The sentimental European

Purists hate the politics of the big coalition. This much seems uncontroversial. Divide a country - any country - of sufficient bigness, richness and complexity into two massive tribes, and you form uncomfortable, often incoherent coalitions. You quickly find folk vote your way for reasons you disagree with, and worse, which you disrespect. You find people you think of as your political fellow travellers voting for the other side, because some detail -- piffling to you -- torments them, some wrinkle in their soul, a different perspective. 

Purists also - in their bones - hate the cynicism of political campaigns.  It isn't my reasons for believing in Brexit, or supporting our continued membership of the EU that matters. Not to the instrumental activist. What matters is the arguments and reasons which might convince you, rather than those which convince me. And if I happen to hve an unpopular ideosyncratic view, unless I can bracket my own sentiments, unless there are a lot of people who share my outlook, I can't be an asset to your cause.

On the 18th of September 2014, I spent much of the day standing outside a kirk near Queens Park, Glasgow. The area was Yes inclined. It was a pleasant -- but doomed -- way to spend the day.  I'll never forget the woman who left the polling station, buoyant. "If we vote Yes, we automatically leave the EU" she said, having swallowed the Better Together line, hook and sinker. When she bounced out into the balmy afternoon, she had cast her Yes ballot. There was no use remonstrating, no use suggesting she'd misread the arguments of reached a - truly perverse - conclusion based on the two campaigns. I waved, dumbly, as she toddled down the street, having put up token resistance to her analysis. It wasn't worth it: her ballot was in my pile.

The EU referendum has brought out the awkwardness of the big coalition in spades. Pro-European Scottish Nationalists have watched a scorched earth economic case, orchestrated by the same folk in the Remain campaign who assured us that Scottish independence would result in an economic crucifixion. It has not been compelling. On the other side, eccentric - perhaps - but good-hearted, unbigoted leave campaigners have found themselves aligned with an often odious campaign, with which - I am sure - many would rather having nothing to do in any other circumstances. As I say: big coalition politics is difficult. It is often uncomfortable. It often feels a little dishonourable. And it makes for strange, incoherent coalitions. 

It is important to understand and scrutinise both campaigns - and both arguments - in this light. Different arguments will convince different people. There is no necessary hypocrisy in this. I would encourage you to vote Remain tomorrow. But the reasons which persuade me may not be reasons which persuade you. Some other advocate -- on either side -- may more effectively speak to your concerns than I can. Heed them. Follow your own best judgment. We are large. This is a country of several million people. Domestic politics is still diverging in the home nations. We contain multitudes.  

But speaking solely for myself: the European ideal still seems to me a noble one. The academic world is full of European citizens. I am surrounded by folk who live here, love here, work here, labour here, raise and educate their children here, because of the free movement of people. In the 2014 referendum, European citizens voted on the constitutional future of Scotland because -- at its most simple -- they are part of us. They choose to live here. They persevere here. They have their pleasures and their pains here, their friends and enemies. They have sparkling evenings, and dull times, they share laughter and kisses and rows and sorrows. They do precisely what the rest of us do. You may say this is sentimental. Very well: it is sentimental. But quietly, undemonstratively, this decision was one of the noblest things the SNP has done in office.

I cannot look at these people in the eye tomorrow - these colleagues, these allies, these friends - and vote to Leave the European Union. Unlike Jim Sillars, I cannot and I will not prosecute my indyref feuds with the European Commission and European governments by turning a cold shoulder on my comrades, who are part of us, who live with us, whose children are our friend's children, who elaborate Scotland and Britain's still largely monochrome tapestry.

They are immigrants and emigrants, just as Scots have traipsed across this globe for centuries, inflicting their lousy patter on the peoples of the world on the banks of the Hudson, in the scorching territories of Australia. They are people -- people who I have watched suffer, largely in silence, through this referendum. Tomorrow too, they will be silent in the ballot boxes, their votes missing. But one of my Dutch friends, who has lived in Britain for fifteen years, put it horribly starkly. "I will never forget the headlines. Stay or go, I will never look at you the same way again."

I believe that Scotland has a European destiny, inside the UK, or outside of it. For me, this is existential. Despite the slurs and the sallies, the wits and the wags and the denigrators, ours is not and has never been a separatist movement. I have no interest in narrow nationalism. Too often too isolated in this debate, the leadership of the SNP has forthrightly made the case for immigration, uncowed, unbend, courageously. They are to be commended. Alex Salmond recently put it well in the Oxford Union. We know being involved in mankind is nothing to fear. We know that the lean sphere of sovereignty is a boyhood fantasy. We aren't afraid of negotiating, even negotiating hard-headedly, in our collective interest. We abjure easy solutions to complex problems. 

Confident people -- truly confident countries -- do not hirple through their collective lives, cramped and shivering. They do not go into the darkness of the future with fear. They are emboldened by their own best traditions. They are fierce friends. They don't cringe.  They see opportunities, more often than they tremble. As a Scottish Nationalist, I am soaked in pessimism about the United Kingdom. This much you know. But this is a land with a better tradition which tomorrow will be weighed in the balance. I have no confidence about what the result might be -- but I know this. 

Despite my long-standing pessimism about the UK, I'll be exiled to the doldrums of unhappiness on Friday, if Britain crashes out of the European Union. The bottom will - once again - be speared out of what I thought was a bottomless bucket of disappointment with Britain. This may seem perverse. You are right. The force of those multitudes again, I suppose. But in my bones, I'm an optimistic soul. I remain a Scottish nationalist with regrets, still somehow stubbornly attached to the possibility of a better Britain. It will be a painful to discover my most harsh suspicions about this union are true. I'm not trying to be cute. I will be horribly unhappy to be confirmed in my prejudices.

Tomorrow is one of those days in our history which will try Britain's soul. It is difficult, even to begin to calculate the consequences of a vote to leave. Yet I cast my ballot, more in hope than expectation. And I cast it for my friends, sentimentally perhaps, but unrepentantly, a European.

WANTED: Scottish Nationalism with a head as well as a heart

The 2014 referendum was a premature confrontation between Scottish Nationalism and its ambitions. In a long campaign, Yes Scotland managed to achieve something remarkable. The Yes campaign was defeated and defeated handily, but support for Scottish independence roared into the mainstream of political opinion. Even victors are by victories undone. Short term advantage is sometimes bought at the expense of a disaster tomorrow. The Better Together campaign is a case study in the perils of short term thinking. 

Last Friday, we observed the aftermath of a stricken Scottish Labour Party, sinking beneath the waves, demasted in the crosswinds of political opinion, hull bust, lifeboats swept away, leaving a sole survivor in Ian Murray. Now the ship's skipper has finally done the decent - and probably necessary - thing, leaving the battered boat directorless and directionless heading into the long campaign for Holyrood in 2016. For the partisan SNP supporter, a squirming feeling of schadenfreude may attach to Labour's immediate challenges, but we must continue to take a longer view as the People's Party are gripped by their own internecine conflicts and disputes. 

The brutal fact remains -- if we held another independence referendum today, tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year -- we would still be defeated.  Scotland is not awash with people feeling buyer's remorse. The poll wasn't fixed. The anxieties which delivered a No majority on the 19th of September have not been answered. The doubts of the folk outside the enclaves that supported independence by a majority - Clackmannanshire, Aberdeenshire, Perthshire, the Highlands - have by no means been allayed.  

Any indisciplined rush into a second referendum can lead only to disaster.  Exuberance in the wake of an exciting General Election campaign, I can understand -- but it must be checked and scrutinised cold-bloodedly. I would suggest that that scrutiny urges only one conclusion: the fundamentals are still agin us. Vital, it may have been, stimulating and new. But we must be honest with yourselves: on too many issues, the intellectual case for Scottish independence was never won in the long referendum campaign of 2013 and 2014.

One of my long lasting anxieties about the 1998 devolution settlement has been the kind of politicians it would produce. As a party which has rooted and grown in Holyrood since the turn of the century, the SNP has historically been particularly exposed to the limits of devolved thinking. A national parliament with an important range of powers, but one shorn of responsibility for economic affairs, for monetary and international affairs, defence and welfare.  For the unionist majority in the Smith Commission, the problem with this set-up is the lack of "responsibility", connecting decisions on spending with decisions on taxation. But for an independence-supporter trying to take a longer view, the issues are different. 

Devolution risks producing politicians with attitudes towards a great swathe of state policy which is at best intellectually underdeveloped and at worst empty oppositionalism and sloganising. These "big things" become someone else's problem. This attitude may cut the mustard in the forgetful ordinary run of politics. In the compressed formats of telly and radio, your spokesmen will find things to say, outraged soundbites to coin, but a slogan is not a policy. 

Slogans may work day to day, but they are bound to be seriously shown up in something as fundamental as a long referendum campaign. By no means am I suggesting that the SNP is the vacuous party of empty protest its opponents sometimes suggest -- but these reserved areas have often been our weakest suit. There is no shame, and no downside, in being frank with ourselves about that.

Take one example. You can understand the thinking behind the White Paper's currency policy. Folk wanted to keep the pound. The focus groups urged it. So the Scottish Government decided to back it. But in practice, the policy amounted to giving your deadliest enemy a loaded revolver and saying, "please don't shoot me with this". The rest is history. Osborne pulled the trigger. Salmond foundered in the first debate with Darling. Credibility was never demonstrated or gained. We lost. I could go on.

The election of the 56 is no mandate for independence, or even another referendum, but it is a remarkable opportunity to begin working quietly on these tricky fundamentals and to resist the narrow field of policy vision which devolution sometimes encourages. The Short Money is flowing in, up from a modest £187,000 to £1,200,000 a year, excluding any additional party levies on the new MPs' salaries. That is a formidable war chest which the SNP must put to work in pursuit of its short and longer term aims.

The intellectual, technical case for Scottish independence must be strengthened in the longer run if it is ever to be won. The target is moving. The issues are not static. But if -- when -- a second referendum comes along, we now have no cause and no excuse to run a campaign which is vulnerable on critical questions of reserved policy. Tough choices will, inevitably, have to be made and policy battlefields selected. But for the first time in its history, the party now has a formidable Westminster machinery and staff, scrutinising the reserved issues, with resources to think fundamentally about its approach to central issues in the economy, and choices in monetary policy and regulation, defence, welfare, international affairs.  That's an opportunity which cannot be squandered.

Acknowledge it now

The starting point for the Scottish National Party, going into the Smith Commission on further devolution, must be a maximalist one. We are the party of Scottish self-government. We cannot pretend otherwise. If independence is our first preference, our esto position is the greatest level of autonomy for Scottish institutions which it is possible to be gained within the United Kingdom. 

As Ruth Davidson made clear yesterday, "devo max" as it has conventionally been understood - responsibility for nearly all of Scotland’s domestic affairs, including taxation and welfare benefits, while foreign affairs and defence would remain the responsibility of the UK government - is a non-starter. 

While this comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the devo-schemes offered in the months before the referendum by the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat parties, it will come as something of a rude awakening to those moved by the rhetoric and the representations of the "new powers" apparently on offer which saturated the final weeks of the campaign.  

But over and above the narrow party debates and Westminster recriminations on the balance of welfare and tax competencies, the pro-independence minority have particular interests which they we must argue to be privileged in the Smith process. We've got to come down to brass tacks, and quickly. The Greens and the SNP have just over a week to submit their views on more powers to Lord Smith of Kelvin. The rest of us have a little longer. 

I'm sure folk are beavering away behind the scenes, but we also need practical ideas circulating out there, in the ether. If, as Alex Salmond has argued, the custodians and guarantors of further devolution are millions of our active and agitating fellow citizens, those citizens need quickly to master the Scotland Act - at least in outline - to understand what is doable and what is desirable, what is already devolved and which powers Westminster still stubbornly - and sometimes unjustifiably - clings to.

The welfare red lines I suggested last week are one such practical idea for Nationalists. Here's another: we need to seize the opportunity of the Smith Commission to put the legality of any future referendums beyond dispute, and vigorously resist any proposal to entrench the Union along the lines suggested by Jack Straw last week.

Although there was a good deal of nonsense and shadowboxing on the topic back in 2012, as loyal and long-term readers of this blog will recall, without Westminster's 2013 section 30 order under the Scotland Act, the legality of the 2014 referendum hung by a very shoogly legal thread. Calling a referendum was arguably within Holyrood's powers, but no higher than that. Without getting the nod from Westminster, the referendum was vulnerable to legal challenge, the outcome unclear, and risked putting the Presiding Officer - who must certify that Bills fall within the Scottish Parliament's powers - in an impossibly difficult place. 

Even kicking the referendum can several years down the line, with September's defeat, these issues return with a vengeance. If there was an arguable case that the referendum fell within Holyrood's devolved powers before the Edinburgh Agreement process, that case is now much weakened. The UK government imposed a number of restrictions on the 2014 poll. Firstly, they insisted that the referendum should be an either/or affair, a Yes or a No to independence. They also time-limited Holyrood's authority to call such a poll. It lapses on the 31st of December this year. Bottom line: on the current law, future independence referendums called by Holyrood, without securing London's agreement, are now almost certainly unlawful. Jack Straw's wheeze is entirely surplus to requirements. So what are we going to do about it?

From a democratic perspective, this restriction cannot be justified. Future referendums any time soon cannot be a priority and cannot seem like a priority for the Scottish Government and the Scottish National Party. But we have a responsibility to the very substantial minority who voted Yes on the 18th, and to the principle of Scottish self-determination recognised by the 2014 referendum, to ensure that future generations have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. And to do so lawfully, peacefully and democratically - at the ballot box. There can be no question of changing the rules of the game now. Jim Sillars is dead wrong about that. All we must seek is to give permanence to the basic principles, recognised by the UK government in facilitating the 2014 referendum.

Nor is this special pleading, or an unprecedented or unreasonable recognition of minority sensibility. The first section of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 recognises that "Northern Ireland in its entirety remains part of the United Kingdom and shall not cease to be so without the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll" but "if the wish expressed by a majority in such a poll is that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament such proposals to give effect to that wish as may be agreed between Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland." 

The rules governing such a border poll are set out in the first Schedule to the Act, and are not unproblematic in their details - but the basic principle recognised by the legislation is a sound one. If Northern Ireland's right to determine its constitutional destiny within the United Kingdom can be respected and reconciled in law with continuing Union, why not Scotland's? Surely a will to self-determination expressed in an orderly, civic movement has at least as much moral and political authority as the hard and harrowing process in Northern Ireland which culminated in the 1998 settlement.

The case for recognising Scotland's right to self-determination in primary legislation is unanswerable. It isn't good enough to leave the question vulnerable to cynical political manipulation and Machiavellian legal position-taking. Our first priority in the Smith Commission must be securing greater autonomy in tax and welfare to make a real difference to folk's lives. 

But it is crucial not only that Holyrood's powers are extended, but that the democratic principles which flowered in this referendum also endure. Securing the inalienable right of Scots to decide their own political future - giving legal force to the principles articulated in the 1989 Claim of Right - must form part of that. The new Scotland Bill could do worse that incorporating this thought into its first section: "We acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs". 

This is the challenge to the other parties to the Smith Commission: many of you acknowledged it then. Acknowledge it now.

The party of Scottish self-government

"Absolutely no one will run the affairs of this country better than the people who live and work in Scotland." 

The words are Alex Salmond's, but the sentiment resonated throughout the Yes campaign. We lost on the 18th of September. Scotland will not be an independent country any time soon. But as we take stock, and the SNP doubles in size with inflocking new members, reassembling its leadership around Nicola Sturgeon, it seems to me that we should pin this statement to the wall in bold, bright letters. In black and gold, if you like.

"Absolutely no one will run the affairs of this country better than the people who live and work in Scotland." 

That cause endures. It is not a statement of principle for an independent state alone: it is the red blood of the argument for Scottish devolution within the United Kingdom. During the referendum, in proprietorial mode, the Labour Party would occasionally trot out the line that the SNP don't believe in devolution, keen to erect a wall of fire between aspirations for a separate Scottish sovereignty and the demand for greater autonomy within the United Kingdom. In one, very limited sense, they were right. Independence is, in some important respects, categorically different to devolution of power within a larger state. In international law, states are a distinct sort of entity. They do things which a region within a greater polity - forgive the term - cannot do. States sit at tables which Scotland will not now be invited to. That's beyond dispute.

But this pettifogger's distinction obscures more than it illuminates. The broader claim that seeking greater Scottish self-government has no connection to ideas of independence -- that's poppycock. Anybody who has been paying attention during the last two years cannot but have detected the overlapping logics of devolution and independence. The connecting tissue of the two arguments is a belief in greater self-determination. The difference, really, is one of degree. Certainly, full-fat home rule is different from the semi-skimmed version now available to us, but the idea that the pro-indy bod has nothing in common with the devo-thusiastic has the distinct ring of pish to it.

It is now up to the SNP to be the party of Scottish self-government, making the case for the greatest level of Scottish autonomy within the United Kingdom. Marco is absolutely right. Put all talk of future referendums from your mind. Give it a rest. That battle is over for the foreseeable future. We must win the peace declared by the two million people who voted to remain in Britain last Thursday.

We must be constructive but critical, ambitious but realistic, holding the covenanted people of the No campaign to their undertakings with ferocious tenacity. After the sapping ennui, the activity. We don't have the time to mope or to stand still. And we must take heart. In many respects, we remain in a remarkably strong position for a defeated campaign. And for this, we have the fretful temporising of our opponents to thank.

There are some times in negotiations when it pays to hold back and allow your opponents to show their hands. This isn't one of those times. The territory of aspiration for greater Scottish self-government, the gap between the promises of the Better Together parties and the impression they allowed to be cultivated, is up for the claiming -- but only if we're speedy. The initiative is there to be seized -- if we're quick. Will we get everything we want? Not a snowball's chance in hell. But better for the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats to dance to our tune, than to wait for them to fluff the melody.

This commitment is not at odds with the logic of the Yes campaign, but simply its application to our new circumstances. The case for Scottish independence was not rooted in national identity, but in the virtues of national self-government. It was not a case from romantic feeling, but of practical concerns of democratic control of our affairs. It was an argument not for separateness, but for finding new, more satisfactory ways to work together in these islands to realise the political aspirations of the Scottish people. The people have chosen to continue that work within the United Kingdom, and they are never wrong.

That work may initially be contemplated by Nationalists with little enthusiasm, and with a good deal of pessimism about Westminster's willingness and capacity to transform itself. But this founding axiom - maximising Scottish self-government - can carry us through and structure our engagements with this process. It is even a moderately exciting thought. As Nicola recognised in her statement launching her leadership bid yesterday, we can be disappointed, but we must not be discouraged. There's no good in us hanging back, waiting to be foiled, bathing passively in the embalming fluid of low expectations, met.

Smooth equivocations to the contrary, in the dying days of the No campaign, its movers and shakers gave out the distinct impression that Scotland could expect significantly enhanced autonomy if independence was rejected. Devo-max. Devo-super-max. Real home rule. Almost federalism. Everything short of the key functions which the UK needs to exist. Much greater autonomy or an end to the Union, went up the cry.

On any register, this patter was calculated to leave the impression that there would be a significant advance on the proposals set out by the Tory, Liberal Democrat and Labour devolution commissions. Now that independence is safely defeated, the sleekit are attempting to reverse ferret, and to insist that these modest proposals were always the be all and the end all of their devo-something offers. 

That won't do. They know it won't do. Britannia, once again, finds herself between Scylla and Charybdis. Remarkably, the No parties have worked themselves into a position where they may well deliver on their plans for enhancing Holyrood's powers, but where they are more or less predestined to disappoint not just the Yes voting 45%, but the wider community who believe in "significantly enhanced" Scottish autonomy within the Union. As political achievements go, it is a beezer.  Mugged by the sea monster and kicked in the teeth by the scowling beast of the rocks. That's our opportunity. 

So, in these negotiations, let's use Gordon Brown's criterion. He told us that we could expect the maximum devolution compatible with continuing Union. Cameron and Miliband gave him the nod.  Let's take them at their word. In discussing the new settlement, the critical question cannot be "why should that power be devolved?" but "why should this power be reserved to Westminster?" Let's go through schedule 5 of the Scotland Act. Foreign affairs, currency, defence, imports and exports, immigration and extradition - sure, they must remain at the Westminster level. But misuse of drugs? Control of the Crown estate? Firearms? Elections? Equal opportunities? Elections? Insolvency? Energy? Embryology and the cutting edge of medical research? Are they the glue holding the state together? I struggle to see it.

Applying Brown's test, where no reasoned or compelling case can be made for a power's retention, going to the heart of the Union, the power should be devolved. That's our opening gambit. In some areas, the SNP has a snowball's chance in hell of achieving consensus. This, it should frankly be admitted, is the key limitation of the all-together-now structure set up under Robert Smith by the Prime Minister.

And to be franker, our key problems is the stubborn dunce in the room, wearing the big red jacket. What if the best consensus capable of being formed excludes the Labour Party? Which value do you privilege? Are we to proceed at the pace of the slowest student in the class? Must we dawdle as we wait for the Labour Party to recover any kind of ambition for Scotland or coherent idea of why it supports devolution? Will the parties formerly known as Better Together privilege their own coherence, and a united front, or aspire to the greatest level of self-government possible?

In the current atmosphere, it is difficult to say for sure. Smarter sorts in the Labour Party might regard it as a kind of relief: a rare opportunity to pry themselves from off the wretched hook they spiked themselves on with their pitiful and incoherent devolution plans. Nobody will even gloat about it.  But we owe it to ourselves, and all those across this country who voted for greater autonomy, to bash on, undiscouraged. 

Any process which involves the Labour Party will almost certainly not achieve anything like "extensive" new autonomy for Scotland in welfare and social security. Their instrumental case for the Union, and (largely unconvincing) disavowal of British nationalism sets Labour precisely at odds with any such devolution of power. That before we've factored in the universalising ambition behind Iain Duncan Smith's consolidated UK universal credit, which makes hiving off particular strands of social security particularly challenging. To my mind, the Strathclyde Commission proposals represents the minimum floor beneath which the Better Together parties cannot fall without ratting on their vows. But they must be encouraged to go further. 

The challenge for the Westminster parties is to explain to the Scottish people why, in the fields of tax, welfare and social matters, they're better placed to take these choices, to explain why the Union's life depends on excluding them from the Scottish Parliament's sway. But Scotland expects, vows have been uttered, and the SNP has a good answer: "Absolutely no one will run the affairs of this country better than the people who live and work in Scotland." 

Prove us wrong.

Treacherous weapons

Newsflash: prominent / eminent / official person expresses opinion / prediction somehow relevant to independence referendum shocker, Yes / No campaigners outraged.

It is becoming a familiar format. The media unearth a suitably credentialled worthy or bigwig, ask them a few prickly questions, and invite an indiscretion liable to wind up one side of the constitutional debate. Which is generally fair game. This Sunday it was Barroso's declaration that an independent Scotland's EU accession would be "difficult if not impossible", for which read, bloody hard, tending towards chuffing hard. Cue salivation in Class 2B, as the Bash Street Better Together kids get their tweets formulated and fire off a series of whizzpoppers about pariah Scotland's hilarious exclusion from Europe, like the plooky teen tapping, ignored, at the form room door. 

On one level, this is a perfectly understandable response on their part.  Uncertainty and risk are the No campaign's favoured instruments.  They want us to see the independence referendum as a jury might a criminal trial, with Yes campaigners' being afforded the opportunity to displace the presumption in favour of union.  Has the prosecution proven its case? If not, the defence need not take to its pins and clear its throat to offer a reasoned account of its own. The proposition falls. 

Where, it seems to me, Better Together go wrong is that they've ceased properly to discriminate between credible and incredible lines of attack.  Does a particular intervention, however wrong-headed, ignorant or loopy favour our position? Then attack, attack, attack. This isn't a phenomenon unique to themselves. Pro-independence folk share the bad habit of enthusiastically promoting congenial interventions in the debate, however objectively dodgy their reasoning or provenance.  The First Minister loves to quote an eminent somebody, pouring icy water on an opponent's position. But we have to try to retain our critical faculties, and resist the partisan logic that every scrap of opinion, prophecy or claim which happens to chime with our constitutional preferences must be right.  That way intellectual bankruptcy lies.

Barroso's intervention this week furnishes an admirable case in point. Whatever your view about the desirability of Scottish independence, his remarks over the weekend were cobblers, and all fair-minded folk who want Scots to vote on the facts instead of distortions should have regarded them as cobblers.  Since, a number of constitutionally unaligned or no-tending voices have offered interesting (and quietly incredulous) responses to the Commission President's opinion. Sir David Edward, a No voter who served on the European Court of Justice and on the Calman Commission, described Barroso's reasoning as "absurd". Professor Michael Keating at the Future of the UK and Scotland blog argues that his intervention "confuses the question" of Scottish accession to the EU and the real and unreal challenges facing it, concluding that:

"None of this is in itself an argument for independence. Unionists can argue that Scotland is better off as part of a big EU state than as a small independent one. It is not consistent, however, to agree that Scots can vote to be an independent state but then seek to deprive them of the basic rights of any European democracy."

While this morning, for the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum, Professor Neil Walker - "inclined to vote 'no' in September's referendum" - responds to Barroso's comments. He writes that these:

"... recent  events  have fuelled my anxiety about  the climate in which the debate is taking place. They have made me wonder whether the case for independence is getting a fair crack of the whip on the international stage, and have caused  me to ponder the implications of lending my vote to a position that remains so reliant upon negative rather than positive arguments."  

Noting, of Barroso's comments, and asking:

"These remarks have been well publicised. Predictably, they have been seized upon by Better Together as vindicating their long-standing scepticism about an independent Scotland's EU future, and as further evidence of the emptiness of nationalist promises. But why should anyone listen to Barroso on this topic?  Does he have a legitimate political voice in the debate? Does he speak from a position of legal authority?  Or, regardless of his political or legal standing, does he simply have a good insider argument, and one that we should heed? The answer, on all three counts, would seem to be 'no'. Why is this so, and why is it important to the integrity of the debate that the kind of intervention Barroso has sought fit to make should be challenged?"

It is an interesting piece, exploring the complex and contested principles undergirding the European Union, and how these relate to the particular case of an independent Scotland's chance of negotiated EU accession, and the terms of that accession.  

For what it is worth, my own view is that the Nats bungled the early argument on Scotland's EU status, the rhetoric of "automatic" membership offering Better Together an easy and predictable free shot at our vitals on the reasonable basis that (a) there are legal protocols governing EU accession and (b) EU treaty amendment requires unanimity among Member States.  However smooth or rough Scotland's accession to the EU might be, and whatever might be lost or gained in terms in that negotiation, "automatic" seamless and unruptured the process ain't. We have to make informed, prudential and principled judgements about its outcomes.

As Lord Glennie observed in a recent Court of Session decision, "the decision on continued membership will not ultimately be decided solely as a legal question but will, to a greater or lesser extent, involve questions of hard politics." To my mind, taking into account the principles undergirding the EU, and past practice, these hard politics favour some sort of EU accommodation with an independent Scotland. For that reason alone, the demand for certainty emanating from some quarters of the pro-Union debate is absurd. It is like one of David Greig's Yes/No plays.

Yes: Should we go out for dinner, darling?

No: Can you guarantee that the restaurant won't have been booked out, exploded, or become infested with weasels?

Yes: Um. No.  

No: We'll stay in. Microwave mac-and-cheese it is.

Much - too much - of the uncritical response to Barroso's intervention continued to foster this kind of ridiculous shadow-boxing. The temptation to squeeze short term tactical advantage from an intervention damaging to the other side may seem irresistable for the cynical hack.  It is certainly understandable, and a measure of skulduggery and position-taking is to be expected in a political campaign.  But a treacherous weapon is ever a danger to the hand.

Gonzoing the referendum

Where is the Scottish independence debate happening? Who are its main characters? 

One version, arguably the dominant version, would point to the airwaves, Newsnicht and First Minister's Questions, interviewing politicians and canvassing a recurring band of greying (or long-grey) pundits, whose opinions we're all already perfectly familiar with. That's certainly one part of the conversation about independence, and an important part - but outside the studio, overlooked, in un-newsworthy places, more lively spirits are stirring.  

We should hear more about them. We can't leave the last word on the significance of this campaign to increasingly-jaded commentators, working the dismal miracle of making the referendum boring. In that spirit, in the lead up to the referendum, I wanted to write about the campaign's quotidian, quiet revolutions. The stuff you rarely find in the papers. The social life of the referendum, if you like. 

You can find the first of these constitutional field logs in the new edition of the Drouth magazine.  I kick off on a Gonzo journalistic note, taking a look at the independence generation, treading warily inside the National Collective Hipster's Den.  

Read the whole piece here.

Schrödinger's Victoria Sponge

We're not terrifically good at this European lark, are we? The SNP government's canny sense of strategy has seemed to desert it again and again in matters touching on the law of the European Union. For the weary nationalist consumer of the Scottish media, another round of negative headlines in the papers this week might suggest the outbreak of another baseless scare story about Scottish independence. But it isn't.

The idea that an independent Scotland would be able to continue charging English students fees for studying in Scottish universities is an unforced - and totally pointless - error. There may be an argument for it, but it is frustrating to see the Scottish Government's old bad habit of overegging legal arguments, transforming balanced contentions into definitive certainties, re-emerge so early in the referendum year.

Frustrating, not least, because it gives Unionists a wholly unnecessary free shot at our vitals, insidiously undermining the SNP's credibility yet again on European issues. Playing target-practice with your own toes may wile away the long winter evenings, but it isn't a constructive pastime for a government waging an uphill war to convince the Scottish people that they may be confident that independence is a credible project. As I observed yonks back, about the absence of law governing Scottish accession to the EU, uncertainty which cannot be eliminated, can't be avoided.  There's no point pretending that everything's crystal clear, when your opponents have a pail of mud to hand and a will to chuck it. And legally credible mud at that.

The basic position in European law is that you cannot discriminate against EU citizens on the grounds of their nationality, as University of Edinburgh law professor Niamh Nic Shuibhne has explained estimably clearly. There are some circumstances in which this general rule against discrimination may be disapplied, where the government is able to show objective justification for the discrimination. These depend on whether the discrimination is direct or indirect. Niamh, who knows a good deal more about the European Court of Justice's approach to these issues than I do, concludes that the Scottish Government may have a legal argument - but it is a shoogly one which they can have no confidence whatever that the Court will accept, given the tribunal's current case-law on non-discrimination in the educational field.

This should chime with our intuition, and the evidence of our own eyes. If it would be legally permissible under EU law for an independent Scotland to discriminate against EU students in this fashion, why do we currently allow Irish and Belgian and Austrian students to study here without paying an additional penny for their degrees? I'm at a loss as to why the rhetoric seems to have shifted us from a straightforward and credible position, exposing the government to yet another round of negative commentary, insidiously undermining confidence in its judgement and contributing another unwelcome strand to the theme that it doesn't know its business where the EU is concerned.  

Try something like this on for size: the principle of free access to higher eduction is of fundamental importance to us, as is full participation in the European Union and the citizenship rights it enshrines.  An SNP government will do everything in our power to preserve that social compact with students and parents, come what may, in an independent Scotland.  

Independence poses some new challenges, but they are not insurmountable challenges. For understandable reasons, the free universities of an independent Scotland could exert considerable attraction on English students who would face far steeper expenses to study south of the border. Under the current settlement, we are able to charge English students fees.  

Under European Union law, however, it is considerably more doubtful whether we could continue to do so after independence.  Our first priorities are to find mechanisms within the law of the European Union to do so, and objectively to justify treating English students differently. Scottish institutions of higher education are subject to real pressures and we believe that EU law should recognise that.  Our legal advisors suggest this may be possible, but cannot give cast-iron guarantees. 

If it does not prove possible to distinguish between different students in this way, the policy of free higher education will be maintained, and additional resources will be found to meet the additional cost, as they are found to cover the expense of French and Dutch and German students, taking advantage of Scotland's institutions of higher education at present. 

The downside? Another spending commitment for an independent Scotland. Better Together might grouse about that, but it is not a great story. The upside? This formulation poses no questions about the SNP leadership's competence and candour when it comes to EU law. Sure, it owns up to another uncertainty about independence, but it wouldn't have generated headlines like this.  It is clear and honest and principled.

All of that said, I'd be fascinated to hear how the underlying assumptions of the SNP's unionist critics are remotely reconcilable. Weeks by, we've heard palpable glee from Tory and Labour and Liberal politicians, and their constitutional fellow travellers, arguing that negotiated entry from within wouldn't work, and Scotland would be booted out of the European Union and its citizens' rights to free movement, extinguished. Or to use their preferred formulation, there could be "no guarantees" that an independent Scotland would be "allowed into" the EU. For this round of slagging, we're being asked to assume that Scotland would be admitted to the European Union in short order after independence. The volte face, and the chopping and changing basic assumptions, is made without blinking or blushing. 

The irony of course being, if Scotland was outside of the EU, then none of this would be a problem.  There would be no free movement of persons, and you could squeeze a pretty penny out of students arriving here from any European Union country, including rUK. Alternatively, if Scotland was inside the EU but England and her provinces were out, fees wouldn't be a problem either, as the English students would enjoy none of the rights of  EU citizens. The same goes for a situation where both Scotland and the rUK sat outside of the European Union. This whole argument is predicated on the assumption that both Scotland and rUK would remain EU states. There are no "guarantees" about which of these four options will obtain, I suppose, but they can't all be true simultaneously. 

Wanting to have your cake and not have your cake and eat it and not eat it? The paradox of Schrödinger's Victoria sponge.  Or should that be Schrödinger's petite madeleine, sachertorte or panforte?

Victim Fantasies

"Now we see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help. I'm being oppressed!" 

Victim fantasies seem to have become a staple of UK political discourse lately. They find their fullest expression in the pessimistic nostalgia of Farage's political outfit, but the UK governing party are hardly immune to their lures. 

It isn't enough for Tories that their welfare reforms hollow out the lives of those they effect. They also want to experience the titillating sensation which accompanies setting an injustice right.  Understandably, they don't conceive of themselves as heartless villains prioritising the welfare of the rich "wealth creators" over the impoverished and disaffected. Oh no. They're the agents of justice, settling an old score, straightening the scroungers, the feckless, the spare-room-subsidised. For the plain people of England, I stab at thee.

What does it matter if the phantasms they strike at are straw? The sensation's the thing, and a sense of righteous vengeance against the unworthy is intoxicating.  The pleasures of victimhood are not exclusively domestic.  Bleating has international applications. The entropic force of the European Union schemes to fetter our enterprising spirits with needless bureaucracy. The European Court of Human Rights is waging "war on British justice". Puir us! How we suffer!  

This weekend we find a new charge added to the indictment: according to two different writers from different ends of the UK political spectrum, support for Scottish independence has "hatred" at its heart and the Yes case is "chauvinistic". Not content with actually winning the independence referendum on current polling, part of the pro-Union movement wish to win while cultivating the sense that they've been horribly wronged in the process. Victory is inadequate: they want to triumph as martyrs, without any of the actual sacrifices martyrdom usually requires.  

Tin-eared London-based commentary on Scotland is nothing new, but a new spirit seems to have taken hold of parts of the press recently, spanning both the left and right.  A few weeks by, the Spectator blogger Steerpike commemorated Flodden in his own way, with this pop at Alex Salmond, and this characterisation of the contemporary independence movement:

"The First Minister of Scotland is masterful at mixing anti-English rhetoric, rose-tinted recollections of Scottish history and no gloves politicking. When he does it right, it can be devastating. History is at the heart of his campaign for Scottish independence in the run up to the referendum, so I was surprised to see how quiet he is today over an important point in his nation’s heritage".

This diagnosis may surprise those of us paying passing attention to the Scots political scene. Anti-English rhetoric? A campaign festooned with Scottish history? From his perch in the eerie of the Tower of Flints, Steerpike clearly surveys a different campaign. Say what you will about Yes Scotland: their output is hardly the gusty stuff of ethnic politics, unrepentant tartanry, or the hooch-skirl of Sassenach-bashing. 

It is difficult to imagine the meek Blair Jenkins in plaid, dirked and targed.  Nicola Sturgeon would struggle to be cast as a latter-day Flora MacDonald, or nimble Salmond snipping Sir Henry de Bohun's napper in half like a wet melon. And Steerpike misses the really, rather more interesting point: contemporary Scottish nationalism is remarkably unhistorical in its animating gods. But why let empirical reality subvert a good-going sense of victimisation?

Today, employing bare innuendo, a thin gloss on the controversy around Alasdair Gray's comment on Scottish arts administration, and education policy, Andrew Gilligan argues that "some very unpleasant views have started to surface. For some prominent nationalists, the pandas might be all right – but other arrivals are much less welcome." Entertainingly, Gilligan also suggests that Salmond's criticisms of David Cameron have an ethnic whiff, arguing that the First Minister has "not been averse to national stereotyping at times, condemning Westminster cabinet ministers as "incompetent Lord Snootys".

Presumably English Tory MP, Nadine Dorries, was resorting to the same xenophobic logic when she styled the Prime Minister and his coterie "posh boys", and Labour MP Dennis Skinner also appeals to malevolent stereotypy, when he fires the occasional rhetorical rocket up George Osborne in the House of Commons.

As Tom Nairn observed long ago, "London government invents habitual class remedies to nationalist ailments". In this case, the Telegraph goes one better, transforming its pitiful whinge of "class war" into an ethnic slur, as if it was somehow objectionable to criticise the dominance of privilege in the United Kingdom. The goal of both rhetorical measures? Sleekitly to delegitimise critiques framed in this way. "You can't hold my massive wealth, superior advantages and control of power against me! You. Um. Xenophobe Luddite." And in a trice, we're back on the cross, tacked up with jelly-bean nails, able to feel tender, but without too much  any real suffering. Help, help, I'm being oppressed. 

Gilligan is given a helping hand by the Observer's Catherine Bennett.  For Catherine, the Yes campaign is "chauvinistic", an appeal to an "impoverished and resentful" corner of the UK, predicated mainly on "bellicose, English-phobic nationalism". After a masterful display of false sympathy, Bennett wields the dagger, suggesting that if support for Scottish independence isn't higher in England, this is because:

"... extreme, flag-waving chauvinism has been strongly discouraged in British schools for generations, with the postwar decline of nationalism only intensified by multicultural nerves. True, as we were reminded last week, members of the EDL have miraculously survived all such conditioning; equally, these extremists now risk being righteously snubbed in Mens' Socks.

This is classic stuff from the anti-nationalist multicultural British left, who sustain their crude characterisations of nationalism, usually by trying to distinguish their "patriotism" from deplorable nationalistic thinking. This is rarely plausible, and tends to entail a vacuous reference to Orwell's Notes of Nationalism, which ignores the eccentric way in which Orwell uses the term "nationalism" in that essay.  Bennett's piece duly obliges.

It is the same word. "Nationalism" has to mean the same thing, right? It's a credulous approach which would be rightly flayed if it appeared in an undergraduate essay.  But hey, this is journalism right? What does it matter if I make a vague resort to Orwell's deathless authority, just to slag off a band of Scotch politicians as incipient kryptoethnecists? By all means, let's be cavalier when we're throwing around outrageous allegations and asking idiotic questions about whether a Luxembourger can be venal, if your Frenchman is capable of benevolence, or even more absurdly, whether Scots or English folk are characteristically faultless souls. None of these arguments are features of the constitutional debate. And yet Bennett shoehorns them in, purporting only to find them. 

This strange argument is of interest, in part because nobody remotely in the know about what's going on in Scotland would mistake it for the reality. The projections of Bennett, Steerpike and Gilligan represent the Scottish nationalism they'd prefer to oppose, not the really-existing Scottish nationalism we see, day to day, in Holyrood or in the country.  Reality seems likely to have little purchase on these fantasies, but they doubtless have their psychological compensations.  The essential solidity of UK politics is reinforced. The lunatic Celtic fringe is handily discredited, and you can enjoy the smarting sensation which comes with a vague sense that you've been criticised, and you can't fathom why, or what you've done wrong.

This attitude should concern our UK federalist not-quite-fellow-travellers too. Seemingly unable to accept critiques of UK governance on their face, commentators like Gilligan and Bennett immediately leap to the conclusion that, all evidence despite, the independence movement is an atavistic, anglophobic political project. Scottish independence as it now stands is one answer to the political malaise in this country.

For self-appointed victims like Gilligan and Bennett, the pleasures of wallowing in invented ethnic slights enjoys priority over a fair-minded attempt to understand the current case for independence, its civic nationalist convictions, and the roots of its critique in the failure of Westminster government.  I do understand. Facing that second reality flies in the face of the mainstream UK political discourse. It moves beyond mere gripe. It dispenses with cantankerous trade gossip of the parliamentary lobby. It appeals to a different logic. Independence offers one practical solution to our predicament.  Not everyone will agree that independence represents the right solution to the problems of our governance and politics. I respect that.  

What I cannot abide, however, is the bleating of self-appointed babes in the wood. Far too many folk in the world suffer from the brutal, bloody consequences of hate, unemancipated from historical struggles, and finding their lives crushed between the rocks of racism and chauvenism, to allow ninnies like Gilligan and Bennett to cheapen their suffering, and unhurting, from a privileged, untroubled perch, to pilfer the mantles of martyrdom. 

Not Scandinavia, but Ireland...

In a column in last weekend's Scotland on Sunday, former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson returned to a familiar theme, arguing that "British identity is key to debate on independence."   

Andrew worries that "fewer than one in ten Scots with a “strong sense of British identity” back independence".  What is to be done? Andrew's answer is that the Nationalists should cunningly hijack British identity, and rearticulate it in a form more amenable to our constitutional ambitions.

"... the SNP and the Yes Campaign have just over a year to communicate cleverly that Britishness is about much, much more than the functions of state government. Indeed, who the government is and what it does is the least important aspect of Britishness and most urgent to reform. The familial, cultural, social and economic ties that bind will endure and strengthen when the politics is taken out of the equation."

But is it really a question of "cleverly" articulating a new, non-state account of British identity, as Wilson contends? I'm not so sure. As I tracked in a post here some time ago, nationalist politicians have been using the language of a "social union" after independence for a good while now. The idea that Britishness and this "social union" can and should be used interchangeably, seems a more recent development in pro-independence rhetoric. And for me, one of the least convincing.  

On BBC Question Time a while back, the SNP MSP Alex Neil told the audience that "I am an Ayrshireman, I am a Scot and I feel British and European as well." Now, I've no window into the Health Secretary's heart. A cherished sense of Britishness may warm his cockles.  If so, little of that heat communicated itself in his answer. His Britannic protestations looked strained, and hollow, altogether too pleased with themselves. Some independence supporters may feel profoundly British, but I doubt most prominent Nationalists do, and for them to pretend to do so looks decidedly shifty, and decidedly not convincing.

SNP MP Pete Wishart has been at the forefront of the argument that we should think about Britishness in geographical, super-state terms, detachable from national governments, and independent from the question of whether Scotland sends parliamentarians to Westminster.  As is so often the case at the moment, Pete offers us Nordic models in justification.   

"Britishness is as much about geography as it is about identity and history. Coming from Perth in the northern part of the island of Greater Britain I am as much British as someone from Stockholm is Scandinavian."

This argument has a superficial allure to it. Scots won't lose Britishness if we vote yes. Fear not fellow citizens! We'd be just like those friendly folks lining the fjords of Sweden, and of Norway and Denmark. But what do most folk know about shared Scandinavian solidarity and identity? Bugger all. How does the reference connect up to Scots' lived experiences? Not to any significant extent. So why the devil should we think that recasting Britishness in terms of an alien concept of regional identity of which most folk know nothing is going to do the trick? 

Wilson's choice of words is significant. Such a strategy is "clever", but I think, too clever by half, and unlikely to make much sense to your average Scot, with hazy British sympathies, and at most a couple of days in Stockholm, or a couple of episodes of the Killing under their belts. 

By making Britishness the answer to Yes Scotland's campaigning problems, Wilson's argument conflates two points. As he diagnoses, rightly, if the referendum resolves itself into a question of "do you feel British?", the SNP are stuffed. On the Better Together side, we've heard Ed Miliband's identity-driven British nationalist case for the Union.  According to the Labour leader, the referendum turns on the question of identity, his message to Scottish voters: Feel British? Vote No.  Independence supporters must resist this framing of the question.  Hitherto, they have done so by focussing on independence as a constitutional, civic and political issue, about powers, not identities.  The question before voters is not whether they feel British, but whether they want Scotland's democratic institutions to make key political decisions about their public services, their wars, their social security and taxation. 

One of the surprises of the Better Together campaign hitherto has been the absence of the full-scale sentimental British nationalist campaign promised by Miliband's intervention. You could do it marvellously. Twinkle-eyed Corby grannies, born in Dumbarton but long in the south, surrounded by a giggling knot of grandchildren, and ideally, with a son and daughter living on both sides of the Tweed, whose laughing children sound an untroubled mixter-maxter of accents. The young couple, one Fifer, one Londoner, who met at university in Edinburgh, and settled down, all invested in the idea that the noble goal of a multi-national state is worth preserving, all arguing we're "better together", as the saying has it. And so on, and so on.  

It might be an idea for Yes Scotland to get their retaliation in first, and to shoot a counter-intuitive ad with similar characters on both sides of the border endorsing independence, relaxed about the implications for their families and relationships. For Yes campaign to make the case for companionable Britishness, however, would be madness, and do Better Together's identity politics for them.

As many of you will know, since 2009, I have lived in the south east of England. I don't feel British to any significant extent. I enjoy warm and convivial relationships with my friends, neighbours and colleagues in Oxfordshire, unencumbered by any requirement that we share some defined regional supra-identity. I get along without Britishness quite happily. More and more, I've been wondering if independence supporters, tickled by the novelty of Scandinavian parallels, and the cul de sac of reclaiming Britishness from the British state, are neglecting the more obvious, more helpful contemporary example of the Republic of Ireland in talking about social, family and commercial bonds, after independence.

English-speaking, sharing a land-border and abiding historical ties, you'll find few people who seriously think, in Johann Lamont's ugly phrase, of the denizens of Tipperary or Cork as "foreigners" in the United Kingdom today. As is well known, Irish nationals enjoy a number of rights under UK law, including the ability to vote in our elections, free movement and immigration rights (above and beyond the rights of EU nationals in this respect).  For most folk in Great Britain, the Irish are betwixt and between, resisting the straightforward binary of the Self and the Other.  From my experiences in England, they are not significantly different from Scots in this respect, despite my Irish friends' "separate" government in Dublin, and "our" shared parliament in Westminster.

Identities don't belong to states. The Irish lesson shows us, in concrete terms most people in our country will understand, that our shared bonds in these islands won't break up if Britain breaks up.  We don't need any mediating concept of Britishness to make this happen, to maintain the to-and-fro of immigration and emigration, wandering carelessly over lightly-drawn borders, comfortably befriending, loving, working and belonging.  I don't need any pseudo Britto-Nordic construct to feel that my Irish friends here in England aren't the "foreigners" Johann Lamont would have them be. 

"Surly lodgers turned good neighbours" pay the rent.

An elementary proposition: the first act of a surly lodger turned good neighbour is not to bugger off leaving your share of the rent unpaid.  

One of the Better Together campaign's most boring strategies in this campaign so far has been to play international law and politics off against one another. Any legal uncertainties or ambiguities, particularly in the notoriously ambiguous, compromising political regime of international and European law, are persistently depicted as damaging sources of uncertainty, undermining the pro-independence argument. Where are your cast-iron guarantees? Where's your legal evidence, Mr Salmond, that all will be well and that everything you promise will definitely, unerringly, absolutely come true? 

In order to be effective, this rhetoric is obliged to ignore the reality of contemporary diplomacy, which is marked by negotiation and political accommodation. The European Union is not a court of law, it is not bound over blindly to apply its governing documents, any more than parliament is obliged to leave the statute book unaltered in the United Kingdom.  Public international law isn't some neat book of binding rules, but an evolving and often inconsistent mixter-maxter of precedents and treaties. That is not to say that the laws there are aren't important. The law of the sea, for example, will be critical when it comes to negotiations about the scope of a sovereign Scotland's territorial waters, with significant implications for the north sea sector, the distribution of oil reserves (and of course, the weighty and consequential question of the sovereignty over the strategic isle of Rockall).

If Scotland is to become independent after 2014, negotiations will be critical, and it is in the nature of these bodies of law not to have all of the answers. It is not as if a 300 year old Union disentangles itself every month. That is the best answer, the only real answer, which independence supporters can offer to pro-Union politicians, and their tactical, obtuse refusals to recognise this basic reality.  I recognise that this is frustrating, and doesn't exactly answer the charge of uncertainty.  But it is an uncertainty which cannot be eliminated, so it cannot be avoided. 

This weekend, we heard in the Sun from our old friend Matt Qvortrup. His "gamechanger" argument, essentially, is that if you examine the precedents of countries breaking up into smaller units, the successor state takes the whole burden of the accumulated national debt, while the "breakaway" state steps onto the world stage, without a single debt blotting her balance book.  As you may recall, the UK government insists as a matter of international law that Scotland would be a new state, and only the rUK would be the successor to the UK's current store of treaties and the like, including Britain's EU membership and its terms. Qvortrup contends that this legal logic hoists them on their own petard, meaning that an independent Scotland could depart in good conscience, without accepting any share of the UK's national debt.  It isn't clear whether Dr Qvortrup considers this primarily an historical or a legal argument, but whatever else it is, it is a thoroughly impractical one.

Understandably, several pro-independence folk saw this as a marvellous opportunity to beat Better Together supporters at their own parlour game. We should avoid the temptation. Scotland "could" break up Britain and accept no share of our accumulated national debt, in the same sense that the EU "could" cold-shoulder an independent Scotland. Could, but probably wont, and shouldn't. 

And that's the critical point. The uncertainties of international law cuts both ways, throwing up uncertainties for both pro-independence campaigners, and those supporting the Union.  Salmond's earlier missteps around an independent Scotland's legal status in the European Union should have taught us that the trick here isn't to ape the dishonest certainties peddled by the UK Government and its supporters. We can't win that game, and more importantly, perhaps, they aren't true.  And, after negotiating a fair distribution of assets and liabilities, a surly lodger turned good neighbour ought to pay his debts.

Talk of post-independence negotiations are important in a couple of senses.  The first, and most obvious, is that any agreement cut with the remaining parts of the United Kingdom will exert significant influence on the sort of independent Scotland we see after a Yes vote, and we have plenty of big-ticket items to discuss, from transitional arrangements, to shared assets and liabilities, security cooperation and citizenship. So much is obvious. 

Secondly, how we talk about those negotiations also important for setting the tone of the campaign and the sort of independence we want to promote. The SNP have gone out of their way to accentuate the positive, to sketch images of friendly future relations with the rUK, sharing a currency, cheerfully cooperating when it is in the national interest, cultivating a social union of like-minded states, with a shared island, and language and traditions. For gradualist nationalists and democrats, the concept of "UDI" elicits cold sweats.  As a serious-minded account of what Scotland can and ought to do if we vote Yes in 2014, Qvortrup's latest intervention on national debt is fantastical and risks leading us down a self-defeating rhetorical gulch.  

Picking your neighbour's pocket isn't a good start to an abiding and friendly social union.  Evident glee at the idea of doing so recalls the bad faith politics of the playground, not the cooperative vision of Scotland the Good Neighbour which the SNP has been pains to cultivate.  

TNS BMRB: Yes 30%, No 51%

Today, pollster TNS-BMRB publishes its most recent poll on Scottish independence. Often as not, today's results are quoted in isolation. I thought it might be helpful and of interest to stage a beneath-the-topline retrospective on the company's findings since the start of 2013. One wee note of caution. In January, TNS BMRB was still using the old formulation about negotiating independence, adopting the Scottish Government's new question first only in February. The impact of the change seems negligible, so I've simply included the January figures in the charts below.  

I don't have much time to commit to the exegesis of this material, so today I'll mostly be presenting the data, and leaving it at that, with a couple of marginal notions, to aid understanding. Today's data is labelled as March '13 throughout. First up, TNS-BMRB's findings on the changing overall picture since January. 

Gender

Historically, the gender gap has remained a stubborn feature of independence polling. Interestingly, TNS-BMRB has consistently generated smaller discrepancies between the voting intentions of men and women in the referendum than many of its competitors.

Age

Polling data on the breakdown of voting intentions by age has been marked by significant volatility at the bottom, most youthful end of the spectrum, and a good deal of solidity as we approach the eldest cohort of respondents.  Opposition to independence amongst those aged over 55 continues, undented. By contrast, the sometimes more-pro-independence younger voters continues to leap about like a frog in a frying-pan.

35 - 54

55 - 65+

Social Grading

Like a number of other pollsters, TNS BMRB break down their data using "social grading" codes.  Respondents are classified based on the occupation of the "head of household". This information on the chief earner's profession is broken down into AB (upper) and C1 (lower) middle classes, with C2 representing the "skilled working class", and DE denoting the working class and those living at the lowest levels of subsistence.  To add a bit of important context, according to Ipsos-MORI, something like 27% of Britons would be classified as of AB social grade, 29% as C1s, 21% as C2s, and 23% as DE. 

Previous polls have tended to show that opposition to independence is substantially higher amongst AB voters than their poorest fellows.  While TNS-BMRB found that opposition to independence is 8% down amongst AB voters than at the start of the year, today's poll shows a spike in the number of the poorest Scots who oppose the measure, and an independence droop. That said, the poorest cohort of Scots remains the most supportive, while the richest remain unconvinced, with less a quarter of AB voters currently favouring independence.

Independence: AB and C1s.

Independence: C2DEs.

 

Those full tables here.