One Year to Go. It looks like No.

It's not exactly been a happy pre-anniversary for the Yes Scotland campaign. Looking at the deluge of one-year-to-go opinion polls, the only sensible conclusion is that very little has changed and independence is set to be rejected by a substantial majority. Yes, the number of don't knows has gone up and there is a degree of fluidity about the supporters of devolution max. But there is no sign of an early breakthrough. Even Alex Salmond's Aberdeenshire school students blew him a raspberry by voting against independence in mock elections by a margin of three to one.

The economic argument rages on to no particular purpose. All sides accept that Scotland could be a viable economy on its own, but the £500 question remains unanswered. An opinion poll by ICM last week suggested that 47% of Scots would vote Yes if they could be assured that independence would make them richer by this amount, while only 18% would vote for independence if they were made poorer. Nicola Sturgeon welcomed this poll and insisted that “on the basis of the current Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report Scotland’s finances are stronger than the UK’s as a whole to the tune of £4.4 billion – which equates to £824 per person”. Whether this fiscal arithmetic is right or not, I find it rather demeaning for the question of Scotland's national renewal to be reduced to the cost of a minibreak in Benidorm.

Anyway, the Nationalists are always going to be on the defensive with these arguments because of the uncertainty factor. It is impossible to say whether Scotland would be better off after independence, and the hard fiscal reality is that a short period of post independence austerity is likely, even with the benefit of oil revenues. The Institute for Fiscal Studies claimed last week that Scottish public spending, which it says is 17% higher per head than in England, would be squeezed in a transition period as Scotland tried to grapple with the debts inherited from the UK.

Now, the Nationalists rightly say that this is hardly their fault, and that is true. They are also right to argue that with oil and renewable resources, Scotland could be a viable and very effective economy. But it is hard to argue with the IFS calculation that there would be significant spending constraints in the short term. The IFS is the gold standard of financial accounting and its assessments have to be taken seriously, unlike the UK Treasury, which has been frankly producing propaganda in the guise of economic analysis.

Now, in any normal independence situation, such transitional costs would be seen as a price worth paying for national freedom. You didn't find the Slovakia, the Lativa, or any of the other countries which won independence in 1990s worrying over such trivial sums. In Barcelona today, Catalonian nationalists don't march in their millions demanding 500 more euros – they demand an end to domination from Madrid, cultural liberation, control of their own affairs. Scottish independence is in danger of turning into a bean-counter convention, where people are arguing over the small change in the national accounts instead of creating a vision of a better society.

On yer bike Chancellor.

Talk about an open goal. The most unpopular Chancellor since Nigel Lawson, George Osborne, came north again this week, bearing Treasury propaganda disguised as objective analysis - and he seemed to get away with it. Where's the anger?

The independence campaign has not just stalled, it is in danger of going into reverse. People who were minded to vote Yes are flummoxed by the relentless stream of negativity from Westminster which the Nationalists seem unable to counter. Neither the SNP government, nor the Yes Scotland campaign seem able to mount a coherent, imaginative case for independence in a language Scottish voters can understand. I'm not surprised support for independence is back at its bedrock 25%.

The best Alex Salmond could come up with this week was abolishing early release for sex offenders – the kind of populist policy that Labour's Jack McConnell used to reach for when he was in a hole. Month after month the Nationalists repeat the same tired slogans about “completing the powers of the Scottish parliament” whatever that means; grasping the “ economic levers”. Maintaining the “social union”, the “defence union” – hey, why not the Union union?

There is a strategic problem with the independence case, which is that it has essentially framed the debate in its opponents terms. This is the classic mistake identified by George Lakoff in “Don't Think of an Elephant”. If you keep talking about unions then the message that will get across is is that union is rather a good idea. Better Together are much better unionists than the SNP so perhaps leave it to them.

The Yes campaign need to have aspiration, a shining city, a vision. Politics is about moral choices and this is what effective campaigns are based upon, not the dull and desiccated language of economics. Which doesn't mean that you duck economic arguments – in fact the SNP had an opportunity to do both this week, secure the moral high ground while rebutting the politics of fear.

Low pay is a cause of stagnation, not a consequence of it.

Another 'here's tae us' press release from the Scottish Government on jobs. “The employment rate is now higher in Scotland than in the other four nations of the UK”, it proclaims, “whilst the unemployment is now lower than in any of the four nations of the UK”. Leave aside whether there are four nations in the Union, the last time I looked there were only two. Unemployment in Scotland is indeed down 7.000, which is indeed remarkable given the sluggish recovery and the shake-out of jobs in the hight street.

Funny, though, how it's always Westminster's fault when unemployment goes up, but when it goes down down it is thanks to the wisdom of the SNP government. That's politics of course. Governments always try to own good news and disown bad. And it's hard to argue with figures showing that more than 2.5 million Scots are now in employment, which means that nearly 50,000 jobs have been in the last quarter alone.

However, there is a dark side to this good news story of happy Scots toddling off to work in unprecedented numbers. They may be earning, but they're not spending.      An inconvenient statistic this week revealed that that retail sales in Scotland have not been recovering in the way they have been in the rest of the UK. The difference is quite dramatic. As the Herald reported yesterday, the total value of retail sales was up 0.8% last month, year on year, as against 3.4% in the UK.

Retailers always talk about this in terms of “consumer confidence” as if people in Scotland are wandering around in a state of dismal depression at the weather and keeping their purses tightly shut out of spite. The Scottish Retail Consortium says that “in terms of consumer confidence, London is certainly weathering the difficult economic conditions better than elsewhere in the UK”. Well, yes, it would do, since that's where all the money is. Look at London house prices which are rising dramatically as they fall elsewhere.

There is a very obvious reason why people outside the metropolis are spending less: they are earning less. The Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed yesterday that we have lived through the deepest and longest squeeze on earnings in a century. Far worse than the 1990 recession or even the 1930s. Real earnings are 15% lower today than they would have been had the banking crisis not wrecked the British economy after 2007. It's the biggest five year fall in earnings in history, according to the IFS. One in three workers has suffered a cut or freeze in their pay packets in real terms since 2010.

Road to Referendum: the book and the film.

My documentary series on the national question "Road to Referendum", continues this week with part 2 on Tuesday at 8.00pm on STV.  See the stars of the poll tax era - and I mean stars - as we revisit the 80s and Thatcherism. 

    Also, Part 1 is repeated tonight at 7.00 on STV for those who missed it through technical difficulties. This tells the extraordinary story of how Scotland went from being at the heart of the Union in 1945 to a referendum on independence in 2014. 

I have also written a book of the same name - Road to Referendum -  which is launched at the Aye Write book festival in Glasgow on 17th June published by Cargo Press.  This charts the history of the national question in Scotland since the Middle Ages,  through the age of Empire - when Scots fought Britain's wars and ran much of its colonial business  -  to the present existential crisis of British unionism. 

Reviews of "Road to Referendum":

"A truly important book, particularly at this moment. It offers a huge sweep of history and deals with recent Scottish politics in formidable, but never tedious detail". --Andrew Marr

"Iain Macwhirter is shrewd, insightful and with few rivals in the business of understanding - and explaining - the changing politics of Scotland". --Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

"Iain Macwhirter offers a highly readable and personal account of Scottish history drawing on wide reading and a career during which he has followed these debates more closely and consistently than any other journalist. He enlivens old stories with new perspectives, challenges established wisdom and raises awkward questions for protagonists and antagonists in equal measure on either side of today's debate". --Professor James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh

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This extract from my book was published in the Sunday Herald 2/6/13.

The most extraordinary thing about Scotland's independence referendum next year is that it is happening at all. We could be only eighteen months away from the dissolution of one of the most successful political unions in history: the United Kingdom - a country whose empire once dominated the planet. Yet, Scotland has no real history or tradition of political nationalism, at least not on the scale of Ireland or any of the former British colonies that sought independence in the 1950s and 60s.

And there's a very good reason for this. Scots have not rebelled against the UK because, for most of the last 300 years, Scots have been among its most enthusiastic supporters. They helped to create it after 1707 along with the currency union based on sterling. The Bank of England was even founded by a Scot, William Paterson. Which makes it offensive to hear unionists like the Chancellor, George Osborne, threaten to deny Scotland the use of its own currency. It's like denying the pound and the Bank of England to Yorkshire.

When Scotland gave up its parliament in 1707, it wasn't quite the corrupt annexation that has been presented in Jacobite lore, or the ambiguous poetry of Robert Burns. Nor was it the last gasp of a nation impoverished by the Darien disaster, which is how it tends to be presented in some school history books. The Treaty of Union was essentially about security: about ending three hundred years of debilitating warfare between Scotland and England, that had continued, and even intensified, after the Union of the Crowns in 1603 which was supposed to have ended this historic enmity.

King Edward's armies may never have conquered Scotland and extinguished Scottish nationhood, but Oliver Cromwell's roundheads nearly did after 1650. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the turbulent Stuart Restoration that followed, left Scotland exhausted physically, economically and spiritually. It has been estimated that 100,000 Scots died in these terrible conflicts, in a population of little more than 1 million.

Economic and political union was seen by its advocates as a way of resolving this conflict by creating a new economic and political entity, Great Britain - rather as the European Union was seen as a way of ending conflict between France and Germany. And it worked - even though, crucially, Scotland and England remained nations with their identities intact. The abortive '45 Rebellion was the last battle ever fought on British soil.

England didn't move the Treaty out of altruism, of course. It wanted the security of the Hanoverian succession, and also needed Scottish taxes and Scottish men to fight its battles with France. Scotland's parliament was folded into Westminster with indecent haste. However, losing a parliament was not considered as great a loss in 1707 as it would be today. Scotland was not a democracy at the start of the 18^th Century – it was more like a theocracy, dominated by the Presbyterian Kirk.

The old Scottish parliament before 1707 was more like a chamber of commerce for the nobles, lairds and burgesses - people of property. Yes, 'a parcel o' rogues', were shamelessly bribed by Queen Anne's agents into voting for the Treaty of Union. And yes, many Scots did riot against the 1707 union, especially when they discovered that they were expected to pay the cost of it through an array of new taxes, like the hated Malt Tax on alcoholic beverage. But crucially the Presbyterian Kirk accepted the deal because the Acts of Union left it in sole charge of its own religious turf, and for most Scots this was more important than the location of a parliament in which they had no say.

Scottish merchants and money lenders got what they wanted: access to the lucrative markets created by the British Empire. By the 1750s, they had begun to make good money out of tobacco, the slave plantations of Jamaica and the cotton trade, which helped fuel Scotland's mills in the early industrial revolution. Meanwhile many lower class Scots, some of whom had fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie against Cumberland's red coats in the '45, were enlisted into the British army and became the shock troops of the British Empire.

Scotland provided an “inexhaustible treasury of men”, according to one contemporary account. From Quebec to Balaclava; from the Indian Mutiny to the First World War, it was generally the Scots who went over the top first, suffering the worst casualties as a result. Their exploits were glorified in epic Victorian paintings like the Thin Red Line and Scotland Forever. These were the blockbuster films of their day and lent a mystique and celebrity to the Scottish soldier which exists to this day in plays like Black Watch.

Scots saw themselves as partners in the Empire - junior ones, but partners nevertheless. The Scots fought Britain's wars, kept its books, ran its colonial administrations, evangelised the heathens. By the mid 19^th Century, Scots were flattering themselves that they were the best bit of the Empire – the hardy ones who did the work, handled the natives and even lent a moral dimension through the work of Scots missionaries like David Livingstone.

Back home, the fantasy image of the heroic Highlander, created by the novels of Sir Walter Scott, captivated Victorian England and helped turn Scotland into a deer-hunting theme park for the English upper classes. They were often clad in tartans invented by the Highland Society of London, and wearing the short kilt or philabeg, which was popularised, if not created, by an Englishman, Thomas Rawlinson, and bore little relation to the great plaid worn by true Highlanders. 

Scots rather liked being regarded by the English as fearless warriors, canny entrepreneurs and prudent bankers. Being a patriotic Scot, and celebrating Wallace and Bruce, became a way of expressing Britishness in Scotland. The mighty Wallace monument outside Stirling was built in the 1860s. Scotland became a hub of the British industrial revolution, thanks to Watt and his steam engine. By the end of the 19^th Century Scotland was arguably the most technologically advanced country in the world after England and Glasgow called itself the Second City of the British Empire.

Working class Scots didn't get much change out of it however – Edinburgh's slums in the 19^th Century were almost as bad as Calcutta's. Scots, many cleared off their ancestral lands by former clan chiefs, were turned into industrial wage slaves. But their patriotism, and their presbyterian religion, consoled many lowlanders, and seemed to immunise Scotland from the political nationalism that swept Ireland and Europe in the 19^th Century. 1848 may have been the Springtime for Nations on the continent, but it was still winter in Scotland. Scots continued to respond to the call of the British Empire in 1914, enlisting in prodigious numbers and dying disproportionately in the trenches.

World War Two is often called the “High Noon” of the Union, as Scottish and English soldiers fought to defeat fascism. And they fought side by side again afterwards to create the welfare state, a new post-imperial social contract, defined by the NHS, sponsored by the 1945 Labour government. It really did look like a land fit for heroes in the 50s, as the slums were cleared, Scottish wages tripled and infant mortality became a thing of the past. Scots probably never felt more British than they did in the early 60s, as popular culture and television made the border seem irrelevant

Scottish nationalism was certainly irrelevant in post war Scotland. The SNP, created in 1934, barely registered in elections until 1967 when Winnie Ewing won the safe Labour seat of Hamilton. That, plus the discovery of Scottish oil, launched the wave of constitutional innovation that ultimately led to the creation of the Scottish parliament in 1999. Though it was Margaret Thatcher, and her poll tax, who finally convinced Scots that they needed to restore their parliament, essentially as a defence against Tory governments in Westminster.

But this was very much Labour's Scottish parliament, the SNP having boycotted the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention that devised it. Holyrood was delivered on the back of the 1997 UK Labour landslide as a subordinate, devolved parliament within the UK. In the early years, it looked as if the Scottish parliament really had “killed nationalism stone dead” as the former Labour Shadow Scottish Secretary, George Robertson had forecast in 1996. As late as 2003, the SNP's support was in steep decline in the Scottish parliamentary elections.

It was only the return of the 'absentee landlord' Alex Salmond from voluntary exile in Westminster that allowed the SNP to crawl to power in 2007 over the ruins of the Scottish Labour Party, whose period in office had been marked by scandals and resignations. Scots were so relieved at the SNP's performance that they re-elected Salmond with a landslide in 2011, making the referendum inevitable. The Scottish parliament had thus been the incubator, for the first time, of a genuine political nationalism in Scotland.

However, it is important to stress that most Scots were not voting for independence in 2011, but for a better devolution. Scottish voters have told opinion pollsters repeatedly over the last thirty years that they do not want to leave the UK, but want a stronger, essentially federal parliament with a full range of economic powers, but leaving policy on defence and foreign affairs with Westminster. The most recent confirmation came in the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey in January 2013. In this most exhaustive independent survey of Scottish opinion, two thirds, 67% said either that the Scottish parliament should take all decisions for Scotland (35%) or that it should make all decisions apart from defence and foreign affairs (32%). Yet, this is the one option Scots are not allowed to choose in the 2014 referendum.

It isn't hard to understand why so many Scots are confused and irritated about the referendum in September 2014. They will be presented with a choice of unacceptable alternatives - independence or the status quo – in a referendum they never really asked for. Moreover, Alex Salmond, in trying to tailor his message to mainstream Scottish opinion has confused matters by talking of a new 'social union' in which Scotland would keep the Queen the pound, Nato bases, UK pensions etc..

So, on the one hand,we have the Scottish National Party offering a form of ersatz autonomy, which leaves so much power with Westminster that it is hard to call it independence. On the other we have the reactionary unionism of Labour's MPs in Westminster, who won't even allow their own Scottish leader, Johann Lamont, the freedom to contemplate more powers for Holyrood, as was demonstrated by their rubbishing of her tentative tax proposals in March.

Scots are increasingly confident that they could become a viable independent country if they really wanted. The great change in the Holyrood years has been the increasing acceptance by both sides of the independence debate that Scotland, with its burgeoning oil industry, its financial services, its universities, renewable energy resources etc, has the means to become an independent state just like Denmark of Norway. Scotland increasingly resembles a Nordic country in terms of economic and political culture. This is apparent in the continuing commitment in Scotland to collective provision expressed in policies like elderly care to student fees and opposition to the commercialisation of the NHS.

However, it is understandable that the Scots should not want to discard the UK because they helped build it, even if it is looking unfit for purpose. With Conservative-led government back in Westminster, the divergence of political culture between Scotland and England is becoming more pronounced. “Tory” is still a four letter word in Scotland.  Scots can no longer be confident even of remaining in the European Union now that the UK Conservatives are committed to an in/out referendum.

The worst that could happen in 2014 is an inconclusive and bad tempered referendum campaign after which a No vote is taken by Westminster as a sign that the Scottish question is no longer important. This is what happened after the 1979 referendum, which failed to meet the 40% rule.   UK governments then allowed Scotland's manufacturing economy to be dismantled, while the UK balance of payments deficit was being financed by Scottish oil revenue.

To avoid that fate, many Scots may be tempted to vote Yes in September 2014, even though they don't want independence. Others may vote No, even though they want a deeper form of devolution. The fate of Scotland may be decided by the frustrated middle who decline to make any choice at all. It would be the ultimate irony if Scotland left the UK through apathy.

Postpone the referendum? How can Scots decide on staying in the UK if they don't know whether the UK is staying in the EU?

FROM HERALD

   “Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union?”. That's the question that looks increasingly likely to be asked of British voters in a referendum in the near future. It is in the draft bill offered by David Cameron to assuage his eurosceptic backbenchers.  It didn't, and 116 of them demonstrated their continued dissatisfaction by voting against their own government's  Queen's Speech.  They still don't believe their leader is serious about holding an in out referendum and want a commitment before 2015. 

Labour's Ed Milliband has been enjoying David Cameron's latest troubles over Europe immensely. It is redolent of the mess the Conservatives found themselves in during the early 1990s, when John Major was unable to control his eurosceptic “B@@tards”. But Miliband may not be smiling for long, because things have moved on and Britain, or rather England, appears to be increasingly hostile to the European Union. The pressure will mount on Labour before the next general election to give its own commitment to a referendum on Europe, especially if, as expected, UKIP effectively win the European Elections in May 2014. 

   I don't see how the Labour leader can refuse.  Indeed, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats already accept that there should be a referendum if there is any “substantial” change in Britain's relationship to Europe. Since Europe is in the process of reviewing the EU treaties prior to introducing a banking and fiscal union, that substantial change looks increasingly likely. Yesterday, at Prime Minister's Question Time, the Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said it was a matter of “when not if” there will be a referendum on Europe.

Europe has become the dominant issue in UK politics, and it increasingly looks as if Britain is, if not on its way out, then moving towards a much looser relationship. But where does this leave Scotland? We have a referendum on independence in September in September 2014 in which Scots will be asked whether they want to be out of the UK but in Europe. Then, shortly after, they will be asked in a referendum whether we want to stay in the UK but out of Europe. I don't know about the voters, but I'm confused. I'm not even sure it is possible to have a view on staying in the UK if we don't know whether Britain is staying in Europe.

Indeed, as the constitutional lawyer, Alan Trench has suggested, there is a case for delaying the Scottish referendum until the UK's position in Europe has been resolved. This is because the information essential for making a determination on independence for Scotland will not be available to Scots when they make their choice in September 2014. Will a No vote also be a vote, effectively, to leave Europe - a proposition that a majority of Scots reject? We don't know.

Margaret Thatcher: why they should erect her statue outside Holyrood

FROM SUNDAY HERALD.

She was as divisive in death as she was in life - or so everyone has been saying about the passing of Lady Thatcher. In fact, you could equally argue the reverse. The Left hasn't been more united for years and nor has the Right, in its hatred for the street parties and sing-alongs that have followed in her wake.

 

At times last week I felt as if I had been transported back to the 1980s, watching crowds chanting “Maggie Maggie Maggie” in Glasgow, Liverpool, Brixton. The BBC under attack for threatening to play “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” as it raced up the charts. The press reissuing their 80s classic,“The Enemy Within”, and vilifying ex miners and Labour MPs like Glenda Jackson for sullying the memory of the Great Leader. It has even brought Tony Blair out of his lair to warn the Labour leader Ed Miliband not to get too lefty. 

It's all been in extremely bad taste of course. We shouldn't use a personal tragedy to peddle a political message, said editorials in The Times. But it didn't stop Tories like Boris Johnson doing precisely that. 

  On the day after she shuffled off this mortal coil Mayor of London delivered a politically-charged eulogy in the Daily Telegraph. “You either gave in to the hunger strikers, or you showed a grim and ultimately brutal resolve”, he roared, referring to the IRA hunger strikers of 1981. “You either accepted an Argentine victory or else you defeated Galtieri. You either took on the miners or else you surrendered to Marxist agitators”.

  That exercise in tasteless triumphalism was bound to provoke a response even from those who do not glory in confrontation. Thatcher, remember, also gave comfort to dictators like General Pinochet, promoted homophobia with Clause 28, opposed the liberation of Nelson Mandela, closed down the mines, introduced the poll tax, destroyed manufacturing industry and demonised modern Germany and the European Union. Since you ask.

Mayor Boris has been calling for a statue to be erected in Mrs Thatcher's memory, perhaps even on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square, which would be madness. It would rapidly become the most vandalised and desecrated memorial in Britain.

  And then there is the extraordinary decision to give Thatcher what is effectively a state funeral, with gun carriages, the Queen and Jeremy Clarkson in attendance. It is one thing to give a state funeral to a genuine national leader, like Winston Churchill, who led a coalition government during the Second World War; it is quite another to give a similar send off to a politician who simply divided the country on class and north-south lines. It will likely provoke the street party to end all street parties this week, as well as a national rendition of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” as she is laid to rest.

 

Yes, it is tasteless and a bit silly to indulge in this nostalgic class warfare, since this is not the 1980s, even if it feels that way. However, the reaction on both sides has demonstrated that the wounds that were opened in that decade have not been healed by the passage of time. My own professional history was dominated by Margaret Thatcher, a politician I only met four times and interviewed twice but who hung like a shadow over Scottish political life. On the day she was elected in May1979 I felt, like many in Scotland, an ominous sense that things would never be the same again.

 

    Fresh out of university I'd had the dubious fortune to start my journalistic career in the BBC's Referendum Unit for the abortive devolution vote of March 1979. Scotland had voted yes, by 48% to 52% but was denied the Scottish Assembly because of the infamous 40% rule. That led directly to the dawn of Thatcherism because the SNP MPs in Westminster, in their fury at the loss of an assembly they didn't really want, withdrew support for the Callaghan government in the crucial confidence motion later that month. It was an act of unpardonable folly by the 11 SNP MPs, even though David Steel's Liberals were also implicated.

 

In the May election, which brought Mrs Thatcher to Number Ten, the SNP lost all but two of its MPs, and was plunged into political obscurity for the next decade. But what was much worse was that their stupidity helped leave Scotland politically undefended in a crucial decade. The incoming Tories concluded that Scotland wasn't a problem any more, with the referendum won and the SNP back in their box, and that consequently Scotland's industrial economy could be sacrificed in the class war. It's an outcome that Scots might do well to reflect upon in the run up to the 2014 referendum.

 

Anyone who thinks that Thatcherism was a good thing for the Scottish economy, as apologists have been trying to argue in the past week, clearly wasn't around at the time. In the early Eighties I was working as a presenter for BBC Scotland documentary series, Current Account, which charted week by week, the social and industrial consequences of the Thatcher recessions. Singer sewing machines in Clydebank, Dunlop tyres at Inchinnan, Alcan aluminium in Invergordon, the last car factory in Scotland, Linwood, closed in 1981. We filmed factory occupations in Plessey Electronics and British Leyland Bathgate, watched as Scotland's steel industry was run down, the shipyards dismantled. It was blindingly obvious to everyone except Arthur Scargill that Thatcher was storing up coal stocks and political capital so that she could take on the miners in 1984. I spent a large part of the strike seeing the life drain out of pit towns like like Polmaise as the tragedy unfolded. .

 

Scotland had been a world leader in engineering technology for nearly a century, a cradle of the industrial revolution, with Glasgow the industrial heart of the British Empire. That was swept away in less than a decade. Around 400,000 jobs, mostly in West Central Scotland were destroyed during the Thatcher recessions, and though many were replaced in electronics assembly plants, Scotland's industrial economy was not. It was an irony entirely lost on the Scottish Tories that the electronics firms that came to Silicon Glen in the 90s were attracted by the very state subsidies she had withdrawn from Scotland's indigenous manufacturing industry. And because of Britain's membership of the EEC she abhorred. Most of them left within 15 years, leaving the deskilled and demoralised Scotland we see today. Scotland's notorious health problems date directly from this period which was the economic equivalent of warfare.

 

Modernisation it wasn't: countries like Germany didn't destroy their industrial base in Bavaria in the 1980s, they retooled it. Opportunities to rebuild on the basis of the oil industry were missed. And what made it all so profoundly unsettling was the knowledge that the destruction of manufacturing industry was being financed by Scottish oil revenue which was pouring into the UK treasury in the 1980s, masking Britain's balance of payments deficit. Estimates of the value of North Sea Oil vary hugely from £100 – 200bn in the Thatcher era. But what is not in doubt was that it was oil that kept the UK in business in the 80s. Of course, Scotland received its share: in the form of unemployment and invalidity benefit.

 

This kind of scorched earth policy would not have been possible in the South East of England because it would have been politically unthinkable. Historians tut tut if you suggest that there was a Scotland-England dimension to Thatcherism because that smacks of nationalism. But it was glaringly obvious at the time, even to non-nationalists like me. Her policies, designed to destroy trades unionism by laying waste to manufacturing industry, were in the direct interests of the City of London financial classes. The other side of the collapse of Scottish industry was the Big Bang of 1986, which deregulated British banking and gave birth to the reckless financial services “industry” we see today. Her privatisations of utilities like gas, electricity and British Telecom earned huge commissions for City of London firms that handled the floatations and speculated on the share prices of state assets. The Russian oligarchs imported her business model to their own country. South of Scotland Electricity, recently fined a record £10m for cheating its own customers is also part of the thatcher legacy. It used to be called the Hydro Board.

 

Mrs Thatcher's policy of council house sales further benefitted the banks and finance houses who sold the mortgages and raked in the profits, mis-selling dodgy endowment mortgages in the process. . Britain turned into a nation of estate agents, and the value of properties in the South East and in London rocketed, benefitting the middle class Tory voters who made capital gains through property speculation. The Lawson tax cuts, which reduced income tax from 83% to 40% further enriched the wealthy middle classes of the South East of England by allowing them to keep most of it. Meanwhile, Scotland got the poll tax.

 

In 1987 I'd just been made the BBC's Scottish Political Correspondent, and was furious that she refused to give us an interview in the run up to the general election. I shamelessly hijacked a packed press conference at the start of the campaign and threw questions at her from the floor. It was insulting to the other journalists present, but sensing the moment, they remained silent when she tried to move on, and we got our interview. Being in Mrs Thatcher's bad books wasn't a very sensible career move, but the poll tax was an unique moment Scottish history. Questions had to be asked about how this policy could be imposed on a country which had rejected it very firmly at the ballot box. Scotland wasn't used as a “guinea pig” as Tory apologists always point out. But the poll tax was introduced a year ahead of England and in the teeth of widespread opposition across all classes expressed in peaceful demonstrations and in the 1987 election where the Tories were routed.

 

But what was worse was that the poll tax was only scrapped in 1990 after riots in London. This delivered a sobering message to Scots that peaceful expressions of dissent are not heard in Westminster, and led to the massive endorsement of the devolution in the Referendum of 1997, and also to the wipe out of Tory MPs in the general election of the same year. It wasn't the industrial closures as such but the manifest unfairness of a tax where “a duke pays the same as a dustman” that forced Scotland to rethink its place in the United Kingdom. It also sealed Margaret Thatcher's fate.

 

I was back in London working in Westminster in 1990 when she finally resigned after Michael Heseltine finally stood against her. It really was announced in the train on the way in – I heard it. Tory ministers like Michael Portillo and Michael Forsyth gathered distraught, some in tears, in the Members Lobby at Westminster promising revenge against the cabinet “wets” who had brought down their leader.

 

But I have to record that there was a great deal of relief too among Tory MPs who feared for their seats, and were genuinely worried about what she was doing to the country. Thatcher was never a true Conservative, after all. Her ideological populism, class confrontation and military sabre-rattling was not at all in the Tory tradition, which is why so many of her cabinet ministers trooped in to Number Ten in November 1990 to tell her the game was up.

 

But by then the damage was done. Britain would never be the same again. Scotland set up its own parliament and opted out of UK domestic politics. The City of London - a frankenstein monster largely of her creation – went on to bring down the entire financial system. Commentators say it is wrong to blame politicians for the bankers' greed, but they were the direct beneficiaries of her industrial policies and also of the amoral climate of possessive individualism which she introduced to Britain - a travesty of the economic philosophy of Adam Smith whom she claimed as a mentor.

 

And today her policies are being pursued again by David Cameron, despite the image of “liberal” Conservatism. We have the bedroom tax in place of the hated poll tax. And yes, I know, it isn't a tax, but nor was the poll tax. It was officially called the “community charge” and the BBC got into exactly the same difficulty for not naming it as such. Margaret Thatcher cut pensions in by not raising them in line with average earnings after 1981. Tories today are cutting all benefits by raising them by less than the rate of inflation. She was profoundly hostile to Europe, but it has taken David Cameron to offer Britain a ballot on withdrawal from the EU. She may be gone, but her work remains.

 

Why did Scots find her so abominable? After all, Scotland used to be a Tory nation in the 1950s. It was a potent mix of anti-Englishness, moral indignation, legitimate grievance and philosophical revulsion. Her Sermon on the Mound in 1988, with its crass celebration of wealth, offended something deep in Scotland's Presbyterian soul. It convinced Scots that they really were a different country and began the process that could still lead to Scotland leaving he UK for good. The cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention was set up in the same year as the poll tax and within a decade Scotland had won a parliament with primary legislative powers. Now Scotland faces a referendum on independence.

 

If they do erect a statue it should really be outside the Scottish parliament in Holyrood, because Mrs Thatcher was the politician that made Scottish home rule inevitable. And may yet cause the Break up of Britain.

 

Kim's nukes to target Glasgow - Cameron

David Cameron raised the stakes in the independence debate last week by insisting that it would be “foolish” to abandon Trident in the Clyde when there is a growing threat from countries like North Korea. I'm not sure it was entirely wise to suggest that we might be on Kim's target list. Are we to assume our Trident missiles are now potentially targeting Pyongyang?

Residents of Scotland's largest conurbation might wonder if having weapons of mass destruction, which are illegal under international law, on our doorstep is a good idea if they are liable to attract the attentions of rogue nuclear states. Even the former Tory Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, said Cameron's intervention was “absurd”. But the PM seems to believe that Trident is a key plank in the “positive” case for the union. A majority of Scots seem to disagree, according to opinion polls, and think that there are better things to spend £100bn on than a useless virility symbol.

David Cameron also believes that the Coalitions's welfare reforms, that kick in this week, will bolster the Union by targeting scroungers and skivers who set fire to their children. But Scots do not seem over keen on weapons of social mass destruction like the bedroom tax, which is shaping up to be the poll tax of the 21^st Century.

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.

And the Question is: what does independence mean?

From Herald 31/1/13

At last, we have a question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?". Well, you have to agree it's short and to the point, unlike some other independence referendums.

  In Quebec, the independence question in 1995 asked: "Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12 1995?". No, I don't know what it means either. And that was considered a model of clarity compared with the 1980 Quebec referendum question which ran to 108 words. So, don't knock it: this simple, clear Scottish question is a considerable achievement.

Was it a defeat for Alex Salmond, who unionists said had tried to lure Scots into voting Yes by subtle psychological marketing? No, the Electoral Commissions amendment, effectively changing "agree" to "should" is not significant enough for that claim to stand up. I suspect the Scottish Government's formulation: "Do you agree that Scotland should become an independent country" was drafted precisely so that the Electoral Commission would have something to take out to justify its intervention and confirm its independence. Taking out "agree" makes it marginally less leading, but doesn't alter the question.

Europen Union or United Kingdom. Scotland may have to choose.

   To howls of unionist derision, Alex Salmond yesterday outlined his thoughts on an independent constitution for Scotland. He holds these truths to be self evident: that Scots shall have a home as a constitutional right, that there shall be free education in perpetuity, and that there will be no nuclear weapons on Scottish soil. I don't argue with his priorities, though I can't help feeling slightly uneasy at a constitution that sounds suspiciously like election manifesto. What kind of home? Will all education be free under the constitution? Even part time and post graduate university degrees? Will my daughter's guitar lessons be refundable from the state?

There are some constitutional anomalies too. The First Minister says he is affirming the Scottish constitutional tradition of the Declaration of Arbroath, that he says was a declaration of popular sovereignty - which of course it was not. The Scottish nobles who put their seals to the letter to Pope John in 1320 weren't democrats and had no concept of the Rights of Man. But let's not quibble about that - it was a long time ago after all, and we're all democrats now. There is a more direct problem with monarchy.

The SNP's Constitution for a Free Scotland, published in 2002, says that "Executive powers are vested in the Head of State, Queen Elizabeth 11, who is expected and required to act on the advice of the Prime Minister and Ministers". A constitutional monarchy, right enough, but a monarchy nevertheless. Do we really want Elizabeth Windsor, her heirs and successors, reigning over us in perpetuity? Nor am I sure how you reconcile a pledge to reject nuclear weapons with being a member of a nuclear alliance, NATO, which hasn't ruled out the first use of them.

But least the First Minister is talking about the constitution and making positive proposals for how a written constitution might improve the governance of Scotland. The No campaign has been predictably dismissive of the whole idea - that it is Alex Salmond's ego getting in the way of political reality. "Scotland has a right to a first minister who is honest", was BT's response yesterday. The UK government has ruled out any pre-referendum talks on the transition to independence, on the grounds that they don't believe it's going to happen.

But they are missing a trick here. If they were to come up with some constitutional proposals themselves they could rebut the charge that they are only interested in negative scare-mongering. Right now, the UK government is supposed to be reforming the House of Lords, but seems to have no idea how to do it. The West Lothian Question remains an issue, and the Barnett Formula has to be reformed because the Scottish parliament is to get greater tax and borrowing powers in 2016. Better Together could run these elements together and make concrete proposals for a federal UK, with the House of Lords as a regionally-based Senate, an English Grand Committee for domestic legislation, fiscal autonomy for Scotland and a written constitution. The Coalition is supposed to be drafting a Bill of Rights as we speak, but can't decide what to put in it. There it is.

  This is a rare opportunity address not just the Scottish Question, but the London Question. Britain is becoming two nations: London and the rest of the country, and there is a pressing need for a constitution that devolves and decentralises power. But what do we get instead? A referendum on British membership of the European Union - an issue that is scandalously irrelevant to the real issues facing this country. It raises what might be called the West Strasbourg Question: what if Scotland is thrown out of Europe on the basis of English votes?

Trident job losses and other independence scare stories.

So much for accentuating the positive. Barely a week into 2013 and we're knee deep in scare stories already. Though it has to be said that this year some are scarier than others. Last week's shock horror report from the Treasury claiming that Scots would lose £1 a year if they voted to leave the  Union didn't exactly make the hair stand on end. We're promised another eleven of these Treasury reports in 2013, which will please the Yes Scotland campaign.

And we're also being told, once again, that Scotland is going to be thrown out of Europe if we vote for independence. That's if David Cameron doesn't get us thrown out first, with his No Surrender speech on Europe next month. The eurosceptic noises coming from the Tory benches have so frightened business leaders like Richard Branson of Virgin that a collection of them have written to the Prime Minister urging him “not to put our membership of the EU at risk”.  Funny, I thought it was only Alex Salmond who was allowed to do that.

But fright night would not be complete without the old faithful: Trident jobs losses. West Central Scotland will be devastated if the Scots dare to challenge the presence of weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde. Pick a number, any one will do: 19,000 jobs to go according to anonymous government sources yesterday; 11,000 according to Jackie Baillie, the local Labour MP; and 6,000 according to the Better Together Campaign. Then again, the Scottish Trades Union Congress puts the number of jobs at direct risk from Trident removal at 1,536, based on government figures, and the Ministry of Defence told the Sunday Herald last year that “there are 520 civilian jobs at HM Naval Base Clyde, including Coulport and Faslane, that directly rely on the Trident programme.” . So you pays your money and you takes your choice - around £100bn as it happens. That's a hell of a job creation programme.

The economics of this are questionable to say the least. If no defence review were to be permitted unless it involved zero job losses we'd still be building Dreadnoughts. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea. At least the World War One battleships were of some conceivable use; we could send them to the Falklands to wind up the Argies. You can't do that with Trident, which is only useful for destroying Russian cities. In fact, the government could mop up those Trident job losses by building a range of heritage naval vessels, which could double as theme parks when we're not being threatened by foreigners.

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.

Better Together's secret weapon: Tony Blair.

Herald  18/12/12

First it was David Cameron, now Tony Blair has entered the fray. He told journalists at a press gallery lunch this week that he stood ready and willing to come to the aid of  Better Together's fight to keep Scotland in the UK. All we need is for Margaret Thatcher to come out of retirement to help save Britain and we'd have the set. The Scottish Nationalists are jubilant. 'Christmas has come early'', said Kenneth Gibson MSP. In Nationalist demonology, there are no blacker figures than these with which to scare the Scottish voters.

But I'm not sure. David Cameron is regarded as a benign irrelevance, Thatcher is ancient history to Scots under forty, and even Tony Blair is not the hate figure he was. In fact, he was never quite the hate figure he was said to be. There's little polling evidence that Scots had any particular loathing for the former Labour prime minister, who of course delivered the Scottish parliament after the 1997 referendum. One episode in particular testifies to the contrary.

It was at the height of the Keep the Clause row in 2000. Cardinal Winning and Brian Souter had staged their private referendum to show that Scots didn't want to lose Section 2a, which outlawed the teaching of homosexuality in schools. The late Donald Dewar was at sixes and sevens; the cabinet was split; the press were in revolt. Church figures were warning about homosexual role-playing being introduced to Scottish classrooms. UK commentators suggested that devolution had unleashed a latent homophobia in Scottish society.

Then, Tony Blair made a speech at the Scottish Labour Conference in Edinburgh in March 2000 in which he ridiculed the alarmism of the Keep the Clausers. “Kids are going to be force-fed gay sex education?”, he said referring to the adverts being posted across Scotland. “And it's Donald who's doing it? What utter nonsense”. And with that the panic subsided. I can't recall any single speech which has had such a direct impact on public debate as that one. Blair clearly carried conviction and people trusted him - rather more than his Scottish Labour counterparts. The Scottish Executive – as it then was - made some noises about supporting the family in the bill, the clause was dropped, and the issue duly died.

Of course, this was before the Iraq war, which destroyed Tony Blair's credibility. For many Scottish intellectuals Blair remains the Unforgiven, though memory of the war is rapidly fading into history for most Scots. Blair is probably more widely remembered here for the struggle with Gordon Brown, his embittered rival for the Labour leadership. In the years before Blair's resignation in June 2007, there was a widespread feeling in Scotland that, in some way, the then Labour Chancellor was more in tune with Scottish sensibilities. It was assumed, without a great deal of evidence, that he was less “New Labour” than Tony Blair, and that his attitudes to issues like the market reforms in the National Health Service was more true to Labour values. This was largely wishful thinking.

Forget Barroso, what if the David Cameron takes Scotland out of Europe.

 Sunday Herald 16/12/12

I don't know about Tantric sex, but the Prime Minister is certainly a teaser. Last week he informed hungry hacks at a Westminster press lunch that he had delayed yet again his long forecast speech on a referendum on European membership. He said that like Tantric sex, it would be worth the wait, though I'm not quite sure for whom. Perhaps he is suggesting that the opposition, or the EU, will be shafted. Or could it be Scotland?

Scottish debate on Europe has been depressingly parochial. For weeks, commentators and unionist politicians have been blasting the SNP for not being able to guarantee that Scotland would gain automatic entry to the European Union after independence. What the myopic chatterati have failed to grasp is that the UK is moving rapidly away from the EU and, under the present constitutional arrangements, is likely to take Scotland with it – at least if the majority of Tory MPs in Westminster get their way.

Conservative opinion on Europe has changed out of all recognition in the past 20 years, since the Tory Prime Minister, John Major, faced down his rebels and ratified the Maastricht Treaty creating the European Union. That was when it was still possible for a Tory PM to say that they wanted Britain to be “at the heart of Europe”. Not any more they don't. They are all eurosceptics now. It is extremely rare to hear anyone in the Conservative Party having a good word for Brussels, which is now universally condemned as a parasitical bureaucracy presiding over a basket case currency that will shortly collapse.

David Cameron is a pragmatist, and doesn't want to cut economic ties with Europe, but he is under increasing pressure and not just from his parliamentary party. The UK Independence Party is snapping at Tory heels in southern constituencies, and the UK press, led by the Daily Mail and the Sun, with their five million readers, are increasingly europhobic. According to YouGov, a clear majority of English voters say they either want to leave the EU or renegotiate the terms of British entry. The Labour leader Ed Miliband has turned trappist on Europe, because he doesn't want to be on the wrong side of public opinion, and is likely to back a referendum on Europe after the next general election. The Liberal Democrats have also called for a referendum on British membership.

Cameron, when he finally gets over his coitus interruptus, is expected to say this: Britain will make a series of proposals for renegotiation to Brussels along the lines of “back to the Common Market”. In other words, Britain would explicitly be opting out of the European Union, and rejecting its right to legislate on UK internal affairs. This will be a momentous step. It will almost certainly be rejected by the European Union because there is actually no Common Market left to join. Britain would have to opt out of the EU altogether and seek status such as Norway, which is part of he European Economic Area.

Norway, Scotland, and why I was wrong about the arc of insolvency

   I have often regretted coining the phrase “the arc of insolvency” in this column in 2008 to describe the financial crisis as it afflicted Iceland and Ireland. It was only ever one side of the story. While some neoliberal small nations exploded because of their irresponsible banks, the rest of the Nordic arc - Denmark, Sweden, Finland - passed through the eye of the storm largely unscathed. Certainly, in Norway, where I have been hanging out this week, there is no sign of any financial hangover from the great crash.

Oslo is, as usual, a building site. There can be few cities outside South East Asia that are so obviously booming. Unemployment here is very low, salaries are very high, beer is ruinously expensive at eight pounds a pint – though that doesn't seem to stop people going to the pub. Even the banks are doing well in Norway, largely because they didn't get caught up in the property madness that exploded Iceland and Ireland.

Deficit? Non existent – Norway has the largest budget surplus of any AAA rated nation in the world. Growth is “only'”3.7% ; inflation is 1.4% ; unemployment at 3.3% is the lowest in Europe and poverty is almost too low to measure. This is a country which regularly tops the global quality-of-life indexes. So what is the secret? Why have economies like Norway been largely immune to economic crisis that left countries like Britain as debt zombies, kept going only by zero interest rates and money printing?

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.

There ain't gonna be a second question.

  Alex Salmond has been accused of jiggery pokery, collusion, manipulation and dishonesty over his offer to include a second “devo max” question in the independence referendum. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee in Westminster declared that Salmond only wants this as “an insurance policy against the verdict of the Scottish electorate.”   The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Willie Rennie, then accused Salmond of using the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations as a “front organisation”, after a leaked email suggested that the SNP leader's aides were trying to prompt the SCVO leader, Martin Sime, into coming up with the wording of a second question.        With support for independence falling, Salmond is, we are told, desperately looking for a way to snatch a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat by ensuring that he gets his “second best” option on the ballot paper.

Mind you, I'm not sure this is what the Yes campaign believe is happening. It may surprise you to learn that leading figures in the independence movement are privately expecting, indeed banking, on there being only one question. The trouble with the second question on devolution max is that a lot of Scottish nationalists think, and have always thought, that it is a very bad idea. This is because it will all but guarantee that independence loses, since the vast majority of Scottish voters favour a parliament with greater economic powers. So why hold a referendum that you can't win?

Team GB: is it game over for Scottish independence?

   And there is scarcely a dry eye in the house as Sir Chris Hoy, laden with medals, says goodbye to the fans who have followed him so ecstatically through these games. A final victory lap, wearing the Saltire of Scotland,  a true national hero retires to take his place in the pantheon of sporting fame. Promising to dedicate himself to promoting Scottish cycling as patron of the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome in Glasgow...And here comes Alex Salmond now, jogging alongside Sir Chris, weeping openly, as the crowd goes wild at these Commonwealth Games, which many are saying have ignited a new and positive sense of Scottish national identity, a New Patriotism...

Well, in your dreams, Alex. Such are the sentiments that Scottish National Party romantics hope to hear from the commentary box at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. They want the “friendly games” to deliver a sporting boost to Scottish nationalism in 2014, just as the London Olympics are being credited with giving birth in 2012 to a “New Patriotism” in Britain, as the New Statesman put it last week. “A soft and benign patriotism,” said the left wing journal, “quite different from the hard, defensive patriotism of the Eurosceptic right or any number of Little Englanders or some Scottish nationalists.” Mo Farah, an asylum seeker from Somalia, winning the 10,000 metres and wearing the union flag is the multicultural pin up for the New Britain.  B