English Parliament online is a community website designed by Gareth Young and hosted by the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP).

A successful campaign relies on the input and participation of its members, but it must also reach out to and engage the wider public. This site aims to do that by helping to stimulate debate on 'The English Question'.

A National Conversation for England

The content of this website, therefore, does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the CEP's National Council or its membership. It is editorially independent of the CEP. It is a place for conversation and therefore a place for contrasting viewpoints, and to that end we hope to feature Opinion Pieces from people outwith, and even opposed to, the Campaign for an English Parliament.

We believe that it is important for the people of England to engage positively in discussion on the question of England: our national identity, our democracy, our governance, our future.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in flux. Just as unionists in 1921 were forced to rethink the logical territorial boundaries of the Union (with the secession of the Irish Free State) today’s unionists are coming to terms with nationalist governments in Scotland and Wales, and new territorial limitations on the extent of Westminster power. Devolution may not have delivered all that it was intended to achieve but for the Scots and Welsh it has proved a liberating experience, invigorating national life, political debate and their national sense of self.

For the English it is becoming increasingly apparent that devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has moved power away from Westminster in a manner that has damaged English voters, and public consultations in Wales and Scotland threaten to further weaken the Union parliament and our sense of Britishness.

As if to counter-balance debate taking place at the peripheries (The ‘All Wales Convention’, the 'National Conversation', and the ‘Calman Commission’), the UK Government has launched a 'Governance of Britain' programme to ‘help us define what it means to be British’, an initiative that may well result in a British Bill of Rights and various policies to strengthen our feeling of Britishness.

But what about England; and what about our feeling of Englishness? Unlike the other nations of the United Kingdom we have been offered no national consultation, nor a referendum, on how we wish to be governed. None are planned, nor even proposed. Instead we watch as our partner nations in the Union are consulted again and again, with the indulgence of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, with a view to further referenda which may again alter the very nature, balance and working of the Union state.

Ironically devolution to all parts of the United Kingdom except England has redefined England politically, once again, as a defined political territory, but only in a negative sense as that part of the United Kingdom which exists within a vacuum. In a political, constitutional, sense England exists only as that part of Britain which is governed entirely from London, by the UK Government; that part of the union with no national voice and no legitimate political means of articulating its feeling of nationhood.

Where the People are Sovereign

In the absence of an national voice expressed through our own English national parliament and government, English Parliament online is designed as an exercise in sortition, in which anyone who registers with the site can participate in and therefore influence the outcome of our polls.

Comments, Viewpoints and Networking

At English Parliament online we are all in favour of robust and healthy debate. In order to achieve this we have a few rules of procedure and civility.

We ask users of the site not to abuse the comments facility to post anti-social, abusive or degrading remarks about any person, people or organisation.

If you do not wish to receive messages from other members of English Parliament online, please deselect "Personal contact form" under the "Contact settings" tab of your user profile.

Please respect the privacy of other members.

Your privacy

Personal information that you share with this site will not be divulged to any other organisation or individual (including the Campaign for an English Parliament), and we will not use it to contact you unless authorised by you to do so (for example, if you signed up to the newsletter).

Links to other websites and blogs

In keeping with the general ethos of the blogosphere we link to other blogs and websites. This should not be taken to mean that we endorse their view.