Wings Over Scotland

The parties of the Union must be pleased with themselves today. Seven months ago the Scottish electorate delivered its verdict on their previous four years in opposition – an opposition marked by an almost uniformly negative and bitter response to the SNP's unexpected minority victory. The two parties who were the least constructive – Labour and the Lib Dems – were severely punished by the voters in 2011, while the relatively co-operative Tories lost the fewest seats.

In the face of this clear message, though, the Unionist parties seem to have learned nothing. The SNP's stunning majority and the prospect of the independence referendum that will come with it appears to have had no chastening effect on the others, and the nationalist government has endured a daily barrage of unrelenting vitriol from the opposition and media, much of it documented here on WingsLand.

In the meantime it's been forced to make some difficult cuts thanks to a decreased budget, and has brought forward some highly controversial legislation – minimum pricing for alcohol, an anti-sectarianism bill loudly decried by Old Firm bigots as well as some high profile pundits and bloggers, and a proposal to legalise gay marriage which has brought down the wrath of some large religious communities on the government's head. Throw in a gruesome consultation document about the nation's railway infrastructure and you've got a recipe for plummetting popularity.

Except, of course, that the SNP's poll ratings have instead just climbed to a record high of 51%, with the First Minister's already-impressive personal approval among the electorate also rising and the opposition stagnant or falling, leaving Labour now backed by just half as many Scottish voters (26%) as the Nats – a staggering, almost mind-boggling turnaround of 40 points from March 2011 when Labour led the SNP by 15 points in the polls just eight weeks before the election and were talking of their own Holyrood majority. And of course, this comes hard on the heels of the Scottish Social Attitudes survey showing record (and growing) levels of support for independence itself.

This blog doesn't often praise the Scottish Government's opponents, but we'd like to take a moment to register our appreciation for their efforts over the 12 months, and to express our sincerest hopes that they continue in the same vein for the next four years. We love you, guys. Don't ever change.

Discussion of the intriguing Scottish Social Attitudes survey has been slightly undermined by the fact that the full report itself isn't publicly available. However, the estimable Lallands Peat Worrier has secured access to more of the detail, and picks through it here. Of particular note is the precise wording of some of the questions, which wasn't previously revealed. The deeper conclusion that this blog reads into his analysis is that there seems to be a subtle shift taking place – independence is slowly but measurably becoming the default case in the minds of voters, ie the state people need to be persuaded out of rather than into. (Presented with a proposition under which independence would make no difference to people's finances either way, the response is 47% in favour of independence with 32% against, which to our knowledge is the biggest straight-question margin for "Yes" ever recorded in a full-sized poll.)

As LPW pointedly notes the continued absence of the "positive case for the Union" (and in the light of the relentless continuation of increasingly impotent fearmongering in its stead), that could be a very significant development indeed in the years to come.

There's been so much happening lately that we can barely keep track of it, let alone attend to such trivial matters as real life as well, so let's see if we can get up to speed on the most interesting stuff quickly. It seems like everyone's talking about Scandinavia at the moment, as the SNP revealed that they're keen to see a future Scotland align itself in a slightly more Nordic way than a European one.

The Guardian, Caledonian Mercury and Scotsman have run a fascinating variety of perspectives on the issue lately, and this blog is certainly very comfortable with the idea that an independent Scotland might choose to run its society along such lines rather than follow the neo-liberal path that's done such a good job for Europe lately.

Hamish McDonnell's article in the CalMerc perceptively points out the conflict between the high-tax, high-quality lifestyle of the Scandinavian nations and the low-tax Ireland-style model the SNP have previously advocated, but Donald Adamson writing in Bella Caledonia comes in with a timely piece, ostensibly focusing on some election-result analysis but which ends by suggesting the SNP might stand to gain significantly by making exactly such a move towards the more social-democratic positions occupied by Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

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Malcolm Harvey over on Thinking Unpopular Thoughts finally got round to his delayed assessment of the state of the SNP this week, completing his analysis of all five of the parties in the Scottish Parliament. And given that the SNP is currently riding at a dizzying all-time high in every measurable sense it's a pretty downbeat view, echoing (and indeed directly quoting) many of the recent complaints of the erudite legal blogger Andrew "Lallands Peat Worrier" Tickell. Over on A Burdz Eye View, meanwhile, Kate Higgins is bemoaning that the SNP's recent announcements about future projects have been overly "macho", and haven't focused enough on wimmin.

Here at Wings over Scotland, though, we must admit to being bewildered by the wave of negativity from some nationalists lately. Is there something in our national DNA that tends to self-destruction? Heck, you'd only have to look at our diet and drinking habits to find some supporting evidence for that theory. But is it in our politics too?

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You know the political landscape of Scotland is in serious turmoil when this happens.

(See here for the whole story.)

"As we get closer to the referendum, people will realise that staying within the Union has substantial benefits for Scotland."
(James Kelly, Labour MSP, December 2011) (at 4m 20s)

"We've got a distinctive argument to make on the power of Scotland inside the United Kingdom."
(Johann Lamont, Labour leadership contender, December 2011) (at 23m 08s)

Sadly, both Mr Kelly and Ms Lamont ran out of time before they could actually explain what these substantial benefits and distinctive arguments were. Oh well.

Still waiting.

Labour's justice spokesman Richard Baker brought one of our favourite songs to mind today, with an outburst (reported in the Herald) that lays bare just exactly how stupid Scottish Labour still thinks the electorate is. A study by the OECD has found that the pay gap between the highest and lowest earners has grown more quickly in the UK than in any other high-income country since 1975, with a particularly sharp rise since 2005. With no detectable shame, Baker was quickly moved to note in response that:

"This survey only confirms what Labour has been saying for months now. Under the Tories the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

We hesitate, readers, to point out anything so blindingly obvious for fear of insulting your intelligence, but… of the six years between 2005 and now, Labour was the UK government for five of them. Of the 36 years between 1975 and the present day, Labour was in charge for almost exactly half (17 out of 36), and for 13 of the last 14.

Of course, we shouldn't be surprised that the lot of the poor didn't improve over that time – as Labour MP and Baker's prospective new leader in Scottish Labour, Tom Harris, has sneeringly reminded us recently, "We weren't set up as some sort of charity to help the poorest in society". But that Baker genuinely appears to believe everyone will already have forgotten Labour's record in power speaks more about the attitude of Scottish Labour than we could ever do.

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There are many good reasons not to envy Scottish Labour members, but the miserable choice they're being offered for their new leader must be near the top of the list right now. Last night's edition of Newsnight Scotland was devoted to a hustings between the three hopeful candidates at the BBC studios in Glasgow, and watching it felt like an intrusion on private grief.

To be fair, the setting didn't do much to portray the candidates in a good light. Newsnight's Raymond Buchanan was a clumsy host, alternately barging in over the top of the three when they were trying to give an answer then letting them waffle on when they were saying nothing at all. The audience was also a limp rag, putting up mostly feeble, long-winded and vague questions capable of inspiring nothing but empty platitudes from the contenders.

(One bloke in a red tie wasted about a minute of the show's limited airtime wittering on incomprehensibly about sport before Buchanan finally cut him off in exasperation, and the final audience contribution was particularly toe-curling. Some studenty girl came out with a half-baked Marxist polemic demanding to know what "direct action" the candidates were going to do about the nasty bankers and such. When Buchanan asked her what sort of direct action she'd like to see taken, she clearly wasn't expecting to be asked to provide a constructive suggestion and just stammered that she wanted to hear the candidates' plans. Even the vacant rhetoric she got in reply was better than the question deserved.)

But even allowing for the difficult circumstances, McIntosh, Lamont and Harris offered little to fire enthusiasm among the comrades, or even to distinguish themselves from each other. The only partial exception was Tom Harris, and we still can't tell if he's serious or just trying to use shock tactics to kick some life and sense into his party. Either way, we're not sure that coming out loudly and proudly in favour of tuition fees and nuclear power stations is the way to lead Labour to glorious recovery in Scotland.

Harris is also a dyed-in-the-wool Nat-basher, a strategy which failed Labour on an epic scale in 2011 and which Lamont and (especially) McIntosh appear to be backing away from as fast as is decent. We know these things because all three spent the vast majority of the broadcast talking not about Labour, or even about the Westminster coalition that's imposing savage austerity cuts on Scotland, but about the SNP.

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There’s only one story in the Scottish political media today. The explosive contents of the Scottish Social Attitudes survey have been seized on with glee by the SNP, leaving the Unionist camp in desperate damage-limitation mode. The news – first broken by the Express – that a whopping 65% of Scottish voters only need to be convinced that independence will benefit them by around £9 a week in order to vote for it has sent Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems into something of a panic, and it’s fascinating to watch both they and the predominantly-Unionist media try to spin it.

Tory Hoose takes the “we see no ships” angle, announcing that the SNP’s natural welcoming of the poll results is “hysterical grandstanding”, while rolling out David McLetchie to pick out a different section of the results and claim that “This is just one of the many polls that shows support for independence is still relatively low.”

The Scotsman goes for a similar approach, with trusty psephologist Prof. John Curtice sent in to find the most negative view of the survey possible, listing a whole slew of cautions and provisos and comparisons of dubious merit, eg pointing out that support for independence is still lower than that for devolution in 1999 (which is about as surprising as finding out that Andy Goram’s favourite fruit is oranges).

The Herald features a quote from Labour’s Margaret Curran that borders on flat-out hilarious in its twisting and turning to find a position from where the figures look bad for the SNP – eventually settling, like Curtice, on a bemusing comparison with 1999, which for all the relation it bears to the current economic and political climate might as well be 1929. The Herald also runs the most perceptive piece in the mainstream media, in which Robbie Dinwoodie observes that the “old scare stories” beloved of the Unionist parties are slowly but surely losing their power over the Scottish electorate.

The BBC, meanwhile, comes up with a fairly snappy at-a-glance summary of the results, but none of the media pick up on some of the survey’s stranger quirks.

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LabourHame allows Labour's frustrated grassroots to speak out for a positive approach to the referendum, relaxes its draconian comment censorship a little (for how long, we can only guess), and opens the floodgates.

As regular readers will know, as a supporter of independence this blog fervently hopes that Tom Harris wins the contest for the leadership of Scottish Labour. Not only because Comical Tom – a fervent pro-Unionist who has already proclaimed that "I don't want Scotland to run her own affairs" – would be a massive recruiting sergeant for the Yes campaign, but also because he's simply the most entertaining.

It recently dawned on us that by joining Youth Labour for just £1, we could actually help to make such a thing happen by having a vote in the leadership election. We duly filled out the form with some enthusiasm, but were sad to realise that we lived far too far away from any of the hustings to quiz Tom directly. Until, that is, he sportingly hosted a live Q&A session on his website…

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Combined spending in Scotland by the four main parties for both the 2010 UK general election and the 2011 Holyrood general election, in descending order:

LABOUR: £1,785,000

CONSERVATIVES: £1,546,000

SNP: £1,456,000

LIB DEM: £647,000

(Sources: here and here.)