I always try to stay up for the general elections in the UK (politics junkie that I am), and I often try to tunr in for the American presidential elections. The timing doesn't really work out for me there, although it's usually possible to get a good idea how things are going thanks to the instant exit polls so I can go to bed with a pretty good idea of who's won even if very few states have actually declared.

With this referendum I don't need to stay up, and it would be pointless. I normally get up in the morning at about 5ish anyway so I can just wake up as normal and switch on to see how things have gone.

I don't know how the results will be announced, but I expect an Exit poll or two will come out at the end of today. Chances are I'll stay up for a bit to see if it's close.

There are no exit polls apparently, so you'd need to stay up till the first results come in at about two and then see how they extrapolate the results based on projections for those regions. Bollocks to that.

That means 9:00 EDT. That's when they will officially "announce" them? (or at least be finished counting?) Doesn't sound like something terribly difficult to count, though. Certainly easier than hand-counting an election in the United States, where you elect not just a president, but your congressman, possibly one of your two senators, and then a ****load of state and local offices...all on one piece of paper/machine/touchscreen/whatever.

We'll know for sure by about 6am our time, not sure what that is for you. By then all the big council results ought to be in.

I'm calling it for No right now though. I've just watched about an hour or so of the BBC coverage and it seems clear that the No representative (Douglas Alexander) is totally relaxed, whereas the woman from the SNP whose name escapes me is a little bit evasive and refuses to be drawn on any kind of prediction. Having stayed up deep into the night to watch many elections I have a pretty good nose for these things. Hopefully I'll prove to be right.

Well, there was an exit poll, and it was pretty accurate. 10% is a fair margin of victory, but closer tham it lokked up to a few weeks ago.

I hope that the losers do not get bitter and vindictive, that we do move on to greater devolution across the UK (I prefer the idea of regional government in England to a single English Parliament), and that the winners and the English do not block progress.

I think Cameron has done enough to keep his job for another few months.

Well, in an American election, 55% is a landslide.

I hope that the losers do not get bitter and vindictive, that we do move on to greater devolution across the UK (I prefer the idea of regional government in England to a single English Parliament), and that the winners and the English do not block progress.

English regional government doesn't really make much sense. Nobody wants it. They tried that with the referendum on a regional assembly for the NE and it failed miserably. The NE has one of the strongest regional identities in England and even there the people just couldn't get excited about the idea of regional devolution. It makes far more sense to have either an English parliament or to simply bar non-English MPs from voting on English legislation. England is a defined nation and should be represented as such in the same way that the other nations are.

If there's any block on progress it's likely to come from the Labour party. English devolution is a mortal threat to Labour and I'm quite sure they'll do their damnedest to water it down.

This has to be the best observation on the whole separatist lunacy that I've read to date. It came from, of all p[laces, the comments section underneath a Brendan O'Neill article, not the sort of place you normally look for sanity...:

Well, from where I'm standing (more Hibs territory I'm afraid), all I saw was a state sponsored and extremely well disciplined and drilled chugging campaign, light on substance but big on stickers, corralling loads of people who had no idea what it might be like to leave a large, stable economy of sixty million people with low interest rates, a stable economy and a central bank to join a small, unstable state with absolutely nothing probable, and even less possible.

I admire the YES campaign, I really do. You managed to go fishing for all kinds of disaffected interest groups, hormonal teenagers, the greens, CND, the gay rights lobby, Brian Souter, the socialists, the secular humanists and convince them that the Union was the source of all their problems and disunion was the answer. There might actually have been something comical in watching that rabble try to build a functioning polity amid the rubble.

And for all the talk of "civic nationalism", there was more than a whiff of English scapegoating and class warfare going on. And intimidation and violence.

And it very nearly worked. But for people like me, people with businesses and families, it was a very frightening time indeed, as we faced upheaval, losing our homes and leaving. Because this country would have been a basket case if you had prevailed, an unadulterated basket case.

There's a bottle of something sparkling in the fridge. I and plenty of others have been put through the mill by this madness, and we deserve a drink. You'll get over it. You'll get over having to live in a prosperous, generous, secure, stable, liberal, equitable democracy for a few years yet.

For what it's worth, the article itself is here :

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/ar ... BxuaBa765g

Like all of his work, it sounds really plausible and interesting for the first few paragraphs and then you realise that it's basically a load of old bollocks. I do enjoy reading his work though.

There are big problems with the 'simple' solution to bar non-English MPs from English voting.

1) It would mean reforming the Barnett formula, because that is based on English departmental budgets
2) It would mean devolving to a very strong nation, with 85% of the population and power.
3) There are some issues that are English & Welsh. And there are some issues that are English except for London.
4) If there is a majority in the UK, and a different majority in England, who forms the stable government? (and while the most likely prospect is a UK-wide Labour majority and an England Tory majority, there are other possibilities, especially if coalitions are involved).

England is too much to 'devolve' to, and in reality the deficit is in the centralisation of power in the UK over the past 30 or so years. Regional devolution should take powers down, and local authorities should get more autonomy.

Regional devolution wouldn't work because it would be widely viewed as a glorified county council and the resulting low turnouts would end up giving us a series of rotten boroughs right through England. The SE would be Tory in perpetuity, as would the SW in all probability. The NE would be a permanent Labour fiefdom, as would Yorkshire. The only vaguely competitive region would be the Midlands. This is a recipe for corruption, cronyism and pisspoor government. Think Rotherham council writ large.

Labour favours this solution for cynical reasons. Very few actual English voters do.

Sassenach wrote:Regional devolution wouldn't work because it would be widely viewed as a glorified county council and the resulting low turnouts would end up giving us a series of rotten boroughs right through England. The SE would be Tory in perpetuity, as would the SW in all probability. The NE would be a permanent Labour fiefdom, as would Yorkshire. The only vaguely competitive region would be the Midlands. This is a recipe for corruption, cronyism and pisspoor government. Think Rotherham council writ large.

Well, one way to reduce that likelihood is to have a form of PR to reduce the chance of majority control (they have proportional systems for local elections in Scotland and NI). The other is to have below the regions strong local government with consistent powers that can challenge any such hegemony.

I don't also think it could happen quickly - and the changes should start at the bottom. We have a complicated set of different types of local government, from parishes and town councils, through Districts and Boroughs, County councils up to Unitaries and City councils, with London as a glaring anomaly.

Labour favours this solution for cynical reasons. Very few actual English voters do.

I favour it for completely different reasons, and I know people in Labour who have various views on devolution.

If you want to throw around accusations of partisan cynicism, isn't Tory backing for "English votes for English MPs only" not also in their own interests - they can lose a General Election and still dominate the decision-making for the whole country.

This is really why I don't agree with a quick fix as proposed within an hour of the referendum result. Politicians seeking to save their careers (like Cameron is, and many MPs will be in the next 7 months) don't necessarily make the best long term decisions for the country.

Which is why I agree with the concept of a proper constitutional convention. We have a history of piecemeal changes to the system, but the most effective improvements have been wholesale. Ultimately the message that people say we are getting from Scotland (and England) is that people are sick of Westminster. Giving a large group of MPs at Westminster greater power, and removing it from MPs from the periphery does not seem to be a way to deal with that. What would be is true devolution on the basis of subsidiarity - decisions taken at the lowest level of government that is appropriate.

In reality we should be looking at all of the following:

1) Differing levels of devolution currently in place to Scotland, NI, Wales and London
2) Local governments having responsibilities but little power (and the issue that about 3/4 of the budget for local government is centrally allocated, the rest comes from local taxes that everyone hate)
3) If we are going to look at powers of MPs in Westminster we should really revisit the question of how they are elected (and, yes, how many people they represent). Mind you, the constant call for 'fewer politicians' is actually dangerous - if they retain the same collective power, then it means that each individual MP is more powerful than they are now, and it takes fewer of them to do real damage.
4) And hey, why not look at the Lords while were are at it?
5) There is also a patchwork of public service provision because Central government departments and historical features have forged them in silos. Sometimes they are co-terminous with each other and local authorities, but often they overlap. Devolution of those to a form of local government would be in line with subsidarity and bring things closer to the people, rather than being decided by Whitehall-based bureaucracies and the people they appoint.

Sounds like a minefield of regional and national interests that goes on. I wouldn't be able to comment on a 100th part of it.

The Royal Mint is now having a contest for the reverse design of the new One Pound coin. I've decided to enter it. So I have one question:

Now that the Scots have opted not to cleave the UK; what exactly represents a "united" UK? A sense of "Britishness"?

BTW, speaking of "Whitehall", how big is the British civil service, exactly? and now that Wasles, Scotland and NI have experienced "devolution", do they have their own Welsh, Scottish and N'Irish civil servants?

As I understand the "constitution" of the UK, doesn't a good bit of it come from tradition involving or having devolved from, the Crown?

A constitutional convention is a great idea in theory, but I can't help thinking it's just a cynical ruse to kick the issue into the long grass because Milband and most of the core Labour leadership are determined to water down any kind of meaningful answer to the West Lothian question. Besides which it's incompatible with the 'vow' given by all the party leaders to begin extra devolution to Scotland right away.

Patchwork regional devolution, partitioning of England into arbitrary geographical regions with no sense of common identity and then imposing extra layers of government on them (with hazily specified powers that will inevitably fall way short of what's on offer to Scotland) is just a recipe for an unruly mess. It's also something that will almost certainly fail to pass any prospective referendum. There's simply no appetite for that kind of thing in England. If you're then going to try and use this process as an excuse to incorporate all the rest of the hobby horses like PR and Lords reform then you can guarantee that nothing will ever be achieved. It'll be a hugely complicated, lengthy and ultimately fruitless process that serves only to ensure that England never attains parity with the other devolved regions.