When David Cameron secured his “historic” reduction of the increase in the EU budget it was on the condition that the UK ended up paying more whilst everyone else’s bill went down.

Thief

One of the mechanisms for making us pay more was a reduction in the amount of our money the EU gives us back as structural funding.  Predictably, the British government has found a way to make England feel a disproportionate amount of the pain of the increased membership costs of being in the EU by skimming 11% off the money allocated in the EU budget to England and sharing it out between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to cushion them from the effects of the reduced structural funding.  As the only net contributor to the British Treasury, England is already responsible for paying a disproportionate amount of the cost of being in the EU making it doubly unfair for the hard working English taxpayer.

The Local Government Association have criticised the plans to deprive England of desperately needed structural funding and have predictably called for “devolution” of power and funding to local authorities.  The LGA is just one of the organisations that respond to the discrimination against the English with calls for the balkanisation of England and local government reorganisation as a weak and ineffectual English equivalent to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies.

This is yet more proof that the English just can’t trust the British to protect their interests or even just treat them fairly.  We need an English Parliament now more than ever.