Falconer's no to English Parliament is the beginning, not the end

Constitutional Affairs Secretary and former Tony Blair flatmate Lord Falconer has today delivered an uncompromising statement on the Government's attitude to an English Parliament.

He said an English Parliament would control the greater part of the economic power of the UK, leaving a federal UK parliament "hanging on its coat-tails."

"To the idea of an English parliament we say not today, not tomorrow, not in any kind of future we can see now. Devolution strengthens the union of the UK. English votes for English issues would wreck it."

The full story can be read here.

So where does this leave us? Does this mean that those of us who support an English Parliament and a federal UK should pack up and go home? Absolutely not.

To start with, Falconer is toast when Brown takes over. He is only in the Cabinet because he's an old legal chum of Blair's, and the PM is so isolated in the Labour Party he needs to surround himself with cronies. Furthermore Brown has already said he will have a wide-ranging look at the constitution when he takes over.

But the real significance of today's comments is that Falconer felt it necessary to make them at all. It means the idea of an English Parliament is, finally, on the mainstream political agenda.

What this does is create a great opportunity for the Campaign for the English Parliament to get its message across and expose the contradictions in the Government's argument.

For example, the BBC is running a Have Your Say on the issue which is now running to eight pages of coments, together with a poll which currently shows around 63pc in favour of an English Parliament and 37pc against.

Here's an excerpt from what I wrote on that thread:

"If Falconer's argument against an English Parliament is that it will ultimately lead to a "federal Britain," then I would have to ask him where he's been for the past nine years. The actions of his own Government in creating devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales and the attempts to create a similar structure in Northern Ireland have - quite rightly in my view - taken us three quarters of the way towards a federal UK already. An English Parliament is simply the missing piece in the jigsaw."

Plenty more debate on this at Iain Dale and the CEP newsblog with an eloquent summing up from Little Man in a Toque.

March 14 update: Roy Hattersley gives his backing to an English Parliament with this piece in the Guardian.

Get on with it Blair - II

A couple of weeks ago I urged Tony Blair to get on with his long-awaited Cabinet reshuffle, questioning his decision to announce the creation of a Minister for Social Exclusion while failing to announce who was to fill the post.

It's nice to know that the Labour-supporting Times newspaper agrees with me.

Ming's top team: a preliminary verdict

Ming Campbell has now completed the long-drawn out Lib Dem frontbench reshuffle and the full list can be viewed here.

I don't think there are any great surprises. We knew he would reward Clegg for not standing by giving him a more important position than Huhne, who did stand, and this has duly happened.

In my view Huhne should have got the Foreign Affairs spokesmanship but that would have irritated the Clegg camp and in any case Michael Moore appears to be joined at the hip to Ming.

Sarah Teather has been getting the headlines today for her promotion to Education spokeswoman, but I am not alone in wondering whether she really cuts the mustard.

In terms of the minor placings, interesting to see old Paddy Ashdown ally Nick Harvey back in the top team at Defence, and Lembit keeping his job as Wales and Northern Ireland spokesman despite making an arse of himself in the leadership campaign.

Out go Andrew George, Sandra Gidley and Tom Brake who are no great losses but I'm puzzled as to what poor old John Thurso has done wrong apart from wear a silly Lord Lucan-style moustache.

One potentially really significant appointment is that of Simon Hughes to the constitutional affairs brief.

Some of my colleagues in the Campaign for an English Parliament believe that Hughes is a secret supporter of their cause, so it will be very interesting to see if this now forms of part of Lib Dem policy development in this area.