Better Nation

An Eton Mess could help Salmond find his sweet spot

Oct 11

Posted by Jeff in Constitution | 31 Comments

It was David Maddox who spelled it out so succinctly.

On the Scotsman journalist’s Twitter feed, he remarked the following:
‘SNP need a better referendum strategy than going on about Tories and saying all their opponents are Tories’

The man has more than a decent point there.

Lamont’s ‘something for nothing’ misnomer to one side, the SNP need to define, and regularly redefine, what it is for and what its vision for an independent Scotland is much more clearly than it is currently doing. Befuddled Scots are looking to the governing party for answers and no amount of throwing ‘you can have the Queen, we can keep the pound, we’ll still be British really’ our way will distract us from wanting to know the answers to the more pertinent question – yes, but what’s actually going to change?

It is a simple philosophical logic that asking us to vote Yes instead of No means that there is a difference between the two outcomes from the coming referendum. It’s still not abundantly clear what that difference is. There is admittedly a risk that the SNP’s challenge becomes the unachievable winning a referendum and winning the an independent Scotland’s first election, but more is certainly required than the current performance.

NATO is a prime example of the lack of direction that the SNP is suffering from right now, expending considerable energy on arguing how alike the status quo things will be after a referendum victory. So what’s the point in voting Yes then?

I’m happy to be in NATO, happy with the pound and happy enough with the Royal Family. I still want independence because it appeals to my adventurous side and I think it would instil confidence, fairness and pride in a nation where not enough currently exists. That’s closer to the message that the SNP should be spreading right now, and it shouldn’t be too tough a sell against the backdrop of the direction the UK coalition is taking us in, but it’s just not getting through, seemingly due to timidity.

If you’re not playing offence then you’re playing defence, and so it has proved with Ed Miliband and David Cameron successfully stepping into the void created by the SNP’s lack of proactive campaigning in these past few weeks. If the unionist camp can with this referendum by mentioning the Olympics and getting a bit jingoistic about the UK, then it’s the SNP’s fault for letting it happen. I’m sure One Nationism doesn’t sound too bad to many wavering Scots out there.

NewsnetScotland has fallen into the trap as well, calling today for the unionist camp to explain what a No vote means. Well, no. The onus is on the SNP to explain what a Yes vote means and although that is difficult, shirking from that duty by lazily trying to box Labour and the Tories into a difficult corner just won’t cut it.

The opportunity may come from the ‘blond-haired mop’. Boris Johnson is plainly on manoeuvres and, if the rumours are true, won’t want to wait too long before making his move into Westminster and to the top job. David Cameron after all has never looked weaker – bizarrely unwilling or unable to sack Andrew Mitchell after plebgate, shackled to his best buddy Chancellor whose deficit reduction plan isn’t working and struggling to hold onto the central ground from a resurgent Labour party.

It wouldn’t be glorious or even particularly attractive, but the SNP thrives against opposition that is in disarray. Labour will do very well to conjure up a narrative that prevents this referendum being a choice on whether we want to live under Tory Governments or not so a posh boy scrap between Cameron, Osborne and Johnson over the PM position, not particularly helped by Ed ‘common as muck I am’ Miliband merrily jumping on the bandwagon. (I lived just up from Haverstock in London, it ain’t no Drumchapel I’ll say that).

It’s not the preferred platform for building a new country but for a party that seems intend on taking the easy route, Tory infighting may well be the SNP’s beat chance of victory. I do hope they opt for the high road, the difficult road, in the years to come though. The strategy just doesn’t seek right at the moment.

It’s not surprising that independence polls are derisory at the moment. ‘Scotland’s not buying what Salmond’s selling’ was how Lamont put it and, not for the first time in the past few weeks, the lady has a point.

Ed Miliband delivered a fine leader’s speech a couple of weeks ago and Cameron did the same yesterday.

I’m looking forward to Salmond’s contribution to conference season next week with his own leader speech but if he indulges in more Tory-bashing rather than selling Scotland a dream of an exciting, ambitious future, don’t expect those polls to be moving upwards any time soon.

Nice to fire you, to fire you…

Oct 9

Posted by Jeff in Economy, Parties | 18 Comments

How much does job security mean to you? As low as £2k in employment shares if George Osborne gets his way. The big news from the Chancellor’s Conference speech in Birmingham was that, in exchange for giving up your employment rights, you can be entitled to a stake in the company that you work for.

The deal is a prime example of the incongruity of Lib Dems and Tories in a coalition. Right wing Tories take a Romney-esque view that business can get ahead better if it can fire at will while Lib Dems are of the view that employees owning part of the company they work for will ensure higher job satisfaction and better output. George ‘Frankenstein’ Osborne has tried to merge the two policies together and ended up with something that, not quite a monster, but is certainly less than the sum of its parts. If employment legislation is bad (it isn’t), then get rid of it and if owning part of the company you work for is good (it is), then go for it. Don’t try to engineer a grubby quid-pro-quo compromise that will just be a stick for employers to beat their staff with.

‘Make me profits or I’ll fire you’ may be a regular refrain across the UK if this comes through and it’s a sentiment that was echoed by Ruth Davidson’s speech which, again, had worryingly Romney-esque strains.

‘Only 12% of Scots contribute to the country’s wealth’ the Tory leader railed, leaving journalists and bloggers to scamper off and check the rather dody-sounding statistic. Accurate or not, the soundbite rather cold-heartedly writes off the 88% of teachers, dentists, lollipop persons et al as benefit claimant ne’er do wells. At least Mitt had the goodness to limit his gaffe to insulting 47% of the population.

If I work for a bank that’s part-owned by the state but makes good profits, am I an asset to the country or a quasi civil servant liability Ruth? Actually, don’t bother, I’m not interested.

We’re all in this together the Conservatives claimed and yet – If someone’s not up to scratch, sack them; if someone comes into your house, shoot them; if someone promises you unlikely, untold fortunes over the next decade, give them a rail contract. No wonder Ed Miliband has taken the One Nation crown, the Tories have laid it out on a plate for him.

The Conservatives are not making unreasonable points, but they are couching them in far too unseemly tones. Having employment rights and a decent pension shouldn’t be unattainable, neither should having a public sector job and feeling good about yourself.

David Cameron’s on a downward spiral but I do think Ruth Davidson will improve as a leader over time. I’d like to see her move closer to the compassionate conservative, vote blue go green and hug a hoodie Tory mantras from a few years ago, even if now know there was more hoodwink than hoodie at play there. Her speech at conference was too stark, too black and white for any latent Tory tastes that I may have.

I wonder what Murdo Fraser makes of it all. Although maybe making it easier to fire a certain person might be to his (and his party’s) good fortune as the Tories fight for relevance in Scottish politics.

Should Scots pay more income tax?

Oct 2

Posted by Jeff in Economy | 27 Comments

The one thing that worries me about the SNP Government and, by extension, a Yes result in 2014, is a barb that James regularly levels their way – they want Scandinavian-style services on a conservative low-tax base.

Alex Salmond has been the master of being all things to all people and it is into this world of smoke and mirrors that Johann Lamont has rather cack-handedly stepped, ending up only choked and spooked as a result. The Labour leader took another step into this quagmire at Labour Conference today and, in her battle against universal provision, it seems the lady is not for turning.

Ian Bell and Iain Macwhirter quite rightly (and quite spectacularly) derided Lamont for her poor delivery and poverty of ambition in the Sunday Herald this week so there is no need to labour the point by pointing for too long at Labour. After all, to be fair to Johann, the media pundits and SNP personalities may merely be making hay while they still can. Holyrood budgets are yet to attract double digit percentage decreases over the next few years and I don’t see many fatty sides of the budgets put forward of late. Maybe being unpopular now is worth being right in a couple of years.

It wasn’t so long ago that the SNP was pushing for a rise in income tax, a tartan penny that would fund Scottish services. That was back in the good old days, when the sun was shining and we were blissfully ignorant of the roof’s brokenness. So why isn’t it a good idea in these bad days? The SNP would argue that higher taxes would strangle growth (just as Boris Johnson would, incidentally) but the party must also be mentally scarred by the bruising defeat that they received when they asked Scottish turkeys to vote for Christmas with a tax-increasing manifesto. Once bitten, twice shy.

This institutional Nationalist nervousness around tax-raising might explain the white knuckle resistance to letting go of the Council Tax freeze and also the private-cum-public smackdown levelled out to John Mason by the First Minister for merely suggesting that an independent Scotland might increase the top level rate of tax.

The SNP party memo is clear, we don’t do tax rises this side of the referendum. End of. END OF!

For me, this is unfortunate. I make a poor turkey as I have voted for the party most likely to raise taxes in each election I’ve taken part in this century. There is undoubtedly a lot of wastage in the system that would ideally be addressed before the taxpayer is shaken down for more cash. For example, an in-house public sector recruitment team would save a fortune as contractors can double the cost of temporary personnel through agency fees while a sharper, leaner feedback and appraisal system would reduce instances of staff turning up to work in body but not in spirit. (Yes, it happens in the private sector too, but that’s far less the taxpayer’s problem). However, such wastage can easily be self-indulgently exaggerated in a Daily Mail manner. From John Swinney’s toothcomb downwards, it is difficult to imagine that value from every last penny isn’t being squeezed as far as humanly possible. Even the trams are on track to be finished early. Well, when I say ‘early’, you know…

The key is jobs though, there is surely few greater miseries in life than wanting to work and not having the opportunity to do so and, as comfortable as any one of us think we currently are, your livelihood can be whisked away from you as quick as it takes to print out a P45.

Unemployment in Scotland is running at 8.2%, more or less in line with the UK’s 8.1%. (Norway, incidentally, has an unemployment rate of 3%, a clear sign of what well spent oil revenues could do). Scotland’s rate is nestled snugly the right side of a European average of 11.4%, which would be considerably lower with the PIIGS stripped out. The SNP can’t rest on its laurels though with a light touch approach to jobs until independence may or may not come along with its oil-fuelled riches (sic). It will win more votes from pro-active progress within the confines of devolution than it ever would from the tempting grudge and grievance but ultimately inert anti-London rhetoric.

Facts and figures are important so from the Scottish Government website:
The employment rate in Scotland, using the European age definition (15-64), in 2011 was 69.5% which is 0.3 percentage points lower than the previous year. When compared against 35 OECD countries, Scotland was ranked 13th highest in terms of employment rates. Between 2010 and 2011 the gap in employment rates between Scotland and the country with the 5th highest rate (Denmark in 2010 and now Sweden in 2011) increased from 3.7 percentage points in 2010 to 4.6 percentage points in 2011.

13th out of 35 is good, very good, but the employment rate of Sweden (higher income taxes than Scotland) is now further away than Scotland’s by a whole percentage point in the space of a year. We’re lagging behind the countries that are doing the very best. Sitting above and below Sweden in this table are Norway (top rate of tax 54.3%), Netherlands (top rate of tax 52%), Iceland (income tax rate 37%-46%) and Denmark (top rate of tax 55.4%). Progress on jobs comes at a cost to those that have them. It’s not rocket science, and Lamont’s on course to get there before Salmond is.

If, and it is a big if, 2015/16 (or earlier) is the correct time to raise taxes to ensure that those who can afford to pay a little bit more do pay more, then we all have to play our part. Political parties have to have the courage of their convictions to pledge to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing of offering the moon on a stick, but the electorate has to be braver still and vote for them.

The SNP was thumped in 1999 on a revenue raising manifesto, just as the Scottish Greens were in 2011. Whoever is brave enough to step into the public’s firing line next, maybe we should give them more credit, and our vote.

Johann stole my prescription

Sep 28

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 14 Comments

I’ve not had a chance to read or see the exact speech that Johann Lamont gave when she attacked the Scottish Government’s ‘something for nothing’ attitude, or Nicola Sturgeon’s widely agreed hammering of the Labour leader on the same. While I do believe that tying quickly exaggerated Scottish politics bunfights to reality is worthwhile, I believe I can understand the argument that was being made well enough to comment. A recent poll did after all show that a majority of Scots wanted students to pay directly for their tuition, contrary to current Scottish Governmental policy, and with the majority of the cuts not yet in Swinney’s budgets, there is fertile ground here for Labour to make hay, if they want to do so.

My main concern over this speech is that the Government providing for certain sections of society is seemingly seen as ‘something for nothing’, likening students, patients, welfare claimants to charity cases rather than taxpayers receiving a service. It would be an unfortunate linkage from any politician, but it’s particularly shocking from a Labour one.

Money can only go so far, and I must admit I treated the SNP manifesto with a heavy dose of suspicion when I read it, believing that it was only the Greens who were playing straight with the electorate when they proposed revenue raising in order to pay for similar commitments. It has been so far so good from the SNP of course, and John Swinney in particular, but to what extent councils can absorb the pain to get through this funding pinch over the next few years remains to be seen. It is difficult to criticise a political party for delivering a manifesto that it won a majority for though. Manifestoes should be written on stone, despite what Nick Clegg says.

Not that the above is necessarily the discussion that is being played out in the press at the moment, I’ve noticed that the debate has very quickly got personal.

There is something quite grubby about trying to link the Sturgeon household’s income to a substantial debate on Scotland’s spending policy, but it’s worth noting that a household earning £200k gross salary (as ‘The Sturgeons’ are reported to do) will be paying tax at a level not too far off £100k. Should we really begrudge such people the odd ‘free’ hayfever prescription? It all just seems a bit petty and parochial.

The real debate should be around how much money we need to pay for the things we want which, by definition, requires Scotland to agree on what it wants. Johann Lamont’s approach to that debate is to meekly accept the money that is heading north from UK coalition spending decisions and trying to make do on that. That is Johann’s decision but it doesn’t suggest much in the way of ambition or big picture politics. The choice will ultimately come down to either compromising on our principles due to the constraints of the money we receive from George Osborne or breaking that link through independence or fiscal autonomy and raising whatever we need. Put another way, does Scotland want the means to raise the revenue required in order to fund the public sector that we want? I would have hoped so.

I don’t really see how Scotland can harmoniously coexist with the rest of the UK when south of the border moves towards free schools, privatised NHS, £9k/year tuition fees and needlessly expensive non-devolved defence spending which prohibits, through the allocated spending block, Scotland taking too markedly a different path.

There are not many political decisions that I feel that passionately about. Higher education free at the point of use is one and universal healthy school meals for all school children up to a certain age is another. They are not giveaways, they are a value-for-money price of a healthy, educated populace that will power the economy and take the strain off the health service (which should also be free at the point of use, right up to getting your prescription). They operate in blessed ignorance of background and class, of whether your parents earn £20k, £200k or £2m. Universal provision is, surely, the bulwark of social mobility, with tax rates required to flex affordability, not means testing. I am concerned that Scottish Labour seemingly disagrees.

Johann Lamont bringing alternative suggestions to John Swinney’s budgets to the table would be welcome (not that she has as yet that I have seen) but my heels will be unapologetically dug in on the side of the direction that the SNP is trying to take us and the universal provision that will move all of Scotland, not just those who can afford it, forwards to a healthier, smarter and happier future.

What if the Americans got themselves an actual NHS?

Sep 28

Posted by James in Health, International | 3 Comments

While scanning this piece about the unpopularity of the Romney-Ryan plans for healthcare, one figure jumped out at me. The total Medicare bill: $549bn, roughly £338.5bn. This programme covers 48m Americans – 40m of whom are over 65, and 8m are people with disabilities. That’s a cost per capita of roughly $11,400 or £7,000. Compare that to the NHS. For ease of comparison, these are the England-only numbers. The whole population of 51.8m was covered in 2010 for a total of £105bn, just over £2,000 per capita.

Now, clearly Medicaid covers a section of the US population that is much more expensive to care for, but we have some information about the NHS costs specifically for treating people of retirement age. This Parliamentary research paper says that in 2007-8 the value of NHS treatment to retired households was about 85% higher than the value to non-retired households, and, from that same paper, the retired are about a sixth of the population. A spot of simple maths gives us a rough NHS cost for the non-retired of £1749 a year and £3236 for the retired (again on a crude assumption that the average household size of each group is the same). Note: I’ve not factored out the higher costs for caring for people with disabilities, either, so the comparisons above will also be inaccurate to the extent that those costs diverge from the costs of care for the over-65s.

So let’s say the Americans had a rush of socialist blood to the head and set up a NHS along pre-Coalition lines. What might the budgetary implications be, aside from the setup costs?

Let’s assume treating those on Medicare would cost the UK retired figure, and treating the 260m Americans who aren’t eligible for Medicare would cost the UK non-retired figure. The Medicare crowd would then be covered for about £123bn ($200bn) – a saving of $349bn, Republicans please note – and everyone else would be covered for £455bn ($738bn). At a total cost £578bn (or $938bn) all 260m Americans would have healthcare free at the point of use, just 70% more than the current cost of caring for fewer than a fifth of them.

But Medicare isn’t the only government health programme LBJ left our American friends. Medicaid was established as a medical safety net for those on low incomes, and in 2008 it cost about $338bn, roughly £208bn, to cover a further 60m Americans, albeit with plenty of costs for those poorer citizens still to bear. No doubt the 2010 figure was higher, but even assuming not, that takes total federal expenditure to $887bn, or £547bn.

So, to conclude: America – you’re spending $887bn to provide healthcare to 108m people, little more than a third of the population, but you could spend less than 6% more, just a further $50bn, and cover the whole country. In fact, your total costs are already almost three times more than that when you factor in private expenditure, from companies and individuals – a whopping $2,600bn. Sure, some of that wouldn’t be covered by your shiny new National Health Service, but the savings would be truly enormous.

No-one would pay a penny when they got sick except a small flat charge per prescription that the Medicaid and Medicare crowd would be exempt from entirely (this is a comparison with England: in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland you wouldn’t even pay that). No more fear of losing insurance. Hell, no more insurance.

Cut wasteful spending. Save the average family $20,000. Put money in the pockets of the middle class and the working class alike. Economic benefits, not least because people might dare to start more businesses rather than clinging to an employer’s health insurance. This is nothing less than a fiscal conservative’s dream. Even Obama’s baby step in this direction isn’t unpopular anymore. Just don’t mention Bevan, Attlee and Beveridge.

Work as if you live in the early days of a