For England it is difficult to envisage any insuperable disadvantage in the break up of the UK, but easy to see definite and substantial advantages. Most importantly, England would be able to act wholeheartedly in her own interests. Her considerable population, wealth and general sophistication would ensure that she could maintain without any real difficulty the present levels of government provision from the welfare state to the military. The powers vital to a sovereign state – the ability to control immigration, trade and the laws of the land – would be once again in English hands. Acting within the confines of the nation would allow meaningful democratic control to once again be exercised over parliament as politicians could no longer act as Quislings in the service of globalism because they would have to account .
England would no longer pay subsidies to the Celtic Fringe. These currently total around £16 billion as there are around 10 million Celts and each receives from the Treasury approximately £1,600 per head more than the English receive. In addition, the tax take in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales is less per capita than in England and the take-up of benefits higher (benefits are not devolved). Consequently, England has to pay disproportionately more of the UK benefits cost than her share of the UK population. The same applies to other non-devolved areas such as defence and foreign policy.
England’s removal from the EU would save around £5-6 billions just on the net difference between what is paid to Brussels and what Britain gets back. Much, probably most, of the remaining money is ill-spent because it can only be used in ways sanctioned by the EU. Most of the Dangeld paid to Brussels is paid by England. That burden would be removed from the English taxpayer. Further savings would come from removing the dead hand of EU directives from Britain, the cost of which is overwhelming borne by England.
Billions more can be saved by ending foreign Aid. This is currently around £9 billion pa. It will rise in the next few years to between £11-12 billion because of Gordon Brown’s committment to donating the UN’s target figure of 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2014. Most of this money is paid by the English taxpayer.
The only important disadvantages for England could be balance of payments deficits (primarily from the loss of oil, gas and whiskey production) and ructions in the international institutional sphere. Happily, adverse balances of trade are (eventually) self-correcting even if the correction, as is the case with America, can seem an age coming. Moreover, with the free global currency market and a floating pound, an adverse balance of trade does not hold the horrors it once did, for international borrowing is infinitely easier than it was and devaluation of the currency is not viewed as a national humiliation. England might be temporarily embarrassed by a substantially increased trade deficit, but there is no reason to believe that it would be prolonged or seriously affect the English economy.
As for international upheaval, it is conceivable that England would be unable to sustain a claim to Britain’s privileged position on international bodies such as the UN Security Council and the board of IMF. However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons. To begin with there is the precedent of Russia which assumed all of the Soviet Union’s international entitlements. Britain is also the United States’ only halfway reliable ally on most of these international boards. To this may be added Britain’s position as one of the larger international paymasters and providers of reliable military muscle. None of these facts need essentially change with the substitution of England for Britain. Perhaps most importantly, the denial to England of any of Britain’s institutional places would pose the awkward question of who was to take any vacant position. This could (and almost certainly would) in turn raise the whole question of whether the constitutions of most world bodies are equitable or suited to the modern world. (The constitutions were after all created approximately fifty years ago and are in no sense equitable). To deny England would mean the opening of a can of worms.
Conversely, it could be plausibly argued that membership of such international bodies represents a liability rather than an advantage and England would be well shot of them.
Independence for England can only be a ‘win / win situation’ for the English and I’ve been advocating independence for England since long before 1997.
Bring it on – the sooner the better! I am sick to death of English taxes being used to provide benefits elsewhere, such as free tuition fees, EMA, care for the elderly, free prescriptions, low council tax (the list is endless) that we the English are denied.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061231051149/www.realnews-online.com/rn0001.htm
Discrimination against the English
The politics of each country in the United Kingdom is clearly different with Labour and the Liberal Democrats doing far better in Scotland and Wales. These political parties have therefore ended up with a free hand in running aspects of their own national affairs. The same is true in Ireland where political parties with specifically Irish characteristics are left to run their own affairs. In England there is no assembly so there is no means whereby the politics of England finds expression.
The current “New Labour” government has a “majority” of some 66 MPs in the Parliament of Westminster. This essential majority for the survival of this government comes from Scottish and Welsh MPs who contribute some 70 MPs to the Labour Government’s double counting system. There is therefore, in the case of England, an imposition of a United Kingdom assembly where the government of the day has manipulated affairs to guarantee a built-in “majority”. This is a minority government which has the “support” of less than 22% of the electorate. This grossly unfair system survives because of the ability of Scottish and Welsh MPs to sit in two houses while preventing the English MPs the same priviledge; this is an unacceptable act of discrimination against the English.
Erosion of vital English values
Historically, in terms of the development of democracy, Englishmen have been unique in identifying, defining and giving voice to seminal values which so many hold dear. These include the right to the pursuit of happiness, the setting of individual freedom as the hallmark of a successful system of justice as reflected in the typically English legal imperatives as the right to equality before the law irrespective of status, the assumption of innocence, the right to trial by jury, habeas corpus and freedom of, and the defence of, free speech. These have largely rode on English Common Law and the ability of Judges and Juries to do a fair job free from political interference.
Such imperatives for the survival of freedom were promoted by the Levellers during the English Civil War and by the group associated with John Lilburne. Cromwell had these inividuals kept in prison. With the collapse of the English Republic and with the return of Royalty their essential writings were very much kept under wraps. The spark which gave rise to a mass revolution in the American Colonies was when the British Crown moved to ban juries because too many were preventing the state enforce arbitrary decisions on innocent “colonists”. It is notable that the American Constitutional components which relate to the pursuit of happiness, individual liberty and freedom are largely based on the early writings of Lilburne written in the Tower of London, 150 years before.
Unfortunately there has been a slow erosion of this essential spark, this recognition of the importance of the defence of individual freedom, as a typical English value. This has occurred gradually since the ascendency of the Scottish influence in United Kingdom politics. Scotland, it should be noted, has a legal system based on the European system, Corpus Juris, a codified Roman Law which is completely distinct and almost alien from English Common Law. This sustains a position which keeps the influence of the community conscience in legal affairs and court decisions at arms length.
Elimination through a political Europe
The lack of an English assembly prevents the English from protecting their rights to sustain their nationality as English. The European project, Corpus Juris and the European Constitutional Draft are aimed directly at “standardizing law” which means, in the United Kingdom context that Scottish Law will eventually reign supreme. The breaking up of England into so-called EU regions has been a subtle and politically destructive means of destroying the coherence of the English nation. England has become the only country in Europe to have been eliminated without a war but rather as the result of the manipulations of Brussels bureaucrats and dishonest and irresponsible politicians in Westminster serving their party interests over country.