More than petty, it's childish. And it was utterly insane at the time to start talking up EVEL when the votes of the referendum had scarcely been counted, but the Tories could have quietly dropped the matter after the election, were they serious about maintaining the union, which increasingly, it would seem they are not. And were they a party of grownups, which also, clearly they are not.
And to push it through by simply changing the rules of parliamentary procedure, when this is something of such constitutional significance is disrespectful not just of the Scots, but of the entire nation.
But I'll let the Indy speak to the matter, in this Q&A from an article which they have headlined 'Nicola Sturgeon threatens second independence referendum over 'English votes for English laws', which is the way everyone seems to be framing it, though I haven't seen an exact quote to support the assertion of a threat, beyond that she suggested it would increase support in Scotland for another referendum. Which it obviously would.
Q&A: English votes for English laws
Q. So is that it – the West Lothian riddle, finally solved?
A. Not quite. Grayling has merely restructured Westminster’s political games rather than deliver a genuine solution. The Tory MP Martin Vickers asked where Grayling’s “stumbling” was heading towards. The answer is either a federalist UK, or Scotland leaving the UK. No democratic chamber where there are two classes of members is likely to endure.
Q. Surely the government has thought hard on this?
A. No they haven’t. After the panic-ridden deployment of the “vow” to keep Scotland in the UK club, it took Downing Street only a couple of hours to wreck any post-referendum unity. William Hague was quickly despatched to sketch out a plan to placate English Tories angry at the concessions Scotland was about to be handed. John Redwood offered a plan strikingly similar to what Grayling told the Commons, suggesting not much more thought has gone into this.
Q. The SNP members in the Commons, all 56 of them – they’ll be furious?
A. Furious at what? The SNP have a vested interest in seeing the union fail, and Pete Wishart is entirely correct in forecasting Grayling has helped the nationalists’ cause. Extend the consequences of what this means and it’s hard to see how a Scottish MP can ever again become prime minister, or indeed hold many of the top ministry jobs. Limit the ambition of members of any club, and they’ll take their business elsewhere – in this case out of the union.
Q. Is the change really that big?
A. There will be three new legislative grand committees: one for English MPs, one for English and Welsh MPs, and one for English, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs. They will dictate what a lot of the full House gets to vote on.
Q. So where are the Scots?
A. Exactly.
Q. The SNP MP Ian Blackford asked why the Conservatives are bothering with all this - why not just create an English Parliament ?
A. Good question. Scotland already resembles a one-party state. The nationalists have tight control of Holyrood. Labour, the LibDems and the Tories all have only one MP north of the border. This isn’t an English Parliament, but it’s close.
Hundreds of years of unity destroyed in such a short space of time. And peoples who have intermingled (genetically, culturally, linguistically) for generation upon generation upon generation, now likely to be artificially divided along the lines of ancient arbitrary borders that haven't held that much significant relevance for centuries. And David Cameron's party would seem to have destroyed it in the course of just one electoral cycle.
* And it still seems a little bizarre to me that there could even be such a thing as English nationalism. The degree to which a truly Welsh or Scottish identity exists separate from a British identity is vastly overstated, never mind the degree to which one could separate out an English identity. Other than geography, what does it really mean to be 'English' and not 'British' ? No-one seems to know.
