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Why the Coalition is outgunned by the SNP

Jan 10

Posted by James in Constitution, Holyrood, Westminster | 57 Comments

The intensity of the debate/kerfuffle/furore about the independence referendum continues to build with the publication of the UK Government’s consultation document today – which at first glance doesn’t appear to bear much relation to the weekend spin from the Prime Minister.

Despite the legal concerns of Scotland’s finest legal tweeters, I share Jeff’s view that Holyrood could ask a question which is politically equivalent to an independence referendum, even if the previous “open negotiations” one is a poor choice and one that would require a vote on what had been negotiated. No matter: the Coalition proposal is for clarity on Holyrood’s ability to legislate here, and that’s welcome. The date limits and nature of the question are far more problematic, and I’ll return to the latter shortly unless someone gets in ahead of me again here. On the date front it’s long been my view that a late poll with a tired SNP administration (domestically they’ve basically run out of ideas already) is more likely to be lost, so both sides appear to be arguing for the position which suits them least.

In any case, the constitutional battle is truly upon us. But are the armies well-matched? Is the terrain more suited to one side or another? Is there a parity of intelligence? Clearly not. Just consider the main combatants: the Coalition versus the SNP administration.

Starting with the ground war, the former have, at a Ministerial level, the full-time efforts of Michael Moore and David Mundell. Even the most ardent Lib Dem or Tory wouldn’t pretend they were their parties’ most imaginative or tactically shrewd generals. The best you can say for Moore is that he’s tall and looks Ministerial, whereas Mundell is no friend to his notional colleagues at Holyrood and hardly a first-class campaigner. Neither of them appear terribly in touch with matters on the ground – even just working in London rather than Scotland can’t help, and Moore, like most Lib Dems, has the air of someone who knows he’s not got another Parliamentary term awaiting him: time to enjoy the limo, the staff and the state receptions before heading off into oblivion.

The Coalition also have the Prime Minister’s occasional attention, as this week, which typically doesn’t help very much. David Cameron, despite the name, clearly views Scotland as a far-away country where one’s chums go shooting, which makes it more interesting than the North of England, but only marginally. He regularly overplays his hand, as this week, and I have no doubt that every time he discusses the constitution or Scotland a little dial in SNP HQ twitches perceptibly towards the shiny yellow YES end.

And as for the rank and file, who are they? Imagine a non-party No campaign had been set up: other than hacks from the three main anti-independence parties, who joins up? Who volunteers to be the lion led by these donkeys? Who wants to spend their rainy evenings in a forlorn attempt to move David Cameron’s drinks cabinet six inches closer to Edinburgh? And where are the financial backers who’ve waited their whole lives to fund a defence of the Union?

Consider next the Coalition’s air force. The Scotland Office has perhaps three press officers, and no credible sign of a strategy unit. According to Guido, there isn’t even a SpAd in evidence, while the press team’s work is the kind of stolid and neutrally-worded stuff the civil service insist upon. Finally, the big intellectual guns – presumably naval to stick with my metaphor – in other words, Unionist campaign central. What is it? Where is it? There is simply no devoted and organised hard core with the preservation of the Union as its raison d’être, contrary to Alex Neil’s suspicion of a Yoonyonisht Conshpirashy. Admittedly there are first class journalists for whom the Union is crucial, including the trenchant Alan Cochrane, the self-described black-hearted Unionist, and Alex Massie, who deserves a wider audience than Twitter and the Spectator, but the current field of battle regularly leaves them bemoaning their side’s mistakes.

Above all, the Coalition has lots of purposes, some contradictory, some associated with grinding the faces of the poor, and some day-to-day fire-fighting. The Scottish question is not their main concern, apparently not even for those Scottish Lib Dems for whom the prospect of independence ought to be focusing their minds. Fighting on lots of fronts at once is much harder than a single determined effort, and it shows.

As for the SNP and the Scottish Government, they have an entire team of Ministers with a dedicated interest in the constitutional question. The FM and DFM are truly first class officers, generals with strong tactical nous, irritating as I find the Great Puddin’ in particular. The next tier has brains too, notably Swinney and Russell. They’re all based here in Scotland, which makes for a much stronger connection to the ground campaign, their careers still look like their trajectory is upwards, and their supporters don’t cringe when they come on the telly. And those front-line troops are gee’d up to say the least. They’ve just had the best ever election result in their lifetimes, they’re experienced, and they believe one more push will see them achieve total victory. They can also call on irregulars, ex-SNP fundies and those for whom the current leadership is too right-wing, people who wouldn’t campaign in a local election ever again but who would do anything they could to deliver independence.

And on the air war side the SNP have a staggering array of media professionals. They have a team in the party’s own offices, from where electioneering and campaigning are led – and they buy in strategic support. They have Liz Lloyd’s well-run team on the fourth floor at Holyrood, dedicated to getting backbench SNP MSPs into the papers and on the telly. They have their own vast civil service press team who can’t promote the SNP, but promote the hell out of their Ministers in a pseudo-non-partisan way, just as they did for the last lot (and who seem brighter than the UK equivalents). And they have 11 SpAds, led by the always-on Kevin Pringle (incidentally, the odds on an all-male team like that occurring purely by chance are less than a twentieth of one percent, all other things being equal), bridging the gap between the civil service press teams and Ministers’ partisan positions. Each and every one of these people is based in Scotland, and they know the key Scottish political hacks in a way the Coalition’s press team simply don’t. With the exception of the Record and the Telegraph, all the important papers backed them in May, even if they won’t back a Yes vote whenever it comes.

I felt the disparity when it was just me doing media for the Green MSPs by day and for the party by night and weekend, but the assets the Coalition itself can deploy on a day-to-day basis fall almost as short: the exception will be on rare weeks like this where Scotland is indeed their overall front line.

Finally, the SNP itself is that single-issue big gun the Union side lacks. They have some serious shortcomings – how and by whom the constitution should be written is one, what they want to do with an independent Scotland is another – but they know how to make the case and they have the organisation. They’ve also got an overflowing war chest, from poets to lottery winners, and they’re supported by a series of thinkers like Pat Kane and Gerry Hassan, blogs like Bella Caledonia and, well, there’s actually a bit of a dearth of non-mental SNP-backing blogs, but you see the argument. (edit – this has been taken as an insult to first-class bloggers like Kate and LPW: it’s not, just that neither are exactly uncritical, and there are others too, but many good ones are now sorely missed)

These substantial disparities don’t guarantee an SNP win over how the referendum will be held, nor in the referendum itself, but they’ve certainly put themselves in about the strongest position possible, and the appearance of a UK administration being a larger force is superficial and entirely misleading. In fact the gap between them is almost what Iain Banks calls an Out Of Context Problem in the opposite direction. Your civilisation is getting on swimmingly with swords and pikes when a ship turns up and men with guns get out. Taking account of all these imbalances, the next phases of this war remain the SNP’s to lose.

Independence? Show me the money

Dec 6

Posted by Jeff in Constitution, Economy | 37 Comments

It was never meant to be this way.

What if Mel McGibson had marshalled the troops at Stirling Bridge and tried a different type of inspiring rhetoric:

‘Imagine yourselves lying in your deathbeds, many years from now. Would you trade in all the days from this one to that, to stand here and fight, to say to your enemy that you may take our lives, but you will never take our £500!’. I don’t know if Scots had short arms and long sporrans back then, but it doesn’t exactly get my patriotic juices flowing.

Amidst this whimsy I am referring of course to the poll news yesterday (commissioned by the Scottish Government, curiously) that 32% of Scots are in favour of independence but 65% would vote Yes if Scotland proved to be £500 a year better off. I know times are tough but that’s a rather tawdry way to go about choosing your constitutional destiny, is it not? That said, I do wonder what the result would have been if the dangling trinket was 500 Euros rather than pounds. Isn’t it SNP policy to take us into the Euro before too long? I’m just saying…

Anyway, it will be a bit sad if this is what the next few years are going to come down to, a contest over who can convince Scots who they’d have more money with as their Government. It’s like some sort of unseemly Tesco vs Co-op price war. I can just see Salmond and Cameron jostling for position at Fort Kinnaird giving out clubcards. I understand that people are struggling to make ends meet and the prospect of more money in the wallet each month is appealing but noone really knows with any degree of certainty how much better/worse off Scotland would be after independence so what we end up with is all sides just yanking each other around, and the public seems to not only be caught in the middle, but falling for it gooing ga-ga over the shiniest entreatment before them.

I’m often disappointed at the idea that the richest in the UK have to be placated with financial incentives to stay here so if Scots were also seen to be selling their future to the highest bidder, that would be doubly depressing, triply depressing infact as this poll result will inevitably open to the door to more scare stories about how Scotland will be a basketcase of ah place if it goes it alone.

I suppose I should guard against being too cynical. After all, my personal belief is that Scotland will be better off as an independent country, albeit partially off the back of a foolhardy strategy surrounding its oil revenues and despite seemingly shunning the sensible option of a separate Scottish currency. Either way, would I be voting No if I thought Scotland would be worse off if independent? I like to hope not, I like to think that this choice runs deeper than the pound signs (or Euro signs) that are seemingly flashing in front of our eyes.

The prospect of building a new country in the mould of what Scots envisage a country should be, distinct from (but not separate to) the rest of the UK and Europe at large, is a tantalising prospect, an adventure that we can all tell the next generation(s) about and trust them to continue. I genuinely love the idea of a Scottish call to arms, a clarion call to Scots across the world to come ‘home’ and help build something special. It is a message built on emotion, on romance, on ambition. It is not a message that is built on creaming a few extra hundred quid for yourself.

Not that the SNP should be castigated if they do opt to tap into the strategy of promising more money for all after independence, it has to give the people what they want to get by, that’s how democratic politics works after all. Let’s be honest, a win is a win and, come the referendum, there isn’t really such a thing as winning ugly. The game is ensuring that your objective is appealing to the majority of the public, irrespective of how base their instincts may be. There is also a realism that has to be faced here; how many countries have chosen independence from a larger country and faced a poorer future? I am thinking of South Sudan, of UAE, of Norway. Plenty of oil, plenty of profit and plenty of people voting in favour of secession. Is that really so bad?

Either way, I remain hopeful that Scots can in time dig a little deeper and harden their opinion on the matter one way or the other. Voting Yes doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee, it is a decision taken for richer or poorer, so maybe we should take the £ signs out of the debate a bit more.

Cameron dusts off the unionist battering ram

Nov 15

Posted by Jeff in Constitution | 30 Comments

The metaphorical cannons have been fired, the first few volley of arrows twanged and the blood-curdling roars, as much as an old Etonian can muster, have been sounded.

This isn’t the 1600s though, this cross-border assault was delivered by press release.

Day 1 (yesterday) saw George Osborne warn that Scotland was losing out on investment as a result of constitutional uncertainty. Day 2 (today) sees similar warnings that Scotland will lose jobs in the Defence industry. Big Brother is clearly watching us and we shall see how long the onslaught goes on for but I suspect the drip-drip-drip of stories such as these will continue for a good while yet. So much for a positive case defending the union.

Whether the timing of the Conservative scaremongering/prudent warning (delete as applicable) over independence is supposed to coincide with Ruth Davidson being installed as new Tory leader and before Labour have selected theirs doesn’t change the fact that there has been a palpable stepping up of rhetoric against SNP plans.

The rights and wrongs of these arguments could, and will, be argued until the sheep come home; a neat analogy as it happens as David Cameron is effectively trying to round Scots up and put them back in their unionist pens. I don’t really mind what the result of the coming referendum is, but I do want Scots to really sit down and have a conversation with themselves and consider where they want to take their nation. There’s nothing wrong with not voting Yes, there’s nothing even wrong with bottling it but I do not want people frightened into thoughtlessly voting No and missing this great opportunity.

Yes, Scotland will have less jobs in Defence if we are independent but we’ll also be about £2bn a year better off if we adopt Scandinavian levels of spending in this area, more than enough money to retrain and reemploy anyone directly affected with change left over to help fund a renewables revolution, the oil boom of tomorrow. Furthermore, while there is a clear irony, even hypocrisy, in the SNP calling for the UK’s Green Investment Bank to be located in Edinburgh while simultaneously trying to remove Scotland from that same UK, it is telling that Alex Salmond can name several large companies who have invested in Scotland recently while George Osborne can name none. Scotland is bearing up very well indeed despite these difficult times and there’s only one Government that can take credit for that, even if it is to the chagrin of the other.

The real villain of this war of words debacle, not that it’s their fault, is the media. Newspapers sell through sensationalising a story (which perhaps makes we the public the real villains for falling for it) but this is not serving Scotland and the debate around independence very well at all.

The best way for the main players in this debate to take their arguments to the people is directly, be it party broadcasts, stump speeches or good old-fashioned door to door. There is an opportunity here for individuals to make famous deliveries – the constitutional equivalent of Jimmy Reid’s rat race speech or Obama’s Berlin speech on Europe.

There is at the very least an opportunity to rip up the tired old format of two political foes knocking lumps out of each other in the column inches and, I think, we will see that happen before too long. The SNP simply want this too much to not try something new and dynamic.

What if David Cameron says No to Scotland using Sterling?

Nov 10

Posted by Jeff in Constitution, Economy | 146 Comments

The raging wrangling around the benefits or otherwise of Scotland becoming independent continues apace, though possibly largely on Twitter and blogs rather than in pubs and coffee shops across the nation. The SNP seemingly has the upper hand with the unionist camp reportedly reduced to trying to set its own referendum that fits with their timescales, a risky ploy that, despite clear merit, may result in a Scottish backlash from the masses.

I do wonder however if David Cameron has an ace up his sleeve that would send the SNP spiralling into disarray, a simple, single line that he just needs to publicly utter that would be game, set and match for the unionists. That line would be as follows: “A United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland would not recognise the currency of Scotland if it sought to use Sterling against our express wishes”

What could FM Salmond and the SNP realistically do then? Proceed with saying Scotland will use Sterling even though the political leaders of the Bank of England have said No? Do we really aspire to being the “naughty neighbours” leeching off down south’s pounds and pence? Is it not a bit like divorcing your partner and asking to still borrow their purse or wallet?

We are seeing right now what a basketcase country can do to a shared currency, with Germany and France amongst others looking on aghast as small Greece pulls the Euro down into the mire. It is unlikely to ever happen of course, but why should rUK run the risk of Scotland doing the same to Sterling? Why shouldn’t England, Wales and Northern Ireland want to protect its currency within its own borders during these troubled times? Look at the mess that Ireland got into with banks that were too big to fail but also too big to support; rUK shouldn’t be expected to take a punt on its currency in similar circumstances closer to home.

The problem with the Euro is that the Continent has seen a union of currencies but no fiscal union. So if Scotland wants to loosen its fiscal union with the UK, then so it follows that a loosening of the currency could follow, and David Cameron is well within his rights to argue that it should follow. It’s not petty and it’s not foolhardy of unionists to argue so, despite what some in the SNP would believe, but it does happen to be a good strategy for completely undermining the Nats.

It has been suggested that it is not David Cameron’s decision to make, that Scotland can use the Sterling regardless of what England or Mervyn King or George Osborne says. Well, I don’t think it’ll work that well in reality and I certainly don’t think that the proud people of Scotland would like the idea of being a Western version of Cambodia, a country that uses the US dollar as its de facto currency like some sort of sovereign scoundrel.

The SNP has pegged too much of its credibility on Sterling and changing tack now to suggesting that a Scottish currency is Plan A would see its independence chances done for (assuming that championing the Euro remains political suicide for the next few years).

I personally believe that a Scottish pound would be a great idea, it gives us the opportunity to be nimble enough to have export-led recovery during tough times and import-led booms during the good times, not to mention plenty of cheap holidays.

Why does the world need a new currency one could reasonably ask. Why does the world need a new country one could reasonably counter.

Perhaps there is a way for Salmond to raise the bar, to raise his party’s vision beyond clinging to the currency that we know. Perhaps the FM could deliver a speech searing with soaring rhetoric that pleads for activists and the public alike to dare to be the equals of the Swedens and the Norways, to embrace the idea of a small country with a big currency, powered by a roaring economy. That standing up for ourselves means going the whole way, a truly clean slate upon which to build a better nation in the mould that Scots want. I’d cheer, I’d clap, but I don’t see Salmond gambling that enough Scots would follow his words with their votes. We just don’t like change enough to do it.

So until then, Alex Salmond seems to want the Bank of England and Westminster to dance to his tune for his own party’s convenience, despite wanting to pull Scotland out of the union. It won’t work. It can’t work, and it’s only a matter of time before Cameron, Osborne, Clegg or someone else publicly and decisively calls him on it. It would be a challenge that even the First Minister’s trademark chuckle couldn’t shake off and could quite possibly ruining irrevocably the SNP’s chances of a Yes result.

Don’t believe me? I’ll bet you any number of your British pounds. (I don’t take Euros)

“Devo Max is an obvious bear trap”

Nov 3

Posted by James in Constitution, Holyrood | 31 Comments

I had hoped to go along to Tom Harris’s campaign launch this morning with my Better Nation hat on, but work got in the way. Never mind. David Torrance on Twitter tells us he said:

“Devo Max is a nationalist ploy, aimed at disconcerting and confusing the Labour Party… an obvious bear trap.”

I don’t know what Tom’s detailed thinking here is, but he’s right that there’s a risk here for Labour. There’s also an awful lot of muddled thinking about this putative third option, irrespective of how the questions are structured. Much as I miss writing with Malc, formerly of this parish, I think this post of his on Burdzeyeview is uncharacteristically off the mark.

The received wisdom, as discussed there, is that Salmond’s trying to look conciliatory, that it gives him a fallback option if the public aren’t ready for independence, and that it makes the Yoonyonisht Conshpirashy look like they’re against any change.

But who’s really in favour of it? Polling (as Malc rightly says) suggests it’s popular, but where there’s an ill-understood middle position the ‘don’t knows’ and ‘won’t votes’ will tend to congregate there. Given the uncertainty about the specifics of what Devo Max or Indy Lite might actually be even inside the bubble, rest assured the wider public haven’t a scooby about it.

But these standard assumptions may rest on a misunderstanding of what Salmond and his sofa cabinet want. Allow me to digress again into some theory.

A standard political theorist model of coalition-building is that three variables count: policy, office, or votes (that link is to the whole of Strøm and Müller’s book, I’m afraid). The Lib Dems, for instance, got more ministerial roles after May 2010 than they perhaps deserved, so scoring highly on the office front. They got much less on policy, with some wins on Europe and tax changes massively outweighed by student fees, NHS privatisation and the rest. The price they’re paying in vote terms is also very clear. Strøm and Müller would call them a predominantly “office-seeking party”, perhaps driven in part by the memory of their Gladstonian heyday.

New Labour, conversely, were more of a “vote-seeking party”, governed by focus group and the winds blowing from Fleet Street – now Scottish Labour mostly want to run Scotland because they don’t like the SNP doing so, and are perhaps better understood as primarily the “office-seeking” now. Greens have historically been a “policy-seeking party”, as exemplified in 2007-2011 by the efforts to secure policy changes rather than office from the minority situation (although having Patrick as convenor of the Committee that covered climate change was certainly useful office). The Scottish Tories are probably best understood in that way too.

And the SNP? For my money I believe their activist base to be sincerely committed to policy above all. They have a range of opinions on the rest of politics, from left to right to none, but achieving independence is the Holy Grail, the defining purpose, the eschatological moment itself. If you asked them to choose between independence with the dissolution of the SNP on one hand, and the status quo – the union with a rampant SNP – on the other they’d choose independence every time. And on Twitter and elsewhere, the mood amongst the nationalist massive was pro-Margo’s position, that Devo Max is simply a distraction.

But do the Ministerial team and SNP strategists agree? The top team do definitely love their jobs, their office, and their status. And they will have gamed the consequences of six possible outcomes – the two possibilities from a straight Yes/No to independence question, plus the three from a indy/devo max/status quo referendum, plus the one where no referendum is held.

Any clear vote for independence means they will have fulfilled their manifest destiny – and it’s hard to see how or why they’d make a pitch to continue to govern, or even whether people with bread-and-butter politics as diverse as Linda Fabiani and Fergus Ewing, for example, would want to remain part of the same party. Do they really want to become Scotland’s answer to the ANC? Similarly, a clear vote for the status quo pushes any progress towards independence off the table for a generation, despite the threats of a “neverendum” from the likes of John Mason, not to mention the speed at which morale amongst their activists would drain away.

The late-term referendum bid, derailed by legal challenges, might be a high-risk way to play the original 2007-11 game plan, mysteriously abandoned during that session, which was to blame the Conshpirashy for blocking democracy and preventing the people from having a say. However, the only one of the six options that allows them to say “we’ve made progress, give us another shot” in 2016 is a win for Devo Max. They can’t propose it themselves in case people come to the conclusion that it’s their first preference, so they would need someone else to do it for them. It would string the activists along and could, potentially, be the only option that could almost guarantee they retain Ministerial office.

Why else would they have spent so long pushing Indy Lite (as set out best here by David Torrance again) to no avail? And why do their press team put out so many press releases urging Labour and the other Yoonyonishts to put forward a Devo Max option and pointing out endlessly when the odd Labour voice backs it *? Prizes are available for anyone who can provide a clear distinction between the two proposals, incidentally.

If I’m right, Tom Harris is right too, on this if nothing else. Many in Labour now, finally, belatedly, realise that either a clear yes or no to independence would allow politics to move off the constitution and onto all the issues those outside the SNP got into politics to take an interest in – poverty, climate change, methods of taxation, cuts and alternatives to them and so on. And they have probably worked out that the only option they should fear is Devo Max, an option being pushed to the SNP’s benefit by that little list of semi-detached Labour figures. One day Labour’s strategists may even realise they should have offered an up/down vote in 2006.

* 17th Oct, “Henry McLeish is to be congratulated for urging Labour to back a “devo-max” option in the referendum”; 19th Oct, “The SNP today urged those Labour members who want to see the party back more powers for the Scottish Parliament to openly support Malcolm Chisholm MSP’s call for Labour to develop a position in favour of devolution max.”; 25th Oct, based on a single tweet from George Foulkes, “Labour and the Lib Dems need to understand that the only alternative to campaigning for “devo-max” is for them to stand with the Tories in opposing any more powers for Scotland”, 26th Oct, an almost identical release to the previous day’s one, just with a different headline.