St. George’s Day and St. David’s Day Bill

Sponsor Mr. Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford on Avon)

Summary

The Bill would amend the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 to provide that 23 April (St. George’s Day) or nearest working day should be a bank holiday in England but not in Wales, and that 1 March (St. David’s Day) or nearest working day should be a bank holiday in Wales but not in England.
The Bill would enable the Secretary of State to designate an alternative date for the St. George’s Day bank holiday if it fell on Good Friday or Easter Monday.
The Bill would address the grave injustice of inequality that exists across the United Kingdom that allows only the Scots and Northern Irish to celebrate their saint days.

Mr. Nadhim Zahawi MP for Stratford on Avon withdrew his bill after a short debate because Minister Mr. John Hayes announced that the DCMS strategy allowed for a consultation on moving the May Day Bank Holiday, and one suggestion is that it might be moved to St. George’s or St. David’s day.

In my opinion Mr. Zahawi should not have withdrawn his Bill and England should have no confidence that the outcome of such a consultation will result in a St. George’s Day bank holiday, because rather than try to confirm it the withdrawal of this Bill if anything as done the opposite, and could more or less have guaranteed its failure if the mood of the short debate this Bill had continues into that consultation. While the Bill stood England could guarantee the full support of Wales, and Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) confirmed this when he stated that it was a grave injustice that the Scots can celebrate St. Andrew, the Irish in Northern Ireland can celebrate St. Patrick, but the English cannot celebrate St. George, and in Wales they cannot celebrate St. David, and added that he wanted it put on record that the entire Welsh nation strongly supported the Bill.

Mr. Zahawi who was himself co-founder of the YouGov market research firm also stated that his Bill received 68% support in one of their polls and 89% in a Facebook UK Democracy page he had teamed up with that had had a response rate 800% higher than usual.

With all this public support in both England and Wales to right the wrong of what is another UK divisive and destructive policy you would have expected MPs that claim to support the Union would have given this Bill a favourable response, but when you think that the Bill if passed into law will give England at least some sort of formal recognition the Little Britishers are not so keen. Step up one of our own Labour Black Country MPs Mr. Ian Austin of Dudley, who hypocritically declared his support and then set about trashing the idea or got totally confused that the debate was about England and Wales and inequality and not Britain, has he continually ranted on about Britishness and what it meant to him to be British. The saying goes that the Cuckoos sing in May and obviously this man is one and has got into our Black Country nest, and is one who we can not rely on for support in any consultation process; he wants a British Trafalgar or Falklands Day holiday instead. If this is Ed Milliband's policy for connecting with England then the imerging Blue Labour movement has a mountain to climb to convince the electrate his Labour Party is any different from that of Gordon Brown when it comes to dealing with England, and from this debate we can have no confidence in David Cameron’s Tories either, as another West Midland MP a Conservative Mr. Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) who also wanted a Trafalgar Day gave an example of why the people of England should not be represented by these British MPs when he set about trashing all the virtues of England’s St. George when asking why do we not celebrate Trafalgar day rather than the day of a mythical Greek who went around slaying mythical beasts?
When the May Day bank holiday was mentioned in this short debate Mr. Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Lieth) said he hoped that it was not being suggested that the May Day holiday should not continue, because he said if that approach were to be associated with introducing St George’s day or St David’s day, it would destroy the otherwise bipartisan approach to the debate, and added that he thought that Mr. Zahawi would not want that either, which beggars the question why Mr. Zahawi withdrew his Bill.