Scotland+Wales to Sink Westminster Parliament?

SNP and Plaid Cymru to ask for dissolution debate at Westminster
newsroom published this on 8:30 pm, Tuesday, 2nd June, 2009

MPs could be given an opportunity next week to dissolve parliament and call an early General Election after the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru announced they would seek to use debating time allotted to them to force a dissolution debate.

Whatever your politics, there’s a sense that we’re all living in limbo. The country is stalled. No one knows what will happen next.

We have Ministers stepping down and others who will obviously have to do so.
We have MPs standing down and others now blocked from standing for their party again.
There are the elections to the European Parliament and the English Local Authorities on Thursday, with the local authority results due on Friday and the European Parliament results on Monday.
There is to be a reshuffle of Government Ministers within days which, if it sees Ed Balls replace Alistair Darling as Chancellor will see Balls and his wife, Yvette Cooper, forced from office in short order in a well-earned media storm because their expenses claims are even more dubious than Darling’s. And if Darling is sent to the Home Office to replace the departing Jacqui Smith, how is it OK for a flipper to hold one of the great departments of state but not another? Is anyone in the Government even capable of thinking just now? They still don’t get it.
Then there are more forensic details of MP’s expense claims to be revelaed under the Freedom of Information Act in July.
It is unimaginable that the ship of state can struggle on, rudderless, like this for another year.

On the SNP / Plaid Cymru move, Angus Robertson, the SNP Westminster leader, says: ‘This dissolution motion is about confidence in the whole Westminster political system which has been mired in the expenses scandal.

‘It is not just the UK Government that is out of step with public opinion, but Parliament itself.

‘The only way to sort this mess out is for Parliament to be dissolved and for the people to have their say in a general election. There can be no argument against the entire House of Commons submitting itself to a vote of the people who elected it.

‘This political crisis was created by politicians and the SNP and Plaid Cymru will give Parliament the chance to give the people their say’.

Comment: Indications suggest that the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties will give their full backing.