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What next for FMQs?

May 26

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 12 Comments

One of the first few difficult decisions that new Presiding Officer Tricia Marwick will have to make is who gets to quiz the First Minister at Question Time, how many questions will they get and how regularly will they be asked.

Given the SNP enjoys a majority in the Parliament, there is an even greater incentive for Salmond to duck and dodge answering questions. A ‘you can’t do anything about it anyway’ mentality could easily seep in over the next five years so a strong opposition with ample time to press the Government is as important as ever. It was relatively easier for the SNP to take umbrage with opposition parties on policies from Local Income Tax to Minimum Pricing because the onus was as much on Labour, Tories, Greens and Lib Dems to get involved as it was on the SNP to deliver on its promises. Not any more, and that means opposition parties have more of a right to be righteous.

Labour and the Conservatives will no doubt take first and second spots in the questioning stakes, possibly even with an extra question each.
It is difficult to quantify to what extent FMQs defined Gray and Goldie’s tenures as leader but it could be a useful springboard into the public arena for either (or both) of their replacements.

The Liberal Democrats, to reflect their shrunken size, will no doubt be entitled to a couple of questions every other week. A frustrating demotion for the party but it may lead to more targeted and more effective questioning as the party seeks to find a foothold in the electorate’s hearts. It does seem that Willie Rennie is going to opt for the Mr Angry mould of opposition that didn’t serve Gray or Scott terribly well. We shall se if that changes in the chamber at Question Time.

There is an argument that as the Greens are the only Opposition party not to lose any seats then Patrick Harvie should not suffer a reduced profile at FMQs, and perhaps even increase it given the overall shrinkage for other opposition parties. Realistically this won’t happen and it’ll be business as usual for the Greens. The battle for relevance, within or outwith FMQs, will be even more challenging now that the party’s 2 MSPs do not hold the balance of power.

The main problem of course is the content. We have had ‘hamster wars’ between McLeish and Swinney and last term was more than a little bit panto. Adding a touch of theatre to proceedings is welcome of course but whoever asks however many questions in whatever order over the next five years, they will do well to have learned from the election that a constructive, positive, logical line of questioning is key.

And there’s no Lord Foulkes any more so at least they should be a little bit quieter…

Passport controls at Gretna are possible

May 25

Posted by Jeff in Constitution, International | 72 Comments

There is a lot of nonsense that is spoken of regarding what an independent Scotland would involve – financial meltdown, mass emigration and never entering a World Cup again. As if we need to be independent for one of those harbingers of doom to come true.

Amidst the excellent debate in the epic comments on James’ recent post, the common line of ‘borders at Gretna’ was raised, fast becoming Scottish independence’s very own version of Godwin’s Law. (that is, the longer an online conversation discusses Scottish independence, the probablility that someone mentioning passport controls at Gretna approaches 1).

I had always considered this to be a ridiculous notion. Having to get your passport out when driving between Scotland and England seems fanciful when no such border exists between Ireland and the UK, not to mention France and Spain, Holland and France and Denmark and Sweden (though that last one is set to change). However, when leaving a comment on that recent article, I realised that passport controls between Scotland and rUK* is not so ridiculous after all.

Picturing an independent Scotland, the first thing that it will need to work hard on is its economy. I do not imagine there will be a significant withdrawal of business from a new Scotland and, even if there was, new entrants to the market would quickly fill the gap and that may not necessarily be a bad thing for a new nation finding its identity. However, there will always be extra costs for a young country as new processes get set up and institutions are created from scratch. Furthermore, a strong dose of confidence would be useful to inject at such an uncertain time so a visible growth in the Scottish economy would be welcome.

The two key ways to achieve such growth and confidence are exports and tourism; two areas in which Scotland is particularly blessed. On tourism, a new Scotland would seek to sell all its key characteristics; the golf, the whisky, the rolling hills, the ceilidhs. Ah, I’m getting all misty-eyed just typing it. However, no scone would be left unturned as this new country tried to ingratiate itself to its new European neighbours so it’s not out of the question for Scotland to opt to enter the Schengen agreement which would mean that citizens from EU countries that are also in this agreement would not need their passports to travel to Scotland. A subtly powerful way to entreat tourists to come visit and spend their money. Indeed, Scotland may even have no choice in the matter as it has been suggested that new joiners to the EU (of which I would personally assume that Scotland as the secession state would be and rUK would not) must join this Schengen agreement.

Either way, the rest of the UK would have a problem if Scotland were to enter Schengen.

Per Wikipedia:

In 1985 five member states of the then European Economic Community signed the Schengen Agreement on the gradual dropping of border controls between their respective countries. This treaty and its implementation convention of 1990 would pave the way for the creation of the Schengen Area. Although not implemented until 1995, two years later during the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference, all European Union member states except the United Kingdom and Ireland, plus two non-member states Norway and Iceland, had signed the Schengen Agreement. During those negotiations, which led to Amsterdam Treaty and the incorporation of Schengen into the main body of European Union law, Britain and Ireland obtained an opt-out affirming their right to maintain systematic passport and immigration controls at their frontiers. If the United Kingdom or Ireland were to join Schengen, the Common Travel Area would come to an end. If one were to join without the other, the joining country would have to exercise border controls vis-Ã -vis the other thus ending the zone. If both were to join all the functions of the area would be subsumed into the Schengen provisions and the Area would cease to have any separate existence.

I can’t imagine the largely UKIP-sympathetic, anti-immigration electorate of rUK ever agreeing to open, passport-free borders; it is barely tolerable for them to be a part of the EU as it is. In Scotland, that is not the case and, were it to be proven that the income gained from being part of Schengen would exceed the cost of a few passport controls and the hassle when travelling into England, then I can easily imagine this imbalance on the British mainland taking place.

The irony of a border point at Gretna symbolising an end of the Scottish/UK marriage? Don’t bet against it….

* rUK = the rest of the UK once Scotland has left

David Cameron is standing at the (Southern) cross roads

May 25

Posted by Jeff in Economy, Health | 4 Comments

Let’s say there are two tribes. One goes to great lengths to ensure that no-one goes hungry, no-one goes homeless and the sick and the elderly are looked after in a caring, compassionate and unconditional manner. The second tribe is quite the opposite; everything is about survival and competition. The tallest get the best fruits, the strongest kill the meatiest animals and build the best homes and those who don’t measure up are effectively cut loose.

On the face of it, a private investment deal that went from a valuation of £1bn in 2006 to £18m today would attract little sympathy. Some rich group, that presumably doesn’t know what it’s doing, that belongs to the latter tribe in the above paragraph and that has deep pockets backed by Qatari investors is it? Well, yes and no.

The situation I am referring to is Southern Cross Healthcare, a UK company that has had a dizzying fall from grace but runs a huge number of care homes, including some 100 in Scotland, so any financial implosion would have unthinkable consequences for the tens of thousands of elderly residents that are now at the mercy of open markets. This is more than a case of schadenfreude at the rich getting poorer, much more.

Southern Cross is, to use a well worn phrase, too big to fail. Many of these care homes have no obvious new owner and many of the areas involved have no alternative provision. The residents can surely only stay in the buildings they currently live in but a liquidated company will surely want to sell off its assets to meet its debts.

Figures quoted in The Guardian suggest around ~£240m is required to prop up the Group to pay rent for another year which is surely better value for money for the Government compared to the tens of billions pumped into banks, much of which has continued to puff up over-inflated salaries in the financial sector.

This issue epitomises the mistrust and distaste that many either side of the border reserve for the Conservatives, reckless private financing of a very public concern. The same could be said for the railways (30% more expensive in the UK because of privatisation). And, worryingly, the issues surrounding this company could easily apply to the NHS in future (south of the border) if private involvement is allowed to infiltrate the Health Service. It is good to know that nurses, doctors, the Greens, Labour and even the Lib Dems are wise to the complicated risks at hand but Britain stands at a crossroads and a public NHS and a country that still competently looks after its weakest is at risk.

I know which tribe that I believe the Conservatives are regrettably closer to and I know which road I believe they are trying to take the country down. The fate of Southern Cross is Cameron’s first test and 31,000 elderly residents await his Government’s next move.

This is one issue where a Government going tribal is acceptable, it just depends which tribe it picks.

Why everyone is still wrong about timing for the referendum.

May 24

Posted by James in Constitution, Holyrood | 308 Comments

Jings!During the last Holyrood session, when the referendum was something the SNP could strive for without fear, the Yoonyonisht Conshpirashy (please do read that in Alex Neil’s voice) were consistently agin it, all apart from that glorious moment of Wendyism.

As some in Labour now acknowledge, the idea of Bringing It On might have been cack-handed in its implementation – OK, it was hand-deep in cack – but, the whispers go, it’s the only thing that could possibly have saved Labour in May, and possibly saved the Yoonyon when the time now comes, as come it will.

But Wendyism ceased to be, and Holyrood’s Yoonyonishts reverted to anti-referendumism. Odd, and I’d say ill-advised. The polls then were clear – those who were against having a referendum were those who would win it, while those (apparently) pushing for it were those who would lose. Surely everyone was wrong?

In that last session, bold moves to demonstrate the potency of an SNP administration, and by implication, the opportunities of an independent Scotland, could be scuppered by a Parliament on a knife-edge, a situation which gave a limited (but well-used) bully pulpit for Scotland’s theoretically weakest ever First Minister. A Tory government, that notorious recruiting sergeant for independence, was merely a worrying prospect back in 2008.

Once the SNP’s wafer-thin plurality became a substantial (by Holyrood standards) majority, everyone’s timing rhetoric shifted completely. The day before she resigned, for example, Annabel Goldie taunted Alex Salmond to “take a brave pill” and signed up to Wendyism. Her colleague Liz Smith even used the dread phrase itself. Alistair Darling belatedly followed suit – “why not hold it now?“. Nick Clegg, that political black spot incarnate, refused to rule out Westminster setting up their own Scottish independence referendum. I’m sure that would end well.

And yet, and yet, The Great Puddin’, despite his clear “We Are The Masters Now” moment of triumph, committed during the election to a 2015 or 2016 vote, and apparently remains so committed. At Holyrood, it matters not a jot what anyone else thinks. That’s his schedule, and a Presiding Officer drawn from SNP ranks will, on the schedule of Holyrood’s theoretically most powerful ever First Minister alone, consider the legitimacy of an SNP Bill before it goes to a Committee with an SNP majority, and then to a Chamber with an SNP majority.

On one level it’s hysterical. The holders of the anti-democratic position that we simply shouldn’t ever have a referendum all lost seats and votes, and then still thought it their place to try to dictate the schedule themselves during the aftermath while simultaneously falling over each other to resign first. Everyone deserves their view on the referendum, but surely the result tells anyone with ears that a vote will be held when the SNP alone decides to bring it on?

And yet surely everyone’s still wrong about timing?

If the SNP wants to win this referendum – and let us assume that almost all of them do – holding it at the fag end of Holyrood’s first No Excuses Session is a chronic mistake. There’s always a cost to governing, a price for each decision. Whether it’s right or wrong people will disagree with you. Some quick wins like minimum pricing for alcohol won’t take them very far.

By the end of the session the SNP will have indeed implemented a series of destructive cuts to public services. When the Sun endorsed a Salmond administration, it was in part because, to quote the paper itself, the SNP are “tackling the economic crisis head-on by cutting public spending faster than anywhere else in the UK“. That’s going to hurt.

Patrick got rubbished as ‘negative’ for pointing out that the SNP promises Scandinavian levels of public services with American levels of taxation. The choice has been made, though. Council Tax will be retained and frozen, and token supermarket levy aside, none of the various immediate options for additional revenue will be taken. We’re going to be in Kansas, not Copenhagen.

What’s more, SNP Ministers appear determined to stick to their vague and unconvincing formulation for the Question: that the people of Scotland be asked to approve the idea of opening negotiations with Westminster about independence. As Iain MacWhirter says, what kind of independence will it be? How will the people be consulted on what they want? Involved in a way the National Conversation never did, just like Calman never did? There are apparently no plans of that sort, although I’d like to be proved wrong. If what’s asked feels like a politicians’ bounce (like the AV vote or Australia’s republic referendum) it’ll be lost.

If the SNP thinks they can postpone the key decisions (currency, defence, a formal constitution for post-independence Scotland) until after the referendum, then the campaign will be all about uncertainty. A series of open goals will be presented for Jim Murphy or whoever fronts the No campaign. In favour of the monarchy? The SNP can’t guarantee that as Scotland’s long-term post-independence settlement. In favour of a republic? That’s not what’s on offer, chum. Think signing up to the Euro as it implodes might be a bad idea? That might be what the dastardly Nats want to do once you’ve signed their blank cheque.

A late term, vague referendum is the SNP’s plan, and I personally don’t have any confidence in it. If I were part of the Axis of Resignations I’d sit tight and nod and wait. Or if I was really devious I’d argue frantically for an early vote, in a kind of reverse Brer Rabbit approach. They’re surely not that smart though… are they?

Relying on the best electioneering machine Scotland has ever seen and the FM’s personal luck/strategic sense simply won’t be enough to turn the polls round for a late term campaign fought on these terms. The SNP has long been more popular than independence, but remember, the Yes vote will have to win a bigger share of the actual vote than the party did earlier this month. Re-running that same election won’t deliver a win. For one thing there are many who voted SNP (newspaper editors amongst them) who will be against. And many voted for other parties who will be for – not just Greens and Socialists either.

But there is an alternative. A moderately quick, clear, participative and ambitious process could deliver a win. Get on and deliver a couple of quick legislative successes at Holyrood (minimum pricing and ??). And set up a proper constitutional convention, with a steering group, to tour the country for nine months, meeting across the regions, taking in a plurality of views like the last one had.  It could include not just loyal supporters of independence but the open-minded too, and those for whom it’s not their first choice but who’d rather it works if it’s going to happen.

Ask the people what kind of new Scotland they want, what a better nation would look like. Involve them, make the process theirs, turn ideas over in public, and let meetings inspire debate and debates inspire more meetings. Work by consensus – devolution is actually more complicated a project than independence, and consensus worked before. Aim towards a vote in autumn 2012, long enough for due consideration but not so long that staleness creeps in.

Would the outcome be an up-and-down vote or a multi-option vote? I don’t know. Would the offer be a radically democratic Scotland, not beholden to inherited position, wealth or institutional inertia? A place with key freedoms built in and guaranteed by a written constitution? I hope so, and I’d go further – I’d take part to try and help shape it in that direction.

The polls currently ask people a daft question, a question they can’t answer with what we know already. What, exactly, are they saying yes or no to? Even the mighty Deputy First Minister doesn’t know what the answers are. Running an open and participative process instead would be brave, letting control slip from a majority government to the people, but I believe it’s the only way a referendum can be won, and the only way to build a new Scotland worth the effort.

The law is an ass but will more law mean better law?

May 24

Posted by The Burd in Holyrood | 22 Comments

You’ll have to forgive me this morning, for I am an addled, befuddled little burd.  And it’s all down to the law.

Let’s take the super-injunction stushie.  I’ve already nailed my colours to the mast.  Yes, I do believe that the reams of stop papers served on media outlets and others preventing the disclosure of salacious details of the private lives of rich men (mainly) is distasteful.  It is also evident of how the wealthy will always be able to buy protection for themselves at the expense of others.  Frankly, it ain’t what a system of justice was set up to do.

Yet, I found myself on Twitter the other evening defending the one that has been shopped around all over that medium and now, every newspaper in the land, following the Sunday Herald’s brave stance with its front cover.  I found myself defending it because he was probably entitled to his injunction.  For everyone to make this case the cause celebre of all that is wrong with the system is misguided.  There is no public interest here;  this particular footballer has always been an intensely private individual;  the court papers suggest less than fragrant behaviour by the woman involved who appears to have colluded with the media to try and create a story worthy of their attention;  and he has never created a public persona based on his private personage.  I couldn’t even tell you how many children he has or what his wife’s name is, such is the low profile he has given his family throughout his career.

This is entirely the wrong case upon which to demonstrate that the law is an ass and to try to tease out the balance between article 10 (the right to freedom of expression) and article 8 (the right to private and family life).  There are other super-injunction cases, such as the Fred Goodwin one, which will have much more distinct public interest elements, where article 10 does and must over-ride article 8, and seem much more within the bounds of a wealthy man buying his privacy with the willing co-operation of the justice system, ignoring everyone else’s rights and the public interest in the process.  If we were actually serious about challenging the establishment rather than simply being titillated, of using these injunctions to create better law, we would have seized upon different cases, surely.  As it is, we will now get more law that is not necessarily better law.

The problem for everyone, as the outed case demonstrates, is that it is incredibly difficult to contain information, thanks to the advent of social media and networking sites like Twitter. But never fear, here comes the First Minister, riding to everyone’s rescue, who has promised to “clamp down effectively on bigotry peddled online” and whose Government intends to make “such online behaviour, including posts on sites like Facebook and Twitter, an indictable offence with a maximum punishment of five years in jail”.

Such a move has been welcomed by Paul McBride QC but also questioned in his usual forensic manner by Lallands Peat Worrier.

I do hope the Scottish Government’s law officers have been watching the super-injunction stushie closely.  A threat by the outed footballer’s lawyers issued to Twitterland resulted in thousands more naming the footballer and spreading the details.   I doubt that folk would as gleefully seize on retweeting noxious sectarian bile but you never know.  Such is our willingness – apparently – to defend our right to freely express what we want to, without real or proper consideration of the consequences.

And therein lies one of two problems for the Scottish Government.  First, neither current UK equality nor human rights legislation intends to create a hierarchy of rights and protections.  Indeed, the Single Equality Act attempted to remove the hierarchies of rights that existed amongst different minority groups.  This underpinning belief that everyone is equal and should be treated equally was used to try to persuade the Scottish Parliament to create a series of aggravated offences – so-called hate crimes – that treated all prejudice and malice shown to all minority groups the same.  The then Justice Minister, Cathy Jamieson, bottled it and we got hate crimes on the ground of religion and race and had to wait for Patrick Harvie’s private members’ bill to protect gay, lesbian and transgendered, and disabled people in the same way.

Expect when the new sectarianism bill to reach Parliament for the same arguments to be made. If it is wrong to use internet chat rooms to peddle hate on the grounds of someone’s religious beliefs (or rather affiliation to a particular football team – and this is where the burd becomes very confused – is it just the Old Firm that is now to be viewed effectively as an equality strand?) then it is wrong to do so on the grounds of someone’s gender, sexuality or sexual orientation, or different ability.  Indeed, it is arguable that if it is an offence for Old Firm fans to peddle bile, then that must also apply to other football fans and further, to supporters of different political parties.  Which might cause some of the worst offenders of the cyber spats between Labour and the SNP pause for thought.

At heart is my unease that by treating the current law as an ass, we may end up with less liberty not more, caused by our inability to police ourselves, to behave with any sense of decorum, of our failure to work out what is right and what is wrong and to insist upon our own individual rights trumping anyone else’s.  By our own failings, we will end up living in a more illiberal society where our actions, thoughts and expressions in all media, are increasingly controlled and policed by the state.  Because we do not know anymore where to draw the line and where not to cross it, the irony is that we, the little people will find our rights increasingly constrained and limited, while the real perpetrators – the rich who buy their way to justice and the peddlers of hate who have no respect for themselves or fellow citizens – will have the luxury of the law to protect their rights.