A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 27th November 1998.

Tom Utley suggests that English Conservatives should forsake the establishment of an English parliament in order to “fight shoulder to shoulder with Donald Dewar” to preserve the Union of England and Scotland (article, Nov. 20th).

There is a persistent belief among the well-to-do English political class that if only we, the long-suffering English people, would appease and subsidise a bit more, the beneficiaries will be deflected from their settled purpose.  As in Europe, Northern Ireland and now Scotland, such appeasement merely whets the appetite for more.

There has been little sentimental attachment to the Union in Scotland for years.  If in due course people in Scotland vote to break the Union with England, it will be because the sentimental attachment to a separate Scots state will have taken precedence over a hard-headed calculation of the disadvantages which separation will bring.  These include the loss of career opportunities – in the Armed Forces, science, corporate business, media – which would follow the Scots’ transfer of citizenship from a major to a minor state.  The cost of the offsetting jobs – all those new embassies for instance – would be borne 100 per cent by the Scottish taxpayer.

While probably a majority of English people today would prefer the Union with Scotland to continue, this could change rapidly once the manifest unfairness of the new constitutional arrangements becomes full visible.  England does not need the Union to support it.  It is a powerful nation of 50 million people, the sixth largest economy in the world, and contains all but two of the strategic industrial and military installations of the United Kingdom.

The re-establishment of the English parliament, while indispensable for democratic fairness to the English people, will also give status to Scotland as a partner in a proper federal United Kingdom.  It should therefore receive the support, not disapproval, of those people such as Mr Utley who support the Union.