Should England or its regions have a devolved Parliament in the same way as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales?

An English parliament was rejected by nearly two votes for every one in favour, while the floor’s most-respected voices spent their energy attacking devolution itself rather than defending England’s existing Westminster settlement. The result was decisive, but the argument was less a settled constitutional design than a rebuke to the whole direction of travel.

The three No submissions carried the page’s highest recorded respect. One demanded to “Return Parliament to a system never designed to break up the Union”; another dismissed the new institutions as “talking shops for the useless”. Together, they made the case for reversal, not merely for leaving England as it is.

The Yes side had only one voice, and it was internally awkward. It said an “English parliament is a must”, but in the same breath warned against “more authorities with pen pushers costing more” — a formulation that blurred the distinction between a national legislature and another layer of administration.

That mismatch mattered. The debate prompted by the West Lothian question — who should decide England-only matters when MPs from devolved nations can vote at Westminster — never became a detailed argument about accountability or workable powers. Instead, the No case treated devolution’s record as the issue, calling the existing parliaments “obvious failures and disasters for their citizens”, while Yes offered conviction without much machinery.

The verdict was clear enough: opposition to another parliament was more organised, more confident and more respected than the case for creating one.