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The Aberdeen Donside by-election

May 7

Posted by James in Elections, Holyrood, Parties | 2 Comments

Brian Adam MSPThe sad death of Brian Adam MSP just under a fortnight ago means the first Holyrood by-election of this session, and only the sixth since the Parliament was established. Only in the first of those, the 2000 contest for Ayr, did a seat change hands.

This is a particularly crucial vote for Holyrood’s numbers, given that the SNP have lost five of the 69 they elected in 2011, one to the PO’s chair, two on principle, one to a complete absence of principle, and now, regrettably, Brian. If they fail to retain this seat they will theoretically be a minority administration again.

The 2011 result in Aberdeen Donside was hardly close, though – Brian had a majority of more than 7,000 and a margin of more than 25% over his Labour challenger, Barney Crockett, now leader of Aberdeen Council.

Labour held the predecessor seat in 1999, narrowly lost it to Brian in 2003 (he served in the first session as a regional MSP), and lost it by 15% to him in 2007. So the trend-lines here seem clear. The 2011 result was as follows:

Party Candidate Votes +/– % +/–
SNP Brian Adam * 14709 +2544 55.4 +10.6
Labour Barney Crockett 7615 -999 28.5 -3.2
Conservative Ross Thomson 2166 +139 8.1 +0.6
Liberal Democrat Millie McLeod 1606 -2734 6.0 -10.0
Independent David Henderson # 317 +317 1.2 +1.2
National Front Christopher Willett # 213 +213 0.8 +0.8
Majority 7175 Turnout 26707 Swing +6.9% SNP hold

And it’s certainly no more than a two-horse race, assuming it’s that, with the Tories and Lib Dems scoring less than 10% each in 2011. It’s also the worst part of the North-east for the Greens, should the local branch choose to stand – we polled just 2.5% on the list in this seat that year. If I were Labour I would be inclined to throw the kitchen sink at this campaign – the symbolic power of depriving the SNP of their majority would be hard to over-estimate, unlikely as that result would be.

In terms of candidates, the totally unsubstantiated rumour I’m hearing from the area is that Mark McDonald MSP, the final SNP member elected from the North-east regional list, may choose to do what Richard Lochhead and Mary Scanlon did in 2006 – resign a list seat to fight for a constituency, perhaps against Cllr Willie Young for Labour.

If Mark were to stand, and if he were to win as would be expected, the actual new face at Holyrood would be Christian Allard, sixth from the SNP’s 2011 regional list. Curiously, Mr Allard is the last candidate on that list not yet at Holyrood, given the SNP’s extraordinary success in the North-east, so any subsequent vacancy on their list before 2016 would then go unfilled.

Anyway, RIP Brian. I knew him pretty well from his 2007-2011 role (which from a Green perspective was mostly deputising for Bruce Crawford when the SNP needed Green votes in the Chamber), and he was tireless, totally committed to the cause, and always warm even when he was being blunt. He loved elections, too. Let’s hope this is a good one, much as it’d be better if it wasn’t happening at all.

The North is rising

May 6

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

I’ve been somewhat sceptical as to some of the overtures being made toward the Nordic countries by the SNP, though their engaging with the prospect of a Nordic Scotland keeps them a step ahead of the Labour party who ideologically might be the expected natural proponents of such a project. The leadership of the SNP itself remains coy about the big scary tax word which overshadows  the Nordic debate – a colleague of mine remarked that every single debate and panel discussion they have been involved in on Nordic economy has inevitably ended with the depressing assertion that you’d never get people to agree to even minor tax increases.

It is then particularly welcome that a group of academics, not Holyrood researchers, have come up with a blueprint for taking Scotland to a new developmental level which it could never possibly achieve under existing Labour, Conservative or SNP policy. The basics are reported here in the Herald, and some of the central pillars of Nordic economy and welfarism have been covered here on Better Nation.

It presents a rather interesting challenge to the constitutional referendum, in that it is a vision for Scotland which has not been directly produced by the Scottish National Party. The usual tendency is for any government or party-produced document to be dismissed as selective propaganda, and often with good reason. You’ll struggle to find a government policy primer in either Westminster or Edinburgh that would hold up to some critical peer review.

What the SNP need to get used to is the idea that Yes Scotland is not a vehicle for SNP policy but for the harnessing of a national appetite for change and innovation. It has improved considerably from when it was first conceived and is starting to find its own voice, which can only be a good thing and which will help to dismantle the myth that an autonomous parliament in Edinburgh is the sole intellectual property of the skirts and suits in the Holyrood tower. The job of the SNP is, after all, to govern the country well with the powers they have. It is up to people to decide what the country could and should look like in the future. A non-governmental vision for an independent state is exactly the kind of thing needed to articulate the opportunity afforded by a small state with a robust and transparent democratic process.

Labour’s timidity on pay

May 5

Posted by James in Economy, Parties, Westminster | 2 Comments

£1.26The week before their 29% triumph in the local elections down south, “Red Ed” set out a timid Blairite proposal on pay, perhaps with half an eye on UKIP’s bizarre idea that wage levels are entirely determined by the numbers of people arriving in Britain. His grand idea was this – if employers pay the living wage, they might get tax reliefs or lower business rates in return.

The living wage rates are assessed by Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Social Policy, who calculate that “people need to earn £7.45 an hour to be able to pay for food, heating and clothes, as well as to participate in a minimum level of social activity“.

For those aged over 21 working outside London, a living wage at that rate represents a modest £1.26 an hour above the minimum wage. The other way of looking at this is that the minimum wage is insufficient to allow people to “pay for food, heating and clothes, as well as to participate in a minimum level of social activity“. Can that really be acceptable? Why have a minimum wage if it doesn’t allow people to lead a basic existence of that sort?

Miliband’s proposal would mean taxpayers further subsidising employers who aren’t prepared to pay this minimum, just like parts of the tax credit system did. Effectively, those employers would still be paying below the living wage but we’d be making up part of the difference. It’s an inadequate and pathetic response to a crisis in living standards.

Instead, government should just be setting the minimum wage at the living wage level, not fudging it like this or gently pressuring companies to do the right thing. Not only would it be a redistributive pay rise for the lowest-paid in society (and make the siren voices of the ‘kippers less appealing) but, as Darren Johnson points out here, it’d save taxpayers an estimated £2.2bn. It’s a decent test of a party that claims to be of the left, too: back this, or give up your claim.

The march of the ‘kippers as the revenge of Yes to AV

May 4

Posted by James in Democracy, Westminster | 4 Comments

Yum! Kippers!The Alternative Vote referendum in 2011 was one of the most cynical episodes in modern British politics – very few of its notional supporters much liked AV, almost all its opponents preferred First Past The Post for perceived selfish political advantage, and the minor point of representative principle which this change would have made was barely discussed.

The Tories in particular objected because they feared AV would make an outright majority permanently beyond them, and that they’d have to deal again with the Lib Dems in 2015 if they wanted to stay in office, a strange concern given how small an obstacle the yellows have proved to the Tories’ promotion of a hard-right economic agenda.

The logic of the Tory opposition also assumed that those people who still plan to vote Lib Dem (for reasons most people find hard to ascertain) would have given their second preference to Labour, and that Labour second preferences in Lib-Dem/Tory marginals would flow to Team Clegg despite their coalition record.

The first of these ideas is less plausible than the second, given that the residual Lib Dem voters are hardly the left of the 2010 cohort of Lib Dem voters. No matter. The partisan calculation in Tory Central Office was of a divided centre-left and a united (Tory) right. No more.

For all that the ‘kippers are undoubtedly correct to say that they will have led some to vote who would have abstained, and for all that some UKIP votes have come from non-Tory parties, the fact is that the march of Farage’s ragtag army disproportionately splits the vote on the right, and that most UKIP voters would be likely to have put the Tories second in 2015 had the AV vote passed. There’s no principled satisfaction here from seeing the Tory maths collapse, merely schadenfreude at the irony. Without UKIP voters’ second preferences, that second Cameron term now looks much less likely, despite the growing realisation that Ed Miliband will flounder in the heat of a proper election campaign. And Britain, with or without Scotland, will still have a grossly unrepresentative Parliament elected under rules that belong in the 19th century, not the 21st. Regrets? Surely the Prime Minister is starting to have a few.

Diverse In Action

Apr 30

Posted by Natalie in Constitution, Governance, Ideology, Parties | 15 Comments

1

The independence movement is just that; a movement. It is not a retailer of one narrative, or one coalescent ideology. It is a broad church peopled by persons of many political creeds, and none.

Disagreements about post-independence policy are inevitable, and welcome. This is one of the Yes campaign’s strengths. Any attempt to convince the public that we all agree wholesale on every aspect of post-independence direction would be completely disingenuous, and the public wouldn’t buy it.

The SNP have been very successful in recent years because they appeal to the centrists in the voting population. The electorate from large swathes of the centre centre left and centre right can all look to the SNP and identify policies which appeal. The SNP have been able to bridge ideological positions because the SNP itself is fairly reflective of public voting demography; made up as it is of people who can compromise on policy in pursuit of independence. That the SNP have cross-section appeal is no coincidence, but neither is it simply a construct to garner public support. It simply is because the SNP has to reflect the views of its membership, and we are a fairly diverse bunch.

It is no secret that I disagree with the SNP on NATO membership. The majority of Scots in any competent polling have expressed anti-Trident, and anti-Trident replacement preference, and I obviously welcome the SNPs commitment to the removal of nuclear weapons post-independence if it is in the SNPs gift to do so, but I will be campaigning for removal from NATO after that yes vote.

Similarly, I am a republican and I disagree with the current SNP narrative on a continuing monarchy. I say narrative because I am not aware of a vote in which the party have had an opportunity to express any preference for this new position.

I also have a preference for an independent Scottish currency, and agree with Professor John Kay that this is the best possible position for a post-independence Scottish Government to consider. However, I also agree that continued use of Sterling in the interim, as a short to mid-term stability measure is a rational and sound proposal. We will be using sterling on the day we become independent and any transition to a new currency would inevitably take time, but I also agree with The Sun’s Andrew Nicholl that locking a post-independence Scotland in to perpetuity of economic reliance on rates set by rUK isn’t much like my idea of independence either. That said, Sterling is ours too, and any attempt by Osborne to try persuading Scots that we will be excluded from using it is as ridiculous as it is offensive.

I am comfortable that I can be in the SNP and not agree with all of its policies. It isn’t a shock, horror moment that I don’t, instead it is a valuable lesson about the art of compromise because for every policy I disagree with, there are ten that I do agree with, and I can live with that. Post independence it is up to me, and people like me and the public to make our case to the Scottish people about what shape our independence takes.

Independence does not belong to the SNP, nor does it belong to Alex Salmond. Independence is about opportunity and democracy. It isn’t about policy. The SNP are quite right to set out their position on post-independence policy, and as the leading party in the independence movement, it is inevitable that the public expect them to. However, it is important that the public know that independence and the SNP are not interchangeable and the press are partly responsible for this. It suits their narrow reporting of the independence movement to conflate SNP policy with post-independence reality.

That said, the SNP are also not responsible to the independence movement. If Patrick Harvie wants to present an argument for a Scottish currency, then his vehicle to do that is his political party. If those on the radical left want bolder vision for post-independence policy, let them sell it to the public. If they call on the SNP to do these things, they are just as guilty as the media of conflating independence with the SNP. Diversity is strength, if those on the Yes side are bold enough to sell it.

The risk for those on the Yes side is that, while welcome, all the groups which have been set up to campaign for independence risk being consumed by navel gazing and endless posturing on post-independence policy. All the policy in the world doesn’t matter a damn if there is no yes vote.

The SNP are a campaigning party. James Mitchell’s study in to levels of activism in political parties evidences that the SNP has the most motivated membership and the membership of the SNP are used to campaigning, and campaigning hard. The SNP membership knows that to win elections it is all very well to have a national strategy, but when it comes right down to it, it is the areas where the highest levels of activism take place that garner the best results.

This campaign will be won on the doorsteps. It won’t be won on social media – or even in the national media. It won’t be won spending innumerable hours creating socialist utopian ideas in rooms with like-minded people. It won’t be won at rallies preaching to the converted. We don’t have to preach to the converted, we have to convince other voters that independence offers opportunity.

It is a frustration that people in political parties have known since the dawn of time: those that talk the loudest, or tweet the loudest, or speechify the loudest don’t necessarily work the hardest. It is all very well to talk about what you want from independence, and that is a valuable enterprise, but it must be accompanied by action, not just narrative.

A few weeks ago when David Cameron came to Scotland, around 50 people gathered to protest against him, the Conservatives and Trident in Govan. How many of these people then translated that protest in to proper affirmative action by actively campaigning for independence in Govan that week? Almost none, I can confirm. Protesting has its own value, but it certainly isn’t productive in convincing the public of the benefits of independence.

So, “splits in the Yes campaign” isn’t something to be feared. It is a necessary part of democracy that different views are represented. However, what we need to fear is inaction.

Those campaigners in the SNP will be campaigning on the doorsteps and in the streets for independence. If other groups and organisations in the Yes campaign don’t want the SNP to set the agenda, they have to ensure that they are out there campaigning right alongside them. The parties and bodies which make up Yes Scotland may have different opinions, priorities and opinions, but are united in seeking a yes vote.  The yes campaign’s breadth is its strength, but the public will only believe that if they see it.

We can live without the “keyboard warriors”, but we can’t carry the campaign without the support of active campaigners.

We have just over 500 days until the referndum, it is time to step away from the computers, end the obsession with minutiae and get our bahookies in gear. This referendum ain’t going to win itself.