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Region: Lazarus

The isles of great britain and ireland wrote:Scottish votes have only influenced the outcome of a handful of elections in history. I always hear we're over represented yet the parliament is dominated by English MPs. We'll never have any power because we will always be a minority in the UK and parliament. Perhaps some Scots are content to play second fiddle but I'm not. And I refuse to choose between 2 parties I loathe (Labour and Tory). FPTP is a crap system and makes for a shoddy limited democracy.

Moreover, British is an identity in decline. Most English Pro identify as English, Scots as Scottish and Welsh as Welsh.

In the seven elections between 1945 and 1966, there were three where the Scottish voted differently to the English and got their own way. The Scottish didn't get a government they hadn't voted for until 1970. What had changed? It's simple. That's the election where the SNP first became a real political force, with their voteshare more than doubling from 5% to 11.4%. It hasn't dipped below that since and consequently Scotland has lost the control it had in Westminster. The SNP is the main reason Scotland gets saddled with governments chosen by England, so it's a poor argument in favour of their cause.

Representation isn't about having more MPs, it's about having a proportional number of them. Scotland gets a greater proportion of MPs in parliament than it has people in the overall population, whereas England has a smaller proportion.

It's hard to get statistics for the number of people who identify as British to some extent-the categories tend to be "British/British and other equally/other".

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