Dear Edinburgh Lib Dems: Do you want to die?

Another guest today from Dan Phillips. You may have seen his biog a week ago, but here it is again. Dan’s a press photographer by trade but a political obsessive at heart. A small ‘l’ liberal, he blogs at liberalsellout.wordpress.com. The blog has taken to dissecting the local elections in Edinburgh of late and this is his latest post in this vein.

If you as a party were fighting for your life, you’d pull the finger out.

Or you would have thought so. It’s less than a month to go till the polls and not a peep has been heard from the Lib Dems.

They were the last to put out their candidate list. Not a single policy has been trailed in the local media. Not a hint of what they would do in a coalition. And this is a tipping point for the birdy badged party.

A perfect storm in Edinburgh meant they were annihilated at Holyrood. Trams, the UK Coalition combined with the god-awful campaign they ran conspired to remove all their representatives from the capital – not even an insurance list seat.

You would think they’d have learnt. But given the inertia from their camp apparently not.

In 2007 they clinched 17 councillors – but only just. Seven of those were in the last round barely scraping past the finish line. Some didn’t even make the quota but were merely the last candidate standing. In short they won by being everyone’s second favourite – they are the lowest common denominator.

But need I say it, the context is ever so slightly different now. The Nats are standing two candidates in many of those same wards where the Lib Dems won through inertia (like Sighthill, Craigentinny and Portobello to name a few) while the paucity of independent candidates in this election means there is no second chance to get it right. If you don’t get a decent haul of first preferences, expect execution in the first round.

So how to avoid this fate? Well you could put out at least some sort of policy. Maybe trumpet your successes as a council over the last five years. Do something to cut the tram albatross from around your neck. Possibly, and I know this is radical, give your lost voters a reason to return, and the hard core a reason to turn up.

Or you could do nothing and let the self imposed vacuum be filled with the policies of the opposition.

It’s up to the Lib Dems what they do. But to my mind there are only four safe-ish seats, and that’s a relative term. Edinburgh’s voting patterns contrive to bind the UK Coalition partners together. In three seats where the Lib Dems are strongest, so are the Tories. And we know that the Tories prefer the Lib Dems substantially over any other party, so expect to see the blues haul the injured Lib Dems over the line in Almond, Corstorphine and Meadows/Morningside. In Drumbrae/Gyle the Lib Dems had 45% of the first preference in 2007 – it would be a colossal disaster if they could not return there.

Everywhere else? Well it’s up to them. I suspect that Southside will return Mackenzie for the Lib Dems but it is very narrow, election fans. Beyond that every seat will have to be wrung from the opposition.

The defence to such inaction could be that the SNP have been silent too. That in 2007 the Nats hadn’t put out a manifesto at this stage either. But the Nats aren’t at risk of being torn asunder by the four other parties currently lashed to their limbs.

If you wish to be uncharitable to the Lib Dems you could note they have made one promise in their ‘Edinburgh Voice’ newspaper. The strapline directly underneath the masthead on one reading declares an Edinburgh ‘free from the Scottish Liberal Democrats’. Carry on like this and they might just deliver it.

WMOTW – The cut of the GiB

The SNP is usually adept at picking its battles so, in relation to the winner of this week’s Worst Motion of the Week, perhaps Marco Biagi MSP is too wet behind the ears to know when it is best to quit while one is only slightly behind. Or, perhaps young Marco is being put out to bat as a sacrificial lamb but, either way, a call to “make GIB a Scottish Company” can only ever fail in today’s climate.

The Green Investment Bank was recently placed in both Edinburgh & London and renamed the ‘UK Green Investment Bank’, for obvious Nationalist fox-shooting purposes. Many may grumble that this was a political decision but that, I’m afraid, is Westminster’s wont. The message from the coalition is clear – ‘here are some jobs and investment opportunities that would not be of the same level if Scotland was independent. Vote Yes in 2014 and we’ll take those jobs and that money back to London’.

The referendum is not going to be won and lost over 70 jobs and £2bn of renewable investment but this was a rare example of a union dividend coming Scotland’s way and the SNP’s posturing of calling for a UK Government to place a UK institution in Scotland, less than three years away from an independence referendum, is foolishly drawing attention to this UK benefit and, on top of that, has always sounded a bit childish.

Anyway, here is the motion (and a Lib Dem amendment to it):

Motion S4M-02542: Marco Biagi, Edinburgh Central, Scottish National Party, Date Lodged: 29/03/2012
Make GIB a Scottish Company

That the Parliament welcomes the recent announcement that the Green Investment Bank (GIB) is to be based in Edinburgh and considers that this is in recognition of the tremendous strength of Edinburgh as a centre both for financial services and the new green industries; understands that the new Edinburgh-based GIB is registered with Companies House at an address in London; considers it important to have the GIB headquarters in Edinburgh in more than just name, and calls on the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to transfer the company registration to Edinburgh once a suitable venue for the GIB has been identified in the city.
Supported by: Bill Kidd, Annabelle Ewing, Stuart McMillan, John Finnie, Adam Ingram, Christina McKelvie, Mike MacKenzie, Joan McAlpine, Kevin Stewart, Angus MacDonald, Maureen Watt, John Mason, Jean Urquhart, Mark McDonald, Bill Walker, Roderick Campbell, Kenneth Gibson, Dennis Robertson, David Torrance, Margaret Burgess, Linda Fabiani, Fiona McLeod, Bob Doris, Dave Thompson, Gil Paterson, Christine Graham

Motion S4M-02542.1: Liam McArthur, Orkney Islands, Scottish Liberal Democrats, Date Lodged: 30/03/2012
Make GIB a Scottish Company

As an amendment to motion S4M-02542 in the name of Marco Biagi (Make GIB a Scottish Company), leave out from “that the Green Investment Bank” to end and insert “by the UK Government that the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) is to be based in Edinburgh and considers that this is in recognition of the tremendous strength of Edinburgh as a centre both for financial services and the new green industries; recognises that the headquarters of the GIB will be located in Edinburgh, with the main transaction team based in London, in order to enable a greater commercial reach nationally than could be achieved from one location; believes that basing the GIB’s corporate headquarters, asset management and administrative functions in Edinburgh and its transaction team in London will harness expertise across the country to deliver a strong and successful GIB for the UK, make Edinburgh a centre of excellence for green investment and provide a welcome boost to the city’s economy, and looks forward to the GIB playing a vital role in the UK’s drive toward a sustainable and green future.”

It was an easy riposte for Liam McArthur really, let’s be honest. The UK GiB is an example of London and Edinburgh working as a team, stronger together, weaker apart etc and Scotland being given something and wanting more is not the type of behaviour that is suited to a nation arguing to be mature enough to stand alone on the world stage.

Independence will inevitably involve compromises, and looking to nab UK institutions before the referendum is called rather than gracefully accept the forfeiture is unbecoming of the otherwise typically positive approach adopted by the SNP. If an independent Scotland wants a Green Investment Bank, it can build one. End of. If rUK wants to keep its bank in a foreign country, that’s its decision.

If the 2014 referendum results in a No vote, then by all means call for the UK GiB to be based in Scotland if that’s where the headquarters are but simultaneously looking to move away from the UK while calling for its institutions to be based here seems hypocritical or naïve.

Furthermore, the call is so easily countered by the opposition that a frustrated silence is surely immeasurably preferable, not that silence tends to be preferred over an MSP’s opportunity to submit a below-par motion.

Isn’t it time we bought Scottish to boost Scotland?

I enjoyed a few days in Stockholm last weekend and, without really seeking them out, was able to enjoy Swedish brands, produce and hospitality throughout my stay. There was the salmon and meatballs from the Swedish ICA supermarkets (proudly stamped with the local area that had produced them), the Falcon and Mariestads beers that washed them down and the ‘fika’ (coffee breaks) at Sweden’s fiercely popular Wayne’s Coffee stores dotted around the city. The whole weekend involved walking past Saab after Saab and Volvo after Volvo, Swedish flags were everywhere from pots of jam on supermarket shelves to fluttering proudly in many a front garden and numerous people I walked past had on Fjällräven jackets or bags, or Peak Performance winter gear, all Swedish brands, naturligtvis.

Compare and contrast with Scotland where any old produce is purchased in tax-dubious Tesco with profits evaporating out of the Scottish economy to, well, either Cheshunt or Zug I suppose. Yes, Zug. The many beers drunk here each night are typically the Carlsbergs, Kronenbourg, Stella Artois, Carling and Guinnesses, so that’s more Scottish pounds falling out of our economy. The flights are on Ryanair and Easyjet, as there’s no longer a Flyglobespan to keep the travel money closer to home, while cars and clothes are barely ever Scottish-made or designed and you’d do well to see too many Saltires on a supermarket shelf, let alone a front garden.

Sure, we have Farmers’ Markets, Scottish restaurants (boasting Scottish produce), Brewdog, Innes & Gunn, staycations and Harris Tweed helping to shore up the local economy, but it all seems to be too much of a one-way battle at the moment, particularly when you realise how other countries out there in Europe have it.

We are regularly told to embrace globalisation, to suppress national pride and remember that too much protectionism is ultimately bad for us but, call me paranoid, I do wonder who is behind this particular insistence and whether that message is getting out beyond these UK borders. Looking at France, Spain, Scandinavia and Germany, their largely successful rebuffing of Americanism (do they even have Starbucks on the continent?) and their impressive championing of home produce and local brands, it makes me wonder if Scotland is putting itself at a distinct disadvantage by being so laissez-faire.

Of all Governments that could grasp this issue, one would think that an SNP Government would put things right.

Well, the foregoing of Scottish steel in the building of the Forth bridge in favour of Chinese steel certainly raises an eyebrow and suggests otherwise. I get that there are procurement rules that need to be followed and potential savings could allow Swinney’s budgets to go further than they would have if we’d bought materials closer to home but, if such a calculation has been worked out, I would have thought that a pre-emptive information strike would have been forthcoming. The Herald reports that as much as one third of the required steel could have been sourced from Motherwell. A no-brainer, surely? Seemingly not. It all seems to go against a direction of travel that was suggested a few years ago.

The SNP, in the last parliamentary term, had the thoroughly commendable idea of a Saltire scheme whereby shoppers would be rewarded with loyalty points for purchasing Scottish produce. The scheme was led passionately and eloquently by Aileen Campbell, now the Minister for Children and Young People. With a whopping parliamentary majority in the bag and a dearth of devolved issues to sustain itself for the next four years with, there is no reason why the SNP shouldn’t push this idea a lot harder than it is currently doing.

A saltire scheme can, by extension, mean more than simply buying Scottish produce. It can also signify less food miles, sustainable fishing methods, ethically robust farming methods, material quality and so much more, if the Scotland flag comes to signify these things (if it doesn’t so already, of course). Indeed, why this idea never took off before, from any party, really is beyond me.

I attended a wonderful presentation from the FD of a bank that I used to work for. The lessons shared then are lessons that Scotland should really learn today. He said that it is important to focus on the ‘marginal dollar’, or the ‘marginal pound’ in this instance. The old days of banking involved lending money if it meant getting a profit back, any profit, a philosophy that led inevitably to the credit crunch. These days, with fewer pounds available to lend and banks building up capital ratios, the decision-makers need to consider what they are

    not

spending their money on before they spend it. It’s basically opportunity cost with bells on and it is applicable here, not so much in terms of short-sighted profit making but rather in terms of building a balanced, local society and ensuring that it is sustainable alongside and in healthy competition with the rest of the UK, the rest of Europe and indeed the rest of the world.

So when you are standing on your local high street, when you know which Scots are secure in their jobs and which one’s aren’t and when you consider that other countries out there have a healthy balance between protectionism and globalised free markets, the key question you need to ask yourself when you stretch open your purse strings is this – where are my Scottish pounds best spent?

Keeping the Scottish pound local should be a top priority for all of us, and the Scottish Government should be taking the lead on facilitating that objective, from bridges to supermarket shelves.

Surely politics should promote equality?

We have a most welcome guest from Juliet Swann today. Juliet works for the Electoral Reform Society in Scotland. She blogs for them professionally occasionally here, and has her own personal blog here.

Imagine a female Prime Minister. Hold on, AND, a female Chancellor, and the Defence Secretary is a woman, and so is the Speaker, and the Leader of the Opposition, and the Opposition Chancellor, and the Leader of the House of Lords. And in the Scottish Parliament, the Cabinet is led by a female First Minister, with only the Health Secretary and the Culture Secretary standing out as being male.

It feels strange to imagine, and yet, by accepting that the reverse as the norm, and as okay, we are also accepting that 50% of the population don’t deserve 50% of representation in our political institutions.

I’m not going to second guess whether policy decisions would be different with a better gender balance in Parliament, but ignoring half the population is never a good idea, not least because it means we lose their talents and perspectives.

Our political institutions shouldn’t be carbon copies of society, but when they represent an entirely distorted picture of who we are, this can’t help but create a parliament which is out of touch with the people it serves.

Devolution was supposed to herald a new era of gender balance in politics. In 1999 Scottish Labour’s pairing policy saw the party return 28 women out of 56 MSPs. In 2003’s “rainbow Parliament” the SSP returned twice as many women as men, and Labour’s gender balance improved as the six seats they lost were all held by men, but overall women still only numbered 51 of 129. The Liberal Democrats have only ever returned two female MSPs, even when they held 17 seats. With their highest number of sitting MSPs, the SNP have only 18 women out of 69.

Labour still have 17 of 37, which is only just shy of 50%, demonstrating that even with a loss of overall numbers, the pairing policy that worked so well in 1999 has enabled them to maintain a good gender balance, even though they have not continued to promote positive measures. (Imagine where they might be if they had…)

Then we can look to local government – with the second STV local election just around the corner, surely, as the electorate can rate their candidates by preference, rather than placing all their eggs in one basket the parties will have thought about gender balance? Because would it not make you think twice if you realised that although you could express a preference, that preference had to be male?

And yet, to highlight Edinburgh’s list of candidates:  the Liberal Democrats have just two women among their 17 candidates. Labour is fielding eight female candidates out of a total of 23 and the Tories have six women among their 20 hopefuls. Only the Greens achieved a gender balance with eight women and nine men.

Of the smaller parties or independents standing, only 3 are women.

“perhaps no women were interested”, “women don’t have time, with childcare responsibilities”, “parties should select the best people, regardless of gender”, “women aren’t attracted to the cut and thrust world of politics”

These excuses, and they are excuses, will not stand. In 2012, in a first world country with girls exceeding boys in education, it is absurd to suggest women don’t want or are not able to match men in the political sphere.

Firstly, politics needs women, it needs to represent all of us. Secondly, perhaps we need to re-think how politics works, or how childcare works, if in 2012 women are not standing for election because they have kids. After all men have children too. Thirdly, the only way to encourage more women is to ensure they have role models to aspire to, believe in and emulate.

You’ll have noticed the Green party achieved gender balance. That’s because they have a strong gender policy. It’s not rigid, but it is strong. And as time goes on, it becomes easier to meet the 50/50 target because women see other women succeeding and as we all know, success breeds success.

Arguments for quotas and strong gender policies are often refuted as ‘meddling’. I would never argue that quotas are perfect, they are an interim measure to address an inbalance. But something needs to change.

We need to stop saying that positive measures lead to mediocrity. This is an argument with no evidence and no logic. We see mediocrity and brilliance across politics and it never has anything to do with gender. Secondly we need to act now. The idea that the situation will eventually right itself is a cowardly excuse for doing nothing. The number of women MPs has increased by only 4% since 1997. If we don’t do something our daughters will be drawing their pensions before they have an equal say in how our country is run. Is that really the message we want to send to our kids?

The new campaign Counting Women IN was born out of this anger. Five democracy and gender organisations – The Centre for Women & Democracy, The Fawcett Society, The Hansard Society, Unlock Democracy and the Electoral Reform Society – came together to campaign for equality: for equal numbers of men and women in our Parliaments and institutions by 2020. It’s a positive campaign designed to work with parties in recognition of their separate cultures, histories and practices to achieve real change. Equality, that’s all we’re asking for.

Join the call for 50/50 equality for men and women in politics at www.countingwomenin.org

“To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise”

Nick Clegg’s support for a massive extension of online monitoring may be a disappointment to disgruntled activists, and to any voters who listened to him on the subject prior to (and immediately after) the May 2010 election. But it should be no surprise. It’s certainly in keeping with a consistent experience of the three UK parties of government.

They regularly appear solid on policy in opposition but then are either ineffectual or do a series of direct u-turns once in office. The list is endless. Labour talked about equality of opportunity before 1997, but left behind the most unequal UK ever. The Tories joined the Lib Dems in howling about tuition fees in opposition, before working together to treble them almost immediately their coats were over the Downing Street chairs. I still remember the Tory backbencher telling me in 1997 that “we’re fine on this now, but don’t trust us when we get back into office“. Too true.

On security and civil liberties – especially on the futile attempt to trade the latter for the former – we have this same problem in spades. Governments, including this one and its predecessor, are almost always wrong, and oppositions, including this one and its predecessors, are almost always right. Whoever you vote for, it seems, the permanent government gets in, and the policies remain the same. The glee in the Labour spokesperson’s voice on Westminster Hour when asked if she’d be supporting this latest dogs’ breakfast was inescapable: “we dropped it! we dropped it!”, she said. Be in no doubt that Labour would pick it up the moment they ever return to office.

This might just be another attempt by the Lib Dems to discard a chunk of the broad base of support they assembled up to 2010. We’re not quite two years through a supposedly five year term, and there’s very little left. Broad but, it turns out, shallow, and only the Orange Book minority has really been shown any love by the leadership. Students were driven away, anyone concerned about privatisation of the NHS or Royal Mail is long gone, let alone those who wanted a principled left alternative to Labour. It seems almost absurd to think that’s how people ever thought of them.

The email monitoring legislation does feel a little different to previous betrayals, though. It has the air of a terminal nosedive about it, a sense that the party is approaching what looks like the point of no return. The smarter sort of Lib Dems on Twitter, the few of those that remain in the party, are saying things like “I have not sent my LD membership renewal until I see what happens with the surveillance stuff“, “I don’t know where [Clegg’s] going, but I have no appetite to go on the journey with him“, “As someone who generally is keen on Clegg he’s fucked this up big time“, and “The question is what we can we do about it? How can we make the leadership listen?

As Polly Toynbee put it today, “civil liberties was their last USP“, although she’s excluded Iraq, presumably because their policy there was actually much weaker than the media and the party implied: “if there’s a second resolution we’ll back a disastrous war“. (Polly-haters should try again with that piece, incidentally. Except for a spurious paragraph where she suggests “Labour has been spring-cleaning it roots” (sic), she’s on good form.)

Less than a month ago Julian Huppert, the darling of the Lib Dems on Twitter, wrote a remarkably prescient piece for the Guardian. Here is just one chunk (emphasis mine):

Civil liberties are a core, unifying issue for the Lib Dems. There are MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties who would defend civil liberties to the very end, and others – too many others – who would tear them up at the first opportunity. There is no such division in the Lib Dems. Issues such as civil liberties are utterly uniting for our party, and utterly divisive for the others. To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise. […] if we do not provide a thorough, reasoned defence of civil liberties, no other party will.

Aside from the usual Green-and-Nat-ignoring self-serving Westminster tripe at the end, most observers would have agreed with this assessment of the Lib Dems until the weekend. But now it transpires that their champions around the Cabinet table don’t care about this issue either. Who knew? Perhaps it’s some odd highball tactic so Clegg can accept a “compromise” that the party wouldn’t otherwise have swallowed.

No amount of reasoning with the Clegg/Alexander leadership could get them to change their minds on private control of NHS, and no amount of lobbying could persuade Lib Dem MPs or peers to rebel in any numbers on it either. Will they go the same way over internet surveillance? Are they really ready to go down with Clegg on this issue and take their whole party with them? Or will we, finally, start to see some backbone from their backbenchers?