Scottish nationalists will hold us to ransom if Labour blocks English votes', William Hague warns, Daily Mail

 England risks being held to ransom by Scottish Nationalists unless Labour agrees to implement a system of ‘English votes for English laws’ at Westminster, William Hague said yesterday.

The Leader of the Commons said Ed Miliband was refusing to back a veto for English MPs over legislation that applies only to their constituents, to keep open the possibility of a Labour-SNP coalition.

The Conservatives said they planned to strip Scottish MPs of the power to impose tax changes, education and health reforms on England, given the Scottish Parliament will soon have control of all these issues.

The reform would make it impossible for an incoming Labour government to press ahead with its plan to raise the top rate of tax to 50p in England, for example, without winning the support of a majority of English MPs.

Mr Hague said it was a ‘simple matter of fairness’. But his blueprint prompted a furious response from Labour and the SNP – as well as some Right-wing Tories who want to go further and create an effective English Parliament.

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Comment:

Why should  Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh Members of Parliament have the right to vote on matters such as Education, Health etc  that only effects English hospitals and schools etc, etc when those matters in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies  for the electorate and the citizens of those parts of the United Kingdom ?.   I believe those matters only affecting England should only be voted on by English MP’s. This is known as the West Lothian Question.

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The decade of despair: The businessmen warning that Miliband wants to take Britain back to the 1970s are right - it would be a catastrophe, writes DOMINIC SANDBROOK

 First, the Boots boss, now a string of other senior business figures are queuing up to attack Labour’s beleaguered leader.

In the past few days, it has seemed that Ed Miliband is heading for all-out war with the High Street over his increasingly strident attacks on Britain’s businesses.

As Lord Rose, the man who saved M&S, put it in yesterday’s Mail, the Labour leader is in danger of looking like a ‘Seventies throwback’.

Indeed, with his planned National Insurance and corporation tax rises, as well as his attacks on so-called business ‘predators’, Mr Miliband seems determined to rekindle the spirit of the decade that fashion forgot.

Labour MPs naturally shrink at comparisons with the Seventies, when strikes brought the country to a standstill and Jim Callaghan’s government was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for the biggest bailout in history.

Yet from his cynical pledge to cap energy prices to his controversial mansion tax, Mr Miliband seems intent on banishing all memories of the New Labour years, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were eager to prove their business-friendly credentials.

For all Labour’s synthetic outrage, therefore, I think Lord Rose was entirely justified in recalling the climate of the mid-Seventies, which he called ‘the old days of punitive taxes on business-people, of class war and the stirring of resentment’.

In 1974, rather like today, Britain faced a choice between a governing Conservative Party that often seemed out of touch with its own supporters, and a lacklustre Labour Opposition happiest when bashing business and pandering to its Left-wing activists.

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Comment:

If you want to see the United Kingdom bankrupt by punitive taxes, and ruined by neo-communist/left wing/socialist and self interested parties like the Greens and Scottish Nationalist  Parties and see Alex Salmond  as Deputy Prime Minister intent on breaking up the United Kingdom because of his self-inflated ego. vote for Labour, If you want our country to continue to see economic growth,  well the choice is easy, vote the Conservatives.  I know what choice I will be making and it’s not voting for Labour

Archbishops Justin Welby And John Sentamu Make Their Biggest Political Intervention Yet, Huffington Post

The Church of England has labelled income inequality "evil" in a scathing assessment of the coalition, in which it questions how David Cameron has allowed entire communities to be "cast aside."

In one of the Church's biggest ever political interventions, timed to coincide with the general election campaign, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York said valuing communities on purely economic output was a "fundamental sin", and claimed Britain has become dominated by consumerism and selfishness.

In a video to launch the collection of essays in his new book Rock or Sand?, which includes a contribution from the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, admitted the Church was making a political intervention but said it was not trying to be party political, despite remarks being clearly aimed at coalition policies.

Dr Sentamu said the UK faced a "deep, deep economic crisis" during the last four and-a-half years and said inequality trapped "hard-working" families on "poverty wages".

An extract from Archbishop Welby's essay, published in the Daily Telegraph, also criticises the "un-Christian" principle of of what is known as Social Darwinism - "every person for themselves", and said while London and the South East are growing economically, "entire cities are being cast aside" and left to decline.

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Further Reading

Daily Telegraph Archbishops’ pre-election assault on ‘evil’ of inequality in Coalition Britain

Daily Telegraph Archbishop of York says politicians obsessed with ‘beguiling Middle England’

More on Social Darwinism