Lost: Labour's love

I can understand those of you who feel a significant measure of cynicism about the Smith Commission process and its capacity to deliver meaningful new autonomy for Scottish institutions. I'm cultivating pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. There are real gains to be secured here, but they will only be won by the deft application of political pressure, exploitation of our opponents' anxieties, and some cold-hearted lawyering.

It won't be an uplifting process. It can't really be participative. Given the tight timetable, the body is doomed to be dominated by the political parties, and in particular, by the aftermath of the Better Together coalition. That coalition is committed to delivering devosomething only, and nothing like the maximalist vision of autonomy articulated in the Scottish Government's submission to it.

The trick will be bridging that gap - to the advantage of the vision articulated by Nicola Sturgeon. The signs are not without promise on this score. The Vow stoked higher expectations, and seemed to suggest a commitment to more thoroughgoing change. The Tories have since characterised their proposals as a "floor not a ceiling." The Liberal Democrats have historically wanted to further than their allies, towards a federal Britain. Labour ... well, we'll come onto Labour in a minute.

These are green shoots, to be cultivated. But I can understand also why many folk approach that task without enthusiasm. The vernacular dominated many people's experiences of the referendum campaign. Folk got involved, felt emboldened. It was accessible, engaging, even exciting. Technical discussions about how Schedule 4 of the Scotland Act might be amended to extend Holyrood's social security authority while preserving Westminster's reserved prerogatives -- well, they light no bonfires in the soul.

The devolution debate can seem a colourless, lifeless thing by contrast to the lively days of late September. But the detail of what the Commission agrees will be of profound significance for how this country is governed, and what the Scottish Government and Parliament can and cannot do. If the case for independence was about achieving powers for a purpose, we cannot, credibly, be indifferent to an opportunity to redistribute those powers across the United Kingdom. If the case for self-government was rooted in a desire for greater self-government, we cannot treat an opportunity to achieve greater self-government like a sideshow. We may fail to secure what we want, but we cannot afford to be or to seem to be indifferent to the difficult questions which will animate Lord Smith and his fellow commissioners from the SNP, Labour, Green, Tory and Liberal Democrat parties.

If the wheeze is going to go anywhere, and achieve anything, it needs constructive suggestions from those of us who agitated in favour of independence before the 18th of September.  To that end, and with my academic hat on, today I sent this submission to Lord Smith, focussing on two areas which have already been highlighted on the blog: (a) securing greater autonomy for Holyrood in the field of social security and (b) giving permanent recognition in the Scotland Bill to the basic democratic principles, expressed in the referendum process, and accepted by the UK government.

This submission focuses more on the doable than the desirable, and offers a few detailed ideas about how these proposals could be realised in a new Scotland Bill. I caution you now. It isn't interesting, or uplifting. Ian Smart was complimentary earlier, in describing it as "very boring and very interesting at the same time." I hope so. It is practical-minded, narrow, focussed. There is no great rhetoric in it, or a smouldering first-principles case for maximum autonomy. The Scottish Government has already made that case effectively. Hopefully these more limited, and more achievable plans, can contribute usefully towards the discussion.

Heaven knows, the Commission could do with a helping hand. This weekend's developments shuffled another wild card into Lord Smith of Kelvin's deck. Behind the Brownite waffle, the "home rule" rhetoric and and the invocation of federalism, Labour are in a directionless mess. Nimble as ever, the party decided to submit their widely derided and watered-down proposals to the Commission entirely unamended last month. No updates, no restatement of more ambitious plans, zip.

While there are noises off, encouraging the party to embrace a more substantial platform of powers, it is far from clear who is calling the shots, or is to be persuaded, if Labour is to be coaxed into a bolder offer over the next thirty days. With the implosion of what might politely be described as Johann Lamont's "leadership" of the Scottish party, and the outbreak of internal factionalism, denials, turf wars and recrimination in Labour's ranks, it is far from clear who might be coordinating the party's response, or who is giving the party's two delegates to Smith - Iain Gray MSP and Gregg McClymont MP - their marching orders.  Nobody seems terrifically sure.

Labour hope to appoint a new leader by the 13th of December. The interregnum continues till then, under that hefty visionary and elder statesman, Anas Sarwar. On the current timetable, the Smith Commission hopes to cut a deal by the end of November: two weeks before the next chieftain takes over the stone bonnet and the flogging stool.

Perhaps the Eds hold the whip hand till then, as usual. Perhaps Sarwar. Perhaps any number of competing grey eminences, scheming for influence and power, behind the scenes, Will any of these people feel emboldened - or even entitled - to depart from or to elaborate on the party's lukewarm offer of last year? It is an open question. If the party looked vulnerable to stumbling blindly into a bear trap before Johann's ill-tempered departure, now without a leader, and without a plan, in their headless disarray, the pitch of the Labour Party's engagement with the Smith Commission is anybody's guess.

Will they retrench, stubborn and oppositional, clinging onto Westminster's welfare prerogatives for grim death? Will the nasty surprise of Lamont's departure focus minds on a more fundamental rethink? Can those of us advocating a more substantial level of autonomy be able to take advantage of their bewilderment, to railroad the reluctant?

There are everywhere snares and pitfalls -- and opportunities all too easily missed in the melee. I imagine it is difficult to focus on the detail of radical constitutional change when your footsoldiers are busy forming a circular firing squad. It is difficult to be strategic when your leadership decapitates itself, without even a credible puppet dauphin to plonk on the throne. Worse, in the very midst of a politically sensitive, time-pressured and internally fraught process. Every crisis is also an opportunity, as they say. But it remains to be seen which of Labour's warring tribes - the one keen on more devolution, the other deeply sceptical - owns that opportunity.

But Johann has lobbed a primed grenade - plop - straight into the septic tank. Take cover, comrades. The blowback won't be pretty.

You can read my whole Smith Commission submission here.

She's not up to it

The Normandy Hotel in Renfrew, before the referendum. The Pakistan Welfare dinner. The Vale of Atholl pipe band have filed out, having smashed out renditions of the Flower of Scotland and the national anthem of Pakistan. The room is thronging with respectably dressed folk, the men abuzz with handshakes and gossip, the kids on their best behaviour, the tables piled high with iced lassi. The minutes tick by slowly.

Proceedings run long, and are punctuated by long breaks during which this conviviality boils over, chairs and tables abandoned. An officious major domo in a red coattee and medal, loosely - and with mounting irritation - structures proceedings with booming passive aggression. When the crowd are finally persuaded to sit, a visually-impaired young man recites a verse from the Koran from memory. We hear a touching remembrance speech from the son of a recently-departed stalwart of the organisation. The Pakistani ambassador reflects on the ties binding Scotland and his country. The room is ecumenical, but chock full of politicians and senior state functionaries of every political hue. 

The top table - indeed the whole room - is crammed with familiar faces. Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, wee Willie Rennie, Tory Deputy Jackson Carlaw, the Lord Advocate, a deputy chief constable, a smattering of councillors and a wealth of parliamentarians, mainly Labour and SNP. Humza Yousaf glad-hands about wearing a splendid sequinned coat you imagine his mammy bought him. Anas Sarwar works the room like a greased octopus. Almost all of the other politicians - at least those with a sparkle of charisma - do likewise. Nicola moves assiduously from table to table, looking both elegant and appropriate in a pale salmon shalwar kameez. Although perhaps not gregarious by disposition, Sturgeon has diligently acquired the social and political skills. But for the odd flicker of self-consciousness, you'd never guess she felt at all out of place, operating against type.

But look. Up there. On stage. A small, still figure wearing a fixed rictus smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. You might guess at a sort of loneliness alive in her as, immobile and with searching eyes, she looks out across the babbling mass of sociability. And she doesn't join in. As someone with a thick vein of inadequacy in my own temperament, I recognise the tension which comes from feeling that you ought to do things which don't come entirely naturally or comfortably, when you hesitate, and miss opportunities you know you should take. It is ghastly, paralysing. You feel useless, utterly useless in the pit of your belly.

Her speech is respectable, the delivery workmanlike, if not inspiring. Others catch the mood more deftly. Even Jackson Carlaw, who keeps things short, direct and self-effacing. The sense of the lady's overwhelming shyness is brought home even more powerfully in one of the dinner's many breaks - as enthusiasts waylay Alex Salmond for a blether, or a photograph. He looks in his element, holding court, seemingly inexhaustible. She, by contrast, creeps around the big hotel room ignored, quietly, awkward. As soon as possible, she disappears into the night under a floral umbrella, as the rain begins to fall. I doubt many - maybe any - hands were shaken. The set piece speech was fine, the script written; but pressing the flesh was a terrifying chore which she never really attempted.  

I have an inexplicable soft spot for Johann Lamont. Or maybe it's a misplaced sense of pity. It is easy to like people's harmless vulnerabilities, and she strikes me, first and foremost as a self-conscious sort of person, with a thin skin, and a brittle sense of self underneath it. It's never a pretty thing to see a human personality, pinned to the PR rack, being pulled into strange and unattractive shapes by the perceived demands of the political personality being constructed for them. But with the now-departed Paul Sinclair working the winch and tending to the ropes, the leader of the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament has been transformed into a ferocious, non-nonsense, belligerent personality, punctuated by long, soothing spells as the invisible woman. 

You can imagine her pulling a cheeky child up short, telling them they'd never amount to anything in life. I'm not saying she did. I hope she didn't. But that is this kind of unlovely, discouraging teacher which Lamont has made her public persona, or been made into. It is difficult to imagine that Johann's teaching career left behind it a wealth of students who can say that she bulldozed through her classes like a knifegrinder – seeing "the dull minds scattering sparks of themselves, becoming razory, becoming useful", as Norman MacCaig once wrote In Praise of a Man. That's an opportunity missed. 

The disastrous thing is, there is no gravitas to any of this. Her latest relaunch speech - wittily described by one of my crueller followers on twitter as "cargo cult Obama" - is an ungrammatical mish-mash of rhetorical tropes and meaningless drivel. Whoever composed it - and part of me fancies this might be from the desk of Lamont herself - seems to think that the essence of uplifting rhetoric is combining the same words in as many different senses in a single sentence as possible. Hence the sub-Blairite payoff: "We can have any number of Scotland Acts - Scotland will improve when Scotland unites and all of Scotland acts and that is the challenge." It is a kind of pastiche of eloquence, to be uttered with feeling, in pert, verbless sentences, but it is emotionally and politically vacuous. 

Much of the recent gossip around the parliament has focussed on Lamont's longevity. Will she survive till 2016? And who could take over from her anyway? She hasn't taken out Jim Murphy at the knees, but after the referendum result, she seems to have acquired a more resolute gleam in either eye. It is as if a small, flattering voice has stolen from somewhere in her skull, "I've seen off Alex Salmond. I can do this. I'll stay." My own sense has always been that it is the function of caretaker leaders to lose elections, (and perhaps to win them, if they get lucky) and Johann hasn't lost her's yet. She hasn't done the job, and cannot, with any credibility, throw in the towel now.

But there are also the bright flashes, and a permanent residual glow, of deep, deep insecurity about the Labour MSP, which I expect to be the focus of increasing attention has 2016 approaches.  Peter Ross's 2013 interview in the Scotland on Sunday with Lamont is required reading, and is - very gently, very intuitively - eviscerating. Peter captures that sense of self-consciousness which I observed in the Normandy Hotel in bright colours, and which goes a long way to explaining some of the other, awkward expressions of Lamont's public persona.  A key passage:

"Perhaps because her self-esteem is so rooted in that old image of herself as the clever girl from the tenements, this criticism seems to nag at her and she comes back to it later on. “The worst thing anybody could call me is stupid.” She understands, I think, how corrosive this sort of criticism can be; how, for people who are a little fragile it can eat away at your guts, your head." 

One expression of this, for me, is Johann's pretentiousness, in the very specific sense of "trying to impress by affecting greater importance or merit than is actually possessed." I know, I know, Lamont's favoured shtick is the plain-speaking, no-nonsense dominie. The suggestion seems improbable and even impertinent, particularly from someone as excessively florid as me, but bear with me. Watch the Labour leader talk about any topic, given room to run. She's a remarkably digressive, and frequently incoherent, speaker. Watch her trying and failing to explain her devolution plans to Gordon Brewer. Watch her performance on telly on referendum night, setting out the main , complex factors informing the vote.  Watch her in any setting, where she has time to develop a point, without a script clutched for grim death to read from. She tanks.

The obvious interpretation of this is simply that her mind is stumbling and unfocussed, her tongue tied and tripping her, but I think that diagnosis misses the more interesting point. Lamont doesn't have the confidence to be simple. Her digressive tendency derives from a generally unsuccessful effort to present herself as master of the brief, in command of the technicalities, able to spring from one topic to the next with elegance and fluency. It springs, in short, from inadequacy and a misplaced effort to make out her sense of self as, in Ross's phrase, "a clever girl from the tenements." It turns every considered answer into a dreary psychodrama. 

The only problem is, Lamont doesn't have the communication skills or the smarts to prosper in the role she's allotted to herself. She isn't the master of the brief, and doesn't have the prowess to pretend otherwise. Ensnared by her inadequacies, she conspires to make herself look considerably dumber and less eloquent than she undoubtedly can be. In trying and failing to be impressive, she leaves a mangled wreckage of loosely strung together words and concepts, exemplified by her statement, during the referendum campaign, that "Scots aren't genetically programmed to make political decisions." What she meant by that remark was that Scottish political inclinations are not inborn or inevitable - but instead served up an eminently quotable suggestion that ye and me are a chromosome or two short of the full governing set. This tendency is only likely to be aggravated as 2016 approaches, and the thin film of her self-esteem stews in the battery acid of a campaign.

Emotionally vulnerable leaders are, all too easily, eaten alive in politics. I say it with no relish whatever. This is an ugly thing to see. But if Johann stays on, and my reading of her is anywhere near right, that is the fate awaiting her as the next Scottish Parliamentary election approaches. If the subtext of the next SNP Holyrood campaign is She's Not Up To It, it is hard not to feel that Lamont's own self-confidence isn't rotted by that self-same, nagging doubt. As a human personality, with all of the vulnerability which comes from that, Johann is going to be crucified, not just politically, but in herself. Part of me feels for the the peeping face at the top table, shyly refusing to descend. The referendum may be won, the Labour leader may feel buoyed, but I wouldn't want a lend of Lamont's shoes for anything. 

"Eck Salmond came down like the wolf on the fold...

... his caramel log gleaming in scarlet and gold."

It's Sunday morning, and that means a new edition of the For A' That podcast. On episode thirty-four of the show, Michael and I were joined for a second time by Pat Kane and by James Kelly, of the Scot Goes Pop blog.

Up for the blether this week, Scotland Tonight's Sarwar vs Sturgeon rammy on STV, notionally concerned with social security and the welfare state of an independent Scotland.  Was this Scotland's "big debate", or an unilluminating, unappealing boorach? We offer our verdicts. For Pat, it was a "credibility-threatening" performance for one of the participants. I shan't spoil the surprise by revealing who.  

We also discussed the resurfacing of a certain G Broon at a United with Labour event in Glasgow this week, on pooling our resources and entrenching devolution.  We pick through some of the the former Prime Minister's arguments, his legacy, and his surprising constitutional (il)literacy. 

Our final big theme for today was racialism and advocating independence. Over the summer, several folk have argued that the current Yes case lacks green sap, and has managed to make startling constitutional changes ... boring. Is this a problem? Is reassurance the right strategy? Are we, by consequence, disciplining reasonable disagreement and ideological diversity on the Yes side of the argument?
 

We also dip a tentative iambic foot or two into the great #indyref poetry debate. As we speak, I'm busy, scratching out a heroic verse ballad in defence of my constitutional ideals, starring an Ossianic figure, harried by a cunning crow goddess and her fell, carrion-picking minions. Now, all I need do is find a few more words that rhyme with "Unionist"...

Download the show via Spreaker or your iTunes. You can also sign-up for our RSS feed, to ensure no episode will ever run astray.  Or alternatively, just lend it your lugs right here, right now.

"And yet we all would wish to feed on certainties..."

It is probably unwise to take Francis Urquhart, of the House of Cards, for a moral and political tutor, but the old villain had a fine line in insight into the allure and peril of denying contingency.

"So hard to know who to trust in these suspicious days. Does passion engender trust? Not necessarily. And yet we all would wish to feed on certainties. To hear the word "always", and believe it true. She trusts me absolutely, I believe. I trust she does. And I? I trust her absolutely... to be absolutely human."

In politics as in life, it matters what you are pessimistic about. Whatever some political scientists might have us believe, we don't live in a world straightforwardly structured according to immutable iron laws.  We may be tolerably confident that the sun will come up tomorrow (or at least some wan vestige of the sun, during the winter months), but absolute certainty about the future has the habit of eluding us. Fortuna kicks sand in our eyes. Our best laid plans unravel. Marvellous opportunity strikes, upending disaster for triumph.  Optimism, pessimism, and dicing the probabilities, are the elementary stuff of human affairs.  The rational soul has to make the best of it, weighing up likelihoods, assessing past conduct, and in the final analysis, take a calculated risk.  

On twitter this afternoon, Deputy Editor of the Scotland on Sunday, Kenny Farquharson laments recent Nationalist responses to the latest devolutionary wheeze from Alan Trench for the IPPR, with David Mundell claiming yesterday that all three pro-union parties would come up with another batch of proposals to wing more financial powers Holyrood's way, if independence is defeated in 2014.  Quoth Kenny:

It's sad that SNP is so casually dismissing those who have ambition to advance Scotland's cause in the event of a No vote in #indyref .
— Kenny Farquharson (@KennyFarq) January 22, 2013

Real change in tone in past couple of months. Last year, SNP warmly welcomed Devo Plus etc as useful contributions to debate on our future.
— Kenny Farquharson (@KennyFarq) January 22, 2013

Also tiring of the use of a promise made 34 years ago by a man born in 1903 as a block on eminently sensible proposals to advance home rule.
— Kenny Farquharson (@KennyFarq) January 22, 2013

I can understand Kenny's frustrations on many levels. He's not in favour of independence, but does support more powers. The case for independence is undeniably advanced by cultivating the idea that the UK is sclerotic, unreformable, unwilling to decentralise decision-making on key economic and social issue.  As Sturgeon put it in a recent speech:

"Devolution - to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - was itself an attempt to renew the UK state. But the UK’s ability to re-invent itself is spent. The Westminster parties are at best sceptical and at worst hostile to further substantial reform in Scotland’s interests."

Kenny's thesis, as I understand it, is that this is an over-pessimistic assessment, underestimating the continued plasticity of the UK state, and under-egging the potential within the UK to secure more powers for Holyrood. On a broad, theoretical level, I agree with him. It is possible, for example, to see some routes towards greater devolution after a no vote.  With the United Kingdom's half-scribbled constitution, I suppose one can envisage circumstances coming around in which a new spirit of governance might, maybe, somehow subvert the centralising, controlling habits of the UK treasury, prying greater powers from their grasp. Certainly, if political forces committed to such ideas took over in Westminster, there appears little in the way of formal barriers, save perhaps the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, to prevent them from radically reimagining, from reconstituting, the British state.

After all, if we lose the referendum in 2014, and any honest supporter of independence must concede the possibility, we'll be linking arms with folk like Kenny, in the hope of finding effective strategies for coaxing or cajoling Westminster into relinquishing greater responsibilities for Holyrood.  That'll be a grim business if we go into it on the basis that the struggle will inevitably avail us nothing.  None of this is a given, a certainty.  We have to make a calculation about what is more likely to happen using our best resources, and best ideas. And like Nicola, and most other pro-independence sorts, on balance, I can't share Kenny's confidence in the hitherto very vague devolutionary nostrums emanating from the pro-Union parties.

The argument for pessimism has a pedigree going back at least to Tom Nairn, and goes something like this.  Although for many of its proponents, devolution was a political end worth pursuing in itself, for a great many others, support for the creation of a Scottish Parliament was a work of expediency, not of political principle. Devolution to shoot the nationalist fox, to negate a little trouble on the northern frontier and secure the British state. On this account, nationalist agitation is understood to be the prime driver of the devolution of powers.

A defeat in the referendum, by eliminating the risk of independence breaking up Britain, will simultaneously blunt one of the most effective rationales - some would say the only effective rationale - which could and has persuaded the Mother of Parliaments to part with a single iota of power or responsibility. A defeat for independence will mute the nationalist clamour and eliminate those anxieties for a generation, and in a trice, significantly diminish Westminster's incentives to devolve more power to Holyrood. 

One needn't favour independence to see that this argument is not without some force, even if you think that it overstates the role of pro-independence politics in achieving devolution, and understates the potential interest in more devolution in a United Kingdom which includes Scotland after the 2014 poll.  In that context, it seems eminently reasonable to me for nationalists to ask folk, musing on the likelihood and scale of any post-referendum devolution, not to take every claim at face value, and weigh up the risks and opportunities independently.  

An analysis of the past conduct and declared ideas of the major political parties in the UK must be part of that.  The Liberal Democrats have a long-standing commitment to federalism, which is well and good, but the calculating voter can hardly neglect to notice that they are 1) not likely to be elected as a majority party at the next UK election; 2) will in all probability receive a drubbing to relegate them once again to distant third party-status, frozen out of influence; and 3) even if, after 2014, they remain part of a coalition government in Westminster, their priorities will inevitably end up being significantly qualified by the politics of their partner.

And from neither the Labour Party, nor the Conservative Party, has any clear statement of principle yet emerged on what their preferred constitutional structures might look like, beyond the status quo. That flexible lack of programmatic commitments, of course, can cut both ways, leaving space for more devolution, and the door open for none, but it can hardly fill the doubting pro-devolutionist, considering voting yes in the absence of a better alternative, with much confidence that something like their preferred constitutional option is an incipient possibility. 

The Conservative Party was notoriously first opposed to devolution, and now it appears to have no principled position in favour of greater devolution. Although a right-inflected case for the devolution of fiscal decision-making is readily made, its most enthusiastic proponent in the Scottish party, Darth Murdo Fraser, stood and failed to be elected leader in 2011.  David Mundell their sole MP representing a Scottish constituency, it isn't at all clear that his English and Welsh colleagues are interested in further fracturing Westminster's powers, beyond some vague nostrums from David Cameron in that direction during 2011. Simultaneously, as anyone who has leant an ear to its recent rhetoric cannot have missed, the Tory parliamentary membership are increasingly fixated on parliamentary sovereignty. They hardly look like a mob, burning with enthusiasm to distribute Westminster and Whitehall's power with a more generous hand. 

On the Labour side of the chamber, things remain similarly opaque. If the tenor of their recent debate on the section 30 order is anything to go by, many of the party's Scottish MPs seem to want "devolution without devolution". Just a week ago, the House of Commons atmosphere was thick with condensation, and regret. For Scottish Labour's Deputy leader, Anas Sarwar, Holyrood was "not a democratic place in the conventional sense", crushed under the yoke of the (from his perspective, somehow illegitimate) SNP majority.

In other areas, including electoral reform, the Labour party has shown it to be every inch as conservative as their colleagues with the blue rosettes.  The party's parliamentary delegation from north of the border do not, to my eye, cut a compelling image of a crew keen to cut the Scottish Parliament in on more powers.  Its English MPs, by contrast, don't seem to give a fig one way or the other, beyond vaguely endorsing Labour's constitutional record during its last term of office.

In the absence of a clear body of principles from either of the large Westminster parties, it seems entirely admissible to look at their past conduct. Particularly their recent past conduct. Labour enjoyed office in this country between 1997 and 2010.  They are certainly not to be criticised for leaving the Scotland Act 1998 a decent time to bed down before revisiting many of its powers, but in the subsequent time, they've proven themselves implacably opposed to introducing just the sort and scale of powers which Alan Trench's IPPR report will seemingly propose. 

If they are such eager beavers for more devolution of further financial powers, why did they not make economic use of parliamentary time and ministerial resources in a penny-pinched period of our history, and use the latest Scotland Act as the vehicle to realise those apparently cherished ambitions? Remember, the Calman Commission proposals did not go unamended or enacted in full in the Scotland Act 2012.  Claims of fidelity to the proposals which Kenneth and his colleagues agreed upon simply won't do.

If you were such a grand enthusiast for greater devolution all along, why the devil didn't you tell anyone, act on those convictions, and even more mystifyingly, actually oppose introducing any further changes to Scotland's constitutional compact just a year ago? There may be persuasive answers to these questions. Frank ones, perhaps. We haven't the foggiest how we'd like to see new financial powers distributed, to be honest, but we're giving it a proper look now. 

I await worked proposals from the Tories and from Labour with anticipation. Until then, I don't think pessimism about loose commitments to greater devolution is disreputable, unreasonable grinchwork or a perverse conclusion to reach having weighed up the evidence before us, estimating what's plausible and what's probable.  Francis Urquhart has the right of it.

Blinded by the Westminster prism...

On the theme of significant political images, yesterday afforded another telling little scene, courtesy of the BBC's midday Daily Politics.  Jo Coburn was sitting in for Andrew Neil and the discussion, understandably, turned to the issue of Scottish independence, and Cameron's jaunt up to Edinburgh to subscribe to the deal.  In an earlier segment of the programme (starting about 7:00 minutes in), Coburn interrogated SNP local government minister, Derek Mackay, about the Nationalist position on a range of topics, opening with the gambit that "the terms of trade have been agreed, but we don't yet have a question.  What would you like the question to be?"

Now, I don't object to this style of interviewing, which poses, as if from a position of ignorance, critical questions, permitting politicians to make their views plain. But I wonder if there might be more to it than this. Coburn then proceeded to put several needling propositions about independence to Mackay, as is her right and indeed, journalistic duty. James Caan shared his unrecognisable, tin-eared interpretation from a position of palpable cluelessness.  Somewhat later in the programme, after a few shots of Cameron bounding up the steps of St Andrew's House, Coburn introduced her panel to "discuss this historic moment".  

A balanced bench of judges, this, consisting of Deputy Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, the Liberal Democrat MP for Solihill, Lorley Burt, and for the Tories, Steve Brine, MP for Winchester.  None of which were, as you can imagine, particularly complimentary about Scottish independence, as is their prerogative.  During this section, she announced, as if it was news to anyone, that the SNP does indeed have a preferred referendum question, squinting down to consult a note, as if she'd only just discovered this from the lips of Derek Mackay. Seasoned Scots political watchers no doubt fell out of their armchairs in shock at this startling revelation.

For the nationalist, the gripe about the political balance of the piece composes itself.  This was like an edition of Scottish Questions in the House of Commons, where the vast majority of participants agree that nationalists are a bemusing cadre, to be reported as the somewhat eccentric, Other, marginalised in the conversation and certainly not to be taken too seriously.  As a representative balance of political opinion on the topic, it was a signal failure.

But bracket the issue about the representativeness of the conversation broadcast. On this critical day in the referendum's progress, it's more than accidental, but significant and telling, that the BBC should cobble together a debate, reflecting not the realities of contemporary Scottish politics, but the old Westminster spectrum of opinion, in which a complete spread of views need only include beams of red, blue and canary yellow.

As someone living down south at the moment, I'm interested in what folk in England make of the process, and what significance, if any, they can see in the referendum for their own vision of politics and of the United Kingdom. I'm keen to hear, from time to time, how pro-federal English Liberals talk about Scottish independence, or listless half-unionists from the Tory benches defend their, often modest, enthusiasm for "keeping Britain together", or the extent to which apparently non-nationalist democratic socialists from the Labour benches account for their universal adherence to the United Kingdom.

I've written before about devolution, and the accelerating social disunion we can already detect, as the political spaces of Westminster and Holyrood - and their attendant reading and broadcasting publics - pull apart. Despite the proliferation of potential sources for the journalist or reader based furth of Scotland, despite the relative ease with which folk can find out more about the emerging sense of a distinct Scottish political space, we don't see a London media showing greater savvy about issues at the core of the referendum debate. Instead, hackneyed imagery of nationalism are endlessly repeated, reportage is dominated by the implications of distinctly Scottish politics on Westminster - isn't it unfair that you charge the English for tuition fees? Why should Scots get free prescriptions, and the English pay?

The binary language of "them" and "us" is often employed, oblivious to the significance of such pronouns, and the presumed audiences they purport to distinguish and address. One doesn't have to be a devotee of Scottish nationalism to recognise this ongoing trend, and the social and political drift which underwrites it. The Spectator's Fraser Nelson, no friend to the SNP, has repeatedly identified the phenomenon of a drift apart in UK public affairs,  Even under devolution, the social union is breaking down, precisely because a shared politics is part of constituting a shared social and public life.

For all of their hostility towards Scottish nationalism, it is ironic that through the exclusions of their reporting, and the projection of Scottish politics as a foreign vale, populated by curious natives whose political convictions refuse neatly to fit into the categories of Westminster-centric political analysis, these self-same London-based media outfits foster a critical sense of difference, and reinforce the boundaries between UK and Scottish constitutional and political space, by increasingly seeing and writing and talking about Scotland as if it were a foreign country, covering Scottish stories as they might developments in France, or German politics. To put it another way, albeit unwittingly, the unionist UK media are helping to create the conditions which Salmond was able to exploit yesterday, making Cameron look like a foreign dignitary, rather than a Prime Minister on his own turf. I'm reminded again of Michael Ignatieff's description of political life in Canada, and the effect of the divergent political conversations happening in Quebec, and the rest of the country:

“The problem here is that we don’t have anything to say to each other any more. There’s a contract of mutual indifference which is very striking for someone of my generation ... Now effectively – effectively – we’re almost two separate countries."

This already looks like a recognisable and escalating feature of the relationships between the "London centre" and the "devolved periphery" to me.  What is interesting, too, is that you find curious and telling manifestations of this sort of feeling everywhere, beyond the papers, the news bulletins and discussion programmes. I recently attended an otherwise engaging lecture in Oxford.  The (English) academic in question was keen to subvert the (pervasive) idea that the international recognition of a right of peoples to self-determination was rooted in Wilsonian idealism in the wake of World War II.  The speaker was keen, instead, to promote an alternative genealogy of self-determination, rooted not in American liberalism, but instead in communist and socialist political history. 

To underline the significance of his study, he listed several "independence struggles" for self-determination from across the world.  Quebec warranted a mention, as did the Catalans and the Basques., along with Palestine and the Chechens. I waited for the S-word.  His longish list ended, and he moved on, having identified, as he saw it, all the important examples of self-determination which his audience might be interested to consider. I sat, at once astonished, and on another level, hardly surprised, that the independence movement on his own doorstep, imminently imperilling the integrity of his own state, didn't seem to warrant inclusion.

Looked at abstractly, this is profoundly strange omission, and reflects remarkable complacency on his part. When I challenged him about the domestic gap in his account, he shrugged it off as an accidental exclusion, a meaningless oversight, and not to be read too much into.  I was unconvinced. The absence of Scotland from this English lawyer's imagination was not incidental, but tells us a good deal about how a sense of understanding about Scotland is circulating (or not) within the UK, despite his considerable resistance to seeing it that way.

In what other state but the United Kingdom is it even conceivable for smart, highly-educated scholar of self-determination, listing significant instances of his topic, not to think of secessionary movements within his own borders immediately, not first, not second - but not at all?

Westminster: Beyond recall?

Cast your mind back, if you can, 652 days, to the 12th of May 2010.  After febrile negotiations, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats came to an initial coalition accord, followed up shortly after by a more elaborated programme for government. Both documents made explicit reference to the coalition's intended programme for political reform.  Still under the fug of the expenses scandal which engulfed Westminster in 2009, and the subsequent humiliation and prosecution of Members of Parliament, the new government agreed that instituting a mechanism to recall transgressive MPs constituted one key aspect of their envisioned reforms.

2010's post-election stramash seems far away now, and I'd half-forgotten this coalition commitment, until I fell into discussion with a Wisconsinite colleague this week.  The US state, whose population is very similar to Scotland, has a bicameral state legislature, and in 2011 a whacking nine of thirty three state senators were subject to recall elections. If a similar percentage of the House of Commons were put to the touch, 175 MPs would be refighting their seats.  The coalition's initial agreement read:

"The parties will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents."

How early? On the 27th of July 2010 in the House of Commons, Jo Swinson put the following to Nick Clegg, now deputy PM :

Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD): A vital part of rebuilding trust in our political system is giving constituents the power to call a by-election if their MP has been found guilty of wrongdoing. I am delighted that the right of recall is in the coalition agreement, but can my right honourable friend tell us when he will bring forward legislation to implement this?

Quoth Nick, in response:

The Deputy Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. By the time the election was called, I think that all parties had a manifesto commitment to introduce a power of recall, whereby if it were proved that a Member of Parliament was guilty of serious wrongdoing, his or her constituents would not have to wait until the next general election to cast judgment on the fitness of that individual to continue to represent them, but would be able to trigger a process of recall by a petition from 10% of constituents. We intend to bring forward that proposal in legislation next year, and I hope that it will enjoy cross-party support.  (my emphasis)

So how's it going? Cynic that I am, sans public discussion on the topic, I had wondered if the scheme would be quietly shelved, after a calculated dither. Not so, it transpires. While Clegg's overtones about expeditious legislation have been squelched, and a statelier pace instituted, detailed proposals have now emanated from the UK government.  Although somehow the development managed entirely to pass me by - which speaks volumes about the coalition's communication skills - the Cabinet Office produced this power of recall White Paper and Draft Bill in December 2011. 

Is it a radical, fundamentally democratising proposal, empowering the people to decide what matters to them and when their representative is failing to serve them well? Not a bit of it. Instead, the proposals are cautious, self-serving, unambitious, almost certainly ineffective and continue to privilege the interests of parliamentarians. 

One of the profoundly unclear elements of the coalition initial agreement on recall was: what would the permissible triggers for recalling an MP? Would it - should it - not be for the people to decide what constituted misconduct worthy of recall? The text initially adopted by the Liberals and Tories includes the legalistic phrase "serious wrongdoing", which at least implied something in the way of criminal sanctions being imposed on a member, relieving the no doubt anxious Liberal Democrat representing a university constituency of the fear that student groups may go after them and force a by-election on the basis of their voter record on university fees, for example. Alternatively, might some cosy establishment figure or body be empowered to determine which MPs get flung to the lions, whatever their constituents think, based on the conduct they regarded as "serious wrongdoing" warranting public participation?

Predictably enough, seriously at risk of recall elections themselves if criminal or establishment conditions weren't attached, the coalition have opted for the least democratic option. In summary, they propose that a recall elections may take place where:

• An MP is convicted in the United Kingdom of an offence and receives a custodial sentence of 12 months or less (the Representation of the People Act 1981 only disqualifies MPs who receive custodial sentences of more than 12 months); or,
• The House of Commons resolves that an MP should face recall (this would be an additional disciplinary power for the House).

However, these two conditions will only trigger the proposed process: thereafter, it is proposed that the petition will be open for eight weeks, and 10% of the electorate in a constituency would have to sign the petition for a recall election to follow. The foreword glibly suggests, that...

"It is crucial we do all we can to ensure that MPs remain accountable to their constituents. At the same time MPs must not be left vulnerable to attack from those who simply disagree with them or think that they should have voted a different way on a particular measure. We believe that the proposals outlined here address this issue in the right way".

Try not to choke on your ironic laughter at this delightful little piety. Self-interested worry about the security of your political position is entirely understandable, but we shouldn't permit the coalition to don such farcical and disingenuous democratic costumes as they sacrifice idealism on the altar of expedience. I particularly appreciate the strategy of nicely minimising the significance of the parliamentarian voting in disappointing ways. However, can one not make a persuasive argument for the recall of any parliamentarian, who may not have committed a fraud in criminal law, but who has fundamentally mislead the public by acquiescing in a catalogue of policies that are anathema to those who voted for them, contrary to that parliamentarian's declared convictions during the election campaign and the clear pledges of their manifesto? Or because he or she turns out to be a crashing buffoon, a lazy beggar, or whatever? If I entirely neglected my constituency, cashed my salary, and spent my time pursuing private enterprises for my own enrichment, these laws would provide even the most outraged constituency no real recourse unless the lazy sod in question committed a felony or two, and ended up in chokey. Hardly accountability, effectively achieved.

One of the easiest objections to these proposals is generated by the scandal they are partly in response to.  Although Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and David Chaytor's transgressions came to light in the summer of 2009, Chaytor was not sentenced to serve a custodial sentence until January 2011, Morley in May 2011 and Devine at the very end of March 2011. Say, counterfactually, that the coalition recall provisions had been in the statute book between 2009 and the end of 2011.  Would they have been used? Arguably not. If criminal charges are in the offing against an MP, might not parliamentarians be rather chary about deciding effectively to expel a member from the House on the basis of wrongdoing which is liable to feature prominently in any indictment served upon them? What sort of fair trial could anyone receive, if the high court of parliament had already adjudged you guilty of "serious wrongdoing", and put in motion steps to deprive you of your seat? While the concepts of criminal liability and serious wrongdoing do not exactly align - one could conceivably do serious wrong without the conduct in question being criminal - isn't it easy to envisage that with court proceedings in the offing, MPs are unlikely to set the recall process in motion?

That being so, the more "expeditious" route towards a recall election against the sitting member's will is not, I fancy, going to be tremendously speedy or effective. In fact, I'd wager it'll be about as speedy and effective as a drunken slug negotiating its way across a puddle of molasses.

My own preference would be for unfettered rights to recall MPs and for the public to determine what conduct warrants recall, regulating the potential for nimous use of petitions by the number of valid signatures required to prompt a recall election, and an initial period of immunity from recall after any election.  In Wisconsin, for example, Article VIII §12 of the state constitution provides for qualified electors to petition for the recall of any incumbent elected officer. However, a petition can only be got together a) a year after the office has been occupied and secondly, in order to effective, the "recall petition shall be signed by electors equalling at least twenty−five percent of the vote cast for the office of governor at the last preceding election, in the state, county or district which the incumbent represents". No limits on the whys and wherefores of pressing for recall, a modest time-bar, no requirement for elite determination by fellow tribunes, no need for the law's delays to prevent insolence in office from being punished. 

If we substitute the government for the current incumbent MP, and apply these rules to my constituency in Glasgow in 2010 (turnout 50.9%), 30,572 voters participated in the poll that elected Anas Sarwar, so 7,643 signatures could generate a recall. By contrast, if we apply these modified Wisconsin rules to the highest turnout constituency (Renfrewshire East at 77.3%), unseating Jim Murphy would require 12,795 signatures.  Yet we needn't rely, like Wisconsin, on the weight of the franchise exercised in the preceding election. 10% of the current Glasgow Central constituency would require only 6,100 signatures. 25%, 15,250.  On balance, something like 15-20% of the current electorate (9,150-12,220) would seems a reasonable threshold to justify a recall election, if the self-serving conditionals Clegg has proposed were eliminated.

Indeed, one could be cynical and suggest that the coalition's early agreement on the 10% threshold for petitions - a curiously specific figure to settle pre-legislatively - was essentially designed to seem high enough not to be immediately objectionable to those scrutinising the coalition agreement, but also low enough to justify the inclusion of a range of other conditions and legislative controls and delays, effectively neutering the democratic potential - and potential political spice - of these proposals.  Predictable perhaps, but a bally pity.

"And great was Labour's Lamontation..."

Rubbernecking on the internal politics of one's political opponents is rarely appreciated.  However, since the Sunday Herald saw fit only to report Labour's leadership election on the fourth page of today's issue, I dare say Johann might welcome the attention, from whatever source. As you'll certainly have heard, Lamont saw off Ken Macintosh, while Tom Harris' hopes of being anointed LOLOTSP ("Leader of Labour outside the Scottish Parliament") were comprehensively disappointed. 

So at last, it is farewell to Iain Gray, the Snark, LOLITSP.  Farewell also, to Labour's suspended animation since May's election? Mibbes aye and mibbes naw.  After the announcement of a Lamont victory at noon yesterday, much muttered was the fact that she appeared to have attracted only 12% of Labour members' votes. Quite reasonably, some folk wondered where the devil the other 88% had disappeared to.  Welcome to Labour's electoral college, made up of three sections. The first, parliamentarians, includes MPs, MSPs and MEPs.  The second is the ordinary membership of the Labour Party, while the third are votes cast by affiliates, including members of affiliated trade unions and socialist societies. Despite the numerical imbalances between them, all three groupings are of equal weight when it comes to awarding the leadership.

While not quite as wonderfully arcane as the process the Venetians used to elect their Doge, for those of us more familiar with one-member-one-vote leadership elections, Labour's approach can seem a bit esoteric. Others are more critical. In today's Scotland on Sunday, Kenny Farquharson describes it as a "flawed, antediluvian antique that needs to be unceremoniously ditched". Whatever its merits or demerits, the process and its results are all rather straightforward if sympathetically presented.  To start us off, three tables showing the percentage of their total support which each candidate attracted from the three voting sections - and where Johann's winning votes came from.

 

And in second place, Ken Macintosh...

 

And bringing up the rear, poor Tom Harris...

For clarity and interest's sake, it is also worth separately pulling out how each of the sections cast their votes.  For example, you'll see that the 12% support from the membership being bandied about with respect to Johann is both true and a truly misleading statistic, seen out of context. While members did prefer Macintosh and Lamont's victory was substantially down to affiliate votes and a more modest lead amongst parliamentarians, Lamont attracted around 37% of the membership vote, compared to Ken's 53%.

 

 

In addition to the leadership election, Labour was also voting on a new deputy, with my tender tyro MP, Anas Sarwar, winning out over Ian Davidon MP and Lewis Macdonald MSP with 51.10% of the vote across the college.  Here's where Anas' found his support in the party. You'll notice, in stark contrast with Johann, that Sarwar only managed to attract a modest percentage of affiliates' ballots, while very comprehensively carrying both Labour's parliamentary delegations, and ordinary members.

And amongst the three sections of the college, support for the three candidates for deputy divided as follows...

 

Source.