From Sunday Herald, 16/6/13

I don't know about the Scottish cringe, but I found Thursday's Edinburgh Question Time toe-curling. It was a nightmare version of the referendum campaign, complete with an omni-rant from George Galloway, the Respect MP, forming a devil's alliance with the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage - a demented glove-puppet - to claim, mendaciously, that the latter had been the victim of ugly anti-English behaviour when he last appeared in Scotland.   

I felt some sympathy for the journalist Lesley Riddoch, trying confusedly to make a moderate non-party case for voting Yes against those two unionist foghorns. The SNP Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, made the cardinal error of attacking the programme for bias. This never works because it looks like an attack on David Dimbleby, who is of course a national institution. Robertson may have had a case since he was outnumbered three to one, but in these situations you just have to suck it up because whingeing antagonises viewers.

Having worked on BBC programmes like Question Time I'm sure there was no political bias intended by the producers. It doesn't work that way. They just wanted a good old confrontation, a rammy, and because it was Scotland they knew they could get away with it. If it had been Question Time the week before, say, the Eastleigh by-election in Hampshire, rather than Donside in Aberdeen, they wouldn't have dared pack the panel with eccentrics and nationalists representing constituencies in another country.

But better get used to this, because I suspect the QT spat is what next year's referendum campaign will be like, only on a larger scale. The SNP are wrong to assume that they will get favourable treatment from the broadcasters in 2014. The 'story' of the referendum will be nationalists trying to break up Britain and setting Scot against English. We have seen nothing yet.

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

Sunday Herald 3/2/13

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

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

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

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

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

It's an OUT OUT referendum on Euorpe.

    This isn't an in out referendum on Europe, but an out out referendum.  The PM says he will try to negotiate a new deal with Europe and put that to the people in a referendum.  But he must know that the kind of package of repatriated powers that he is seeking, or rather his Tory backbenchers are seeking, is impossible because it would not be compatible with Britain's continued membership. Social and employment laws, business regulations, criminal justice and human rights.  There's just no way that opt outs on all this will be acceptable to other member states.

    So, what happens when he comes back from Brussels with an empty briefcase?  He puts the agreement he can't get to the British people in a referendum?  There wouldn't be anything to vote on.  He would proposing that Britain rejects the proposals from the EU. There would be nothing to vote Yes for.

   What Cameron has tried to do is neutralise the threat from UKIP.  But in doing so he has effectively set Britain on a course which could only lead to departure from the European Union.

Are the Liberal Democrats more nationalist than Alex Salmond? Discuss.

   First there was one option, now there is a whole raft of them. No sooner had Alex Salmond and David Cameron struck the Edinburgh Agreement, and opened the way for a single question referendum on independence for Scotland, when along come the Liberal Democrats with plans for a full-scale federal restructuring of Britain. The Scottish Labour Party has also finally convened its Devolution Commission. And of course David Cameron has suggested that Scotland can expect enhanced devolution if they are good boys and girls and reject independence.  Suddenly you can't move for devolution commissions. What will Scots make of it all?

Well, the Liberal Democrats first. Their Home Rule Commission under the former leader, Sir Menzies Campbell which reported this week, has essentially restated their long-standing policy of federalism. The LibDems want a formal separation of powers between a federal UK level of government and subordinate state governments in the component parts of the UK. Much like the United States of America - though littler. The Scottish parliament would gain full powers over income tax and domestic policy, while leaving defence, foreign affairs and overall currency to  a new level of government. It's a system that works very well in countries like Australia and Germany where federal systems were introduced by British colonial and wartime administration

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.

The status quo isn't what it used to be.

 The status quo isn't what it used to be. In the old days, you knew where you stood when you voted No to constitutional change. You would be voting for things as they are - whatever arrangement happens to apply at the time of voting. Not any more. This weekend it is impossible to say what the current state of play is on the constitution because all the unionist parties are proposing radical changes to it.

The status quo is now a process not an event, to paraphrase Donald Dewar. There was David Cameron last month, after his meeting with Alex Salmond, announcing that there could be “more powers” for the Scottish parliament. A week later, Alistair Darling – no enthusiast for fiscal autonomy - caught the bug and announced that to be responsible a parliament “should raise the money it spends”. Last week, leading figures in all three unionist parties got together to promote “devoluton plus” under which Scotland would acquire powers to raise income tax, corporation tax and oil revenue, while leaving VAT and National Insurance with Westminster.

Now, this weekend, the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Johann Lamont, has announced that she will lead a new commission on devolution, a kind of Calman plus, to look at new fiscal powers. This parallels the commission already set up by the Scottish Liberal Democrats under their former leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, to look at a federal option. And there is the Future of Scotland initiative – an umbrella of various “civic Scotland” groupings like churches, charities and trades unions, who met last week looking at form devolution max .

Suddenly you can't move for commissions on fiscal devolution. It makes the unionist demands for an early referendum on independence look oddly premature. If there were an early ballot, what on earth would Scots be voting for? Independence is clear – sort of. Alex Salmond at least seems to know what he is talking about. But on the other side there is now a shifting kaleidoscope of constitutional formulas occupying the unionist space.

The unionists' priority of course is come up with a something, anything, to block the march of the SNP, following its election landslide victory in  May. Figures like Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have been urging the Scottish Labour party up to understand the extent and significance of its defeat and start thinking constructively about more powers for Holyrood. But Lamont, who says she will be leading the No campaign with Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown in support, is still grudging about what she calls the “virility” test of more powers. She is even hinting about powers being taken away from the Scottish parliament – not so much devolution plus as devolution minus. Right now, bizarrely, the UK Labour party seems more radical on the constitution than its Scottish counterpart.

So, where does all this leave the state of the union? Do we have any clear idea where the status quo is going? Well, they haven't said it explicitly, but the parties are clearly heading very rapidly towards a consensus on devolution plus, if only because there really is nowhere else to go. The Scottish parliament, to satisfy voter opinion, simply has to have a new funding arrangement more radical than that offered in the current Scotland Bill. The idea of splitting income tax between Holyrood and Westminster, proposed by Calman in 2009, was always a difficult sell and it is now well past it. Devolution max is a bit too like independence, since it involves Scotland raising all taxes and sending a contribution south for common services like defence.

Devolution plus is the only credible unionist destination short of independence. It is the unionist Maginot Line – the line beyond which Alex Salmond shall not past. It is also almost certainly what the Scottish voters would vote for – if the unionist parties would only let them. Perversely, all three unionist leaders are still insisting that there should be no opportunity for Scots to have a say. But how else are the voters to have any confidence that this better devolution will actually happen? Unionists can't simply offer promises of what might be if the Scots are good boys and girls and reject nasty Mr Salmond. Everyone knows that if the referendum returns a No to independence in 2014, then the unionist parties' enthusiasm for more devolution would rapidly evaporate. If they refuse a second question or a second ballot, then the only alternative would be to move a new Scotland bill, replacing the one limping through the House of Lords. But come the referendum, if all the unionists offer is jam tomorrow, I wouldn't put it past the Scottish voters to back independence in order to be sure that they get a better devolution.

Pandagate. Those independence scare stories in full.

But they will never take...our pandas! I don't know where the Mirror got the story that, because they were gifts to the UK not Scotland, we would lose Sunshine and Sweetie if Scotland voted for independence. The paper cited government sources.   But apart from being straight wrong - the pandas were lent to Edinburgh Zoo, not the UK - it only drew attention to the First Minister's quip that there are more giant pandas in Scotland than there are Tory MPs.

Pandagate provided an element of light relief among the increasingly bizarre scare stories that radiated across the media since January. The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, warned that, after independence, Scotland would have to pay “billions” for the cost of relocating Trident. This wasn't quite in the same league as losing the pandas, but was equally daft. I don't recall the Ukraine being required to build bases in Russia for the nuclear weapons it returned in 1994. Scotland never asked for weapons of mass destruction in the first place. Anyway, there's a simple enough solution: Trident nuclear warheads are moved by road convoy every year from Coulport to Aldermaston near Reading. Maybe they could just make a one way trip in 2015. Scotland could pay for the diesel.

The UK government also turned its big guns onto Alex Salmond's proposals for an independent Scottish defence force of one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile brigade. “You can't just break off bits of the army like a bar of chocolate” said Mr Hammond. Which is curious because that is exactly what the UK government has done under its defence review, which reduces Scotland's bases to, er, one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile brigade. This is a childish dispute because, Trident aside, it would be senseless for England and Scotland not to co-operate on defence, since we occupy one small island.

But divorce is a costly business. “An independent Scotland would be saddled with a crippling national debt of at least £140bn!” cried the Daily Mail, again citing “government sources” Shock! Horror! But, wait: this figure is arrived at by giving Scotland a 10% share of the UK national debt which is estimated to rise to £1.4 trillion by 2014. So, if Scotland is in the red, England would be even redder – and Scotland at least has the oil. I'm not sure who I'd put my money on in this particular race to the poorhouse. The truth is, as far as debt is concerned we really are in it together.

Independence. It's all in the mind.

In first ordinary philosophy seminars students used to debate the question of whether we can rely on the evidence of our senses to give us an accurate account of the real world. Is this a real table before me, or am I just dreaming or imagining a table? I've been having similar problems with the referendum debate.

There was Alistair Darling, the former chancellor and an ardent fiscal unionist, saying at the weekend: “Most people think the present settlement does need to change and my view is that any parliament that can spend money but doesn’t have the pain of raising it isn’t satisfactory.” Well, actually most people in the Labour party do not think the present settlement needs to change – at least not in the direction of fiscal autonomy, or devolution max or federalism or whatever you like to tall it. Or so I thought.

I was under the impression that only relatively dissident figures like the former FM, Henry McLeish or the former Labour minister, Malcolm Chisholm, had been talking about giving the Scottish parliament the power, through income tax and other taxes, to raise the money it spends. But clearly I've been relying on my all too fallible senses here, and Alistair Darling agreed with them all along.

2011. Why I think independence is inevitable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AV is not PR so WTF?

 

  It is now looking almost certain that next week's referendum will lead to a defeat of the Alternative Vote.  Not many people will lose any sleep over this since not many people are interested in electoral reform, and even fewer are proponents of AV.  But I fear that this will be a disaster for those seeking to reform our political system.   We can say goodbye to fair voting for a generation at least. 

    The Conservative leader, David Cameron, played it brilliantly, seducing the LIberal Democrats into coalition by offering them a referendum on an electoral system that isn't proportional representation, but would give the Liberal Democrats a few more seats. Now that the naive LibDems have been caught in the trap, they have turned nasty, behaving like bad losers, threatening court action against their detractors.  How ludicrous they look. How vain and petty.  It was their own intellectual dishonesty that got them into this mess.  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

.   I feel genuinely angry about this - not just at the absurd claims made by the No campaign about “letting in the BNP” and other alarmist nonsense. But at the dishonesty at the heart of the Yes campaign led by the Liberal Democrats   As Nick Clegg said himself, in a quote that may become his political epitaph, AV is a “miserable little compromise”.  Indeed, and it’s miserable that the LibDems have accepted it, not because they believe in it, but because it will probably lead to more Liberal Democrat MPs being elected.

   

    But as Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University has pointed out, had the 1997 or 2001 elections been fought on AV, the result would if anything have been more disproportional.  In ‘97, Tony Blair won a 167 seat majority on 44% of the popular vote, a grotesque distortion of the true result.  If AV could actually lead to an even more unfair result, you wonder what point there is in voting for it.  The Yes campaign responds that, while it isn’t ideal, the Alternative Vote is at least proportional in single constituencies.  Voters rank the candidates from one to four,  or however many are standing, in terms of their preference.  If no candidate has a majority of the vote on the initial ballot, the bottom candidate is dumped and his or her second preference votes are distributed among the remaining candidates.   This goes on until one candidate emerges with 50% of the vote. This is arguably fairer than the present system where a candidate can win on a minority of the votes cast. 

   However, the problem arises when there are 650 seats.  Then the AV system fails to guarantee what, for my money, is the only purpose of electoral reform: to ensure that the parties’ representation in parliament broadly reflects the number of votes cast for them in the election.   Prime Ministers like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair used their unassailable majorities to pursue their own narrow-minded and destructive obsessions.  That gave us the industrial recessions of the 1980s, plus Mrs Thatcher’s poll tax,  and allowed Tony Blair to launch an illegal war in Iraq.  Had it not been for his inflated majority,  we would not have invaded Baghdad in 2003, because parliament would have voted against it,  and tens of thousands of lives would have been saved.  FPTP encourages  megalomania in Number Ten because it allows Prime Ministers to ignore parliament altogether if they want. 

   Only a system of fair votes can prevent this happening - a system such as the Additional Member System that elects MSPs to the Holyrood parliament.  AMS ensures that the composition of the parliament reflects the wishes of the voters.  But it also addresses one of the criticisms of other forms of PR, like the Single Transferrable Vote, that they break the link between the elected member and the geographical constituency.   AMS does this by having two votes: one in the 73 Scottish constituencies using FPTP, and another based on 8 regional lists of party candidates lists.  Using a mathematical formula called the “d’Hondt method”, the regional votes are redistributed in such as way as to supply additional members to each region to balance out the unfairnesses that arise from First Past The Post.  Simple. 

    Well, not really - but it is a creditable system that has served Scotland well.  It has prevented one party dominating Holyrood on the basis of a minority vote.  But more importantly, it has ensured that minority parties and independent candidates can gain representation. Now, some critics of PR say this is undesirable because it might allow nasty parties like the BNP to gain respectability. But this objection if fundamentally undemocratic. Better to expose these parties to the light of public scrutiny and political accountability, than let them fester in extra-parliamentary obscurity. 

   There is a kind of electoral Darwinism with PR which ensures that only relatively able politicians and parties survive. In 2003,  fed up with the big party monopoly, Scottish voters returned 7 Scottish Socialist and 6 Green MSS, as well as a senior citizens MSP and the redoubtable Margo Macdonald.  Unable to cope with the  exposure, the SSP collapsed into internal division and acrimony, its leader ending up in prison for perjury.  But the Greens are still in there fighting the good fight, as is Margo Macdonald, a national treasure and one of the most distinctive and influential voices in Scottish public life.  

   The other criticism of PR is that it leads to coalition and government by compromise.  But sometimes compromise, or rather collective decision making, is the best way.  And coalition isn’t inevitable.  The SNP minority government in Holyrood has been more effective than its coalition predecessors. PR has forced MSS  not just to vote on party lines, but to engage in serious detailed negotiation over annual budgets.  All MSPs are important, and they all have to exercise their consciences on a regular basis.  First Past the Post does the opposite: it allows legions of timeserving MPs with safe seats to hang around parliament at the beck and call of their party whips. Prime Ministers in Westminster treat MPs with indifference or contempt because they are not afraid of them.  

   But of course, the AMS system is not on offer in the referendum.  We are stuck with lousy AV.  Perhaps it will be a “baby step” towards real PR, but I have my doubts.  If I do vote for it, it will be with thumb and forefinger fixed firmly to my nose. 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There will be a referendum on independence - in 2012.

 The decision by the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference to boycott the Scottish Government’s forthcoming referendum bill might seem about as momentous as Stephen Fry abandoning Twitter because someone said he was boring.  (Oscar Wilde never had to put up with such indignity!)   So why are people saying that it has made a referendum almost inevitable?  And even that the campaign for the 2012 referendum on independence has already begun..  Let me explain. 

  The closed-door debate in Dunfermline last weekend was designed to get the LibDems out of the hole they dug themselves into after the Scottish elections in 2007, when Tavish Scott, the SLD leader refused even to discuss a coalition with Alex Salmond unless the SNP leader dropped his party’s policy of a referendum on the constitution - which of course he could not do.   This was an act of unpardonable folly by the Libdems since there was never going to be a referendum anyway. It was a matter of simple arithmetic.  The SNP had only 47 out of 129 MSPs, so as long as the unionist parties held firm, the referendum bill was never going to get to the statute book.

  Salmond couldn’t dump the formal commitment to a referendum without being accused of betrayal, but a referndum was the last thing the leadership actually wanted at that moment anyway.   The Nationalist game plan has always been to show that they could run a competent government at Holyrood before popping the question about leaving the UK.  However, they did initially want a coalition and they wanted to talk.   The SNP were even minded to make a raft of key concessions to the Liberal Democrats including a new Constitutional Convention and a promise that the referendum-that-wasn’t-going-to-happen would include the Liberal Democrat option of federalism.  But it was not to be.

   The Liberal Democrat opposition to the principle of an independence referendum never made much intellectual sense.  The UK party has been calling for a referendum on Europe,  a referendum on constitutional change in England and a referendum on electoral reform.   But under a veto thought to have come from the UK party leader Sir Menzies Campbell, Tavish and his troops were not allowed even to go into the negotiating chamber unless the SNP ruled out its defining policy.    So, the Scottish Liberal Democrats were left out of office and out of power after eight years. They had turned down the opportunity to introduce their local income tax,  and to put their stamp on a whole range of issues of policies in their 2007 election manifesto from the climate change bill to the abolition of bridge tolls.  

  Meanwhile, Alex Salmond, with opportunistic genius, realised that he could make a virtue out of necessity and run a minority government. The rest is history.  The SNP minority administration was spectacularly successful, while the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been left wandering in the wilderness with the other lost tribe of Scottish politics, the Conservatives.  Losing office is like bereavement for some politicians, and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been in mourning ever since.  The conference at the weekend was an attempt to lay the past to rest and find away back to the land of the living.  The leadership has signalled that, while they rule out a referendum before the 2011 Scottish elections, all bets are off after that. They will not require the SNP to drop its flagship policy before they sit down and talk after the  next Scottish election in 2011 - that’s if the SNP win, of course. 

    However, the Nationalists have done very well under minority, and might be a lot less keen on coalition-making than they were in 2007.   Which means that the terms for any 2011 coalition might be stiff.  The Liberal Democrats will have to agree actively to support a bill for a referendum, which means Alex Salmond will almost certainly get his ballot.  But does he really want one?  The great mystery of Scottish politics is why the SNP are so determined to hold a referendum on independence that they will almost certainly lose.  

  One of the constants of Scottish political opinion over the last quarter century is that, in opinion polls, only around a quarter to a third of Scots actually want to leave the United Kingdom.  The vast majority want ‘devolution max’ - a Scottish parliament, with more powers, within the UK.   In a three question referendum, there seems almost inconceivable that independence would prevail.  Just think: if you are offered, the status quo, a leap in the dark, or a better Holyrood, which would you choose?  

   So, why does Alex Salmond want a referendum that would rule out independence for a generation (he has said there would no recurrent ‘neverendum’). Some cynics say that the SNP doesn’t want independence any more and is quite happy getting rave reviews for running the devolved Scottish parliament.  This is plausible. But  in my many discussions over the years with SNP leaders I have never once had any of them nudge me in the ribs and say: “forget independence, we like this fine”.  Alex Salmond genuinely seems to want a referendum, even if it means that independence is off the agenda as a result. 

   I suppose the way to look at this is that a referendum is a game the SNP cannot lose.  If they win, fine - negotiations begin with Whitehall about leaving the UK.  But if they don’t win, the chances are that they will still be in a parliament which  acquires tax raising powers.  So long as the SNP keep winning elections to the Scottish parliament, and it looks as if they will win next time, the nationalist project is being fulfilled.  Scots are being given confidence in their ability to run their own affairs, and the UK is getting used to thinking of Scotland as a separate country.  Independence is a long game- they’ve waited three hundred years, so what’s another generation or two.  

   The task for Labour will be to prevent them remaining in charge of the Scottish parliament, which is why, Labour will become very much more nationalistic after the next general election - assuming they lose office in Westminster - and might themselves decide to opt for a referendum on their own terms to pre-empt the Nats.    With the SLD moving in that direction also, you can begin to see why this weekend’s non-event in Dunfermline may have altered the course of Scottish history.