Roger.Hicks@spaceship-earth.de
SIR - After participating in the Feedback poll, 'Should we give devolution a vote of no confidence?' I was amazed to discover what a high percentage of other participants voted with a 'yes'.
It is an expression of Britain's advanced level of civilisation, that while other governments are still resorting to military force to keep their dominions under central control, our Government is encouraging devolution and the decentralisation of political power.
We need devolution as a complementary development to international law, the EU, mass society and globalisation. We are at the very beginning of a process that will develop over generations, comparable to what followed Magna Carta in 1215.
Calling for a vote of no confidence now is absolutely ludicrous, although I do not doubt that there were some who would have given a vote of no confidence to Magna Carta when it was first introduced!
Instead, we should be thinking and talking about applying devolution to England, taking account of historical, geographical, political, economic and emotional affiliations and considerations.
London would have one of the new English assemblies, whose representatives, along with those from other English assemblies, and the assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (if still possible...), would be able to send representatives to a reconstituted upper chamber of Parliament, giving us a modern and effective federal democracy.
