Calling out Conservative bloggers

Ask a question, get a stock answer. That certainly seems to be the way of things when the questions are complex, the correct answers politically 'difficult' and the stock answers easy on the tongue. Take the deeply disturbing omission of the nation of England from the devolution project in Britain. What about England?. It's one of the hard ones and currently has two stock answers. Regional devolution, which says nothing of England as a nation and can never deliver the level of devolution given to other British nations, and English Votes on English Matters (EVoEM) which delivers just as poorly and is just as unequal in the devolution stakes. EVoEM is designed to answer a very different question to that of devolution; it simply provides an accessible answer to the question of devolved nations voting on matters in a UK parliament building on proposed English only legislation. It provides no voice for England, no executive, no body to work in the interests of the people of England to ensure that they are equally represented in the Union.

Silky smooth, it rolls off the tongue. It's the Tory opposition body armour. It's the soundbite on the radio. It's the footnote at the bottom of the ubiquitous your MP has asked me to respond letter.

And it's not good enough. I know this, my fellow Witanagemot Club bloggers know this and those members of the public who have become aware of the discrimination that devolution has handed down to them know this.

Gareth, over at the Campaign for an English Parliament has thrown down the gauntlet to the conservative bloggers who use this easy EVoEM chaff in response to the hard question:

A quick Google for them revealed them to be nothing more than a cursory mention of Davis and Cameron's attitude towards Scots voting on English legislation. This simply won't do. I'd like to see some proper discussion amongst Conservative bloggers about how 'English Votes on English Laws/Matters' (EVoEM) would actually work in practice. It seems to be a subject that Conservative bloggers, just like the Conservative Party, go out of their way to avoid discussing in any detail.

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So, if any of you Conservative bloggers (Once More, Conservative Home, The Cameron Leadership - or any of the individual Tory bloggers) are reading this, then consider it a gauntlet thrown down. Please explain to us at The Campaign for an English Parliament how your EVoEM proposals would work. Let's discuss this now, it's in your interests before the matter becomes a serious embarrassment for the Conservative Party and the UK as a whole.