i warn you not to be young.

Neil Kinnock made a speech before the 1983 general election in which he said: "I warn you not to be old. I warn you not to get sick. I warn you not to lose your job..." Today, he might have added a warning not to be young. This week an unprecedented assault was launched by the Conservatives on the living standards and prospects of Britain's under 25 year olds, a million of whom are unemployed.

Who would be young today? £9,000 a year fees (in |England at least) no jobs, zero hours contracts, unaffordable mortgages, ruinous rents and now you lose your benefits if you happen to lose your job. Think about it. If you are someone who left school, got an apprenticeship, worked for five years and then were made redundant, you would lose housing benefits and job seekers allowance for the crime of being under 25.

This is so manifestly unfair, I could hardly believe that David Cameron was serious about it in his conference speech. But this is going to be a major plank of their Tory election platform in 18 months. They are already committed to cutting housing benefits for jobless under 25s, and now they plan to take away jobseekers allowance too, which at £51 is already too little to live on.

I'm not entirely sure this is even legal. If I were a single parent, or a soldier back from Afghanistan, or a hospital worker axed in the cuts,  I would be inclined to raise a court action for discrimination on grounds of age. These are adults were are talking about, not children. I feel genuinely sorry for the under 25s, setting out on lifetime of debt, their aspirations crushed by an generation of politicians who enjoyed advantages they can only dream about. 

Don't read this. The Internet is not secure.

"Snowden", "surveillance", "Islam" , "bomb", "terrorist". That's all it takes. Those key words, written in any order on an email - or indeed this column - could be enough for my name to be identified as a 'person of interest' by the security services of the United States of America or Great Britain. Probably both.

Indeed, if you are reading this on the internet, you might well be alerting the attention of some internet 'bot' somewhere in cyberspace, which will by now have logged your IP address, traced your browser history and even had a peek at your email inbox.

The consequences could be quite profound. You might be held at an airport, denied a visa to travel. You might find yourself held for questioning by the police for nine hours with no explanation. Threatened with prison if you don't divulge all your internet passwords.

Paranoid? Absolutely. But that is the world we are now living in, where it must be assumed that everything you do or say on the internet or on the phone is being monitored. Perhaps not by some PC plod on headphones as of old - those of us brought up on television series like The Wire have a very antiquated notion of what surveillance means in the digital age. Now it is all done automatically, anonymously, by computer programmes that search millions, even billions of digital messages in seconds.

The Home Secretary Teresa May made clear yesterday that, under her interpretation of Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, any individual may be detained by the police merely on suspicion that they  possess information that might be of use to terrorists.   I could hardly believe my ears. That is very close to the definition of a police state.

 It may not seem a great hardship, to be detained at an airport and questioned. But anyone who has had experience of interrogation will tell you that a lot can happen in nine hours, and the psychological stress is intense. This is supposed to be a free country. It is shocking that a citizen can be held and interrogated when there is no evidence that he or she is engaged in acts of terrorism - and in the case of David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, there was none.

We are now being told that Mr Miranda, was not an innocent citizen but a "mule" carrying security sensitive material on behalf of the Guardian newspaper. What a ridiculous concept:  to equate journalism with drug trafficking! It is also said that he was "uncooperative" and "asked for his own lawyer". Good for him.

No free citizen should be forced to co-operate with police going on a blatant fishing expedition, as even the Labour Peer Lord Falconer - who was Lord Chancellor in the government that passed the Terrorism Act 2000 -  made clear yesterday. What we are seeing now looks very like a campaign of intimidation of the press.

We need more immigration, not less.

from Sunday Herald, 10/8/13

Suddenly, everyone's doing it. Following the royal baby. and the news that Edinburgh Zoo's giant panda, Tian Tian, may be pregnant, we hear that the birth rate in the UK is at its highest rate since 1972, according to the Office for National Statistics. It's official: we're bonking for Britain.

And for Scotland - at least a little. For the astonishing news is that Scotland's population is now higher than it has EVER been : 5,31 million - 14,000 more than the previous peak recorded in 1974. Yet only a decade ago, we were being told that Scotland was dying out, as the population dwindled to less than 5 million.

Back in 2003, the Registrar General forecast that, by 2017, there would only be 4.84m Scots. The workforce would fall by nearly 10%; the number of under-sixteens by 80% while the number of Scottish pensioners would increase by 25%. This was called the Demographic Time Bomb, and we were told that public finances would be destroyed by the greyquake.

As recently as 2005, the First Minister of the day, Jack McConnell, was desperately looking for ways to reverse what looked like a terminal decline in Scottish population. And meeting resistance from Westminster for his plans to increase immigration by, for example, allowing foreign students to remain in Scotland after graduation.

Professor Robert Wright of Stirling University, dismissed the Scottish Executive's measures as too little too late: "The demographic problem in Scotland is very, very serious," he gloomed. "The government is very näive to believe this problem can be solved by trying to retain a small number of foreign students."

Well, it seems that the problem was not quite as serious as supposed, and that under their duvets, Scots were taking matters into their own hands, as it were. Perhaps, with diminishing incomes, people have turned to sex as a low-cost recreational activity.

But more important than the increase in the birth rate in recent years (it actually dipped last year) has been the decline in the death rate. Thanks to remarkable work by the NHS, combatting heart disease and cancer, Scots are not popping their clogs as they were even ten years ago. Measures like free personal care and the smoking ban in 2005 have had a remarkable impact on the health of Scots. People are drinking less, taking few drugs and some of us are even exercising.

However, this most remarkable demographic turnarounds in Scottish history could not have been achieved without another significant factor: increased immigration. Not only are more people coming to Scotland, they are having larger families when they get here. And this is a UK phenomenon - which takes us into rather murky waters.

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

---

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.

Independence warning: the lights will go out if Scotland votes yes.

There are many things that I don't understand. Like why a day return rail ticket between Edinburgh and Glasgow costs £22 when we are trying to get people to stop using their cars. Or why a cup of coffee costs £2.50 when its ingredients cost 0.5p. But nothing puzzles me more than energy prices. They have doubled in five years even though Scotland is sitting on a mountain of power. Yesterday, we were warned by Alistair Buchanan, the chief executive of Ofgem, the energy regulators, that energy prices are going to soar again because of something called a "gas crunch". We haven't seen anything yet. The lights will go out.

Now, every six months or so there is a scare about lights going out (LGO). The most recent - inevitably - was a warning that independence for Scotland would lead to LGO because England wouldn't continue to subsidise Scottish power generation. This seems utterly baffling since Scotland has a vast surplus in electricity generation at the moment and is sending the surplus south.

Ah, but that's only because of those nasty fossil fuel stations like Cockenzie that are being closed down. And nuclear power stations like Torness that are coming to the end of their unnatural lives and will not be replaced because, according to Labour, the SNP is irrationally biassed against nuclear power. Labour have for years been predicting LGO without more nuclear power stations, which the Scottish government has ruled out on the grounds that they would be hugely expensive, dangerous and surplus to requirements.

At present, Scotland has total energy generating capacity from all fuel sources of just over 12 GigaWatts - or so I am told. By 2020, we will have the capacity to produce 100% of electricity demand from renewable sources like wind. Scotland supposedly has wind, wave and tidal energy potential of 60GW - six times current capacity. We have 25% of Europe's wind and tidal and 10% of wave energy potential - a colossal comparative advantage in green energy.

And these aren't fantasy figures from some environmental pressure group. 20 GW are already in the pipeline, according to the Scottish government, which is nearly twice what we have now. We already provide nearly 40% of the UK's renewable energy output - which is why the UK government has been helping subsidise the development of the Scottish renewable energy, so that Scottish wind can help England meet its climate change targets.

So, lights going out? I don't think so. Unless this is all garbage. But assuming ministers are not lying, we seem to have rather a lot of energy. Indeed, we still have a trillion pounds worth of oil in the North Sea, prodigious amounts of Scottish coal and a lot of the latest fad - shale gas, which is supposed to be worth £5nb a year in Scotland alone if fracking (that's a method of extraction not a term of abuse) turns out to be safe. Germany would love to have our renewable energy sources - they are turning green and phasing out nuclear powers stations at the same time. But they are of course German, and their lights do not go out.

David Cameron's speech on Europe. What he will say and why he is wrong.

David Cameron's speech on Europe is turning into the greatest speech never made. Fortunately, from leaks and briefings we know a lot of what's in it.  Cameron says that he wants to address the "three crises" of Europe: the eurozone debt crisis, the democratic deficit and the loss of European competitiveness.

Taking these in reverse order, the competitiveness issue is probably the most dubious. Is Germany uncompetitive? The Single Market is all about competition. What the prime minister means is that all the social protections of Europe - the working time directive, the social chapter - have placed a "burden" on business that makes Europe uncompetitive with China and South East Asia. But this is pretty dubious also. Europe isn't "uncompetitive" because of social legislation but because Europeans have higher incomes than workers who have just left the paddy fields for the factories of Shnezhen and Guangdong. I trust the PM does not want British wages to be cut to a pound an hour, though I sometimes wonder.

The democratic deficit in Europe is all too real because the EU is very bureaucratic. The European Parliament has very little power, and the big decisions in Europe are taken by the Council of Ministers, on which member states have a veto on many issues. But is Mr Cameron proposing to make the European Parliament a truly democratic institution with legislative powers and the right to elect a government of Europe? Of course not - that would mean a United States of Europe, to which he is resolutely opposed. The PM wants less democracy in Europe not more. He wants powers repatriated to Britain.

Which brings us to the eurozone debt crisis. Now, this is clearly a serious problem, despite the recent calm on the European sovereign debt markets. The action taken by the European Central Bank in buying up the bonds of troubled states like Spain and Greece has been successful, for now, in containing the debt spiral. But the fundamental problem remains: that the single currency needs financial integration at European level. It needs a central European treasury, with the power to issue bonds for the whole of the eurozone backed by the whole of the eurozone, and the power to intervene in member states' financial systems. David Cameron agrees with this, and has called on Europe to "get on with it", But he doesn't want to be part of fiscal union because this too would be a United States of Europe. He even tried to veto the enlargement of the EU bailout fund in December 2011. There is no way the Coalition is going to allow UK taxes and borrowing to be regulated by the European Central Bank, still less have the contents of the UK Chancellor's Budget revealed to the EU before it is presented to parliament.

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?

America avoids the Fiscal Cliff, as Britain and Europe tumble over it.

America didn't go over the fiscal cliff. That's good news, right? Well, the stock market seemed to think so: the FTSE rose over 6,000 for the first time in eighteen months. And it was surely a good thing to see investors here, and in the rest of the world, celebrating an increase in taxes for the rich - or at any rate those earning over $450,000 a year.

This was a victory for President Obama, of that there is no doubt. Refusing to blink as the Tea Party Republicans took America to the brink, he managed to avoid any big cuts - at least for now - in federal spending on tax credits to the low paid or welfare to the long-term unemployed, who stood to have their benefits cut completely. The US is a slightly fairer country as a result. The Republicans have been left divided and confused, with the budgetary super-hawk, Paul Ryan, voting with Obama.

But isn't it just a little odd that hedge fund managers and other stock market money men here should find this all so positive? Presumably, they believe that these measures, the avoidance of deep spending cuts, mean that the world economy is now in better shape. But that isn't the economic logic they have been applying on this side of the pond. In the UK, the Coalition decided to go over its own voluntary fiscal cliff in 2010 when the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that he was going to put through the deepest spending cuts in half a century and eliminate the deficit in five years. 'Cheers!', said the stockmarket suits. 'Just we need to put the country on course for recovery'. Unfortunately, the UK economy went into a triple dip recession which looks like lasting well into 2013. So, why is a fiscal cliff good here but not in America?

In Europe, they went even further over the cliff and plunged Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece and Portugal into crushing economic depressions. Why? The US is in just as serious a debt hole as the eurozone. America has a £16.4 trillion debt, and its annual deficit – the amount the governmen has to borrow each year – is nearly 9% of GDP. That's higher than ANY eurozone country's deficit and 3 times the 3% ceiling in the EU “stability pact”. Yet, the ECB and the German bankers were yesterday also celebrating the fact that America had decided not to do what they've been doing. Perhaps they could learn something.

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.

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.

George's Christmas message to the poor: abandon hope.

From Herald 5/12/12

  

   In 1931, when the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald cut unemployment benefit in an economic depression, the Labour party split and was almost destroyed as a political force for the next decade. But the cuts in welfare made in the Chancellor, George Osborne's autumn statement have not only failed to cause a split the Liberal-Tory coalition, they've won the support of the Labour opposition. In his bumbling Commons response yesterday, the one thing that the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls had no difficulty saying clearly was that “Labour supports the cap on benefits”.

Except, of course that it isn't a cap, but a cut in real terms, since benefits like Job Seekers Allowance will rise at only 1% per year while inflation has been running at 2.5-5%. This represents a significant slice of a very meagre income. The current maximum rate for Job Seekers Allowance is £71 per week. I had to double-check that figure because at first I didn't believe anyone could possibly be live on it.   Of course, those receiving JSA will also be entitled to housing benefit and council tax relief, but that still leaves them with very little for the bare necessities of food, clothing, heat. Living on that kind of level for any length of time would not just be soul-destroying, for many of us it would be life-destroying.

The Chancellor justified the cut, which will take nearly £4bn out of the pockets of welfare claimants over three years, on the grounds that he was taking an equivalent amount from the rich by capping tax free pension pots, ending Swiss tax havens and altering changes to tax thresholds. But this is hardly comparing like with like. Losing tax relief on the top quarter million of a £1.5 million pound pension fund is hardly going to hit as hard as losing £5 out of a £71 allowance, and that is what the poor sod on JSA is looking at over the next three years. And since there is all party support for this squeeze, there isn't much hope of a reversal.

One of the remarkable achievements of this Coalition has been to fundamentally change the terms of the debate over welfare during this recession. There seems to very little public sympathy now for those on benefits. I hesitated before writing this column about welfare because I'm aware that, for many people, the issue is simply a turn off: heard it all before, country's run out of money, we've all had to tighten our belts. Labour focusses relentlessly on “hard working” middle income families – who, it is claimed, lost £1,000 a year through yesterday's jiggling with tax thresholds and entitlements. The Liberal Democrats used to be the party of conscience, but they are now signed up to the austerity programme and seem to have lost their voice.

Leveson Press Law. Don't worry, it'll never happen.

    The debate over Lord Justice Leveson's call for statutory regulation of the press has unfortunately turned into a political bun-fight. Labour are so eager to court popularity by hammering the gutter press that they've embraced the Leveson Laws with hardly a moment's pause. Meanwhile, from the opposing camp comes the din of grinding axes as special interests led by the Murdoch press line up behind David Cameron against Leveson's “statutory underpinning”. Many believe the PM is only opposing regulation because he wants to keep the press barons on side for the next election.

But while politicians are always guilty of courting the press – even our own First Minister , Alex Salmond, couldn't resist offering to bat for Rupert as Leveson pointed out acidly – we should give the Prime Minister some credit for having genuine reservations about the rush to reintroduce regulation after three hundred years. And yes, I know regulation doesn't mean “political control” - but you have to look at how this new “independent” regulator would work.

Let's imagine that the Leveson proposals are adopted into law. What happens then? Well, the new Press Standards Commission is appointed by a panel overseen by the regulator, Ofcom. Since Ofcom is appointed by government, a line of influence is already open. The PSC drafts a code of conduct requiring journalists to behave properly, not hack phones, not harass famous novelists, not tell lies about people who've lost children, not blag medical records of politicians' children from the NHS -  In other words: obey the law. But since it is the courts that enforce the law, what else would the commission do? How would the Commission enforce good behaviour? Well, it would license the press – decide who is a legitimate accredited journalistic operation.

Lord Leveson doesn't use the word, “license” but he does propose a “kite-mark” for reputable organs. In exchange for being licensed, the newspaper would have certain legal protections in defamation and other cases. Lord Leveson says that those who don't play along would have to pay full court costs in defamation actions even if they WIN the case. So, if Lord X sues for defamation, and the Sunday Herald win on the grounds that what they have said about him is true, it might still have to pay the costs of the litigation, which could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

  Licensing raises the whole issue of compliance. Editors would have to show, even before they embark on a story, that they have fully discussed the implications, not just all the possible legal consequences, but whether they are within the Commission's code. If they are not, and the story leads to court action, they could effectively lose the protection even if story is true. So we can already begin to see some of the difficulties this might cause in a fast-moving news environment. 

Who will be first to be locked up by the Leveson Laws?

 Form an orderly queue there, please. Editors are jostling to be the first in the clink if the government moves to introduce press regulation. Already, the editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, has said he will not comply with any such statutory body, and is prepared to suffer the consequences – which could mean spending a few months at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Other hacks are promising to desert print for the internet where it is thought the Leveson Laws will not apply.

They're all assuming that Lord Justice Leveson will today end Britain's tradition of press freedom, which dates from 1695 when state licensing of newspapers was abolished. And they are almost certainly right. Lord Leveson is not bonkers. His report, published today, will be cogent and reasonable and will almost certainly call for a new independent system of press regulation, backed up by new laws, which the Prime Minister will find very difficult to reject.

During his lengthy inquiry, the Law Lord made it clear that the present system of self-regulation through the industry body, the Press Complaints Commission, is broken and that public confidence can only be restored by independent regulation of the press. All of the press. Opinion polls show overwhelming public support for regulation. This time it really is closing time in the last chance saloon – and PC plod is about come and chuck out the barflies.

Now as working hack, I find talk of statutory controls deeply troubling. Not least because it seems to be Labour and Liberal spokespeople who are mustard-keen on press regulation, while it is the Tory ministers like Michael Gove and press barons like Rupert Murdoch who are standing for the principle of a free press. With friends like these... It is disturbing to see the Guardian newspaper, which broke the Milly Dowling story, and the National Union of Journalists arguing for a form of state regulation of newspapers.

Regulation can only mean, surely, that a new body - admittedly at arms length - will be empowered, effectively, to license publications, and possibly even license journalists. Certainly the new regulatory body would be in a position to levy fines and enforce the right of reply, and it will be a court of final appeal for people who feel they have been hard done by in the press. Perhaps, indeed, the regulator will have to be consulted when a newspaper proposes to break the law, or bend the law, in the public interest. I'm thinking about use of covert recordings or phone hacking to expose fraud, wrong doing and illegality. To catch a thief you set a thief.

Nadine Dorries: A Nightmare in Westminster.

 Daytime nightmares are the worst kind because you can't wake up from them. All week, I've been haunted by an image that lodged in my brain on the day the Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, was evicted from I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. It is of a parliament entirely composed of neurotic self-publicists.

Nadine Dorries would lead the front bench of course, where she thinks she ought to be. The Leader of the Opposition would be George Galloway, the member for Big Brother. Louise Mensch, the Corby Tory, whose sudden departure to America plunged her party to by-election defeat, would be foreign secretary. Lembit Opik – of Cheeky Girls – would be there for the Libdems, and Sally Bercow, the Speaker's wife, would of course sit on the cross benches as the member for Twitter and Libel.

Scotland would be represented by Mssrs Pot and Kettle: the education secretary Mike Russell and his accuser, the Labour MSP Michael McMahon, who was suspended from Holyrood last week for telling the Presiding Officer that she was “out of order”. They'd be having a square go on the backbenches, over lies, lies, lies. Meanwhile, Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks would be guffawing from the press gallery while paying private detectives to gather news by hacking into members' phones.

Don't laugh. The way things are going, this could be what parliament will look like in future, once Twitter takes over from the stuffy “old” media and our parliamentary coverage comes to us by virtue of YouTube. Politicians are able to justify almost any bad behaviour on the grounds that it gets them noticed. As she emerged from the jungle, Mad Nad was not only unrepentant, but bitching about the Prime Minister for suggesting that MPs ought to be doing their job in parliament rather than peddling their dismal egos and baring their boobs on reality TV. “But I was doing it for ordinary people - to connect with them”, insisted Dorries on breakfast TV after being evicted from the show so fast she hardly had time to digest her ostrich anus.

The Conservative MP claimed that becoming a celebrity “known to millions” would make it easier for her to promote her cherished causes, like reducing the time limit for abortions. What a sad delusion. Doesn't she realise that she can only damage any cause stupid enough to let her represent it -  though I suppose it couldn't happen to a better cause. Dorries has earned the contempt of her leader and her party, but far worse she has treated her voters with contempt. She is a ludicrous figure and the sooner she is out of politics the better.

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?

Europe's trades unionists have won the argument even if they haven't won the streets

 Last week' pan-european strike was the biggest show of trade union solidarity since the creation of the European Union. 40 trades unions in 23 countries took to the streets in protest at the austerity policies being pursued by European countries under the direction of the IMF and the European Central Bank. The organisers should be very pleased with the response, even though it largely passed Britain by.

The turnout demonstrates that, even though the vast majority of workers in countries like in Spain are not members of trades unions, it is possible to mount an effective protest against austerity across southern Europe at least. However, protest is all it was. This was not a general strike or anything like it, and we shouldn't exaggerate its impact. The EU bureaucrats are not exactly shaken to the core. Nor is Angela Merkel likely to open the coffers of the Bundesbank because of a few clashes with police. The demonstrations will make very little difference to the fate that awaits a generation of young people as Europe languishes in economic depression.

This is despite the fact that in many ways the unions have won the argument. The intellectual case for continuing with the austerity measures in the eurozone has been seriously undermined by the deepest economic contraction in  since the Second World War. Greece's economy has shrunk by 25% since 2009, and the contraction is accelerating: Greece shrank by 7.2% in the Third Quarter of 2012, which is unprecedented in any European country in peacetime. Countries like Spain, where unemployment is now running at 25%, are caught in a ruinous fiscal trap: cuts lead to economic contraction, which leads to more unemployment, which leads to collapse of tax revenues, which leads to more debt and more cuts. It is a vicious spiral the significance of which the northern eurozone countries seem unable to grasp - even though Germany is now beginning to feel the consequences as its exports to the rest of Europe dwindle.

Salmond gets the numbers wrong. But it's all Mike Russell's fault.

  “Facts are chiels that winna ding” is one of Alex Salmond's favourite Burns quotes, so it was with particular relish that Labour's education spokesman, Hugh Henry, flung the words in the FMs face on Thursday when it became clear that Salmond had got his facts wrong on college funding. At First Minister's Questions Salmond had said repeatedly that further education spending had increased when it had actually fallen. A humbled First Minister returned to the debating chamber later that afternoon to apologise for misleading parliament. “Ding, dong!” said Henry.Now, the education secretary, Mike Russell, has agreed to come to parliament today to set the record straight. 

It seems the Scottish government's omnibourach moment is not over. This is the third time in a month that leading figures in the government have found it necessary to make an emergency statement before the close of play in parliament. In October Alex Salmond was forced to answer accusations from opposition leaders that he'd been “lying” over claimed legal advice on European Union membership. He apologised last week for inadvertently misleading parliament on college spending.  This could be habit forming.

   What with "Plan McB" wilting under the impact of recession, unemployment rising and support for independence waning,  things seem to have stopped going Salmond's way recently. Following the climb-down on the second referendum question, and the unexpected resignation of senior nationalists after the conference debate on Nato, Labour sense that Salmond may finally be outstaying his welcome, both in the SNP and in the country. Mind you, they've said that often enough before and the FM's popularity has remained stubbornly high.

The Bastards Are Back. How the Tories are all eurosceptic now.

It was just like old times. Wednesday's Tory back-bench rebellion over Britain's contribution to the European budget took me back twenty years to Maastricht, John Major and the eurosceptic tormentors that the former Tory PM called “the b****rds”. One of them, Teresa Gorman, the Conservative MP for Billericay, even wrote a book entitled “Bastards” about her contribution to the great Maastricht war. But it seems the b****rds are back.

Last week, as Tory MPs inflicted a humiliating defeat over their own prime minister, there was that same sense of excitement in the airless corridors of the Palace of Westminster. Tory MPs with glistening foreheads rushing around collecting names for mischievous motions, intoxicated by rebellion. There's nothing like it. Backbench MPs live pretty dull lives: being told how to vote by the whips; keeping their thoughts to themselves in case they damage their careers; filing obediently through the lobbies. When a rebellion happens it is as if they wake up – they remember why they came to politics in the first place. To change things; to call spades spades;to make passionate declarations.

Mind you, to outsiders these declarations may seem to come from another planet expressed in an alien tongue. Tories fulminate about obscure issues like the “Lisbon passerelle” which sounds like an opening gambit in grandmaster chess, but is actually a clause in the EU treaties that allows the European Council of Ministers to decide when to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting. Tory MPs call it the “gangplank clause” because it means the other states could force Britain to walk.