Work as if you live in the early days of a

Better Nation

Will the Lib Dems pay for being a Tory shield?

Sep 4

Posted by Malc in Parties, Westminster | 7 Comments

On MitB, I regularly whacked the Lib Dems for everything I could think of.  But given we’ve started afresh, with a blank canvas and a promise of positivity, that has to stop.  Which is a shame – there isn’t much more fun in the blogosphere than baiting Lib Dems.  Nevertheless, I’ll try to get through a post without dissing them too much.

I think one of the most surprising things that came out of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition was, for me, the fact that the Lib Dems took on the role of Secretary of State for Scotland.  I was a little surprised that they didn’t give it to Alastair Carmichael, who acted as Scotland spokesperson during the election debates (and, in my mind, was a very able performer, even – and I don’t think its unfair to say – outshining Alex Salmond in the event at the Hub) when they did get the position.  More surprised that they gave it to Danny Alexander, and then Michael Moore after Alexander’s move to the Treasury, but then I don’t know that much about internal Lib Dem personalities and cliques.

Anyway, I was more surprised that they took on the role – though I guess the Conservatives didn’t really give them much of a choice (with only one MP in Scotland, the role was probably odds-on to go to a Lib Dem).  For me, the Conservatives must be delighted with this – and the fact that they have a Lib Dem in the Treasury too – for the simple reason that, although the policies that are being enacted (and for “policies” read “cuts”) are pretty much Tory ones, they can point to the Lib Dems and say it is them who is doing it.  In essence what Scotland has is a Lib Dem “Governor General” who fronts for the Tories in Scotland – providing a shield for them and their unpopular cuts up here.  The Tories must be delighted.

But… I said I’d be positive, so here’s something:  I can understand why they took the job.  I think pre-Nick Clegg and the TV debates, the Lib Dem vote was in free-fall.  There were some polls in which they had fallen below 15% nationally – and, indeed, they were squeezed out of the Lab-SNP and Con-Lab narratives in Scotland.  The Clegg effect kept them at 2005 levels.  But because of the two narratives here, they do need a handle on why they remain relevant in Scotland – and I think the fact they have the Secretary of State for Scotland gives them that opportunity.  Now it may be that relevance is symbolic – that Michael Moore can say what he likes in the Cabinet room and no one will really listen – but it does look to the public like they have a role to play.  And that, in elections, is important.

So yes, on the surface, having a Lib Dem Secretary of State for Scotland gives the Tories a nice shield in Scotland.  But on the other hand, it also delivers something for the Lib Dems too – a measure of relevance (which, arguably – and I’m sure you’ll debate the point – they may not have without it).  Everyone’s a winner.

But what about the voters?  Will they see it the same way?  “The Lib Dems have the guy running Scotland in the Cabinet, therefore we must vote for them” is one way they could look at it.  Alternatively, the “Lib Dem Scottish Secretary is a front for Tory cuts in Scotland – we must punish them by voting against them” is another potential view.  So how will that go?  I guess time – and the full force of the cuts – will tell.

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Not the only gay witch-hunt in the Westminster village

Sep 3

Posted by James in Westminster | 10 Comments

Ah, that hat.William Hague’s painful personal statement has failed to quell the media fascination with his private life, which is unfortunate but only to be expected. Sally Bercow and others are right to say that he was given duff PR advice, true, but that hardly justifies yet more prurience and three-way interviews between journalists.

It’s been rumbling on for days, after all, and there is no actual story here. The rumours about Hague started years ago, and all inhabitants or political bubbles love a chance to get old rumours off their chest, but there’s nothing that could be described as actual substance to them.

In fact, it’s almost Westminster’s favourite game, given the sheer number of politicians who’ve been the subject of sexuality rumours. For the egregious Paul “Guido Fawkes” Staines, and many others, even the Guardian – see the last line here – this latest effort again reeks of nudge-nudge wink-wink homophobia. They’re too well-dressed, see? It’s politics by way of Are You Being Served? No doubt the Tory machine will respond the way they know best, and the traditional Fawkes-hunting will be in full cry (Jeff insisted on that, by the way).

The specific allegations being made are also profoundly stupid. Imagine, hypothetically, you’re a senior cabinet member, you’re married but in the closet, and you’re having an affair with a special adviser. Let’s also assume you’re of above average intelligence, which the Foreign Secretary clearly is, baseball caps notwithstanding.

Do you get a room together? Really? Surely you’d get a nice double to yourself and have your lover come by to “discuss tomorrow’s campaign events”. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see the allegation doesn’t stand up. No-one in their right mind plans a happy love life around twin beds. That’s a room booking you only make when it doesn’t even occur to you that people would think anything of it.

Apart from utterly misplaced prejudice, it’s not clear why Staines and others have gone for the Eurosceptic Hague, but he’s certainly an interesting figure. Like John Swinney, he bounced back from an unsuccessful stint as leader and rebuilt his reputation on the front benches. Both men are now effectively the number two figure in their respective governments – apologies to Nicola and Nick. In fact, Hague may be the only coalition Minister who had been gaining in credibility in office.

Once the flurry of nonsense has passed, that trend will continue, and the empathy for his situation will be what remains of this story. Morus is right. If you like a flutter, it’s time to back Hague for next Tory leader, which might encourage comparisons with Salmond rather than Swinney. Just think how furious Redwood and Tebbit would be.

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What price a retiring MSP?

Sep 3

Posted by Jeff in Elections, Holyrood, Parties | 1 Comment

Whenever I turn my thoughts to election speculation, (which is more often than is perhaps healthy), I typically assume that an MSP retiring in a certain seat will mean that the constituency is more ripe for a challenging PPC from a rival party at the next election. I have belatedly decided that this somewhat lazy assumption needs further scrutiny and, with Holyrood 2011 (as ever) in mind, I started to crunch some numbers and put the hypothesis to the test.
 
Of the 11 constituencies that have seen retiring MSPs during the 1999-2007 period, 10 of them resulted in the party reducing its share of the vote at the next election. The 1 constituency that saw an increase in the party’s share of the vote after one of its MSPs retired was Banff & Buchan when Alex Salmond chose Westminster over Holyrood.
 
The average decrease in vote-share when an MSP retires is 6.1%. The median decrease is 7.4%.
 
Were we to adopt the hypothesis that a party is as likely to increase its share of the vote as decrease when an incumbent retires (against an alternative hypotheis that the share of the vote should decrease), then the probability of 10 (or more) out of 11 instances all decreasing is as follows:
 
P (X > 10) = (0.5)^10 = 0.049%
 
Pretty conclusive then – at a 5%, 1% and even a 0.1% level of significance, my ‘lazy’ assumption that retiring MSPs are more likely to see their vote-share go down seems to hold true.
 
Of course, perhaps most seats see the incumbent lose votes and perhaps the above is tainted by the fact that the sample includes mostly Labour MSPs who will generally have seen vote shares decrease due to an increased public appetite for a new Government.

Of the 11 constituencies with retiring MSPs, 10 saw decreases in vote-share over and above any decrease for the party nationwide. This increases to 13 out of 14 when the deaths and forced retiral of Donald Dewar, Margaret Ewing and Lord Watson are included.     
 
So let’s delve into the detail a bit more to see what’s happening:
 
When looking at individual parties, there seems to be little to suggest that there is little variation across the board. (Note that the Conservatives have not yet experienced a retiring FPTP MSP so have no data to provide from a strictly Scottish Parliament population)
 
The retiring MSP is an event that has hitherto affected Labour much more than any other party simply because Labour holds considerably more First Past the Post seats. In each of the nine instances where an MSP has not contested the next election (including retirements, deaths and ‘other’), the party share of the vote has decreased more than the national average. The detriment for these constituencies was on average 3.7% at the 2007 election and 6.2% at the 2003 election.
 
Looking at individual instances, from 2003 to 2007 – vote share decreased by 5.5% on average across all 73 constituencies for Labour.
 
Retiring MSPs include:
Edinburgh East (Susan Deacon) – 14.8% decrease
East Lothian (John Home Robertson) – 10.4% decrease
Glasgow Rutherglen (Janis Hughes) – 7.5% decrease
Dundee West (Kate MacLean) – 7.0% decrease
Glasgow Cathcart (Lord Watson) – 6.2% decrease
 
So, as in the final case, even convicted politicians are popular enough to ensure that their retiral (not to be confused with retrial!) results in a more adverse movement in vote share than the national average. This, of course, is as it should be as we would hope that the known sum contribution of our politicians’ previous efforts outweighs the unknown potential of whoever is next in line.
 
Note that, again for Labour, the same trend was evident from 1999 to 2003 with the following retirements resulting in voteshare decreases that were below the party’s nationwide average (of -0.7%):
 
Fife Central (Henry McLeish) – 9.1% decrease
Strathkelvin & Bearsden (Sam Galbraith) – 7.9% decrease
Ayr (Ian Welsh) – 1.4% decrease
 
The Lib Dems support this trend, albeit with only two retirements to work with:
 
Jim Wallace’s former constituency of Orkney saw a 3.3% drop in vote share for the Lib Dems in 2007, relative to 2003, compared to a nationwide movement of only -0.3%. 
 Ian Jenkins’ former constituency of Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale saw a 7.4% drop in vote share compared to a 1999-2003 nationwide movement of +1.8%, the biggest drop for the Lib Dems across Scotland except for, interestingly, Jim Wallace’s seat of Orkney which decreased by 15.8% (the largest single decrease in any constituency for any of the parties).
 
 This helps highlight that the largest movements in any given constituency at any given election will not necessarily be caused by a retiring incumbent.
 
Airdrie & Shotts witnessed a massive 33.5% swing from Labour to the SNP between 2003 and 2007, despite Karen Whitefield being the sitting MSP in each contest. The individual change in vote-share was the largest deviation from the average for each of the two parties and is an example that may highlight what a change in challenger can potentially do to the statistics.
 
Ross Finnie saw his share of the vote sink by 14.2% from 2003 to 2007, 13.9% of which went to the SNP. The Labour incumbent was largely untroubled by these significant movements, holding onto the seat with relative ease.
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The Lib Dems saw double digit increases in their share of the vote in Aberdeen South, Edinburgh South, Ross, Skye & Inverness West, Strathkelvin & Bearsden and West Aberdeenshire at the 2003 election. This was presumably less to do with incumbent MSPs and more to do with the targeting of the party’s resources. Needless to say, each of these five movements were way above the 1.8% increase in vote share at a national level.
 
So, moving back to retiring MSPs, what does this mean for next May then?
 
Well, boundary changes may well dilute or accentuate the occurrence but retiring MSPs include:
 
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross) (majority 10.9% over the SNP)
John Farquhar Munro (Ross, Skye & Inverness West) (majority 12.1% over the SNP)
Cathy Jamieson (Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley) (majority 11.8% over the SNP)
Margaret Curran (Glasgow Shettleston) (majority 20.0% over the SNP)
Jack McConnell (Motherwell & Wishaw) (majority 26.1% over the SNP)
 
Labour’s existing majorities in the above seats are probably too big for a retiring MSP and the ‘hit’ of 4-7% to make much of a difference. Indeed, there is a fair chance that the reversal of Labour’s fortunes since 2007 are such that an increase in the party’s general popularity will neatly net off against the downside of a retiring MSP to result in more or less ‘nil gain, nil loss’ from the last result.
 
However, for the Liberal Democrats, and the considerable woes that they face, that lack of incumbency could make all the difference to their hopes of clinging on in the two seats that they currently hold.
 

The conclusion, if any such thing can be reached from the above, is that with numbers expected to be tight in the electoral arithmetic come May 2011, it may end up being who is stepping down and where, rather than who is standing, that makes all the difference…

Is it time for compulsory voting here?

Sep 2

Posted by Malc in Democracy | 22 Comments

Having read this piece on Wales Home, I thought this was an issue worth flagging up here.  Should voting in the UK be compulsory?

Unlike Marcus Warner, the author of the Welsh piece, I’ve always been instinctively against compulsory voting. At heart, I’m a liberal. I think the state should be as small as possible, that it is a necessary evil, and it should only force the public to act in ways which are congruent with Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’ – that is to say, we cannot harm others. Other than that, I think we should be left to get on with our lives by ourselves.

But compulsory voting is an interesting idea for me, because it raises another classic liberal idea, that of participation in democracy. Rousseau believed that only in the act of voting were citizens truly free and that subsequently we became prisoners to what those whom we trusted to act in our interests decided. In essence, compulsory voting would be ‘forcing people to be free’. And I’m not convinced we should be forced into this.

There are other reasons to be sceptical too – if forced to vote, you can ‘sell’ it to the highest bidder (less in monetary terms than policy terms, though I wouldn’t rule out the former), a new brand of ‘consensus politics’ to make sure you connect with everyone and the fact that people are abstaining for a reason, a lack of engagement with politics, is not really addressed by forcing participation in elections. Also, if we were to do this, we should be doing it because it is right – and that compulsory voting wins over these arguments – and not simply because we fear ever-decreasing turnouts diminishing the legitimacy of our institutions.

In truth, I don’t know. The latter point is one that hits home in my mind, despite my scepticism. If our political institutions lack legitimacy (and you can see that in the Welsh Assembly, with legitimacy only just recovering from the 7,000 votes separating victory from defeat in the 1997 referendum) then the public engagement with those institutions suffers – and they further lose legitimacy. It’s a vicious circle, and one which deserves some kind of action.

Is compulsory voting the answer? In this round of constitutional reform, the answer appears to be no. But should it be? I don’t know seems like such a cop-out answer. And yet, that’s what I appear to be saying.  I do recognise that a low turnout in elections lends itself to questions about the legitimacy of those elected – and indeed, in the institutions themselves.  But if we are “forced to be free” (and I’m using that in not quite the way Rousseau did, though if his assertion that we are only truly free when electing our representatives is correct, then it follows) then the legitimacy that we are bestowing upon those who represent us appears to be artificial and manufactured at best.

In short, compulsory voting doesn’t solve the problem in re-engaging the public with politics, nor does it re-instil a sense of belief in the political structures, a belief which had been waning even before The Telegraph went to town on those whose expenses were not quite proper. Compulsory voting would serve only to draw back into a political process those who had lost faith in politics, those who remained unconvinced by the system they were forced to be a part of.

That paragraph seems to finally put me on one side of the debate. Compulsory voting would not do what was intended of it, therefore why should we adopt it? I almost feel daft, having raised the concept and now knocked it down.  Does anyone think it worthwhile discussing the idea?

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A modest introduction

Sep 2

Posted by admin in Housekeeping | 18 Comments

Welcome to Better Nation, our new Scottish blog, built on four things its editors share: a love of ideas, an essential optimism, an anoraky obsession with politics, and a particular interest in the nation of Scotland – as it has been, as it stands now, and its future prospects.

The title comes from Dennis Leigh, famously quoted by Alasdair Gray (and attributed to Gray on the walls of Holyrood itself): “Work as if you lived in the early days of a better nation“. The three of us believe devolution has been a pretty successful endeavour thus far, but that the current constitutional arrangements are unlikely to be the final settled will of the Scottish people.

As a result, it is already a better nation than it was when the Vigil camped out under Calton Hill, but even the most cursory glance around Scotland shows continued poverty, movement away from sustainability, a business sector hardly thriving, a nervous public sector, stretched voluntary organisations and shortcomings in our democracy.

Our MPs and MSPs all seek to improve Scotland in the way they each best see fit, no matter what colour of party flag they wave or particular leader they serve under. However, for a country of our size, that is a daunting task, so this blog will aim to be, at worst, constructive criticism of their exploits, and, at best, a show of support for our politicians from interested Scots. Most in politics do have a genuine desire to improve how their country runs, and we will try to give a fair wind to their intentions, even when we have to disagree profoundly with their methods.

Independence for Scotland will, of course, be considered in various ways and at fairly regular intervals. This blog ain’t no Calman Commission where ideas are excluded before the exercise begins but it is also no National Conversation where an answer is pencilled in before research and analysis is conducted.

This will also not be an uncritical Green voice, even though James is press officer for the Green MSPs, Jeff has just joined the Green Party of England and Wales, and Malc… well, he too is moving in the right direction.

We aren’t naive enough to think that a blog can make a difference, however fun it may be to write and however fascinating the debates. However, whatever we end up writing between us as the days, weeks, months and perhaps even years draw on, we hope we will at least get to provide another chronicle of Scotland as it becomes a better nation.
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The founding editors are a merry band of three – James Mackenzie, Jeff Breslin and Malcolm Harvey, Scottish political bloggers who have forged friendships through their respective online presences in the past few years. The flexibility that a panel of editors affords was part of the key appeal for this blog.

Regular updates without onerous individual effort should be an easier recipe for a substantial, interesting blog, and, as we hope to disagree regularly, also for debate between ourselves as well as with any readers we are lucky enough to find. There is no reason why the number of scribes should remain pruned back at three, so there is scope for organic growth over time.

The aim is that this blog will also be festooned with guest writers, invitational posts from around the globe, staged debates and cross-postings with other parts of the blogosphere. Furthermore, there is a corresponding Twitter feed @NationBetter, because it is important to remember that sometimes you have to go backwards in order to go forwards (and also because every permutation of “Better Nation” has already been taken!)

We will only feel it has been a success if we provoke fierce and intelligent debate, but please be nice.