I fear this election is turning me into an English nationalist

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/27/election-english-nationalist-devolution-union

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In 1951, the general election was held on St Crispin’s Day, with echoes of Agincourt – “Cry God for Harry, England and St George” – though that probably didn’t account for the rather flukey Tory victory. Last Thursday’s St George’s Day passed almost unnoticed; his red and white cross only appears in profusion during the World Cup (and much good did he do us last summer).

And yet the great unspoken theme of this election is “the English question”.

With the SNP taking centre stage and Nicola Sturgeon the star of the show, you would never guess that she’s not even standing for election herself. And nor would you guess that the inhabitants of England are 84% of the British population, 10 times more numerous than the Scots. But the English question will not go away.

Related: In Scotland, an epic political journey is under way, its destination as yet unknown | Neal Ascherson

On the morning after the Scottish referendum last autumn David Cameron brought up “Evel”, the unfortunate acronym for English votes for English laws. He has been berated for that, and now for the vulgar demonisation of the SNP.

But is Labour any better? At one time it was as strongly unionist as the Tories, and when it took up devolution in the 1970s it was as an insincere and opportunistic convert. Labour was trying to square a political circle, keeping at bay the SNP while holding on to as many as possible of Labour’s Scottish rotten boroughs. After the 1997 election and the creation of the devolved Edinburgh parliament, it briefly appeared to have worked, especially since the electoral system for Holyrood was designed with the utmost ingenuity to ensure that no party in general, and the SNP in particular, could gain a parliamentary majority there.

And yet. At a party in 1999, I was talking to Peter Mandelson, and I said that this devolution caper could one day go badly wrong for Labour. He replied with what I must say was an uncharacteristically robotic, on-message voice: “Devolution will strengthen the union.”

Has it just! When the 2007 Scottish parliament election made the SNP the largest party it formed a minority government, at the 2011 Scottish election it won an absolute majority, and next week it looks like obliterating Labour north of the Tweed. If you want to know what a great Scots writer meant when he said that “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, / Gang aft agley,” look no further.

And now, apart from possibly precipitating a constitutional crisis, the election can only highlight the unfairness that England still endures. Cameron offered Evel as a sop, evidently without giving the matter any serious thought. In truth, it’s no answer since it is fraught with difficulty. As Gladstone realised at the time of the 1893 second home rule bill for Ireland, when it was proposed that the remaining Irish MPs at Westminster would only be able to vote on questions of Irish concern, to have two classes of MPs could mean that an administration had a Commons majority for some purposes, but not for others, destroying the basis of parliamentary government.

From when devolution first appeared as a serious prospect I was instinctively opposed to it, and couldn’t understand why

Before the referendum Cameron had made another reckless promise, this one as a sop to the Scots: the bloc grant or Barnett formula would continue. This gives Scotland about £1.20 per head of public spending for every £1 in England, and the last word should go to Joel Barnett, one of the better Labour politicians of his age, who was chief secretary to the Treasury in the 1974-79 government. Not long before his recent death, he said that the eponymous formula for apportioning expenditure was intended as a temporary expedient, and that he had never imagined for a moment that it would still be around almost 40 years later.

Finally there is parliament itself. Writing from her native Isle of Wight, Polly Toynbee mentions that it now has the largest electorate of any constituency in the country. She might have added that these 110,000 voters are more than the combined electorates of three separate Scottish constituencies, Caithness, Sutherland and Ross; Orkney and Shetland; and Na h-Eileanan an Iar (that’s the Western Isles for the majority of English – and Scots – who don’t speak Gaelic). Such disproportion is a grotesque affront to one of the great radical demands in the age of parliamentary reform, “one vote one value”.

Not everybody noticed that at the last election the Tories won a parliamentary majority – in England – and they may do so again. But Sturgeon says she will lock them out of office. In the 1980s it was claimed with some plausibility that it was unjust for Scotland to be ruled by a government for which most of its people hadn’t voted. How much worse will it be if that happens to England?

Here in the west of England, and despite what some have said, there has been very little Jock-bashing, certainly nothing to compare with the vicious Anglophobia that distresses some Scots in their own country. Instead there’s a mood not so much of resentment as of frustration. As long as the English taxpayer heavily subsidies Scotland, where the money is spent in a way over which Westminster has no control, while too-numerous Scottish MPs continue to legislate for England, it will be a matter not of national sentiment, but simply of representative government, and the fundamental democratic principle of the greatest good of the greatest number.

Perhaps I could put it personally. From when devolution first appeared as a serious prospect I was instinctively opposed to it, and couldn’t quite understand why. Gradually I realised the answer: I am not an English nationalist and don’t want to become one, but faced with injustice on this scale I have had little choice. After the election, I may have none at all.