The political news today is dominated by the Scottish Government’s timetable for the year and a half after a Yes victory in the looming referendum. This has, of course, invited charges of hubris and complacency from many in the press, not to mention comments that the SNP is happy to say when ‘Independence Day’ will be (March 31st) but not the actual referendum date.
These are all fairly low brow objections. The precise date of the referendum is not occupying the minds of anyone save perhaps the odd antsy journalist, and despite the suggestion that the SNP is planning ‘parties’, there is no such mention in the report released today. The Electoral Commission found that the public were uninformed as to what a Yes or a No result would mean and the SNP, for its part, is doing something about that.
Of course, one clear offshoot of today’s news is the indirect invitation for Scots to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a No victory. The unionist camp may be cleverly trying to paint this referendum as a choice between full independence and further powers, but there’s no Devo Max option on the ballot slip and it’s not difficult to imagine the current status quo remaining the status quo long after 2014 is done and dusted, the needle returning to the start of the song and us all muddling along as before.
Comparing and contrasting with the hint of national jubilation after a Yes vote, the extra bank holiday and the feel good factor of having delivered change may be seductive for many. Even the sight of Yes supporters proudly wearing their Yes t-shirts (once the weather warms up a bit) might start to turn a few minds. Will there be No t-shirts in parks up and down the country? Would that even be good PR if there was? It’s nice to feel like you are a part of something and it’s difficult to get excited about being part of ‘No’, irrespective of what that No entails.
So by laying out a post-referendum timetable to independence and subtly challenging our ambitions, the SNP is keeping up its positive agenda today and once again pushing the unionists onto the backfoot. After all, it begs the question, how would Scotland celebrate a No victory?
I take a curious pleasure from combing through my finances each week. Maybe it’s the mathematician in me or maybe it’s the accountant, or maybe I just need to get out more, but knowing that there’s no surprises in there, that the monthly balance is slowly moving upwards and that bills are (largely) getting paid on time brings a certain calming joy.
It didn’t always be this way though.
I still shudder at the way I used to organise the admin in my life. It wasn’t just unpaid bills, it was unopened letters that were getting stuffed in drawers or even piled up in the hallway for weeks on end, and zero checking of what was going in or out of my account. This wasn’t even because of money issues, the money was there for the bills to be paid, that’s the absurdity of it all. But then the scarier looking letters would appear on the doormat and I’d be jolted into action, usually costing me an extra £30 for putting my fingers in my ears for so long and no doubt needlessly ruining my credit score. It was an utter, utter shambles, for years, never to be repeated.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that I honestly can’t imagine what it must feel like to have to choose between council tax, electricity bills, rent and/or food if your financial situation literally depends on your last penny each month. I self-induglently dipped my toe in those waters but have never had financial misery heaped upon me from on high and am mercifully a world away from that type of stress. We probably need financial planning included in the school curriculum as a matter of course (as per other European countries) and a reappraisal of numeracy classes that have been cut back in recent years but sadly even that is way down the country’s depressing priority list.
I am well aware, as my Green votes hopefully testify, that a rebalancing of rich and poor needs to occur, urgently. How you do that with the Tories in charge and when 70% of Scots live off less than the average wage is beyond my simple mind though. I intend to keep voting for the party promising the highest tax increases, in order to finance a proper welfare system, and just hope something will give at one of these elections I suppose.
The more I dip into it though, the more I realise the welfare changes that are on their way are going to be an utter disaster, potentially in every sense of that word. They don’t impact me of course, I couldn’t tell you what pain was meant to be coming my way to help pay down the UK debt as part of ‘we’re all in this together’, but I can tell you I haven’t felt it if it exists. Quite the opposite infact, I’m paying off my mortgage at a rate of knots and frankly, if I chose to be selfish about it, long may it continue. The irony is I’m thinking of finding somewhere with a second bedroom, just around the same time people that need theirs much more than I ever would are having it taken away from them.
From April, those at the rough end of the income scale are in for some serious changes:
– The housing allowance that will go direct to the tenant rather than the landlord will inevitably result in many instances where the rent doesn’t get paid and the tenants get evicted. Total madness.
– The bedroom tax is presumably meant to ensure that precious housing is allocated as efficiently as possible but anecdotal accounts just make the government sound plain old mean (disabled children sharing with siblings, fathers moved into one-bed homes). Totally heartless.
– Caps on the total amount of benefits for households (around £500 per week for lone parents and couples, £350 per week for single adults, including housing benefit).
– Concern that IT capacity to deal with all of this might fall through.
And I’m sure that’s just scratching the surface.
The SNP took a bit of a hammering in the Sunday Herald yesterday for writing out £600m of redundancy cheques in cutting employment rather than using that money to safeguard jobs. Money for firing not hiring as Labour put it and, well, why not, on the face of it? The SNP is getting similar grief on the BBC for not doing anything to offset the impact of the Bedroom Tax. There is, to be fair, little the SNP can do about not having control of the welfare system, little it can do about the fixed block grant it receives from Westminster and little it can do about a coalition government intent on wreaking this kind of economic havoc. That said, it hasn’t helped the situation by denying itself the option of increasing income tax, something that I personally would absolutely be happy to see happening if it meant jobs saved and extra support for those at the sharper end of Osborne’s stick. No pain no gain and all that.
Of course, we learned back in 2010 that the SNP Government chose to not maintain the option of the Scottish Variable Rate that, although deeply limiting, would have afforded Scotland the option of some sort of alternative plan given the dire situation many of us are in. The suggestion back then was that the SVR would not be available until 2013/14, so I do hope someone has asked the question as to whether it will be an option this year? And if not, why not? Patrick Harvie, I guess I’m looking hopefully at you.
That aside, the SNP really needs to show Scotland that it’s still governing, to show that it has answers to current everyday problems and isn’t infact obsessed with the independence referendum that is still in all likelihood over 18 months away. It needs to do something, and be seen to be doing something, even if solutions are merely tactical rather than strategic. This, right here, is where national Governments step in and step up.
This is probably where I’m meant to rhyme off what I would have them do, and I’ll give it a go, but it’s not unreasonable to hope for your Government to act without knowing specifically what needs to be done, or at least hope for a clear explanation as to why they are powerless. For me, whether it’s Government-sponsored credit unions to stamp out exorbitant payday loans, council-backed mortgages to take the pressure off social housing, encouraging job sharing in the private sector and arranging it in the public sector where possible, a McBig Society drive to boost charities or a smarter, smoother solution to housing association arrangements, more needs to be done. I want to see my Scottish Government sweating blood and tears to offset the pain being sent up from London, not getting giddy over Danish actresses who happen to be in town.
Just because it’s difficult, and it is bloody difficult out there, that doesn’t mean Holyrood shouldn’t rise to the challenge. What is the big plan? What makes Scotland different? The stage is yours Salmond & co, and you could lock up a Yes victory with this alone if you find a radical edge that will make a difference.
It’s alright for me of course, tossing these thoughts in my mind as I swirl a nice glass of Merlot around in a warm, cosy middle-class glow but, as the Sunday Herald highlighted in its paper today, Holyrood doesn’t really listen to anybody except the McChattering classes apparently, and April 2013 is closing in fast.
The longer this referendum goes on, the clearer it becomes that both sides have limited internal common ground. I don’t hold with the SNP attack on Labour’s position – the argument that they’re obviously Tories in disguise because they’re campaigning together on this issue. Were the SSP basically just Tories because they campaigned against the Edinburgh congestion charge with them? No, just misguided.
As discussed before, if both sides are internally indistinguishable, it would also make me essentially Jim McColl, because he’s in favour of independence too. And I could hardly respect him less. In evidence to a Holyrood committee, he said Scotland should cut corporation tax to Irish levels, an approach that suits rich men like him and which plays beggar-your-neighbour with other European countries’ tax bases.
He’s also personally based in Monaco and in the same meeting admitted not paying full UK income tax. His startling reasoning there was as follows: “if you look at the wealth created here by me and my team, it puts into insignificance anything that I might pay if I was a full-time resident here“. Of course, the actual wealth is created by his workforce, not him, and they presumably do pay their full UK taxes. The logic is stark: the richer you are and the bigger the business you own the less important it is for you to pay taxes. Taxes are for the little people.
It’s all quite petty too. My guess is that he’d still be pretty rich if he paid his full taxes here, which should be the minimum requirement before pontificating about Scotland’s future.
His contribution today is consistent with his extraordinarily unpleasant vision for Scotland (if you look beyond the empty guff about compassion and renewables). Independence would, he says, be a “management buyout”. Don’t be led astray: this is not a metaphor, it’s literally what he wants. The thing about a management buyout is you’re left with the same people in charge, but they’re personally doing much better because less of the revenue gets passed elsewhere. Jim McColl and those like him are already the “management”, they are already Scotland’s establishment, and he wants a Scotland where that doesn’t change. In fact, he wants a Scotland even more closely recast in line with his kind of selfish tax-dodging capitalism.
The historic left opposition to independence, which was dominant until the formation of the SSP and its precursors, ran roughly like this. The purpose of independence and nationalism is to divide the working class and to let local capitalist elites carve out more for themselves without interference from the imperial centre. You don’t have to be a Trotskyist to see that’s precisely what Jim McColl wants to see from independence.
Fortunately, though, if we win it won’t just be up to him to shape Scotland, especially if the current SNP leadership don’t get to run that post-independence administration. It’ll be up to the people of Scotland to decide whether they want a Scotland where business pays its fair share, or whether they think Jim’s spot on and the Tories ought to have bent over even further towards the interests of business. Jim McColl may be working for a management buyout, but there’ll be plenty more of us pushing in the other direction, towards a more co-operative Scotland.
In the absence of a tangible vision for continued membership of the United Kingdom, and amid the relentlessly positive rallying calls from Yes Scotland, it can be baffling to witness consistently stubborn Scottish independence poll ratings that show support for a Yes vote at roughly between a quarter and a third. The most recent poll may have suggested that less than 50% of Scots intend to vote No, but a Yes victory still seems a long way off.
The Electoral Commission stated in its report last week that both sides of the debate need to make it clear what a Yes or a No vote will mean in the weeks, months and years following the referendum itself. With the vague promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ from all parties within the Better Together umbrella and a clear majority of Scots wanting more powers at Holyrood, one would expect that something would have to give over the next eighteen months in terms of direction from anyone in the unionist camp from David Cameron to Johann Lamont.
And yet, there is every chance that this impasse may drift up to, and beyond, Autumn 2014 with Scots still content to trump out and vote No.
Citizens around the world would respond in greater and lesser degrees to lofty language lulling people into a new constitutional setup, largely depending on their geographical location. Barcelona saw one million people calling for independence with typical Catalan energy and colour, Hong Kong held a purposeful but muted protest in similar numbers against China, while Quebec nationalism is often met with a somewhat ironic ‘Bof’ from the locals.
In a global context, it is perhaps no surprise that Scots would be amongst the most reticent to change. Scotland is, after all, a largely Calvinist nation, an historically Protestant land that wants for little and asks for less. We are, broadly speaking and whatever our political party persuasion, small c conservatives, though indeed used to be big C Conservatives.
There is a widely known but nonetheless remarkable factoid that it is the Conservatives that are the only party to have won a majority of constituencies in Scotland with a majority of the popular vote in any general election. One could argue that the new conservatism of the Labour party has merely replaced the old conservatism of the Tories, aided and abetted by Thatcher’s hollow spectre. Labour nowadays tend to win more seats in Scotland the less radical it actually is. Rocking the British boat, or any sizeable boat for that matter, has not been on the agenda for decades.
Indeed, it is testament to the peculiarities of the United Kingdom that, for decades, a largely poor Scotland happily forwent billions of oil revenues to an already cash-rich London, despite the Norwegian example showing that we were sitting on a winning lottery ticket that would transform our schools, infrastructure and employment prospects if we only stood up and fought for it.
This economic piety is perhaps not borne out by the poll that suggested a majority of Scots would vote for independence if it meant an extra £500 in the bank account each year. This SNP-minded redistribution of public cash strikes me as playing up Tory-esque electioneering tax cuts but, either way, such squalid squander will not be a feature in Scottish minds when the referendum comes around. It’s easy to cash those cheques in one’s mind on a call to a pollster, but the Scottish mentality that is engrained within so many of us is less easy to shift when it comes to big decisions.
We have been called out on this outlook before of course, the American priest that said Scotland is ‘a dark place full of homosexuals’ drew ire not just rightfully because of his bigotry but also wrongfully because he struck a nerve. In our heart of hearts, few Scots would argue against their nation being a dark place in the context of history, health or humour. It’s grim up north.
Indeed, the difficulty that Yes Scotland (and the SNP in particular) face in trying to buy an independence victory through promises of savings from Trident, through a reduced Defence budget and/or through bountiful oil revenues may not just stem from being up against immovable Scottish conservatism, but also rather ironically from all the way back in 1707 when Scotland was united with England in the Treaty of the Crowns.
The 18th century Robert Burns poem ‘Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation’ remains popular today, particularly the line where the bard castigates those Scots who were believed to have been “bought and sold for English gold”. We Scots resented being bought over back then and, by jove, we won’t make the same mistake again, even if that would involve righting the original wrong. ‘Salmond can hold onto his purse strings, we’re fine as we are’, some may say.
Many Scottish Calvinists and conservatives alike quietly pride themselves in not asking for much and not being a bother. No wonder then that Yes Scotland’s task of delivering momentous change to the United Kingdom is so challenging; we already have No riven through us like a piece of rock.
The Independence Question
Jan 30
Do you agree that “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” is an independent enough question?
That is the question, apparently, or it certainly has been for the Electoral Commission that has deliberated on this matter for the past few months.
In order to look like they are doing their job, and to justify the length of time spent on this, a change will undoubtedly be made, most likely taking the “agree” out of the equation. Alex Salmond will have to sit on his hands and bite his tongue now that Blair Jenkins, and belatedly the SNP, have agreed to abide by the Electoral Commission’s findings.
It’s worth noting that it is smart politics to forego this battle as drawing an independent body into partisan bickering would have come at a significant price for the SNP, even if they did ramroad their preferred question through Parliament.
That said, I would argue that just because Salmond’s preferred question is the one most likely to lead to a Yes vote, that doesn’t necessarily make it unfair. Perhaps the other questions are even less fair, with the pejorative term ‘separate’ typically being preferred by the unionist side, even though Scotland isn’t geographically going anywhere.
This splitting of hairs can be extended to the fact that Scotland won’t be “independent” as we live in such an inter-dependent world. This is a favourite navel gaze of Labour MP Tom Harris but such trifling matters won’t both the Electoral Commission, one would hope.
There is, of course, a recent Scottish precedent in all of this.
In 1997 we were asked “Do you agree there should be a Scottish Parliament?”, which is interestingly entirely consistent with the SNP’s preferred question. I don’t really understand why that style of question was good enough then but isn’t good enough today but, at the end of the day, if voters aren’t convinced enough by the merits of independence that they may be swayed into voting No when they look at the question, then do we really want to embark on this great adventure at all?