Monday, May 16, 2016 

June 24th: never the end.

By Christ, politics is dispiriting at the moment.

Not that it isn't normally.  It's just the absolute quality of the nonsense of late.  The entirely confected Labour antisemitism row, that just so happened to coincide with the local elections and has since vanished without trace, just for one.  You obviously can't legislate for the newt fancier to suddenly decide to tour TV studios talking about Hitler, but it does show the depths to which a party establishment still unable to face up to how it got itself into this mess will sink.  Just look at the anonymous quotes given to Sam Knight for his New Yorker profile of Corbyn.  "He is an allotment digger," said one ex-cabinet minister.  "Plodding".  What does that say about you then, mate?

It's also that no one it seems can learn the very simplest of lessons.  I hate to keep coming back to this, it's that it's so fucking obvious.  If the Scottish referendum campaign taught us anything, it's that it's suicide to share platforms, even if it's for the greater good.  To see Osborne, Balls and Cable all on a stage together, joined by another of those unacceptable faces of capitalism, Michael O'Leary, it's as though the whole Yes/No neverendum didn't happen.  No, Balls and Cable might not be MPs now, having both lost their seats to the Tories, making it all the stranger why they would decide it was in anyone's best interests to play the part of the shit to Osborne's latest round of bull, but that doesn't make a scrap of difference.  It still looks like the establishment ganging up together, even if the Leave campaign is just as much the establishment as Remain.  There isn't any need for conspiracy theories, as Osborne said, because something that looks very much like a conspiracy to your average passer-by is only made all the more apparent by figures that used to be at each others' throats suddenly making eyes at each other.  Talk about a trifecta of dunces, only one joined by someone who would sell you his grandmother and then charge you extra for her handbag.

Then we have the Leavers, with Boris himself deciding to dust down old Adolf and bring him into the debate.  Now, it might sound beyond stupid to everyone else, comparing the EU to a dictator who used his military in the attempt to create a united Europe, and that's because it is.  It doesn't though to some in the Leave campaign, as Matthew d'Anconservative in one of his lucid moments sets out how comparing the EU to the Nazis has long been a thing.  Those on the far-right usually prefer to describe it as the EUSSR, as clearly all EU member states are just vassals to Brussels, with Jean-Claude Juncker as Brezhnev.  Either way, it's the same thing: the EU has no democratic accountability or credibility.  You only need look at how the EU doesn't take for an answer on previous referendums to see that, obviously.

 Which is precisely why as d'Ancona relates, should Leave lose this time, those who want out will just agitate at every turn for a referendum under the 2011 European Union Act, the first attempt at placate Tory backbenchers by Cameron.  The merest transfer of power to the EU will then trigger another referendum, another fight, another round of each side calling white black, while everyone else either tunes out or becomes so desperate for the end they consider opening their wrists a viable alternative.  June the 24th will never be the end.  Leave learned from the SNP.  Remain hasn't from the mistakes of the No campaign.

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5/16/2016 10:45:00 pm | |

Tuesday, October 20, 2015 

Impotence before the SNP juggernaut.

If there's one thing other than politics guaranteed to bring out the worst in some people, it's competitive international sport.  Orwell might have said that only English intellectuals were ashamed of their nationality, but then he died long before anyone dressed up as a crusader to attend a football match, chanted about not surrendering to the IRA, singing that goes on to this day (and was just last week targeted against James McClean in the Premier League), or booed the opposition's national anthem.  Obviously, you shouldn't hate the player, you should hate the game.

These things are though all but indivisible, at least to some.  After Scotland's last minute defeat to Australia on Saturday, dear old JK Rowling tweeted Scottish Rugby to say they did the country proud.  The response of Stuart Campbell, of the Wings Over Scotland blog, was to tell her and Muriel Gray to "fuck off, as you don't think we're a nation at all".  Rowling, who no doubt gets plenty of such tweets since she has both donated to Labour and opposed the Yes campaign last year, could have just ignored it.  Instead she responded to Campbell and then others in a calm and measured way.  She comes out of it once again looking the model of benevolence, while Campbell in his often obtuse fashion has responded to the wider media coverage of the exchange by focusing on the "fuck off" part, rather than his implying that Rowling cannot support Scotland and oppose independence without being a hypocrite.

Is an online exchange between a political blogger and the Harry Potter author really front page news, however, as it was deemed to be by the Scotsman and the Telegraph?  Campbell might continue to laughably claim that Wings is an independent site when it has never featured a critical word about the SNP, but the idea Nicola Sturgeon has any kind of control over what the most ardent and belligerent independence supporters get up to is nonsense.  That was proved by the reaction of some to Sturgeon's address to the SNP conference, all but ruling out another referendum if as expected the party repeats its success of last May in the Holyrood elections next year.

Such coverage is in fact grist to the SNP mill.  Any other party that has been in power for the past 9 years would be expecting the public and probably even its own supporters to be starting to tire of it.  With the SNP the opposite is the case, and part of the reason for that is the sense of grievance and victimhood that soon bubbles to the surface when the slightest heat is applied.  Fringe gatherings at the conference saw all the old canards voiced: the biased BBC, with even the weather map favouring England, everything being against the SNP despite its success in the face of such apparent adversity, and the odd whinge about not being given their due internationally just to lighten the tone.

To an extent, all parties complain of how unfair the media is to them, and to an extent they occasionally have a point.  When it's a party of government doing the complaining, even if it's just the supporters and MPs rather than the leader themselves, especially one so popular, it becomes that bit more sinister.  And yet it would be perverse to argue that the vast majority of the media wasn't diametrically opposed to Scottish independence, just as it would be to claim that the Better Together campaign wasn't based around fear.  It's this sense that because the SNP's very raison d'etre is so ferociously fought against, even if in truth it took the YouGov poll suggesting the Yes campaign had pulled ahead to really concentrate minds in Whitehall, that drives the ongoing belief the SNP is still an insurgent force rather than an accountable and responsible party of government.

The continuing focus on Cybernats is more than anything a reflection of the impotence of the media.  Independence was defeated, and yet the SNP emerged victorious, having lost the economic argument but won the emotional, patriotic one overwhelmingly.  Having made its case in such terms, convincing if not the 45% then a substantial percentage that opponents of independence are siding with the Westminster elite or are even actively traitorous, it's not surprising when the most vociferous then lash out in response to what to everyone else will see as completely innocuous.  The apparent belief on the part of the media, that by linking Sturgeon to such people she and the SNP can begin to be undermined just doesn't follow.  Even if most weren't of the opinion that the wider media is hopeless biased, it's just another instance of journalists seeming obsessed with themselves and the medium rather than the reality.  Most Scots will have had just as virulent if not more so arguments during the campaign itself; why would they be so disgusted by the abusing of someone as liked as JK Rowling when they will have experienced as much themselves?

Instead, it's far more likely to serve as further reinforcing of already entrenched positions.  More evidence of the media focusing on the irrelevant, trying desperately to link a political leader to online idiots as it can't lay a finger on her otherwise.  Alternatively, more proof of how the SNP has succeeded in splitting Scotland down the middle, to the point where it can't even come together over a rugby match without fingers being pointed and insults being thrown.  Most delightfully of all, we've got our own version of this fast approaching.  I don't know about you, but I can't wait.

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10/20/2015 10:10:00 pm | |

Monday, September 22, 2014 

All transitory.

Despite everything, I still felt a pang of disappointment on waking up on Friday morning.  I'd stayed up for the first results, Clackmannanshire, Shetland, Orkney, the first setting the pattern mostly to be repeated throughout the night: Yes had come close, but still not close enough.  For all my contempt for both campaigns, for the naivety, the scaremongering, the chauvinism, shallow nationalism and baleful bigotry, had I a vote I could only have crossed the yes box.  Given the choice between a state retaining a belief in solidarity, even if not with the neighbours south of the border, something akin to a social democracy, and the atomisation offered by all three Westminster parties? There is no choice.

True, the SNP weren't in reality offering anything like that.  Independence was always just a means to an end, with everything to be determined afterwards.  The idea Alex Salmond isn't an establishment politician is as much of a hoot as Nigel Farage presenting himself as the insurgent; it's how debased and safe our politics has become that both just about get away with it.  When it came down to it, the Yes campaign's failure to answer convincingly the most basic economic questions about an independent Scotland cost it.  The undecideds stripped from the polls simply made it look closer than it was.

We can't of course without further polls know exactly what it was that made the undecideds say no.  Were they always going to, was it last minute doubts, the Daily Record "vow", Gordon Brown's interventions (or the just as electrifying condemnation of the SNP from Vicki Greig for that matter), the warnings from businesses, the horror of making Salmond even more smug and self-assured?  All we do know is the commentariat made its mind up straight away.  Scotland might have said no, but no actually meant yes.  Moreover, despite the rest of us not having a vote, Scotland's no also meant yes to more devolution for rUK.

First though, let's not get too carried away with the 85% turnout.  Present a country with a yes or no choice on whether it remains part of a 300-year old union where every vote counts, and if turnout isn't approaching that level you've got severe problems.  More concerning ought to be how 25% of the electorate of Scotland's biggest city still couldn't be persuaded to make a decision either way.  Alternatively, it could be those 25% are the smartest people around, indifferent to the political weather and perfectly happy with their lot in life.  Perhaps they should be envied, rather than getting us dead inside political junkies why-oh-whying about how they can't be reached.

By the same token, only so much can be made about those who've spent the last year or so hoping against hope Yes would pull it off at the last.  Political movements are prone to collapsing the minute after the moment has passed; remember Occupy, or indeed any real organised opposition to austerity for that matter? Thought not.  When Martin Sorrell remarks on just how quiescent the young are, dulled he no doubt believes by the very promise his advertising offers, we ought to be taking notice.  The radical independence people are most likely to be this decade's Iraq war marchers: there for the extraordinary moment, and left bitter, angry and depressed at the failure to achieve their goal.  Nor is there much comfort to be taken from the level of debate: yes, more people than ever informed themselves via the internet and made their minds up that way; no, it didn't make up for the underlying tenor, the shouting down of the opposition, the all too frequent recourse to the language of betrayal and surrender, the never-ending torrent of shit thrown in all directions by more than just the usual suspects.

Equally, you can appreciate the irony of the London media, so often to be found either bemoaning Scotland or England both suddenly desperate for these septic isles to remain united, seemingly for subconscious atavistic reasons rather than out of any real affection, but it doesn't last long.  Not least when nationalism of one variety leads all but inevitably to the rise of its equivalents, understandable grievance followed by pitiful whinging.  Of all political bores, and let's face it, we're never the most engaging of folk, the most crushingly dull are the constitutionally fixated ones. England needs its own parliament like it needs two John Redwoods, West Lothian question aside.  The word devolution means whatever those clamouring for it say it does, and it's more power for them rather than true localism.  Time and again the public has made clear it has no interest in yet more politicians, whether it be through often rejecting mayors, the north-west assembly or most recently in the derisory turnouts for the police and crime commissioner elections, a creation no one asked for and no one wanted, and yet still a section of the media and the Westminster bubble thinks otherwise.

The dream might live on.  It's just the dream, as always, is transitory.

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9/22/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, September 09, 2014 

Cometh the hour, cometh Brownman.

Every so often a political crisis comes along that just can't be solved by the usual, ordinary methods.  In such times, there is but one man you can turn to.  He can't be reached by phone, his real identity is known only to a select few, and there's no guarantee then he will help out, liable as he is to years of sulking and plotting.  Your best bet of attracting his attention is to ask Commissioner Gordon Hogan-Howe to illuminate the brown signal.  For he is, and will always be, The Brownman.

Yes, now recuperated from the exertion of saving the world from financial meltdown in 2008, Brownman is back to smash the Salmon(d)'s nefarious plot to break Scotland away from the United Kingdom!  Could Brownman this time have left it too late however?  Should he rather than the Boy Darling have led the battle against the Salmon(d)?  And what of the swirling rumours Brownman is only intervening due to the machinations of Two-Face Cameron and Poison Crosby?

Describing the actions of Better Together over the past couple of days as panic doesn't just do a disservice to those who suffer from anxiety attacks, oh no.  We're talking full on, head-just-been-cut-off, running around the farmyard with blood spraying everywhere type attacks of fear-induced mania.  It speaks volumes of the confidence of the no campaign that a single, solitary, within the margin of error, with don't knows stripped out poll giving Yes its first ever lead causes a quite staggering outbreak of oh my god what are we going to do we must do something anything and right now-itis.  These, remember, are politicians meant to be calm, collected and resolute in the face of any threat.  Menaced by the divisions of YouGov they've turned tail and ran straight for the high road.

Leaving it till now, both to use a figure who might make a better emotional case than Alistair Darling and to set out exactly what a no will mean in the form of further devolved powers is baffling, except when you know what a basket case the no campaign has long been.  They believed they could just go on saying no to everything Yes said they could do, and that would be enough.  No currency union, no EU membership, no deals, no friendship, no help, no chance of Scotland becoming Norway.  In fairness, the polls suggested this approach worked, except until the vote got so close you could start to feel it, more people began paying attention and Salmond played the if-you-hate-the-Tories-even-if-you-don't-know-why-vote-Yes card (PDF).

I've tried not to pay too much attention to the Scottish independence campaign for the reason that both sides equally depress, or rather infuriate me.  Generally in politics and as I've often tried to argue here, all involved are ghastly but there's usually one slightly better than the rest, even if the differences between them are almost imperceptible.  Yes peddles a fantasy vision of a Scotland freed from the perfidious English establishment, a country where the sun will always shine, the oil will perpetually flow and the welfare system will forever be more generous and fairer than its south-of-Berwick equivalent.  Sure, every so often either Salmond or Nicola Sturgeon will say they're not claiming independence will be a panacea or transform the nation overnight, but it usually comes after a very particular flight of fancy.  No by contrast paints a picture of a nation too wee, too poor, too stupid to go it alone, one where London knows best and to prove exactly that point will block any proposal, however modest, to give the Scottish people more say.  This is without getting into the petty grievances of both sides, the dead horses beaten daily, the phony differences played up by those who really, really ought to know better, the we're more Scottish than you attitudes on display by all concerned.

Just as sad is how otherwise intelligent people have been sucked in by this cavalcade of bullshit.  Some of those on the left backing independence really seem to believe this is the first step on the road to socialism in one country.  Never mind that the SNP is about as radical as those people wooing and cheering as Apple launches yet another slightly better iPhone than the last one, a party that as Shuggy says has not during its 7 years in power instituted a single redistributive policy, that Salmond is more than happy to pal up with those pinkos Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch, as once the independence deal is done and dusted they can elect someone better.  Like whom?  The Greens?  A reinvigorated Scottish Labour party, suddenly receptive and open to policies they weren't when tied to the English party?  Or do they seriously think the tax cutting yet still somehow able to spend more SNP will turn from yellow to red?  The notion Scotland is more left-wing than the rest of the country doesn't stand up to any kind of real scrutiny; hating Thatcher and not voting for the Tories in the same proportion as us southerners have certainly doesn't equal the same thing.

Yet it's also impossible not to see the attraction.  Forget the chest-beating nationalisms for a second, and why wouldn't you want to take a chance on independence when the alternative is more years of austerity, whether delivered either by a Tory-led or a Labour-led coalition?  No one seems to have connected the spectre of another war on the horizon with the leap in support for Yes, despite independence suggesting a break from the overseas adventurism of the recent past.  Listening to David Cameron speaking last weekend from the NATO conference was to hear a man suffering from the most extreme delusions of grandeur, imagining the nation he leads is still a world power, able to project itself around the world as it builds a second aircraft carrier and ensures defence spending remains at high percentage of GDP.  Who wouldn't want the insufferable, jumped-up arse to be forced to go to the Queen and tell her in the space of four years he's managed to oversee the dismantling of the union?  The idea he could stay as prime minister in such circumstances is laughable, as is the one the general election would go ahead next year as planned.  Besides, do you really want to align yourself with the gimps in power at Westminster, complacent with the apathy they usually encounter, until at last they realise the situation is far more serious than first thought?

The problem with this is both that it's a strange independence movement that wants to break up the United Kingdom yet keep the pound, if necessary without a currency union, all while staying in the European Union, and that even if we accept at face value most of the claims about the true potential of the Scottish economy, it still leaves the country facing an incredibly tough initial decade, such are the levels of debt the newly independent state would take on.  This is if everything goes smoothly in the negotiations between Scotland and rUK, of which there is absolutely no guarantee, with Mark Carney explicit today about the incompatibility of sovereignty and a currency union the SNP insists will happen.  It could just be my natural pessimism talking, but I'd like to think it's in fact realism.

All three main party leaders are then off north tomorrow in their bid to lovebomb Scotland into submission.  It's a pretty pass we've come to when unleashing Brownman is the more rational, more likely to have an impact stunt of the week.

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9/09/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Thursday, August 07, 2014 

If Simon Cowell wants us to stay together, then who are Scots to argue?

One of the absolute finest qualities we as humans possess is our ability to admit when we're wrong, or when we don't know something.  By contrast, never back down, never apologise is the mantra of such towering figures as Kelvin MacKenzie, and even if not immediately, such principles tend to eventually catch up with you.

I will then freely set out how at times this politics thing completely and utterly bewilders me.  Do politicians seriously commission focus groups, which are often nothing of the sort, and use them as their ultimate guide for which policies are most likely to reach the nation's collective erogenous zones?  Did they really imagine that an obviously catastrophic in retrospect ploy would work, when anyone with half a brain could of told them it was beyond idiotic?  Is Grant Shapps a real person and not a fictional creation designed to destroy the Tories from within, ever ready with a charmless, redundant anti-Labour soundbite?

The ultimate example of this has to be, at least in my eyes, the celebrity endorsement.  Absolutely no good can come of it, either to the famous person or the cause they take up/are persuaded to support.  It doesn't matter how noble it is, whether it be trying to stop Sexual Violence in Conflict, a notion that seems to ignore that they the two have always and will always go together and the best way to end the former is to stop the latter, or as we're getting on to, urging the United Kingdom to stay united, someone out there will take against you for it.  Just tweeting #FreePalestine is enough to make an image consultant have kittens, while Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are naturally, according to the Times of Israel and other celebs, antisemites for their comments.  Bono was always a twat, but he didn't really become such a stupendous bell end (yes, equal opportunities sexual organ based insults are here again) until he started his philanthropic work.  At the same time as being a tax exile, natch.

So it is with the 200 or so celebs and semi-celebs who've signed the Let's Stay Together letter.  The sentiment expressed is mild, and done in such a way as to make it unlikely anyone could be genuinely offended by the simple plea for voters to consider all that we've shared over the past 300 years of union.  At the same time, those behind the campaign have what could be described as a murky past, and the message is one anyone contemplating voting yes will have already thought over themselves.  They really don't need people without a vote, famous ones at that, to tell them something they already know.  Some might also recall the Guardian's Clark Country fiasco back in 2004, when the paper urged readers to write to voters in America as to why they shouldn't re-elect George Bush.  It didn't go well.

Nor does it help when the vast majority of those who've added their signature are exactly the kind of celebs you'd be tempted to move to an independent Scotland to avoid.  The very first name is David Aaronovitch, for crying out loud.  Kirstie Allsopp swiftly follows, and once you realise both Trinny and Susannah have signed, along with Neil "paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me" Fox, it's easier to note those on the list who aren't complete tools.  Like Olivia Colman, David Mitchell and Tamsin Greig.  Or Stephen Hawking and Doreen Lawrence.  Then you realise Simon Cowell, Tracey Emin and Andrew Lloyd-Webber have also etched their initials, and heading north of Gretna after a Yes vote once again looks incredibly attractive.

It wouldn't be so bad if the lead No has in the opinion polls didn't look all but impregnable, or had Alex Salmond trounced Alistair Darling in the debate as so many expected he would.  As it happened, Salmond fell shortest on the currency question, the exact quandary Yes campaigners have repeatedly and with some justification said is a non-issue.  The problem is voters don't believe the rUK will roll over after a Yes vote and say OK, let's discuss this in a civilised fashion now it's happened, even if that's most likely what would happen.  Nor did Salmond help himself by bringing up the scare stories over a Yes vote, as it's one thing for a blog like Wings to do it, and quite another for the prospective first prime minister of an independent Scotland to.

Much as you don't want it to be the case, Project Fear looks as though it's done its job.  The Yes campaign's insistence everything will be absolutely fine post-independence just hasn't worked when set against the apocalyptic visions painted by Better Together.  A better society as Salmond promises is a fine sentiment, it just doesn't seem able to win out against those worried about what might happen if things don't go according to the SNP's plan.  Add in what you can only describe as the naivety of the Radical Independence campaigners, convinced supporting the SNP now will mean jam tomorrow, and it will take something miraculous for the gap to be made up.  A bunch of well-meaning if jumped up celebrities aren't going to piss off that many wavering voters, sadly.

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8/07/2014 10:36:00 pm | |

Tuesday, May 13, 2014 

Between the doomers and the Milibelievers.

The obvious, arguably only response to two polls showing a Tory lead for the first time in two years is to put your panic trousers on.  To some this is only what they've expected and long predicted. The "Milibelievers" have been living in a dream world, a comforting place now infiltrated by the twin monsters of past economic failure and lack of leadership projection. With the economy growing, even if the recovery isn't being felt much beyond the south east, only for so long could Labour live off the general unpopularity of the coalition and the emphasis on the cost of living. If anything, Labour should be grateful for the rise of the UKIPs: without Farage's party, now regularly polling at around the 15% mark, the Tory lead would likely be even more crushing.

Scarily, even if just this once, Labour's doomers might have something resembling a point.  You can make all the usual, valid points about outlier polls, margins of error, how on Sunday YouGov had the party with a 7 point advantage over the Tories, it just being a blip and so on and so forth, it doesn't alter the fact that the gap has been steadily lessening.  Yes, everyone knew the Conservatives would make up ground as the general election approached, as they always have; that they have done so prior to elections it was thought they would do badly in, and probably still will, all things considered, is a major surprise.  Last month's 6 point lead in the Graun/ICM series was probably boosted a little by the Maria Miller factor, and while the Tories still have to increase their share of the vote on last time to have any hope of getting a majority in parliament, something not achieved since 1974, an outright Labour victory also looks unlikely.

Most of these worries will be played down in precisely these terms, and besides, with a year still to go anything could happen (more on which in a minute).  The one finding that stands out from the Graun poll which can't be so easily explained away is the transformation in attitude towards George Osborne.  Lest we forget, just less than 2 years ago he was being booed by the crowd at the Paralympics, and for long periods since has been about as popular as a musical on the X Factor endorsed by Mr Cowell himself.  With the budget well received, despite not doing much other than bribing those likely to vote with their own money, Osborne is now, incredibly, seen as doing a better job than David Cameron is.  He gets a +5 score, compared to Dave's +2.  Ed Miliband by contrast is now somehow seen as putting in a poorer performance than the Cleggster, at -25 compared to Nick's -21.

Apart from further boosting Osborne's already off the scale opinion of himself, it brings into sharp focus how the problem right now is not policies, which for so long were sketches and for the most part still are, with occasional specific promises like getting a doctor's appointment within 48 hours thrown in to add colour, but Miliband himself.  This isn't due to Miliband not having been seen enough, although both he and most other shadow ministers seem to have a tendency to disappear from view for long periods of time for no discernible reason, it's instead down to how many have made their minds up already.  It's not that Ed's a "metropolitan libural" as the likes of Dan Hodges have it, not understanding the average Labour voter, especially when the charge is now being made against all of the political leaders by the UKIPs, it's that he's not different enough.  When someone as establishment as Nigel Farage can pose as a revolutionary, it really shouldn't take much for Ed to position himself as firmly on the side of the dispossessed, vulnerable and struggling to make ends meet.  That he hasn't is down to how Labour under Ed has never decided what it wants to be: the Tories with a slightly kinder face, a position they so often default to, or an actual opposition, against the coalition's running down and belittling of the NHS, welfare state and much else that so many hold dear.  For all his attempts to be radical, and indeed the corresponding attempts by both the Tories and the right-wing press to paint him as a raving Marxist, he's just another Westminster politician, the same old same old.

This isn't a counsel of despair by any means.  Winning the policy battle shows that, in spite of what John Harris wrote last month.  It does however mean Ed's style of leadership has to change, which is presumably why David Axelrod has been brought in.  The difficulty is it might have been left too late, with perceptions now that much harder to shift.  All may yet depend on just how right-wing the Tories go in the face of the challenge from UKIP, with the potential for centrist voters to be turned off by the attempt to woo back defectors to Farage.

Also needing to be factored into the equation is the increasing possibility of a yes vote in the Scottish independence referendum.  The SNP campaign over the last couple of months has amounted to little more than asking everyone whether they want to be governed by Cameron or someone they've chosen themselves, the hardly surprising response being the latter.  The further Labour slip in the Westminster polls, the more the undecided start wondering whether the only way to get a government even slightly responsive to their concerns is by voting yes.  Scottish independence wouldn't mean perpetual Tory government in England and Wales, but it would render the 2015 vote all but void, almost certainly necessitating another general election once Scotland secedes a year later.  It probably won't happen, yet such has been the volatility since the rise of UKIP post the 2012 local elections you wouldn't completely rule it out either.  All the more reason why Miliband and co have to do better, and if these two polls don't end the complacency that's set in, nothing will.

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5/13/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, April 08, 2014 

Scottish independence and "the forces of darkness".

The Better Together campaign against Scottish independence hasn't had a great time of it recently. Ever since the Graun quoted an unnamed minister apparently due to be involved in the negotiations should there be a yes vote as saying a currency union would be possible in exchange for Scotland continuing to host nuclear weapons at Faslane it's seemed more on the backfoot than usual. They must know "Project Fear" isn't working, but as yet they still haven't come up with an alternative. Last week instead saw a step-up in the complaints about online nationalists supposedly abusing their opponents, the internet equivalent of taking your ball and going home.

Lord Robertson wasn't speaking on behalf of Better Together at his Brookings Institution speech, although that won't stop everyone, myself included, from linking his ridiculous scaremongering to the No campaign's overall message.  As a paragon of the substrata of the political and military establishment seemingly unable to address any matter without seeing it through a prism of what's good for NATO is good for the world, he naturally thinks the United Kingdom breaking up would be the second great victory for dictators and annexers of the year. What's more, it will encourage all the other separatists in Europe, could undermine peace in Northern Ireland and also prepare the ground for the four horsemen of the apocalypse. To call it unhinged doesn't quite do it justice; the idea Scottish independence "could ... impact on the stability of the world" is only slightly less absurd than suggesting Colonel Gaddafi could rise from his grave and come back to power in Libya.

It doesn't even begin to make the slightest sense.  You could understand it more if Scotland were, as some would like, not intending to rejoin NATO or the European Union immediately, except that's precisely what the SNP is proposing.  Despite some on the no side comparing the SNP to the UKIPs, the differences couldn't be more stark: the SNP if anything wants to play more of a role in the EU than the UK currently does, and also favours immigration.  They might be similar in the way both insist that any problems with becoming independent/leaving the EU will be overcome as soon as the decision has been made, and in the personality cult surrounding their respective leaders, but that's about as far as it goes.

Robertson's argument is all the more mystifying for coming at the precise moment when such pleading to think about the consequences for everyone else appears to have lost the impact it once had.  Nigel Farage's man love for Putin is revealing for a supposed libertarian, and his claim that the EU has blood on its hands over Ukraine the most specious nonsense, yet one of his most telling blows against Clegg in the second debate was his attack on the deputy prime minister for being "hell-bent" on bombing Syria.  As exemplified by the coalition not crowing about what should be one of its crowning achievements, having now reached the point where 0.7% of gross national income is spent on international aid, going out of our way to "help" other nations is not currently in fashion.  While there's a world of difference between going beyond the bare minimum in helping developing countries and bombing those said countries, or at least there should be, the fact is the political class is no longer trusted when it comes to either.

This poses a problem when so much of the establishment still earnestly believes in interventionism.  We've just had the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, from which the notion of the responsibility to protect emerged, despite how peacekeepers were on the ground both there and in Serbia at the time of Srebrencia.  The same human rights organisations opposed to the Iraq war were practically cheerleading for an attack on Syria last year, with those of my generation who were in favour of removing Saddam Hussein now ensconced in positions of power in both Amnesty and Human Rights Watch.  Despite the failures of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, there isn't the slightest indication that any lessons have been learned from the mistakes, hardly surprising when the Western media en masse celebrated Afghans "defying" the Taliban to vote last weekend, as though that was their main reason for casting their ballots, nor have any reflected on whether those interventions might just have influenced Russia's annexing of Crimea.  Instead we have Tony Blair (who we shouldn't be calling a war criminal apparently) once again given the time and space to say we will regret not acting on Syria, as though that isn't precisely what we've been covertly doing now for over 2 years.

Much as I loathe the moaning about the metropolitan elite, much of which ironically comes from those who are, err, a part of the metropolitan elite, they've started to have a point when it comes to foreign policy.  If we're to believe Seymour Hersh's latest report for the London Review of Books, the real reason Obama pulled back at the last minute from attacking Syria is it was discovered the sarin supposedly used by Assad's forces in Ghouta didn't match with the batches in Syrian government possession, and was instead part of a false flag attempt to force just such an attack by the Turkish government.  As incredible as that seems, there is evidence of other Turkish skulduggery in Syria, notably the conversation posted on YouTube, prompting the site's shortlived ban in the country, and which seemed to be between government figures discussing staging an attack the Turks could then use to justify intervening more widely themselves.  If the international community can come so close to being so spectacularly fooled, not to mention shown up over Crimea,  it takes a hell of a lot of chutzpah to then lecture ordinary Scots on what they should consider before they cast their vote come the referendum.

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4/08/2014 11:16:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 26, 2014 

Stratchclyde Partnership for Transport gives you wings.

It's fair to say that I am yet to be convinced by any of those arguing in favour of Scottish independence. Apart from how I find it extraordinarily difficult to separate narrow nationalism from short-sighted political chauvinism, being constantly reminded of Renton's outburst in Trainspotting, I simply don't follow the case made by the radical independence people.  Should Scotland vote yes it certainly won't mean that the SNP will be in government for perpetuity, but the idea this will open a gap for those further to the left just doesn't tally. The SNP is fundamentally an authoritarian party, albeit one closer to social democracy than Labour has been in two decades. It's made the exact same compromises though, as evidenced by Salmond's sucking up to Murdoch and pledges on corporation tax and air passenger duty.  Imagining that giving them their greatest ever victory will in turn result in a triumph for those opposed to neoliberalism is just wishful thinking.

This said, it's difficult not to be slightly overawed by the efforts of some on the Yes side, as epitomised by Wings Over Scotland. Having already crowdfunded two opinion polls, Stuart Campbell's last appeal for cash to keep up the site's campaigning brought in over £100,000, a sum which astonished everyone. With some of this extra money, Campbell booked an ad to run on the Glasgow subway, a simple yet bold design pointing out that not a single national or daily paper supports independence.

Almost entirely predictably, within hours of the ad appearing it was being pulled.  The reason? It's difficult to tell, as the advertising contractor Primesight and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport have now taken to blaming each other, but it seems as though the justification remains that the ad is "political". Except, as should be clear to anyone even passingly impartial, it's not. While you can quibble over the exact number of papers that are Scottish owned, with Campbell accepting he forgot about the Greenock Telegraph, no Scottish paper does support independence.  The Wings advert is no different from a newspaper declaring what its political affiliation in the same way; how anyone could claim that makes the advert itself political completely escapes me. If anything, it reminds of the Guardian's well known advert from the 80s, which also advocated taking a wider view.

Whether the decision itself was political, and it's difficult to shake the feeling it might well have been, the knock on effect has been just as predictable: news articles on the controversy mean that thousands more people than would ever have seen the ad on the tube are now aware of it and Wings Over Scotland (Wings has also had its money refunded).  It also shows the Tube operators in an extremely poor light, especially when the newspaper distributed on the network today carries an advert attacking, err, the Yes campaign and directs readers to a website. Even if the Yes campaign does fail, and while I suspect the end result will be far closer than most polls suggest you'd have to be a brave man to bet against an No, the Scottish media and their friends in power have been shown up as never before.

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3/26/2014 11:16:00 pm | |

Monday, February 24, 2014 

Aberdeen is full of crushing bores.

You have to feel for the people of Aberdeen.  It's bad enough one group of politicians taking it upon themselves to pay a visit to your city, predicated on the strange belief that doing so will suggest that the metropolitan based elite aren't just concerned with the bright lights of London and the south east but also them there yokels; when two turn up, it's enough to make you reach for the digitalis.  About the only such jaunts that gain anything approaching a hubbub are royal ones, for goodness knows which atavistic reason.  Even more bizarre is the Tory insistence on both Dave n' George being seen to visit businesses that demand they don the necessary gear, generally white or blue overalls, hi-vis jackets and hard hats.  Whether this is meant to conjure up the impression of the pair caring deeply about our manufacturing and construction base, or that had they followed a different path they could have been working in such an environment, all it does is make them look like prize twats, successors to the mantle of Hugh Abbott, although as yet neither have been accosted by a woman asking if they know what it's like to clean up their own mother's piss.

To be fair, the real reason both the UK and Scottish cabinets made a stop off in places close to Aberdeen today is due to the city being the country's oil and gas capital.  It would be a bit off to make major announcements about investment in the North Sea sector without at least referring to the damn place, not that it's much consolation to those who had to suffer Salmond, Cameron and the media apparatus descending for a few hours.

Quite why Cameron and pals felt they had to go so big with the report by Sir Ian Wood is something else entirely.  The big questions about an independent Scotland are those that have been discussed over the past few weeks, which currency would it use, would it be able to join the EU, is the SNP promising dick pills to those who vote yes and the Better Together clan suggesting the four horsemen will descend on the 19th of September should the result be yes an unsustainable strategy, and so on.  When it comes to oil, there are a few facts that are difficult to argue against.  That Scotland and indeed the UK as a whole didn't benefit as they should have done from the oil rush, with successive governments preferring to spend at the time rather than save for later making it the SNP and Alex Salmond's trump card, the party promising to right the wrong.  It might turn out that it's too late to set up a sovereign wealth fund now, even if an independent Scotland implemented the recommendations of Sir Ian Wood, but at least it's an attempt to do something.

Which makes it all the more head scratching why Cameron insisted it was only under Westminster tutelage that such funding and investment would be possible.  Take the worst case scenario in the event of independence, that Osborne and the other parties carry through their threats not to agree to a currency union, Scotland as a result refuses to accept its share of the national debt and so is penalised by the markets when it wants to borrow.  Even in such circumstances it's difficult to see why investors wouldn't want to grab a share of the £200bn it's suggested could still be underground, difficulties in extracting it or not.  As overblown as the SNP's vision of Scotland as the new Norway is, you can't help but think it might just put the windfall to better use than the UK has up till now.  Cameron's rhetoric comes as close to the bluster we've heard about recently as anything, his supposed "positive case" laughably inept.

Despite all the carping from Salmond on the basis of a single opinion poll that support for independence had gone up in the wake of the Better Together currency union gambit, a broader view suggests it's done relatively little to alter the standings.  This is hardly surprising when many are yet to make up their minds and almost certainly won't until the last minute.  The polls will narrow as we approach the 18th of September, it's whether Yes Scotland can continue to make a case that convinces the head as much as the heart.  The way the three unionist parties handled the currency union argument was botched yet the right idea, focusing on the uncertainties the SNP have brushed over.  Paul Krugman's intervention shows the SNP doesn't have all the Nobel laureates on its side.  They might also have a few less of those who have a vote, so long as Cameron and friends can be persuaded to keep a low profile from now on.

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2/24/2014 11:46:00 pm | |

Monday, February 17, 2014 

Breaking up is hard to do.

While there's been little polling as yet on whether or not the gambit by the three Westminster parties to oppose currency union with an independent Scotland outright has had any impact, although indications suggest it may well have backfired, Alex Salmond's response today was billed as being a "point-by-point deconstruction" of their stance.  As was predictable when both sides prefer hyperbole to anything so much as resembling dispassionate analysis, it was nothing of the sort.

Salmond's first problem is that regardless of the spin put on it by Osborne and friends, it's a policy based on the analysis from the permanent secretary to the Treasury, an independent figure.  Salmond can dispute the merit and strength of Sir Nicholas Macpherson's reasoning, but not its source.  Instead then he dealt purely with Osborne, only mentioning the paper from the Treasury once.  Second, of the two new points he made, his publication of an analysis suggesting a £500m cost to UK businesses if there wasn't a currency union is based on the obvious assumption that, rather than using sterling informally, Scotland sets up an entirely new currency.  This would be fair enough if this was the SNP's Plan B, except it clearly isn't.  For someone who denounces the negative campaigning and calls out the No campaign as being Project Fear, this is rather desperate stuff, as making the argument has been from the outset.  It's also as transparent as can be - if Scotland votes yes, it will use the pound, whether within a currency union or not.  No business is going to fall for the same bluster as Salmond has been condemning

On surer ground is the response from Salmond and others to José Manuel Barroso's renewed comments that an independent Scotland joining the EU would "be difficult, if not impossible", if only because Salmond's point that Scotland would almost certainly have an easier time agreeing to join than Cameron will "renegotiating" the rest of the UK's relationship was spot on.  This said, we simply don't know how those negotiations will go until they happen, or indeed whether Spain or other states might object, despite suggestions they will keep their own opposition to Catalonian independence as a separate matter.  By the same token, Salmond is continuing to bet everything on rUK being more receptive to a currency union once the referendum has been won, as Osborne and pals may well be.  Salmond's other argument however, that it is "insulting as well as demeaning" to be told you have no rights to assets built up jointly cuts both ways.  He imagines that public opinion in the rUK will side with the newly independent Scotland's claims to the pound, disregarding how bloody-minded and parochial the nationalists south of the border are also.  Breaking up is hard to do, as it would be nice for the SNP to acknowledge every now and then.

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2/17/2014 08:26:00 pm | |

Thursday, February 13, 2014 

The weirdest good cop/bad cop strategy in history.

The Tories have come up with what might be the oddest good cop/bad cop strategy in history when it comes to Scottish independence.  Just last Friday David Cameron was invoking the spirit of London 2012, summoning up all the usual boilerplate about this being the greatest country on Earth, something the Americans are much better at claiming because they genuinely believe it, urging reluctant unionists to tell undecided Scottish friends to stay. 6 days on and George Osborne is back to ramping up the fear, allied with the gruesome twosome of Ed Balls and Beaker Danny Alexander. Should Scotland vote yes, there will be no currency union, end of.

For those who like me think that every time a Tory opens their mouth on independence the yes campaign cheers, it doesn't exactly strike as a winning formula. Not that there was anything spectacularly wrong with Cameron's speech, despite the wearying nonsense about Britain being a brand; if anything, more misjudged was the response from Nicola Sturgeon, complaining about the PM leeching off past sporting glories, apparently letting the fact Alex Salmond had been far more shameless in unfurling a Saltire as Andy Murray won Wimbledon slip her mind.

While David Cameron can do charm, even if it's patently insincere, George Osborne by contrast can only do smarm.  Putting him up in what seems to be a Better Together orchestrated operation to say there will be no negotiations for a currency union is the equivalent of a two finger salute, and the obvious response is to reciprocate.  Yes, he was essentially just presenting the advice provided to him by the permanent secretary to the Treasury, but surely a better option would have been to release the letter and allow someone else to make the case.  Far more than the whole thing being a stitch-up between the Westminster parties, that it was once again a Conservative telling Scotland what it can and can't do seems to play straight into the SNP's hands.

This in turn undermines how this is certainly the most significant challenge yet to Yes Scotland's narrative, and it's one they could have avoided.  Scotland's Future was weakest where it should have strongest, glossing over any potential problems in keeping the pound, as well as in joining the EU.  It might indeed be the "most logical option" to have a currency union, yet independence supporters despite their arguments are playing a weak hand.  The threat to default on taking a share of the national debt if a currency union is refused would almost certainly lead, as Robert Peston says, to investors demanding a punitive interest rate when the newly independent country seeks to borrow.  This would doubtless drop within a few years but could still be crippling.  The SNP's enthusiasm for a currency union also downplays the disadvantages to one, namely that it brings into question how independent a sovereign nation is when its monetary policy is decided in another country entirely.  Using the pound without currency union is certainly an option, just as the dollar is used without permission as the official currency in a number of south American states, and the Euro is in Kosovo, but carries risks (not having a lender of last resort) as well as benefits.

The SNP's response has been, as always, to claim plucky little Scotland is being bullied by the big boys, with a secondary line of it all being bluster and bluff.  It could well be, but the whole point is to plant doubts, something the ploy will certainly achieve.  The other implicit threat is that regardless of the Edinburgh Agreement, the rest of the UK on independence would refuse to just go through the motions when it came to the discussions on (re)joining the EU, NATO, etc should Scotland in turn renege on paying its share of the national debt.  Macpherson suggests this cutting off your nose to spite your face strategy could potentially cost less than currency union with a nation that has "misaligned tax and spending policies", which seems a more devastating critique of the SNP's vision of independence than anything yet come up with by Better Together.

All of which goes to the heart of the campaigns so far run by both Yes Scotland and Better Together. The SNP's case at times has, as Flying Rodent puts it, been only slightly off "promising every man in the country a bigger dick and a Lexus full of cocaine".  Scotland certainly could be a successful independent country,  just not necessarily the social democratic paradise they're so keen to paint it as becoming.  By the same token Better Together hasn't even bothered to present a positive case for the union despite the impression conjured up by its name, preferring instead to scaremonger and also bleat about supposed smearing by cyber-nationalists.  Both would benefit from dialling it down a shade, presenting a more realistic case and even, gasp, accepting their opponents' arguments are legitimate.

And the three bears.

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2/13/2014 10:40:00 pm | |

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 

Promising too much, too soon.

The old adage if something looks too good to be true it probably is applies just as much to politics as everything else in life. To go by the extensive and also exhausting document produced by the SNP making the case for independence, Scotland is a veritable land of milk and honey, only held back by the perfidy of everyone south of Berwick. If given the opportunity to go it alone, taking back control of North Sea oil, within a matter of years the country could be rivalling Norway for wealth, its own sovereign fund guaranteeing prosperity for decades to come. Benefits would rise, hated impositions such as the bedroom tax will be abolished, the minimum wage increased, and yet taxes will either stay the same or in some cases be cut.

To give the SNP their due, it is undoubtedly a positive, progressive and admirable vision of what they believe their nation could become. For an obsolete old leftie like me, on the surface it's incredibly attractive, and promotes the kind of policies I'd (mostly) love to see implemented at Westminster. Getting rid of Trident? Check. Promoting and welcoming immigration rather than demonising it? Check (answer 359). Looking towards decriminalising drugs? Check (answer 418). Celebrating being, or in this instance becoming, a member of the EU rather than edging towards the exit? Check.  Rethinking the disaster of the work programme and workfare in general?  Once again, check.

Why then does the entire thing leave me cold?  It's not just that to call much of it pie in the sky would be an insult to flingable pastry based products, it's where it's come from and who's offering it.  I can of course understand the grievances that have built up over the past few decades (or centuries, in some cases), not least the impositions of the Thatcher years and the squandering of the wealth the aforementioned oil could have brought to Britain as a whole.  It's also true Scotland has been dismally represented down the years, and continues to be to this day.  Whether by Tory Scottish ministers who put forward the country as a testing ground for the poll tax, or catastrophically inept Labour politicians who prospered thanks to a complete lack of opposition, the country has long deserved better.

Does it deserve the SNP though?  With the exception of Alex Salmond, lower down the ranks the party isn't in a much better state than its rivals.  Indeed, that Nicola Sturgeon has long been Salmond's deputy is enough of an indictment of the party's lack of talent.  It triumphed in the 2011 Scottish parliament elections not so much due to having a unique selling point, more that it's either them or Labour, with Lib Dem and Tory supporters favouring the SNP, at least that time round.  Considering they are exactly the people likely to be either against or leaning towards voting no, there's really very little in Scotland's Future designed to appeal to them.  Strip away the updated parts that point the finger at the coalition, and it's almost exactly the same case as Salmond and the SNP were making before the crash, just with far less talk of "arcs of prosperity", and Iceland and Ireland exchanged solely with Norway.

For all the claims of encouraging growth, the economic priorities set out amount to their childcare plans, which they believe will result in women being able to return to work as well as creating 35,000 jobs, and cutting corporation tax and err, air passenger duty.  The result of the cuts in corporation tax by the coalition so far? A fall in the amount expected to be collected.  As we've learned over the past couple of years, getting multinational companies to pay corporation tax at all is difficult enough; why would they suddenly decide to just because it's been cut by a further 3%?  It also raises the spectre of a race to the bottom: why would any future chancellor of England, Wales and Northern Ireland not reduce it to the same level as in Scotland in order to match it?  Salmond seems to want to rerun the boom years, spending plenty, while not explaining how it will all be paid for.

This is the obvious disjunct and flaw in the SNP's otherwise better than could have been expected case.  Scotland may be rich in natural resources, but the reason countries such as Norway, Australia and others in a similar position have managed to avoid recession or the worst of the crash is that they had the foresight and will to plan ahead.  Should the country vote yes, the SNP will be starting from scratch.  You don't need to take the IFS report on the SNP's proposals as gospel to think they're promising far too much, far too soon.  At the same time, they dismiss out of hand any suggestion that a currency union might not go too smoothly, that the EU might not immediately welcome an independent Scotland into its fold, while indulging also in pettiness, setting up a Scottish Broadcasting Service out of the ashes of BBC Scotland, not apparently expecting those working for the corporation to object.  Scotland's Future might answer 650 separate questions, but it doesn't bring us any closer to knowing what the only one that matters will be.

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11/26/2013 11:59:00 pm | |

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