CEP Protest in Smethwick

Members of the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) in Shropshire and the West Midlands attended the inaugural meeting of the grandly-titled but pointlessly ineffectual Regional Grand Committee for the West Midlands last night (8th October) to protest at its existence.

Like the vast majority of English people, the Campaign for an English Parliament opposes the damaging regionalisation of England and instead believes that England should be run by an English Parliament.

CEP members held up a 12ft banner and waved placards as MPs arrived at Sandwell College Campus at Smethwick. Several passing motorists stopped to read the placards and many of them stuck up their thumbs and honked their horns in support.

Despite the Conservatives saying that they would boycott these regional grand committees and pledging, in their party conference this week, to unravel Labour's regionalisation, seven opposition MPs turned up to the meeting. Had they not attended, the Labour MPs that attended would have failed to meet the minimum number required for the meeting to go ahead.

These regional grand committees are Gordon Brown's preferred form of government for England and are supposed to be Labour's answer to the national parliament and assembly they created in Scotland and Wales. British ministers have described them as bringing democracy closer to the people. To think that the people of England will accept this sham as the future of their country is an insult.

Tories won't be boycotting regional grand committee after all

The Tories and the Lib Dems both pledged to boycott Gordon Brown's regional grand committees so I called the offices of the five Shropshire MPs over the last couple of days to ask if they would be attending the regional grand committee in Smethwick on Thursday.

• Daniel Kawczynski will definitely not be attending the meeting, approves of the Tory boycott and opposes regionalisation.
• Owen Paterson is giving a speech to the Tory Party conference and won't be attending the committee.
• Mark Pritchard's secretary in his constituency office doesn't have access to his diary and his Westminster office has yet to reply to an email.
• David Wright has yet to return my call (although he has been sending me Twitter messages all day).
• Philip Dunne will be attending the committee as he has been instructed to attend by the party whip.

Tory Party conference follower and English Parliament supporting blogger, Man in a Shed, put the following update on Twitter today:

Abolishing Labour's regional government gets the loudest clap so far

How much applause would the announcement have got if the delegates knew that the whips were ordering their shadow cabinet members to attend regional grand committees despite a public pledge to boycott them?

Down with this sort of thing

On Thursday members of Shropshire Branch will be at the Campaign for an English Parliament’s protest at the pantomime that is the regional grand committee for the West Midlands euroregion.

The regional grand committee for the east of England euroregion was a complete farce – hardly any MPs turned up to the meeting (not enough for a quorum so they couldn’t discuss anything on the agenda) and they spent 30 minutes of the 50 minute meeting debating whether to put the PA system on. The whole thing cost the taxpayer nearly £2m, the meeting in the West Midlands euroregion will also cost roughly the same amount.

This is El Gordo’s vision for the future governance of England but it’s certainly not mine. The protest will be at 6:30pm on Thursday the 8th of October at the Sandwell College campus in Smethwick.