Common select committee asks the West Lothian Question

The Daily Telegraph reports this today - even a Labour dominated committee can now see that the current constitution arrangement can't last. I suspect Labour politicians are beginning to panic about:

1) Brown becoming PM and getting a massive English back lash.
2) The Conservatives winning the next election and answering the West Lothian question on terms that aren't favourable to the Celtic fringe (aka Labour ).

I suspect Labour will produce a large policy shake up here - designed to hold their Celtic fiefdoms whilst denying the Conservatives power in England. Plan A was the balkanisation of England with the regional assemblies - but they'll think of something else, and soon.

The DT report comments that
"Resentment at the powers the Scots exercise over English affairs is compounded, many MPs say, by claims that English taxpayers subsidise people in Scotland because the country is thinly populated, making services more expensive to run."

Here they are wrong. No Englishman I have met complains about government spending being based on need. A large amount of money goes to Wales to help adjustments there - and that's as it should be. What we want is equal funding of people of equal need. Its the comparisons between funding in Northumbria and the Boarders area that point this out most clearly. The Barnett formula is unjust to the whole peoples of the United Kingdom.

Also most Scots live in the central belt or close to Aberdeen - not challenged by geography.