With England being the only nation on the island of Britain to be unrecognised by the UK Government and mainstream opposition parties, the odious BNP have begun making hay with members of an electorate which is demoralised, downtrodden and has nowhere else to look.
Think about this...
People in Scotland and Wales can be Scottish, Welsh and British. There are efforts to foster a civic national indentity for those countries, regardless of ethnic origins. In England, there is no encouragement of an English civic identity. Anybody can be of English nationality, but as there is no political recognition of England as a unit within Britain, that counts for nought. BRITISH is force fed to us every day of the year.
Having no political recognition as a nation within Britain means that England gets poorer health care, poorer education provision, poorer residential care, and charges for health and residential care which are free in Scotland and Wales.
In England, life prolonging drugs available on the NHS in Scotland and Wales are not available to us.
Scots Westminster MPs rule on English issues, sometimes overturning the will of our representative MPs, imposing unpopular legislation like foundation hospitals and university top-up fees on us. The Scots Parliament has begun to extend its territory into England, ruling certain English rivers. The maritime boundary has been altered to give Scotland most of England's share of the North Sea Oil - we were not consulted.
And so, people in England become disgruntled. Then angry. But nobody listens.
"English votes on English matters," squawk the Tories, whilst their leader brags of Scots blood in his veins and slags off the English during a speech in Scotland.
"We've always backed devolution for the others!" say the Lib Dems, proudly. "But as for England... no, the current set-up isn't fair but we're not rocking the boat to restore democracy."
"I wanna be Prime Minister and I don't care about equality for England!" hints Gordon Brown. "England is BRITAIN, BRITAIN, BRITAIN! Democratic deficit? Think BRITISH!!"
And similar nonsensical cobblers.
And so the BNP seize their chance and start making inroads. No, Guardian reading elite folk, it's not the fault of a knuckle dragging electorate, it's the fault of the UK Government for delivering unfair and uneven devolution which ignores England and discriminates against its people at every turn. It's the fault of the mainstream opposition parties for putting their rosy careers and the bizarre continuation of pre-devolution UK style rule for England before democracy.
Yep, the BNP are making hay.
And the Government and mainstream opposition parties are entirely to blame.
We must all demand that the mainstream politicians act to restore democratic rule to England and begin to look after England as a nation within the UK, in line with Scotland.
The BNP MUST be kept at bay. And England must be justly treated.
More about the BNP issue here.
This blog is supportive of the aims of the Campaign for an English Parliament, but is in no way connected.
