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Scottish Labour needs to remember its own history

Jan 19

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution, Holyrood | 79 Comments

Another guest post, this time from Andrew McFadyen, who has a PhD in politics. He used to work for the Scottish Labour Party and now earns his living as a journalist. 

The last week has been depressing. The whistle has barely been blown for the kick-off, but already the debate about Scottish independence is showing all the subtlety of the crowd at an Old Firm match.

Standing behind the goal and waving her fist at the opposition, SNP MSP Joan McAlpine is giving a lesson in intolerance. Her comments in last Thursday’s Holyrood debate that “the Liberals, the Labour Party and the Tories are anti-Scottish” were daft and she should have known better.

What about Labour? Frankly, the constant repetition of negative phrases like “rigged referendum” and “separation” is giving me a headache. With a few honourable exceptions, like Malcolm Chisholm and Patricia Ferguson, the Labour Party is displaying a kind of knee-jerk Unionism that is out of step with mainstream Scottish opinion and its own traditions.

It’s worth recalling that Keir Hardie was a founding Vice-President of the Scottish Home Rule League. Labour politicians campaigned for a Scottish Parliament for over a century.

In the breakthrough election of 1922, Red Clydeside sent ten socialists to the House of Commons. Tom Henderson, the newly elected MP for Glasgow Tradeston, urged his colleagues at the victory rally in St Andrew’s Hall to “go to Edinburgh and take over the old House of Parliament and set up a government in this country.”

The generation that built the Labour Party in Scotland believed that they could achieve more with a government in Edinburgh, than one in London.

Last May, I was among the shocked Labour activists in the SECC who watched as their work was undone. The cheers from jubilant Nats provided the soundtrack to a dreadful night that got worse as it went on.

All of the candidates in the recent leadership election spoke about the need for change. It is now time for them to show that they meant it.

Strathclyde University’s John Curtice pointed out in a recent article for The Scotsman that according to the Social Attitudes survey, three-fifths to two-thirds of Scots would like Holyrood to take on responsibility for taxes and welfare benefits. He added that, a recent Ipsos-MORI poll reported that as many as 68 per cent would vote in favour of “devo-max” should they be given the opportunity.

This is the ground that the Labour Party should be fighting on. There is no issue of principle that precludes adding a second question on ‘devo-max’ to an independence referendum. It is simply a matter of tactics.

In January 1978, Donald Dewar, George Robertson and Helen Liddell were part of a Scottish delegation to Downing Street urging the then Prime Minister Jim Callaghan to add a second question on independence to the following year’s ill-fated referendum on devolution. The plan was designed both to bolster the vote for devolution and deal with the question of independence for a generation. If Donald Dewar could support a second question then, why can’t Johann Lamont support a second question now?

The Conservatives are adopting an extreme position, as they did in the 1980s and 1990s, trying to polarize the debate and force Scots to make a hard ‘in or out’ choice. My advice is that Scottish Labour should regard the Tories in the same way that a budgie does a ginger tomcat. David Cameron and George Osborne should be kept at a very great distance. The party has much more to gain, and would be truer to its own values, by being the voice of reason.

The Question

Jan 18

Posted by Kirsty in Constitution, Westminster | 15 Comments

The members of the commission set up by the UK government into the West Lothian Question have been announced.

The commission will be chaired by former House of Commons clerk Sir William McKay and is made up of non-partisan experts with “constitutional, legal and parliamentary expertise”.

The rest of the panel are senior parliamentary lawyer Sir Stephen Laws, his predecessor Sir Geoffrey Bowman; the UK’s former ambassador to the UN, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, as well as two academics, Professor Charlie Jeffrey, the head of social and political science at Edinburgh University, and Professor Yvonne Galligan, a researcher in gender politics at Queen’s University Belfast.

Ever since the 1970s the West Lothian Question has plagued parliamentary relations between the nations of the UK. First posed by Tam Dalyell, then MP for West Lothian, it queried how a Scottish MP at Westminster post-devolution could vote upon policies affecting English seats, when that same MP could not vote on the same issue affecting his or her own constituency because it would have been devolved to a Scottish Parliament.

Today, the question more commonly challenges how Scottish MPs (and Welsh and Northern Irish members) continue to vote upon English matters while MPs from England have lost the power to influence the same policies, now devolved to the nations. There have been previous attempts to remedy the situation – notably reducing the number of Scottish MPs – but the discrepancy became particularly stark under the last Labour government, where Labour’s MPs from Scottish constituencies enabled the passing of controversial legislation for England like foundation hospitals and tuition fees.

The commission has been tasked, by the original coalition agreement drawn up between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, with recommending new ground rules for MPs on the Westminster Question. It will not cover financing, or the number of MPs: its purpose is rather to recommend a solution to the problem of who votes on parliamentary business covering England in Westminster that is under the auspices of the devolved assemblies elsewhere.

It seems unlikely that the commission will settle on all or nothing.

Burke’s dictum that “You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament” won’t soothe the sense of injustice after over a decade of Scottish MPs dictating domestic policy for England. Nor is Pete Wishart MP’s suggestion, speaking on the announcement of the commission members, that “There is only one clear answer to the West Lothian Question and that is for both Scotland and England to be fully in charge of their affairs by becoming independent and equal nations”, likely to gain the approval of the coalition government at the moment.

So with neither all MPs voting on everything, or no Scottish MPs at all being outcomes the commission is likely to reach, one possible solution is a ‘gentleman’s agreement’, whereby MPs from devolved nations refrain from voting on matters pertaining to England alone, as SNP MPs do at the moment. It was the aim of Conservative backbencher Harriet Baldwin’s Legislation (Territorial Extent) private member’s bill, which fell at its third reading last September, largely due to Ministers preferring the commission to be left to do its work.

I doubt MPs representing devolved constituencies will enjoy being relegated to not quite full Members of Parliament, meaning the restriction on voting will have to be made mandatory rather than voluntary. The archaic divisions in the House of Commons, coupled with the ways votes are called, could make implementing this a nightmare, although that indicates to me the need for more reform of the practices of parliament rather than an insurmountable obstacle in and of itself.

An alternative solution is federalism: an English chamber for discussing English issues. Sittings in Westminster Hall could change to focus on such legislation and only MPs from English constituencies would attend. It’s a reasonable option, soothing some of the issues West Lothian Question poses.

The Question of course only arises because of power moving closer to the people, or at least for people living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Restricting what legislation certain MPs can vote on might resolve the Question in neat terms of day-to-day House of Commons life, but it does little to right the fundamental imbalance in power and influence which drove Dalyell’s original point.  Each nation’s representatives legislating on issues affecting that nation alone naturally brings more power and influence to all people in the UK. Whether the commission on the West Lothian Question will recommend this solution, at a time when most parties at Westminster oppose constitutional changes like independence for Scotland, will be interesting to see.

If you tolerate YES then your children will be next – how the NO campaign can succeed

Jan 17

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution | 60 Comments

Another guest, this time from Andrew Graeme Smith, a London-based Scot who works in the PR industry. He grew up in Edinburgh and studied at Dundee, and you can read his blog at www.blackberrybanter.wordpress.com

Well, the battle lines have been drawn and the campaigns are about to properly kick off as we enter the longest and most important three years in Scottish constitutional history. All that stands between Scotland and independence are the matters of public opinion and a NO campaign that will involve a bag of dirty tricks and mud-slinging tactics that will make the scrutiny of a US Presidential campaign look like a walk in the park.

By day I work for a PR firm and spend lots of time working on campaign strategies and plans for a wide range of clients, so it’s with a professional hat on that I’ve been thinking about what form the NO campaign will take. On one hand they’ve already rejected most of the advice that I would have given them (The Tories should have elected Fraser, Labour should have elected Macintosh and both parties should have tried to embrace and shape the meaning of devolution-max) which leads me to expect that they’ll do the exact opposite of what I suggest, and then hopefully they’ll stand no chance of winning whatsoever!

One interesting aspect of the last few weeks has been the obvious divisions across the NO camps, but in some ways this makes perfect sense because nobody can have a monopoly on the idea or reasons why people might wish to vote NO. While it’s fair to assume there will be a nominal umbrella campaign for a NO vote it will probably only be used for letterheads, posters, adverts and the odd speech. There is unlikely to be much of a focus on a formal campaign because, as the recent discussions about the role of Alistair Darling show, the unionist parties know that they have utterly nothing whatsoever to gain from entering a presidential campaign against Alex Salmond.

This leads to my second point. If we are to believe the recent social attitudes survey then simple math dictates that the unionist parties don’t need to win over any new converts in order to win the referendum, all that they have to do is ensure that their own supporters turn out and don’t vote the wrong way, this stands in stark contrast to the YES campaign which can’t win the referendum without winning over new voters. This means that the approach of the unionist parties will almost certainly be very insular and will be directed almost entirely at their own supporters in a bid to ensure that they don’t vote yes.

Which leads me to my final point: the individual and collective campaigns will be incredibly negative. There will be some patriotic talk about World War 2 and the wonders of the NHS, but that won’t be enough to make them feel confident of victory. What they will probably do is make sure that the SNP are attacked from all angles in a bid to destroy their credibility in the eyes of their own supporters. This tactic has already been used over the last few days as we have seen the SNP fending off accusations from all angles, the assumption behind this strategy isn’t that the electorate will all want to drape themselves in Union Jacks, the idea will be to conflate the concept of independence with the specific policies of the SNP and the assumption is that if people don’t feel entirely confident about SNP economic policies then their doubts will lead them to vote no.

The history of referendums in Britain show that cross party campaigns can be very popular, and the recent AV referendum has shown that promoting negative messages and appealing to people’s inner doubts can be very popular (how about “she needs a new cardiac facility NOT an independence referendum” for a new slogan?). The AV campaign is an interesting case study because the NO campaign managed to get 2/3 of the vote in Scotland, and as the polling data shows it was only really once the negative advertising and the big political beasts had been unleashed that the NO campaign began to really establish a lead. In the case of AV people were being asked to vote on a reasonably inconsequential change – just imagine how much scare-mongering will be done on something as major as independence.

If the referendum has more than one question then almost everything I’ve written will be invalid (and possibly the topic for a future article) as the middle option will change the nature of the debate and pull both campaigns out of their comfort zones. I would expect that if there is a FFA option then the NO campaign will probably try to run a positive and more formal campaign that’s based more on the Make Poverty History type of model than anything that I’ve outlined. If this is the case then I would expect it to be presented as a conversation between civic Scotland about the future of the country balanced with some whining about the Nationalists being on the sidelines. Equally, all of this is conjecture and speculation and may well prove to be wrong, regardless, I would be keen to know everyone else’s views.

There’s only one team in Tallinn

Jan 15

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution | 26 Comments

Herewith a guest post from SNP activist Richard Thomson. Richard is a former SNP researcher and Westminster candidate who used to blog at scotsandindependent.blogspot.com. He is now a full-time journalist based in Aberdeenshire.

Since the SNP’s victory in May, Scottish politics had been very quiet. Attribute that to what you will, although the leadership vacuum in the three main opposition parties certainly played a role. However, with this week’s referendum stushie, the brutal truth for Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie is that it’s taken an intervention from the Prime Minister, however ill advised and counterproductive it may have been, to come anywhere close to seizing the political agenda from the SNP.

The PM marched his troops up to the top of the hill last Sunday over setting an 18 month window for holding a referendum. Now, he faces the prospect of having to march them back down again after Alex Salmond revealed what was probably one of the worst kept secrets in Scottish Politics – that there would be a 2014 referendum.

To call for an 18 month timescale on Sunday before running away from that on Monday only to launch a ‘consultation’ on Tuesday is frankly incredible. There’s a book, or at least a series of FOI requests to be written about the twisting and turning going on behind the scenes in Whitehall. There’s nothing like a well-worked strategy and even the most loyal supporter of the Lib/Con coalition would have to concede that this was nothing like a well-worked strategy.

To my mind, Labour, the Conservatives and their Lib Dem partners in government lost the moral authority to set the terms of an independence referendum with the SNP landslide in May. To go from a position of saying ‘no referendum, ever’ to bleating about having one and having it yesterday holds no credibility whatsoever. If a referendum was what was required, then there was ample leverage during the last Scottish Parliament to extract just about any concession on franchise, supervision and timing that could possibly have been desired.

But that chance was spurned and now the SNP is firmly in the driving seat. Forget the misguided talk from Michael Moore about a ‘legally binding’ referendum – there’s can be no such thing in the UK. If the Westminster Government genuinely wants to remove any possibility of grounds for challenge as to the legislative competence of Holyrood to hold a referendum, then it should get on with it, stop trying to attach strings to the vote and accept with as much grace as can be mustered that it has been overtaken by events on this one.

Much of the last week of coalition politicking has left an unpleasant taste in the mouth. Arguments about process, hiding behind the narrowest possible interpretation of the Scotland Act to imply that your opponents have no respect for the rule of law, trying to exert muscle over the what, when and how of people’s ability to voice an opinion on their future governance; none of it is very impressive, far less the sign of a coalition confident in its arguments.

All this rolling around in the mud also highlights, albeit inadvertently, what many in nationalist ranks suspect is the absence of a positive case for the union. This much-vaunted positive case, which must exist somewhere because lots of important people assure us that it does, is always spoken about as if it is a given, yet its elements are never unpacked for examination.

In more wicked moments, I have a vision of there being a strongbox down in the vaults of the Bank of England, embossed with a plate saying ‘Positive Case for Union – open only in Emergency’. Eventually, someone, possibly even Douglas Alexander, decides to blow the dust off and take it upstairs, the better to unleash its power to vanquish ‘narrow nationalism’ once and for all.

“Get out the way! Positive case for Union coming through!”, its bearer will shout. A crowd, hushed with expectation, will gather round, desperate to see for themselves what they have long been told will clinch the debate over their future governance.

After a battle with the lock, the lid creaks open. Then, in the unforgiving light of day, the awful truth emerges – whatever was in there before has turned into little more than a pile of dust. Closer inspection shows a fragment of a picture of what could be a Spitfire, but no-one’s really sure. There’s a bit of what looks like a fragment of a plate from what might be a Royal Wedding, or perhaps even a Coronation. But apart from that and the spiders, there’s nothing – whatever once was there having been eaten away by the ravages of time.

Everyone agrees about the need for a debate on Scotland’s future. Right now, nationalists must feel like Billy Dodds in Tallinn, kicking off while the other team argue about timing and procedural squabbles instead of making sure they are ready to pull on their jerseys and get on with it.

FIFA doesn’t supervise referendum campaigns. If it did, there’d be a strong case for awarding the independence campaign the 3 points now on the grounds of the opposition failing to turn up.

Labour’s choice: a whiff of power trumps the Union

Jan 12

Posted by James in Constitution, Holyrood | 62 Comments

Labour’s motion on the referendum being debated as I type is pretty thin gruel:

Johann Lamont: Scotland’s Future—That the Parliament recognises that the Scottish Government has a mandate to call a referendum on the constitutional future of Scotland and calls on the First Minister to hold immediate cross-party talks, including with leaders from all quarters of civic Scotland, to agree a timetable for the referendum, to ensure that the referendum provides a clear result on a single question and to ensure that the referendum is run in Scotland by the Electoral Commission so that the people of Scotland can have an early and rigorous debate on the future of Scotland.

It must again cheer SNP hearts to see the Scottish Labour Party sign up to chunks of the UK administration’s misguided intervention, and the call for cross-party talks on the timetable only will easily be brushed off by the Maximum Eck. A call for an open constitutional convention to involve the public and civic Scotland in the broadest sense would have been more constructive, notably if it was to consider what kind of independent Scotland the public wish to be offered, in constitutional terms, and whether there is indeed real public demand for devo max. But that call remains something only the Greens are making so far, unfortunately.

The “single question” aspect is the most critical part, though. This is perhaps the only part of the phoney war over process that Labour could have influence over. A clear and robust decision by Scottish Labour to set out a devo max option (or full fiscal autonomy, or indeed anything more coherent than the Scotland Bill) would surely have seen the SNP bring that forward in legislation. The Nats have issued enough press releases trying to provoke Labour into doing precisely that, and Ministers have essentially committed to offering the middle way if someone else comes up with it.

Why have Labour turned this offer down? Let us assume it’s tactical rather than some reference to party policy.

Lallands Peat Worrier has made a comprehensive and convincing case that a devo max option would reduce the chances of an independence victory. So if Labour were looking to minimise the risk of Scotland going it alone, surely they’d have set out some middle position, even if it didn’t go as far as devo max? Mere devo-plus would have sufficed. More powers is a form of pragmatic Unionism in the same way Holyrood itself was Unionist – an effort to head off independence at the pass.

Although the poll results showing support for devo max may largely be driven by people tending to pick the middle option, as LPW says, there would have been major media and political advantages to Labour if they had been the party to set out what that middle option would have been. They’d have owned a question on the ballot, they could have been virtually centre stage throughout the debate, they’d have had something positive to make the case for, and their option would have been quite likely to have won.

But devo max is also what would suit a personally ambitious set of SNP Ministers best. As I’ve argued here before, it gives them a moderate win, a step towards the holy grail, something to keep the activists happy, yet it also allows them to keep governing. It’s almost impossible to imagine an SNP devo-plus administration not being returned in 2016. Declining the offer to set out an extension to Holyrood’s powers suggests Labour are more afraid of seeing the SNP’s hegemony grow and strengthen than they are of an increased risk of full independence.

A Yes vote, however, would see the SNP achieve their only purpose while would also depriving them of it. It would make the contest for the first post-indy Scottish Government an open one, one which Labour no doubt feel in their secret heart of hearts that they would well placed to win. The constitutional question would for the first time (deep intake of breath) not overshadow the other issues politics urgently needs to deal with – poverty, public services, taxation, climate change, the rest. Indeed, one former very senior Labour figure once told a friend of mine they’d be fine with independence so long as the Nats weren’t running the show.

Conversely, an outright No vote sends the SNP activists back home in despair and puts the question on hold for a generation – unless the SNP didn’t notice what happened to the Bloc Québécois when they kept pushing it. There is no burning agenda for the SNP to deliver with the existing powers, we know that already, just some pretty right-wing tax proposals for an independent Scotland, and so again a No vote could well be followed by a Labour-led administration on the existing powers. A stronger prospect of returning to power at Holyrood looks more important to Labour than reducing the risk to the Union, whatever they say in public.

Devo max may be Unionism, but few on that side of the argument would be so foolish to regard it as likely to kill nationalism stone dead. In fact, if you want to kill nationalism stone dead there’s only one way to do it. Give it what it’s always said it wants: a clear yes or no on independence. Conveniently, that’s also the best sort of ballot paper for those of us who want independence but also want to see the back of this economically right-wing SNP administration.