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Two bald men fighting over a comb

May 16

Posted by James in Constitution, Energy | 5 Comments

Scotland has endured forty years of debate about North Sea oil – who owns it, how much is there, what is it worth, can we afford to burn it, can we afford not to, and so on. It’s been a totemic issue for the SNP, with their early successes in the 1970s built in no small part on the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil“. Some on the fringes even believe the marine border between Scotland and the rUK was changed prior to devolution to diminish the proportion that would indeed be Scottish in the event of independence (pro-tip: negotiations over independence won’t be trumped by a Westminster statutory instrument).

More recently, though, there’s been a flurry of excitement from the nationalist side about the reserves that remain and the value of them to a future independent Scotland. There are three problems with this.

First, the argument on increased value is based primarily on a massive (and entirely plausible) projected increase in the cost of oil. The stuff is, after all, finite and globally the more readily accessible portion of it has indeed been used. However, not only do all those revenues not just accrue to Scotland, given we don’t have a nationalised oil industry, as a nation we also use a substantial amount of it. As Chris Skrebowski of the Energy Institute put it in 2008:

Alex Salmond’s predictions are simply wrong. Even with optimistic assumptions about future North Sea oil production, and even if Scotland was allocated all of that production, an independent Scotland would be likely to be a net importer of oil by 2015 or 2016. By that stage, given the global decline in output which has already begun, we will have to buy oil on the open market for two or three times the current price. It’s completely fraudulent to suggest that Scotland can just live off its oil wealth now.

The extent to which high prices benefit us while we remain a net exporter can be debated (i.e. how much of the benefit accrues to the Treasury or a future Scottish exchequer), but as soon as we’re a net importer high prices only hurt us.

oil chartSecond, although Chris’s dates there may be a bit pessimistic, the trends on output are clear. I asked a friend in the oil industry for the 1980-2020 output figures, and the graph to the left shows them for both oil and gas in kboe/day (red is oil, green is gas). The projected rise and fall again between 2012 and 2020 is down to a few factors, notably a couple of new developments plus the closure of Schiehallion during 2014 and 2015 while they replace their FPSO, effectively postponing production there for two years.

The baseline for that graph is zero, too. You’ll hear a lot over the next few years about a boom as oil output goes up from 888kb/d last year to a projected 1,429kb/d in 2016. But it’s just a blip.

The bottom line is this – the glory days of North Sea oil are over, and there is no prospect of anything like the 1999 peak in output being repeated. Last year’s figure is less than a third of that peak, and the long-term trend is down.

The third problem is this. We can’t afford to burn it all, because of a little thing called climate change which the unGreen parties are broadly ignoring, and any valuation of the reserves that assumes we can afford to burn it risks another bubble and crash.

Scotland can afford to be independent, and we are energy-rich, but our true lasting assets are the wind, the wave and the tides, not the dinosaur wine. Arguments with Westminster about who should own the latter are an embarrassing distraction. Even the climate change sceptics should realise that the raw economics make it time to plan for a post-oil economy, to invest in public transport not endless new motorways, to turn planning around so local communities come before commuting, and to switch to supporting low-carbon industries.

Bearding the Tavish in his den

May 11

Posted by James in Constitution | 1 Comment

Last night a debate took place on Shetland. In one corner for The Rumble In The Northern Isles was Tavish Scott, constituency MSP since Holyrood was established, former Minister for Motorways, and a man so supposedly central to the political life of Shetland that when he suggests the Isles might not stay in an independent Scotland, it gets reported as if the rocks themselves had spoken.

On the other side, my friend Ross Greer,18, with experience in the Scottish Youth Parliament, of working hard on some committees of the Scottish Greens, and junior fixer at Yes Scotland. Barely out of nappies when Tavish first campaigned for Parliament.

One might assume it would go like that time I watched Michael Forsyth crush a young Lib Dem for tripping up over his words.

Surely Tavish would sway the waverers with the force of his arguments, his authority, his personality?

But apparently not. Fortunately, a count was taken before and after. At the start, four supported independence, ten opposed, six unsure. By the end, Ross’s side had won round five of the waverers, and Tavish just one: nine in favour and eleven against.

So, no knockout blow. And to be fair, Ross had support from an SNP activist too, so Tavish was outnumbered. Not a majority for independence in the end, either, and tiny numbers, of course, but could this be a straw in the wind as to what happens when a non-nationalist case for independence is made?

Because that’s what Ross appears to have done. Put Tavish on the ropes with rock hard information about Westminster’s practical and policy failings and kept him there with passion for the opportunities an independent Scotland would bring for those who want a fairer and greener country. Read and enjoy the whole thing here on Shetland News.

Oh, and don’t tell Ross I posted this. He’ll be furious with me for not managing expectations downward. #pro

Questions for Better Together

May 9

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution | 7 Comments

A guest today from Keir Liddle on those infamous 500 questions, as lovingly parodied on Twitter. He read them all, which might save you a lot of time. Thanks Keir!

No CampaignThe state of discourse in Scottish politics is often remarked on poorly. From the bright beginnings of the politics of consensus at Holyrood it was relatively free from the tribalism and point scoring that haunts Westminster spectacles such as Prime Minister’s Questions. Sadly, attitudes have changed, and, as parties contest votes each dearly believes is theirs by right, tribalism and point scoring has become the order of the day.

Though this criticism, as far as I know, does not generally extend to formal critiques of the rhetoric used. With that in mind I thought I would have a wee swatch at the Better Together campaign’s latest offering: “500 Questions”.

Around 2,700 odd words later – and with a general failure to meet my high minded intentions – the sheer weight of the 500 questions, though there are actually quite a lot fewer, caused me to collapse in a frustrated singularity of thwarted academic ambition. So you see before you my second attempt.

I specifically want to look at Better Together’s 500 questions through the lens of the Cooperative Principle. Plundered from the mind of Paul Grice (the philosopher, not Parliament’s Chief Executive) and used in the social sciences generally and linguistics specifically, this principle describes how people interact with one another. It is composed of four maxims (Grice’s Maxims), as follows:

Maxim of Quality: Be Truthful
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Maxim of Quantity : Quantity of Information
Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Maxim of Relation: Relevance
Be relevant.

Maxim of Manner: Be Clear
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
Be orderly.

These maxims vary culturally but luckily we inhabit a culture where they, for the most part, are adhered to. Right off the bat you can probably guess that the maxim of quantity is going to be relevant to the 500 Questions document. Asking such a volume of questions in one go breaches this maxim, and, as such, hints that the purpose of the Better Together document may not actually be to seek answers but rather to inexpertly attempt to sow doubt about the case for independence.

Put simply, it is nigh on impossible to take in the sheer volume of information offered in the 500 Questions leaflet. It took me a Herculean effort to parse and process them all earlier today and I had to give up reading the document on at least three separate occasions due to reading fatigue. In this sense arguably the document also breaches the maxim of manner in respect to its prolixity (or if I am to obey the maxim of manner – its tedious length). This fatigue is made worse given much of the information is needless repetition or the breaking down of questions in to unnecessary sub-questions.

So I now put it to Better Together that any pretence that this was a genuine attempt at gathering information or seeking answers for the Scottish electorate was naught but a thinly veiled ruse (and one that plays to the long term electoral strategy of the Labour Party in Scotland by casting doubt on Salmond and the SNP to boot).

There are a couple of questions that assume answers to questions asked previously in the 500 Questions document. A notable example are the questions relating to embassies:

“How many embassies and consuls would and independent Scotland have around the globe?”
The next two questions continue this theme: interestingly though, they note that their question has been answered and has been answered to the best of the current ability of the Scottish Government. This would seem to indicate that the question did not need asked in the first place:

“The Deputy First Minister has said than an independent Scotland would have 100 embassies and consuls compared with 2070 the UK currently has. In what countries would an independent Scotland set up embassies and consuls?”
“How long would it take before those 100 embassies and consuls of an independent Scotland were operational?”

Another point worthy of note is that in this example, and indeed in many, many more littered throughout the document, the two separate questions here could easily have been compounded into one single question. This would have saved Better Together some space and allowed them to ask many more of the burning questions they have about independence (unless of course they don’t actually have any and were getting a bit desperate to hit 500). The most egregious examples of Better Together “getting their money’s worth” from a question are undoubtedly when they ask what will happen with the Scottish military and the Post Office.

In considering the Post Office, Better Together abandon the pretence that their repeated or component questions are separate questions altogether, except in their numbering scheme, by asking:
356. Will a separate Scotland have a Universal Service Obligation (USO) which guarantees:
357. At least one delivery of letters every Monday to Saturday to every address in the UK?
358. At least one collection of letters every Monday to Saturday from every access point in the UK that is used to receive letters and postal packets for onward transmission?
359. Postal services at an affordable, uniform tariff across the UK?
360. A registered items service at an affordable public tariff?
361. An insured items service at an affordable public tariff?
362. A free-of-charge postal service to blind or partially sighted people?
363. And free carriage of legislative petitions and addresses?

Even the least eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this is one multipoint question, at best, and numbering 356 as a question in its own right, or indeed all that follow from it, as separate questions is either bad proof-reading, terrible grammar or downright dishonesty to reach that magic number 500.

The defence, security and foreign affairs section appears to contain 44 questions, but in reality it contains far fewer: for example, questions 30 to 35 are basically all subtle variations on question 29:

“An independent Scotland would no longer be protected by the British Armed Forces, would new Scottish Armed forces units be created?”

The following five questions are simply variations on this theme asking exactly which new units would be created (a similar trick is attempted towards the end of the document referring to military intelligence and other specialist services). It’s fair enough to labour the point, I suppose, but it does make you wonder what questions Better Together deemed less important than asking the same question six times in a row?

The questions following that appear to want the Yes Campaign or Scottish Government (you get the impression that the two are being treated as one and the same as is Unionist tradition) to produce in detail its entire defence budget and deployment plans. Now that only sounds reasonable if you fail to consider that this budget and the subsequent deployment plans are largely contingent on the result of negotiations between a newly formed independent Scotland and the rUK.

As such I would suggest that this question, and again many, many more like it in the document, break the maxim of relevance. Not because it is irrelevant to ask these questions but because they are being asked to the wrong people, or at best they are not being directed at all the right people.

To answer this question on defence (and indeed most if not all of the following questions: 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 44, 48, 51, 95, 96, 138, 98, 99, 112, 113, 116, 137, 138, 139, 430, 437, 438, 440, 441, 468, 469, 470, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477 – this list is likely not to be comprehensive) the Yes Campaign need to know the likely results of negotiations following a yes vote. The only way to determine that is to enter into pre-negotiation with Westminster over these issues. This is something polls seem to indicate the Scottish people would welcome but understandably it doesn’t appear to be a risk Westminster wants to take. Regardless, it poses an interesting question for Better Together:

“Will Better Together lobby for UK Ministers to sit down with Scottish Ministers and negotiate their position on the issues referenced by the questions above and answer their questions?”

There are a number of questions which indicate that Better Together seems to think such discussions or pre-negotiations should already have taken place, most notably in the pensions section where they, a political campaign backed by both the parties of government at Westminster, ask what discussions have already taken place. However there are many more questions that ask the Yes Campaign, the Scottish Government or the SNP to detail what their stance is on the membership of many and various international and European organisations and this prompts me to ask:

“Do Better Together now support allowing the Scottish Government to approach Europe and seek answers on these issues?”

Would Better together lobby the Westminster government to seek answers on the Scottish Government’s behalf should the EU be unwilling to negotiate? Taking the document at face value, and assuming that Grice’s maxims have been followed, the answer to all of the above three questions (I am being far more charitable to any Better Together readers than they were to anyone who downloaded and read theirs!) must assuredly be “Yes”. Which is a bold move and an interesting gamble, but one that does appear to capture the mood of the Scottish electorate.

As such I think all sides should not just consider this to be a poor piece of ill-thought out spin, a desperate, tiresome and tedious exercise in continuing a massively negative campaign because they couldn’t think of 500 reasons to stay in the union, but rather consider this to be Better Together “grasping the thistle” and demanding answers, not just of the SNP, Scottish government and Yes campaign, but of Westminster, of Europe and of many international organisations.

A bit of a gamble for them, all told. But good on them for this genuine attempt to get Holyrood and Westminster around the same table and to work out just exactly what we will be voting for next year.

(PS. For those in Gretna worried about an international border interfering with their weekly shop – the 79 apparently stops outside the Tesco in Annan and takes about 29 minutes. Failing that it seems to be less than a half hour drive to the superstore in Dumfries)

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.

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.