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Back Scotland, not the predatory rich

Apr 25

Posted by James in Holyrood, Westminster | 50 Comments

As Jeff blogged today, the First Minister has begun to find the Murdoch swamp rising around his thighs. The SNP activist defence to that is simple – do you really think the word of the First Minister would carry weight with a Tory or Lib Dem Secretary of State?

Perhaps not, but the Murdochs clearly thought this potential phonecall would be helpful. And it’s not hard to see one way that call would have to go for to be useful to News Corp: “Hi Vince/Jeremy, Alex here, just to let you know if you approve the BSkyB deal my administration won’t kick up a fuss”.

Another of Mr Salmond’s former friends made his presence felt at Holyrood today – Donald Trump. Like Jack McConnell before him, the First Minister did everything he could to get Mr Trump to build his resort and golf course at Menie, but Mr Trump is unable to quit when he’s ahead.

His friend Alex, the man who overturned local planning rules for him, is now “Mad Alex“, who will literally, Trump’s argument goes, destroy Scotland with wind turbines. His bizarre rantings in Committee today will have won no-one round, nor will his argument that a mere democratic mandate is no reason to set energy policy.

In both cases, the First Minister has made a serious effort to get these men on board, and in both cases their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the Scottish people. On Murdoch, I think Scots would clearly welcome a more diverse media, not one so extensively owned by one family. On Trump, his threats to evict local families from Menie were opposed by 74% with just 13% support.

Murdoch and Trump may have turned on the First Minister now, but these are hardly isolated examples. Take just two more of the First Minister’s friends. Brian Souter’s interests are in a deregulated bus market, and the public interest is in a regulated one. Jim McColl’s interests are in a low-tax Scotland, although he’s registered in Monaco for tax reasons, whereas the public have an interest in business paying its fair share. It’s time for this SNP administration to start putting the interests of the vast majority of Scots first, not the predatory elite they seem to prefer.

Osborne’s major donor doo-doo

Apr 12

Posted by Kirsty in Society, Westminster | 6 Comments

Disclaimer: When I’m not co-editing Better Nation I’m a professional charity fundraiser, and my work includes major donor giving. I write here, as ever, in a personal capacity.

David Cameron has promised to consider charities’ calls to dismiss plans in the Budget to cap tax relief on charitable donations.

At the moment, whenever basic rate taxpayers donate to charity, whatever they would have paid in tax goes to the charity as well – all thanks to the little Gift Aid box you usually tick on a donation form. For higher rate taxpayers, some of the tax due goes to charity (the amount of tax due under basic rate) and the rest (on the higher rate) can be reclaimed by the individual. The Treasury wants to cap the amount which can be reclaimed to £50,000 per annum.

Of the £11 billion given to UK charities last year, almost half came from only 7% of donors. Attempting to end tax loopholes should be commended, but it is foolish to penalise the people who help ensure this country has the arts, education, museums and, I dunno, the Big Society it merits.

The Conservatives themselves are trying to boost private giving to the arts. Osborne’s Budget in 2011 added a new tax break for charitable giving, allowing anyone leaving 10% of their estate to charity to reduce their inheritance tax bill from 40% to 36%. In this situation, charities rightly feel wronged by Osborne’s decision.

It is the major arts and education institutions that largely benefit from major donor giving. In Scotland, the principals of five universities and the directors of National Museums Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland have called on the UK government to scrap its tax relief cap. It is unlikely the revitalisation last year of the National Museum of Scotland or of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery could have been completed without measures like this to encourage major donor giving.

Other charities are of course affected too, and the SCVO is supporting the ‘Give it back, George’ campaign, while major Scottish philanthropists like Sir Tom Hunter and Sir Ian Wood have warned the move will have a ‘disastrous’ effect on charitable giving.

I have worked in encouraging major charitable donations. Part of my previous job was trying to figure out why wealthy people would be motivated to support the capital project I worked on, and I wrote and rewrote many guides to demonstrate this tax relief opportunity which Osborne wants to end.

I don’t think any of these guides were ever used in meetings with potential donors.

Russ Alan Prince and Karen Maru File wrote a book in 2001 called The Seven Faces of Philanthropy. Like most fundraising, it’s good common sense. People have different reasons and motivations for giving, and they can be summarised in seven different types:

1. The Communitarian: Doing Good Makes Sense
2. The Devout: Doing Good is God’s Will
3. The Investor: Doing Good is Good Business
4. The Socialite: Doing Good is Fun
5. The Altruist: Doing Good Feels Right
6. The Repayer: Doing Good in Return
7. The Dynast: Doing Good is a Family Tradition

I have met donors across all seven faces, and number three, the one who thinks about the tax advantages of philanthropy the most, shows up the second least often. (Number seven, The Dynast, is the least frequent, but I think that’s more to do with a difference between British and American philanthropy.)

Should philanthropy happen without financial inducements? Ideally. Of course. Will it happen as often? I doubt it. Several beneficiaries of major philanthropy, like UNESCO and the National Theatre, have already reported that large pledged donations are threatened by this move. Charities are squeezed right now: rising inflation, falling income, increasing demand for services. To make a change like this – even if most major donors don’t consider it before giving –  without prior consultation with charities literally wipes millions from predicted incomes going forward, affecting future plans and service provision.

I would like the Treasury to do more, a lot more, to end tax avoidance. Some people are probably funnelling funds to made-up charities to benefit from this relief. But for most major donors, who are giving a lot of money for their name to be etched in stone forever on a wall somewhere, for everyone to see, including HMRC, isn’t really what I consider the behaviour of a tax dodger.

Non-nationalists for independence

Apr 11

Posted by James in Constitution, Holyrood, Westminster | 46 Comments

The Jolly Roger flyingDuring a recent discussion thread one of the commenters admitted to not knowing what the difference is between a nationalist and someone that supports independence. Given it was Jeff, I promised to explain my position, which is, as the title suggests, in favour of independence but against nationalism.

Crudely, there are romantic arguments for particular territorial boundaries, and there are pragmatic ones. The arguments for and against independence can both be divided in this way. If someone believes that larger nation-states carry more clout on the world stage, that the costs of implementing Scottish independence outweigh the benefits, and that the Westminster system is the most efficient form of democracy ever devised, for example, they are certainly a unionist but not necessarily a nationalist of any flavour. Those are pragmatic positions, and their merits can be debated.

If, however, they believe that Britain has a splendid history, that Britishness is important to their identity, and that we therefore belong together, they are a British nationalist. It sounds unpleasant, because of the association with the British National Party, but it’s really no more logical nor any less savoury than Scottish nationalism. Nationalists believe in flags and anthems and symbols of collective identity. Unless it’s the Jolly Roger, I’m broadly against flags. Any form of nationalism is like a faith position, and it is hard to debate sensibly with a person who adheres to one of them.

Similarly, Scottish nationalism has independence as an end in itself, an emotional objective irrespective of any other political changes. Patrick and I once took a drink with an SNP MSP who shall remain nameless. Patrick asked what their campaign priorities would be after independence, and got the memorable reply: “what do you mean?” Another round of pressing still failed to elicit any secondary policy objectives, like perhaps tackling poverty, or even apparently an understanding of the question. Eventually the answer came that they’d leave politics – job done. That’s nationalism in its purest form, and it frankly baffles me.

Personally, I came to support independence as a pragmatic position, entirely devoid of any nationalist sentiment – only the 90 minute version has any effect on me. I look at Westminster politics and despair. I no longer think it likely that we will in my lifetime see an end to corporate politics there, or a fair electoral system, or a party of government opposed to privatisation, or a government prepared to make a positive case for immigration and honouring our asylum commitments. Obviously Labour started small, and the Greens couldn’t have a better bridgehead in the Commons than Caroline Lucas, but the inertia (at best) and copycat neo-liberal politics seen at a UK level is frankly beyond depressing.

So I don’t want to be offered an independent Scotland which would reproduce Westminster at Holyrood, something where the constitution won’t be written by the people, without a choice over an elected or a hereditary head of state, or where money politics still rules. I want to see independence for something, for a purpose. I want to see a fairer Scotland, one that relies on wind and wave, not oil and gas, one where money stops being wasted on motorways and is diverted instead into public transport, and one where politics is cleaned up and opened up. The list is enormous, and in general it’s what you’d see if you merged the last Green manifestos for Holyrood and for Westminster. Only a referendum on a truly democratic independent Scotland gives me any hope that I’ll live in a country like that.

The irony with this, of course, is that plenty of people who get called nationalists – SNP members, or even SNP MSPs – are not nationalists by this definition, or not just nationalists at least. Like me, they want independence for a purpose: some to deliver a version of social democracy, others to continue down a neo-liberal path. The leadership recognise the ideological and emotional strands in the pro-independence camp too, and so they use rhetoric that mixes nationalism and pragmatism, designed to have a broad appeal beyond the flag-wavers.

Another example further from home provides a footnote. Consider the 18th century American campaign for independence and the colonists’ famous slogan “no taxation without representation”. This was not a nationalist position, although it was part of the ideological foundation for a war for independence. It’s a pragmatic political position, and if George III had had any sense he’d have offered them representation. Who knows how that would have turned out? Similarly, if the unionists had been smarter and hadn’t blocked the assembly plans in 1979, who knows whether independence would seem so essential now?

“To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise”

Apr 3

Posted by James in Crime, Parties, Westminster | 5 Comments

Nick Clegg’s support for a massive extension of online monitoring may be a disappointment to disgruntled activists, and to any voters who listened to him on the subject prior to (and immediately after) the May 2010 election. But it should be no surprise. It’s certainly in keeping with a consistent experience of the three UK parties of government.

They regularly appear solid on policy in opposition but then are either ineffectual or do a series of direct u-turns once in office. The list is endless. Labour talked about equality of opportunity before 1997, but left behind the most unequal UK ever. The Tories joined the Lib Dems in howling about tuition fees in opposition, before working together to treble them almost immediately their coats were over the Downing Street chairs. I still remember the Tory backbencher telling me in 1997 that “we’re fine on this now, but don’t trust us when we get back into office“. Too true.

On security and civil liberties – especially on the futile attempt to trade the latter for the former – we have this same problem in spades. Governments, including this one and its predecessor, are almost always wrong, and oppositions, including this one and its predecessors, are almost always right. Whoever you vote for, it seems, the permanent government gets in, and the policies remain the same. The glee in the Labour spokesperson’s voice on Westminster Hour when asked if she’d be supporting this latest dogs’ breakfast was inescapable: “we dropped it! we dropped it!”, she said. Be in no doubt that Labour would pick it up the moment they ever return to office.

This might just be another attempt by the Lib Dems to discard a chunk of the broad base of support they assembled up to 2010. We’re not quite two years through a supposedly five year term, and there’s very little left. Broad but, it turns out, shallow, and only the Orange Book minority has really been shown any love by the leadership. Students were driven away, anyone concerned about privatisation of the NHS or Royal Mail is long gone, let alone those who wanted a principled left alternative to Labour. It seems almost absurd to think that’s how people ever thought of them.

The email monitoring legislation does feel a little different to previous betrayals, though. It has the air of a terminal nosedive about it, a sense that the party is approaching what looks like the point of no return. The smarter sort of Lib Dems on Twitter, the few of those that remain in the party, are saying things like “I have not sent my LD membership renewal until I see what happens with the surveillance stuff“, “I don’t know where [Clegg’s] going, but I have no appetite to go on the journey with him“, “As someone who generally is keen on Clegg he’s fucked this up big time“, and “The question is what we can we do about it? How can we make the leadership listen?”

As Polly Toynbee put it today, “civil liberties was their last USP“, although she’s excluded Iraq, presumably because their policy there was actually much weaker than the media and the party implied: “if there’s a second resolution we’ll back a disastrous war“. (Polly-haters should try again with that piece, incidentally. Except for a spurious paragraph where she suggests “Labour has been spring-cleaning it roots” (sic), she’s on good form.)

Less than a month ago Julian Huppert, the darling of the Lib Dems on Twitter, wrote a remarkably prescient piece for the Guardian. Here is just one chunk (emphasis mine):

Civil liberties are a core, unifying issue for the Lib Dems. There are MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties who would defend civil liberties to the very end, and others – too many others – who would tear them up at the first opportunity. There is no such division in the Lib Dems. Issues such as civil liberties are utterly uniting for our party, and utterly divisive for the others. To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise. […] if we do not provide a thorough, reasoned defence of civil liberties, no other party will.

Aside from the usual Green-and-Nat-ignoring self-serving Westminster tripe at the end, most observers would have agreed with this assessment of the Lib Dems until the weekend. But now it transpires that their champions around the Cabinet table don’t care about this issue either. Who knew? Perhaps it’s some odd highball tactic so Clegg can accept a “compromise” that the party wouldn’t otherwise have swallowed.

No amount of reasoning with the Clegg/Alexander leadership could get them to change their minds on private control of NHS, and no amount of lobbying could persuade Lib Dem MPs or peers to rebel in any numbers on it either. Will they go the same way over internet surveillance? Are they really ready to go down with Clegg on this issue and take their whole party with them? Or will we, finally, start to see some backbone from their backbenchers?

Devolution Beached

Mar 23

Posted by Kirsty in Democracy, Environment, Holyrood, Westminster | 1 Comment

On Monday, the Scottish Affairs Committee published its report into the Crown Estate in Scotland, recommending the devolution of Crown Estates Commission’s responsibilities for and ancient rights over Scotland’s coastline, firstly to Holyrood with the intention of further devolution to local communities.

Gaining control over Scotland’s foreshore and seabed is certainly not a trifle: this move gives Scotland powers over a vital economic sector. Currently, the Crown Estates Commission holds gems like mineral and salmon fishing rights, while renewable energy projects like wind farms and offshore gas storage facilities on Scottish Crown Estate is projected to generate an annual sum of £49m by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, it acts like an absentee landlord or tax collector, doing little to re-invest to any significant extent in the sectors and communities from which it derives income.

Interesting then, that Ian Davidson, Chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee, dismissed the Scottish Government’s demand for the devolution of powers over the Scottish Crown Estate back in November as “entirely vacuous”, telling Linda Rosborough, the acting director of Scottish Government agency Marine Scotland, that “Asking for power over the Crown Estate without having any idea of what you do with it is a position that seems entirely vacuous.”

According to The Scotsman, Rosborough advised that the Scottish Government would only bring forward detailed proposals for its Crown Estate plans and hold a consultation if Westminster agreed to devolve the powers. Pretty standard, and Davidson should know that. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the new powers devolved to Scotland in this week’s Scotland Bill, like tax and borrowing powers, air weapons, drink driving and speed limits needed extensive consultation in Scotland prior to the agreement being made.

Land reform is one of the best things to come out of Scottish devolution, especially local measures like community right-to-buy. I think it will hopefully be improved under this Scottish Government, with Roseanna Cunningham announcing an intention to review and improve the legislation within the year. It’s abysmal that the Crown Estate has failed Scotland since devolution: failing to account for Scottish rights and assets. It is entirely right that these powers are devolved to Scottish communities, but it should not have taken Westminster more than a decade to give Scotland’s coastline back to Scotland.

Davidson might have had to conclude that the Crown Estate Commission should no longer be the body responsible in this case, but for proponents of devolution as Labour MPs should be, the transfer of these powers should be both obvious and necessary. It’s disappointing that Westminster appears to be begrudging handing Scotland powers, just because they fear it might in some way help the independence campaign. If you really want to oppose independence, diminishing devolution which Scottish communities need and from which the economy benefits is certainly not the way to win.