Better Nation

Reading through David Torrance’s recent travails in which he had a (slightly self-satisfied) Road to Damascus ‘the UK is great!’ moment, I had my own revelation as to just why I’m not bought into the No campaign that DT now seems certain is on its way to victory.

Having asked where I was from (I always say Scotland with the caveat that I work in London), his face glowed and the compliments flowed. After salvaging a disappointing situation by booking a cheap flight from Borispol Airport to Georgia, again I was struck by how others see us. On the corridor linking my Aerosvit flight to Tbilisi’s International Airport, posters proudly proclaimed that the Bank of Georgia was listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Then, on the high-octane taxi journey into the Georgian capital’s charming Old Town, I noticed European Union flags everywhere. Later I learned this was a manifestation of a (probably quixotic) Georgian desire to join the EU. Although London’s banking sector and the European project might appear bruised and battered to us – perhaps irreparably – to Georgia’s political elite they represent something to strive for.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that some chap in Georgia is enamoured by the London Stock Exchange but for me personally, well, I honestly just don’t care. This guy might as well have a penchant for the French Euronext or the Stockholm OMX exchanges. Good for them. I simply don’t recognise the London Stock Exchange, and most other such institutions, as being something that I and my forebears helped to create. Indeed, the London Stock Exchange is a shining example of why I want to opt-out of the United Kingdom and into an institution that I feel a part of and feel excited to be a part of. Furthermore, the Stock Exchange has 3,000 companies listed on it from 70 different countries and LSE itself is a plc owned by major shareholders Borse Dubai (21% owners), Qatar Investment Authority (15%) and Fidelity International (5%, based in America or Bermuda, depending on which holding company is the ultimate parent). The CEO is Xavier Rolet from France.

So the London Stock Exchange is an odd company to make one go all goose bumpy about being British, unless one just likes the name.

Anyway, the argument that we should vote for the United Kingdom because our institutions are so great is fatally undermined when people have no attachment to said institutions. The two main exceptions that I personally make to my ambivalence to most things British are the NHS and the BBC.

The NHS, taken first because it’s the easiest to dismiss, has already been severed in two at the border with Nicola Sturgeon responsible for a wholly Scottish and distinctly more public health service than her counterpart Andrew Lansley who, for now, covers England and Wales. There’s no overlap there, the NHS’ are, for want of a better word, independent. There is no reason to fear the end of NHS post-independence.

The BBC is an entirely different kettle of fish, and Brian Wilson clearly took merriment in pressing Alex Salmond’s many available buttons on this very issue in the Scotsman recently, the killer line perhaps being: “I have heard of setting the aspirational bar low, but this really does take the shortbread. “Cry Freedom! Our telly will be like RTE”!” The man has a point.

The BBC is wonderful, it carries a global gold standard and for the price of a few beers a month one gets internet, radio, news and an abundance of excellent TV and sport. I can’t say I’ve ever watched RTE, but a Scottish equivalent in place of the BBC would surely be a poorer result.

If voting Yes to independence means saying farewell to the BBC, then many sitting at home will be thinking again.

For me, the straightforward solution is simply to keep the BBC post-independence. “But there’s no longer a Britain” people complain, which is factually incorrect aside from anything else as it is the political entity ‘the UK’ that is at risk of being broken up, not the geographically sound Britain. The British Broadcasting Corporation will still have a natural home whatever the outcome in 2014 is.

Nowhere in the rules for what faces us over the next couple of years is a diktat that independence must involve shutting ourselves off from the rest of the world. We can keep the Queen, keep the pound and keep the BBC if we want (and rUK wants). We can decide for ourselves how we run things. See how much fun this is? Sure, it’s independence-lite, or Devo Max heavy, depending on your point of view and/or party colours, but there’s nothing wrong with going for the optimal deal rather than the black of white visions of a future that is being sold to us. If it’s the BBC that is worrying you about voting Yes, just head to any European country and gaze in wonder at the healthy cross-fertilisation of TV networks across the many, many borders on the Continent.

I have to say, to address the other aspect of David’s article, the flurry of flag waving that has been going on since several weeks ago, I am similarly confounded by the suggestion that all these gold medals will mean Scots will rush to vote No to independence. Now, I happen to think that a flood of No votes will indeed be one unhappy direct result of the Olympics, but I’m as happy for Mo Farah and Vicky Pendleton winning their medals as I am for the US’ Ryan Lochte and Aussie Sally Pearson.

Even though Scottish successes for Chris Hoy etc did give me that patriotic rush of delight at the time; at the end of the day, they won their success through working their backsides off in their own time and on their own dime. It’s got naff all to do with me and naff all to do with Scotland’s constitutional setup, though people are of course free to vote for whatever reason tickles their fancy.

So, unionists are seemingly already backslapping themselves on a job well done but their current high standing may well be built on shifting sands. There is nothing tangible behind an Olympic feel good spirit (other than a £24bn price tag) and there is no reason why Scotland should necessarily feel any attachment to London institutions, irrespective of how popular they may be outwith our current borders.

Another guest article from Alasdair Stirling, to follow up a very well received Referendum Round-up from earlier in the month. Aasdair describes himself as cynical of politicians and believes that we should reject all authority which we cannot justify by reason, but believes that politics that delivers the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers can be virtuous.

With at least some of the post-Olympics opinion polls lending support to the Unionist contention that TeamGB successes have ushered forth a celebration of Britishness that is turning Scots heads away from independence, it is worthwhile considering how devolution may develop if the Scots do vote NO in 2014.  Whether Donald Dewar ever referred to devolution as “a process not an event” is neither here nor there.  The concept is what is important, and whoever said it (it was in fact Ron Davies the Welsh Secretary) was bang on the money.  Devolution did not start in 1997 and (absent a YES vote) is unlikely to have reached a conclusion with the Scotland Act 2012.

From a faltering and short lived mid nineteenth century campaign (Devine 2006) the impetus for specifically Scottish political institutions, and local control thereof, developed and progressed throughout the remainder of the century.  Although never matching the tempo or intensity of Irish demands for Home Rule, this gradual but growing pressure saw a dedicated education department empowered to conduct school inspections in 1872 (O’Connor & Robertson 2000) and resulted in the reappointment of a Scottish Secretary in 1885.  These were tentative steps down the ‘devolution highway’ and further progress came only slowly.  It was not until 1928 that the Scottish Board of Health (created 1919), Board of Agriculture for Scotland (created 1911) and the Prison Commissioners for Scotland (created 1877) were abolished as semi-independent bodies and re-established as departments of the Scottish Office (HMSO 1928).  Westminster tidied up these ‘devolved’ responsibilities by amalgamating prisons, agriculture and fisheries to form a Scottish Home Department in 1939 (HMSO 1939).  This reorganization also saw the Scottish Office opening its resplendent new offices in St Andrew’s House and, more importantly, gaining dedicated civil service support.

These developments created, in effect, the apparatus of a ‘pocket’ government for Scotland, complete with is own ‘pocket’ Prime Minister (the Scottish Secretary), a ‘pocket’ executive (the Scottish Office Ministers and Departments) and ‘pocket’ secretariat (the Scottish section of the Home Civil Service).  However, they were not the whole sum and substance of the devolution’s progress: Westminster itself was also in on the act.  Starting with a Scottish standing committee established in 1909, Scottish MPs progressively came to dominate the consideration and legislative process of exclusively Scottish Bills.  This arrangement developed as the century wore on, eventually becoming the grandly titled the Scottish Grand Committee (Scotland Office 2000).  Whilst never entirely excluding English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs, this ‘pocket’ parliament nevertheless represented a significant further devolution of power by ensuring that Scottish MPs had a disproportionate influence over legislation affecting only Scottish voters.

With the wounds of 1979 still fresh in the memory, many a Nationalist has branded David Cameron’s much reported claim that he is open to ‘considering what further powers could be devolved’ after a NO vote (STV 2012) as ‘jam tomorrow’ and most likely just another example of Unionist perfidy.  So is his position just a worthless promise, easily broken once a NO vote lances the independence boil, or can the Scots take him at face value?  To its credit, Westminster has a substantial and honourable record when it comes to devolving power to Scotland.  Scottish Labour likes to claim the devolution mantle, but in truth all of the major Westminster parties have embraced the devolution process over its long history and may take some of the credit for having the constitutional flexibility and political will to develop a form of government that is to some extent responsive to Scotland’s particular needs.  So to answer the question: Scots voters can and should take David Cameron at his word when he says that a NO result in the referendum would not be ‘the end of the road’ for devolution (STV 2012).

However, nobody should read more into it than that.  What is important is what is not being said.  To date, no Unionist party nor any high ranking Unionist politician has made any specific undertaking on what further powers might be devolved to a post referendum Scotland or (perhaps more importantly) when any further devolution might take place.  Much is made of the need for clarity in the vote, of lack of consensus on what further powers might be devolved and of the complexity of crafting a proposal that voters might readily understand.  Without doubting the difficulty of these issues; ‘where there is a will there is a way’.

There are many constitutional models already operating successfully throughout the world that might serve to inform a debate on the shape of further devolution.  No doubt Quebec’s arrangements with Ottawa or the Australian state’s relationship with Canberra are a worthwhile study.  However, the constraints of European Union membership, mean that the templates that would most likely to be relevant to enhanced devolution in Scotland would come from within Europe itself.  This need not be a limitation, there exists is a rich diversity of arrangements: the autonomous regions of Spain, the German lander and closer to home the Isle of Man and Channel Islands readily spring to mind as useful starting points.
The plain fact is that it is not beyond the best Unionist brains to act quickly and outline a comprehensible template for Devo-Max that could form the basis of second or Devo-Max question.  So why this reluctance to explore the possible future of devolution?  It is far from a vow of silence.  That Unionism has set its face against a second question is actually most eloquent, and speaks volumes as to Unionist intentions for Scotland’s constitutional future.  What they are saying: the Unionist promise, in effect, is that in the event of a NO vote the the process of devolution will continue along much the same lines and at much the same pace as it has over the last 127 years.  

Perhaps it is cynical, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Westminster really only embraces devolution when it is confronting a serious Nationalist threat.  Was it by chance that it allowed semi-independent bodies for prisons, health and agriculture in Scotland and re-appointed a Scottish Secretary just as the Irish campaign for Home Rule gained strength?  Did the creation of the Scottish Office in 1928 have anything to do with Britain having fought and lost a bloody war against Irish Nationalists?  Is it fair to suggest that devolution stalled during the period from 1940 to 1970 because there was no real threat from Irish or Scottish Nationalists?  Can we attribute the Scotland Act 1978 to fear born of Scotland’s oil fuelled enthusiasm for the SNP?  Did George Robertson reveal Westminster’s true intentions in the mid-1990s when he said that ‘devolution will kill nationalism stone dead’?  Would Kenneth Calman ever have chaired his commission had Scottish Labour won the election in 2007?
It doesn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to answer these questions, nor is a crystal ball really necessary to foresee Scotland’s constitutional prospects in the event of 2014 NO vote.  Although no longer leader, it is hard to believe that Gordon Brown’s recent speech – all but ruling out a move toward fiscal autonomy (Telegraph 2012) – is far from Scottish Labour’s view of, and preferred approach to further devolution.  At the other end of the political spectrum, David Cameron has already warmed over the ‘Real Devolution’ theme, beloved by the Tories in the 1990’s, in an attempt to recast future devolution in the context of local councils rather than further powers for the Scottish government (Independent 2012).
Such views are more than idle speculation, they are the genesis of Unionism’s post referendum policy and represent the likely boundaries to Scotland’s future constitutional development.  In practical terms they mean that, free from the fear of Nationalism, Westminster will most likely restrict future devolution to piecemeal powers devolved from the periphery of their current reserved responsibilities (e.g. international development, the civil service or broadcasting).  Moreover, with only seven major events (appointment of the Scottish Secretary, formation of the Scottish Office, creation of a dedicated secretariat, the evolution of the Scottish Grand Committee and the 1978, 1998 and 2012 Scotland Acts) throughout Scottish devolution’s 127 year history, it is arithmetically unlikely that Westminster will be minded to pass another Scotland Act much before 2030.

One of my favourite facets of modern politics is cross-dressing, outperforming your rivals at the polls by stealing (or more likely borrowing for a very short period) their policies and their voters. One could argue that the SNP is succeeding at the polls because it is out-Labouring Labour, and long may it continue while the latter attempts to uncomfortably straddle the right and left wings of Scottish and British politics.

As the independence timeline continues (I refuse to call it a ‘debate’ until it actually is one) and while the unionist side continues to dominate, in no small part due to its particularly positive and nifty catchphrase ‘Better Together’, I can’t help but wonder if the SNP shouldn’t, well, nick it.

Scotland can, after all, be better if it chooses to pull together. The UK also can, but only to a limited extent, for perfectly logical reasons.

Scotland’s solo political journey has already started from the smoking ban through minimum pricing at 50p to keeping university tuition free in the face of £9k fees down south. We can, and should, be doing a lot, lot more and still suffer from a poverty of ambition but, irrespective of how short or far we choose to set our sights, a distinctly Scottish constitutional setup is best placed to deliver that for us.

That’s easy to say and harder to prove but here are several inter-connected reasons why I believe Scotland can be better together in a way that would be unthinkable across the UK.

– No Nuclear Weapons.
It is said so often that the potency of the argument becomes diluted, which is a shame. Nuclear weapons, so costly to build, maintain and replace are so particularly wasteful as they will quite simply never be deliberately fired. There is no enemy, real or imagined, that any right-thinking Scot would wish a nuclear weapon on and that alone is reason enough to stop holding and paying for them.
Indeed, decreased defence spending, a prospect so patently unpalatable across most of England, would free up at least £2bn a year for Scotland to spend in other areas. That is a direction that the UK will unfortunately not take for as long as those at Westminster wish to try keeping up with the USA and retain their permanent seat at the United Nations.

– Green Energy
A nation cannot invest simultaneously in nuclear power and renewable energy to the level necessary for both to be world leading. We have dilapidated stations of the former and the greatest potential in Europe, if not the world, for the latter, and that marginal pound can only go to one or the other.
Chris Huhne, the (former) Environment Minister, whose well-meaning principles were ultimately stymied by coalition pragmatism, sold the Lib Dems out on their promise of opposition to nuclear and the facts are, despite Huhne’s assurances of no public subsidy (now abandoned), that all nuclear power has cost the taxpayer eye watering sums in the past and will cost even more in the future. The British tax payer has already spent £100bn on nuclear clean up costs already. £100bn. And we’re building eight more of them south of the border.

rUK has hitherto had minimal appetite to facilitate Scotland’s renewables revolution, so freeing up Defence spending to invest in green energy at this crucial, crucial juncture seems like an opportunity Scotland can ill afford to ignore. It is considerably less likely to happen inside a UK context.

– The End to Boom and Bust
A Scot may have made this hollow promise before but I firmly believe that of the constituent nations of the UK, it is Scotland that has the right size, sentiment and steadiness to deliver an economy that is sustainable for the long term.

The Scottish subsample of UK polls regularly show that Scotland is the region with the lowest support for George Osborne’s economic policies but also the region with the highest level of ‘Don’t knows’. In other words, we know something is wrong but can’t seem to work out what to do about it.

An answer may lie not in GDP tables but in the many ‘Happiness Indices‘ that consider life expectancy, literacy, standard of living, quality of life and child welfare. Scotland is, of course, not included but the top 10 in Europe is dominated by countries such as Norway (1st), Ireland (3rd), Sweden (6th), Iceland (8th) and Denmark (9th). Indeed, if you strip out Germany as an outlier (5th, population 82m), then the average population size of the remaining nine countries that are the happiest according to the UN is 6.6m. Smaller is better is the clear message.

The UK, incidentally, is 19th, one place ahead of Greece, and what does “Better Together” mean if not ‘happier together’?

– International Relations
The Iraq War is old news and not, in itself, a reason to want to distance ourselves from the UK, but there is no denying that Scotland could hold its head up higher in a global context if it had a distinctly Scottish viewpoint that it was able to get across from the EU to the UN or, dare I say it, NATO. The Chinese words for England and the United Kingdom are the same. If that’s not enough to put a bit of fire into wanting the world to know that Scotland exists, then I don’t know what would.

Scotland’s view of the world is too often at odds with the rest of the UK’s view of the world for the assurance that we, as the UK, are better together to hold much weight and, furthermore, who is more likely to win business for Scotland on trade missions, David Cameron, Boris Johnson or A.N. Other Tory Prime Minister who can only ever expect to win a few Scottish seats at election time or the First Minister, be it Alex Salmond or whoever is next in line. The ship, perhaps, has already sailed on who is fighting Scotland’s corner abroad.

Would a Scottish Gary McKinnon still be facing extradition to the US? Would a Scottish Richard O’Dwyer? I can’t help but think that a nation that unflinchingly grasped the Megrahi nettle would come to a similarly civilised and correct decision in the more open and shut cases that it faced, rather than meekly abiding to a one-way extradition treaty with the US.

I accept that the unionists will not be knocking my door down here in leafy London but I don’t know what the specifics of the Better Together case is and can’t really imagine what it could be. From the Economy, through Defence, to Power Production, and given that the NHS and Education are already separate and diverging, in what context is the UK going to improve Scotland moreso than a separate Scotland making its own decisions would? Even Team GB at our ‘home’ Olympics for our national sport didn’t have the good grace to include a Scot in the squad, let alone the lineup.

‘Better Together’ is a persuasive phrase, but it’s more up for grabs than many on both sides of the independence discussion bargain for.