Invalid

The invalidity of Gordon Brown extends to every part of his persona. He has no mandate to lead the Labour party and no mandate to be Westminster prime minister; he has no authority to act in major areas of government's proper remit and no history of professional competence or personal capacity to undertake major political roles. His chancellorship is a well-documented disaster and his prime ministership a slow agony into quiessence.

The Scottish people do not want nuclear power stations built in Scotland, nuclear waste stored in Scotland, Trident and nuclear-powered submarines in Scotland, oil in Scottish territory exploited rather than husbanded, Scottish fishing grounds devastated by European Union agreements negotiated by Westminster, indiscriminate immigration into Scotland, fees and charges for services in Scotland that should be part of the social wage, and are not wholly convinced of Scotland's settled future within the European Union on Westminster's terms. Neither do they want Labour party rule in Scotland.

The English people do not want any of the above in England either, plus they do not want a Scottish prime minister from Kirkcaldy when he has his own Parliament to go to. As Labour members of parliament press for Darling, Alexander and Browne to be demoted within the Westminster government not least on the grounds of their Scottishness and the seats they hold, though rank incompetence weighs in to recommend their rapid departure as well, Frank Field underlines that the Labour party's very survival as an English party is at stake, in a new twist to the arguments about relations within the United Kingdom. (today's Telegraph).

England has a natural right of centre of balance. The Conservatives will always represent the majority here. But those voters whose economic and cultural interests are not served by the Conservative view of government as the creation of a civil society under the rule of law within a small and well-defended state, those who see government as the creation of some kind of ideal, large state with government as permanent administration - as many authoritarian ideologies of the left and the right do - are turning increasingly from Labour to the authoritarians of the right, not the left.

It is not just the federation of the United Kingdom that must be re-ordered. The Labour party itself must become a pluralist democratic party of the centre Left and abandon the New Labour Project of imposing a permanent authoritarian governance within a federal European Union state upon the country.