IN the early years of his government, Tony Blair offered devolved powers to the Scots.

Although it was a serious constitutional issue, he adopted his trademark back-of-an-envelope mode of policy-making, with no thinking through of long-term consequences for the UK constitution.

He and his co-conspirators had only one thing in mind; they thought that the establishment of a Scottish parliament would be in the long-term interests of the Labour party in Scotland. We now see, of course, what a dire misconception that was.

The result of Labour’s bungled chicanery is that, whereas there is a parliament in each of the 40 or more countries of continental Europe and Scandinavia, and even the smaller countries on the island of Great Britain have their parliaments, there is no English parliament.

The Conservatives are attempting to fob the English off with English laws being voted on by only English MPs. But a future Labour government could easily defeat this convention by simply abolishing it or by ensuring that no Bill presented to Parliament was an England-only Bill.

The Labour party who got us into this constitutional mess won’t even countenance English-only votes at Westminster. What they would like to do is to dismember England and replace it with nine regions.

However, when they tried to initiate the process in 2004 by seeking to establish a regional government in the north-east, they were severely rebuffed by the public. The English do not want their country broken up.

The existence of and actions taken by the devolved governments have served to engender an increasing awareness of English identity and the SNP’s robust campaign for Scottish independence has strengthened that feeling.

Shortly before the Scottish referendum vote was to be taken, the major Westminster parties, in a panic, promised extensive additional powers to the Scottish parliament.

As a result more powers |will inevitably be granted to Wales and, probably, Northern Ireland.

These additional powers will throw into an even more glaring light just how grossly unfair the present UK government system is to the people of England.

This in turn will only heighten the desire of the English people for their nationhood to be properly recognised by the establishment of an English parliament and an English government.