Prime Minister David Cameron was on Andrew Marr this morning and he made several eyebrow-raising points regarding Scotland (see transcript below), including confirmation that a statement will be made “in the coming days” on the legal aspect of the independence referendum.

David Cameron believes that “we owe the Scottish people something that is fair, legal and decisive”, decisive being the most interesting word for me there. He also “(doesn’t) think we should just let this (uncertainty and lack of clarity) go on year after year”. Cameron is keen to “move forward” and “settle this issue in a fair and decisive way”. And there’s that d- word again. Indeed, he mentioned decisive or decisiveness four times in total, so something is afoot.

My expectation is one of three possibilities:

Either:-
(1) David Cameron will announce a fast tracking of the transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood in order to deprive Alex Salmond from having any excuses to name his date and get on with Scotland deciding its future, one way or the other.

or

(2) David Cameron will announce a UK version of the National Conversation, an effort to engage with Scots and talk up what the UK is and why Scotland should stick with it.

or

(3) David Cameron will announce that Westminster, the Parliament with the legal competence to do so, will facilitate an independence referendum in order to end the uncertainty surrounding Scotland’s constitutional arrangement.

Of the three options, the first doesn’t change things too much other than put a little bit of extra pressure on Salmond to get a move on (easily ignored), the second is a decent idea to get the unionist side of the debate in early but is likely to be as unsuccessful as the original National Conversation and the third, well, the third one makes more sense from a unionist perspective – using Westminster’s existing powers to hold a Yes/No referendum on Scottish independence.

Yes, the SNP will jump up and down about London ‘butting in’ to Scotland’s affairs and will go on about its (highly questionable) mandate to hold a referendum at the end of this parliamentary term but both sides are playing to win and if Alex Salmond wants to have the plebiscite later to maximise his chances of winning then it is reasonable that David Cameron sees it the other way. Furthermore, the Prime Minister is still responsible for Scotland and if he can see that Scotland is losing out on investment, losing out on jobs as a result of this uncertainty then he has a duty to act.

I’ve said before that the unionists best chance of a win is to move early and I’ll happily say it again. It looks like we’ll find out this week to what extent the Prime Minister agrees.

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ANDREW MARR SHOW TRANSCRIPT – 8th Jan

ANDREW MARR:
Let’s turn to something that might be about getting smaller, not getting bigger, and that’s the United Kingdom itself. Are you determined to affect the timing and the questions of any referendum on Scottish independence?

DAVID CAMERON:
Well I think there is a problem today, in fact two problems. One is the uncertainty about this issue I think is damaging to Scotland and Scotland’s economy because you have companies and other organisations asking well what’s Scotland’s future. Is it within the United Kingdom or not? That’s damaging. And, secondly, I think it’s very unfair on the Scottish people themselves who don’t really know when this question is going to be asked, what the question is going to be, who’s responsible for asking it, and I think we owe the Scottish people something that is fair, legal and decisive. And so in the coming days we’ll be setting out clearly what the legal situation is, and I think then we need to move forward and say, right, let’s settle this issue in a fair and decisive way.

ANDREW MARR:
So what is the legal situation because you know I think, as most people understood it, Alex Salmond as First Minister of Scotland would decide when the referendum was going to happen and the question of whether it’s an in or out referendum or whether there was a third option there would be down to the Scottish administration to decide. Is that something you don’t believe to be the case?

DAVID CAMERON:
Well we’re going to make clear – and I’m afraid I can’t do it today – but we’ll be making clear in the coming days what the legal situation is, and then I think we need a proper debate where people can put forward their views. But my view very strongly is the Scottish people deserve some clarity, some decisiveness, and obviously they deserve it to be legal and binding. And I think that’s very, very …

ANDREW MARR:
(over) So sooner rather than later?

DAVID CAMERON:
(over) Let me be absolutely clear, put my cards on the table. I strongly support the United Kingdom. I think it’s one of the most successful partnerships in the history of the world.

ANDREW MARR:
Yuh.

DAVID CAMERON:
I think it would be desperately sad if Scotland chose to leave the United Kingdom and I’ll do everything I can to encourage Scotland to stay in the United Kingdom because I think that’s the best for all our economies – Scotland included – and all our societies.

ANDREW MARR:
And of course if Scotland did leave the United Kingdom, that would be the end of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, wouldn’t it?

DAVID CAMERON:
Well there would be many disadvantages from a break-up of the United Kingdom. You know all those issues would have to be dealt with. But let’s not go there. You know we have this great partnership. This partnership’s worked so well for us in the past, we must keep it into the future. But let’s have some decisiveness about it. Let’s not drift apart with … I think what Alex Salmond is trying to do is just … I think he knows that the Scottish people at heart don’t want a full separation from the United Kingdom and so he’s trying to sort of create a situation where that bubbles up and happens, whereas I think we need some decisiveness so we can clear up this issue.

ANDREW MARR:
And just on the timing. He also apparently wants to have this vote in 2014, the anniversary of the great Battle of Bannockburn when lots of people called Cameron defeated lots of people called Osborne or something like that. But at any rate, he would like it to be 2014. You are saying no, let’s have the vote earlier.

DAVID CAMERON:
Well I think this is a matter for the Scottish people …

ANDREW MARR:
(over) Oh it is, it is.

DAVID CAMERON:
… and if there are problems of uncertainty and lack of clarity, I don’t think we should just let this go on year after year. I think that’s damaging for everyone concerned, so let’s clear up the legal situation and then let’s have a debate about how we bring this issue to a conclusion.

ANDREW MARR:
(over) And sooner, not later?

DAVID CAMERON:
My view is that sooner rather than later would be better.

It has been a week of fun political stories for tweeters and bloggers to keep themselves entertained over and yesterday was no different with Nick Clegg quoted in The Scotsman as calling the SNP extremists. 

To be an extremist is typically to be two things – to have all political parties to one side of you on a particular political spectrum and also to be seen to have a very small band of committed followers behind you.

The former is palpably the case for Nationalists when it comes to Scottish independence, as the SNP never tires of reminding us when they merrily lump the London unionist parties together. 

The latter is something that is not true of the SNP with a majority Government and ~30% of the public backing them on independence. 

It is well worth noting that the former is a logical extension of the word “extremism” and the latter is merely a perception. An extremist could have democratic support of 50%+ from the public, they all just might happen to really want significant change.

Nick Clegg did not liken the SNP to basque separatists, to IRA groups, to Italian fascists or some other such well known extremist organisation, his quote was “the extremists are those who think that we need to yank Scotland out of the United Kingdom tomorrow”.  And he was accurate, and smart, to say so. 

The SNP rattiness on Twitter speaks volumes about how rattled the Nationalists are about this accusation. They know, even if they don’t care to admit it, that they are the extremists of the independence piece and, righty or wrongly, this comes with a heavy disadvantage. 

Think about this, if you asked 50 people to pick a number between 1 and 10, would 5 of them select 1 and 5 of them select 10? Not likely. There is comfort in selecting something from nearer the centre. 

And that is why Nick Clegg’s positioning of the SNP is so astute. He is pushing the Nats to the side and freeing up some precious space in the centre for his party to find some much needed relevance. Alex Salmond (pictured above to the extreme right of some school girls) is, somewhat ironically, helping the Lib Dems out with this strategy. There is no middle ground for the Lib Dems to hold in a Yes/No referendum but the First Minister’s apparent insistence that there be a second question is a lifeline for the Lib Dems that they appear well placed to take with both hands.

Could the Lib Dems be on track for a revival? Well, not simply by calling the SNP separatists they aren’t, but positioning themselves as Scotland’s leading devolutionists in a period when Scotland may very well define itself for the next generation as committed to devolution will serve them well. Sure, the Lib Dems will get spanked at the local elections in May and probably at the Westminster elections in 2015 too but Holyrood 2016 should see a huge reversal of fortunes.

As the SNP licks its wounds and comes to terms with a No result, as Scottish Labour pointedly but purposelessly breaks away from UK Labour, as Tories continue to be Tories and as Greens struggle to get a look in, why wouldn’t the Lib Dems enjoy a resurgence in Scotland? Fees schmees and Clegg Schmlegg. Tim Farron and Willie Rennie freed from the shackles of a wrongheaded coalition standing in the spotlight with the shadow of independence removed for a generation. They could put on quite a show you know, but that’s still a long way away. 

For now, the SNP perhaps had its first taste in a long while of how losing will feel when the referendum is held because it is choosing to have its own sharpest weapon used against it. 

Almost all political parties want to be seen as radical but few wish to be seen as extreme. Why? What is the difference?

Perhaps the SNP should stand up and be proud of who they are, positive extremists who are brave enough to argue for the radical, relatively extreme change that Scotland needs, not opting to suffer more from the glacial progress that we are making as a nation within a sclerotic union. 

The Nats ran for cover despite Nick Clegg pointing out the reality of the situation this weekend.  They’ll need to do better next time, and the time after that, and the time after that, and so on if they are to have any chance of winning the Yes vote they so crave.

 Today the SNP claimed (ETA: this has now fallen off the internet fortunately there’s google cache), as evidence of their prowess, that 820,000 people moving from the other parts of the UK to Scotland since 2007. This was picked up by the Scotsman, on various blogs and on twitter.

On first glance, it seems pretty shaky. A wave of people totaling more  than 150% of the population of Glasgow coming here in the last 4 years? You’d have noticed that, surely…

On second glance, ok, it’s probably a gross inward migration figure cheekily ignoring outward migration so maybe the net figure’s a bit smaller and they’re spinning somewhat less impressive figures.

On third glance, like the burd you check the figures, scratch your head and wonder what the hell is going on in Gordon Lamb House. The General Register of Scotland (GRS) puts the annuals statistics at less than a quarter of what Joan McAlpine claims.

At which point I started to do my best Ben Goldacre impression and asked the SNP media team on Twitter what they based it on, in case it was a Bit More Complicated Than That.

It wasn’t.

Point man Paul Togneri asserted the piece was accurate and was based on aggregating monthly GRS figures. Which is methodologically dodgy at best, especially given directly conflicting annual figures from the same organisation for the same period.

So it wasn’t consistent within it’s own frame of reference. Maybe the overall impression of increasing migration from England, Wales and Northern Ireland was correct, despite net UK migration being 26,000 rather than the 820,000 that the SNP press release implies? Sadly not. Based on the SNPs preferred measure of medical records transferred each month, in the year ending March 2007 shortly before  the SNP took over 52,153 people from RUK moved here. In the same period of 2011 43,730 people did so.

So the SNP have done so well that 20% fewer people decided to move here since they took charge. Great work that. Well. Done. *slow handclap*

Worse, both net and gross migration to Scotland were higher not only under the previous Labour/Lib Dem coalition in Holyrood but were also higher between 1986 and 1994. So not really that much to boast about at all.

Still, and this is why I’m writing this up, it does give us some insight as to the SNP strategy for 2012. It’s going to be about construction of a narrative that supports independence with Scotland gradually but inevitably and inexorably moving towards independence under the SNP, facts be damned.

That’s my 2012 prediction. So stay frosty folks and trust no-one.

ETA: I’d like to point out that Kate did the digging on this and shot their fox, I’m just commenting on it

From the outside, the electoral college the Labour party uses to elect it’s leader does look odd. From the inside, however, when you’re filling in another set of codes from the 3rd of 4th ballot to vote on line it also looks odd. Having multiple votes is a pretty weird thing, especially when you’re not entirely sure what to do and might vote each way for the sheer devilry of it. In the end, Johann won despite Ken getting more votes in the party member section leading comrade Breslin to despair at a re-run of what’s perceived as the undemocratic foisting of Ed Miliband on the Labour party instead of his brother.

And fair enough the electoral college is undemocratic, unfair and needs to be reformed – the aberration of multiple votes because (in my case) you happen to be a member of the Co-operative Party and the Fabians as well as a party member is just weird. It’s all run by the ERS, they could be tasked with de-duping the names, and all votes could be given equal weight. Great, all for that, one member one vote, democracy in action, that sort of thing.

Presumably then, this would mean that Ken would have won? Well, no. Johann had far more ballots cast for her than any other candidate, and mostly by people who only had one vote – members of the trade unions. The electoral college was put in place to undemocratically disempower some parts of the party against others, but it’s the bits that voted for Johann (and Ed) that were disempowered so rather than winning because of the electoral college it’s more correct to say that they won despite the electoral college. Lallands Peat Worrier goes into some detail on the numbers over in his peaty place.

In order to get the “right” result there’s two ways to go about it. Firstly, Labour could increase the unfairness of the electoral college by putting more weight on the membership and elected members sections, but that hardly gels with the cry of “byzantine and unfair!” so let’s discount that option.

Alternatively we could exclude the individual members of the trade unions from voting. I know it’s a long held dream of the Tories to break the union link, and of the SNP to gather trade union support for themselves, and there’s even some within the Labour party who want to do away with it and it a “modern”, “professional” political party. Why should trade unionists get a say in the running of a political party? It’s not like they started it, it’s not like the party is there to represent working people, it’s not like it’s the parliamentary part of a much wider labour movement and union members an integral part of it.

Oh. Wait.

The union link has changed in the past, it’s been a long time since the days of the block vote for instance, and it needs to change again, most pertinently so that candidates are able to campaign in a meaningful way for their votes – at the moment by and large all people get is a small pamphlet and perhaps an endorsement from the affiliated organisation. The divergence in the way that the party members and the union members vote is interesting and probably hints at something deeper, perhaps related to the changing demography of the affiliated unions relative to the Labour party membership?

As for the canonical SNP members who vote, well, they’d have had to pay good money and swear they supported the Labour party – so well done for lying and ta for the cash. I’m really not sure we’ve got Johann Lamont (let alone Ed Miliband) because of an entryist movement of false flag union members, impressive though the SNP machine is. If people are crowing about getting a ballot for “the enemy” then the best response is probably mild mockery for their vaguely infantile behaviour.

So, wrong leader? Only in the sense that Alex Salmond is the “wrong” First Minister because you’d have preferred somebody else to win, it’s not because of the voting system. Not unless you have a fundamentally different conception of what the Labour party actually is.