IPPR A DAY…

It’s becoming an almost daily feature on the BBC. I refer to the “left-leaning” IPPR getting high profile for one of their “reports.” This morning it was all about voters living in England placing more emphasis on their English rather than British identity. Whilst one absolutely welcomes the wishes of English people being giving attention (at last) one also must be careful about where this leads. The EU, for example, would love to see the UK break apart into a mass of small controllable regions, and the encouragement of this via an IPPR study is surely a watch out. The other point is that this study claims most English people would like to see “Devo Max” for Scotland but this is surely a misrepresentation by the IPPR and BBC as to what exactly “Devo Max” actually constitutes? As I understand it, Devo Max will ensure that the taxes from England will still continue to flow north of the border but in addition Scotland can then vary taxes even further.