By Rab Bruce’s Spider

EVEL, the English Votes for English Laws legislation, has exercised a great deal of comment in political circles over the past couple of days. Much of this is spin, because the practical impact is not that great. If you want to read a summary of how it works in practice, check out Lallands Peat worrier’s excellent blog article at:

http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/what-does-evel-actually-do.html

However, while the estimable LPW has pointed out that things are not as politicians are portraying them, that has not stopped the Scottish media putting their own spin on things, with the BBC at the forefront as usual. Their presenters have consistently stated that the EVEL rules mean that SNP MPs are now second class MPs. In fact, of course, this rule applies to all non-English MPs, no matter which Party they belong to. It is not just the SNP who are affected. Perhaps the most favourable interpretation we can place on the BBC’s stance is that their news reporters are irredeemably stupid and do not understand the basic facts behind the news they are presentin, because the alternative is that they are deliberately misleading the public, and we all know the BBC would never do that.

It doesn’t stop there, of course. Many Labour-voting pundits have tried to defend EVEL as only fair, apparently in ignorance of one of its main effects, which is to effectively render Scottish Labour redundant in UK terms.

How so? Well, as Lallands Peat Worrier has pointed out, any future Labour Government at Westminster cannot rely on its Scottish MPs to form its majority because those MPs would be excluded from the Veto stage of any English-only legislation the Government tried to push through. A Labour Government would need to have a majority of English MPs to have a chance of passing new laws without risk of defeat. Its Scottish MPs are, in that case, most definitely second class and, as far as Labour are concerned, must be regarded as superfluous when it comes to targeting electoral seats in the next General Election.

The same applies to all parties, of course, but the Liberal Democrats are never going to form a Government at Westminster and the Tories wrote Scotland off a long time ago, recognising that their core support is based in England. Perhaps Scottish Labour have realised this, thus explaining their reticence on the subject so far but many of their supporters don’t seem to have twigged it yet. They probably need some time to work it out.

Aside from marginalising Scottish Labour, EVEL has a rather low practical effect. This is because very few Bills can truly be regarded as affecting only England and because, even if such a Bill passes the English Veto stage and Scottish MPs are permitted to engage in the final debate and vote, the Tories can still push the legislation through because they have an absolute majority in the House of Commons. As we have seen from many analyses of Westminster votes, Scottish MPs very rarely affect the outcome of any vote because of their relatively small number. This was what lay at the heart of the Scottish independence movement in the first place but Scottish voters were persuaded that having their country governed by English Tories was preferable to governing themselves, so we are stuck with the democratic deficit whether we like it or not.

Having said all that, there is another, perhaps more significant aspect to EVEL. It is the symbolic effect.

With all due respect to Lallands Peat Worrier, we cannot ignore the symbolism here. Symbols are important; people respond to them and identify with them. This is why supporters of sporting teams wear their team’s colours, why people dress up to look like their music and celebrity favourites, why teenagers put posters on their walls, why manufactureres put their badges and logos on their goods and products, and why countries have a national flag for people to wave when they want to confirm their identity and support.

But what is the symbolism of EVEL? It is most certainly that Scottish MPs are second class in their own UK Parliament. This is the line the Tories have pushed because they want to appeal to their core English electorate and it is the angle the SNP have pushed because it suits their grievance agenda. It is also the line which will, eventually, backfire on the Tories.

Remember last year when Scots were urged not to leave the UK but to lead it? Then the SNP won a landslide in Scottish seats and the rhetoric became very different indeed. During the EVEL debate, one Tory MP told them to get on a plane and go home. This sort of overt racism is what Tory supporters in England like to hear and it’s exactly what the Tory Party are giving them.

At this point, I must mention MPs from Wales and Northern Ireland because they are affected too, even though nobody seems to be talking about them. The problem is that the Tories are behaving like playground bullies, strutting and posing, and shoving people around as it suits them. Welsh MPs are ignored as irrelevant and those Northern Irish MPs who take up their seats are such staunch supporters of the Union that the Tories feel they can heap any indignity on them without fear of complaint and so treat them as expendable allies.

But let’s get back to Scotland. After the IndieRef, David Cameron showed his true colours by immediately announcing his EVEL plans because constitutional change needed to run in tandem if al parts of the UK were to be treated fairly. Fine sounding words but, as so often, they were lies. England now has its constitutional change while the Scotland Bill is still being talked about and, even when it does eventually become law will offer Scotland very little real change.

Scotland, in other words, has been shafted and this is why the symbolic effect of EVEL only adds fuel to the SNP, the main reason why they are up in arms about it. It allows them to promote the idea that Westminster is, first and foremost, an English Parliament and that it cares little for what happens in Scotland. Even those who voted No in the IndieRef are now faced with the knowledge that their democratically elected MP is viewed by the House of Commons as less important than English MPs.

Nobody can deny that the infamous West Lothian Question needs an answer but the correct way to go about providing a solution would be for all four nations within the Union to have their own devolved Parliament, with each having the same powers, while Westminster provided over-arching control of UK issues for all four. That would be fair and equitable but Westminster is jealous of its power and will not relinquish its authority unless it has no choice. What the Tories have done is implement a botched, mess of an idea simply in order to achieve the short term political goals of hamstringing Labour and marginalising the SNP. While they may well have succeeded in the first of those aims, the second one will only serve to inflame the feeling that Scots are despised by Westminster. It plays into the hands of the SNP because, whatever the practical limitations of EVEL, it is the perception which will count with the electorate and the perception is very much that Scottish MPs and, by extension, the people they represent, are second class citizens. Any Government that treats its people that way is going to find itself in trouble the next time those voters go to the ballot box.