A Confession

I really don’t like Tony Blair (that’s not the confession, that’s common knowledge).

No, here is the confession. In 1994, I voted for him to become leader of the Labour Party. I did so, as the phrase has it, “with no illusions”. Nothing he then did disappointed me, because I had “no illusions”, although even I was a little surprised by his slavish subservience to George W Bush. I couldn’t wait for him to go. If I had any criticisms of the various plots to get rid of him once we were in power, my only criticism would be that they were not more successful at an earlier stage.

So why did I initially give him my support? Because if Labour hadn’t won in 1997 there would still have been an increased gap between rich and poor (New Labour’s central failure); there would still have been a new generation of British nuclear weapons; there would still have been a free rein for corporate banking leading ultimately to the biggest slump since the 1930s; there would still have been PFI; there would still have been an Iraq War with UK support.

But there wouldn’t have been the Working Families Tax Credit; or Civil Partnerships; or the Human Rights Act; or the minimum wage; or, probably, a Scottish Parliament. These required a Labour Government and, if Blair was the price, it was one I was willing to pay.

By themselves, the policies of the Labour Party are utterly unimportant. And, by itself, the position of Leader of the Labour Party is utterly insignificant. If it were otherwise, in 1994, in a contest with three candidates, Blair would have been my fourth preference. But the only important policies are the policies of the Government. And the only important leader is the leader of a government. And to be in government requires the winning of elections. That’s democracy.

I voted for Blair in 1994 because, as I saw it, of those actually standing, only he could win a General Election. Because I’d been there, in 1980, with a man I really loved as Labour Leader and policies that had, mostly, my unconditional support. But to paraphrase the saying of a defeated US politician, the people had then spoken..............the bastards.

It appears in 2011, Labour in Scotland still hasn’t got this. Neither Johann Lamont nor Ken McIntosh are remotely electable as First Minister. Neither was Iain Gray. Actually we all know this. The Labour Party knows this, the media know this but, most importantly of all, the people of Scotland know this. It appears however that the Labour Party proposes simply to proceed to elect one or other of them and proceed to ignore the people.

The only certainty of such an approach is that the people are likely to reciprocate.

Now this is not an encomium for Tom Harris. I’ve already said that of the declared candidates he is the one who will have my support but he is hardly Barack Obama. To be fair, even he wouldn’t claim that he is. He is simply the only the Candidate who has even the remotest chance of actually returning Labour to power. Indeed he seems to be the only one whose supporters are actually interested in their candidate being elected as First Minister, as opposed simply to being elected as leader of the Scottish Labour Party, (Although I accept one of the other candidates might not be bright enough to have worked that out for himself).

Ken’s supporters are united only by the fact that he is not Johann (and that there is nobody else). Johann’s by the belief that there is nobody else (and that she is not Ken).

In the eyes of both camps, Alex Salmond is an irrelevant bystander. Although neither camp would be able to explain why.

Now, and I’ve said this to Tom himself, if a candidate with a better chance of securing the position of First Minister came forward, then I’d wish Tom goodbye and good luck. Only I suspect I wouldn’t need to, because I believe that Tom would be right beside me in switching his allegiance. Even if that person was a bit of a Leftie.

There is a convention in internal Labour politics that, no matter what your private feelings, if, in advance of the contest you have expressed a preference for an unsuccessful candidate, in the aftermath of that contest you acknowledge the successful candidate to be the obvious and manifestly best qualified choice.

I said in one of my earliest blogs that I no longer had any aspiration to elected office. I therefore have no reason to abide by such conventions. If either Johann or Ken become leader of the Scottish Labour Party we can write off the 2016 election now and look forward to four years of hiding behind the settee whenever they appear head to head with Salmond.  How did it come to this?

Expel me if you like.

What really needed done by Ian Smart aged 53 and one day.

So the Scottish Executive have laboured mightily and laid a curate’s egg.

There are some really good things in the report. Contrary to reports they do not include devolution of domestic policy, for we’ve got that already, but they do include devolution of Scottish Party rules; changing the basic unit of party organisation to Scottish Parliamentary Constituencies and moving the Party HQ to Edinburgh. All good, although I doubt any of these previous failings had anything other than the most marginal effect in our catastrophic defeat.

There are other proposals for better training and support for candidates which may be more significant . This however only hints at the real problem which is that, while competent candidates will always benefit from better training and support, the precondition is in the adjective competent. You simply can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear and that applies not only to candidates for individual constituencies but also to our potential candidate for First Minister.

And on this the report ducks all the important issues, not because they weren’t identified but because the need to juggle the various conflicting interest groups in the Party: The MPs; the MSPs; the Councillors; the Unions and the feared knock on to English Party rules and practice simply made it impossible to do what was necessary.

Well, let me spell this out. There is only one acceptable vested interest for the Scottish Labour Party; the vested interest in getting elected.  In getting elected to govern Scotland, not simply  to the sinecure of back bench opposition in what remains of our safe seats.

So let’s start at the very beginning: the membership.

680,000 people still voted Labour in May. This is the real core vote. Nonetheless, of even those prepared to vote for us in the most adverse of circumstance, less than 1% were eligible to participate in the selection of our candidates. So is it any surprise that so many of our candidates were not representative of Labour voters but rather only of 1% of Labour voters, heavily skewed in favour of councillors; would be councillors; full time public service trade union officials and the families of all three groups? Now, I’ve got nothing against any of these people but it is hardly surprising that, in expressing their own preference for who should represent them, they favour those with similar backgrounds. The problem is that the electorate doesn’t share that prejudice. It wasn’t always like this. Look at Donald’s first cabinet.  Before Wendy, Susan, Sarah and Sam took office they all had had varied careers and lives outwith the Labour Party. Certainly Henry and Jack had Local Government experience but they had done other things, other major things, as well. That diversity of experience not only served to increase the competence of the Administration it also contributed to getting it elected.

Since 1999 however almost every vacancy that arose was filled by a serving councillor, the exceptions being people elected off the list only because Labour had done badly at the polls (ironically often because the electorate was unwilling to thole the undistinguished councillors that the Party wished upon them with their constituency vote).

What can be done about this? We can widen the selectorate for our candidates. We had a lot more members in 1999 and a lot better candidates as a result.

Why shouldn’t people identified by the Party as solid Labour supporters be entitled to a say in who should represent them? In this age of ever more sophisticated canvas techniques we know who these people are and in this internet age it is not even expensive to communicate with them. And far from disenfranchising the Unions, levy payers could automatically entitled to have a direct vote if only the unions would tell us who they were.

There is no downside to this: We get candidates chosen by a more representative group; we give Labour voters more reason to feel ownership of “their” candidate and thus to promote and actually go out and vote for them; we have some right to call on the selectorate to actually work on the campaign; we even have the opportunity to solicit financial support.

I say there is no downside, but of course there is. Such a change would significantly reduce the prospects of some people of ever becoming a Labour candidate. Unfortunately these “some people” are disproportionately represented in the Party’s current hierarchy, locally and nationally.

Then there is the issue of our candidate for First Minister. Elections are now essentially Presidential contests. I might not like that but I can’t turn back the clock. No Party could be elected to majority power without a credible candidate for the top job. But there is simply no reason that a credible candidate needs to be in the Scottish Parliament before the election as a necessary pre-requisite for First Ministerial Office.

Donald wasn’t. Nor was Alex Salmond. Jack did the job for five years not on the basis of his couple of years experience of the Scottish Parliament chamber beforehand but rather of his diverse experience in teaching; in local government  in Party position and in Ministerial Office  that all preceded his election as FM. Why has any of that changed? Various names have been floated as potential Labour First Ministers since the election but the present rules prevent many of them from even standing. Jack or Wendy couldn’t come back, because they’re not currently in the Parliament; John Reid or Des Browne because they don’t currently hold elected office. Most bizarrely of all, if Alistair Darling, or Jim Murphy or Douglas Alexander or, dare I say it, Tom Harris was to win the post and left Westminster before the election to concentrate on winning here they would automatically disqualify themselves from the position, even if already selected for the safest of Scottish Parliamentary seats!

Four and a half years before his election, Barack Obama was a State Senator in Illinois. Essentially a Turbo Regional Councillor. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, before his fall, was front runner to be President of France without even living in France! The credibility of a candidate for First Minister depends on their perceived ability to do the job. Certainly that credibility could be achieved in the Holyrood Chamber but it could just as easily come from having served (not necessarily currently) at Westminster; or at the top of a public company; or at the leadership of a major local authority; or even in the media.

And the candidate does not need to be chosen now. Fixed term Parliaments mean that we know when the next election will be. The next US Presidential Elections are in November 2012 and yet the Republicans are still months away from having a candidate. If someone had suggested it would have been advantageous to have had that person in place in the Spring of 2009 they would have been regarded (quite rightly) as off their head. Even more so if it was put to the Democrats that the best time to choose their candidate for November 2016 was in April 2012.

Obviously there is a need for day to day opposition but the person who does that does not need to be the candidate in four and a half years time. One Nicola Sturgeon performed perfectly competently in that very opposition role. Iain Gray is doing it now. And, and I repeat, fixed term Parliaments mean that May 2016  can only ever be the date on which Labour will require a candidate for First Minister.  It goes without saying that the position at Westminster is quite different when the Government of the day can (normally) opt to call an election at any time.

So, again, why doesn’t the Party get this? Well, once again vested interest is at work. The proposal for an immediate election serves the interests of those currently eligible to stand and, once again, they have a disproportionate influence in the Party’s deliberations.

And the final vested interest standing before electoral success? The method of selecting the leader.

The electoral college is a disaster waiting to happen. Ed Miliband was not the choice of either the membership or of the Parliamentarians as leader of the Labour Party . We (just) got away with this because the front runner had, depite manifest initial advantages, so obviously stumbled; because Ed came very close (particularly) among the membership but mainly because of the bizarre family circumstance of the election itself.

We won’t always be so lucky. There is every prospect of the winner of a contest to be leader of the Scottish Labour Party being won by someone declared and revealed publicly by the Party itself to have been rejected for the role by a clear majority of the membership or (despite being from the Holyrood Group) a clear majority of the Holyrood Group. In certain circumstances, if the Westminster MPs and the Unions line up behind the same candidate, we could see someone being chosen without the majority support of either the membership or the Holyrood group!

What possible credibility could such a candidate have?

And anyway, the Scottish Electoral college is a farce. Why do elected members have a disproportionate vote? In theory because they have been elected and have more knowledge of the candidates. But, first of all, some of the list MSPs haven’t been elected other than by accident of Labour’s catastrophic loss.  For some at least their only merit is that they were prepared to put their names forward for the thankless position of list candidate at a time when no one believed that to be a matter of any importance in Labour’s departed heartlands. Secondly, how does someone who has been in the Parliament for a couple of months have a better view of the candidates than those who lost their seats in May having worked with these people for twelve years? Thirdly, how much more do Westminster MPs really know about the Holyrood group members than is known by committed Party activists and Councillors (or even people who just read the newspapers regularly)?

But since everybody is aware of these anomalies and even those with a self interest in them have some sense of the absurd, that’s not the real reason we are persisting with the college. The real reason  is that it gives the Unions the illusion of power. I say, quite consciously, the illusion because in reality they could only ever really use that power at the price of bringing down the whole institution.

Either we will get a result where all three sections vote the same way, or at least in which the winner carries the membership, or we will end up, in reality, with a contest without a meaningful result in terms of producing a credible leader of anything. Even of the opposition.

But the Unions fear the end of the college will signal a decline in their influence and ultimately bring about a similar change for the UK leadership. So again that means no change. Even if the obvious change might simply be to give all levy players a vote alongside members in one big “one supporter one vote” contest. That however, while it might just be acceptable to the Unions, would not be acceptable to the potential candidates among the MSPs or to some of the existing Party members as they give the same vote to everyone irrespective of the level of their contribution of effort or cash. I needn’t point out that the logic of this would currently give activists more votes than simple card carriers and those who give additional financial donations more votes than those simply paying the basic sub.

You couldn’t make the level of obduracy here. WE GOT GUBBED! This is not the time for the defence of vested interest or it will simply be a vested interest in a worthless institution.

I finish (more or less) where I started. The only acceptable vested interest the Scottish Labour Party has is the vested interest in getting elected. Regrettably yesterday’s report makes only a marginal contribution to that prospect being realised.

Thoughts after the Last Night of the Proms and before the triumph of Andy Murray

I'm a devolutionist. I accept that this may be a minority opinion. Many of these who have supported devolution over the years have done so only as a stepping stone to something further while others have done so only in an attempt to head off something, in their opinion, much worse.

That's never been my view. Oddly enough there was a time when I thought that there might be an opportunity for the minimalist wing of the SNP and the maximalist wing of the Labour Party to meet somewhere in the middle. If the UK had joined the Euro and engaged wholeheartedly with European integration, then I could certainly have forseen a situation where the importance of "British" government would wither away, a bit like the state under primitive communism. But events elsewhere make that increasingly unlikely. I might be tempted to suggest to say by virtue of the cowardice of Blair but, to be honest, at least as much by virtue of the lack of vision of Brown.

So we have to accept where we are. A Scotland with a (UK) Government we didn't vote for (yet again), and a Scottish Government with little they can do about it.

So why don't I think we should bail out? Well partly because we can't bail out.

I disagree fundamentally with the economic policy of the coalition. Nonetheless, I recognise that the economic policy even of a “second division” member of the G8 can’t be isolated from world events. If the USA goes back into recession, so, inevitably, will the UK. And that would be the case even if Labour had been returned with a landslide in 2010 and Ed Balls had been given absolutely free reign ever since.

So even a big nation, like the UK, has limited control over economic events. So much more would a small country like Scotland.

But that’s never been my major objection to “Independence” (whatever that is).

I don’t like the idea of wee Countries. They are inclined to be too full of people determined to prove their own importance and to hide behind perceived grievance with others to explain or excuse their own inadequacies. I am slightly reluctant to engage in football analogies but, no matter what the shortcomings of the referee a week past on Saturday, in the end Scotland failed because they were, at the very best, no better than a team who had lost at home to Lithuania. That was no doing of the referee. But who in Scotland was prepared to say that? Once again, all the commentary was of the “We were robbed!” variety.

No great harm in that if it’s restricted to the field of sport but a rather dangerous basis for a view of the real world.

And big countries inevitably allow more diversity. No wee Country could contemplate the diversity of output we enjoy from the BBC. Or the influence in the world enjoyed by the British Council or, yes, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I’ve certainly had my disagreements with British Foreign policy over the years but I am uneasy with the idea that it would be better for us to ignore the rest of the world altogether or at least to be no more than a spectator.

So, in the end, I’m quite happy being British. But I’m Scottish as well. There’s no real rationality to this but on the few occasions I’ve driven abroad on holiday, I’ve not felt “home” at Dover. Home is the “Welcome to Scotland” sign on the M74. Whenever, in my almost second home of Italy, attempts have been made to describe me, officially or otherwise, as “Inglese”, my otherwise wholly inadequate Italian has always, somehow, risen to the task of assuring my accuser that I am anything but the sort.

The Union was a long time ago, but it is still a Union, not a merger, nor even less a takeover. Although it was more than three hundred years ago, I’ve never doubted that the population of Scotland, however constituted at the time, had and has the right to dissolve it on request. I’ve just never wanted to dissolve it.

But I have wanted to recognise, and protect, Scottish particularism.

I’ve never been a huge 1314 man. To be honest, one group of Normans, calling themselves Scots (or possibly Ecossais), defeating a different group of Normans, calling themselves something else, always seemed to me to have likely to have been, even at the time, a matter of huge indifference to the vast majority of the population, particularly because, no matter what Nigel Tranter says,those who ended up on which side at the showdown was largely a matter of historical accident or personal opportunism.

On the other hand, I’ve always regarded 1560 as a hugely important date. After 1517, religion engaged popular opinion in a way that nationalism never had (to date). And in 1560, Scotland took a very different religious route from England. Which led to a very different attitude to education as the embryonic modern nation state began to emerge and also led to Scotland, by 1707, being a significantly different Country from England. This time not in the calculations of its ruling classes, but in the day to day lives of its people. We were not Catholics (most definitely not!) but we weren’t Lutherans or Anabaptists either. We were Presbyterians. That might not have been an entirely happy inheritance but it was indubitably where we stood. For predestination but for popular Church governance and the universal right to be able to read the Bible as well.

So, when the Treaty of Union was drawn up, what was the Scots bottom line? That this religious difference be protected, as it was; with the protection of an independent legal system as a necessary adjunct.

And, on the one occasion this was seriously challenged it brought about the Disruption, a much more important and popular movement than the 1821 martyrs or, I concede, Thomas Muir of Huntershill ever represented.

But progress in other spheres, welcome progress, together with the decline of religion in public life threatened that diversity and led to demands for Scottish distinctiveness to be protected. The National Health Service, no matter how welcome, was about a different “Nation” from Scotland; universal education meant something different across the Border if it encompassed a burden rather than an opportunity; British Rail, British Steel, the “National” Coal Board all had a dangerously sounding homogeneity.

So, particularly if Scottish people stopped going to the Church of Scotland, but still wished to be Scottish, then they needed to be able to assert their nationality in another way. And that’s where I come from; for the benefits of the Union but also for the protection of that distinctiveness. For Devolution. And that’s where I believe most Scottish people stand.

Now in the last weeks we have been told that the SNP’s victory in May allows them to define (subject to a Referendum) not only the terms of “Independence” but also the terms of devolution.

I’ve always believed devolution might be improved. Within the context of a hostile Prime Minister, the original Scotland Bill was a masterful achievement but on the day it was published I emailed Wendy querying where the borrowing powers were. That wrong has been righted by the current legislation but there remains no reason Drugs legislation remains undevolved;  or any number of other specific examples. Equally, some would say more importantly, it seems to me that the taxation powers of the Parliament could be strengthened in a number of ways not inconsistent with continued membership of a unitary state.

But defining devolution is for the devolutionists. Having seen off the Unionists on one flank there is no reason we should cede ground to the nationalists on the other. I am more than a little irritated by the demands of the SNP that we need to develop a different devolved settlement to enable them to put it as a fall back option in their legendary referendum.

No matter what devolved scheme is developed it will never be acceptable to Nationalists. Quite right too.  If you believe in an “independent” Scotland then why should you settle for something less?  If I was of that persuasion, I certainly wouldn’t.  I don’t however go about insisting the ways in which the Tories should organise their affairs; any more than I would demand of Methodists that they abandon their aversion to strong liquor or aspire to select the team at Greenock Morton. I’m not a Tory or a Methodist or (thank the Lord) a supporter of the Morton so while I might have an opinion about how they conduct their affairs I recognise that, in the end that’s a matter for them.

However no such stricture applies to the SNP. They complain, if we don’t come up with a different devolved scheme we’ll end up with the status quo. Well, firstly, that’s got nothing to do with them, because they’re not in favour devolution at all and, secondly, and in any event, maybe we devolutionists are more or less happy with the status quo.

I had some part in the thinking behind the Calman Commission but I always thought it was too “Grandee” a project, particularly after Wendy’s fall detached it significantly from those practising day to day politics in Scotland. It nonetheless is a well argued document. If you wish to exist within one nation state (Calman’s essential premise) then its constituent parts must have a modus vivendi and that has to be on some basis other than trying to fight each other for competitive advantage. If, on the other hand, you want to make devolution meaningful, then it requires not just to be about how money is spent but also about how it is raised. And not just year to year.  Calman makes a fair stab at coming up with a solution.

But the SNP didn’t win in May, or Labour lose, because people were unhappy with the current devolution settlement. They won, and we lost, because their people were perceived as competent to govern Scotland, and our’s, correctly, weren’t. Because they were perceived to have some idea where they were going, and we, correctly, weren’t. Because while they might have few ideas other than independence, we were perceived, correctly, to have no ideas at all.

But the SNP’s Achilles heel lies in that last sentence. The Government programme published this past week is, bluntly, boring. The SNP is a coalition held together by a common belief in Independence. But real politics is about choice and that choice is measured on a left/right spectrum. Across the world, the Left is for higher taxes and collective provision while  the Right for lower taxes and individual initiative. The Left is for personal liberty while the Right is for the maintenance of order; the Left stands for the essential goodness of creation while the Right persists with original sin.

 But to hold their coalition together, the SNP can’t address these universal choices. So the only solution is to choose to do nothing at all.

As a result, Scotland will stand still for the next three years. Nothing wrong with that if we were already a happy and contented Nation. But we’re not. Our health statistics are appalling; our proud education tradition is being bypassed by the rest of Europe; we are developing a permanent underclass and such indigenous industry as we have left has neither support nor even a clear future.

What has the Government programme to say about any of this? Nothing at all, except that we might save a bit of money by having a National Police Service. An initiative so exciting that it was in the Scottish Labour Manifesto.

Now there are lessons about opposition and the first is that you are the opposition.  You can’t legislate for anything. But there is also a danger about opposition. Not just that you fall into the trap of opposing measures that are patently sensible (because “that’s your job”) but also because it frees you from the responsibility of saying what you would do yourselves.

With the exception of no-one (my own candidate Tom Harris not excluded) no potential candidate for the Labour leadership has had anything to say about the platform on which we should have fought the last election, let alone the programme on which we should fight the next one. It has, so far, been about how the winner might reform and then run the Labour Party.

And, for what its worth, the same might as easily be said about the Tories and their own contest.

Scotland needs change. And bluntly one of the major obstacles to that change has been the Labour Party itself.

So, c’mon Tom. Let’s have a bit of New Labour thinking about Scottish public services; or institutional poverty; or chronic ill health. I reserve the right to denounce your ideas but I promise an alternative proposal. I hold out no hope of any ideas of any sort from any of the other potential candidates.

Everybody needs to keep the heid.

Look, we lost. I accept that. And they won. I accept that too. I don’t like it but I accept it.

Obviously we presented the victory to them on a plate. We didn’t take the election seriously; we had no proper policy platform of our own; some of our candidates could only be voted for by people who were completely ignorant of them personally; no-one had heard of our candidate for First Minister; and those who had didn’t believe him to be up to the job.

So we lost. But they still won.

But there are turning points in politics.

1945 was a turning point and so, I regret to concede it, was 1979.  And, and here I suspect I will fall out with some of my co-contributors, there are also false dawns. 1970 was for the Tories and 1997 was for us.

Sometimes you don’t have a real mandate for change; you are simply not the other side, like Wilson in 74. And sometimes you do but have a leadership who are simply not that interested in doing much to disturb the status quo, like Blair in 97.

I genuinely don’t believe 2011 was a turning point election. In the aftermath there was little said about why the SNP won. Instead almost all the attention was on why Labour lost.

Now Labour lost big and consequently the Nats won big. But let’s not let them rewrite history about why they won.

The constitutional issue simply was not a major issue during the Scottish election. That’s not to say the SNP wouldn’t have liked it to be: they would have much preferred to have been swept to power on a mandate for Independence but, even at the height of Labour’s incompetence, they knew that would be a mandate they couldn’t procure. So they didn’t seek it. They said there would be a referendum on Independence at some indeterminate point in the next Parliament and they hid behind the subtext that since they were not anticipating an overall majority even that was unlikely to happen.

But they clearly did not anticipate the magnitude of Labour’s ineptitude and in consequence they did win on a scale even they had not predicted. So, one might expect, no matter how they came about it, they are surely entitled to say with some justification, we do now have a mandate for a referendum on Independence. But, although to some extent they do say that, on the other hand they don’t.

It’s not just that they show no immediate signs of holding a referendum, or even introducing the paving legislation to permit one; or even that they appear to be having doubts about exactly what “kind” of independence they want; it is also that it now appears that they want to put other questions to that referendum.

Now this is not the action of a Party confident of victory.

Surely the best hope of victory in an Independence Referendum is on a straight choice between Independence and the status quo? That is only common sense. Given a third option at least some of those drawn to it must be doing so at the expense of choosing not to go the whole way. And given Salmond’s position that an Independence Referendum would be a once in a generation event, (which, as far as I am aware, remains SNP policy) why do anything at all to hamper the chance of victory?

Unless of course, in your heart of hearts, you know there is no chance of victory but still hope that you might be seen to have achieved something.

The difficulty with this strategy is in defining the nature of the questions.

It’s difficult to see these being organised with Independence being the first option.

That would inevitably lead to a second question being predicated on the failure of the first; something along the lines of:-

Even if you do not want full Independence would you like the Scottish Parliament to have the following [specified] additional powers?

But equally its difficult to see Devo Max (or whatever you want to call it) being the first option, not just because it is not (presumably) the preferred option of the Government but again because the second question put would have to be with a predicate:-

Even if the Scottish Parliament receives the powers above would you still prefer Scotland to be fully independent?

Indeed, the more you consider it, the more you see the difficulty in putting two different, and ultimately inconsistent, propositions on the same ballot paper.

But that’s not the only problem. It’s difficult to see who is going to frame the non-independence option. Presumably, the SNP Government, even though it’s not their desired outcome. The problem with this is that any settlement short of full independence is not a matter for the Scottish people alone. So what happens, in advance of a referendum, if the rest of the UK says that what the SNP want (as their fall back position) is not on offer? That it's independence or bust. What’s the point of then asking the “other” question? The question becomes redundant whether or not the full independence question is won or lost. If the referendum produces a yes vote to independence the “other” question is redundant per se and if the Scots have rejected the nuclear option of “full” independence then why should the rest of the UK make any further constitutional concessions in the aftermath of that. After all, the SNP could hardly hold another Independence Referendum but this time with a single question. That would be silly.

And just for the sake of completing the logic of my argument, what if, in advance of the referendum, the rest of the UK says that Scotland is welcome to what it seeks by way of additional powers for the Parliament while within the UK? Again what’s then the point in an SNP Government risking the people rejecting powers the SNP Government themselves want and which are freely on offer, particularly given the political embarrassment which would follow if that happened?

Now, there would be some sense in having two separate referendums: the first on additional powers and, if that was won, the second some time later on, having factored in the rest of the UK’s response to the first result. But, again, that logic is predicated on not wishing to maximise the chance of winning the “full independence” referendum. You might lose the first referendum, or win it by so slight a margin that attempting a second referendum became impossible. Or you might win the first referendum decisively, only to prompt UK concessions which significantly reduced your chances in the second vote.

So, in summary, if we accept that the SNP genuinely do want “full” independence, the only possible reason they are unwilling to put that to a simple test is because they know they couldn’t win a referendum. That’s what every reputable opinion poll has always said and I’m sure that’s also what the SNP’s own private polling and focus groups will be saying.

So let’s consider where that leaves the Labour Party in relation to the issue of the Constitution? It leaves us where we always should have been. We need to develop a policy towards the powers of the Scottish Parliament based on what we believe these powers should be, not on what we fear they must be to defeat an independence vote. If the SNP themselves have concluded such a vote can’t be won, why should we be intimidated by what amounts to little more than chutzpah on their behalf? And anyway, if we believe that some of the “solutions” on offer are likely to be nearly as damaging as independence itself, are we not obliged to say so?

Scottish Labour Action looked at length at what is now described as “full fiscal freedom”, indeed for a time we advocated it under the different nomenclature of the “Reverse Block Grant”. In the end however we rejected it chiefly because it was dependent unduly on the variability of the price of one commodity, oil. That remains the case, as indeed it remains the major economic argument against Independence itself.

Contrary to popular myth, it was not big Donald, but rather the less fondly remembered Ron Davies, who first said that Devolution was not an event but a process. It was however that belief that prompted Wendy to initiate the Calman Review which forms the basis for the current Scotland Bill. There will, undoubtedly, be future changes to be made to the Scotland Bill settlement  but these changes should be justified on their on merits at the time of their proposing, not thought up in haste and in panic for fear of something else . 

So, let’s get on with what we need to change in order to win in 2016: The fundamental Party structure; the quality and selection mechanism for our candidates; the imagination of our policies and the credibility and authority of our leadership.

But let’s not let others direct us down a path we do not need nor have any desire to follow.

Let’s leave that to the Tories.

Home thoughts from Abroad (until recently)

“Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honeydew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise.”

Italy remains the  beautiful, prosperous, contented and yet anarchic country it always was. And the Italian Left remain as inept as ever. Anybody who thinks we get a hard time from the Guardian should try reading La Repubblica although La Repubblica at least, has more justification.

Thanks to the wonders of modern communication, I have not been entirely isolated from events during my absence, or returned with a confused version of what has happened: e.g. “Tom Harris announced he would stand for the Labour Leadership to prevent rioting spreading to Scotland” or “Following the fall of Colonel Gadaffi it has been discovered that he was secretly on the payroll of News International”

Nonetheless, the best thing about a holiday (apart from the art, the sunshine, the food, the scenery and the fact that you’re off your work without being sick) is that you are a bit cut off from the urgency of day to day events and thus have time to read, and to think.

One of the books I read this Summer was “And the Land Lay Still” by James Robertson, which, although I didn’t know this in advance, I was informed by the cover had been chosen as Alex Salmond’s book of the year. I’m not surprised.

I, had to be fair, been driven to read the book by a very close friend who exhorted me that it represented “What these people really believe”!  That there was astonishment in her voice at the time was, I regret to say, not unusual, but this time she was right; for Mr Robertson’s book does, I believe, disclose the world view of those who, since 2007, have been the political masters of Scotland. And, since the life of the central character runs, chronologically, with my own; since many of the political causes it references are ones with which I was also engaged and since it is largely set in a Scotland, urban but not metropolitan, with which I am also familiar it is a book with which, if nothing else, I should have had a certain familiarity, as I did. And yet, as I will go on to explain, it was like reading one of those “alternative history” books set in a world where the USA had lost the War of Independence or Hitler been successful at Stalingrad. For Mr Robertson’s book is about a Scotland I recognise only so well, and yet a Scotland I do not recognise at all.

Now hear I want to digress very slightly. “And the Land Lay Still” is a major work of modern Scottish literature. It is beautifully written, there are strong and memorable characters and the intertwining of their meetings, sometimes significant while on other occasions merely incidental, is worthy of Balzac. That achievement has to be recognised, not simply in justice, but also to head off the suggestion that the criticism which follows can be deflected by the “it’s more than you could do” school of response. It is more than I could have done and I will now certainly seek out and read Mr Robertson’s earlier work (although not probably till my holiday next year!)

But back to the critique. Mr Robertson’s book purports to be a history of Scotland since the 1950’s, albeit through the mechanism of fiction. It portrays a country ill at ease with itself; denied its proper place in the world through the devices of the English and unable to recognise its true destiny until these issues are resolved.

Now here I require to diverge again with a bit of personal narrative. I’ve got a fair bit of history with the Home Rule movement. Unlike Jack McConnell, I can’t claim that a Yes vote in the 1979 referendum was my first ever vote (that was for a deadbeat Labour Councillor in 1977) but I was a consistent advocate of Devolution from the moment I joined the Labour Party in 1974. When Mr Robertson writes of the hostile climate that surrounded Home Rule in the early eighties and of the assortment of pamphleteers in and around the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly who swam against that tide, I am one of those of whom he writes and, I say with due modesty (although this is unacknowledged by Mr Robertson) it was my initiative, with others, that, through Scottish Labour Action, led first to Labour’s participation in the Constitutional Convention and then to the development of the revised scheme and to its adoption as Party policy and legislative fact.

Yet there is so much of Mr Robertson’s narrative which clashes with my own recollection of events. The fall of the Labour Government in 1979 was not an act of God, as he might as well portray it; the “true” SNP did not ever (even today) consist entirely of well meaning lefties who happened to believe in Independence; and while the Tartan terrorists of the sixties and seventies did undoubtedly set back the cause of Home Rule there is no evidence at all that they did so as agents provocateurs put up to it by the British State. That they are no longer a factor today is not because the British State lost interest but rather because the SNP themselves realised that tolerating these nutters was counterproductive.

That however is not the ultimate reason I find myself so disengaged with Mr Robertson’s book. That reason is that for me the political history of Scotland, during the period of which he writes, was about so much more than Scotland. The central character of the book goes to Edinburgh University in 1972 yet the only mention of Vietnam is to compare its struggle to that of Scotland (truly!); Allende’s overthrow is worthy of a single (and background) pub exchange; the struggle against apartheid which, while I was contemporaneously at University, albeit in Glasgow, united students of any sort of progressive opinion doesn’t rate a single mention. To read this book, insofar as it purports to be a fictional political history of Scotland, you’d have thought that all that was going on consisted of people sitting about bemoaning the constitution. It most certainly was not.

And then there are the cultural references. I’m not a great folk music devotee but no-one on the left is immune from the influence of folk music and Scotland has some great folk music. But so has England, and most politically influential (even in Scotland!) of all, so has the United States. But not for Mr Robertson. It’s all plaintive ballads about a lost Scotland which, if only people would listen, would alert them to their national destiny.

And finally there is the day to day politics themselves. A lot of important things happened in the seventies and eighties. We joined, and decided to remain, in the European Union; syndicalism was flirted with and then rejected and in its aftermath, Thatcherism changed the whole terms of the political and economic debate, laying waste, as it did so, to working class communities the length and breadth of the UK. All of this, Mr Robertson would have us believe, was however largely secondary to Scotland’s struggle for its own Parliament. It wasn’t. I’ve been on too many demonstrations over the years to remember them all but while I marched against mass unemployment; in support of the miners; for the freedom of Mandela and, in something of an epiphany, declined to march against the the first Iraq war. (Although I certainly marched against the second!)

I can only however remember one significant Home Rule Demo, when John Major held the G8 in Edinburgh. That’s a pretty good indication of where the priorities of the left have lain over that period and it is dishonest for Mr Robertson to suggest otherwise. There were certainly people who obsessed about home rule to the exclusion of just about everything else, but equally certainly they weren’t on the left.

Now, I accept the virtue of Michael Corleone‘s advice that it is a mistake to hate your enemies, because it clouds your judgement; nonetheless, I hate Mr Robertson’s history of Scotland. And I worry about it become common currency.

My Scotland is a country engaged with the world, not constantly engaged in contemplating its own navel; which engages with England in an equal and voluntary partnership, punching well above its weight in the process; where a location that is my home doesn’t in the process become superior to the home of anybody else.

But some issues are simply irreconcilable with some with an opposing view. It is impossible to win an argument over regulated abortion with someone who believes that life begins at the moment of conception; or an argument over animal use in scientific testing with someone who believes mice have the same rights as human beings. Equally, it is impossible to win an argument with someone who believes the single most important priority facing this country: above the success of the economy, the eradication of poverty or even the preservation of democracy itself is in fact the cause of independence.

That’s why it would be a strategic error for Labour to engage in a Dutch Auction with the SNP over what degree of Home Rule might buy them off. This, Mr Robertson’s view of the world, is what these people really believe; that Scotland is under the English yoke and that, at least until that is cast off, everything else is secondary.

As such, this is an argument which it is simply impossible to defeat by rational argument because it proceeds not from logic but from belief.

So in constructing the basis of our counter-argument, let’s start by refusing to accept the right of the nationalists to frame the terms of the debate. They did not win in May by securing the support of of a huge tranche of the population who also supported that belief in either the past or of the future of Scotland. Rather, they won by securing the support of those who believed no other Party had any alternative vision at all, a conclusion in which they were broadly correct.

Yet our Party at least did once have a more clearly expressed alternative vision. A vision of greater social equality and personal opportunity; a vision not of a nebulous “better” Scotland but rather of a very real fairer Scotland; a vision which saw Home Rule not as an end in itself but as simply a means to an end.We may have temporarily lost our way but I am in no doubt that is still the direction in which we wish to travel and we should be confident enough in ourselves, supported by the facts rather than the fiction, that that is a journey on which it is possible to persuade the Scottish people to travel with us, as we have done to our mutual benefit in the past.

But the victory of ideas must be organised so, for starters, we need leadership committed not simply to occupying office but to securing and exercising power.

History is not unimportant and there is a fair bit of history between me and Tom Harris. Nonetheless, I was surprised at the extent to which in the aftermath of the great defeat, how much his thoughts independently coincided with my own. We need to be proudly, and on occasions assertively Scottish but equally every Labour figure committed to Home Rule for Scotland, from Keir Hardie to Donald Dewar, has always understood that Constitutional reform, of any sort, was never, for socialists, any more than a tactic. The importance of flags and songs was always an attribute of the opposition. Our view was, and remains, to recognise that, in Tawney's words,  if there is a golden age it will lie not in the past but in the future.

So, I’ve said, and I don’t retract it for a moment, that I believe the best way forward for the Labour Party would be an interim leadership to be cast off as we approach the actual 2016 Election. If however the Party is determined that we must in 2011 decide who is to lead us into that far off event then I’m happy to stand beside the one person to date who seems to have the remotest idea how to reverse our fortunes and the courage to have put his head above the parapet. I’ll be voting for Tom Harris.

Watching the news is not a lot of fun. Glad to be going on holiday.

Four random thoughts.

The bloody obvious reason for the current danger of a double dip recession was the result of the mid terms in November 2010 which stopped the Obama stimulus in its tracks. That’s what the Americans voted for, so that was their right, but lets not kid on there is any other reason. Or that many Americans are other than incredibly stupid.

It is not necessarily a good thing that lots of men with beards are running about Syria, shouting “God is Great” and condemning the Assad regime for being insufficiently hostile to Israel. No matter what the BBC says, it is difficult to see this ending in a triumph for liberal democracy.

Italian taxation is a mess. I love that Country; I’ll be there in 48 hours. But, as I plan ahead, I am struck by the repeated requirements, in imperfect English, that payment should be, for whatever service, “in cash”. If they don’t address this then one can’t help feeling that, sooner rather than later, the cash involved will, once again, be in Lira and paid in multiples of 1000.

The first step to Scotland acquiring a better government would be for it to acquire a better opposition.

I’m off, definitely and finally, on holiday. I promised on Tuesday that you had already read my last words before departure. My apologies to those who took me at my word

I want to start with a confession. On Saturday, as has been our custom for many years, Mo and I will depart for three weeks holiday in Umbria. We’ve got a house, with a pool, and have arranged for various friends and family to join us over our three week absence. We will, I confidently predict, have a great time. And we will spend a fortune.

I say all of that, not to boast but to acknowledge in advance the easy route to criticise what I say below. I am a middle class bleeding heart liberal; a champagne, or at least prosecco, socialist. I have never been poor, or unemployed, for a single day of my adult life, and hopefully I never will be. I say only in my own defence that in choosing to practice in the Legal Aid field for the whole of my professional career, I have made that choice in the knowledge that while I will always be comfortably off (Legal Aid Cuts permitting!), I will never be stinking rich.

My day to day practice involves, always, ordinary people; almost invariably, ordinary people at points of crisis in their own lives, but I regret to say that these ordinary people increasingly divide themselves into two divisions: those who fear lapsing into poverty and those simply interested in making the most of their self acceptance of that state.

I’m going to gone to say a fair amount of controversial things about the current Benefit system but I want to start with a brief diversion into a different group of people altogether: bogus asylum seekers.

Now the Left doesn’t like the term “bogus”. I’ve never quite understood why. A large number of people do enter this Country making false claims of political persecution elsewhere and they do undermine public sympathy for those with a valid claim for asylum. If they do not have a valid claim, what are they other than bogus? But the bogus asylum seekers (excepting a very few genuine criminal elements) are not themselves bad people. They do not come here to exploit our welfare state, for they have little or no understanding of how they might access it, and they are probably unable to do so anyway. They come here because they believe that here they will be able to find work. And, bogus or otherwise, they do. Just as have done the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Slovakians, Portuguese and other nationalities who have taken legitimate advantage of the EU Rules on the free movement of Labour.

But, despite this, even at the height of the New Labour boom, this Country had a stubborn figure of more than one million people allegedly actively seeking work but unable to find it. And as many as three million allegedly medically unfit to undertake work of any sort.

Again, at this point, I need to depart on a caveat, or maybe two caveats. No, three caveats.

1. My office deals with a large number of ESA appeals and some of the decision making is absurd. I hesitate to choose the most ludicrous example but, if forced to do so it would probably be the man who was awaiting a surgical operation to repair the trauma preventing him from using his left arm, and keen for it to be undertaken, who was nonetheless assessed as being fit to work in the meantime. What kind of job is open to a man with (effectively) one arm? And who, anyway, would employ someone imminently awaiting a major operation followed by a six to eight week recuperation? Needless to say, he won his appeal, but what kind of idiot made this decision in the first place?

2. Depression is a terrible illness but, bluntly, depression is a word with two meanings: a clinical illness and, regrettably, a simple state of mind.  The second of these, that I’m depressed because I sit about the house all day doing nothing, is not an excuse to qualify for additional Benefit but rather a perfect example of why you should be encouraged back to work for your benefit as well as that of everyone else. That does not mean however that those with a genuine mental illness are not as deserving as those with a broken leg.

3. Some people “earned the right” to be unemployed. That still unduly colours the thinking of the Labour Party. Fifty year old men, made redundant, having worked all their days in the pits or the steelworks did not deserve to be driven into call centres or check outs at Tesco. If that could be disguised behind the veil of incapacity (and Incapacity Benefit) then I was as up for that as anybody. But that generation has largely now passed into retirement and the rest of the world goes on.

I express these  opinions not to curry favour from those intent in cutting the benefit system but rather in pursuit of a more equitable distribution of its.........err..........benefits.

Someone who has worked for twenty years and who is then made redundant is entitled to Job Seekers Allowance of £67.50 per week. And at the end of six months they get nothing, unless they can pass a means test. This is a ridiculously low figure when set even against the median national wage of £499. On the other hand, someone who hasn’t worked for twenty years but who can pass (or fail) the medical test for Employment Support Allowance, perhaps qualifying on the basis of their alcoholism or drug addiction,  after an initial thirteen weeks, gets £94.25, hardly a devil’s ransom, but still a nice wee £20 bonus if you had no intention of working anyway. I can’t be alone in believing there is something wrong here.

And then there are means tested benefits. The vast majority of benefit claimants never see these. They are unemployed, or unfit, for a short period and then they go back to work. When the Tories proposed to cap Housing Benefit at £400 my immediate reaction was that this seemed a bit draconian. After all, anyone with a big family would find it difficult, particularly in the South of England, to find decent accommodation for £400 a month. Then I realised it wasn’t £400 a month, it was £400 a week!

Now, the average weekly wage in this Country is, as I say, £499 a week (before tax).  Nobody, and I mean nobody, earning the national average wage, or even significantly above it, is living in accommodation costing £400 a week. “But”, some complain,”because of this cap, we’ll be unable to continue to live in the centre of London”. Well, I’m a lawyer and I couldn’t afford to live there. All working people face up to that reality. I pay my taxes and, indeed, would be content to pay a bit more, but not to subsidise the lifestyle choices that I couldn’t possibly choose for myself. If you can’t afford to stay in a particular house, move.  Even as to where I live now, that’s what I’d have to do if they abolished the Legal Aid Scheme tomorrow.

I could go on but I am in danger of turning into James Purnell.

The real point however is not to engage in a right wing rant but to engage in a left wing rant. For in addition to the client group who wish simply to make the best of a life chosen to live on benefits, I deal with an awful lot of ordinary working people who are being screwed by the current economic situation. People on compulsorily shortened hours; arbitrarily renewed or not renewed employment contracts; suddenly displacement from secure and well paid employment through no fault of their own;  working week to week as opportunity presents itself.

Never mind those whose lives are suddenly transformed by unforeseen illness.

And, it is they, not me, with my comfortable lifestyle, who are most resentful of those who play the system and most resentful of Labour’s support of that choice.

Yet these people, not the chancers, are those for whom the welfare state was originally created: those who have contributed to “National Insurance” but who hoped personally never to have to call upon it. And yet they are the group who increasingly feel Labour, the creator of the Welfare State,  has forgotten them.

So, let’s be more judgemental. Let’s not be afraid to say those who can work are expected to work and, if they choose not to do so, should be entitled to nothing more than the most basic level of subsistence until they change their minds. And if that means they can’t “afford” their chosen place of residence without working, then they have the simple solution of finding work, not in every part of the Country but certainly in those parts where work is patently available.

I suppose in the end I should own up to the origin of this rant: The London Olympics. I am simply fed up with the number of “Eastenders” complaining that there are no jobs for them from this project. They don’t mean that. They mean actually that there are no jobs that they can be bothered to do. As I write this there will be people in North Africa and Near Asia prepared to risk their lives to travel half way across the world to find work at the Olympics. And people from Eastern Europe prepared to be separated from their nearest and dearest for the same opportunity. And yet, all the while, my taxes and yours will be paying for people across the road from the stadium to exercise their “right” to stay in bed until the start of the Jeremy Kyle show.

So here’s a proposal for Ed. Between now and the end of the Olympics no one in East London , fit for work and without family obligations, should be entitled to any form of state benefit (including housing benefit) for more than thirteen weeks unless they are working at least sixteen hours a week. Not only would that recoup some of the public money thrown at this project, it would be incredibly popular with voters: Labour voters. Particularly those here in Scotland, and Newcastle, and Manchester, and Birmingham, who only wished they had such an employment opportunity on their own doorstep.

And, just in case this appears unduly London phobic, when it’s over, let’s go to the East End of Glasgow and do the same with the Commonwealth Games.