Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

Some different ideas to go with your referendum: Scotland 44

Jun 1

Posted by Dom in Constitution, Culture, Democracy, Economy, Education | Comments off

scotland44-page001Better Nation does not have a publishing arm, and despite ideas of a Better Nation film being mooted over some drinks last year the realities of living a normal life bit. I have not however, been sitting idly on my hands for the past eighteen months, instead putting most of my effort into the Post Collective publishing project.

The Post Collective was set up last year to provide a forum for progressive green journalism in Scotland. Made up of a merry collection of academics, sometime journalists, economists and science professionals  the project regularly writes about contemporary Scotland, science, culture, politics and democracy on postmag.org. Post also publishes printed books and magazines, and though we do not have any clear view on the referendum itself as a group, we decided to try and make a collective contribution. The result is a forthcoming book about the future: Scotland 44.

Scotland 44 is not designed to argue for independence, instead it sets out a number of different possibilities for Scotland’s next thirty years that would improve the lives of Scottish people in areas from how we build our cities to how we fund the arts, manage information and privacy and generate energy. Arguing for independence as an end in itself will not do much to change Scotland without the will or ideas to significantly restructure the way the country works, and a no vote is no excuse for political stasis from either side.

That said, independence would seem to be the most opportune moment to rip it all up and start again, including an areas the independence debate is yet to touch on. One of Scotland 44’s writers, the urbanist Stacey Hunter of Edinburgh University, will for example be writing about an area the Scottish Government already has full control of. Could independence mean an end to the SNP’s love of suburban estates and motorways over communities and sustainable transport?

And how can power be taken from the Scottish Parliament and given back to people? What would decentralisation mean for democracy and the economy? How do you come up with an arts policy for a nation as diverse as Scotland? Who gets to be Scottish, and what will Scotland in 2044 mean compared with the Scotland of 2014 and 1984? If you could put science and education at the centre of society, how would it work? What does citizenship mean in post-2014 Scotland?

These bigger questions transcend a decision between Yes and No and demand answers from ourselves as much as they do politicians. If you want to pre order a copy of Scotland 44 or find out about and contribute to the ongoing work of the Post project you can do so here.

Selling out to the lowest bidder: Serco and the SNP

May 29

Posted by Dom in Constitution, Defence, Democracy, Environment | Comments off

One of the things the SNP like to talk about at length is their commitment to ridding Scotland of nuclear weapons. The anti-nuclear stance is one of the few pieces of political radicalism, along with free education, to have remained in the SNP manifesto pack. It is then all the more surprising that the same government is happy to award contracts to an outsourcing company actively engaged in the maintenance of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal. Serco, accurately described as ‘the biggest company you’ve never heard of’ are one of the largest outsourcers in the world, running public contracts in myriad areas from transport to weapons technology, data management and prisons. Late last year they were the subject of an investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office  for their work electronically tagging prisoners (along with private security contractor G4S). Through a partnership contract, Serco Denholm, the company also provides a range of services at HMNB Clyde, of which the Faslane nuclear base is part. The contract with the Warship Support Agency, an arm of the MoD, includes support to the movement and training excercises of Vanguard nuclear submarines. The Faslane submarines are the delivery mechanism for the UK’s roaming Trident nuclear deterrent. Only people within the SNP can say whether anybody failed to see the link between a lucrative contract for the Caledonian Sleeper and Serco’s nuclear and defence work, but it makes the SNP hardline on public services and moral superiority look a little weaker. Serco already run the ferries to Shetland and Orkney after winning the contract from publicly-owned Caledonian MacBrayne a few years ago, banking £254m pounds in the process. The new Caledonian Sleeper franchise also sees an injection of £100m of public money toward new trains, to be owned by a private rolling stock leasing company.

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..”

May 28

Posted by James in Constitution | Comments off

Today has been a bad day for the indyref debate, with weak arguments from governments in Edinburgh and London, and a shared frame that could have been designed between them to drive down turnout. The offences aren’t the same, mind: from the SNP side we have speculative handwaving designed to appeal to pure selfishness, while on the Coalition side we see downright dishonesty and misrepresentation.

To start with the latter, the UK Government put out information about the “cost of independence”, based on research from the LSE’s Professor Patrick Dunleavy. The data in it was then utterly destroyed by one Professor Patrick Dunleavy, as initially reported in the Financial Times and now belatedly elsewhere. The doomed Danny Alexander claimed the costs would be £2.7bn, then rowed back to £1.5bn, about seven and a half times the upper end of the Professor’s estimates, and ten times the lower end.

Here’s a bit more from the Lib Dems on what the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had to say.

“In his speech, Danny pointed out five factors that would affect Scotland’s finances if it were to become independent:

1. New institutions would have to be set up in Scotland, costing the country millions of pounds.
2. Scotland would have to pay higher interest rates to borrow, resulting in around £500 million per year in additional debt interest costs.
3. The Scottish government’s new policies would cost at least £1.6 billion every year.
4. Revenues from oil and gas production would fall by around 95% over the next 20 years due to the decline in North Sea oil production.
5. The shrinking number of working age people would have to pay for Scotland’s growing number of old age pensioners.

Danny mentioned that all of these factors would be worth £1400 per person in Scotland each year for the next 20 years, something that would be easily avoided by staying in the UK.”

Let’s look at those all in a little detail.

1. Clearly true, although “millions” is a bit of a further row-back from the billions they were initially claiming. £150m-£200m isn’t a lot of setup costs, to use the Professor’s figures: it’s about an eighth of the money Scottish Ministers are already squandering on a single unnecessary road bridge. No biggie.
2. Unknown and unknowable prior to independence. Just don’t.
3. Depends on what kind of Scottish Government we elect in 2016, and if the Lib Dems still exist then they’ll be free to propose a low-tax war-on-the-poor style system for Scotland akin to the one they’ve helped the Tories deliver in reserved areas. So therefore unknowable.
4. Utter unmitigated bullshit: yes, oil and gas revenues will drop sharply from around 2016, they are already well below the 1999 peak (see graph below), and cannot in any case be a sustainable basis for a future Scottish economy. But aside from the last of those, the issue here is geology, and staying in the Union can’t undo the fact that oil is finite and we’ve already extracted most of it from the North Sea.
5. Again, it depends. Will an independent Scotland stick to the kind of anti-immigrant policies the Tories and Lib Dems are delivering, or will the more positive position shared by the SNP and the Greens win out? Can’t have this both ways, Danny.

The offences on the other side are less glaring, and not blatantly dishonest, but still, in the interests of fairness, they have to be pointed out. Here’s the argument. It relies on speculative better productivity gains in Scotland than in the rest of the UK (the equivalent of the empty politicians’ call for “efficiency savings”), speculative better employment rates than the rest of the UK, and speculative Scottish population increases.

All of these are the same sort of unsubstantiated arguments as Danny’s final point above (much as I hope an independent Scotland will welcome more immigration), and it’s also tactically poor. Confusing independence with some sketchy estimates of outcomes from vague policies won’t persuade people to vote Yes. Independence is about the people of Scotland making our own decisions, not it being set in stone now, even if it could be.

Incidentally, on page 18 of the full document, the Scottish Government uses 2016-17 as the reference year for oil receipts. As per industry research from May 2013, that’s around the post-1999 peak. Their figures on page 26 are, shall we say, bullish.

oil-chartAnyway, the document is full of dubious hypotheticals, and reads like an expert group of civil servants weighing something they can’t see while keeping a thumb firmly on the scales. Sometimes it goes beyond that. Imagine using the word “will” here rather than the word “would”: “Higher productivity growth will boost public sector revenues as increased economic output leads to higher tax receipts” (p36).

Furthermore, people aren’t stupid, or most of them aren’t. They know that chat about whether we’ll be better or worse off, by either side, especially when associated with exciting round numbers, is mere empty speculation. It’s also not what motivates people, from what I understand of the focus groups that have been conducted. Even assuming people want to sound more progressive when being polled, fairness is much more persuasive. Oh, and so too is “decisions will be made in Scotland, by voters in Scotland”: much more attractive than “here’s how it’s all going to be, sod the electorate”.

Conjecture from Yes, downright lies from No: the Scottish public deserves better than this.

 

Who might Scotland have elected under STV?

May 27

Posted by James in Holyrood | Comments off

A preferential ballotThis excellent question was asked this morning by ERS Scotland, and it’s of course impossible to tell, because we all (well, a third of us) filled in a ballot paper with a single X on it, and because people might well have given a first preference to a party which didn’t get their X last week – i.e. anyone who voted tactically. But let’s assume that those clumsy Xs would have been sophisticated 1s and then get even further into handwaving and guesswork from there. Is Tory Iain McGill right to assume (in terms I disassociate myself from) that we’d simply have swapped a ‘kipper for a Nat?

Another assumption is that we’d use preferences for parties rather than the better version of preferences by candidate (for example, if I’d been able to preference amongst the SNP I’d have put Hudghton and Gethins ahead of Smith and Ahmed-Sheikh). For the purists, this assumption is equivalent to the assumption that every SNP voter gives a 1 to Hudghton, a 2 to Smith, a 3 to Ahmed-Sheikh and so on: voting the straight ticket in the order chosen by the parties. My final assumption (and this one is definitely wrong) is that all voters will rank all candidates. Let’s not get too far down the STV rabbithole by debating specific counting models, either, incidentally.

There were 1,343,483 valid votes cast. That would set the usual quota for election at 191,927. The SNP’s Ian Hudghton would comfortably claim election first, with 389,503 first preferences. Labour’s David Martin and the Tories’ Ian Duncan would also make quota directly. No-one else would make quota straight away, so all 197,576 unused SNP votes would transfer to Alyn Smith, while 156,292 Labour votes would go to Catherine Stihler, and 39,403 Tory votes to Belinda Don.

At this point Alyn Smith is also over quota by just 5,649 votes, so he is elected fourth, and those votes all transfer to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

So, four MEPs have been elected at this stage, two SNP, one Tory, and one Labour. Who’s next? Labour are closest to the next seat, 35,635 votes short, then UKIP, who are 51,393 votes short, then the Greens, who are 83,622 short. That means it’s time to start eliminating candidates with the lowest votes and time to get even deeper into guesswork about where their votes go.

The candidate with the lowest vote at this stage is actually the SNP’s third-placed Ahmed-Sheikh – her 5,649 preferences are lower than the 6,418 scored by No2EU, the union-led left eurosceptics. So she would be eliminated next: let’s assume that a third of SNP voters are voting the straight independence ticket, with the Greens next, a third voting soft social democrat with Labour next, and the final third splits equally between the Lib Dems, the Tories, and UKIP. There aren’t many of them so it doesn’t matter much.

Again, no-one’s much nearer to quota so No2EU get eliminated. Let’s assume half of them are primarily lefties and they go Green next, despite us not being anti-EU, and half of them primarily hate the EU so they go to UKIP. That’s 3,209 for each party, and again no-one’s on quota. The next two lowest are Britain First and the BNP. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that all the fash votes slide readily over to UKIP. That gives the ‘kippers another 23,851 votes, just 23,702 away from that fifth seat. Labour at this point are about 10,000 behind UKIP.

Now the real fun begins – no-one’s on quota, and the Tories’ surplus 40,030 votes (including transfers) are redistributed. Given the SNP are already out, that means their votes can only go to Labour, Lib Dem, Green, or UKIP. It’s hard to tell, but let’s assume half are rightwing and eurosceptic, people who’d put UKIP next, a third are coalitionistas prepared to put the Lib Dems next, and a sixth are non-racist unionists who’ll put Labour next.

This brings UKIP a tantalising 3,876 short of quota, with Labour 23,393 behind them, and it brings the Lib Dems to 109,951, just 3,446 behind the Greens. It’s not enough, though, and the Lib Dems are now the lowest-placed remaining party.

Their 109,951 votes (including transfers) are redistributed. Given the SNP and Tories are already out, that means their votes can only go to Labour, Green, or UKIP: bear in mind that the two remaining seats will be awarded only from that list too. I’ll assume (I know) that none of the Lib Dems have UKIP next, that a quarter of them are passionate unionists who’d put Labour next, and the remaining three quarters are lower-case g green-minded, transferring accordingly.

This takes Labour to 192335 and the Greens to 195860 (I have rounded in places so there’ll be an occasional vote astray). Both parties make quota, Labour’s Catherine Stihler narrowly for her party’s second seat, the Greens’ Maggie Chapman marginally more comfortably. UKIP remain those 3,876 votes short and thus return no Scottish MEP. The balance of Lib Dem transfers at the end isn’t particularly crucial – if more go to Labour first and then the Greens, then Labour would make quota more comfortably, with a surplus that could be expected to tend to preference Greens ahead of UKIP, although if not quite 10% of those Lib Dems had ranked UKIP above the Greens we’d be back to the same distribution as the actual result.

Of course, voters don’t vote mechanically like this with their preferences. Just look at any of the local election wards to see that. And you could make plenty of other assumptions that would see the final two seats go to Labour and UKIP, or just plausibly Labour and the Lib Dems (but no way could the SNP have won a third, contrary to Iain’s assumption). But wouldn’t it be nice to find out who we really want and really don’t want? Fair votes under STV aren’t just about proportionality, they’re about subtle and accurate expressions of our votes. I would like us to use nothing else.

(assumptions spreadsheet available on request)

Swedish pluralism means Nigel might get some friends in Brussels and the Greens soar higher than ever

May 27

Posted by Dom in Democracy, Elections, Environment | 1 Comment

How the European elections play out in different countries is highly dependent on which system of election the member state uses. The British regional list system (including Wales and Scotland, but not Northern Ireland) still guarantees a significant advantage to larger parties with a very high threshold for gaining a regional seat (upwards of ten per cent), meaning parties can gain nine or ten per cent across the country yet still fail to achieve a single MEP.

                             In Sweden, however, there is a single national list, and the Swedes have thrown up a very diverse range of parties to send to Brussels. There are two bits of good news from Sweden in a Europe otherwise mired in a far-right resurgence and a directionless but emboldened populist movement. The first is that the Swedish feminist group Feminist Initiative cleared the four per cent hurdle and made history in the process. Should they repeat the feat in September they will enter Sweden’s national legislature with twenty members forming the first feminist parliamentary party in European history.

                             An even bigger piece of positive news is that the Swedish Green Party overtook the Cameron-inspiring Moderate party for the first time, making them the second biggest party on almost sixteen per cent. The Moderates are now doing a lot of soul searching, polling one of their worst results in any election since the 1970s. The division of parliamentary mandates means that larger parties do not win as many seats as smaller parties do per percentage point, so the victory is mostly symbolic for the Greens, but like Feminist Initiative they go into September’s national elections with a good chance of becoming a fairly equal partner in a governing coalition. The secret of their success was becoming the biggest party in all three of Sweden’s large cities and harnessing the youth vote.

                             The national list system also meant that the far-right (though increasingly respectable) Swedish Democrats (SD) secured two seats. Their friends in the far-right Danish People’s Party are keen on cooperation with the British Tory-led group in the European Parliament, but this leaves the Swedish Democrats without too many friends.  The talk in the Swedish media is that SD fancy their chances with Britain’s favourite non-racist party. If this comes off it will mean UKIP sharing photocopying budgets with a party who went into the election promising to combat extreme feminism among other evils. Previous japes involving SD include one of their MPs attacking someone with a metal pole after a night out and some choice words about Roma that would make Nigel Farage turn away in shame.

                             What the Swedish elections to Brussels show best is what a pluralist media and election system looks like. With nine different parties represented from radical left to extreme right, via pink, Green and blue, it is representative in a way Britain’s system is not. With a similar system Greens in the UK would probably have around six MEPs, UKIP nineteen (not twenty-four) and one or two fewer for Labour and the Tories. This does not of course take into account Britain’s complex regional politics (The SNP and Plaid would vanish on a single national list), and the only way to solve that one would be to increase the seats allocated to Wales and Scotland and keep them separate. With its four UKIP MEPs and ten seats, the South of England could surely lose a few anyway.  And if the SD’s Björn Söder pops up next to Nigel Farage in Brussels, just remind yourself that UKIP are not a racist party.