Constitutionally Out of Touch

It's a strange thing, a constitution.

Over here the constitution is a mallet from Madrid, bashing in the heads of anyone who dares to suggest that the Catalans might be allowed to vote for independence. And this week in Westminster, constitutional rules are passed after a three hour debate which consigns Scottish MPs and all their voters to the dustbin. An EVEL way to treat constitutional government.

I will leave it to my honourable friend the Lallands Peat Worrier to pronounce a legal opinion on EVEL. But one cannot help but be amazed at just how out of touch the Tories and Spain's right of centre ruling Partido Popular are in their respective parliaments.

For the last three years more than a million people have taken to the streets and coastline of Catalonia to protest against Madrid's continuous dismissal of Catalan opinions. Opinions expressed calmly and politely in the voting booth. Madrid has used the machinery of the state to dismiss decisions taken in the Catalan Parliament, the Generalitat, and then to threaten its politicians in the Constitutional court. Last week, Madrid passed legislation specifically designed to ban from office politicians and civil servants who defy their kangaroo courts.

The Prime Minister announced the day after 45% of the people of Scotland had voted for independence that they should forthwith be punished by becoming second class citizens under EVEL. In "Project Fear", Joe Pike makes the unlikely claim that this was the only time that Alastair Darling swore during the Referendum campaign. Cameron's announcement was driven by the same strategy as that of the Partido Popular; knock back the lefty nationalists, refuse them, and they will go back into their holes in the hills.

Tories and PP are out of touch. Westminster has no political interest in Scotland because it is focused exclusively on the interests of Chipping Norton and the City. The Bullingdon Club boys have no idea of what life is like for the "ordinary hardworking families" of their fetish phrase; they have never experienced life in an "ordinary hardworking family" because daddy was something in the City and paid for first Eton and then Oxbridge. In Madrid the Partido Popular have the imperial view of three hundred years ago when the city was capital of everything from the Caribbean to Tierra del Fuego and of all the seas to El Peñon.

Only a truly out of touch party could dream up EVEL, the Bedroom Tax and the tax credit cut. So out of touch that they will leave the poor (who did not go to Eton and Oxbridge) to starve and beg at foodbanks so long as they can carry on claiming their expenses and flipping their multiple homes.

But this type of constitutional rot cannot go on forever. Eventually, in Catalonia and in Scotland, the people will decide to overturn their Imperial Masters and build their own countries, with their own constitutions. Constitutions that we can respect, that protect the weak and that limit the powerful. Constitutions that cannot be dismissed in a three hour debate or a kangaroo court. Constitutions for us.