Currency is Important

I was for the Euro. By that I mean for British participation. Oddly, in light of subsequent events, one of the main reasons I was for it was because I believed that it might, in time, allow Scotland, in the Euro, to advance a differential taxation and spending approach from that pervailing in England and Wales.

I believed then, as I do now, that an "Independent" Scotland, still tied to a Sterling Currency zone in the control of our much larger neighbour, would be no Independence at all, within or outwith the Union.

And that even a much more fiscally devolved Scotland would have the same basic problem.

If ever however it was ever demonstrated that for the SNP, "Independence" is really only about flags and anthems, then it must be their attitude to the currency. Having been for the Euro, when that was popular, they now have decided that their preferred currency would be Sterling. They seem to have no conception that a Country trading in the currency of the "Bank of England", would not be an "Independent" Country at all. Indeed, as the Greeks are discovering in a different context, it might not even be a true democracy.

But the most revealing aspect of this at all is the reason that the SNP regard continued participation in Sterling as being important. Sterling remains a major trading currency. It therefore remains unlikely that it would go down the tubes overnight. And allows those who control it at least some freedom of action.

At the moment we, the Scots, do not control Sterling, but we have some degree of limited influence over it.  Logically however, if it was not our currency, but only one we were borrowing, then it would not be for us to have even that degree of limited   influence. The illusory "English bastards" might decide to be actual "English bastards". After all, what duty would they then owe to us?

So, if we do not have that influence over the currency, what is the point in having the currency at all?

There was a time when the SNP advanced the idea of a return to the Pound Scots. Indeed, I am old enough to remember when their main alleged reservation about such a currency was that, such would be the oil riches of an Independent Scotland, the value of this currency would make our other exports uncompetitive.

People however didn't believe them. They worried that, if the Nats were wrong in this analysis, then the result would involve the  cost of a fortnight's holiday in Benidorm being suddenly transformed into the price of a single Cerveza. And raise major questions as to why any "foreigner" would want to invest their private pension fund with a Life Company trading in that currency.

So we now have an SNP Policy that would, in their own argument, tie a rich and prosperous Scotland to Sterling, the currency of a foreign country at a time when that foreign country was being rendered almost bankrupt by the removal of the riches of "Scotland's Oil" which they've been stealing from us all these years. Yet despite that shock to the English system they will remain willing to assist in this process. You could not make this up. Even if the SNP have.

It's not how you start its how you finish

One of the things about this blogging is that it can go to your head.

After I posted my blog "I Despair" all sorts of people weighed in to say what an insightful (cough, cough) piece it was. The problem was that they weren't my people. My people are still living in the fantasy land where either Johann or the other excellent candidate will, given better organisation, sweep Alex Salmond aside in four and a half years time. It appears, in their analysis, that despite Johann and Ken being respectively  the No Change Candidate and the No Hope Candidate, both would nonetheless be more than adequate to that task when the time comes. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I really, really don't like the underlying philosophy of the SNP.

There is probably no Labour figure with whom I have disagreed more, over the years, than Brian Wilson.

But in the new chapters of David Torrance's biography of Alex Salmond there is a quite brilliant insight by Brian.

The consequence of a Scottish Parliament dominated by the SNP has not been radical change but rather no change at all.

Brian makes the telling comparison with Fianna Fail. In pastiche "Until we have a United Ireland then nothing must delay its achievement"

Any since any bold policy initiative is controversial, then, to avoid controversy, avoid any bold policy. More so  still if  you start off in a minority.

We are all familiar with the  sort of newspaper letter that starts "I have always been a supporter of Party A, but because of policy B, I will never vote for them again."

So are the SNP.

Consequently, for the next four years, there will not be a policy B, or indeed a policy C, D or E. Or indeed a policy  F, G, H or.................continue to the end of the alphabet and beyond. Because if  to advance any one of these hypothetical bold policies might lose a single vote from the cause of "Independence" then it is not worth the risk.

The press reaction to the SNP's first post election legislative programme was a snore fest. But the Scottish Government's response was not to address this on its merits but rather to try to move the agenda back on to the national question. Because, for them, that is the only question which is really important.

Now at this point I could happily set off on a list of things which ought actually to be important to the Scottish Government, starting with the poverty of opportunity which afflicts so many of our young people. But that would require me to have opinions and make judgements. And, regretttably, neither opinions or judgements
are the way to prosper in current Scottish politics. As I  fear either Johann or the other excellent candidate might be about to demonstrate to their temporary advantage.

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.