Westminster Isn't Working
Deborah Orr writing in The Guardian makes the same argument I've been advancing recently, that because the Westminster Parliament is so unrepresentative and undemocratic, Scottish independence is its best hope for change.
I vote for a variety of political parties or independent candidates these days, depending on the circumstances, but there's no doubt in my mind that Scotland is a better place for having broken the old 'two party' politics so beloved of both Labour and the Tories.
As Deborah Orr right points out we are where we are today because Westminster (both Labour and Tories) refused to stake seriously the idea of Scotland being granted fiscal autonomy within the Union, yet since an independence referendum has got underway all of the UK parties have been queuing up to say they support more powers for the Scottish Parliament.
But the big question is: Can you really have any trust in politicians who behave in such a cynical way?, to which I suspect the answer is No becauseWestminster is dominated by vested party interests and isn't working in the interests of the people these days.
Scottish independence would change England more than Scotland
JK Rowling is right that kneejerk, sentimental patriotism is unappealing but why wouldn't Scotland want to govern itself, with UK democracy in such a parlous state?
By Deborah Orr - The Guardian
JK Rowling … it's no surprise that the high-profile Labour supporter is a unionist. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Alarmed by the aggressive timbre of some of Scotland's pro-independence debate, the writer JK Rowling has donated £1m to the No campaign. Or "Bitter Together", as some of us like to call it. Her point was proved as Scottish separatists swarmed all over social networks, hurling abuse in response to news of the donation. Scoundrels, all of them, with patriotism their last refuge. (That's the coinage of Englishman Samuel Johnson, recorded for posterity by a Scotsman, James Boswell. Which is nice.)
Rowling is right on this. The kneejerk, sentimental, victim-mentality, Hate-the-English-colonisers patriotism that some Scots display is pretty much the most unappealing of Scotland's products. There is no more abject argument in favour of Scottish independence than naked, angry nationalism. The paradox is that only independence can rid the country of that pathetic strain of chip-on-the-shoulder, tribal narcissism. Even then, it would take a while before they stopped blaming Westminster for any difficulties that appeared resistant to the instantly cleansing magic of home rule. That, however, does not mean that there are no good reasons for Scottish self-governance. There are plenty.
It's no surprise that Rowling is a unionist. She is a high-profile Labour supporter, and Labour loves the union. Of course it does. Labour supporters are fond of pointing out that there are more pandas in Scotland than there are Conservative MPs. Without Scottish seats in Westminster, Labour would find it much more difficult to win general elections in the south. That's the main reason why many people in England dread an independent Scotland, too.
Scotland has long provided a bulwark against English Conservatism, which is why it may look as if the Tories are acting out of principle in supporting the union, rather than their usual self-interest. They are not. Westminster-based, two-party politics suits the Conservatives, because even when they are not in power, their opponent, Labour, only gets in when it has convinced the City of London that it has nothing to fear from them.
It's so ironic that the last Labour government fell because of the financial crash, because the unfettered, free-market City was everything that a truly social-democratic government should have guarded against. And it's ironic that Labour is losing support in England to Ukip. There was no greater cheerleader for open borders than the City of London, who wanted to have the wealth to attract the greediest financial predators and the low, bottom-end wages to ensure that they didn't have to spend money that could be invested offshore on paying a decent wage to those who served them. The limitations of an adversarial system of Westminster government are stifling enough in England. In Scotland, when one of those two parties barely exists, yet still has long periods of rule, it's actually abusive.
Rowling argues that in an independent Scotland, the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland would have bankrupted the country, because it was bailed out by central government. But she forgets that Scotland never voted for Thatcher's Big Bang deregulation of the City, let alone the vandalistic deindustralisation of Scotland that came hand-in-hand with it. Also, while Rowling may have been an admirer of New Labour, many Scots would rather have voted for a Labour party that didn't squander its landslide by continuing to leave financial services as a law unto themselves. Yes, New Labour was dominated by Scots. But it was the English the Labour big beasts had to woo, not their Scottish constituents.
The truth is that the SNP are only in power in Scotland, and able to offer this referendum, because Scotland got so fed up with being part of a two-party state that is more like two one-party states shackled together. Labour thought it could afford to be complacent about Scotland, especially after devolution. It is finally realising that that was a huge mistake. In recent decades it has become horribly apparent that Scotland's main political function in the union is to provide democratic cover for a UK that is ruled for and by the home counties, whoever is in power. If you actually lived in Scotland in the grotesque and awful Thatcher years, under that repellent caricature of democracy – well, it really sucked. Devolution helped, in a limited way. But we are only where we are now, first, because Westminster refused to take seriously the idea of granting Scotland fiscal autonomy within the union, and second, because the north of England remains so sleepily opposed to devolved government itself.
If Scotland leaves the union, the collapse of political stability in England will accelerate. A pro-independence vote is a pro-democracy vote, and it's a shame that it falls to the Scots to shake England from its slumber. What the UK needs is stronger local government and a smaller Westminster that does not concern itself with micromanaging the lives of people it neither understands nor cares about. With Scotland gone from Westminster, that would become much more apparent in England than it already is. Scottish independence would change England more than Scotland. If England showed a bit more willingness to change, there wouldn't be such a problem.
I'm no Scottish nationalist. But I am enthusiastic about responsive and democratic government, transparent and accountable, for all people, everywhere. I'd have preferred for that to be achieved, for Scotland, within the union. But it just isn't happening. The fact that "devo max" was not offered as an option in this referendum (blocked by Cameron) is proof that Westminster simply doesn't want to improve UK democracy. I'm certain that if Scotland was forced to go it alone, then it most certainly could deliver a more democratic system of governance. For one overwhelming reason: it couldn't do worse.
Like many Scots, I am irked by arguments from the No campaigners that Scotland isn't capable of independence. Really? Our education system has always been separate, and it's doing fine, thanks. In fact, more people in Scotland have had higher education than in the union as a whole. At the risk of sounding like a patriot, I'll point out that Scotland isn't just the best-educated country in the union, the Office for National Statistics reckons it's probably about the best-educated country on the planet. That's where England is trying to head, right?
Yet, despite Scotland's advantage in intellectual capital, there is much scaremongering from No campaigners about the ability of a Scottish economy to flourish. Rowling is right to say that the Yes campaign is unwilling to engage with these arguments. But why should it? Scotland unequivocably wants responsibility for its own tax and spending decisions, for better or for worse. It is not afraid of failure. A recent poll showed that, given the choice between fiscal autonomy and full independence, 61% would choose the former. Given the choice between fiscal autonomy and the status quo, that figure rises by 1%.
Scotland wants to be responsible for its own financial affairs. Finger-wagging paternalists who say we couldn't manage fail to see, first, that their attitude is annoying, and, second, that it is not about being rich or poor, successful or unsuccessful. It is about standing or falling because of choices you have made yourself, not because of choices that have been imposed on you. It is a psychologically healthy and mature position. I can think of no other situation in which a willingness to be responsible for your own budget would be so discouraged and denigrated in a group of people. At their worst, Scottish nationalists are as creepy and pathetic as EDL members down south. But self-governance isn't about that. It's about believing you can arrange matters in a way that will be inspirational to others – shine a light in a world that is a bit of a mess. Do I believe that, given the tools, Scotland is capable of making such a contribution? Do I believe it should have the courage to try? I do. Yes.
Politics is Broken (5 October 2013)
I thought this comment piece by Philip Collins in yesterday's Times hit the nail right on the head - with the caveat that Philip did not really do justice to the politics of Scotland where a once all powerful Labour Party has had its gas put at a peep in recent years by the SNP.
But otherwise Collins is correct to say that the politics of the country - largely England of course - are bitterly divided with politicians focused on finding and exploiting even small differences between rival parties - instead of finding ways to work together to solve common problems.
All of which suggests that the our broken electoral system at Westminster needs major surgery and that political sticking plasters won't do.
To my mind Scotland turned a corner in 1999 when fairer voting system was introduced for the Scottish Parliament - and again in 2007 when PR (proportional representation) was introduced for elections to Scotland's 32 local councils.
Where Scotland leads - Westminster must surely follow.
No one party can unite this divided nation
By Philip Collins
Cameron cannot speak to the North, Miliband relies on his core vote. Only Clegg can bridge the gap
In Paul Morley’s rambling and vast compendium The North (And Almost Everything In It) one thing is very much not in it. Apart from Disraeli’s remark that only the philosopher has the grandeur to appreciate the immensity of Manchester’s future and a couple of flicks at Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party is not in it. The thumbnail sketches of famous Northerners makes the cumulative point that this is not a nation that the Tories understand.
The Conservatives met this week in a hotel built on the site of the old Free Trade Hall, a few hundred yards from Albert Square, where the great men of Manchester’s Anti-Corn Law League stand in their stone fidelity to free trade. This is the issue on which, in 1846, the party split. Today the city of Manchester, which has not one Conservative councillor, is united against the Tories.
So are Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield, none of which are troubled by even so much as a single Tory councillor. The M62 and M6 motorways don’t exist in Tory Britain.
The overwhelming feeling after three weeks in the bubbles of party conferences is that it is not just American politics that has gone into shutdown. It was appropriate that Labour should meet in Brighton and the Tories in Manchester because the politics of Two Nations has settled.
This is not for lack of trying on the Prime Minister’s part. David Cameron even included a rather jejune section in his speech entitled “North and South”, which offered HS2 (due in the North some time about 2030) and a few compliments about how clever Manchester’s business boffins are. The reason why the Tories have a problem with the North was also in Mr Cameron’s speech, although he failed to join the dots. No party that falls over itself to applaud Margaret Thatcher is going to do well in a part of the country in which the excessive brutality of deindustrialisation still lives in the folk memory.
For the most part, though, Mr Cameron’s speech was an attempt to occupy the centre of the spectrum. Last year he described the “aspiration nation”. This year he called the same thing the “land of opportunity”, which sounded like a Buck’s Fizz song. It’s not the message that’s the problem, it’s the messenger. The ideal Tory leader would have the equipoise, manner and political plan of Mr Cameron and the background of David Davis. The Conservative Party does not love Mr Cameron because it recognises he is not a winner. The irony is that he is not a winner precisely because he looks too much like the Conservative Party. As a moderniser he will never be able to embody his own message.
The week before in Brighton, as he had a year ago, Ed Miliband used One Nation rhetoric to camouflage the fact that he has a Two Nations plan. It is now clear that Labour is seeking to maximise the left-of-centre vote and rely on the broken electoral system to deliver a narrow victory. Where Mr Cameron is keen to be a One Nation Conservative but cannot manage it, Mr Miliband speaks the words but seeks a different victory.
The joke behind Joseph Heller’s novel Something Happened is that nothing happens. A series of episodes unfold upon which the protagonists try to impose a pattern. This, with one exception, is the story of British politics at the moment. There is air time to fill and ink to be spilt, as there always is, but only one thing to say. That one thing is the gift of five percentage points from the Liberal Democrats to Labour. If you think that UKIP is a protest that is flowing but will then ebb, that is it. Nothing else has happened. Mr Miliband neither wins votes nor loses them. He ensures that the core will hold and has harvested the dissenting Lib Dems. He has, in other words, already achieved everything he is trying to do.
The contest is a bit like this year’s Premier League — interesting mainly because all the top teams are rubbish. Sir Alex Ferguson used to spoil it by being too good, but he has gone, leaving a lesser mortal in charge. All of a sudden, it doesn’t seem as if Manchester United are bound to win. The quality is lower, but the competition more intense.
When politics is cramped into Two Nations, it has an upside-down quality in which the most effective political work is negative and carried out unintentionally by opponents. If Labour does limp into power, it will be a victory won by Nick Clegg, Jesse Norman and Nigel Farage.
Mr Clegg handed Labour an immediate five percentage points on their poll ratings when he took the brave decision to enter the coalition. Mr Norman led the rebellion against a modest House of Lords reforms for which the crucial quid pro quo was that the Tories would gain changes to parliamentary boundaries worth 20 seats. When Tory MPs say the word “Burke” around Mr Norman they are spelling it differently. Mr Farage’s cheerful march back into the past threatens to attract enough of a cavalry to deny the Conservatives seats that they ought to win. The strange alliance of the unconnected actions of these three gives Labour the chance to win on a prospectus that would otherwise be hopeless.
The Conservatives, by the same token, think that Mr Miliband is their most effective double agent. Senior Tories may be right to suppose that Mr Miliband cannot win the election for Labour, but might be able to win it for them. They know too, however, that anti-Labour knocking copy will not be enough. They need to find a way to speak in a Northern dialect.
Of the 158 seats in the three northern English regions, the Tories won 31 per cent of the vote and returned only 43 MPs. The Tories hold just two seats in the Northeast of England and just one in the whole of Scotland. They cannot win with numbers as bad as these. If the Tories had only done as well in the North in 2010 as they did in 1955 or 1970, Mr Cameron would have won an overall majority.
Their economic inheritance and the necessity of deficit reduction makes a northern recovery especially difficult. The Two Nations of Britain divide along a few dimensions. One is private and the other public. One is rural and the other urban. One is richer and the other poorer. In each of these couplets, the latter, northern, component has taken the brunt of austerity. Local economies that became too reliant on public spending, as the once-industrial cities of the North clearly did, are bound to resent the unwinding of support by the taxpayer. That withdrawal is all the more irritating when it has been made necessary by the excesses of the posh kids in that far-away city down London.
The upshot of all this is that politics is getting narrower, more focused and forensic. When nothing happens, small changes in marginal places have large ramifications. The Conservative Party is effectively campaigning in only 100 seats, 50 of which it holds and 50 of which it hopes to win. Thirty six of that latter 50 are held by Labour. Almost all of them are urban seats not in the South of England.
A realm divided into Two Nations will have one government comprised of two parties. Someone will have to construct a bridge between those Two Nations, which is why the undisputed winner of conference season was Nick Clegg, the one leader who, by sheer pressure of circumstance, is changing the nature of his party. These are odd times in which somebody has to win even though clearly nobody can win.
Cameron cannot speak to the North, Miliband relies on his core vote. Only Clegg can bridge the gap
In Paul Morley’s rambling and vast compendium The North (And Almost Everything In It) one thing is very much not in it. Apart from Disraeli’s remark that only the philosopher has the grandeur to appreciate the immensity of Manchester’s future and a couple of flicks at Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party is not in it. The thumbnail sketches of famous Northerners makes the cumulative point that this is not a nation that the Tories understand.
The Conservatives met this week in a hotel built on the site of the old Free Trade Hall, a few hundred yards from Albert Square, where the great men of Manchester’s Anti-Corn Law League stand in their stone fidelity to free trade. This is the issue on which, in 1846, the party split. Today the city of Manchester, which has not one Conservative councillor, is united against the Tories.
So are Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield, none of which are troubled by even so much as a single Tory councillor. The M62 and M6 motorways don’t exist in Tory Britain.
The overwhelming feeling after three weeks in the bubbles of party conferences is that it is not just American politics that has gone into shutdown. It was appropriate that Labour should meet in Brighton and the Tories in Manchester because the politics of Two Nations has settled.
This is not for lack of trying on the Prime Minister’s part. David Cameron even included a rather jejune section in his speech entitled “North and South”, which offered HS2 (due in the North some time about 2030) and a few compliments about how clever Manchester’s business boffins are. The reason why the Tories have a problem with the North was also in Mr Cameron’s speech, although he failed to join the dots. No party that falls over itself to applaud Margaret Thatcher is going to do well in a part of the country in which the excessive brutality of deindustrialisation still lives in the folk memory.
For the most part, though, Mr Cameron’s speech was an attempt to occupy the centre of the spectrum. Last year he described the “aspiration nation”. This year he called the same thing the “land of opportunity”, which sounded like a Buck’s Fizz song. It’s not the message that’s the problem, it’s the messenger. The ideal Tory leader would have the equipoise, manner and political plan of Mr Cameron and the background of David Davis. The Conservative Party does not love Mr Cameron because it recognises he is not a winner. The irony is that he is not a winner precisely because he looks too much like the Conservative Party. As a moderniser he will never be able to embody his own message.
The week before in Brighton, as he had a year ago, Ed Miliband used One Nation rhetoric to camouflage the fact that he has a Two Nations plan. It is now clear that Labour is seeking to maximise the left-of-centre vote and rely on the broken electoral system to deliver a narrow victory. Where Mr Cameron is keen to be a One Nation Conservative but cannot manage it, Mr Miliband speaks the words but seeks a different victory.
The joke behind Joseph Heller’s novel Something Happened is that nothing happens. A series of episodes unfold upon which the protagonists try to impose a pattern. This, with one exception, is the story of British politics at the moment. There is air time to fill and ink to be spilt, as there always is, but only one thing to say. That one thing is the gift of five percentage points from the Liberal Democrats to Labour. If you think that UKIP is a protest that is flowing but will then ebb, that is it. Nothing else has happened. Mr Miliband neither wins votes nor loses them. He ensures that the core will hold and has harvested the dissenting Lib Dems. He has, in other words, already achieved everything he is trying to do.
The contest is a bit like this year’s Premier League — interesting mainly because all the top teams are rubbish. Sir Alex Ferguson used to spoil it by being too good, but he has gone, leaving a lesser mortal in charge. All of a sudden, it doesn’t seem as if Manchester United are bound to win. The quality is lower, but the competition more intense.
When politics is cramped into Two Nations, it has an upside-down quality in which the most effective political work is negative and carried out unintentionally by opponents. If Labour does limp into power, it will be a victory won by Nick Clegg, Jesse Norman and Nigel Farage.
Mr Clegg handed Labour an immediate five percentage points on their poll ratings when he took the brave decision to enter the coalition. Mr Norman led the rebellion against a modest House of Lords reforms for which the crucial quid pro quo was that the Tories would gain changes to parliamentary boundaries worth 20 seats. When Tory MPs say the word “Burke” around Mr Norman they are spelling it differently. Mr Farage’s cheerful march back into the past threatens to attract enough of a cavalry to deny the Conservatives seats that they ought to win. The strange alliance of the unconnected actions of these three gives Labour the chance to win on a prospectus that would otherwise be hopeless.
The Conservatives, by the same token, think that Mr Miliband is their most effective double agent. Senior Tories may be right to suppose that Mr Miliband cannot win the election for Labour, but might be able to win it for them. They know too, however, that anti-Labour knocking copy will not be enough. They need to find a way to speak in a Northern dialect.
Of the 158 seats in the three northern English regions, the Tories won 31 per cent of the vote and returned only 43 MPs. The Tories hold just two seats in the Northeast of England and just one in the whole of Scotland. They cannot win with numbers as bad as these. If the Tories had only done as well in the North in 2010 as they did in 1955 or 1970, Mr Cameron would have won an overall majority.
Their economic inheritance and the necessity of deficit reduction makes a northern recovery especially difficult. The Two Nations of Britain divide along a few dimensions. One is private and the other public. One is rural and the other urban. One is richer and the other poorer. In each of these couplets, the latter, northern, component has taken the brunt of austerity. Local economies that became too reliant on public spending, as the once-industrial cities of the North clearly did, are bound to resent the unwinding of support by the taxpayer. That withdrawal is all the more irritating when it has been made necessary by the excesses of the posh kids in that far-away city down London.
The upshot of all this is that politics is getting narrower, more focused and forensic. When nothing happens, small changes in marginal places have large ramifications. The Conservative Party is effectively campaigning in only 100 seats, 50 of which it holds and 50 of which it hopes to win. Thirty six of that latter 50 are held by Labour. Almost all of them are urban seats not in the South of England.
A realm divided into Two Nations will have one government comprised of two parties. Someone will have to construct a bridge between those Two Nations, which is why the undisputed winner of conference season was Nick Clegg, the one leader who, by sheer pressure of circumstance, is changing the nature of his party. These are odd times in which somebody has to win even though clearly nobody can win.
