There is an advert at the moment for Jamie Oliver's new series "Tasty Britannia". The Nats should watch these adverts for they demonstrate how easy it would be  for the "unionists"  to win an Independence Referendum. As Jamie boasts that he will go round the country sampling regional and national cuisine, we, in Scotland all sit and watch this silently insisting that when he comes here he will find our curries are a match for anybody's. Nobody for a moment thinks we should tell him to f off to his own country.

For we don't for even five seconds think of Jamie Oliver, cheeky Essex chappie  that he undoubtedly is,.... we do not for five seconds think of him as an evil English oppressor.

There has been a lot of talk as to who might lead the "No" campaign. Various cosmopolitan Scotsmen are suggested: Billy Connolly; Lorraine Kelly; Euan McGregor. That would be daft. Popular sentiment insists that "proper" Scottish people would live here and be as miserable as the rest of us.

No, the No campaign should be led by an English person. Obviously not just any English person. The likes of Sir Clive Woodward or Nick Faldo would clearly be a mistake.  As would, I regret to inform my Tory readers, either Nick Clegg or David Cameron.

I myself quite fancy Alesha Dixon.

Anyway, getting back to the politics, my number one choice would be Peter Kay. Let's see even Eck try to persuade us that we are living under his yoke, or indeed the yoke of anybody he's ever met. Or that we should look forward to regarding him as a foreigner.

Now, I'm just an amateur, with no access to current private polling or focus group work. Yet even I can put this idea together since the end of tonight's Downton Abbey, (A programme which, being about English Toffs, the STV hierarchy once thought would be of no interest to Scots).

The problem about the current political situation in Scotland is that the SNP, in a desperate attempt to keep together the coalition that delivers even a 34% vote for Independence can't do anything bold at all. And yet aware that this sort of vote is the best they can do without any sort of coherent opposition, they can't even  move forward on the National question.

So the result is atrophy. Not atrophy on the constitution. Atrophy on any sort of public policy initiative.

I keep banging on that there is not going to be a referendum. I simply cannot conceive of the circumstance in which it would advantage the governing Party to hold one they would lose.

But something has to happen. An unelectable opposition facing a stalemated Government is a recipe for disaster. That's not my opinion as a member of the Labour Party. It is my opinion as a resident of Scotland.

I Despair

If the French Bourbons had been partial to Party Conferences and had decided to hold a 1790 event in response to the events of the previous year it would still have struggled to match yesterday's Labour Party event in its combination of complacency and misplaced sense of injustice.

The problem with the Scottish Labour Party is that it is the Scottish Labour Party. Like the Bourbons, it believes in Divine right and it simply cannot come to terms with the fact that others do not share that view. If the people no longer support Divine Right then it must be because they do not understand it; it is simply inconceivable that they might actually disagree with it.

I will illustrate this with reference to the questions put to the leadership candidates.

Asked why they wished to be First Minister, all three candidates replied essentially that if they were First Minister then patently Alex Salmond would not be First Minister. That was more than enough answer for the people in the hall and therefor evidently would be enough for the people of Scotland.

Asked where they stood on "Devo Max" all three dismissed it for no other reason than that it was being proposed by the SNP. Not one commented at all on their view of what powers the Scottish Parliament should actually have. After all, who is interested in that?

Asked where they stood on Gender balance in candidate selection not one even paused to observe for a moment that the principal problem with our candidates was not their gender but the fact that they weren't getting elected.

Asked what they would do about youth unemployment, all three assured us that they would oppose it! Honestly, that was their answer, as if it was obvious that Alex Salmond, or even Ruth Davidson/Murdo Fraser was actually in favour of youth unemployment. Or that anybody outwith the hall believed them to be.

Most bizarre of all one of the other questions amounted to "Do you think Social Justice is important?" One can only assume this was to give the candidates the opportunity to commit public political suicide.

And as for the Council Tax Freeze question. No answer even started to acknowledge that this had been such an unpopular SNP Policy that we, in a panic move, had adopted it! Or why anybody might have thought, even wrongly, that it was a neccessary move? Even the Deputy Leader who had, presumably, approved it!

And then their was the final staged question on disability rights. Even the question was not: "what would you commit Labour to doing on this subject?" but rather "Would you repeat the experience of 2011 by having a Manifesto on the subject?" All gave the obvious affirmative answer. Not one observed that Labour having a Manifesto on this or any other subject would achieve f..k all for the disabled or anybody else if we weren't the actual Government.

Yesterday we didn't  try to work out why we lost. We just chose to pretend it hadn't happened. Margaret Curran's earlier speech summed it up perfectly. Having started saying that we had to face up to some harsh truths, she then mentioned not a single one and proceeded to attack the Coalition, roping the SNP in with their actions without a single even attempted justification for doing so. If the SNP were not Labour then they must be Tories. Simples.

And despite the quiet private recognition that part of our problem is that we are associated with  being the solely the Party of the feckless, the public sector and of local government bureaucracy and inefficiency; far from confronting this, all three, indeed all seven, candidates chose to give all three groups their enthusiastic pledge of further unconditional support. And to offer not a hint of a policy offer to anybody else.

There might just have been some tendentious basis to proceed after 2007 on the basis that if people hadn't heard us properly, we simply needed to raise our voices. Surely now somebody standing for the Leadership must have the courage to recognise that it is not that people don't hear the message. It is that they don't like what they are hearing.

There were two good speeches yesterday. Iain McNicol, the new General Secretary, gently pointed out that in organisational terms, we needed to start living in the 21st century and, more significantly, Gordon Matheson gave an excellent combination of a defence of our record in Glasgow and a series of positive reasons for a renewed mandate.

Unfortunately neither of them would even be eligible to stand for the leadership.

 

In praise of the Cavaliere

I've said before that one of the advantages of having abandoned the ambition to elected office is that I can say what I think.

So, I can understand why people vote for Silvio Berlusconi. I accept that to advance this view you have to "get" Italy. It is, South of Bologna/Florence/Rome (delete to taste) not an entirely serious Country. By that I mean that it does not enjoy the understanding that loyalty to the state is anything other than a voluntary sentiment. You can pay your taxes, if you want, but, in the end, it's up to you. What matters is not order but "life!" And life can be sweet or beautiful or both according to your taste. Whatever, it is never entirely serious.

Who would not wish to live comfortably and contentedly from day to day, paying little attention to what might come tomorrow? And who would not vote for a man who assures them that this can go on forever? Is that not why we so enjoy holidaying there?

Of course, we holidaymakers know that at some point we will require to return to the real world: the world of jobs and mortgages and sleet in October. But why, if you are assured that this need never be the case, should you not vote for the man who provides that assurance? Vote for him even if you do have some reservations about his personal conduct, which, regrettably, many men of a certain age do not? Vote for him if only because he has an undoubted personal charm?

I felt for Italy this past week when Sarkozy and Merkel  engaged in their body language dismissal of the Presidente del Consiglio. It spoke of a certain northern European superiority that I found distasteful. But, more significantly, I was aware that Italian Civil Society, even Italian Civil Society of the Left, recognised that there was simply nobody else. That they had made their bed and now had to lie in it.

The key thing is however that there is nobody else. I cannot start to express my irritation at the Rifondazione, who continue to proceed on the basis that a government of the Right is no worse than that of the Centre/Left, but I cannot wish them away. Any more than I can wish away the history that prevents the only potentially stable Government in this time of crisis, an alliance between Fini and the PD.

In the end I come back to the main argument of Berlusconi's people. There is no alternative. He might be living in a fantasy world of low taxes and high public expenditure, and somebody else picking up the bill, but there is simply nobody else. And he does have a certain degree of personal charm.

Now, what has any of this to do with Scotland? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Wee Eck has a heart

I've got a fair bit of speechwriting experience. 

Its partly my job "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, would you wish to be sent to prison on the word of this drunken man?" etc..etc; but it is also a political task with which I have been tasked, on others behalf, from time to time.

Since that speechwriting has been in the cause of progress, I have undertaken these tasks for love not money but, to be honest, if paid enough, it is probably a task I could undertake for any cause or any political Party because, as you learn it, you become aware that there are certain set formulae for  platform speeches.

Generally, opposition politicians are for change, for who could be against that? That however allows them greater liberty of discourse.

For Governing politicians the task is both more difficult and the form more restricted. You always have the occasional other example: continuing to run running as an outsider while actually in power or, in extreme circumstance, appealing for popular absolution as the victim of events but these are not the norm. The norm, has five elements: 1, A topical  introduction of some sort related to the place or time; 2. an attack, ideally involving humour, on the opposition; 3. a list of your achievements in Office; 4. what is, or at least purports to be a new initiative of some sort and 5.an inspirational peroration. It is possible to reverse elements 2 and 3 but only at the price of restricting the humour to the introduction. You can also "baroque" it a bit by putting in trills from different bits out of sequence as you go along or even, if your really on the ball, have a recurring leitmotif  but the basic structure might as well have been set out by Isaac Newton.

So, paid enough, I could have written such a speech for David Cameron or Danny Alexander,or, as somebody else clearly did, for Alex Salmond. The point is however that in the speech delivered, if not the speech written, for the First Minister, the fourth part was missing.

If you know the trade its actually quite easy to spot the cut. It's here, three quarters of the way through:

"If Murdo Fraser thought such a notion was conceivable then he would’t be trying to disband the Party!

In contrast fiscal responsibility, financial freedom, real economic powers is a legitimate proposal. It could allow us to control our own resources, introduce competitive business tax, and fair personal taxation.

All good, all necessary but not good enough."

The cut is almost certainly before the middle para but just conceivably immediately after it.

And it's a last minute cut. I say that because speeches are written for two audiences. Those who hear it and those (opposition politicians and journos) who only read it. For the latter it must make narrative sense so an early rewrite is gone over to ensure that the speech still "flows". Here however the FM offers no previous or subsequent reference to "financial freedom, real economic powers....". There is accordingly no narrative sense; the sure sign of a last minute cut.

But you also don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what has been cut. The Papers were clearly heavily briefed in advance that the First Minister would be committing the SNP to a second question in their legendary Referendum. Indeed, they were clearly so heavily briefed that a lot of the immediate press reaction declared that to be what the speech was about. In fact, it is not even mentioned! That is clearly what was cut.

Now, as all readers of crime literature will know, the real question is not what happened, but why.

The SNP are entitled to have a triumphant conference. Most of their senior activists have spent their whole lives being kicked to (the point of) death by the Labour Party. In May they had their revenge. 

So they've all turned up in Inverness in Party mood. I suspect very few of them will have surfaced as I am writing this. I hesitate to be a party (should that be Party) pooper but the problem is that they, if not, to be fair,  their leadership, are labouring under the misapprehension that they are on their way to Independence.

The leadership however know that they won for any number of reasons but, regrettably for them, a popular desire for independence was not among them. Had it not been so, Independence would have taken up more than one page of their sixty-two page Manifesto and indeed they would be hurrying now to accomplish it.

Now, I don't like Eck, but he is not a heartless man. 

What had been written in the original version of the speech was that there was to be a second question in the referendum. And even if he wasn't to state it expressly, the subtext of that statement was that he had concluded that they couldn't win the first (previously only) question. The question whose asking, in unequivocal terms, was the one towards which most of these people had devoted their lives.

So that part of the speech was cut. At a human level, I applaud him for that. Unfortunately for him however, the shattering of dreams will have to come some time. As a consolation, unless we get our act together, there is no reason the SNP will not be able to continue as the Goverrnment of Scotland and have another great day out while persuading themselves Independence is imminent when they gather for their 2016 Conference.

Process, process, process.

What is the point of the second question?

If the second question involves an improved devolution scheme which Westminster is content with, what's the point of asking the question? So we can vote it down anyway out of sheer thrawnness?

If it involves an improved devolution scheme which Westminster won't concede what's the point of asking it then?  Nothing will happen even if we cast a hypothetical yes vote.

Power devolved is power retained. You can't have a unilateral declaration of devolution. Within the last ten years nobody made that point with more force than the SNP.

You could of course then threaten the nuclear option of Independence referendum, but you can't do that if you've already asked the Independence question in the same referendum and got a negative answer.

And if you've asked the Independence question and got a positive response?

What's the point of the second question?

Ach, I've said all this already. There's not going to be a Referendum. If there was then those proposing to hold it would be being more serious.

Debate

I am grateful to Angus McLellan for his comment/correction on my last blog. Alex Salmond did indeed, belatedly, say just before the election that the Referendum would not be held until the second half of the term of the Scottish Parliament. He did so in the final leaders debate, four days before polling, and he said it then, as Angus's own cited press report confirms "for the first time".

I am therefore wrong in my previous assertion that it was never said at all, although not wrong in my assertion that it is not what was in the SNP Manifesto; or as wrong as SNP blogger, Laurence McHale who claims that this is not what the SNP ever said prior to the vote, then or now http://thebunnet.com/?p=878 or indeed SNP twitterer @AlisdairStephen who challenges me to " Provide proof Salmond ever said it was in manifesto. He said we campaigned on second half referendum, which is true."

Only it's not true one way or another. Even if I ever made the first assertion, which I didn't. Anyway, Angus McLellan is good enough to concede that it is an assertion which I might have made legitimately about others in the SNP.

The central claim which I make is that the Referendum taking place "in the second half of the Parliament" is not only not what is in the SNP Manifesto, it it is not, until the very last minute, what anybody in the SNP even actually said during the campaign. I do not have the time to trail every possible internet source but here's Eck himself on Newsnight on 20th April, thanks to SNP partisan Moridura.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxoIVQAHtQw

(For those of you without the time to watch the whole thing (or even the 2 Minutes from 1.57) Eck is repeatedly asked when the Referendum takes place and repeatedly answers "(With)in the Five Year term".)

Now, as Angus McLellan corrects me, at the very last minute, four days before polling, this was changed by Eck himself at least, to a commitment to hold a Referendum (only) in the second half of the Parliament. With respect to Mr Stephen, that hardly consists of a campaign.

Here I want to say two complimentary things about the SNP.

Firstly, that it is actually quite a democratic party, certainly more democratic than the Labour Party (although that may be damning with faint praise). I blogged on LabourHame some time ago about an Independence referendum being, in the words of the First Minister, a once in a generation event. I was pulled up immediately, by various SNP internet commentators, that while this might be Eck's personal view it was no more than that. The members made SNP Policy and Eck did not overrule them. If I accept that however, which I do, then surely I, and more importantly the public, must accept SNP policy to be what's in their manifesto rather than an unauthorised concession made (even) by the candidate for First Minister in the course of a last minute TV Debate.

Secondly, and here I side with Mr McHale, I concede it is entirely a matter for the Government as to when we have an Independence Referendum. That's what their Manifesto said and that's the basis on which they were elected. So if they want to have a Referendum a week before the 2016 Elections, they have broken no Manifesto promises to anybody. I don't like the SNP but even I concede they are not Liberal Democrats.

I'm not going to played for a mug here however. Why did Eck's position on the timing of a Referendum change between the Gordon Brewer interview on 20th April and the TV debate on 1st May?

Because on 20th April the best outcome for the SNP was perceived to be returned as a minority administration with no majority for a Referendum in the Parliament; by 1st May however an absolute majority, or at least a majority with the assistance of the Greens, was being perceived as a possibility. So between 20th April and 1st May, an Independence Referendum moved from being an aspiration to being an actual possibility.

And the First Minister was then faced with an "Oh F**k" moment.

I'm a great believer in honesty in politics. The SNP can't win a referendum on Independence but they are quite good at being the Government of Scotland and they'd quite like to continue in that capacity. The former however mitigates against the latter.

They depend for their electoral success on a coalition between, on the one hand, those who like their technocratic competence within a devolved settlement but who would fear for their personal prosperity under Independence and, on the other hand, those who would be happy to peril everything in the cause of "Freedum!"

Holding that coalition together in the context of a Referendum that would inevitably consign these two wings into opposite camps is an impossible task in a way that would be difficult to mend. There is however a solution and that is not to actually have a Referendum at all; better still, not to have a Referendum while claiming to the "Freedum" lovers to have been frustrated by others (ideally English others; absolutely ideally posh English Lawyer others) in pursuit of that never intended goal.

We all know that's what going on here but politics is politics. You can't ignore your base. Our  base insists on proceeding on the assumption that either Johann or the other excellent candidate are remotely fit to be First Minister because to recognise otherwise would lead to Party Reform in a way too upsetting to vested interest. Equally, (an important section at least of) the SNP's base must be deceived into trusting that the leadership remain remotely interested in risking their Ministerial Offices, and their quiet but effective stewardship of Scotland, in the cause of that self same "Freedum".

I am appreciative of the interest my most recent blog has provoked but I'd like to refer to an earlier missive.

I accept entirely that the timing of a Referendum is a matter for those who won the election but, given the likely legal challenge to the competence of any Referendum, why have the Government not introduced the paving legislation in this session of Parliament, enabling that challenge to be disposed of well before 2016?

Think on that Freedum lovers.

A Surprise Discovery

I set off earlier today to write a blog about Same Sex Marriage. It occurred to me that it would be helpful to have a wee look at what the SNP Manifesto had to say on the subject.

The answer is not a sausage. I have no criticism of that except to note that it is surprising to note that a Party holding itself out as being to the left of David Cameron finds itself now running so hard to catch up. Still, I suppose, they did need Brian Souter's money

However that is not to say that I did not make a surprise discovery in the process.

It was of course the Queen of Hearts who famously observed that "What I tell you three times is true".

Since the Election in May, I have seen the First Minister questioned on numerous occasions as to why the SNP are not immediately proceeding to hold an Independence Referendum. On each occasion, he has assured his interlocutor that this was because the SNP said in advance of the election that the Referendum would take place "In the Second half of this Parliament.".

Now, I have heard this so often that I assumed that I believed it to be true. Only it's er........................not.

The SNP Manifesto has remarkably little to say about Independence or an Independence Referendum. Indeed, it has less to say on the latter subject than it has on the topic of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

What it does say is this (at page 28 of a 42 Page Document.)

I have consciously provided every word so that there is no prospect of being accused of selective quotation. Those able to negotiate the inspirational prose, let alone the contribution of Angela Constance, who, being an SNP backbencher, is, unsurprisingly in favour of Independence, will have noticed that there is no mention of the second half of the Parliament as being the anticipated timing of this event. Nonetheless, since the election, the First Minister has repeatedly made this assertion in a series of interviews and been accepted at his word by journalists of different political perspective, indeed nationality, presumably on the basis that, no matter what their personal scepticism about the SNP, they did not believe the First Minister would be telling them a bare faced lie.

(By way of diversion at this point I urge you to consider the commitment to cutting excise duty on whisky in an Independent Scotland which sits oddly with the minimum pricing commitment elsewhere in the document but which taken alongside the commitment to the European Union, also elsewhere, would involve a commitment to an Independent Scotland cutting excise duty on all spirits. You obviously don't win a landslide without being all things to all men.)

Anyway, to move on. The suggestion that the referendum was never intended to take place until the second half of the Parliament is, quite literally, made up. I trust that someone else, charged with the task of interrogating the First Minister around his conference this week might actually put that to him.

Now I'm on the trail, I'll return to the issue about there being questions in the Referendum relating to different matters entirely and what, if any, mandate exists for that. As you will have seen for yourselves, it certainly doesn't exist in the SNP Manifesto.