One of the less talked about points about last Friday's election results is that the Conservative Party has been denied victory, or at least an outright victory due to a strong showing by Labour in Scotland.

For this result the Tories have no-one but themselves to blame, if they wish to govern the whole of the United Kingdom, it seems reasonable to assume that they should at least enjoy support from all sections of the Kingdom.

However the introduction of devolution in the first years of the outgoing Labour government has served to heighten tensions between England and Scotland, even leading to a sense of injustice caused by the introduction of a new layer of government in Scotland.

The glaring problem with devolution has been that by default it created two classes of MP at Westminster, Scottish MPs and non-Scottish MPs. By devolving a number of policy areas to the Scottish Parliament, Scottish MPs are no longer answerable to their constituents on those issues, but may still vote on them in Westminster despite the fact that it will not affect Scotland, but will be imposed on the rest of the nation.

The "West Lothian Question" as it has been called, has never been answered and Scottish MPs have continued to vote on issues which have no relation to them, but affect the rest of the population. In the past this did not make such a difference to politics as Labour always held such a large majority that even without the votes of Scottish MPs they would have still passed their legislation.

The only exception to this occurred when Scottish MPs managed to get through government legislation on university top-up fees, following a rebellion by many other Labour MPs. The incident led to calls for Scottish MPs to be barred from voting on legislation which does not affect Scotland.

Devolution has thus led to an unsatisfactory halfway house between full union and independence for Scotland, in which Scottish MPs have very little responsibility to their own constituents, but significant power over everyone else's.

This lack of responsibility may perhaps be demonstrated by the fact that not a single Scottish seat changed hands on Thursday, possibly as Scottish voters felt real change comes in elections to the Scottish parliament rather than the one in Westminster.

These Scottish semi-MPs have also brought us into the current hung Parliament by boosting Labour seats. Overall in the United Kingdom the Conservatives won 306 seats, Labour 258 and the Lib Dems 57, all of them short of the required 326 majority.

If Scotland were taken out of the equation the winning party would need only 251 seats. The Tories would have won 305 seats, Labour 217 and the Lib Dems 46 - a clear Conservative majority.

This once again means that Scottish MPs have had a huge impact on England, while making little difference in Scotland which they are supposed to represent. This will only serve to alienate the English even more.

It is not desirable that Scotland, which merged with England over 300 years ago, break away and attempt to go outs own way. Scotland originally united with England at a time when the northern nation was in severe debt, by merging the two could share the debt and both could prosper and build one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.

If Scotland were to break away it would be a much weaker entity, it could no longer rely on England to pay much of its running costs as it does now and could well find itself vulnerable to economic disaster. In the past SNP leader Alex Salmond spoke of an independent Scotland emulating the success of Iceland. Such talk has now stopped.

Had Scotland been independent at the time of the financial crisis it would have found itself having to foot a very large bill to bail out their very own Royal Bank of Scotland. The cost of the bailouts hit the British economy hard, it could well have destroyed the Scottish one.

Independence therefore would seem to be unwise for Scotland, while the present devolution settlement is undesirable for England.

Part of the problem is the poor understanding of history on both sides of the border. The film "Braveheart" has something to answer for in this respect, with the perception being that England and Scotland became united after some kind of vicious invasion and occupation by the English under the evil king Edward.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Edward "hammer of the Scots" I was originally invited into Scotland by the local nobility to help decide a succession crisis. While he crushed the bandit William Wallace, his son King Edward II was soundly kicked out of Scotland by Robert the Bruce, securing Scottish independence.

The Kingdoms of Scotland and England came together over two centuries later when in 1601 the King of Scotland came to inherit the English crown following the death of Elizabeth I. If anything it is the Scotland which took over England.

The two Kingdoms were ruled by the same monarch for over 100 years before being officially merged in the Act of Union in 1707. There was no violence, no takeover, it was an act to bring two nations together of their own volition.

If people could remember this we would not have the absurd notion that Scotland should be free from its English oppressors and nor would we be lumbered with the current injustice of English laws being decided by semi-accountable Scottish MPs with little to do in their own constituencies. We could get back to having equal British MPs deciding laws for a united Britain.

Until this is done the words "United Kingdom" will remain just a name rather than a description.

United Kingdom Elections