Let the People Speak...

No man has a right to fix the boundary of the
march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his
country, “Thus far shalt thou go and no further”.
Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891)

So begins "Choosing Scotland's Future", the consultation document on further constitutional change which was launched in August 2007 by the Scottish Government and which provides the foundations of the National Conversation. In the post-Calman days of devolution, this quotation actually sums up the essence of the debate which is ahead of us. The Calman Commission, paid for by the Scottish Parliament and backed by the three parties which favour limited change to the constitutional settlement was expressly forbidden from considering the possibilities offered by Scotland becoming a normal, independent Nation.

A recent opinion poll by the British Broadcasting Corporation found that a clear majority wanted the opportunity to have a referendum on the issue of Scottish independence in 2010, as is currently proposed by the SNP Scottish Government. Tavish Scott, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats was asked on television recently how he could oppose a referendum and call himself a Liberal Democrat. His supporters may say that the question was harsh but it is easily justified as it is surely neither Liberal or Democratic to deny the People a say on the biggest issues of the day. What could be more democratic than settling the issue at the ballot box?

At it's most fundamental, the question facing the political parties active in Scotland is this: If all the Parties who support the union are not prepared to trust the people of Scotland to make their own informed choices, why should the people of Scotland trust any of these political parties to represent their views in future? They may not want to publicly admit it but I would wager that this is causing some of the more astute strategists some sleepless nights. No political party worthy of the name would want to be seen to be denying the electorate a voice.

The second question for the unionist parties is also an interesting one: If you are so convinced that the Scottish people will vote against Independence, why are you so scared to put your case in a referendum? There are a number of factors at work there. There is no reliable model for working out which set of voters would be more likely to turn out in numbers come an independence referendum. Though the opinion polls currently give the status quo the nod, even when the SNP government's own choice of question is asked, there is the vexed issue of differential turnout. It is one thing to tell pollsters which position you would nominally support but it is quite another to go out and vote for it. The SNP clearly believe that the pro-independence voters would view it as a once in a generation chance and would grab it with both hands. I believe that this is the case and it seems that this is what the other parties believe too, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. Why else refuse to have it? No political party avoids a fight they think they will win, especially given the effect a defeat would have on the morale of the SNP.

The other reason, the elephant in the room, if you will, is that everyone expects there to be a Tory government in Westminster by the time an independence referendum comes around. We will be back to the democratic deficit which existed prior to devolution and which motivates so many people to seek constitutional change. The difference this time is that the SNP are in Government in Scotland and can show that they are standing up for Scotland against a Tory UK Government that was not voted for in any great numbers by the people of Scotland. By the time November 2010 comes, it is likely that the Tories will be making rather large cuts as their hand is forced by the biting recession, left to them like a poisoned chalice by the departing Gordon Brown. A vision of a prosperous, independent Scotland buoyed by oil revenues at that time may well chime with a Scottish population which is sick of unemployment and stagnation under the status quo.

Nuclear Weapons

I have been stirred from my semi-retirement from blogging by the news that David Cameron has apparently "warned" Alex Salmond about the possible use of Holyrood powers over planning to block the new generation of UK nuclear weapons being based in Scotland.

This is breathtaking arrogance from the man who would be Prime Minister. His comments were recorded for a BBC programme about ten years of Scottish devolution. In the same programme he also admits that his party got it wrong when they opposed devolution. These seem to be two contradictory positions: it seems that he doesn't like the fact his party went against the overwhelming views of the Scottish people in the devolution debate but at the same time he is perfectly happy to ride roughshod over their views when it comes to the imposition of a replacement for Trident. In every test of public opinion, the Scottish people have said they do not want Trident or nuclear weapons and the Scottish Parliament echoed this view, voting against them in June 2007.

Far from using this issue to "pick a fight" with Westminster, Alex Salmond is doing exactly what he was elected to do and that is standing up for the people of Scotland. Whether Cameron realises it or not, he is illustrating exactly why people vote SNP and is giving them ever more reason to. The images conjured by his comments take us back to the days of the poll tax when hugely unpopular policies were inflicted by a Conservative Government on Scotland. The frustration felt by ordinary people about their powerlessness and the obvious democratic deficit was one of the catalysts for the devolution campaign and could also form the basis of a major push towards Scottish Independence.

Is this the start of a Conservative push to alienate voters in Scotland and accelerate Independence? It would certainly be in the interests of their party in the longer term if Scotland, which has traditionally returned a majority of Labour MPs, was suddenly removed from the UK Parliamentary equation. The tories would have a much better chance of staying in govenment in perpetuity and that must be something being considered by the tory strategists. Of course, the tories traditionally do so badly in Scotland at Westminster elections that their campaign room shows a map which includes the rest of the UK but is missing Scotland. They say a picture tells a thousand words and it certainly says a lot about their attitude to the people of Scotland.

Breaking News: John MacDougall MP Dies

The BBC Are reporting the sad news that John MacDougall MP has died after a long illness.

Rest In Peace.

Glasgow East - Game On!

We have come to the final weekend of the excessively short Glasgow East by-election campaign and having been in the constituency on numerous occasions, my verdict is that despite the opinion polls, it is very much all to play for. Whilst I am not quite calling it for the SNP, as Calum Cashley has done, I believe that there is a swing coming to the SNP and that Labour are in utter disarray.

There has been a Sunday Times mole within the Labour Party camp who has described the "air of desperation" hanging over the Labour campaign and saying a motivational plea pinned to an office wall "smacks of desperation". He went on to quote a senior local Labour figure as saying the result would be "scarily close".

This is further proof of the panic besetting the Labour ranks in Scotland. They are outnumbered and are being out campaigned on the streets and doorsteps by a buoyant SNP which had over 1,000 activists in the constituency on "Super Saturday". The reception from the punters in this notional Labour stronghold has been very warm, leading many to conclude a major swing is on the way and that it will be very close indeed.

The fact that people are even considering this election to be a close run thing is a miracle in itself and is a testament to the work of all those involved in the campaign for the SNP. The very idea of the SNP breaking the stranglehold of Labour on the throat of a Glasgow constituency would have been unthinkable two, three, five or ten years ago and yet now they are on the cusp of something amazing.

If the SNP can win in this, Labour's third safest Scottish seat then there is nowhere that will be considered out of reach for them, come the national Westminster elections. Make no mistake, this would be a body blow to a Labour Party already smarting from defeat in the Scottish Parliament elections in 2007 and the loss of their leader in said Parliament, Wendy Alexander. There is no doubt that momentum is everything in politics and the SNP have it in spades. They enter the final week of this campaign with the wind at their backs and their eyes on the prize. There has never been a better opportunity for those in Glasgow East to choose a better future and for the SNP to make major inroads into Labour's Glasgow heartlands.

Anti-Scottish Labour Party

As briefly touched upon in my previous blog posting regarding Gordon Brown, there are mutterings afoot amongst Labour MPs about the number of Scots in the UK Cabinet and the seemingly disproportionate power they wield. This trouble has been brewing for some time now and the language used is very anti-Scottish indeed. Consider the following quotes from a selection of named and un-named Labour MPs.

Stephen Ladyman, MP for Thanet South said:

“It is important to recognise that the election is won or lost in England. We need to have English voices speaking and giving messages that make sense in English communities.”

A Labour MP who lacked the courage to be named said:

“We live in a world where there is a quota for women MPs and there may soon be quotas for black MPs. Why should there not be quotas for the English too? The Scots mafia have dominated Brown’s team for too long.”

Lindsay Hoyle, MP for Chorley said:

“Voters are looking to see a better balance within the cabinet to ensure that all the regions of England are represented.”

The idea that Cabinet Ministers should be chosen, not on merit but on the fact that they are not Scottish is absurd and quite possibly racist. Substitute the word "Scots" for the word "Jewish" in the middle quote from the un-named Labour MP and there would be an uproar yet the gutless Scottish Labour MPs don't even raise a whimper.

There is a good post by Tartan Hero on the subject. He points out that Stephen McCabe, the Labour Whip (and another Scot) is getting abuse for both the manner and the scale of the defeat in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. It sounds like he was handed a poisoned chalice anyway though and it wouldn't be surprising if the tactics came from the top. It seems that he is just seen as another easy target for anti-Scottish sentiment.

Of course, this anti-Scottish sentiment has another point to it. It is an attempt to destabilise Gordon Brown and if the case can be made against Scots being in the Cabinet then his jacket is surely on a shoogly nail. This is nothing more than a proxy fight against his leadership from the Labour Party in England.

The difficulty being faced by these Labour MPs is not just that could they appear to be racist, North of the border, but that they are facing in two directions at the same time. You cannot simultaneously make the case against Scots being in the Cabinet whilst saying that we are all British together and that we are all equals in the United Kingdom. Labour have needed their Scottish battalion in order to force through changes which only affect England and Wales on the argument that we are all British and that as Brits, the Scottish MPs had every right to vote on any matter. How does this square with the idea that Scots should not hold positions of power?

It seems that we are seeing the Labour Party and the Union unraveling before our eyes.

The End is Nigh for Gordon Brown

"All political careers end in failure" is a much overused phrase but it is one which Gordon Brown, the current UK Prime Minister must surely be contemplating as he surveys with mounting apprehension the likely result from the Crewe and Nantwich parliamentary by-election. A man who has a reputation for coping badly with stress, whose gnawed and ragged fingernails bear stark testament to the strain he is under. He has visibly aged in the long months since his act of folly in October last year, his eyes ever more deeply set in his skull, the bags under his eyes more pronounced, his jaw seemingly more tightly clenched. He cuts a shambling, clumsy figure of a man, you could almost feel some pity for him, the first serving UK Prime Minister to be denied a waxwork by Madame Tussauds. The butt of a thousand jokes, witnessed on YouTube picking his nose, photographed at a meeting of world leaders with a huge orange make up stain on his forehead, getting lost at a royal banquet to welcome the French President, regarded as a Jonah figure whose well wishes are a curse and his mere presence a guarantee of failure.

He must wonder in his fevered moments of relative peace and quiet when the phonecalls have died down for the day and his children are abed where it all went so badly wrong, how did he end up here? How on earth did all those meticulous years of planning and plotting come to this? He was to be the saviour of the Labour Party, for so long the King Over the Water, returning them from the dark days of Blairism to their socialist ideals and focussing on the poor and the disadvantaged. Wasn't that what Tony had promised him the opportunity to do? All the prodding and prompting and rancor and rage of the last decade must sit prominently in his mind as he thinks of the legacy he was handed.

Scotland

A Scottish Party so lost in the political wilderness, scrabbling around in an attempt to find a direction to go in that they almost brought the Union to it's knees. Whilst Wendy Alexander has not quite killed the Union stone dead, she has certainly dealt it a hammer blow from which it may never recover.

Yet how did it come to this? Scotland was Gordon's heartland and he had ruled the Party unopposed there for as long as he could remember, sweeping their political opponents before them. Had they succumbed to complacency? Had they taken their voters for granted once too often by relying on the same old tired lies and distortions that the people had heard time and time again? He must, in his darker moments of self doubt wonder about the comment made by George Robertson at the outset of devolution about "killing the SNP stone dead" and reflect that it has almost been his party that has been wiped out. Sure, on the face of it, 46 seats against the governing party's 47 seems a small margin but there is a gulf in public warmth and approval between Gordon and Alex Salmond, the charismatic leader of the SNP Scottish Government that suggests the next electoral contest will be much less even.

If the picture in the Scottish Parliament looks grim, the picture in Council Chambers the length and breadth of Scotland looks infinitely worse for Labour. Jack McConnell, for whatever reason was in favour of Proportional Representation in local government. This has led to the Labour stranglehold being broken for the first time in living memory. There are now only two councils in the whole of Scotland under outright Labour control. Their Councillor numbers were decimated in May 2007 and they are almost certain to lose many more the next time as the SNP stand more candidates and really press home their advantage.

Though the true effects of this are yet to be seen, in truth it is the Council results which are the real killer blow to Scottish Labour. They are walking and talking and griping, moaning and baying at the SNP but the truth is that the corpse just hasn't realised yet that it's lifeblood has been savagely cut off. Come the next election, Labour in Scotland do not have anybody left to be their activists. All the ex-councillors and their families who previously did the work will have precious little incentive now that there is nothing to be gained. This is a Labour Party with no defining cohesive purpose, which lost it's way around the time it lost it's founding principles, pitted against a formidable SNP organisation, all pulling in the same direction towards their ultimate goal of Scottish Independence.

England

Then of course we turn back to England, the scene of Gordon Brown and Labour's most recent defeat. Indeed, defeat is not a strong enough word for a contest which saw Labour become the third party in a UK context when it comes to the popular vote. Admittedly, the number of people voting in the May Council elections was a relatively small proportion of the UK population but they still numbered in their millions and it truly would be a dark day for the Labour Party if that kind of dismal result were to be repeated in a UK general election. For someone who has put great store in being able to appeal to Britain and to the values he considers inherent in Britishness, it must have been a bitter pill indeed for Gordon Brown to swallow.

There is, of course, another factor at play here and that is the fact that Gordon Brown is a Scottish Prime Minister at the very time Scotland is showing her distinctiveness in policy terms from the rest of the United Kingdom. People in England are looking at the situation in Scotland and comparing it favourably with their own. The reduction in prescription charges, prior to their abolition, the lack of student fees, free care for the elderly. These are all things that people in the other constituent parts of the UK would like as well. There seems to have been little attempt made to explain that the Scottish Government gets a block grant from Westminster to spend as they see fit. It seems to better suit the mood of the times to portray it as Scots disproportionately benefitting at the expense of the rest of the UK.

There are actually people now openly questioning what right a Scotsman has to be Prime Minister of the UK, which must send a shiver up Gordon Brown's spine. He knows where this argument ultimately leads, hence his embracing of English sporting heroes and claiming his favourite sporting moment was a goal for England against Scotland.

Character

Then, of course, we turn to the question which has dogged Gordon Brown's short premiership, the one of character. It is one thing to publish a book called courage, and in so doing, not so subtly referencing JFK who wrote "Profiles in Courage". It is quite another thing to show strength of vision and of leadership, presenting a clear and contrasting picture to everything which has gone before. Nowhere has Gordon shown that he has anything like this up his sleeve, one great idea to gentle the lives of the poor or at least to help alleviate the worst poverty that sees many children living in terrible conditions. People looking back at Gordon Brown from ten, eleven, twelve years ago would be amazed at the transformation, not just physically, this happens to us all with time, but from a firebrand preaching social justice and fairness to a dull eyed man with nothing to contribute. His seems to be the classic case of being so corrupted by the want of power that he has forgotten why he ever wanted it in the first place.

Character, ah yes, character, we are so often reminded that Gordon Brown is a "son of the manse", that he has a "moral compass" and even on occasion that he is a "conviction politician". The Guardianistas of the world would have us believe that these are the things that let us get a better insight into the mind of the man who would lead us. There are those who say that he lacks a clear vision of where he wishes to lead and therefore makes for an extremely difficult person to follow.

Others would have you believe that he is like Macavity's cat, in that he is never there when there is a crisis. When something goes wrong he can never be found. This aspect has certainly been writ large in the run up to the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. He has not once been present on the campaign trail and indeed the Labour Party candidate has denied ever meeting him, despite photographic evidence to the contrary, even going to great lengths not to have to say whether he is an asset or a liability when answering an interviewer.

Courage seems to be in short supply and indeed, Gordon Brown got cold feet about an early election and this has proven to be his downfall as events has intervened ever since he marched his Party down from the top of the hill. It was rumoured that staff had been hired at a cost of £1 Million, which the cash strapped Labour party can ill afford in it's current financial predicament. Following a short honeymoon period as Labour Leader, Gordon Brown had looked set to call a snap election. Rumours were rife that it would be in the autumn and Party activists (of all hues) waited to hear when it would be. After the performance of David Cameron at the Conservative conference and a subsequent Tory bounce in the polls, the Brown team seemed to take cold feet and Gordon flat out denied that he had cancelled the election because he didn't think he could win, leading to the memorable riposte at PMQs by David Cameron "Well you're the first Prime Minister in history to call off an election because you thought you were going to win it!"

Judgement is also something in seeming short supply. The abolition of the 10p rate of tax being a case in point. This is a move which hurts traditional Labour Party voters more than any other group in society, it is a redistribution of wealth of sorts but in the opposite direction to that which most Labour Party members and supporters expected from Gordon Brown. This move has hit people very hard in the pocket at a time when the cost of living is rising and public resentment is rising in line with the costs. Then there was the Northern Rock fiasco and nationalising a bank! Not exactly the kind of nationalisation Old Labour stalwarts would have had in mind. Even decisions that Gordon Brown made whilst in his previous role as chancellor are now being reconsidered and reinterpreted in light of the current climate.

Goodbye Gordon

There are rumours from reliable sources that a senior Labour party figure will approach Gordon after the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and ask him to step aside for the good of the Labour Party. No matter how I look at it, I just can't see him holding onto power for much longer. He is too personally unpopular to lead the Labour Party into the General Election. The more time elapses before he goes, the less chance they will have of mounting any kind of comeback in time to dent Conservative support.

It's over Gordon. Don't shoot the messenger when he hands you the gun and the bottle of whisky and asks you to commit political suicide. Don't throw the whisky against the wall, like you have been characterised as doing with mobile phones on a regular basis. Go quietly and with some semblence of dignity and accept that all these years of waiting have been in vain. You have lost your party, you have lost the people, you have lost Scotland, you have lost your local Council but you still have your family. Perhaps you should spend more time with them.

Independence Takes the Lead!

Support for Scottish Independence has broken the 40% barrier according to two recent opinion polls from two separate polling organisations. This is in keeping with the trend that has been seen since the Scottish Parliamentary elections last year and confounds the notion widely put about by the Unionist parties that support for the SNP is not being translated to support for their flagship policy of independence and equality for Scotland.

This, of course, begs the question, where now for the "Wendy Commission"?

Sir Kenneth Calman, the head of the Unionist review of Devolution said at it's recent launch: "Like the majority of the Scottish people, I very much see myself as part of the UK, but a Scot within that. Seventy-seven per cent of the Scottish public don't think independence is the right way forward. All of the work over the last few years makes it pretty clear that's not an issue right now."

It looks like the Wendy Commission has already been rendered irrelevant because it is completely out of step with the aspirations of the Scottish people. It will be interesting to watch support for independence grow as the SNP continues to stand up for Scotland and Labour try to figure out how to control and rein in Alex Salmond and an SNP Scottish Government at the top of it's game.

We do indeed live in interesting times and they look set to become even more so.