Controversy about Scottish Prime Ministers


I simply cannot understand this controversy about Scottish Prime Ministers, which seems to have been whipped up at the time of Gordon Brown's elevation to the Premiership.

In actual fact, if the place of your birth dictates your nationality, we have had a Scottish Prime Minister for the last ten years in Tony Blair - born and brought up in Scotland!

But even if you forgive that bit of amnesia by those who are getting into a froth about Gordon Brown's Scottishness, have the chattering classes in England forgotten that that building in Westminster actually houses the United Kingdom Parliament - not the English Parliament?


The House of Commons is part of the United Kingdom Parliament.
It is therefore quite appropriate to have a Scottish Prime Minister! © Deryc Sands

Tony Blair gave the English electorate the chance to vote for their own parliaments/assemblies, but they rejected it. Given that background, it really is a bit rich now to start complaining about the inevitable consequence, given that Scots make up a reasonable proportion of the United Kingdom electorate.

The much greater travesty would be if they tried to engineer Scots out of the top jobs. Indeed, if they would surely be more likely to be serving time at Her Majesty's pleasure, rather than in Her Majesty's parliament, because race discrimination is illegal!

As far as I am concerned, if English MPs are so insecure that they don't want Scots in charge of departments that run affairs in England and Wales and if they don't want Scots to vote on matters that don't affect Scotland, the remedy is in their own hands.

Set up an English Parliament. We're not stopping you.

It could even be made up of English MPs meeting on a day when UK business was not being conducted in the United Kingdom Parliament.

Posted: Wed - June 27, 2007 at 10:21 AM          

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