The latest attempt by New Labour at breaking up the United Kingdom has thankfully failed.
The referendum for an elected regional assembly in the North-east revealed a massive NO vote. The message to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was plain—clear off!
It is ironic that a Labour government so interested in democratic elections in places like Iraq, should spend so much time desperately trying to gerrymander the vote here at home.
Not satisfied with a Westminster packed with Scottish and Welsh MPs, Labour are trying to inflict an unnecessary layer of local government via their elected regional assemblies. Of course the real aim of this is further gerrymandering as they next planned to remove one of the three layers of local government created by their tinkering.
That would have meant the eventual abolition of county councils, who just happen to be Conservative run in the main!
New Labour is happy to have separate government for Scotland and Wales because it suits them politically, but England still has no separate parliament—quite simply because Labour might lose control of the country from which most UK wealth comes.
But elected assembly or not, the gerrymandering goes on. After all it was a non-elected regional assembly in the east that recently voted to build 200,000 new houses on green belt land.
It will be a non-elected regional assembly here in the south-east which eventually decides further planning policy in Medway. So much for local democracy under a Labour government.