Cameron's legal expert endorses independence timetable. Are the Unionists trying to lose?

     Is there a nationalist mole in Whitehall, an evil genius undermining the case for the Union?    On Monday, the UK Coalition published its legal advice on the status of Scotland after independence.  Scotland would be a new state, the government lawyers concluded,  after also identifying the religious leanings of the Pope.  There would be a lot of renegotiation to do, which is great for the legal profession, who stand to make a fortune disentangling the strands of union. 

   Better Together pronounced the death knell of independence.  "This shreds to pieces" declared a UK Coalition spokesman, "Alex Salmond's fantasy that Scotland would be waved through into every international institution on a 'no questions asked' basis".  The fantasy being the SNP's 18 month timetable for transition to independence published last week.  But the UK Coalition's own legal adviser, Prof. James Crawford of Cambridge University, seems to be living in fantasy land also, because on Tuesday, the co-author of the Coalition's legal advice,  admitted on BBC Radio that Scotland already fulfilled the requirements and the Scottish government's timetable for EU renegotiation was “realistic”. The headlines about Scotland having to negotiate 14,000 separate treaties also turned out to be the usual concoction of speculative half-truths. They could all be wrapped up in around 18 months.  So much for this weeks' scare.  

Aliens in warning against independence. SNP needs to lead constitution debate, not follow it.

    Things fall apart. The SNP has got the right question, but it isn't getting the right answers.   The Nationalists have been on the defensive for the last six months over relatively obscure procedural issues about relations with Europe, currency union and the mechanics of transition to independence.  The Yes for Scotland campaign has failed to make a significant impact.   The momentum from the 2011 election landslide has largely spent and the Nationalists are turning into their old embattled and defensive selves.   They need to think carefully now about how to combat all this and get off the back foot. 

   The problem is partly the sheer weight of the forces against them.  Better Together have the UK Government, the three unionist parties in Westminster and Scotland, the UK Treasury and civil service and the Scottish and UK press on their side, plus fellow travellers like Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. The Nationalists have Alex Salmond and a few loose cannons. 

       On the morning when the Scottish government's fiscal commission reported that monetary union was a perfectly sensible option, a leading Scottish daily's front page read:  "Legal experts in warning on independence".  The press coverage of the referendum has been reduced to a kind of pro forma  "..........in warning on independence" (subs to fill).    This kind of thing infuriates the SNP who insist, rightly, that you can find legal experts who will say practically anything. They don't understand why the Scottish press is so hostile to independence.  But the fact is that they are.

    The SNP can't change the weather, so they will have to find ways to stop getting soaked. They have to stop being on the defensive.   They need to be realistic about the climate of opinion among Scottish voters, and the difficulty of persuading a country that lacks confidence in itself to go it alone. That means working back to where the voters actually are, rather than where the SNP would want them to be.  I means going back to the multi-option referendum Scottish voters sought but are being denied.  The SNP needs to recreate, and lead the home rule coalition,just as Alex Salmond originally wanted. 

   This isn't going to be won by a brilliant campaign as in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections where the SNP came from ten points behind Labour to winning a landslide.  A referendum is very different from a general election. It is for keeps - and that is scary.

  The unionists press can always be relied upon to pour cold water on any suggestion that the Scots are capable of managing their own affairs.  The howls of derision that greeted the Scottish government's document on the transition to independence, were entirely predictable too. And the criticism was not without some justification, since it did rather look as if Alex was going to create the universe in six days.

The truth is that a the Nationalists themselves have only recently begun to think in practical terms about things like negotiating a constitution and are uncomfortable with the mechanics of instant nation building. The SNP has been a brilliant vote-winning machine, but it has never been anywhere near winning independence, and under Alex Salmond it has always pursued a gradualist, incremental approach to self-government, rather than a big bang. And any way you look at it, independence is a leap of faith. They need to bridge the Scottish confidence gap, the psychology of national defeatism.

Independence - it's whatever you want it to be.

Sunday Herald 3/2/13

    The Scottish Electoral Commissioner, John McCormick, caused a parliamentary row last week by suggesting that both the Unionists and Nationalists should get together and make a “joint statement” on what a yes vote would mean in practice. You might as well try to get the Professor Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Keith O'Brien to agree on what happens in the afterlife.

The SNP's Nicola Sturgeon called on the David Cameron, to convene pre-referendum talks on the handover, which the PM rejected at Prime Minister's Question time, saying he wasn't prepared to “prenegotiate Scotland's exit”.    Lip-readers in the twittersphere thought he also said a very rude word, now immortalised in the Guardian's Steve Bell cartoon. Though if he had he would've been expelled from the chamber.

Language aside, the Electoral Commission was only reflecting the views of Scots in their focus groups. Scotland has only very recently begun to contemplate the possibility leaving the UK. There has been no century of nationalist agitation here as there was in Ireland before its departure in the 1920s. And since that involved civil war, it's not a history anyone would want to repeat. There is of course no reason why the disintegration of a union should necessarily involve conflict. Exactly 20 years ago, the Czech Republic and Slovakia decided to go their separate ways peacefully in the Velvet Divorce. A whole raft of new states were formed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union without much fuss.

If Scotland decided to leave the UK, the Scottish Government insist the divorce would be similarly silky smooth. The Queen would remain as head of state and Scotland would retain the pound, so no one would notice the transition.   Of course,  the Queen could in theory refuse, though I don't believe she would. England could refuse to let Scotland use the pound after independence, but that also seems unlikely since it would cause needless trouble for banks and businesses that straddle the border.  But one or other of the governments could, despite their commitment in the Edinburgh Agreement, get nasty though there would be nothing really to gain from falling out.

This does not mean, however, that independence would be easy. 

Is the independence referendum already lost?

SCENES from the independence debate: I took my son, Jamie, to the very excellent Stand comedy club shortly after New Year.

It was a packed and raucous show, with a mostly young audience. The compere – a tubby guy from Edinburgh whose name escapes me – launched into an obscene rant about Alex Salmond and Scottish Nationalists who, apparently, are people of a sordid sexual disposition who need to be put down in various brutal ways. And anyway, he said, the Scots "could never govern themselves 'cos they are totally and completely f***ing useless". As a punchline, he bawled out: "Does anyone here support independence?" Not a soul spoke.

You can't judge the politics of a country by its comedy, but if this had been Barcelona, that comic would have been lucky to escape unharmed. Catalans, who are also having an independence referendum in 2014, are fiercely proud of their abilities, whether they support independence or not, and would have taken exception to this affront to their national dignity. Now, don't get me wrong: it's good that we laugh at ourselves (though if the compere had been funny it might have helped). I only offer this as a random insight into Scotland's frame of mind as we enter 2013: the insecurity and awkwardness many Scots feel about the whole idea of independence; the lack of confidence in their ability to govern themselves; uncertainty about whether they even want to bother with it. It's Yes Scotland's biggest nightmare: the credibility gap.

Opinion polls confirm that Scots still just don't get independence. At least, not yet. The most striking thing about the referendum debate thus far is how little change there has been in Scottish attitudes to independence since the SNP's landslide victory in 2011. Scots still oppose independence by around two to one – a ratio that has remained constant for the last 20 years, give or take the occasional poll giving independence a marginal and transitory lead. It's hard to look at the evidence and not conclude that the Yes campaign has lost even before the campaign has started. Labour and the Better Together campaign are already awarding themselves battle honours and talking of getting three million No votes.

The Yes campaign team insists it is relaxed about the polls and points out that the SNP's landslide victory in the Scottish elections in 2011 was incubated largely during the campaign itself. In the year running up to the Holyrood elections, Labour had a comfortable lead in the polls and it was only after the campaign started that Scottish voters decided that Iain Gray was toast.

Independence in Europe. Jose he say "no".

It recalled the BBC Director General, John Entwhistle, being jeered by MPs over the Newsnight/Savile affair.   John Swinney, the Scottish finance secretary, was ridiculed by the House of Lords economic committee on Tuesday for trying to argue that an independent Scotland would be able to remain in the EU because it would still be part of the UK when the negotiations took place. The “last refuge of the scoundrel” sneered one Peer. “Doesn't know what he's talking about” said another

Their Lordships eyes rolled to the ceiling in mock amazement as a diffident Swinney tried to argue that the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, had not said what he clearly had said in a letter to the committee. Namely, that after independence Scotland would become “a third country with respect to the EU” and that the various treaties “would no longer apply on its territory” and that the new entity would have to apply for membership “like any other state”. The chairman, Lord McGregor, treated Swinney as if he were a rather dim sixth former at a minor public school.

It wasn't really John Swinney's fault – the constitution and Europe isn't his brief after all, it is Nicola Sturgeon's. And the patronising Peers, like Lord Forsyth and Lord Lipsey, are of course political appointees and hardly independent authorities. He had been left dangerously exposed by his own party, who've tried to ignore this issue for far to long expecting that it will go away. This won't do. You can't be the party of 'independence in Europe' when the top guy in Europe is suggesting that Scotland would be ejected from it.

Nicola Sturgeon has been dragged kicking and screaming to give a statement on EU membership to Holyrood on Thursday, just as Alex Salmond was dragged to the chamber to explain the non-existent legal advice in October. This is undignified.  Barroso has chosen to get involved in this issue for his own political motives. Bureaucrats, like cushions, ten to show the imprint of the last people who sat on them. Barroso is under pressure from other member states, like Spain, who have their own separatist movements, not to say anything that might encourage secession.

Who won the phoney war of the independence referendum?

So, who won the referendum phoney war? There was an air of quiet satisfaction among senior Tories at their conference in Birmingham recently.   “Wily” Alex Salmond had been put back in his box, I was told. Forced to drop his devious plan to turn the ballot on Scottish independence into an each way bet in a two horse race that he couldn't lose.

But three hundred miles north, members of the Yes Scotland campaign were also expressing quiet satisfaction. They claim to be more than content with a single question referendum. Nationalists think that Salmond pulled the wool over the UK government's eyes and that he really wanted a single question all along. They can't both be right.

Actually, this is one of those rare occasions in politics when both sides can claim victory. David Cameron can legitimately say that he insisted on, and got, a single straight in-or-out question and that the Electoral Commission will have a say on the wording. Alex Salmond can say that he has won on the 2014 timetable , giving16 and 17 year olds to vote and on ensuring that the referendum is legally binding. The FM will say that he always favoured a single question himself, but didn't want to be accused of disenfranchising supporters of “devolution max”. Opposition politicians will say: “Aye, right..”

Perhaps the real winners are the people of Scotland, who will not only be given the legal power to secede from the UK state - a power denied only last week to the Catalonian people by the government in Madrid - but will be allowed to give a straight answer to a straight question along the lines of:. “Do you wish Scotland to become an independent country” This is infinitely preferable to the obfuscatory nightmare formulations that were put to the people of Quebec in their 'Neverendums' of the last century.

How many nations was that Ed?

     How many nations was that, exactly? Ed Miliband borrowed the tailcoat of Benjamin Disraeli this week to pronounce his faith in “one nation”. Constitutional pedants (like me) might have pointed out that there are actually two nations in the United Kingdom, Scotland and England. Oh, and one of them might be about to leave.

Everyone in Manchester, from the leader down, now believes that a deal will be announced in the next couple of weeks on holding a single question, 'in or out' referendum on Scottish independence in October 2014. “The dots have all been crossed”, as one insider put it.

We've been living with the technicalities of this plebiscite for so long that we've tended to forget the significance of it. In a couple years, the 300 year old United Kingdom - one of he most successful unions in history - could cease to exist. This referendum represents a huge gamble by David Cameron - one that the Spanish premier, for example, is not prepared to take by giving Catalonia a referendum on secession.

But I'm still not entirely sure Labour fully appreciate the job they've taken on. You see, David Cameron was responsible for agreeing the referendum on independence after the 2011 election, but it is Ed Miliband's Labour party that has the responsibility of winning it, because the Tories are too unpopular in Scotland. Buttonholing Labour politicians in the Manchester conference centre, I did not get the impression that this is occupying their waking thoughts. Many seem remarkably complacent about the outcome of the referendum, believing that now Alex Salmond has been “put in his box” by the denial of his “second best” second question, the job is largely done. Few seem to realise yet that this single question has long been part of Yes Scotland's game plan.

Catalonia. Bankrupt. Scotland next?

    Scottish nationalists could be forgiven for cursing fate this week. Both Ireland and the autonomous Spanish region of Catalonia, the two most admired constitutional role models for a post-union Scotland, are sinking under the weight of their debts. Today, Ireland's voters are expected to vote reluctantly for an EU financial austerity package that could condemn them to economic depression for a decade or more. Meanwhile, the Catalonian President, Artur Mas, says Catalonia may “not be able to pay its bills at the end of the month”. The region has already restored prescription charges, introduced tourism and fuel taxes and cut spending on infrastructure projects.

There but for the grace of god goes Scotland say unionists. What price independence if it means going cap in hand either to Madrid or the ECB for bailouts? Scotland's much safer in the UK which is big enough to withstand these economic shocks. Well, maybe. The troubles in these once prosperous corners of Europe are undoubtedly a problem for Alex Salmond, who has just launched the SNP's Yes Campaign for the 2014 independence referendum. The negative headlines from Dublin and Barcelona will discourage many Scottish voters from signing the pledge.

However they are not necessarily arguments against independence as such. Catalonia and Ireland have been plunged into crisis, not by their constitutions, but by their banks and by Europe's relentless sovereign debt crisis, now morphing into an economic depression. Neither Catalonia nor Ireland see relinquishing independence as a solution to their financial difficulties - though they are beginning to see Europe as part of the problem

Pound, euro, groat - what currency for Scotland?

Whatever happened to Braveheart?  Time was when the debate about Scottish independence was all about heroic issues like freedom, national destiny, culture. Even the mild-mannered former leader of the SNP, Gordon Wilson, used to talk of it being a “revolutionary” party.  Not any more. Nowadays the independence debate seems to be all about the small change, literally, of national liberation - the currency.

   Right now, the biggest issue in the referendum campaign is whether or not Scotland should keep the pound.. Arguments about  North Sea Oil,  the armed forces, Trident etc have  been eclipsed by a row over whether or not Scotland could, or should remain in monetary union with England, as the SNP wish.    The former Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who will be launching the anti-independence Better Together campaign on Monday, claims that Scotland would suffer “economic serfdom” if it retained sterling after independence. And anyway, he says, England wouldn’t allow an independent Scotland to keep the pound. 

  Nonsense, say the Nationalists.  Wha’s to stop us keeping the bonny pound?   Scotland will prosper in a new Britain as Scots and English share a common monetary destiny.  At least for the time being.  Not everyone thinks this is plausible.   Professor John Kay, a former member of Alex Salmond’s council of economic advisers, suggested this week that Scotland might have to consider setting up its own currency, like Norway or Denmark, rather than remain under the heel of the Bank of England    Nobody seems to talk about joining the euro any more, for obvious reasons, which is unfortunate because there is an argument that, if EMU survives, Scotland could benefit from being in it.

Salmond launches "illegal" referendum campaign.

 As we waited in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle for the arrival of Moses, sorry, Robert Mugabe, sorry Alex Salmond, there was much chatter about Tuesday's now infamous Newsnight interview in which Jeremy Paxman compared Alex Salmond to Zimbabwean dictator and suggest that he wanted to set up a one party state in Scotland. The FM wisely refused invitations to criticise Paxo - since the interview has probably added a couple percent to the SNP's poll ratings. Instead he ticked off BBC Scotland for axing a lot of its political output, including the respected Newsweek Scotland programme.

This was as sure-footed a performance as we have come to expect from the First Minister on these occasions. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard Alex Salmond launch constitutional consultations, but this was Eck's Biggest Day Out ever. With the hall packed with international television hardware, and press from over forty countries, the political theatre couldn't have been more dramatic. As the winds howled around the Castle, Salmond confidently forecast victory in the 2014 independence referendum. Surrounded by massed weaponry of warfare in the frankly militaristic Great Hall, Salmond was right to assure the assembled international media, that Scottish nationalism - unlike say Quebec, Basque or Corsican separatism - has  always been a peaceful pursuit. There has “not been so much as a nosebleed” in the last hundred years of home rule agitation. Though I notice the FM didn't mention injury to letterboxes.

The biggest gag was The Question itself. “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?” Is that it? No dodgy phrases, no weasel words, no devious circumlocutions. And no second or third questions either, unless civic Scotland gets its act together to formulate one. Here was Salmond doing precisely what he had been urged to do by the UK government and the opposition parties:  seek a straight answer to a straight question. No need to invoke the Canadian Clarity Act.    The UK Electoral Commission will have its say on the question, Salmlond confirmed, and would oversee the referendum, reporting to the Scottish parliament.

2011. Why I think independence is inevitable.

  Spare a thought for Iain Gray this festive season He was by no means a bad politician – as his party discovered when they looked to replace him.  But the abiding image of the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election campaign has to be Labour's Scottish leader seeking refuge in a “Subway” sandwich bar after being pursued by anti-cuts protesters. Mr Gray said he was no 'feartie', and reminded reporters that he had “walked the Killing fields of Cambodia” before entering politics. But the 'meatball marinara incident' helped seal his fate in the subsequent ballot, as Labour suffered its worst election defeat in at least 80 years.

The May 2011 Holyrood election was one of those landmark moments when a nation discovers, almost by accident, that it has altered the course of history, even if it isn't quite sure in what direction. Labour didn't just lose 22 seats – the SNP finally stormed the gates of its West of Scotland heartland, taking Glasgow Cathcart, Kelvin, Shettleston, even Anniesland, seat of the late Donald Dewar himself. The SNP swept Edinburgh too, leaving only one Labour constituency member in the capital city, the 'neonationalist' Malcolm Chisholm, and no Liberal Democrats or Tories. The Scottish Liberal Democrats also lost all their constituency seats in the Highland and Islands and in North East Scotland. After the bloodbath, the SNP was left with 69 out of 129 seats in Holyrood – a landslide that has turned the debating chamber into a supporter's club. But Alex Salmond, could legitimately claim that the SNP was now the first political party in modern history to represent the entire Scottish mainland. All three opposition leaders resigned, and the clock started ticking for the independence referendum which was now unstoppable.

2011 was also a critical year for me professionally and personally. Over thirty years of writing about Scottish politics, I'd always argued that home rule within the UK was the only plausible constitutional destination for Scotland. I envisaged a form of federalism, where Scotland would have extensive tax raising powers within a broad union with England and Wales. Of course, I accepted the right of the Scottish people to leave the UK – but I just thought it would never happen. Independence seemed too dramatic, too disruptive, too revolutionary for this small-c conservative country which, contrary to its popular image, avoids confrontation whenever possible. Now I am not so sure.

Scots did not vote for directly for independence, of course, in May but this massive vote of confidence in the Scottish National Party, and in particular its leader, Alex Salmond, was not made lightly. The Scottish voters did what commentators like me said was impossible, delivering an absolute SNP majority in a proportional election. It had the look of a watershed. And the political landscape did not just change because of the Scottish election.

The second bombshell to hit Scottish politics detonated not in Holyrood but in Brussels, in December, when David Cameron vetoed the European Union treaty on the new “fiscal compact” to resolved the euro debt crisis. Cameron has made what looks like a fundamental and irreversible change in Britain's relationship with Europe, delighting his eurosceptic backbenchers, but fatally undermining the unionist cause at home. The charge against the SNP has always been that they are “separatists”, who seek to divide nation from nation, and risk leaving Scotland alone and isolated from the mainstream of Europe. Now it appears as if David Cameron is the separatist and that Britain is now isolating itself from the other 26 members of the European Union.

The euro debt crisis has altered the dynamics of the Scottish Question in much the same way as Britain's membership of Europe altered it in the '70s. If the United Kingdom is on its way to the outer fringes of Europe, then what is left of the argument that only by remaining in the UK can Scotland be assured of representation at the “top table of Europe”? Both the former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, and the Labour First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, have said that Cameron's veto has “strengthened the the hands” of the Nationalists, and they should know. As regional unionists, they see the danger that this new separatist Conservative-led administration poses to the moral integrity of the United Kingdom. How it turns the arguments about Scottish and Welsh independence on their head. After the Cameron veto, does anyone seriously believe that the 26 countries of the greater EU, who have finally shown England the door, would deny membership to an independent Scotland?

The United Kingdom used to be a humane project for the common good, based on universal principles, and embodied in great social institutions like the National Health Service. Not any more. The NHS is being privatised in England. Britain today looks more like a devil-take-the-hindmost union, driven by eurosceptic English Conservatives, and dedicated to protecting the financial interests of the City of London. Scots who retain a commitment to those old values have been left adrift and confused. For it wasn't just the Tories who debased the coinage of union: it was a Scottish Chancellor, Gordon Brown, a Labour son-of-the-manse, who gave birth to the monster that is the City of London through his policy of 'light touch regulation”.

Scotland remembers the charge that they were greedy for seeking to benefit directly from oil revenues in the 70s and 80s. “It's Scotland's Oil” was a political own goal for the SNP precisely because the slogan seemed selfish and narrow-minded. Politics is always about morality rather than material interest, and Scots didn't want to appear grasping. But where did the oil wealth go? To pay for the great industrial recessions of the 1980s that destroyed Scottish manufacturing, and to help make London the investment banking centre of the world. It's difficult for Scots to still feel they have a stake in this Banker's Britain.

But that doesn't necessarily mean they intend to vote for independence in the referendum pencilled in for the middle of 2014.. It remains the case that support for independence rarely rises above a third in opinion polls – though in an amusing poll for the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey in November 65% said they would support independence if they were £500 better off as a result. The vast majority of Scottish respondents continue to say that they want a parliament with more powers within the UK - 68% in the Times/Mori poll in December. Scots have difficulty saying they want to “break up Britain” even as they vote in huge numbers for a party dedicated to precisely that.

But the sheer scale of Labour's defeat, and the absence of any coherent response from the unionist parties, has created a momentum for further constitutional change which will be very difficult to halt. Already, the Scotland Bill, which comes back to parliament in the New Year, is looking like an irrelevance. This is the bill which implements most of the recommendations of the 2009 cross party Calman Commission on devolution, which proposed extensive new tax-raising powers for Holyrood including a 50/50 division of income tax revenue. The tax proposals had been severely criticised in 2011 by nationalist economists as unfair, inherently deflationary and probably unworkable. But now Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats seem to be ditching Calman also.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, made a dramatic intervention in the autumn of 2011, telling Labour that they had been “gubbed”  and that they had to show “an open minded approach as to how the architecture of devolution can be improved”. The Liberal Democrats too have set up a commission under the former leader Sir Menzies Campbell, to look at a new, improved form of devolution as a way of getting back into contention. The Scotland Bill will require the consent of both parliaments if it is to become law in the New Year. Alex Salmond has called for the bill to include powers for Holyrood over broadcasting, the Crown Estates, excise duties and corporation tax. The Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore is making clear that he isn't having any of it, and says that if Alex Salmond wants the increased borrowing powers contained in the Bill, he is going to have to lose the rest of his wish list. The way things are looking right now, both parliaments may decide that it is best to lay the bill to rest rather than to amend it to death.

But whether the bill stands of falls, the home rule story has already moved on to the next chapter. Figures from across the political spectrum – from the Conservative-leaning Reform Scotland think tank, through the Blairite former minister, Lord Foulkes, to nationalist “fellow travellers” like the former First Minister, Henry McLeish, are calling now for virtually all tax raising powers to be handed over to Holyrood. The SNP call this, “full fiscal freedom”; Lord Foulkes calls it “fiscal responsibility”; others call it “devolution max” or “independence lite”. Whatever, it implies a fundamental change in relations with England that it might eventually look very like independence. After all, the SNP says that, after independence, it would keep the pound and look to cooperate with England on foreign policy and non-nuclear defence.

Indeed, critics of the SNP question how Alex Salmond can still call it “independence” when the Bank of England is setting interest rates and Brussels is regulating the Scottish budgets. This is the modern nationalist paradox: they appear support not one but two monetary unions - UK and EU - at the same time. Salmond has tried to resolve the contradiction by invoking a new, though largely undefined, “Social Union” between Scotland and England, as if in some way trying to retrieve the best bits of the old UK and a referendum on the euro. But the SNP seems finally to have accepted that true independence is an anachronism – that the world has changed, and that in future Scotland is destined to remain in perpetual negotiation with other supra-national authorities.

Perhaps this is why Mr Salmond seems content to sacrifice formal independence in a multi choice referendum. For if the SNP leader continues to offer not just independence, but also “devolution max” on the referendum ballot paper, he must surely realise that independence would lose. Scots would vote for devolution max, the policy now backed by Lord Foulkes and many Conservatives.  The calculation on Mr Salmond's part must be that this measure of “fiscal freedom” would be so close to formal independence that, in the modern multinational world, there would be no practical difference. Salmond could win even if he loses. But by the same token, in winning fiscal autonomy he might kill forever the 'auld sang' of full independence.

Whatever, in 2011 independence ceased to be a hypothetical and became an immediate and practical possibility, widely discussed and debated. I now think it is almost inevitable that Scotland will leave the United Kingdom as we understand it now – though it will almost certainly find itself back in some kind of confederal relationship with England. The two partners in the ancient Union are now on very different political trajectories. It would be well for everyone in Scotland - and the UK – to start preparing for the transition now. It is in no one's interest for the United Kingdom to disintegrate chaotically.

Of course Scotland would be admitted to the EU. Look at Latvia, Estonia etc etc.

  I've been in this game too long.   I remember being taken by the Tories nearly twenty years ago to Brussels to hear Baroness Ellis  warn that Scotland would not be allowed to join the EU.  Don't even think about it!  France and Spain would block an independent Scotland to discourage their own separatist movements. England wouldn't accept Scotland as a legitimate nation.  There would be years of wrangling over budgets.  England would dump financial liabilities onto Scotland to reduce its contribution to the EU budget etc etc..

 Scotland would end up broke and isolated, a ragged and homeless fragment lost in the North Sea.   It was tedious rubbish then, and it is rubbish now. Yet, barely a week goes by without some report or other announcing that wee Scotland would be frozen out of Europe and told to go and sit on the naughty step. 

    I've just been looking at the latest report to hit the front pages.  It came from the House of Commons Library and it is a background briefing note, not an authoritative assessment of the Scotland's legal status within the EU. It carries its own health warning  "[This briefing note]  should not be relied upon as legal or professional advice or as a substitute for it.  A suitably qualified professional should be consulted."   It goes on to rehearse all the arguments that have been made about Scotland's relationship to the EU that have been made over the years. Pros and cons - naturally, the Scotsman chose the con and headlined this as "£8bn Bill To Join The Eurozone". This presupposes that Scotland would automatically join the euro, which of course is not going to happen, at least in the short term.  Just like Sweden, Scotland would have the right to decide whether and when to join the euro. The report goes on to question whether membership would be automatic and finds differing views among constitutional authorities. 

   Lawyers make their money from creating legal complexity, so you will always find that there are differing legal opinions about secession.  But the political reality is that it is inconceivable that the EU would try to block an independent Scotland from entry. The EU is founded on the principle of national self-determination, so the idea that Scotland would not be recognised as a nation in Europe is ludicrous.  Scotland is already a part of the EU through its participation in the United Kingdom, and as a nation in its own right, Scotland would automatically qualify for membership of the EU.   It would take concerted action by the other member states to prove, either that Scotland is financially insolvent, or that it is not a democracy, or that it is in in violation of the European convention on human rights.   That is not going to happen. 

  Sure, there may be bureaucratic obstacles to formal entry - calculations of Scotland's contribution, relationship to the eurozone, Shenghen - all of which are the subject of opt outs by the UK.  But many of these problems would also face the RUK (Residual United Kingdom) in exactly the same way.  How much should England and Wales pay exempt of Scotland?  What weight should English votes continue to carry in the Council etc etc..  

  But the central question: Scotland's ability to remain in the EU, answers itself.   in 2004, the EU admitted a raft of small European countries many of which had been part of the Soviet empire.  The idea that the EU would reject Scotland because it used to be part of the UK is laughable. Iceland is being given a free entry ticket to the EU as I write.  Scotland is a wealthy country, unlike Greece or the small former Eastern block countries like Latvia and Estonia or minnows like Malta.  Scotland has around £400 billion in oil reserves, a quarter of Europe's wind and wave energy, five of the top universities in the planet.  

I despair at unionists who make these arguments because they are only destroying their own case.  If this is the standard of debate we can expect in the run up to the independence referendum then - roll on independence!

Hasta la vista Jeremy. The end of the car is nigh.

  A hundred pounds to fill a tank. At first I couldn’t believe it - staring at the pump in disbelief.  Ok,  my VW campervan has a slightly larger tank than most cars.  And yes, I was up north where fuel prices are higher.   But still - a ton just to fill up!  How did we get here?   This is just not sustainable - economically or environmentally.  

  I looked around at the motorists waiting patiently to be fleeced after me.  How do they manage in rural areas  where there’s no public transport and fuel stations charge whatever they want?   What do small businesses do?  Perhaps there is some sort of black market in bootleg diesel - otherwise the place would come to a standstill. 

  But it’s not just an issue for the highlands and islands - everyone seems to be talking about the cost of fuel right now.   Expressing a kind of impotent rage - at ourselves as much as the fuel profiteers.  We all know we shouldn’t still be depending on cars;  that they are environmentally damaging, cause congestion and encourage laddish individualism.  But we’re all still using them.  With children it’s just not an option not to.  

    On my own, I use a bicycle around town, because it’s far quicker and I can park it anywhere - but I’m not fooling myself that this makes me any holier than thou.  I can bike it because I can afford to near the centre of town.  Most people can’t and have no choice but to use their cars in the suburbs or the country.  Try commuting by bike in Argyle in winter and you’re liable to end up with hypothermia.  Car transport is a collective addiction which is very difficult to kick on your own.

   But I think now,   with the hundred pound fill up,  we may  just have reached a kind of transport tipping point. 

Tuition fees - bigger than the poll tax?

   It is one of the most cherished myths of Scottish national identity: the lad o’ pairts.  The image of proud Jock, of peasant stock, striding out of the kailyard with his bag of meal in one hand and his bible in the other. Whistling a Man’s a Man while preparing to take on the  upper classes  thanks to the free Scottish university system.    Like all myths, the “Democratic Intellect”, as George Davie described the Scottish tradition of open access higher education, involves an element of pure fantasy.  Scottish universities in the 19th Century weren’t free, for a start, though fees were very low and most students received bursaries courtesy of the Carnegie Trust.

   Nevertheless, there was some truth in the lad o' pairts myth, and cynics ridicule it at their peril.   At the end the 19th Century,  nearly 25% of Glasgow University students came from manual working class backgrounds, something inconceivable in  the English system,  which was the exclusive preserve of the upper classes.   The belief that higher education should be based on ability learn rather than ability to pay is deeply ingrained in Scottish  culture.  Universities have been seen here as national public institutions which should be mainly financed out of general taxation.  This is confirmed in opinion polls, such as the recent Scotsman/panelbase poll of 1001 Scots which this month showed that two thirds of Scots reject a graduate tax related to earnings.

Independence - Is that it?

As Alex Salmond’s flagship referendum bill sank beneath the waves last week, there were precious few mourners at the quayside, even amongst the SNP. There were even fewer criers of ‘betrayal’ - though the godfather of fundamentalism, the former SNP deputy leader, Jim Fairlie, remarked that: "at the mention of the word 'independence', a shiver ran through the ranks of the SNP, frantically searching for a spine to run up."

    The opposition parties snorted about broken promises and nails in the coffin of  Alex Salmond’s credibility, but it was pretty routine stuff - as if the abandonment of the independence referendum bill was just another item on the list of lost manifesto commitments along with local income tax, the Scottish Futures Trust and abolishing student debt. But it is much more than that.  Only two years ago, at the height of the SNP honeymoon, people were seriously talking about the momentum towards Scottish independence becoming unstoppable.  August bodies like the Constitution Unit at UCL in London were holding conferences on the mechanics of separation -  one referendum or two? how to split the national debt? It was more or less assumed that an independence referendum would happen, somehow. Not any more  

Why is unemployment not an election issue?

On Wednesday I was sitting staring into space, wondering what I was going to write about this week. The press were preoccupied with mounting debt, and the creeps at Strathclyde Passenger Transport circumnavigating the globe at our expense.  Then my phone rang.  It was a BBC producer wondering if I would come and talk about why unemployment was no longer an issue. Now, that’s a very interesting question.

  Hardly anyone seems to think that unemployment, currently running at 2.5 million in Britain, is going to be a key issue for the general election.   An issue, yes, but hardly a dominant one.  Yet back in 1979, the last time a refreshed Tory opposition challenged  an incumbent Labour government after an economic crisis, unemployment was THE number one issue.  “Labour Isn’t Working” said that Saatchi and Saaatchi Tory ad, possibly the most  infamous election poster of all time.  Unemployment then was only 1.4 million.  

    True, the unemployment figures were calculated rather differently in 1979, but that doesn’t alter the point.  The return of mass unemployment has not been the burning issue it was in the past.   In 1979, 53% of voters believed unemployment to be most serious issue facing the country against only 30% today, according to Ipsos Mori.   Yet unemployment really is back in a big way.  The slight decline in the UK figures last week ( they continued to rise in Scotland of course) by no means indicates that joblessness has peaked.  There has been a huge increase in underemployment, with over 7.6 million on part time working.  Economic “inactivity” is also up - the numbers who have given up looking for a job, like students, long term sick etc. has risen to 8.8 million.   Hundreds of thousands of workers have accepted big reductions in pay in order to hang onto their jobs.  One in five young people is unemployed.  And the Chartered Institute of Personnel  and Development warns that a new shakeout of employment is almost inevitable later this year because of the sluggish economic recovery. 

   So, why is unemployment not an issue?  Make no mistake,  a lot of people are really suffering. Ask yourself: could you live on £64 a week jobseekers allowance?  Britain has some of the lowest benefit rates in Europe. In Ireland, unemployment benefit is nearly three times what it is here.  Many British workers have exhausted their savings and are hitting rock bottom, as the dramatic rise in the claimant count indicates.   The pain is partly mitigated by he various government schemes which have frozen mortgage payments and credit card debt.  But these subsidies can’t last indefinitely, and when they unwind, we could be facing a huge social problem. 

  But where’s the public outrage?   Where were the ministers squirming on Newsnight?   In 1991 when the Tory Chancellor, Norman Lamont said that unemployment was “a price worth paying” for economic recovery he was rounded on by the media.  Now no one bothers to compute the price of joblessness. It’s as if we don’t think that governments have any responsibility any more - even though Gordon Brown said, some years ago, that “full employment” was the government’s goal.  

    In the 1970s and 80s, joblessness was regarded as THE great social evil.  The prospect of just one million unemployed was enough to make Ted Heath, the Tory PM, radically change his economic policy in 1971.  The Labour PM, James Callaghan, came to grief over it in 79.   Under Margaret Thatcher’s monetarist policies in the 1980s, unemployment soared and so did social unrest, culminating in the miners strike in 1984/5. Now it’s back, and we all seem to be just accepting it as inevitable.  Even the response to the Corus ending steel-making in Redcar after 150 years has been muted, though a ballot on industrial action has been called. 

   So, what’s changed? Well, for one thing the nature of employment has.  Instead of being in large workforces in manufacturing industry, workers today are largely employed in small companies of under 50 often in poorly organised service occupations.  The great strikes and factory occupations in the 70’s and 80’s, like Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the British Leyland Bathgate, were mobilised like military campaigns.  The foot soldiers were workers who all knew each other, lived in the same streets, had similar status and a great sense of class solidarity.  Now they are dispersed across all manner of occupations, as security guards, supermarket shelf-stacker, or in call centres.  They also have mortgages, which most didn’t in the 1970s, and big debts which put a dampener on industrial militancy.  And whisper it, but the influx of several million poorly unionised immigrant workers, willing to accept poor conditions and low pay, has sapped the strength of British  labour  Instead of union militancy, we have apathy and incapacity benefit.  As a result, trades unions are not the political force they were in the 70s and 80s. The last attempted strike action was the farcical BA non-event at Christmas.  Before that, it was power station workers downing tools in favour of “British jobs for British workers”. 

   The other big difference is that the public sector unions have not yet been mobilised in this economic crisis.  The recession has hit in the main the private sector.  Employment by the state has actually risen by around 100,000 since 2008, during the deepest recession in eighty years, and wages in the public sector have continued to rise, even as non-state workers are taking pay cuts.    In the past, public sector workers - nurses, teachers, fire-fighters - had a deep sense of grievance at their poor pay and were leaders in industrial unrest.  Nowadays they are a relatively privileged class earning higher wages and with better pensions than their private sector equivalents. 

   However, this might all be about to change.  If and when the next government tries to tackle Britain’s unsustainable public deficit, sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, then unemployment and industrial militancy are likely to stage a dramatic comeback.  There have already been threats of strikes from public sector unions at the mere suggestion of a pay freeze - but much more than that will be required to balance the government books.  This may explain why Labour, which tends to do rather badly in times of industrial distress, has held off cutting public spending until after the election is safe and gone.

    So politicians may be fooling themselves if they think unemployment is no longer an issue. There is a lag in social awareness.  It has taken some time for people to remember what it actually means in terms of ruined lives and social dislocation.  If we think society is broken now, just wait until next year and the year after that.  When people lose hope they become desperate - and the clock is ticking.  

  

Excluding the SNP is unfair and undemocratic.

    The Scottish National Party has every right to feel aggrieved at being excluded from the proposed televised debates involving the three UK leaders during the forthcoming general election campaign.  The problem is what to do about it.  It is manifestly unfair for not one,  but three ninety minute debates to be shown in Scotland without the party of government in Scotland being represented.   Quite apart from the unfairness, the important Scottish dimension will be completely lost as the three UK leaders debate English health, English education, English policing and other issues like nuclear power and university tuition fees as they affect England.  Does anyone seriously believe that Brown, Cameron and Clegg are going to debate these issues as they apply to Scotland?  Of course not.

   I am not making a narrow nationalist point here.  It is, or should be, obvious to any fair minded person that this is a distortion of the democratic process in Scotland. Unfortunately, it is a very difficult problem to resolve.  Clearly, shoe-horning Alex Salmond into these debates will bemuse the vast majority of viewers who live in England.  Clearly, Alex Salmond has no chance of becoming UK leader.  His presence therefore, would be an unwarranted intrusion into the English political debate.

  But  if it is unacceptable to transmit these debates in England with Salmond, it is equally unacceptable to transmit them in Scotland without him.  There is no easy way round this, and I think it should be tested by law.  An important precedent will be established with profound implications for custom and practice of broadcasting during elections.   I suspect the SNP will not go to law far because they have little likelihood of overturning the UK networks who will fight fiercely against any attempt to block the transmissions.  But I still hope they try.

  Really, the only fair and representative solution would be for the debates not to be transmitted in Scotland or for there to be as four way debate north of the border including the UK and SNP leaders. Clearly, Brown, Cameron and Clegg are not going to want that, but they may just have to accept it.  They have agreed to have three separate debates to suit the demands of the three UK television    channels - well, the least they can do is suit the demands of the devolved United Kingdom.

   Unionists have been crowing at the thought of Alex Salmond being excluded from these debates, but they should have a care.  This kind of thing does not go down well in Scotland, where voters have an acute sense of fairness and democratic propriety.  I suspect many Scottish viewers will resent the way the SNP has been excluded, and more to the point, will resent the way Scottish issues are largely ignored, as they are on network television bulletins.  These broadcasts could do severe damage to the Unionist case in Scotland, and the SNP know it.

   The UK parties should think again.

Questions, questions. Just how many options does the SNP need?

 Er, just how many questions is that again?  Once upon a time independence was a simple matter - you just asked people whether or not they agreed that: “The Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the government of the UK so that Scotland becomes an independent state”. That’s how it was  in the original draft bill published by the SNP in 2007.   Now, anything goes.

   Today’s St Andrews Day surprise from the SNP government, we are told,  is that there are going to be four options presented in today’s White Paper.  There will be Independence (see above); ‘Devolution Max, or fiscal freedom short of independence; a Calman Commission option of shared income tax; and our old friend the Status Quo - whatever the hell that is.  

  But why stop there?  Why not have a full federal option, whereby there is a formal separation of powers with Westminster, as favoured by the Liberal Democrats?  What about an Iceland option, where you become independent but stay out of the European Union. Many people might favour a Republican question, whereby Scotland is no longer subject to the arbitrary influence of a constitutional monarch.  An Alaskan option might also be considered whereby Scotland remains in the union, as a federal state, but retains control of oil revenues and has diplomatic ties with Russia. Or a Ruritanian option where Scotland declares itself independent, and then does nothing at all except march up and down. 

 This is all getting a little silly. You can’t have a meaningful referendum with four options. The results would be so various that it could be almost impossible to achieve a consensus. Mike Russell, the Constitution Minister, insisted yesterday that there will not be four actual questions on the ballot paper,  which will not be published until next year.  But if there are four constitutionally valid options, I don’t see how you can avoid putting them all before the people. 

 

   The great virtue of the 1997 devolution referendum was that the questions were very clear and transparent.  You could see what you were voting for, and as a result there was an overwhelming affirmation of the favoured constitutional option: a Scottish Parliament with primary legislative powers.  That three to one majority in 1997 ended the constitutional debate for a generation.  Having four options would simply create a huge argument,  not so  much a national conversation as a national rammy.

  Presumably, this option-inflation is an attempt by the SNP to confuse the issue - to turn the debate into a kind of constitutional soup into which all the constitutional options dissolve, allowing the SNP to get along with governing under devolution which, until now, they had been doing very successfully.  The ‘multi-option’ option is a also a distraction from the inconvenient truth that Scots really don’t want to be bothered with constitutional change, at least not now.  The latest Ipsos/Mori poll suggests that support for independence is down to 25% and that only 20% of Scots want an early referendum. 

   This stands to reason.  Asking people in the middle of a recession whether they want to tinker with the constitution seems slightly  indecent - like asking an unemployed man whether he would prefer to be in an English or a Scottish dole queue.  There are more pressing matters - which doesn’t mean the issue has gone away.  In the Mori poll, 50% agreed with having a referendum “in a few years”  In present circumstances, with the SNP government in mid term difficulties, that’s not at all bad.  Maybe Alex should quite while he’s ahead; maybe that’s exactly what he is trying to do today. Lay the independence question to rest for a few years while they sort themselves out. 

  This St Andrews Day is turning into a bit of a nightmare for the SNP.  These disappointing polling returns follow defeats on key policies like minimum alcohol pricing and local income tax, Labour’s crushing majority in Glasgow North East by election, and an epic bust up with local authorities over class sizes.  Alex Salmond is beginning to look a little like Gordon Brown.  There’s even a nationalist sleaze scandal - Universality of Cheese-gate - where a nationalist aide to the Constitutional Affairs Minister, Mike Russell, has been caught spreading abusive and highly offensive hate mail over the internet.  Shades of Labour’s Damian MacBride and his vile smears from Number Ten. The rebarbative behaviour of the cyber-nats is hardly news, but it is a shock to discover that one of them was under the wing of Mike Russell, one of the most enlightened figures in the SNP.

    When things start to go wrong in government they all go wrong together. It will take extraordinary skill to get through the next six months with the government’s integrity intact.  Alex Salmond faces defeat of the referendum  bill in parliament, defeat at the general election and the disintegration of the “historic” concordat with Scottish local authorities.  Press commentators are poised to declare the beginning of the end for Alex Salmond and the end of the end for independence. We will no doubt be reading soon how Nicola Sturgeon - who performed with her usual effortless competence on Question Time last week - should be taking over from Shrek before the SNP lose the plot entirely.  But I wouldn’t write of the big man yet. 

   And we shouldn’t write off independence entirely yet either. Or rather we should, but for a reason. What we will see today, I believe, is the SNP coming to terms with reality - which is that formal independence is becoming increasingly marginal to Scottish constitutional politics.  Everyone knows that the referendum on independence isn’t going to happen.  The debate is now all about extending home rule - how far and how fast.   

  The Calman Report, for all its faults, is a tribute to the success of the SNP in office. All the unionist parties now support giving Holyrood, greater tax powers - something that would have been inconceivable only three years ago.  Whoever wins the next UK election, something like Calman is going to be introduced and this will require the active co-operation of the SNP government.   This will be an opportunity for the SNP to turn Calman into something workable: to convert devolution min to devolution max. 

  That’s if they remain in office - and that’s not looking at all certain any more, after this St Andrews Day nightmare.  Alex Salmond needs to get a grip, put aside multi option metaphysics and focus on winning the Scottish election in 2011.   

Why is Labour only Labour when it's losing?

    Following the Queen’s Speech last week, I have informed my bank manager that I have passed a private members bill to abolish my overdraft within four years.  Having entered into this solemn and binding commitment with myself, I feel sure that he will grant my request for unlimited additional borrowing in the mean time. 

  Yes, a lot of what was in the Queen’s Speech was,  like the Fiscal Responsibility Bill, complete nonsense.  Passing a law to make the government to do what it is supposed to be doing anyway is to treat the electorate with intellectual contempt. However, there was also a good deal of  interesting material in the Queen’s Speech that was largely ignored by the media, on the grounds that, since Labour is on the way to the funny farm, nothing it says is worth listening to.

   But listen up nevertheless, for this last Queen’s Speech of the Labour era tells us a lot about what has gone wrong over the last 13 years.   Whenever Labour seems to be on the rocks -  unpopular, losing votes, on the way to the electoral dustbin - it suddenly rediscovers its social conscience; dare I say it: its heart.  The Queen’s Speech was filled with measures which can only be described as, well, Labour policies.  Like abolishing child poverty, giving job security to agency workers, introducing free care for the elderly in England , promising to extend Scottish home rule. Why didn’t it do these things when it had the chance?

   The 2009 Queen’s Speech has been dismissed as an exercise in political gamesmanship, but if so, Brown is playing a very curious game.  The speech, drafted of course by the government,  included a bill to prohibit those iniquitous cluster bombs which cause terrible injuries to innocent people in war zones;  a bribery bill to clean up corrupt business practices at home and abroad and end scandals like the Al Yamamah arms contract;  and an energy bill to will help poor consumers and give financial incentives for energy firm to develop carbon capture and storage projects.  

   And there’s more.  I won’t bore you with all the details, which you can read for yourselves, but there is a law to limit banker’s bonuses and curb City risk-taking, a legislative commitment to outlaw age and gender discrimination,  and a law committing Britain to spend  0.7% of national income on helping poor countries, which has been hugely praised by Bob Geldoff and Bono. Now, it’s easy to say that this is all hogwash, and Labour is only promising to do these worthy things because it knows that it will not actually be in government to deliver them. It’s a bit like a ‘living will’ - a series of commitments designed to put the Tories on the spot.

    But hang on a minute. If the aim is to damage David Cameron by getting him to disown these policies, doesn’t that rather suggest that the're rather popular?   Gordon Brown - who lives and breathes focus groups - would surely not have put all these measures in the Queen’s Speech if he thought they were vote losers.  This is his last ditch, his final throw of the dice - mix any metaphor you like.  These bills are intended to boost Labour and give voters a clear idea of where Labour stands before polling day in May.

  So the obvious question is, again: why the hell hasn’t Labour introduced these measures before?  It spent nearly a decade dissing the Scottish Parliament for introducing free personal care for the elderly.  Too expensive!  A subsidy for the middle classes! Why shouldn’t old people sell their homes?  Well, for one very important reason: giving older people support to remain in their own homes is not only humane, it  delays the moment when they become a costly burden on the NHS.  Now suddenly, when the government is facing oblivion, Brown discovers that free personal care has been a cost-effective vote winner all along.  

   Why the delay on cracking down on banker’s bonuses and cleaning up the financial system?  One of the abiding mysteries of the Labour years is why successive Labour leaders hitched their fate to the spivs and speculators of the City of London.  It all goes back to the days of Neil Kinnock, and Labour’ desperation to show that it wasn’t anti-capitalist and cloth cap.  But that is ancient history.  Bankers are now the most loathed members of society after paedophiles, and even the Tories have been disowning their behaviour since the crash.  

   The entire financial “community” has been deeply unpopular with the voters for at least a decade.  Successive scandals like endowment mortgages, personal pensions,  with profit bonds have rotted any faith that the people ever held in the probity of bankers.  It’s why so few people save money in pensions - they can see very well that they are going to get ripped off.  Labour had a golden opportunity to remodel social democracy for the new century by cleaning up the city, ending the bonus culture, creating new mutuals and building societies, and introducing a fair deal on housing.  Instead, it cynically created a housing shortage in order to bid up asset prices and put an entire generation of young families into colossal debt to the banks. 

    Being good is popular. So why has Labour in office so often opted for unpopular vote losers?  In last weeks Queen’s Speech there was - thankfully -  not a single mention of the War on Terror, the recurrent theme in New Labour legislation since 9/11.  This government squandered support among middle Britain through its determination to diminish our freedoms and launch unpopular wars to combat a fictitious threat.  4 million CCTV cameras, identity cards, detention without trial, connivance in torture through rendition - these were never popular, which is why the Tories have disowned them. 

   Well, better a sinner repenteth, I suppose.  As it breathes its dying breath, Labour has suddenly rediscovered its soul.  You can see it on the streets of Glasgow North East, where the party is learning to be Labour again.   You can almost hear the thumbscrews being loosened on Labour dissidents.   Gordon Brown is promising a Tobin Tax on financial transactions, for heaven’s sake!  Why has this been left until the very last moment, when Labour is about to enter the long sleep of opposition?  Stuffed if I know. I’m off to the bank.