The Labour Party was committed to decentralised government across the UK and that was why one of its first major changes was to enable the Scottish Parliament to be set up - it wanted to put power back to the people because it was right to do so.
Aye, right!
I can't stay up late enough to watch "This Week" on Thursdays so I watched it courtesy of the infernal wickedness of Sky Plus last night. They had this segment on Scottish politics with the Proclaimers. This is no great surprise if you think about it, but I was amused to see Diane Abbott saying that English Labour MPs didn't pay too much attention to the legislation because their Scottish colleagues, a powerful block in the Parliamentary Labour Party, had told them that they needed to back it to stuff the SNP!
It certainly was inconsistent for a party which is so centralising and controlling in nature to give power away without some sort of political advantage. They blithely assumed that even with PR they would be able to build another monolithic fiefdom in Edinburgh. If they'd gone into it with a more genuine attitude, then maybe they wouldn't be in the mess they're in now.
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