Tuesday 14 April 2015

Message To The Messengers: What Do We Do After Yes?, Gerry Hassan, Scottish Left Project / Open Democracy, ~9 December 2014


The independence campaign has transformed Scottish politics. But we must be wary of mythologising the campaign, and with it Scottish nationalism.

Yes campaigners should stop believing their own spin, and engage with the realities of a Scotland which voted no.

Message To The Messengers: What Do We Do After Yes?, Gerry Hassan, Scottish Left Project / Open Democracy, ~9 December 2014
http://thepeopledemand.org/?p=557
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/gerry-hassan/message-to-messengers-what-do-we-do-after-yes

The result of the Scottish independence referendum and the future of British politics - Paul Cairney, Politics & Public Policy, November 28, 2014


[…] Yet, this promise of further devolution proved to be insufficient and, during the referendum period, each party produced separate plans to extend devolution further. The parties then came together, in the lead up to the referendum to make what is now called ‘The Vow’ of ‘extensive new powers’ for a devolved Scotland. The Smith Commission was set up to take this agenda forward. It reported on the 27th November 2014, and its recommendations include to:
  make the Scottish Parliament ‘permanent’.
devolve some fiscal powers, including the power to: set income tax rates and bands (higher earnings are taxed at a higher rate) but not the ‘personal allowance’ (the amount to be earned before income tax applies); set air passenger duty; and to receive a share of sales tax (VAT).
increase the Scottish Government’s borrowing powers.
  devolve some aspects of social security, including those which relate to disability, personal care, housing and ‘council tax’ benefits (council tax is a property tax charged by local authorities to home owners/ renters and based on the value of homes).
devolve policies designed to encourage a return to employment.
devolve the ability to license onshore oil and gas extraction (which includes hydraulic fracturing, ‘fracking’, for shale gas).
control the contract to run the Scottish rail network.
encourage greater intergovernmental relations and a more formal Scottish Government role in aspects of UK policymaking.
The UK Government now aims to produce draft legislation to take these plans forward, although the bill will not be passed before the general election in May 2015.
To a large extent, the proposals reflect the plans of the three main British parties, rather than the SNP (which requested ‘devo max’), although they go further than those parties would have proposed in the absence of the referendum agenda. Again, they are designed to represent a devolved ‘settlement’, reinforced by the knowledge that 55% voted against Scottish independence in 2014 (the turnout was 84.6%).
Yet, this sense of a ‘settled will’ is not yet apparent. Indeed, it seems just as likely that the proposals will merely postpone a second referendum, for these reasons:
1.  The new plan may represent the largest amount of devolution that is possible if Scotland is to remain in the UK. However, it does not address all of the charges associated with the ‘democratic deficit’.
The ‘spectre of Thatcherism’ is still used by proponents of independence, and a period of Conservative-led government has been used to identify the potential for the ‘top down imposition’ of ‘neoliberal’ policies to continue in some areas, and for economic policy to remain focused on the south-east. It is still used to suggest that only independence could secure a Scottish consensus democracy. This narrative has only been addressed to some extent with the devolution of symbolically important responsibilities – including the ability to remove the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ (an unpopular policy associated strongly with Conservative-led welfare reform), reform local taxes (associated first with the ‘poll tax’, then the difficulty of the SNP to abolish the ‘council tax’ in favour of a local income tax), and administer benefits related to personal social care (associated with a longstanding dispute between the Scottish and UK Governments on ‘attendance allowance’).
2. The SNP remains remarkably popular. Its membership has risen dramatically since the referendum, from 25,000 to over 92,000 and it is now the third biggest party in the whole of the UK despite Scotland having only 8% of the UK population. Its leader, new First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, is one of the few to maintain a positive popularity rating in opinion polls. Current polls also suggest that the SNP will gain ground in the UK election in 2015 and maintain a strong position in the Scottish Parliament in 2016.
4.  A second referendum would have a clearer sense of what people are voting for. In 2014, the ‘Vow’ allowed people to vote No and expect further devolution. In the future, the debate would be more simply about Yes or No to independence (albeit an independence that does not mean what it used to mean).
We could also discuss how Scottish politics relates to debates in the rest of the UK, including:
  Is the Scottish further-devolution agenda tied closely to the wider UK debate on its constitutional future? Before the referendum, there was some prospect of a UK constitutional convention. Now, our short term focus has returned to Prime Minister David Cameron’s promise to address the idea of ‘English Votes for English Laws’ (EVEL) to address the so-called ‘West Lothian question’.
What has been the reaction in the rest of the UK to the Scottish debate? One suggestion, in some of the media coverage, is that there would be an English ‘backlash’ prompting UK politicians to ‘get tough’ in any negotiations with the Scottish Government. Yet, the evidence for this assertion is not clear.
What is the effect of Scottish devolution on Wales and Northern Ireland?

The result of the Scottish independence referendum and the future of British politics
Paul Cairney, Politics & Public Policy, November 28, 2014
http://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2014/11/28/the-result-of-the-scottish-independence-referendum-and-the-future-of-british-politics/

The Smith Commission on accountability: I don’t think it means what they think it means, Paul Cairney, Politics & Public Policy, November 27, 2014


Other blog posts argue that the Smith proposals fall far short of ‘devo max’ or ‘federalism’ and will disappoint people looking for the extensive devolution of welfare powers. So, I will focus on its statement on accountability:
“A more accountable and responsible Parliament. Complementing the expansion of its powers will be a corresponding increase in the Parliament’s accountability and responsibility for the effects of its decisions and their resulting benefits or costs”.
This is very misleading for the following step-by-step reasons:
1.  The Scottish Parliament will ostensibly become responsible for more powers, but Scotland inherited a Westminster-style system of democratic accountability. The Scottish Parliament delegates almost all policymaking responsibility to ministers, who are accountable to the public via Parliament. So, in practice, Scottish ministers are receiving greater responsibilities.
2. The Scottish Government balances the Westminster idea of democratic accountability with others, such as institutional accountability (e.g. the chief executives of agencies take responsibility for delivery) and shared ownership (e.g. through community planning partnerships).
3. The Scottish Parliament struggles to hold ministers to account at the best of times. When the Scottish Government devolves powers to the wider public sector, the Scottish Parliament struggles a bit more. The devolution experience is one of limited parliamentary influence.
4. The Scottish Parliament will not grow in tandem with growing devolution. Instead, the same number of people will oversee a growing set of Scottish Government responsibilities.
5.  So, all other things being equal, greater ministerial responsibility will DECREASE democratic accountability.
In fact, the Smith Commission recognises this point and recommends a response:
“The addition of new responsibilities over taxes, welfare and borrowing means that the Parliament’s oversight of Government will need to be strengthened. I recommend that the Scottish Parliament’s Presiding Officer continues to build on her work on parliamentary reform by undertaking an inclusive review which will produce recommendations to run alongside the timetable for the transfer of powers”.
This need to pass the buck is understandable, given the limits to Smith’s remit (the Commission also makes good noises about the need for public engagement, to help people understand what the Scottish Parliament does). What is less understandable is why the commission presents these measures as good for accountability. What it means is that the ‘Scottish Parliament’ will become more responsible for raising some of the money it spends – but, as long as it can only control one small part of a mix of taxes, that argument is misleading too. Overall, we have a vague and misleading statement, using the language of greater accountability, but it’s not greater democratic accountability. It’s the other kind of accountability. The kind where democratic accountability is further reduced.


The Smith Commission on accountability: I don’t think it means what they think it means
Paul Cairney, Politics & Public Policy, November 27, 2014

Jacobites and Jacobins: the problem with Yes fundamentalism, Promised Joy, Posted: November 29, 2014


I voted Yes. I was sure it was the right thing to do.
It was an article of faith on the Yes side that lots of citizens had journeyed from No to Yes, but no one ever headed in the opposite direction.
Well, more than two months after September 18th, I look around me at what the Yes movement has become. And I think I want out.
[…]
It all seemed so positive at the time. But I’m increasingly concerned that the Scottish public sphere faces a serious threat from authoritarian, sanctimonious Yes fundamentalists.
And that’s the very opposite of what I thought I was voting for.
[…]
[On the SNP]
• identification with the nation, alongside heavy hints that other parties are not identified with the nation;
• the attempt to crowd out other parties as unnecessary to the business of governing Scotland since they know what needs to be done;
• hostility to the neighbouring government, and the attempt to base their own governing legitimacy in their opposition to it;
• mass rallies;
• a romantic air of dewy-eyed defiance.
[…]
[On RIC]
More annoying is the combination of leftist vanguardism and Scottish manifest destiny that has infected supposedly radical conversations since the referendum.
To explain, there is a conviction (that word again) among fundamenalist Yessers that “the 45″ possess a privileged understanding of the direction of history, and that independence is inevitable. Therefore, people who voted against independence are barriers to progress. This is the classic false consciousness trope – those people were wrong and don’t understand what’s good for them.
This sense of being the vanguard of a better future society shaped most of the Radical Independence workshops, and particularly the keynote speeches (with the notable exception of Patrick Harvie, who has retained his objectivity throughout).
The sentimental “we shall overcome” tone is new – no one really spoke like that before the Yes campaign lost. Everyone was at pains to stress how un-nationalist they were. And they were! But suddenly there’s something magical about Scotland that will guide her to independence.
[…]
But far, far worse than any of that was the People’s Vow.
The event climaxed, in what sounds like an all too organismic sense, with the reading of a National Covenant de nos jours.
Where do you start with this? The People’s Vow is a classic piece of vanguard rhetoric. It doesn’t matter if we lost the referendum, it argues – we know better than the voters “who weren’t quite ready this time”. That’s the 2 million voters who weren’t quite ready. That’s a lot of voters. And, ready or not, the People’s Vow dictates terms on equality, land reform and other matters.
Who are these “People”, exactly? Are the people making the vow, or is it made on their behalf? And by whom? And is it also made on behalf of “the 55%” who weren’t quite advanced enough to understand their historical responsibilities?’
[…]
[On the National]
the Herald’s publishers knew that Yes voters would fetishise a Yes paper as “theirs” and mobilise behind it in the post-referendum culture wars.
[…]
And no one on the Yes side sees any contradiction between bemoaning partiality in news coverage, and then launching a Yes propaganda sheet?
[…]
Yes fundamentalists are no longer able to hold political ideas up to objective scrutiny either way. Everything is reduced to the binary independent/ not independent, and Bad Things are blamed on being not independent. Scotland’s nationhood status is, frankly, an insufficient explanation for all political phenomena.
[…]
The Radical Independence conference was in many ways the high water mark of Yes anti-politics in this respect – the “Westminster” parties were routinely booed and the system seen as rigged, while vague programmes of political decentralism were advocated.
[…]
The weeks since the referendum have not been good to the Yes campaign.
Feeling like the bullied, Yes fundamentalists have become the bullies.
Perceiving media bias against them, they have taken solace in media biased in their favour.
Certain that Westminster is undemocratic, they crave unopposed SNP government.
Furious at September’s show of strength by the UK state, they glory in mass rallies and projections of power.
And convinced of their moral authority, they seek to silence any dissenters on social media. […]

Jacobites and Jacobins: the problem with Yes fundamentalism, Promised Joy, Posted: November 29, 2014
https://faintdamnation.wordpress.com/2014/11/29/jacobites-and-jacobins-the-problem-with-yes-fundamentalism/

Scotland, Class and Nation, Alistair Davidson, posted by bellacaledonia on December 7, 2014


Classism is hardly unique to Scotland, but it has a particular national character, where rejection of Scottish culture and language is often an elite trait. To Scotland’s reactionaries, the very Scottishness of the working class is one of the things that marks it as uneducated and unfit to rule, which only makes the recent upsurge all the more terrifying to them. Of late, Kenneth Roy is railing against mobs one week and complaining about the SNP populism of allowing anti-social behaviour on trains the next.
David Leask of the Herald described the BBC Bias demonstrations as fascistic”, on account of all the flags being waved. One widely-shared article worried that the SNP is Jacobin, and that RIC’s People’s Vow risks a rerun of the National Covenant. Journalists on Twitter regularly speculate that Nicola Sturgeon’s biggest challenge is reigning in the 65,000 new SNP members, the 45ers, who are assumed to be impatient fundamentalists.
The fear that mass participation will inevitably end in events akin to the Terror of the French Revolution, perpetrated by the Jacobins, is the foundation stone of modern conservatism. It was most famously articulated by Edmund Burke: “some popular general … shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself … The moment in which that event shall happen, the person who commands the army is master of your whole republic.” In one sense Burke was right, in that Napoleon rose to become Emperor – but he was also wrong, in that the French Republic remains radically more democratic and decentralised than Britain to this day.
It is this Burkean impulse that explains why even as Scottish democracy engages people on a massive scale, some activists are panicking about the danger of one-party rule. It is the curious relationship between nation and class in Scotland that explains why waving a Saltire creeping fascism to one person and a clear expression of popular sovereignty to another.
An alternative to Burke’s view is offered by famed American community organiser Saul Alinsky. In opposition to both conservatives and leftists who “lay claim to the precious quality of impartiality, of cold objectivity” he argued that a true radical is someone who is a “partisan of the people”, who will “identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.” 
Surely, this is the progressive position to take in the new Scotland. I have watched in amazement as the majority of the community campaign leaders I have met down the years, often working class mothers who became involved in politics through local anti-cuts fights, have flocked to first the Yes campaign and now the SNP. These are intelligent people and often experienced campaigners. On Facebook, every day, I see people of all backgrounds engaging in policy, economic and strategy debates, sharing analysis articles and petitions and encouraging each other to take action. The democracy movement is no-one’s fool.
The much-derided 45 are not “zoomers” as some journalists would have it, rather they understand something much supposedly informed comment misses – that nation and class are intertwined, that the nationalist struggle is about much more than flags, that the Scottish working class will always be held as inferior and excluded in the British system. They can see that their nation and their centre-left government are now locked in an existential fight with the British State.
Mass politics has become such a rarity that it is unnerving for the elite, who are used to politics as a polite gentleman’s club. In Scotland, mass politics waves the Saltire, because repression of Scottish identity and language is a central feature of class rule in Scotland. Mass politics is raucous, noisy, and angry. It plays by different rules to elite politics. These features allow it to reach beyond the ideological limits of neoliberalism. The return of mass politics warts and all should be welcomed by all progressives, as there is no real democracy without it.

Scotland, Class and Nation, Alistair Davidson, posted by bellacaledonia on December 7, 2014

'Social democracy not separatism', Neil Findlay and Tommy Kane; 'Challenges the left can respond to', John Foster - Scottish Left Review, Issue 83, October 2014


'Social democracy not separatism', Neil Findlay and Tommy Kane
[…] Another campaign feature was the abandonment by the pro-independence left of its capacity to critically analysis the SNP, its record in government and its ‘independence’ offer. Strangely, the SNP gained a reputation for being good at government but this has taken a hit recently […]

'Challenges the left can respond to', John Foster
[…] The SNP ran a very sophisticated campaign. Its White Paper terms for independence were essentially neo-liberal: EU, sterling, cuts in business taxes, NATO membership and no guarantees on the removal of anti-trade union laws. Not just that. Its timetable for independence provided full reassurance for big (and small) business on delivery. All the key institutions required for neo-liberal continuity would be in place before formal independence. […]

Scottish Left Review, Issue 83, October 2014


'The Next Step For The RIC', Conor Cheyne, Bellacaledonia, 4 November 2014


[…] When I talk of the Nat Trap I refer to those being caught up in the Nationalistic mood. It is fantastic to see so many people still willing to fight for what they believe in and that so many haven’t been disillusioned with the result but for RIC as a group, we must be wary of such Nationalism. RIC was founded on the basis of gaining independence as a means to an end rather than independence as an ends in itself. We want to see an independent Scotland for democratic reasons and because we see socialism achievable in Scotland while almost impossible in Britain. However, since the referendum there has been such a concentration on the independence issue that it seems the real reasons the group started might be falling by the wayside. As Socialists and others on the Left we cannot forget that while independence is what we want, we are still living under the control of right-wing Westminster, facing Austerity along with inequality and all the other wonderful bonus’ we get for being part of Great Britain. We must remember that these things too must be fought against. There has been much talk of devo-max and continuing the fight for independence and while RIC will always argue for independence, I propose that we now concentrate on other matters. The SNP have large numbers and will make the argument for Indy/Devo-Max but who is arguing against Austerity, who is arguing for left-wing politics etc? It must be RIC.
On the face of it the Radical Independence Campaign are a ragtag grouping of lefties who can only see Scottish independence as a route to Socialism. But, in reality RIC was arguably the second biggest group in the Yes movement and possibly the most effective at gaining votes. What is most astounding about the movement is what it has achieved. The desired goal was independence as a means to Socialism and even though the referendum was lost, it still achieved something remarkable. […]
Though it will not be popular, I believe the Radical Independence Campaign must change its name along with its form. For one, having independence in the name narrows the perimeters of debate whether us within RIC like it or not as those we debate with will always refer to it negatively. Also, the campaign itself is over and we find ourselves at another stage all together. Campaign also gives connotations of short-term while RIC has to be the opposite if it is to make a real difference in Scotland. For a new challenge we must have a new name. […]

'The Next Step For The RIC', Conor Cheyne, Bellacaledonia, 4 November 2014