Happy New Year
There was an interesting interview in the Guardian yesterday
with the playright and author David Greig.
The subject matter is the Referendum and at the start the
message is very much that he intends to vote Yes.
Reading the article as a whole however, you see that by his
own admission he might yet change his mind. Now, if I was making a purely
partisan point I might point out that this direct testimony gives a lie to the
repeated suggestions by some on the Yes side that. while they might currently
be behind, their vote is solid while ours is much softer. The reality is that,
in addition to the genuine still don’t knows there are people on both sides at
the moment who will vote differently come September 18th.
Logically, that is more a worry for the side currently ahead
who would be content for politics to be preserved in aspic for the next 9
months. We’d then win comfortably. You don’t need to take my word for that,
Nicola Sturgeon admitted as much in her interview with the BBC on January 2nd.
Of course we keep getting told that there will at some point
be a game changer although interestingly in his most recent contribution the
SNP strategist Stephen Noon was left relying on three suggestions none of which
are now within the Nationalists control: UKIP doing (very) well in England (but
not in Scotland) at the European elections; the Tories looking likely to win
the 2015 UK General Election and the eventual improved Devolution offer from
the “UK Parties” failing to excite.
I want to deal briefly with the first two of these points
before turning to the third, that being my main topic today.
I’m not really convinced the European elections will have
much of an impact on either Scottish or British politics. Otherwise, simply put,
a lot more people would be intending to vote in them. I suspect the only real
consequence for of UKIP doing well will be in relation to the internal cohesion
of the Tories. And the only result of that will be to increase Labour’s 2015
prospects.
Even that aside, it is simply inconceivable that by
September 2014 it will look “likely” that the Tories will win in May 2015. That’s
not because a Tory victory will by then be impossible, although various UK demographic
and systemic issues certainly don’t help them. It is simply be because at eight
months distance nobody will know the “likely” outcome in 2015. Insofar as some
think that the possibility of a Tory
victory makes them inclined to vote Yes, they have made that decision already.
The best Yes Scotland can hope is that continued uncertainty allows them to
hold on to that vote.
The third element is more interesting however. Some already
fully intending to vote Yes will of course declare on the announcement of the
proposals that they are so disappointed that it has made their final decision
for them. Others already inclined to No will seize upon even the most minor
movement as justifying the decision of their already faint hearts without
(alleged) embarrassment. But I take Mr Greig at his word when he suggests that
their might be some voters who will decide on their Referendum vote only when
the final devolution offer is known.
So what might it be? Well
I've written about what it could be at its maximum already. But it won’t be
that, not least because a subsequent conversation with Professor Jim Gallacher has
persuaded even me that the assignation of VAT wouldn’t be in Scotland’s own
interest given the “head office” effect.
It will instead, I suspect, be all income tax, probably
geographic taxes like Air Passenger Duty and (not insignificantly) Inheritance
Tax. And on benefits not much more than Housing Benefit, which should have been
devolved anyway in 1998. And there will be a few extra legal bones thrown in
such as all Road Traffic Law and the Misuse of Drugs Act.
But none of this will be ”Independence”. It will still, on
any view, involve a common UK foreign and defence policy and a common macro
economic strategy (although, arguably, the current White Paper offer, based on
a common currency, also implies the latter, just without us having any say in
it). It also won’t involve a flag or an anthem. Clearly therefore it won’t be
of interest to diehard Nationalists.
So, if David Greig, and others, still need to know our offer
before making their mind up then they should make their mind up now. This has
never been about constitutional technicalities. It has always been a choice
between being participants in our own destiny or merely waving “our own flag”
while, in relation to more important
matters, being mere pawns in the
calculations of England, a much larger “foreign”
Country forming a physical and intellectual barrier between us and the rest of
the world. That is the choice in 2014 as much as it was the choice in 1707.
Maddest of mad Nationalists aside, does anybody, looking back, think that we made the wrong call in
1707? That the Empire that we then built together wasn’t to our mutual
advantage or that its ultimate sacrifice in the defeat of Nazism wasn’t to our mutual
credit? That, even today, the BBC or the NHS or our command of the world’s
language are nothing to be proud of? That it would be better if there had been no
Perth, Western Australia or Hamilton, Ontario? No David Livingston or Mary
Slessor? No Scottish Enlightenment or Clyde Shipbuilding industry? No Keir
Hardie to found the Labour Party or Manny Shinwell to serve in its greatest
government?
Well, actually, undoubtedly, some do. Some who think that we
should just look after ourselves and hope that the world just leaves us alone
in the process. Contrary to the re-writing of history currently being
undertaken, Scottish Nationalism was not devised as a reaction to Mrs Thatcher.
Nationalists were nationalists while we were engaged between 1939 and ’45 in a
life or death struggle for the very future of civilisation. (An “English war” in
which they believed no Scot should be obliged to take part). And they were still nationalists when the
45-51 Labour Government was building the modern welfare state, bizarrely
contesting the Paisley by-election in 1948 with Tory support and on a platform
of abolishing the (British) NHS! And they were still nationalists when they
conspired to defeat Jimmy Reid in Dundee East in 1979 by running the most vicious
of red smear campaigns. They have but
few real principles: Parochialism and isolationism, bound together with the
glue of grudge and grievance. And leopards don’t change their spots.
And, so, in the end, those who would sign up for that for
want of a specific devolution scheme to their liking should maybe just get on
and vote Yes. This is not an argument about constitutional niceties. It is an
existential struggle over your world view. A certainty that over three hundred years
Scotland and England together has proved a better bet than we here standing alone
in self imposed isolation, looking on at events. Let that be the terms of the
argument and then let’s get this done.
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