Brown says PM has made ‘fatal mistake’ in pledging to prevent Scottish MPs from voting on English-only matters at Westminster

Gordon Brown has warned David Cameron that he is in danger of blowing apart the United Kingdom after making a “fatal mistake” in pledging to prevent Scottish MPs from voting on income tax and other measures that have been devolved to the Scottish parliament.

In his strongest attack on the prime minister since last year’s Scottish independence referendum, Brown warns of “tit-for-tat vanity misjudgments” by politicians which risk the future of the UK.

Writing in the Guardian after the leader of the house, William Hague, outlined plans to restrict the rights of Scottish MPs to vote on English-only matters at Westminster, Brown compares his successor in Downing Street to the 18th-century prime minister Lord North, who lost the American colonies.

Gordon Brown: Scotland didn’t kill off the United Kingdom – but Cameron would Read more

“Prime minister Lord North is remembered for only one thing – losing America,” Brown writes as he cites Cameron’s pledge on the morning after the Scottish independence referendum to introduce English votes for English laws at Westminster.

“Will history remember David Cameron for just one thing too – that on the morning of 19 September 2014 he lit the fuse that eventually blew the union apart?”

Brown, who will raise his concerns in a Commons debate on Wednesday, spoke out after Hague announced plans to give English MPs an “effective veto” over legislation that affects only England or England and Wales. A future Tory government would ensure that such legislation, mainly related to matters that in Scotland are devolved to Holyrood, would be considered at the line-by-line parliamentary committee stage by MPs from English or English and Welsh seats.

The veto would be guaranteed by ensuring that no such bill, or part of a bill, would be able to pass its third reading – and into law after consideration in the House of Lords – unless it was approved by a grand committee of English or English and Welsh MPs.

Hague insisted that Westminster would continue to act as a parliament of the UK because MPs from all four constituents of the UK would continue to debate and vote on such bills at all other stages.

But Brown insists that the Tory proposals, outlined in general form by Cameron in a Downing Street statement an hour after the official declaration of the referendum result in the early hours of Friday 19 September, threaten the future of the UK.

Accusing Cameron of acting with “huge cynicism”, Brown says the proposals will create two classes of MPs: “There is no good reason why the United Kingdom should fall apart. But if it does – and sadly many Scots now seem to believe it will – it will not be because of what happened during the Scottish referendum but because of what went wrong in the aftermath.

“Historians will look back on months of tit-for-tat vanity misjudgments by our political leaders who, retaliating against a Scottish nationalist government pushing an exclusively ‘Scottish interest’, decided to elevate the ‘English interest’. They forgot that for the UK to survive, there needs to be a common UK interest that binds us together.”

The Guardian revealed in a series on the Scottish referendum last month that Brown was angered by Cameron’s early morning statement so soon after the referendum result that he telephoned the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to warn that the prime minister should reverse his announcement.

Alistair Darling, who had led the no campaign, warned Cameron in a phonecall a few hours earlier, at 5am, that his intervention would throw a lifeline to the SNP.

Brown complained that Cameron had given the impression that further devolution of powers to the Scottish parliament, promised by the leaders of the three main UK parties two days before the referendum, would be linked to the introduction of English votes for English laws. Downing Street later made clear there was no link between the two processes.

The former prime minister warns his successor not to assume the UK will survive. He writes: “There is a myth that the union can easily survive this new polarisation between Scotland and England because it is held together by longstanding bonds and traditions. But what may have been true in the aftermath of two world wars has given way to a new century where none of our ancient institutions are strong enough or popular enough on their own to bind us together.

“The UK will not survive just on the basis of embracing the lowest common denominator, mutual toleration, as we increasingly go our own ways. The United Kingdom will hold together only if there are things that we share together – common interests, mutual needs and similar values – that make us want to cooperate.

“In the modern world, that has to include a willingness to share risks and transfer resources between each other to ease poverty unemployment and inequality between the regions and nations.”