The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129325   Message #2904788
Posted By: GUEST,Allan
11-May-10 - 06:23 PM
Thread Name: BS: Tories just short of a majority
Subject: RE: BS: Tories just short of a majority
"Labour's majority was only maintained by Scottish MPs."

This is simply not true! If you're going to argue points you have to get the basic facts somewhere near the truth. After the last election Labour had 356 MPs whereas the total on the opposition benches (not counting the 5 Sinn Fein members) was 285. The had a majority of about 71. The total number of Scottish MPs was only 59 but of course Labour didn't hold all these seats. Scottish Labour only took a majority of 23 seats to Westminster. The fact is that Labour held a clear and comfortable majority of English seats at Westminster and whether Scottish MPs were present or not made little difference apart from a couple of votes. So for the most part it was only a hypothetical democratic imbalance. At the same time Labour used the so called Sewel Motion over 60 times where devolved matters were taken from the Holyrood Parliament and passed instead at Westminster. How many moans do we hear about that?

Likewise we constantly hear about the West Lothian Question but the truth is for most of the last 80 years or so the UK has had a devolved parliament in Ulster. Yet we never heard about the West Belfast Question.