Stirring the clear yellow water of independence

I was rudely awakened this morning by the sound of the normally calm, urbane and sophisticated Gerry Hassan shouting at some poor unfortunate on GMS! Intrigued as to what had exercised our commentator I listened further. Turns out that this outburst had been occasioned by a disagreement over Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore’s claim that independence would require two referenda to be administered before being achieved.

Gerry was otherwise minded and his ‘opponent’ Alan Trench got both barrels. (Although we found out later that both actually agreed on the advisability or otherwise of this approach.)

But it did suggest to me that Michael Moore might have inadvertantly raised an important procedural point. At what stage does a referendum take place? And what agreements have to be in place before it actually achieves what it sets out to do?

Amidst all the fog of independence-lite, and devolution-max, a number of crucial questions remain to be clarified before clear question(s) could be put to the Scottish people. Ones that immediately come to my mind are - monarchy or republic? boundaries? single currency or sterling? armed forces and defence? There may well be more and each of these - I would hazard - might cause disagreements, not just between unionists and nationalists, but even within the ranks of nationalists. Debate on them could take some resolving, but might make considerable difference to the views of voters. How much would an ‘independent’ Scottish monarchy under a ‘UK’ crown, using ‘UK’ currency, and defended by ‘UK’ troops be ‘independent’ for example - whether the ‘K’ stood for ‘Kingdom’ or ‘Kingdoms’? Would we be more independent in the Euro - shall we ask our Irish, Greek or Portuguese colleagues? Land boundaries might be obvious (leaving aside the question of Berwick-on-Tweed) but what about marine boundaries?

Would any negotiations around these (and other) questions be resolvable by agreement? What happens if the parameters are not agreed? Could we simply leave them to some constitutional court. At one time we might have looked to the UK Supreme Court, I suspect its even-handedness might now be a little more in question! So where would we go now? Europe?

This murky water, I think, is where Michael Moore has placed his size 11s. If we are talking one referendum, then the answers to these (and no doubt other) questions need to be clear to we who are voting. If not, then any early referendum would be about aspirations and would need to be followed by negotiations. On the outcome of these would rest any further vote.

It might be, as Gerry alluded this morning, a device for the British state to draw out and confuse the discussion, but I suspect two factors suggest that this isn’t likely. One, is that within nationalist ranks it seems there are some who are already flying kites on some of these very questions - coming down too definitively on one side or the other may not be in the interests of a united pro-independence campaign. Secondly, are we so sure that Cameron will be too concerned about a separate Scotland? It might be in his political best interests.

Meanwhile, the important (and more concerning) statement that the UK government was not inclined to devolve any more powers under the Scotland Bill, has almost slipped by unnoticed. Is this a ConDem double bluff? Do they want to hand such a key stick to the nationalists?

Party time for all in Scotland? 1 - the Scottish LibDems

Now that the final losing Scottish party leader has had the visit from the ‘men in grey suits’, it is perhaps appropriate to look at what the results might lead to for all our political parties.

For the LibDems it is clearly desperation alley. Tavish’s too-precipitate resignation (from a LibDem party perspective who with any credibility is available to take over?) is surely so he can say more forcefully what he was hinting at in the final days of the campaign. That is that participation in the ‘cuts coalition’ - in particular after a General Election campaign predicated on ‘ a LibDem vote is a vote against Tory cuts’ - is leading to a massive haemorrhage of the LibDem vote, especially in Scotland where it was never the volatile ‘floating voter’ option that it is south of the border.

Ironically this will not lead to a break-up of the coalition. Indeed the spectre of a mass cull of LibDem MPs by the electorate north and south of the border if an election was to be called will concentrate their minds wonderfully. Plus, of course, Nick Clegg knows this is his only chance of a sniff of power - possibly for ever - and is most unlikely to threaten that. Despite his sabre-rattling over the NHS, he is only demanding what Tory cabinet ministers are already planning for the NHS in England & Wales.

In any case he and the rest of the ‘orange-bookers’ in the LibDems are probably more at home with the Tories in the UK Government than they are with the mainly social liberals of the Scottish Party. However, a split in the party is most unlikely at this stage for the reasons above and below!

Is Clegg himself likely to be challenged? After all the party faithful have allegedly only stuck with the strategy of accepting coalition to deliver PR, and this must now be dead for the foreseeable future. But the LibDems have always been capable of ignoring almost diametrically opposed positions of its elected representatives, and this won’t stop now. 

More likely is a quiet drift away of activists, similar to the Labour Party’s losses in the Blair years.

However, it is likely that the Scottish party will take an increasingly separate line from that at Westminster. Who the new leader is will tell us this. Whether it improves the Scottish party’s position is doubtful. It will take more than this to overcome the betrayal their voters feel. In particular voters do not like to be obviously lied to, as Clegg admitted doing when he said on TV that he knew during the General Election campaign that major and urgent cuts were needed, yet continued to call for a LibDem vote to prevent such cuts. Neither will the coalition change tack on its economic policies. 

The Scottish electorate is now very sophisticated. They know how to vote tactically to deliver their message. This time the message has been primarily aimed at the LibDems (and also at Labour), last year it was aimed at the Tories. Who is next in the firing line?

YouGov! What, MeGov?

If opinion polls are to be believed, Labour is heading for an embarrassing dip in votes and seats at the forthcoming Holyrood elections. Some more excitable commentators have even been moved to predict a ‘crushing defeat’*. However, as most activists and politicians know, polls are more useful as weapons than as sources of clear information. They may (as these recent ones undoubtedly will) be used to galvanise Labour’s notoriously sluggish turnout. They will be used to glorify the name of Salmond. But in all cases polls are deceptive. They were when predicting a Labour lead of up to 10 points early in this campaign, they were when predicting a Lib Dem surge in 2010’s Westminster election, and they are now.

Anyone remember last year, the incredulity with which both media and politicians dismissed the TV exit poll, because it gave the lie to the polls’ prediction? For the record that exit poll forecast Con - between 303-306 seats; Lab - between 251 and 262 seats; LibDem - between 69 and 55 seats (the figures were revised as the night went on) The actual result? Con - 306; Lab - 258; LibDem - 57.)

There are at least three reasons why opinion polls need to be treated with caution. Pollsters themselves recognise that,  unless the sample is huge, a margin of error factor of plus or minus 3%. So a poll predicting a 6% lead could equally suggest a neck-and-neck race. But this is well-known (although not well-reported). Less well considered are methodology and sample taking. YouGov for example, selects its respondents from an internet panel of people who have chosen to volunteer for this work in exchange for cash. The company, says it uses demographic information to balance its results, but there are two or three chances for skewing the sample here, and their methodology remains hotly debated.

Less obvious recently has been the introduction into Scotland of differential swings in local areas. It has been very obvious in Westminster elections that swings vary considerably in different parts of the UK - the increasing Westminster vote for Labour last time being a glaring example . It has been less so within Scotland. I suggest that this is changing, and will make this election virtually impossible to call by extrapolating from opinion polls. It is not just where the disenchanted LibDem votes go. The SNP will surely do best in rural constituencies if that vote does implode, but it may well be different in places like Dunfermline and possibly in Edinburgh. And in the second vote, any shift away from the LibDems will surely benefit the Greens. It seems also clear that the Tory vote will largely hold up - even if only because it has been bumping along the bottom for some time.

It isn’t simply the potential melt down of the LD vote (and in any case I suspect that the polls overestimate this likelihood too.) but the impact of local party politics via local council control. For the first time we have a Scottish Election being fought with councils under a variety of party and coalition controls. This may play out differently in different areas. Again Edinburgh, with the LibDems and SNP in coalition presiding over the debacle of the tram project, and proposals to outsource huge rafts of council services, will LD votes go to their SNP partners? Has the recent controversy over education cuts in Renfrewshire, and the SNP council leader’s climbdown scuppered his chances in Renfrewshire North? What will be the impact of the Aberdeenshire Council LibDem’s public fallout over the Trump development - particularly in the list where Cllr Martin Ford now tops the list for the Greens? 

Of course the final reason that opinion polls never tell the whole story is that they are never told the whole story! The recent YouGov poll for example - even now finds that around 30% of those asked are either uncertain whether they will vote, or certain not to. That is a large undecided area to exclude. (YouGov also has a very low incidence of ‘won’t say’s - almost certainly because their sampling comes from the self-selected panel referred to in para 1).

So, while the trends are important and justify the Labour Party’s attempts to rejuvenate their campaign, the details of recent polls are no more (or less) significant than the earlier ones.

As ever, oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. Only May 5 will tell whether the Scottish electorate is sufficiently annoyed with the SNP government for them to have ‘lost’ this one. I suspect that it is going to be a much closer call than opinion pollsters tell us.

*Peter Kellner in a commentary on his own organisation’s poll

Cable gaffe does not mean Coalition in trouble - just the LibDems

Vince Cable’s ‘gaffe’, and those of other LibDem ministers, has - as many commentators have speculated - shone a light onto some deep fissures in the ConDem coalition.

However, it is not between the LibDems and the Tories that this split has widened, but in fact between the social and the economic Liberals - between the ‘Orange bookers’ (including Mr Cable, himself) and the local populists. Now we see why those of us in Glasgow, have little or no memory of Mr Cable’s period as a Cooncillor. He just wasn’t that good!

His excessive outburst about Murdoch -  does he really want to wage war? - means it is the liberal marketeers - in both the LibDems and the Tories - who are rubbing their hands. And it is why they can still support the old buffer. How else could they allow Mr Murdoch to increase his stranglehold on the UK media?

I can’t think of any politician - of the right or the left - that thinks (in public anyway) that News International gaining unfettered control of another major media organ is good news for us or for politics. But to the free marketeers, anything that stands in the way of millionaire businessmen spending their money the way they want, is bad economics. And, despite all the arguments to the contrary, they are predisposed to let Rupert have his way. That is, those who are not already predisposed to suck-up to him anyway. Vince has now allowed this to happen.

To all those who speculate about Vince’s resignation, or enforced reshuffling and any consequent split of the coalition, I would point out the overwhelming desire amongst key LibDems to cling onto power at all costs. Even at expense of the party itself, which is now far more at risk. Don’t overestimate the loyalty of Clegg, Laws, Alexander et al.

Any split will almost certainly not happen for a while if at all. The illusion of power is probably the hardest one to wake up to - particularly if your party hasn’t experienced it in living memory. But this latest affair has exposed the differences between the Orangeers - Nick Clegg, David Laws and Danny Alexander et al - and those party members who grew up during the period of the Liberal (in particular) campaigns on local democratic issues.

The Orange Bookers have far more in common with Cameron and Osborne than their election pronouncements would lead anyone to believe. The BBC  in 2008 reported Clegg as ‘advocating a huge increase in private sector involvement in schools and the health service. "Marrying our proud traditions of economic and social liberalism, refusing to accept that one comes at the cost of the other - on that point, if not all others, the controversial Orange Book in 2004 was surely right."’

He argued for the creation of schools financed by just about anybody - parents, charities or voluntary and private organisations, suggested radical reform of the NHS, allowing patients to be treated free in the private sector and opposed tax increases.

So, don’t be surprised that if splits come, they are in the LibDems, rather than between the LibDems and the Tories. But this will not, of course, mean a split in the government. Nick & Co will be as at home (maybe more so) in the Tory Party than their current abode. 

And don’t think that even this will happen soon. Vince has fed the story that the LibDems are a ‘radical wing’ in the coalition. It may be an illusion, but don’t bank on any LibDems waking up to it soon.  Power is - after all - what all those shiny-faced newbie party workers came to work for the party for!

Zippin' up my boots, goin' back to Netroots!

Recent violence arising from protests against the huge rise in English student tuition fees have served to slightly obscure the positive message that has come from these protests. The message - also commented on by some, not necessarily left-wing columnists - http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/comment/colette-douglas-home/political-awakening-of-a-new-generation-is-a-stirring-sight-1.1072816  is that students are becoming politically active again. This is a most welcome sight, and is paralleled by a reawakening in the Trade Union movement signalled by both increased activity of young members, and attempts by the leadership to reintroduce political awareness training, and to spread the use of new media and new styles of campaigning.

These developments are at early stages, of course, and could still fizzle out. Student politics still has the capability of dropping out of fashion as happened during the post-Thatcher years. And the fact that much of the resentment is down to a rapid disillusionment with Nick Clegg’s LibDems - who promised a radical change in British politics, and then delivered a pit prop for the Tory establishment - means that apathy might still win out. Remember the election lockouts at many uni area polling stations? But it looks more hopeful than for some time. 

The violence will not help the politicisation of the majority of these young people. On one hand it sends the message, that a cause only gets reported when violence flares - but conversely we also see that reports then concentrate on violence and disruption; the personal connections of protestors and targets; anything in fact - apart from the actual issue that caused the protests in the first place!

But there is much imagination tucked away in the protests that have been undertaken by other young campaigners. the use of ‘flashmobbing’ for example, to target businesses who have been in the frontline of tax dodging, or other antisocial activity (see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/) is derived from art and dance initiatives of ‘spontaneous’ public performance and shows a) the importance that arts can bring to this struggle and b) the need to involve people and the wider community in this campaign. 

Trade unions also, where they still exist, have had too many years of marking time. Those of us who have been active for a while have noticed the absence of a generation or two of activists. In particular, the absence of political activity for at least a generation. We must take much of the blame for this - we didn’t train up our successors politically, concentrating too much on mechanism and process. But now there are strong signs that a new generation IS keen, willing and eager to take on the struggle. 

And political training is beginning once more. But this time it is being linked, not just with public demonstrations and protest, but the use of social networking, the internet, video clips, blogs and other accoutrements of the digital age. UNISONScotland’s recent MOBILISE festival took a weekend to take both trade union and community-based activists through both the politics of the fight, and the variety of avenues available to promote our cause. This not only dealt with media training, economics, and political lobbying, but involved cartooning, comedy and songwriting - not likely to be the Christmas no 1 but check it out !!  BTW the Christmas no 1 should be Captain Ska! 

Another important event is scheduled for the New Year in London. Netroots UK, on the 8 January promises to be the next step in developing campaigning against the ConDemNation. Priced at £5, it must be the best value conference covering a number of key organisations (Obama digital campaigners, anti-cuts websites, thinktanks) on the left. Hopefully it will also spark much new activity, and campaign ideas. Both students and trade unionists need these. 

And more than that, they need to remember that to be successful they need to connect with the community. Tossing fire extinguishers off roofs is unlikely to achieve that at this stage. See you in London.

Feet of Clegg

Lord Wallace of Tankerness, Jim Wallace to you and me (and I suspect, to him), last week, sounded a loud call to the Scottish Liberal Democrat troops - if that is not too collective a name for Liberal Democrats - to keep united and campaign strongly for the Scottish Elections coming up in nine months time. There was more than a hint of desperation about his call, and that isn’t surprising given the party’s reported opinion poll slump since Nick Clegg hitched their wagon to the Tory Cuts machine.

It is instructive to remember that a mere 3.5 months ago, those same opinion polls were showing Liberal Democrats in second (and even first) place, following Mr Clegg’s reported ‘surge’ after the TV debates. As some of us suspected, the 34 per cents etc. were always going to be somewhat wide of the mark, (but don’t be surprised if the media still report this ‘surge’ as if it did in fact happen), but the 14% average that we now see is poor even if you accept the top figure was inflated.

However a more pressing worry for the LibDems in Scotland is that the support of many of their party leaders for ‘market forces’ and cutting the public sector is now becoming apparent. The ‘economic Liberals’ were always there, but managed to shelter behind the more cuddly ‘social Liberal’ image. Now they are in charge, they are flinging themselves enthusiastically behind Messrs Cameron and Osborne in the ‘New Tory’ attempt to destroy our services. This will not play well in Scotland.

Another concern is that MSP candidates cannot rely on the General Election mantra ‘vote for us, or you’ll get the Tories’. Quite apart from the fact that everyone who fell for that now knows that their vote DID get them the Tories, the Scottish Parliament seats held by the SLD are mostly not threatened by Tories. Out of 11 FPTP seats, (another irony is that the SLD have done rather well from FPTP in Scotland) in only one, Fife NE, are the Tories second. 

A third worry for Jim Wallace, Tavish Scott and other prominent (but very quiet) SLD leaders is their UK leader’s admission (in Nick Robinson’s BBC programme on the coalition negotiations) that he knew that huge, immediate cuts to services would be needed during the election campaign. The trouble is not that he changed his mind, but that he kept quiet about it and continued to campaign AGAINST Tory ‘immediate cuts’ economic policies, only to embrace them enthusiastically once a whiff of power beckoned. Isn’t that the sort of tactic of the old cynical party politician? his supporters will be inclined to ask. We thought we were voting for a new way in politics!

So, as Labour and the SNP battle it out to defend Scotland against the Tory cuts, where does this leave the Scottish Liberal Democrats? Attacking the cuts in Scotland while supporting them in Westminster will be a very difficult double bluff to pull off - even for such past masters of the tactic. It may well be that after 5 May 2011, Scottish Liberal Democrats (even the economic Liberals) may find out that their golden leader who has delivered them a hand on the wheel of power, has feet of Clegg.