So, the SNP have had their biggest Conference ever to round off their most successful year ever.
Congratulations to them
But the really big thing that happened was what happened at the Conference's start. Nicola ruled out having a commitment to a second referendum in next year's SNP manifesto. That means, for the avoidance of doubt, before 2023 at the earliest.
The last referendum took so long that you forget how it started. With a lengthy negotiation between the Scottish and British Government over the terms on which Holyrood would be given the legal competence to hold a referendum. That power was ultimately ceded only for a time limited period, now expired, so this process would require to be repeated even if the SNP won in 2021 with a clear commitment to re-run the vote. And, for the avoidance of any doubt, that legal competence is critical. Anybody who thinks otherwise should ask the Catalans. And even if consent was given, there would then need to be another Referendum Bill passed.
So, eight years at the least. Which is a lot of conference time to occupy in some way.
For some it appears they think they'll be able to pass it with an annual hate fest. The hatred of all things English is never far from the surface within much of the SNP but other hates don't even need to be concealed. Hatred of the press in general and the BBC in particular. Hatred of the Tories, which might at least have some logic, were it not that it is accompanied by hatred for the Labour Party as well, just because. At some points during the debate over fracking it even appeared to extend to hatred of the entire modern world.
Who knows, maybe it's possible this will do for the next eight years but somehow I doubt it. However in attempting to find something else to talk about the Nats would have to actually do something about their increasingly obvious failure to use the powers of the existing Scottish Parliament to address the developing crises in our public services.
Yet reform requires change and change always makes enemies. And in maintaining their fragile coalition which delivers them their electoral successes the SNP can't afford to make enemies. So the easy solution is to avoid reform.
Which kind of gets you back to where I started. With not having much to talk about. For eight years.
And to the second emotion which wasn't far away in Aberdeen.
Fear.
What have the SNP got to fear, I hear you ask? They are commonly believed to have more or less already won next year's Scottish General Election. The Labour Party is currently in disarray and while the Scottish Tories may be experiencing a modest revival the adjective modest remains well justified.
Well here's what they have to fear. If now, with a uniquely popular leader, with no effective opposition, with virtually every Westminster MP and a more or less nailed on return to Government at Holyrood. With the army of the 45 defeated but still far from demobilised and with a UK Government virtually closed to Scottish influence. If with all these advantages they still can't risk a second referendum then when are they ever going to be in a position to do so?
Maybe 2023? Who knows.
Which kind of brings me back to hatred. The hatred the Nats are only slowly realising that even they possess. Hatred for the people of Scotland for failing to rise to the historic challenge fate had offered them last year
I suspect this won't end well. Hatred and fear together rarely do.
Sunday, 18 October 2015
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Follow the money
Sometimes longevity in politics allows you a bit of perspective and I've now been in this game a very long time.
At some point in the Autumn of 1976 I went to the Kelburn cinema in Paisley to see the film "All the President's Men".
This was in a different age. A "big" film had to be seen on the big screen unless you wanted to wait three years to see it on the telly. No Sky, no Netflix, no You Tube.
And this was a big film. And certainly one I wanted to see. Not just big in its cast and in its staging but big in the story it told. Of how two junior Washington Post reporters, sticking to their story like limpets, eventually brought down the President of the United States himself.
But even in 1976 I was sufficiently cynical to doubt the neat, feature length, version on offer. So I bought the book.
It remains an influence on me to this day.
It is a worthy tribute to probably the greatest piece of political investigative journalism ever undertaken, written by the practitioners themselves. But it also has a third hero, their editor.
Woodward and Bernstein have got a great story, but Ben Bradlee is the man who insists they properly stand it up.
And he, Bradlee, is correct to be cautious. This is not a casual piece of gossipy political reporting. It concerns a story so important, if true, that it must be capable of unimpeachable verification. In the end it is verified and the rest is history but the crucial qualification comes before that, "if true".
For the story Bradlee is initially presented with is this. That the President has, first of all, condoned illegality and then conspired in its cover up. Much as Bradlee himself, no less than his enthusiastic reporters, is no fan of President Nixon, he doubts whether even Nixon would be so crooked. Indeed, for the sake of the system, he almost hopes his scepticism to be justified.
But there is something even beyond that that bears on Bradlee's consideration. This is such a big story, such a scandal, an event with such potential repercussions that, surely, it can't be true?
Now, nostalgic though I am, you would be right to speculate that I am not here just writing about the reading habits of my youth.
For two weeks back I wrote a wee blog about the significance of the previous day's Sunday Times story regarding the business activities of Michelle Thomson, one time leading light in the group Business for Scotland and the then, two weeks ago, SNP, but now independent, Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West.
I say with due modesty that it had something of an impact, not least in Ms Thomson's now "independent" status.
Yet at the time I did not appreciate the can of worms I had opened.
For something approaching panic then broke out within the ranks of our governing Party, despite their currently enjoying a 30 point lead in the polls. And panic is seldom an aid to sensible decision making.
But such a decision was made, by somebody. A decision to throw Ms Thomson to the wolves. The chosen mechanism the disclosure of internal emails from the Yes Campaign revealing that her participation in the referendum campaign was not the unalloyed triumph it had previously been maintained to be.
Indeed, in a momentary lapse of judgement that will have a tail so long that I suspect that we might well still discussing it ten years from now, it was revealed that Peter Murrell, the Chief Executive of the SNP, had decided, mid referendum campaign, that Ms Thomson was no longer worthy of remunerated employment by Business for Scotland.
A not insensible view. Indeed quite the opposite. Except that, from the perspective of the law governing the referendum, Mr Murrell was not entitled to have any view at all as to the activities of Business for Scotland, let alone to be deciding who they should or should not be remunerating. For he had his, the SNP's, money to spend on referendum campaigning, which he was proceeding to do more or less to the legal limit. Meanwhile Business for Scotland was repeatedly maintaining itself to be completely independent of the SNP, and indeed of Yes Scotland. It needed to be so if it wished to incur election expenditure separately, and in addition to, either. It was, after all, registered as an "independent" permitted participant in the referendum. If the SNP, through Mr Murrell, was controlling the expenditure of another "permitted participant" then that had to be declared as part of the SNP's permitted referendum expenditure . And if that control existed and if it was not to be disclosed, then Mr Murrell would be breaking the criminal law. A breach significantly aggravated by it meaning that the SNP intended to exceed the money they were legally permitted to spend overall during the referendum campaign.
These are not trivial matters.
The law in this matter takes a bit of digging but it eventually found in Schedule 4, Paragraph 24, sub paragraph 5, sub sub Paragraph (b) of the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013. By virtue of that provision, a person who "knowingly or recklessly" makes a false declaration [as to election expenditure] commits an offence bringing with it the potential penalty of a fine or even of a term of imprisonment "not exceeding twelve months".
Now, in conclusion, if Mr Murrell was merely some minor Party functionary then he, like Ms Thomson, could be disowned by the SNP hierarchy, consoling himself that, if no-one else, at least his wife would stand by him if he was prosecuted. Except of course Mr Murrell is not some minor Party functionary. Dare I say it, perhaps I am not wrong to be reminded of Ben Bradlee's initial reaction these forty years past. Surely this can't be true?
At some point in the Autumn of 1976 I went to the Kelburn cinema in Paisley to see the film "All the President's Men".
This was in a different age. A "big" film had to be seen on the big screen unless you wanted to wait three years to see it on the telly. No Sky, no Netflix, no You Tube.
And this was a big film. And certainly one I wanted to see. Not just big in its cast and in its staging but big in the story it told. Of how two junior Washington Post reporters, sticking to their story like limpets, eventually brought down the President of the United States himself.
But even in 1976 I was sufficiently cynical to doubt the neat, feature length, version on offer. So I bought the book.
It remains an influence on me to this day.
It is a worthy tribute to probably the greatest piece of political investigative journalism ever undertaken, written by the practitioners themselves. But it also has a third hero, their editor.
Woodward and Bernstein have got a great story, but Ben Bradlee is the man who insists they properly stand it up.
And he, Bradlee, is correct to be cautious. This is not a casual piece of gossipy political reporting. It concerns a story so important, if true, that it must be capable of unimpeachable verification. In the end it is verified and the rest is history but the crucial qualification comes before that, "if true".
For the story Bradlee is initially presented with is this. That the President has, first of all, condoned illegality and then conspired in its cover up. Much as Bradlee himself, no less than his enthusiastic reporters, is no fan of President Nixon, he doubts whether even Nixon would be so crooked. Indeed, for the sake of the system, he almost hopes his scepticism to be justified.
But there is something even beyond that that bears on Bradlee's consideration. This is such a big story, such a scandal, an event with such potential repercussions that, surely, it can't be true?
Now, nostalgic though I am, you would be right to speculate that I am not here just writing about the reading habits of my youth.
For two weeks back I wrote a wee blog about the significance of the previous day's Sunday Times story regarding the business activities of Michelle Thomson, one time leading light in the group Business for Scotland and the then, two weeks ago, SNP, but now independent, Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West.
I say with due modesty that it had something of an impact, not least in Ms Thomson's now "independent" status.
Yet at the time I did not appreciate the can of worms I had opened.
For something approaching panic then broke out within the ranks of our governing Party, despite their currently enjoying a 30 point lead in the polls. And panic is seldom an aid to sensible decision making.
But such a decision was made, by somebody. A decision to throw Ms Thomson to the wolves. The chosen mechanism the disclosure of internal emails from the Yes Campaign revealing that her participation in the referendum campaign was not the unalloyed triumph it had previously been maintained to be.
Indeed, in a momentary lapse of judgement that will have a tail so long that I suspect that we might well still discussing it ten years from now, it was revealed that Peter Murrell, the Chief Executive of the SNP, had decided, mid referendum campaign, that Ms Thomson was no longer worthy of remunerated employment by Business for Scotland.
A not insensible view. Indeed quite the opposite. Except that, from the perspective of the law governing the referendum, Mr Murrell was not entitled to have any view at all as to the activities of Business for Scotland, let alone to be deciding who they should or should not be remunerating. For he had his, the SNP's, money to spend on referendum campaigning, which he was proceeding to do more or less to the legal limit. Meanwhile Business for Scotland was repeatedly maintaining itself to be completely independent of the SNP, and indeed of Yes Scotland. It needed to be so if it wished to incur election expenditure separately, and in addition to, either. It was, after all, registered as an "independent" permitted participant in the referendum. If the SNP, through Mr Murrell, was controlling the expenditure of another "permitted participant" then that had to be declared as part of the SNP's permitted referendum expenditure . And if that control existed and if it was not to be disclosed, then Mr Murrell would be breaking the criminal law. A breach significantly aggravated by it meaning that the SNP intended to exceed the money they were legally permitted to spend overall during the referendum campaign.
These are not trivial matters.
The law in this matter takes a bit of digging but it eventually found in Schedule 4, Paragraph 24, sub paragraph 5, sub sub Paragraph (b) of the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013. By virtue of that provision, a person who "knowingly or recklessly" makes a false declaration [as to election expenditure] commits an offence bringing with it the potential penalty of a fine or even of a term of imprisonment "not exceeding twelve months".
Now, in conclusion, if Mr Murrell was merely some minor Party functionary then he, like Ms Thomson, could be disowned by the SNP hierarchy, consoling himself that, if no-one else, at least his wife would stand by him if he was prosecuted. Except of course Mr Murrell is not some minor Party functionary. Dare I say it, perhaps I am not wrong to be reminded of Ben Bradlee's initial reaction these forty years past. Surely this can't be true?
Monday, 28 September 2015
Mortgage Fraud.
It's the September weekend and for once it isn't raining.
Better still, for once I've actually had the whole weekend off. I was meant to be doing a jury trial last week, tailgunner on a wee stabbing, but as it turned out the case ahead of it overran so I spent most of the week unable to make client appointments, in case my trial started, but with time on my hands to clear my desk.
So really, really, the last thing I wanted to be having to do today was write a blog about mortgage fraud.
But needs must.
A week past on Sunday the Sunday Times carried an article about the business activities of Michelle Thomson, one time front woman for Business for Scotland and now the SNP Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West. It was unattractive stuff, highlighting how her property company had bought up houses and flats from distressed and desperate sellers at knock down prices. These were hardly the actions of a leading member of a supposedly social democratic Party. So the hypocrisy was enlightening but hardly unique in Nationalist ranks.
And, on the other hand, that is of course capitalism. Those with lots of money regularly can, and do, exploit that position at the expense of those who have little. That's certainly not something even the current Labour leadership is proposing be made illegal.
But there was something in that initial article that seemed to the informed eye a bit more sinister. That was the suggestion that, in some of the transactions involved, the price actually paid by Thomson was less than that declared to the Land Registry. "That looks very like mortgage fraud", I thought to myself but to be honest that was as far as I went. I was more focussed on preparing for my stabbing.
But then, yesterday, the Sunday Times suddenly put much more flesh on the bones.*
For they had found the anonymised findings of a case before the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal and had lifted the cloak of anonymity.
Now here I am going to have to get a bit (even more) boring and explain how various types of mortgage fraud work and who and how the perpetrator benefits.
The first relates to "false deposits".
As you will probably know, in the aftermath of the banking crash, the conditions attached to mortgages tightened considerably.
In particular, purchasers were required to fund considerably more of the price from their own resources, a sum commonly referred to as the "deposit". This caused considerable difficulty in the market. There were good numbers of people, particularly first time buyers, interested in buying property but without the ability to raise the deposit.
So, I might be able to afford an £80,000 mortgage, but that didn't mean I could afford an £80, 000 house. For the lender, typically, at he height of the crash, would be prepared to lend no more than 80% of the price. So to buy my £80,000 house I could borrow no more than £64,000. I would need to find another £16,000 from my own resources.
But of course I could afford an £80,000 mortgage. So, here is the thing. What if I didn't buy my £80,000 house for a declared price of £80,000? What instead if I bought it for £100,000. Then, of course, I could use my full £80,000 mortgage. But, I hear you ask, if you didn't have £16,000 for a deposit how did you suddenly get £20,000? And, anyway, why would you pay £100,000 for a house only worth £80,000?
The answer to these two questions are, respectively, I don't and I haven't. I propose, with the assistance of a third party, either the seller themselves, or an intermediary looking to make a profit in the process, to commit a mortgage fraud.
For one or other of these is going to "lend" me the deposit and once the money, combined with the mortgage funds has been tendered as the price, the seller is going to give them their deposit back.
To do this I must commit a fraud in two ways: Firstly, I have to fraudulently mislead the mortgage provider as to my possession of a £20,000 deposit and secondly I have to deceive them as to the true price I am paying, giving them in turn an inaccurate impression of the property's true worth. Meanwhile those providing the deposit, although not directly involved with the lender have almost certainly committed conspiracy to defraud, particularly if, as an estate agent or property developer, they were the instigators of it.
But of course this type of fraud has one major drawback, it requires the knowing participation of the seller.
So that is where "back to back" fraud comes in. It requires more than one principal participant but in this circumstance the seller is completely ignorant and innocent.
Again I will use the an £80,000 deal as an illustration although generally this operates with higher value properties. Mr innocent wishes to sell his property for £80,000. Fraudster one offers precisely that. But, with settlement on the same date, fraudster two then offers to purchase the same property from fraudster one at a price of £100,000. Fraudster two then gets an 80% loan. Fraudster one never has £80,000. Indeed he or she never has any money. Fraudster two however hands over the full £100,000 from which fraudster one pays Mr Innocent his £80,000 and proceeds to give Fraudster two the other £20,000 "back". Again fraudster two has committed the frauds outlined above but in this scenario fraudster one, although again never directly in touch with the mortgage lender, has also nonetheless participated in a conspiracy to defraud.
Now there are two essential elements to both these frauds. The first element can be innocent. You need a valuation of the property at the level of the nominal price paid. For a percentage loan is always provided as the lower of the declared price or valuation. At the height of the slump however that wasn't difficult as for a considerable time surveyors continued, sometimes wishfully on other occasions........to overvalue property.
The second element however can't be innocent. You need a bent solicitor.
For mortgage lenders aren't idiots. Or at least since the crash they haven't been. Any solicitor handling mortgage funds must comply with the standard conditions imposed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Two of these are particularly germane here.
The first is that the solicitor must inform the lender and get their agreement to proceed if they know that the deposit is not being provided by the purchaser themselves. Obviously this can be entirely legitimate, where for example it comes from the purchaser's parents but where it is less easily explained, it is highly unlikely that the mortgage provider would release their funds. They intended to provide an 80%loan only. That's where we first came in.
The second is that the solicitor must inform the lender if the seller has owned the property less than six months. Again, there can be legitimate reasons for this, most commonly a catastrophic change in the sellers personal circumstance, but, again if the mortgage provider was informed that the seller had bought the property only that day and for a considerably lower price then again release of funds would be inconceivable.
But of course the lenders rely on the solicitor telling them. If at the behest of his client he fails to do so it is highly unlikely they would ever know.
Unless it is picked up by a routine Law Society inspection.
Which is what happened to Christopher William Hales, formerly a partner with Grigor Hales solicitors, Edinburgh.
As a result, it appears, of a Law Society inspection Mr Hales was found to have assisted in mortgage fraud in no less than thirteen transactions for which he ultimately appeared before the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal on 13th may 2014 and was then struck off as a solicitor.
It's all in the judgement which, despite its length I encourage you to read in full. Numerous examples of failing to inform lenders of undisclosed deposits, including examples of Mr Hales personally returning these to the purchasers, and several examples of back to backs, all equally undisclosed to the lenders.
But Mr Hales was not the principal actor here, he was simply the facilitator.
The principal actor, time and time again, was a woman referred to in the judgement as Mrs A. Sometimes she acts directly, on others she provides a third party deposit in exchange for a "fee".
And, thanks to the Sunday Times we now know that Mrs A is Michelle Thomson and from there, on reading the judgement, you can deduce that the others involved in the frauds include her business partner, their joint company and, occasionally, her husband.
Now, in May 2014, when the Tribunal decision was issued, Michelle Thomson was something approaching a national figure as one of the public faces of the SNP front organisation Business for Scotland. Indeed, at first appearance, one of the few genuine business people involved with that organisation, most of the others being little more than jumped up PR men. If her up to the neck involvement in mortgage fraud had come to light just three months before the referendum this would have been disastrous for Yes Scotland, for the SNP by association, but most of all for the economic credibility of the Independence cause.
I've got a bit of knowledge however of how solicitors get drawn into mortgage fraud. It usually starts with agreeing to "bend the rules", for a valued client, "just this once". The problem is that once done there is no way back. For, once done, any future reluctance can invariably be met with the response from the client "it would be a pity if the lender, or the Law Society, found out about that first matter". After all, the client could probably maintain they didn't realise they were doing anything wrong. It's not the sort of thing the solicitor would have been likely to have confirmed to them in writing.
And that can be a problem in other walks of life. For example, a political Party reluctant to enrol an individual as an approved candidate could hardly face down a response that they had known of that person's character when the self same person had performed a previous valued service for them. Nor indeed could they take immediate disciplinary action once matters became public. "It wouldn't look very good if Paul Hutcheon got to know how long you've known about this".
But unless the findings of the SSDT are wholly inaccurate, and you will note that the facts were agreed by Mr Hales, Thomson personally is toast. The sentencing guidelines are here. It qualifies for what is commonly known as exemplary sentencing so she'll probably get several years in jail giving rise to an interesting by-election.
With Bill Walker the SNP got away with murder. I wrote about that at the time here and here. It was simply unsustainable on the known facts that they were unaware of his history at the time he was selected as a parliamentary candidate. But the Nats simply stuck to that line and somehow got away with it.
This time, once the dust settles, there must be a more thorough investigation as to who in the SNP knew what and when. The only pity is that this is unlikely to be before next May.
*Unfortunately the Sunday Times second article doesn't appear to be online.
Better still, for once I've actually had the whole weekend off. I was meant to be doing a jury trial last week, tailgunner on a wee stabbing, but as it turned out the case ahead of it overran so I spent most of the week unable to make client appointments, in case my trial started, but with time on my hands to clear my desk.
So really, really, the last thing I wanted to be having to do today was write a blog about mortgage fraud.
But needs must.
A week past on Sunday the Sunday Times carried an article about the business activities of Michelle Thomson, one time front woman for Business for Scotland and now the SNP Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West. It was unattractive stuff, highlighting how her property company had bought up houses and flats from distressed and desperate sellers at knock down prices. These were hardly the actions of a leading member of a supposedly social democratic Party. So the hypocrisy was enlightening but hardly unique in Nationalist ranks.
And, on the other hand, that is of course capitalism. Those with lots of money regularly can, and do, exploit that position at the expense of those who have little. That's certainly not something even the current Labour leadership is proposing be made illegal.
But there was something in that initial article that seemed to the informed eye a bit more sinister. That was the suggestion that, in some of the transactions involved, the price actually paid by Thomson was less than that declared to the Land Registry. "That looks very like mortgage fraud", I thought to myself but to be honest that was as far as I went. I was more focussed on preparing for my stabbing.
But then, yesterday, the Sunday Times suddenly put much more flesh on the bones.*
For they had found the anonymised findings of a case before the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal and had lifted the cloak of anonymity.
Now here I am going to have to get a bit (even more) boring and explain how various types of mortgage fraud work and who and how the perpetrator benefits.
The first relates to "false deposits".
As you will probably know, in the aftermath of the banking crash, the conditions attached to mortgages tightened considerably.
In particular, purchasers were required to fund considerably more of the price from their own resources, a sum commonly referred to as the "deposit". This caused considerable difficulty in the market. There were good numbers of people, particularly first time buyers, interested in buying property but without the ability to raise the deposit.
So, I might be able to afford an £80,000 mortgage, but that didn't mean I could afford an £80, 000 house. For the lender, typically, at he height of the crash, would be prepared to lend no more than 80% of the price. So to buy my £80,000 house I could borrow no more than £64,000. I would need to find another £16,000 from my own resources.
But of course I could afford an £80,000 mortgage. So, here is the thing. What if I didn't buy my £80,000 house for a declared price of £80,000? What instead if I bought it for £100,000. Then, of course, I could use my full £80,000 mortgage. But, I hear you ask, if you didn't have £16,000 for a deposit how did you suddenly get £20,000? And, anyway, why would you pay £100,000 for a house only worth £80,000?
The answer to these two questions are, respectively, I don't and I haven't. I propose, with the assistance of a third party, either the seller themselves, or an intermediary looking to make a profit in the process, to commit a mortgage fraud.
For one or other of these is going to "lend" me the deposit and once the money, combined with the mortgage funds has been tendered as the price, the seller is going to give them their deposit back.
To do this I must commit a fraud in two ways: Firstly, I have to fraudulently mislead the mortgage provider as to my possession of a £20,000 deposit and secondly I have to deceive them as to the true price I am paying, giving them in turn an inaccurate impression of the property's true worth. Meanwhile those providing the deposit, although not directly involved with the lender have almost certainly committed conspiracy to defraud, particularly if, as an estate agent or property developer, they were the instigators of it.
But of course this type of fraud has one major drawback, it requires the knowing participation of the seller.
So that is where "back to back" fraud comes in. It requires more than one principal participant but in this circumstance the seller is completely ignorant and innocent.
Again I will use the an £80,000 deal as an illustration although generally this operates with higher value properties. Mr innocent wishes to sell his property for £80,000. Fraudster one offers precisely that. But, with settlement on the same date, fraudster two then offers to purchase the same property from fraudster one at a price of £100,000. Fraudster two then gets an 80% loan. Fraudster one never has £80,000. Indeed he or she never has any money. Fraudster two however hands over the full £100,000 from which fraudster one pays Mr Innocent his £80,000 and proceeds to give Fraudster two the other £20,000 "back". Again fraudster two has committed the frauds outlined above but in this scenario fraudster one, although again never directly in touch with the mortgage lender, has also nonetheless participated in a conspiracy to defraud.
Now there are two essential elements to both these frauds. The first element can be innocent. You need a valuation of the property at the level of the nominal price paid. For a percentage loan is always provided as the lower of the declared price or valuation. At the height of the slump however that wasn't difficult as for a considerable time surveyors continued, sometimes wishfully on other occasions........to overvalue property.
The second element however can't be innocent. You need a bent solicitor.
For mortgage lenders aren't idiots. Or at least since the crash they haven't been. Any solicitor handling mortgage funds must comply with the standard conditions imposed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Two of these are particularly germane here.
The first is that the solicitor must inform the lender and get their agreement to proceed if they know that the deposit is not being provided by the purchaser themselves. Obviously this can be entirely legitimate, where for example it comes from the purchaser's parents but where it is less easily explained, it is highly unlikely that the mortgage provider would release their funds. They intended to provide an 80%loan only. That's where we first came in.
The second is that the solicitor must inform the lender if the seller has owned the property less than six months. Again, there can be legitimate reasons for this, most commonly a catastrophic change in the sellers personal circumstance, but, again if the mortgage provider was informed that the seller had bought the property only that day and for a considerably lower price then again release of funds would be inconceivable.
But of course the lenders rely on the solicitor telling them. If at the behest of his client he fails to do so it is highly unlikely they would ever know.
Unless it is picked up by a routine Law Society inspection.
Which is what happened to Christopher William Hales, formerly a partner with Grigor Hales solicitors, Edinburgh.
As a result, it appears, of a Law Society inspection Mr Hales was found to have assisted in mortgage fraud in no less than thirteen transactions for which he ultimately appeared before the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal on 13th may 2014 and was then struck off as a solicitor.
It's all in the judgement which, despite its length I encourage you to read in full. Numerous examples of failing to inform lenders of undisclosed deposits, including examples of Mr Hales personally returning these to the purchasers, and several examples of back to backs, all equally undisclosed to the lenders.
But Mr Hales was not the principal actor here, he was simply the facilitator.
The principal actor, time and time again, was a woman referred to in the judgement as Mrs A. Sometimes she acts directly, on others she provides a third party deposit in exchange for a "fee".
And, thanks to the Sunday Times we now know that Mrs A is Michelle Thomson and from there, on reading the judgement, you can deduce that the others involved in the frauds include her business partner, their joint company and, occasionally, her husband.
Now, in May 2014, when the Tribunal decision was issued, Michelle Thomson was something approaching a national figure as one of the public faces of the SNP front organisation Business for Scotland. Indeed, at first appearance, one of the few genuine business people involved with that organisation, most of the others being little more than jumped up PR men. If her up to the neck involvement in mortgage fraud had come to light just three months before the referendum this would have been disastrous for Yes Scotland, for the SNP by association, but most of all for the economic credibility of the Independence cause.
I've got a bit of knowledge however of how solicitors get drawn into mortgage fraud. It usually starts with agreeing to "bend the rules", for a valued client, "just this once". The problem is that once done there is no way back. For, once done, any future reluctance can invariably be met with the response from the client "it would be a pity if the lender, or the Law Society, found out about that first matter". After all, the client could probably maintain they didn't realise they were doing anything wrong. It's not the sort of thing the solicitor would have been likely to have confirmed to them in writing.
And that can be a problem in other walks of life. For example, a political Party reluctant to enrol an individual as an approved candidate could hardly face down a response that they had known of that person's character when the self same person had performed a previous valued service for them. Nor indeed could they take immediate disciplinary action once matters became public. "It wouldn't look very good if Paul Hutcheon got to know how long you've known about this".
But unless the findings of the SSDT are wholly inaccurate, and you will note that the facts were agreed by Mr Hales, Thomson personally is toast. The sentencing guidelines are here. It qualifies for what is commonly known as exemplary sentencing so she'll probably get several years in jail giving rise to an interesting by-election.
With Bill Walker the SNP got away with murder. I wrote about that at the time here and here. It was simply unsustainable on the known facts that they were unaware of his history at the time he was selected as a parliamentary candidate. But the Nats simply stuck to that line and somehow got away with it.
This time, once the dust settles, there must be a more thorough investigation as to who in the SNP knew what and when. The only pity is that this is unlikely to be before next May.
*Unfortunately the Sunday Times second article doesn't appear to be online.
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Iraq
In 2010, I voted for Ed. Well, actually, I voted for the other Ed, for I was a Broonie to the end. But by the time I did so it was clear that my second vote, for one bro or the other, was the important one.
To be honest I didn't cast either of my Eds votes with any great enthusiasm. It was more that neither was David. For David was Blair. And Blair was Iraq.
And Iraq was unforgiveable.
I read with interest the Lord Ashcroft focus group report. Patently it reflects that Corbyn has no chance of winning a General Election. Which is why I didn't vote for him.
But, let us be clear. Sure there were lots of £3ers whose loyalty to the Labour Party, or anything, is, at best, ephemeral. Sure there was some dodgy dealing when it came to affiliated members. But Corbyn won among full members of the Labour Party. Peter Kellner's research seems to indicate that he probably won among Party members of more than five years standing. Even if he might have, among that group, ultimately faltered after transfers, nobody doubts that he won a plurality.
And the reason was Iraq.
Not actually Iraq but what Iraq represented.
The vast majority of Labour Party members knew Iraq was a mistake. Obviously we have within our ranks a peacenik cadre who think any war is a mistake. That appears to include our current leader. But most of us don't take that view. We are certainly for the use of military force. But only when it is for a justified purpose and reasonably clear as to its objectives.
And we simply could not see the justified purpose of Iraq. Or, in so far as it seemed to have objectives, agree with these objectives.
But even that wasn't the point. The point was that something opposed by the vast majority of Labour Party members; that something opposed in their hearts by a majority of Labour MPs; that something which the second most important figure in the Party (Brown) could send coded signals was not his doing; that this something happened anyway.
For the iron grip of New Labour was such that the Party's view was irrelevant. And worse still that for anybody even at the very top of the Party to dissent was instant political death. When Robin Cook resigned he did so in the certain knowledge that he wouldn't be back. Any back bench MP, no matter how able, joining the rebellion, knew that doing so would end their career. Forever. You can't help feeling the younger Miliband was only saved from this fate by not being an MP. That is, of course, assuming he would truly have voted with his conscience if he had actually been there.
It would be an interesting exercise, if you could, to go back to that 2003 PLP and ask them, unattributally, how they would have voted in a genuinely free vote. Not hiding behind the "if we knew then" formulation but, truly, what was their view at the time. My feeling is that even among the "Red Tories" there was nothing like a majority for participation. For all of these people had been elected as Labour MPs. And nobody achieves that imprimatur without some feeling for our Party. And the Party's view was more or less unanimous. But they knew that dissent was suicide.
In Scottish terms there was the march. I was on that march. It was a great day. Possibly the last great march of my lifetime. NUS Scotland reunited over several generations. And now able to afford a good lunch afterwards. But where were my comrades of twenty years standing? Jack, Wendy, Frank, Pauline, Jackie and so many others? They were at the march's destination, inside the SECC. For Blair was there and as MSPs they were expected to stand beside him. Or die. Who knows, perhaps if I'd been an MSP I'd have made the same call. Although I can't help feeling that last September the 15% who got the blood and soilers to their 45% were incubated that day.
And then of course we, Party majority opinion, after Iraq, were proved right. And yet, under the iron diktat of New Labour, even that could not be acknowledged. No matter how patently true subsequent events proved it to be.
But, and I emphasise the but, the long term significance of this was not really about Iraq. It was about the disconnect between the leadership of the party and the opinions of the thousands of activists who had worked to get them elected which that represented. Iraq was just the lightning rod.
And, twelve years on, Corbyn has proved to have been the earth to that lightning rod.
Almost all the post election analysis has been about why Corbyn won. But, at least as importantly to those of us who haven't given upon the Labour Party altogether is why the others lost.
None of them offered any role to the wider Party except followship. To the right for Liz; straight on for Yvette and whatever the day of the week the polls suggested for Andy.
Corbyn, if not perhaps many of his ultra left allies, suggested that we let a thousand flowers bloom. It's hopeless politics in the real world. But he wasn't appealing to the real world. He was appealing (as it turns out very appealing) to the Labour Party.
He won't last.
But let us be clear. If next time round any of the contenders stand on a platform of "I'll be your leader and you'll shut up" then they'll suffer the same fate as Andy, Yvette and Liz.
For we remember Iraq.
To be honest I didn't cast either of my Eds votes with any great enthusiasm. It was more that neither was David. For David was Blair. And Blair was Iraq.
And Iraq was unforgiveable.
I read with interest the Lord Ashcroft focus group report. Patently it reflects that Corbyn has no chance of winning a General Election. Which is why I didn't vote for him.
But, let us be clear. Sure there were lots of £3ers whose loyalty to the Labour Party, or anything, is, at best, ephemeral. Sure there was some dodgy dealing when it came to affiliated members. But Corbyn won among full members of the Labour Party. Peter Kellner's research seems to indicate that he probably won among Party members of more than five years standing. Even if he might have, among that group, ultimately faltered after transfers, nobody doubts that he won a plurality.
And the reason was Iraq.
Not actually Iraq but what Iraq represented.
The vast majority of Labour Party members knew Iraq was a mistake. Obviously we have within our ranks a peacenik cadre who think any war is a mistake. That appears to include our current leader. But most of us don't take that view. We are certainly for the use of military force. But only when it is for a justified purpose and reasonably clear as to its objectives.
And we simply could not see the justified purpose of Iraq. Or, in so far as it seemed to have objectives, agree with these objectives.
But even that wasn't the point. The point was that something opposed by the vast majority of Labour Party members; that something opposed in their hearts by a majority of Labour MPs; that something which the second most important figure in the Party (Brown) could send coded signals was not his doing; that this something happened anyway.
For the iron grip of New Labour was such that the Party's view was irrelevant. And worse still that for anybody even at the very top of the Party to dissent was instant political death. When Robin Cook resigned he did so in the certain knowledge that he wouldn't be back. Any back bench MP, no matter how able, joining the rebellion, knew that doing so would end their career. Forever. You can't help feeling the younger Miliband was only saved from this fate by not being an MP. That is, of course, assuming he would truly have voted with his conscience if he had actually been there.
It would be an interesting exercise, if you could, to go back to that 2003 PLP and ask them, unattributally, how they would have voted in a genuinely free vote. Not hiding behind the "if we knew then" formulation but, truly, what was their view at the time. My feeling is that even among the "Red Tories" there was nothing like a majority for participation. For all of these people had been elected as Labour MPs. And nobody achieves that imprimatur without some feeling for our Party. And the Party's view was more or less unanimous. But they knew that dissent was suicide.
In Scottish terms there was the march. I was on that march. It was a great day. Possibly the last great march of my lifetime. NUS Scotland reunited over several generations. And now able to afford a good lunch afterwards. But where were my comrades of twenty years standing? Jack, Wendy, Frank, Pauline, Jackie and so many others? They were at the march's destination, inside the SECC. For Blair was there and as MSPs they were expected to stand beside him. Or die. Who knows, perhaps if I'd been an MSP I'd have made the same call. Although I can't help feeling that last September the 15% who got the blood and soilers to their 45% were incubated that day.
And then of course we, Party majority opinion, after Iraq, were proved right. And yet, under the iron diktat of New Labour, even that could not be acknowledged. No matter how patently true subsequent events proved it to be.
But, and I emphasise the but, the long term significance of this was not really about Iraq. It was about the disconnect between the leadership of the party and the opinions of the thousands of activists who had worked to get them elected which that represented. Iraq was just the lightning rod.
And, twelve years on, Corbyn has proved to have been the earth to that lightning rod.
Almost all the post election analysis has been about why Corbyn won. But, at least as importantly to those of us who haven't given upon the Labour Party altogether is why the others lost.
None of them offered any role to the wider Party except followship. To the right for Liz; straight on for Yvette and whatever the day of the week the polls suggested for Andy.
Corbyn, if not perhaps many of his ultra left allies, suggested that we let a thousand flowers bloom. It's hopeless politics in the real world. But he wasn't appealing to the real world. He was appealing (as it turns out very appealing) to the Labour Party.
He won't last.
But let us be clear. If next time round any of the contenders stand on a platform of "I'll be your leader and you'll shut up" then they'll suffer the same fate as Andy, Yvette and Liz.
For we remember Iraq.
Saturday, 12 September 2015
Refugees Welcome?
I've been a legal aid lawyer all my life.
And what goes with that is a lot of interaction with homelessness.
Not just in relation directly to "housing" matters. To people losing their home for reasons related to the house itself: its uninhabitable condition; its occupants inability to meet the continued cost of living there or its owner's unwillingness to allow their occupation.
No, homelessness also arises for other reasons: domestic violence; pathologically antisocial neighbours; vigilantism against certain types of offenders; chronic private debt; failed business ventures.
It is all part of my "daily grind".
And I do what the law allows me to do to help while recognising that, to some degree at least, many of the clients are the partial, or more, authors of their own misfortune. And regrettably, even some of those who are not, would not be people with whom you would wish greater familiarity.
But, every so often, you do get a case where you have someone who seems a genuinely decent individual, or family, who is facing uncertainty as to where they would be sleeping that very evening.
And here is the thing. I've got a big house. Until Maureen became ill, we had three spare bedrooms and one spare bathroom. We even have a largely unused garage that could be used for storage. Arrangements that have, now that we have to accommodate Maureen's illness and the carers who go with it, proved to be a Godsend but which were, for many years, a middle class indulgence. We bought the house perhaps in anticipation of kids who never came but we stayed in it because we liked it and we could afford it. Simple as that.
But for fifteen years I dealt with all these homelessness cases without once considering that, as a final resort, these clients could come and stay with me.
Now, you can rationalise this in any numbers of ways. That individual acts of charity only excuse the failures of the system. That there is "no point" in helping help only some when you can't help more. That it is patronising to select the deserving case(s). Less charitably, that perhaps there is something, on wider acquaintance, that might reveal them to be not quite so deserving.
All of these things might have a grain of truth although similar arguments have never stopped me making any number of charitable donations to domestic causes that I properly believe should be funded by general taxation. Or indeed stopped Maureen, before she was ill and in a way I have continued, sponsoring individual African children, through a charity of her choice.
No, the reason in the end I never took any of these people in was selfishness. I like where I stay and I have no desire to share it with anybody else, no matter how deserving.
So, if I had been a politician asked to take in a Syrian refugee, my answer would have been "Sorry, but no."
And it is utterly delusional to suggest that this would not be the similar response of the vast majority of other British people asked the same question. Not just to their home but to their Country.
So why are we pretending otherwise?
Because no-one wants to admit being selfish. Or at least no decent liberal, let alone socialist, does.
Britain is proud of the 0.7% of GDP we spend on foreign aid and it is to he credit of the Prime Minister that he has maintained that New Labour commitment in the face of siren calls from his own right wing. But could we do more? Of course we could. A 1% increase in the basic rate of income tax could significantly enhance that commitment and, yet, even then, the poorest British citizen contributing to that would remain infinitely better off than every single recipient of that aid.
The right might trot out their arguments: "too much would be diverted to corruption"; "it would still be a drop in the ocean"; "the Lord helps those who help themselves"; etc, etc. But the left should be more honest. The British people wouldn't vote for this. Nor would the Scottish people. The Scottish Government does have devolved competence to develop its own aid programme, notably to Malawi, but why is it not much larger? Because Scots would rather have no tuition fees. Here. And free prescriptions. Here. And, it would appear shortly, to have reduced Air Passenger Duty. Here.
I say all of this only to expose the hypocrisy of those whose response to the Syrian Refugee crisis is apparently "let them all come here."
The one thing you can say about the Greens is that they have a, sometimes unworldly, honesty. Caroline Lucas last week pointed out that if Britain took our share of the Syrian refugees currently wishing to resettle in the EU then that would amount to "only" 240,000 people. A figure Ms Lucas, with commendable consistency, suggested we volunteer to accept as it was "only" 0.4% of the UK population. Although presumably as she trotted out her "we've got room" message she wasn't proposing them housed anywhere in the green belt. Despite that being where the room is.
Nicola, never wishing to be outflanked by the evil Tories, has largely stuck to suggesting Scotland could take "more" than whatever Cameron is suggesting but the only figure that she has actually given is "at least 1000". Which is actually less than our share of Cameron's belated figure of 20,000. But Scotland's share of Ms Lucas's figure would be about 20,000 for us alone. Maybe another 19,000 is implied in the First Minister's "at least" formulation but somehow I doubt it. It seems improbable anyway that the leader of a Party predicated on getting back the money "the English have been stealing from us" wishes to do so only to give it away to people of some other nationality.
For all of these people would need housed; their children educated; their health care needs attended to and, not least, they themselves ultimately found employment. Now, all this could be done. We live in one of the very richest countries in the world. Taxes could be raised; money could be borrowed; the world scoured for the professionals to come here to deliver the support services required
Except that there is no sign at all that the electorate are prepared to make such a sacrifice to address poverty and disadvantage here. So, really, are they going to do so for people from half way across the world?
We should stop kidding these poor refugees on. "Refugees Welcome" might give a warm feeling to those expressing that sentiment but even most of those asserting that are not truly proposing to welcome them in the numbers remotely necessary to solve the problem within these shores alone.
The evil Tory Government is right. Not because they are evil Tories because they are the Government. Any British (or Scottish) Government. Not just people holding up signs. We can only do so much here. Because that is all the electorate will be prepared to fund. The solution lies not in misleading people risking drowning off the Turkish coast that if they are persistent enough they will one day find themselves in comfortable British suburbia. In the short term it can only be by mitigating the conditions in the refugee camps on Syria's borders. And in the longer term by somehow resolving the modern Hell that Syria itself has become.
For the British people are selfish. So, for what its worth, are the peoples of all other Countries in the West. There might be a small minority among us who, genuinely, would make the financial sacrifices involved to make a difference. But it is beyond cruelty for them to ignore their own minority status and, in the process, to give desperate people utterly false hope.
And what goes with that is a lot of interaction with homelessness.
Not just in relation directly to "housing" matters. To people losing their home for reasons related to the house itself: its uninhabitable condition; its occupants inability to meet the continued cost of living there or its owner's unwillingness to allow their occupation.
No, homelessness also arises for other reasons: domestic violence; pathologically antisocial neighbours; vigilantism against certain types of offenders; chronic private debt; failed business ventures.
It is all part of my "daily grind".
And I do what the law allows me to do to help while recognising that, to some degree at least, many of the clients are the partial, or more, authors of their own misfortune. And regrettably, even some of those who are not, would not be people with whom you would wish greater familiarity.
But, every so often, you do get a case where you have someone who seems a genuinely decent individual, or family, who is facing uncertainty as to where they would be sleeping that very evening.
And here is the thing. I've got a big house. Until Maureen became ill, we had three spare bedrooms and one spare bathroom. We even have a largely unused garage that could be used for storage. Arrangements that have, now that we have to accommodate Maureen's illness and the carers who go with it, proved to be a Godsend but which were, for many years, a middle class indulgence. We bought the house perhaps in anticipation of kids who never came but we stayed in it because we liked it and we could afford it. Simple as that.
But for fifteen years I dealt with all these homelessness cases without once considering that, as a final resort, these clients could come and stay with me.
Now, you can rationalise this in any numbers of ways. That individual acts of charity only excuse the failures of the system. That there is "no point" in helping help only some when you can't help more. That it is patronising to select the deserving case(s). Less charitably, that perhaps there is something, on wider acquaintance, that might reveal them to be not quite so deserving.
All of these things might have a grain of truth although similar arguments have never stopped me making any number of charitable donations to domestic causes that I properly believe should be funded by general taxation. Or indeed stopped Maureen, before she was ill and in a way I have continued, sponsoring individual African children, through a charity of her choice.
No, the reason in the end I never took any of these people in was selfishness. I like where I stay and I have no desire to share it with anybody else, no matter how deserving.
So, if I had been a politician asked to take in a Syrian refugee, my answer would have been "Sorry, but no."
And it is utterly delusional to suggest that this would not be the similar response of the vast majority of other British people asked the same question. Not just to their home but to their Country.
So why are we pretending otherwise?
Because no-one wants to admit being selfish. Or at least no decent liberal, let alone socialist, does.
Britain is proud of the 0.7% of GDP we spend on foreign aid and it is to he credit of the Prime Minister that he has maintained that New Labour commitment in the face of siren calls from his own right wing. But could we do more? Of course we could. A 1% increase in the basic rate of income tax could significantly enhance that commitment and, yet, even then, the poorest British citizen contributing to that would remain infinitely better off than every single recipient of that aid.
The right might trot out their arguments: "too much would be diverted to corruption"; "it would still be a drop in the ocean"; "the Lord helps those who help themselves"; etc, etc. But the left should be more honest. The British people wouldn't vote for this. Nor would the Scottish people. The Scottish Government does have devolved competence to develop its own aid programme, notably to Malawi, but why is it not much larger? Because Scots would rather have no tuition fees. Here. And free prescriptions. Here. And, it would appear shortly, to have reduced Air Passenger Duty. Here.
I say all of this only to expose the hypocrisy of those whose response to the Syrian Refugee crisis is apparently "let them all come here."
The one thing you can say about the Greens is that they have a, sometimes unworldly, honesty. Caroline Lucas last week pointed out that if Britain took our share of the Syrian refugees currently wishing to resettle in the EU then that would amount to "only" 240,000 people. A figure Ms Lucas, with commendable consistency, suggested we volunteer to accept as it was "only" 0.4% of the UK population. Although presumably as she trotted out her "we've got room" message she wasn't proposing them housed anywhere in the green belt. Despite that being where the room is.
Nicola, never wishing to be outflanked by the evil Tories, has largely stuck to suggesting Scotland could take "more" than whatever Cameron is suggesting but the only figure that she has actually given is "at least 1000". Which is actually less than our share of Cameron's belated figure of 20,000. But Scotland's share of Ms Lucas's figure would be about 20,000 for us alone. Maybe another 19,000 is implied in the First Minister's "at least" formulation but somehow I doubt it. It seems improbable anyway that the leader of a Party predicated on getting back the money "the English have been stealing from us" wishes to do so only to give it away to people of some other nationality.
For all of these people would need housed; their children educated; their health care needs attended to and, not least, they themselves ultimately found employment. Now, all this could be done. We live in one of the very richest countries in the world. Taxes could be raised; money could be borrowed; the world scoured for the professionals to come here to deliver the support services required
Except that there is no sign at all that the electorate are prepared to make such a sacrifice to address poverty and disadvantage here. So, really, are they going to do so for people from half way across the world?
We should stop kidding these poor refugees on. "Refugees Welcome" might give a warm feeling to those expressing that sentiment but even most of those asserting that are not truly proposing to welcome them in the numbers remotely necessary to solve the problem within these shores alone.
The evil Tory Government is right. Not because they are evil Tories because they are the Government. Any British (or Scottish) Government. Not just people holding up signs. We can only do so much here. Because that is all the electorate will be prepared to fund. The solution lies not in misleading people risking drowning off the Turkish coast that if they are persistent enough they will one day find themselves in comfortable British suburbia. In the short term it can only be by mitigating the conditions in the refugee camps on Syria's borders. And in the longer term by somehow resolving the modern Hell that Syria itself has become.
For the British people are selfish. So, for what its worth, are the peoples of all other Countries in the West. There might be a small minority among us who, genuinely, would make the financial sacrifices involved to make a difference. But it is beyond cruelty for them to ignore their own minority status and, in the process, to give desperate people utterly false hope.
Thursday, 3 September 2015
It's Still Over.
And so, almost exactly a year on from the last one, we have an opinion poll indicating that Scotland would vote Yes in an Independence Referendum.
Now, logically, this should be a problem for those of us who oppose Scottish Independence. Our majority is apparently slipping.
Except it is not. For an instant answer to an unspecific proposition is of course very different from what would be involved were there to be another referendum.
Ironically, the people for whom this poll is a problem are the leadership of he Nationalist movement. Not the common herd, who even now are no doubt seized with a spirit of "one more heave". Hope over Fear as they would have it. Hate over Sense might be a more accurate description. Whichever, not much thinking is involved. But the Nats do have a thinking element.
That thinking element went for broke last September. Until late on, they hadn't ever really thought they had a chance. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of their tartan clad foot soldiers, they had read all the polling data. More to the point, they knew that they were walking an intellectual tightrope on the economic argument; that the truth was that an Independent Scotland would lead to an immediate reduction in living standards. Some genuinely thought that in the medium to long term this would be reversed. Others that, even if it wasn't, the sacrifice was nonetheless worth it for a flag. But, of course, neither scenario was the proposition being put to the electorate. Although that was covered up as best as possible the thinking element feared at one point the curtain would be pulled back to reveal not the Wizard of Oz but an old man with a trumpet.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly they thought they might actually win. And these people, the thinking Nationalists, genuinely believe in independence. So they thought "to Hell with it!" and allowed themselves to become allied with a complete absence from economic, even factual, reality.
So we had tens of thousand of Yes leaflets issued maintaining there were secret oilfields whose existence would only be revealed after the vote; we had the nonsense of an entirely invented "export duty" which allocated much of the value of the Scots whisky industry to its English ports of export; above all we had fantasy spending promises predicated on a price of oil that bore no resemblance to any respectable independent forecasters view or even the affordability of these spending promises no matter what the conceivable price of oil. All of this then whipped up into a hysteria over the failure of the "Main Stream Media", and particularly the BBC, to "reveal the truth".
All of this would inevitably have unraveled had there been a Yes vote but the Nationalist calculation then was that it would be too late to go back. As I pointed out before the vote, the stated intention that independence would have been achieved by March 2016, before the next Scottish Parliament elections, was precisely to rule out any opportunity for second thoughts then on the part of the electorate.
Now the problem with this was what happened if the Nats didn't win. As they didn't. It is clear now there are no secret oil fields; export duty no more exists today than it ever did and oil is now trading at something south of $50 a barrel as compared to the"predicted" $113 in the White Paper. Any early rerun of the referendum would therefor start with it being clear, not based on simple opposition assertion but by by now established fact, that the proponents of independence in 2014 had been proven to be, at best, lunatically optimistic and, at worst, actively deceitful. Yet it would be the same people who would be asking the electorate to "trust" them with their support in any re-run.
It is for that reason alone that there will be no cast iron commitment to a second referendum in the SNP's 2016 manifesto. Not that they couldn't win the election on that basis but rather that they would simply lose any Referendum again. Memories will need to have faded a bit before this problem goes away. The same thinking Nats know that.
But there is something else that would need resolved before a second referendum but which cannot. Cannot ever I'm afraid. That is the issue of currency.
There is an emerging consensus on the Nationalist side that they were badly damaged in 2014 by their adherence to the Pound and events since in Greece have demonstrated in spades the illusory nature of suggesting that a significantly different economic policy could be pursued, within a currency union, against the wishes of the larger partner(s) to that union.
So, the nationalist argument, is shifting to suggesting that an independent Scotland should, at any re-run referendum, be proposed to have its own currency. With one bound they would thus be free, they claim.
But say what you like about Alex Salmond, he is not daft. Would he, in an ideal world, have preferred to have fought in 2014 on the proposition of a separate Scottish currency? Of course he would. He's a nationalist and proper nations don't use another nation's currency Why didn't he then? Because, as I say, he is not daft.
If there was the proposition for a separate Scottish currency that currency would immediately have a shadow value on the international trading exchanges. And if that shadow currency was predicated on Scotland emerging into the modern world with a massive public spending deficit and no governmental proposals to address that, (the current SNP proposal), then you can be guaranteed that the value of the shadow Pound Scots would trade internationally at significantly less than the value of the Pound Sterling.
Now what would that mean in base politics? It would mean that the proposition being put before the electorate at any future referendum would be that anybody in Scotland paid by the Government (pensioners, Civil servants, the chronically sick and the unemployed) would, immediately on independence, suffer a significant cut in their own standard of living. The Scottish Government might tell them that their payment in Pound Scots was worth as much as their former payment in Pound Sterling but that assurance would last no further than a trip to Tesco to buy an imported banana, never mind the outcome when they tried to convert their currency to pay their (still Sterling denominated) mortgage or car loan. This was why, in the end, Syrzia realised that they couldn't "end austerity" by leaving the Euro. The value of the New Drachma wouldn't be simply what the Greek Government said it was worth. It would be what the World was prepared to pay for it. But private and public debts owed in Euros would still be payable in Euros. Even if the debtor only had Drachmas.
And that's why Eck stuck so firmly to Plan A a year ago, even when it clearly was damaging his own cause. It was still doing him less harm than any alternative.
This problem won't go away. And there is one other new factor and that's the Tory majority government. When Osborne, Balls and Alexander ruled out a currency union, there was at least something to the bluff the Nats pulled. I paraphrase: "Osborne might be a Tory Bastard but Labour and the Libs are Parties with big supports in Scotland. If it comes to it, they'll prove more flexible".
Well, Balls and Alexander are no more, alongside their big supports in Scotland. There is only the Tory Bastard now. When he says no it will lack all credibility to insist he doesn't mean it.
But between the Scylla of the redundant plan for a currency union and the Charybdis of a devalued free floating currency, there is no electoral safe passage for the good ship Independence Referendum II. And there never will be.
So it is all very well for the Bravehearts to demand another go as soon as possible. As indeed it is all very well in a random poll for people to answer Yes to an unspecific proposition. The thinking Nats realise that before you can request a meaningful answer however you need to have framed the question. And they are scratching their heads how to do that in a way with any realistic prospect of success.
I'll save them the bother. As I say, they can't.
The problem for the thinking Nats is that it isn't entirely clear a majority of the SNP membership appreciate that. After all, thinking and nationalism have seldom been easy bed fellows and this poll only strengthens the internal hand of those not particularly given to the thinking. So the poll might indeed hasten an attempt at a second referendum. The problem, as the thinking Nats know, is that it wouldn't unfortunately affect the inevitable result.
To lose one Referendum might be unfortunate but to lose two might look awfully like carelessness.
Now, logically, this should be a problem for those of us who oppose Scottish Independence. Our majority is apparently slipping.
Except it is not. For an instant answer to an unspecific proposition is of course very different from what would be involved were there to be another referendum.
Ironically, the people for whom this poll is a problem are the leadership of he Nationalist movement. Not the common herd, who even now are no doubt seized with a spirit of "one more heave". Hope over Fear as they would have it. Hate over Sense might be a more accurate description. Whichever, not much thinking is involved. But the Nats do have a thinking element.
That thinking element went for broke last September. Until late on, they hadn't ever really thought they had a chance. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of their tartan clad foot soldiers, they had read all the polling data. More to the point, they knew that they were walking an intellectual tightrope on the economic argument; that the truth was that an Independent Scotland would lead to an immediate reduction in living standards. Some genuinely thought that in the medium to long term this would be reversed. Others that, even if it wasn't, the sacrifice was nonetheless worth it for a flag. But, of course, neither scenario was the proposition being put to the electorate. Although that was covered up as best as possible the thinking element feared at one point the curtain would be pulled back to reveal not the Wizard of Oz but an old man with a trumpet.
Then suddenly and unexpectedly they thought they might actually win. And these people, the thinking Nationalists, genuinely believe in independence. So they thought "to Hell with it!" and allowed themselves to become allied with a complete absence from economic, even factual, reality.
So we had tens of thousand of Yes leaflets issued maintaining there were secret oilfields whose existence would only be revealed after the vote; we had the nonsense of an entirely invented "export duty" which allocated much of the value of the Scots whisky industry to its English ports of export; above all we had fantasy spending promises predicated on a price of oil that bore no resemblance to any respectable independent forecasters view or even the affordability of these spending promises no matter what the conceivable price of oil. All of this then whipped up into a hysteria over the failure of the "Main Stream Media", and particularly the BBC, to "reveal the truth".
All of this would inevitably have unraveled had there been a Yes vote but the Nationalist calculation then was that it would be too late to go back. As I pointed out before the vote, the stated intention that independence would have been achieved by March 2016, before the next Scottish Parliament elections, was precisely to rule out any opportunity for second thoughts then on the part of the electorate.
Now the problem with this was what happened if the Nats didn't win. As they didn't. It is clear now there are no secret oil fields; export duty no more exists today than it ever did and oil is now trading at something south of $50 a barrel as compared to the"predicted" $113 in the White Paper. Any early rerun of the referendum would therefor start with it being clear, not based on simple opposition assertion but by by now established fact, that the proponents of independence in 2014 had been proven to be, at best, lunatically optimistic and, at worst, actively deceitful. Yet it would be the same people who would be asking the electorate to "trust" them with their support in any re-run.
It is for that reason alone that there will be no cast iron commitment to a second referendum in the SNP's 2016 manifesto. Not that they couldn't win the election on that basis but rather that they would simply lose any Referendum again. Memories will need to have faded a bit before this problem goes away. The same thinking Nats know that.
But there is something else that would need resolved before a second referendum but which cannot. Cannot ever I'm afraid. That is the issue of currency.
There is an emerging consensus on the Nationalist side that they were badly damaged in 2014 by their adherence to the Pound and events since in Greece have demonstrated in spades the illusory nature of suggesting that a significantly different economic policy could be pursued, within a currency union, against the wishes of the larger partner(s) to that union.
So, the nationalist argument, is shifting to suggesting that an independent Scotland should, at any re-run referendum, be proposed to have its own currency. With one bound they would thus be free, they claim.
But say what you like about Alex Salmond, he is not daft. Would he, in an ideal world, have preferred to have fought in 2014 on the proposition of a separate Scottish currency? Of course he would. He's a nationalist and proper nations don't use another nation's currency Why didn't he then? Because, as I say, he is not daft.
If there was the proposition for a separate Scottish currency that currency would immediately have a shadow value on the international trading exchanges. And if that shadow currency was predicated on Scotland emerging into the modern world with a massive public spending deficit and no governmental proposals to address that, (the current SNP proposal), then you can be guaranteed that the value of the shadow Pound Scots would trade internationally at significantly less than the value of the Pound Sterling.
Now what would that mean in base politics? It would mean that the proposition being put before the electorate at any future referendum would be that anybody in Scotland paid by the Government (pensioners, Civil servants, the chronically sick and the unemployed) would, immediately on independence, suffer a significant cut in their own standard of living. The Scottish Government might tell them that their payment in Pound Scots was worth as much as their former payment in Pound Sterling but that assurance would last no further than a trip to Tesco to buy an imported banana, never mind the outcome when they tried to convert their currency to pay their (still Sterling denominated) mortgage or car loan. This was why, in the end, Syrzia realised that they couldn't "end austerity" by leaving the Euro. The value of the New Drachma wouldn't be simply what the Greek Government said it was worth. It would be what the World was prepared to pay for it. But private and public debts owed in Euros would still be payable in Euros. Even if the debtor only had Drachmas.
And that's why Eck stuck so firmly to Plan A a year ago, even when it clearly was damaging his own cause. It was still doing him less harm than any alternative.
This problem won't go away. And there is one other new factor and that's the Tory majority government. When Osborne, Balls and Alexander ruled out a currency union, there was at least something to the bluff the Nats pulled. I paraphrase: "Osborne might be a Tory Bastard but Labour and the Libs are Parties with big supports in Scotland. If it comes to it, they'll prove more flexible".
Well, Balls and Alexander are no more, alongside their big supports in Scotland. There is only the Tory Bastard now. When he says no it will lack all credibility to insist he doesn't mean it.
But between the Scylla of the redundant plan for a currency union and the Charybdis of a devalued free floating currency, there is no electoral safe passage for the good ship Independence Referendum II. And there never will be.
So it is all very well for the Bravehearts to demand another go as soon as possible. As indeed it is all very well in a random poll for people to answer Yes to an unspecific proposition. The thinking Nats realise that before you can request a meaningful answer however you need to have framed the question. And they are scratching their heads how to do that in a way with any realistic prospect of success.
I'll save them the bother. As I say, they can't.
The problem for the thinking Nats is that it isn't entirely clear a majority of the SNP membership appreciate that. After all, thinking and nationalism have seldom been easy bed fellows and this poll only strengthens the internal hand of those not particularly given to the thinking. So the poll might indeed hasten an attempt at a second referendum. The problem, as the thinking Nats know, is that it wouldn't unfortunately affect the inevitable result.
To lose one Referendum might be unfortunate but to lose two might look awfully like carelessness.
Wednesday, 19 August 2015
In Partial Defence of Corbynism.
"Now we're far from that valley of sorrow,
But it's memory we ne'er will forget,
So before we continue our reunion,
Let us stand to our glorious dead."
That is the final verse of Jarama Valley, probably the most famous song to emerge from the International Brigade who fought for the cause of the Spanish Republic.
It's original lyrics were actually written by a Scotsman although it was thanks to Woody Guthrie that the song became truly well known.
Anyway, the version of the song now sung in Scotland traditionally starts with Jarama Valley and then as the valley of sorrow is left in its final verse, segues into the much more upbeat Bandiera Rossa. The reason for that is that this is how the two songs are linked at the end of The Laggan's 1978 folk Album, I am the Common Man and there is virtually no Labour activist of my generation who doesn't possess somewhere a copy of that work. It is almost now a part of the traditions of the Scottish Labour Party.
Now the reason I am telling you this is that Jarama Valley/Bandiera Rossa was sung lustily last Friday night at the conclusion of the rally that Jeremy Corbyn held in Glasgow.
And, although I wasn't there, it seemed from the footage that I saw that a large majority of those present already knew the words.
I'm not voting for Jeremy, I never was, but I am getting more than slightly annoyed at some of the spinning against his supporters. The vast majority of these people were members of the Labour Party before the General Election. Never forget that as recently as December last year, Neil Findlay, Corbyn's Scottish Campaign manager, secured nearly one third of the votes of individual members in the contest to succeed Johann Lamont as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Patently, none of these members then voting joined only to support the Corbyn surge and, with respect all round, this was despite Findlay being a much weaker candidate than Corbyn, while Murphy was a much stronger opponent than even the combined efforts of Burnham, Cooper and Kendal.
And a good further chunk of Corbyn's support seem to me to be people who had at one time been members of the Party, who had lapsed or consciously resigned, but who have been lured back by the prospect of change. Corbyn is the mechanism for that change but contrary to some of the mockery of these supporters he is NOT seen by them as a messianic figure. These people certainly want to change the Party but they have not taken leave of their senses and it is still, legitimately, their Party as well.
Now, that's not to say that Corbynism doesn't have its lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorists up there with the zoomiest of Scottish Nationalists; entryists from the ultra left and the devious right; keyboard warriors blind to the absurdity of those who paid £3 to become only associate members, even now, calling on those who have been in the Party all their adult lives to "JOIN THE TORIES"!
But it would be a critical mistake to tar the whole of the Corbyn movement with this brush.
A lot of longstanding members of the Labour Party: Election Agents, Branch Secretaries, local Councillors of many years service, have decided to vote for Corbyn. Good grief, today, he has even been endorsed by the Daily Record.
Some of these people genuinely think he can get elected as Prime Minister but I suspect most, in their heart of hearts, know he can't. But I think there are three or four other things going on here.
Firstly, as I pointed out in my penultimate blog, they really doubt that any of the other current candidates can win the big election either. Certainly the utterly inept way they have conducted their leadership campaigns hardly fills you with confidence in their ability to go head to head with Cameron or Osborne in 2020.
Secondly, Party members did not want the internal debate about why we lost immediately closed down, yet that was/is what is on offer from each of the other three. "I'm the leader now, we can't afford internal strife, so just leave it to me." That was essentially what happened in 2010 after Ed won and we then sleep walked to disaster. Certainly, if you phrase it that bluntly, it is absurd to say that the electorate gave the Tories a majority mandate and voted in huge numbers for UKIP because they thought the Labour Party was too right wing. But equally, things were altogether more complicated than it simply being all down to Labour's lack of economic credibility. Yet in many ways to install any one of the other three within four months of our defeat would be to be seen to have effectively endorsed that conclusion without it first being rigorously tested. A period of debate is sometimes a good thing and only Corbyn offers that.
Thirdly, I should say that I depart not one sausage from what I said in last blog. Many of Corbyn's supporters are confusing what is unpopular with them with what is unpopular in the Country. But, at the same time, we can't simply give up on what the Labour Party is meant to stand for: First class public services funded by progressive taxation and a continued concern for those at the bottom of society. Even if that is not universally popular. Kez said this week that people in Scotland no longer understood what the Labour Party stood for. It wasn't just in Scotland. I agreed almost entirely with Brown's attack on Corbyn at the weekend but amidst the repeated quotations from our great leaders of the past he missed one of the most important: "The Labour Party is a Crusade or it is nothing." The man who said that remains the only Labour Leader to have won four General Elections.
And finally there is this. Once installed, it is very difficult to remove a Leader of the Labour Party against their will. That was the problem with Ed. We knew in our gut (and from our canvassing) that he wasn't going to sweep the Country about two years out but he wasn't for shifting. And neither, once installed, would any of the other three candidates this time be for shifting.
But Corbyn is in a different position. He could fall at any time, for assembling the necessary Parliamentary votes to trigger a challenge would not be difficult. More to the point, he is nearly seventy. I suspect if they had known how things would develop he wouldn't have been the candidate of the Party's left at all. It is entirely credible to see Corbyn leading his coalition of the angry till 2018. We would have our debate and we would see where his leadership and that debate had got us. It might be messy, it would be messy, but would it necessarily be worse than the false, to use a quote from another former leader "unanimity of the graveyard" that prevailed from September 2010 until May 8th 2015?
And in 2018? Hopefully the centre of the Party would have more credible candidates than those currently in the field.
So, do I want Corbyn to win? Certainly not. But would his victory be the utterly unmitigated disaster some predict? Perhaps not.
But it's memory we ne'er will forget,
So before we continue our reunion,
Let us stand to our glorious dead."
That is the final verse of Jarama Valley, probably the most famous song to emerge from the International Brigade who fought for the cause of the Spanish Republic.
It's original lyrics were actually written by a Scotsman although it was thanks to Woody Guthrie that the song became truly well known.
Anyway, the version of the song now sung in Scotland traditionally starts with Jarama Valley and then as the valley of sorrow is left in its final verse, segues into the much more upbeat Bandiera Rossa. The reason for that is that this is how the two songs are linked at the end of The Laggan's 1978 folk Album, I am the Common Man and there is virtually no Labour activist of my generation who doesn't possess somewhere a copy of that work. It is almost now a part of the traditions of the Scottish Labour Party.
Now the reason I am telling you this is that Jarama Valley/Bandiera Rossa was sung lustily last Friday night at the conclusion of the rally that Jeremy Corbyn held in Glasgow.
And, although I wasn't there, it seemed from the footage that I saw that a large majority of those present already knew the words.
I'm not voting for Jeremy, I never was, but I am getting more than slightly annoyed at some of the spinning against his supporters. The vast majority of these people were members of the Labour Party before the General Election. Never forget that as recently as December last year, Neil Findlay, Corbyn's Scottish Campaign manager, secured nearly one third of the votes of individual members in the contest to succeed Johann Lamont as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Patently, none of these members then voting joined only to support the Corbyn surge and, with respect all round, this was despite Findlay being a much weaker candidate than Corbyn, while Murphy was a much stronger opponent than even the combined efforts of Burnham, Cooper and Kendal.
And a good further chunk of Corbyn's support seem to me to be people who had at one time been members of the Party, who had lapsed or consciously resigned, but who have been lured back by the prospect of change. Corbyn is the mechanism for that change but contrary to some of the mockery of these supporters he is NOT seen by them as a messianic figure. These people certainly want to change the Party but they have not taken leave of their senses and it is still, legitimately, their Party as well.
Now, that's not to say that Corbynism doesn't have its lunatic fringe, conspiracy theorists up there with the zoomiest of Scottish Nationalists; entryists from the ultra left and the devious right; keyboard warriors blind to the absurdity of those who paid £3 to become only associate members, even now, calling on those who have been in the Party all their adult lives to "JOIN THE TORIES"!
But it would be a critical mistake to tar the whole of the Corbyn movement with this brush.
A lot of longstanding members of the Labour Party: Election Agents, Branch Secretaries, local Councillors of many years service, have decided to vote for Corbyn. Good grief, today, he has even been endorsed by the Daily Record.
Some of these people genuinely think he can get elected as Prime Minister but I suspect most, in their heart of hearts, know he can't. But I think there are three or four other things going on here.
Firstly, as I pointed out in my penultimate blog, they really doubt that any of the other current candidates can win the big election either. Certainly the utterly inept way they have conducted their leadership campaigns hardly fills you with confidence in their ability to go head to head with Cameron or Osborne in 2020.
Secondly, Party members did not want the internal debate about why we lost immediately closed down, yet that was/is what is on offer from each of the other three. "I'm the leader now, we can't afford internal strife, so just leave it to me." That was essentially what happened in 2010 after Ed won and we then sleep walked to disaster. Certainly, if you phrase it that bluntly, it is absurd to say that the electorate gave the Tories a majority mandate and voted in huge numbers for UKIP because they thought the Labour Party was too right wing. But equally, things were altogether more complicated than it simply being all down to Labour's lack of economic credibility. Yet in many ways to install any one of the other three within four months of our defeat would be to be seen to have effectively endorsed that conclusion without it first being rigorously tested. A period of debate is sometimes a good thing and only Corbyn offers that.
Thirdly, I should say that I depart not one sausage from what I said in last blog. Many of Corbyn's supporters are confusing what is unpopular with them with what is unpopular in the Country. But, at the same time, we can't simply give up on what the Labour Party is meant to stand for: First class public services funded by progressive taxation and a continued concern for those at the bottom of society. Even if that is not universally popular. Kez said this week that people in Scotland no longer understood what the Labour Party stood for. It wasn't just in Scotland. I agreed almost entirely with Brown's attack on Corbyn at the weekend but amidst the repeated quotations from our great leaders of the past he missed one of the most important: "The Labour Party is a Crusade or it is nothing." The man who said that remains the only Labour Leader to have won four General Elections.
And finally there is this. Once installed, it is very difficult to remove a Leader of the Labour Party against their will. That was the problem with Ed. We knew in our gut (and from our canvassing) that he wasn't going to sweep the Country about two years out but he wasn't for shifting. And neither, once installed, would any of the other three candidates this time be for shifting.
But Corbyn is in a different position. He could fall at any time, for assembling the necessary Parliamentary votes to trigger a challenge would not be difficult. More to the point, he is nearly seventy. I suspect if they had known how things would develop he wouldn't have been the candidate of the Party's left at all. It is entirely credible to see Corbyn leading his coalition of the angry till 2018. We would have our debate and we would see where his leadership and that debate had got us. It might be messy, it would be messy, but would it necessarily be worse than the false, to use a quote from another former leader "unanimity of the graveyard" that prevailed from September 2010 until May 8th 2015?
And in 2018? Hopefully the centre of the Party would have more credible candidates than those currently in the field.
So, do I want Corbyn to win? Certainly not. But would his victory be the utterly unmitigated disaster some predict? Perhaps not.
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