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Can Cameron rise above the vacuous on independence debate?

Feb 16

Posted by Jeff in Constitution | 55 Comments

Maybe it’s the media’s fault. Newspapers in this country are not famous for digging into the detail and providing in-depth analysis of a policy or a speech. Left vs right, unions vs Tories or Lib Dems vs Lib Dems will typically suffice for a narrative, so there’s no reason why it should be any different for unionist vs nationalist, even when it is the Prime Minister that is involved.

That said, David Cameron’s speech today is, from the previews available, depressingly vacuous and ever so slightly patronising.

A couple of quotes from media outlets that have been leaked soundbites are as follows:

(Mail):
We are better off together. We’re stronger, because together we count for more in the world, with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, real clout in NATO and Europe and unique influence with allies all over the world. We’re safer, because in an increasingly dangerous world we have the fourth-largest defence budget on the planet, superb armed forces and anti-terrorist and security capabilities that stretch across the globe and are feared by our enemies and admired by our friends.’

(Sky):
“I am 100% clear that I will fight with everything I have to keep our United Kingdom together.
To me, this is not some issue of policy or strategy or calculation – it matters head, heart and soul. Our shared home is under threat and everyone who cares about it needs to speak out. Of course, there are arguments that can be made about the volatility of dependence on oil, or the problems of debt and a big banking system. But that’s not the point.
The best case for the United Kingdom is entirely positive. We are better off together. Why? Well, first of all, let’s be practical. Inside the United Kingdom, Scotland – just as much as England, Wales and Northern Ireland – is stronger, safer, richer and fairer.”

It is not uncommon for Tory leaders to liken policy debates to wars as they try to tap into the Old Blighty WW2 spirit that they hope still courses through our veins. Churchill was an expert at it and Margaret Thatcher used it to great effect in many a speech in the eighties. David Cameron is, not unsurprisingly given the context, trying to do so again here with his ‘our shared home is under threat’ rhetoric. Alex Salmond the Nazi? That didn’t work out so well for the last person who tried it.

One problem is that it is all too high-handed, too broad brush, when the only way to advance the debate is with detail, facts and figures. The line ‘head, heart and soul’ might have a pleasing cadence to it, and saying the debate in favour of the UK is “entirely positive” may in itself sound positive, but there is no substance there, nothing for Scots to get their teeth into and taste the evidence from.

When Ruth Davidson talks of ‘fantasy figures’ that the First Minister is using to boast that Scotland would be the sixth richest nation, the obvious challenge is to say that at least Salmond is using figures to back up his argument. If the truth is contrary to the SNP’s view of the future, where is the hard-headed evidence otherwise?

If Scotland becoming an independent country is a leap of faith and a step into the unknown, a challenge not denied by Nicola Sturgeon on Good Morning Scotland this morning, then we are as likely to be better off than worse off, safer than more at risk and fairer than ripped off.

Put another way, saying we are ‘stronger, safer, richer and fairer’ doesn’t make it so. I just hope the transcript of David Cameron’s speech today serves up more than his soundbites are promising.

Left hand holds the purse strings

Feb 15

Posted by Kirsty in Democracy, Parties, Westminster | 6 Comments

Ed MilibandParty political funding is the reform behemoth that refuses to die.

Several times it’s been through the wringer of inquiry and report to being roundly ignored in the last decade –the 2000 Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, the 2006 Sir Hayden Phillips inquiry, and most recently Sir Christopher Kelly’s Committee on Standards in Public Life.

The proposed reforms to party funding never secure parliamentary support, as they fail to reach agreement from all three main Westminster Parties.  The Phillips inquiry collapsed over deciding the best way to deal with Labour’s funding from trade unions, while Sir Christopher Kelly’s proposal, of £23m a year in state funding of political parties, met with disapproval from all corners of Westminster, reluctant to commit to such spending of taxpayer’s money during a period of austerity.

Last week Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called for a revival of the behemoth, writing to Ed Miliband and David Cameron asking them each to nominate party representatives for three-party private talks, aiming to set out some form of political funding agreement by Easter.

According to The Guardian, this agreement would “cover individual and company donor limits, the treatment of union affiliates, spending caps at elections and the distribution of existing state funding between parties, currently estimated at £7m a year.”

Additional state funding has been ruled out from these discussions, and this means the agreement will not include much reduced donation limits – such caps, minus funding from the state, could entail bankruptcy for the parties.

Much reduced donation limits from individuals or an organisation is the most frequent sticking point for the Labour Party in these discussions. Heavily dependent on trade union affiliation fees for income, any moves which limit or alter how these are made threatens Labour’s continued existence, whether it’s severely capping the amount a union can donate or proposing that political levy-payers have to contract in, rather than opt-out, when joining.

So while ruling out additional state funding and thus much lower donor limits means Miliband is likely to be more sympathetic to joining Clegg’s talks, another worry about party funding could be looming for Labour – this time from within.

A quarter of motions to the GMB’s annual conference in June are debating the trade union’s future relationship with Labour. The GMB describes the actions of so many of its branches raising this issue as “unprecedented”.

Giving around £2 million each year to the party, the GMB is Labour’s third largest donor. Of its 600,000 members, around half are either employed by the public sector, or in private companies contracted to the public sector. Comments by the Labour leadership in January regarding public sector pay constraint have ignited the union members’ ire; particularly Ed Balls’ statement in a speech to the Fabian Society that he could not promise to reverse the coalition’s spending cuts if Labour were elected in 2015.

In a statement on Tuesday, the GMB’s executive noted the concerns of its membership and said:

“The executive expressed concern and disappointment with recent statements made by senior party officials and registered their growing frustration at the lack of a cohesive policy to protect working people from the ravages of the Tory-led coalition Government.”

Being attacked by union activists while trying to woo middle-Britain back to Labour may not feel like being in ‘Red Ed’ Miliband’s best interests for positioning himself and his party to win the next election, but only a fool would dismiss these calls by the GMB’s activists.

Labour can’t try and defend the trade union link and its generous funding on one hand, while that crucial link and all its cash is slipping away from the other. Miliband is going to have to choose exactly how he wants his party to have a future; just have to wait and see if it will be a well funded one, with committed union activists campaigning on the ground, rather than skint attempts at triangulation with the Daily Mail reading masses.

HMRC 1, Rangers -10

Feb 13

Posted by Jeff in Sport | 38 Comments

Today’s big sporting news has sent a shockwave across British football with Rangers moving closer to administration.

It would take the most generous of hearts from rival clubs to feel sorry for the club’s plight. Taking the lion’s share of tv money, winning qualification to lucrative European competitions year after year and often robbing Scotland’s other teams of their best talent only to leave them rotting in the reserves. Goodbye and good riddance?

Well, that is a bit harsh.

Scottish football is worse off without a strong Rangers Football Club being a part of it. The club has brought young talent to the fore, combined with world class stars being brought in from afar (Laudrup, Caniggia, Amoruso).

A silver lining from all of this is that a new Rangers could emerge from the ashes that has less ambition but more local players making up its squad. Airdrie United was back up and running soon after liquidation thanks to a buyout of Clydebank so there’s no reason why something similar can’t happen down Govan way. Every silver lining has a cloud of course and, at the end of day, the club has diddled the public out of tens of millions of pounds for some as yet unknown reason.

A finger of blame has to be pointed in the direction of Sir David Murray. A tax bill of ~£50m doesn’t accrue overnight and the finances surely can’t have been in order during Rangers’ Champions League heyday of Nine in a Row. A football club is a business before it is a sports team and no club is too big to fail. Sir David wouldn’t be the first knighted Scot to have taken a big company and ran it into the ground before jumping ship of course.

So what next?

Well here’s an idea out of left wing – Celtic could bail out Rangers and ensure their rival’s survival.

Granted, Celtic only made a £180k profit this financial year which is a far cry from the £50m that HMR&C we are due but they could contribute to a repayment schedule and, together with Rangers, make giant strides to making serious progress in the fight against sectarianism in Scotland. Rangers fan would have to find a grudging gratitude and Celtic fans would tap a hidden reservoir of sympathy for their rivals during their plight. After all, there but for the grace of Fergus McCann, go the Bhoys.

It would be nice if there was a coming together, and Scottish football would benefit from Rangers keeping going, but at the end of the day this news has to be taken in context.

This is a club in a footballing world that generally has fewer and fewer redeeming features as the years go by. Rangers fans looking to other sports to direct their passions might, despite what I’ve written above, be the best that can be hoped for from this sorry tale but, for now, and as a fairweather Celtic fan, I have to restrain my smirk and hope that Rangers gets back to where it belongs, second placed in the SPL season after season.

Quantifying Quantitative Easing

Feb 13

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 27 Comments

Photo by J D Mack

Last week the Monetary Policy Committee decided to go ahead with another £50 billion round of quantitative easing in which the central bank buys gilts (UK government debt) on the secondary market (i.e. it buys bonds from private holders on the secondary market rather than buying it directly from the government. That’s the theoretical difference which differentiates us from Zimbabwe). That makes a total of £325 billion of new money floating about in the economy.

It’s worth, at this point, briefly exploring exactly what money is these days. There are two measures that the UK normally uses, narrow money supply (M0) and broad money supply (M4). The first, M0, is the total of the physical notes and coins in your pocket and in the tills and safes of companies as well as the deposits from retail banks held by the Bank of England. The second, M4, is the notes and coins held by people and firms other than banks (including the BoE), the total sum of private bank deposits and certificates of deposit.

Allowing for a substantial difference between M0 and M4 is the essential point of having a fiat currency rather than being bound to something like the gold standard. Quantitative easing, as implemented in the UK, expands the money supply by increasing demand for the bonds deposited with the BoE in M0 thus reducing their price and therefore the relative cost of cash to retail banks.

Which they’ve basically then sat on.

The BBC’s excellent Money Box had a section on this where they challenged the way that QE is implemented and questioned why, if the ostensible purpose is to stimulate demand, peoples bank accounts aren’t just incremented by about a £1000 each. Answer from the Institute of Directors representative came there none.

It’d be bloody brilliant. If we’re going to actually make up £50bn in new money that didn’t exist before, which is literally what is happening, why shouldn’t everyone get a cheque in the post? We could make it taxable so the policy would be progressive and still be sanatised so we weren’t directly printing money for government spending which is the theoretical reason countries get in trouble. It’s far more likely that people would spend it directly (or reduce their overall debt) which helps keep the economy going, businesses from going under and people in work.

The Independence Referendum: Floating Voters or Flighty Voters?

Feb 12

Posted by Guest Blog in Constitution, Elections, Holyrood | 15 Comments

photo by comedy_nose

A guest today from Dr Paul Cairney, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Head of Department of Politics and International Relations at Aberdeen University.

Say what you like about Lord Ashcroft, but he gets things done with money. While most of us might have been muttering under our breaths about the leading nature of the SNP Government’s proposed independence referendum question, Ashcroft just spent some of his money trying to show how leading it was. His comparison of three questions shows that the wording of the question does seem to have an effect on responses. While 41% agreed that ‘Scotland should be an independent country’ when merely asked to agree, 39% agree when invited to agree or disagree. That figure reduces further to 33% pro-independence when people were asked ‘Should Scotland become an independent country or should it remain part of the United Kingdom?’ (oddly, there were no ‘undecideds’ in these polls, so the remaining respondents go down as ‘no’ votes). We have always known that there would be this kind of effect. In fact, it was more marked when the first SNP Government produced the more convoluted question ‘I agree [I do not agree] that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state’. This wording is one of the few to produce a plurality in favour, presumably because many people will feel that they are not yet being asked to choose (although the latest poll takes us from a slim lead for ‘agree’ back to a slim lead for ‘disagree’). In most other cases, and at most other times, a different wording generally produces a lead for the ‘no’ vote (see the 14-plus different ways to ask the question in chapter 7 here; compare the survey approach with Susan Condor’s work (on English attitudes to change in Scotland), which just asks people what they think – it suggests that they care much less about these issues than forced choice surveys suggest).

The usual conclusion is that we should look at longer term trends, to see if the same question shows more or less support for constitutional change over time. For example, support for independence has, for decades, been about one-third to two-fifths when people are given the option of choosing to retain or extend devolution instead. It may fluctuate, and that fluctuation may be a good story for the papers, but the trends are fairly clear. This is not the argument I want to pursue here. Rather, I think we should focus more on the potential for fluctuation. The referendum will be held on a particular day in a particular context after a particular campaign. Therefore, while the trends will give us a broad idea of public attitudes, they will not tell us what will happen if we witness a ‘perfect storm’ of events that produces a particular attitude on a particular day. I am not suggesting that people will radically reverse their views at a moment’s notice. Rather, I am suggesting one or more of four things. First, some people will be torn between the options and, if not given the comfort of further devolution as a choice, will not know what to do. Second, some people will have a clear idea of what they want, but without doing much soul searching to come to that conclusion. Third, some people will base their decision on a very small amount of information. Fourth, some people will get that information from biased sources and might see things differently if subject to a competing view. Overall, if many people are unsure, or their certainty is based on limited and biased information, it may be possible for a strong campaign – combined with key events – to change people’s minds for a little while. The best example for me so far was the Conservative Government gambit on giving permission to hold the referendum in 18 months. This sort of nonsense could produce all sorts of emotional reactions in the most calculating or ambivalent people.

I want to give this issue more thought than Lord Ashcroft, but I have less money. So, with my colleagues in psychology and physics at Aberdeen, I am developing an online project that probes people’s views about independence and examines how likely it is that those views will change when they are presented with new (or newly framed and sourced) arguments. We will gauge people’s existing knowledge and searches for information, then present them with the chance to agree or disagree with new arguments as presented by different people (on the assumption that they will react differently to arguments presented by, say, Alex Salmond or George Osborne). I need your help. I have a decent idea of the key arguments made about independence so far, and can do a trawl of the papers to make sure. However, I am sure that I have not heard them all. Can you think of pro- or anti- devolution arguments that would not fit into these broad categories (for example, I am not sure where to place the idea that the SNP’s image of governing competence will/ will not affect support for independence)? Or, can you think of some unusual examples in each category?

Economic – e.g. an independent Scotland could not have bailed out the RBS/ the Scottish Government would have avoided the catastrophe; an independent Scottish Government can tailor taxes and growth strategies to Scotland; businesses are happy/ will leave in droves; Scots will be better/ worse off in an independent Scotland

Economic deficits and North Sea Oil – Scotland relies on UK subsidies; the UK relies on Scottish oil

The State – Scotland will be a high tax, high spending country; the Scottish Government will reduce taxes to promote growth

European Union – someone will veto Scotland’s EU membership; we can decide whether or not we want to join; we will have to negotiate our entry or exit; we will have a larger or smaller voice in the EU

The Euro – we will have to join it; we can keep the pound until we choose to join it

Defence – will radically change/ not change Scotland’s role regarding the armed forces and nuclear question; Scotland will lose soldiers and defence contracts

Scotland and the UK – we will have to rebuild Hadrian’s wall and present passports at the border; key relationships will not change

Social attitudes – more Scottish than British? Devolution as a compromise between Scottishness and Britishness? People want/ do not want independence or more powers

History – Scotland as a stateless nation which demands self-government; the UK as a stronger, united country

Constitutional Issues – independence will solve the ‘English question’; the English should have their say; a referendum in Scotland has no legal authority; Scotland will keep the Queen as head of state

International affairs – we will have a small international voice; we will have to recruit a new generation of diplomats