Wings Over Scotland

To be honest, we’re still trying to work out what happened here. The Secretary of State for Scotland was well and truly slapped up and down the room yesterday by a panel of peers in the House Of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, every one of whom was a Unionist. One after another lined up to lambast the hapless minister with stinging attacks and rebukes in a session that caught most observers used to the Lords’ normal cosy atmosphere of mutual Nat-bashing completely unawares.

It seems far too late in the day for Westminster’s second chamber to present itself as the heroic defender of the people of Scotland. It would be much too ironic for the unelected Barons and Earls and whatnot to be doing it in the name of democracy. And there seems little chance this one-day aberration will suddenly convince anyone to buy the implausible notion that the Committee is an impartial investigator into the issues surrounding Scottish independence.

(The Herald reported proceedings almost word-for-word the same way STV did, under the headline “Michael Moore savaged by Unionist peers over EU row”, but the poor old Scotsman was so bewildered it couldn’t bring itself to mention Moore’s humiliation at all, glossing over the entire thing with a comically absurd assessment of how his evidence to the Committee “undermines one of the key claims of the SNP and Yes Scotland campaign over economic security for an independent Scotland”.)

So frankly, readers, your guess is as good as ours as to what the noble lords were up to. A momentary outbreak of conscience? One too many sherries at the office Christmas do? If you’ve got any suggestions, we’re all ears.

Supporters of independence often level the accusation at Unionists that they think Scotland is “too wee, too poor and too stupid” to thrive on its own. Unionists generally affect great insult at the suggestion, and have taken to being much more circumspect about the first two, nowadays tending to claim that Scotland could survive without Westminster control, just that it shouldn’t, because of all the positive aspects of the Union such as [SUB FILL IN LATER PLEASE].

Accordingly, the “too wee, too poor” element of the argument against independence has taken something of a back seat in the last year or so, and the “too stupid” part has been correspondingly pushed to the foreground.

Firstly, we’re simply told that – for some reason – Scotland does better if all its big decisions are taken in London, leading inescapably to the conclusion that we’re not as bright as our betters to the south. But more crudely, we’re also shown on a regular basis just how bad independence could be.

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Nick Clegg’s speech on demonising and punishing the poor and sick (in which he displayed a heroic willingness to take one for the coalition team by declaring “the Liberal Democrats are now the party of welfare reform”) brought the issue of the “something for nothing” culture back to the forefront today.

Scots, of course, are already familiar with the leader of the Holyrood opposition standing up and angrily telling the chamber how unsustainable and morally wrong it is that well-off people such as herself are entitled to universal benefits at state expense.

Yet numerous reports emphasise that universality is a solution that’s practical as well as desirable, because it’s economically efficient as well as solving the problem of people suffering because they’re unable or unwilling to claim benefits they need and ultimately costing the state far more money in remedial care.

It’s a tricky old pickle and no mistake. So entirely free of charge, we’ve had a wee think and come up with a policy that squares the circle, so that Johann Lamont can offer to solve the problem without condemning hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Scots (and Labour MSPs) to lives of unending misery.

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about the implications of independence for Scotland and its membership of the EU. As we’ve noted this week, the SNP has long acknowledged that the Scottish government would have to renegotiate terms of EU membership, but it’s highly unlikely that the EU would move to expel Scotland from the EU given the interaction between Scotland and the continent in goods, services, finances and people. As John Swinney recently noted:

“Scotland would not be applying for membership. Scotland is already a member of the European Union, our citizens are EU citizens today, we follow all of the EU relevant provisions that we are required to follow.

“So the key point is any negotiation would be taking place not to apply for membership, but for membership from within the European Union, which is the key distinction which has to be remembered in this debate.

“What we have always accepted is there has to be a negotiation about the detail and the terms of Scotland’s membership of the European Union, but crucially that will be taking place at a time when we are still part of the United Kingdom, still part of the European Union, of which we have been members for 40 years.

But if, just for the sake of argument Scotland was declared a new state and somehow cast out of this expansionist community, would it be the end? By being declared a brand-new nation Scotland would inherit all of the fixed assets and natural resources within our internationally-recognised borders, but none of the obligations of the old state – like a share of the national debt or being bound by international treaties.

Tempting, no? Sure, it would be awkward for a while, what with having to negotiate new treaties and being known as the only country in European history that the EU didn’t want in it, but there are alternatives to the EU.

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Contrary to what might sometimes seem to be the case, we don’t much like attacking the Scottish media, particularly the self-styled “quality” end of the market. Any good democracy needs a free press to function, and with newspaper sales in freefall the economic model for proper investigative and analytical journalism faces the biggest challenge in its history. We criticise the press not because we want to destroy it, but because we want it to live, and more importantly to be worthy of that life.

There is much to cherish in the pages of the Herald and the Scotsman, even if some of it (including but not limited to Iain Macwhirter and Ian Bell in the Herald, and Ewan Crawford and George Kerevan in the Scotsman) is used to provide a figleaf of balance behind which the papers can hide their bias. But it’s impossible for the publications in question to credibly protest that bias in the light of weeks like the past one, when the Scottish and UK press has united around a campaign of what cannot be reasonably described as anything other than concerted, co-ordinated lying.

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It’s possible to watch video footage of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the Holyrood chamber on Thursday (and the debate following it) online, but it’s rather difficult to find the text in searchable form. The only place we were able to locate it took some advanced-level Googling to find and was behind a paywall, so we’ve reprinted it below for reference, because we’re about to cite it in another article.

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The anti-independence campaign and the Scottish media have been loudly affecting great triumph recently over a rather curious claim. Namely, they’ve been insisting the Scottish Government’s acknowledgement that it would be required to negotiate the terms of an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union represents some manner of U-turn on an alleged previous assertion to the contrary.

(Ken MacIntosh, for example, tells the chamber at 21m that the SNP “has finally admitted that the terms of Scotland’s EU membership are a matter of negotiation”.)

Let’s examine the reality.

“Choosing Scotland’s Future” was the title of a Scottish Government document published in 2007 as part of what the SNP called the National Conversation. Clause 3.18 on page 22 reads as follows (our emphasis):

“Negotiations would also be required concerning the terms of Scotland’s (and the rest of the United Kingdom’s) continuing membership of the European Union and other international bodies to which Scotland currently belongs as a component nation of the United Kingdom.”

Clause 3.21 on the next page continues (our emphasis again):

“An independent Scotland would continue in the European Union and bear the burdens and fulfil the responsibilities of membership. Following negotiations on the detailed terms of membership, Scotland would be in a similar position to other European Union member states of a similar size.”

Well, that seems to wrap that up.

What with all the hoo-ha about what Jose Manuel Barroso did and didn’t say about membership of the EU this week, we decided – what with being proper journalists and everything – to take matters into our own hands in an attempt to get to the truth. Caroline Winchester is the European Commission’s Press & Policy Officer at its Scottish office in Edinburgh. We emailed her directly yesterday. (Emphasis added.)

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If there’s one thing we all ought to grudgingly respect about the No campaign, it’s its ability to get all its ducks in a row and pump out an absolutely united and consistent lie. It’s a lot like a World War 1 artillery barrage – impressive in the sheer co-ordinated brute force of its display, even if it’s in fact completely useless in achieving its desired objective and ultimately leads only to a slaughter of its own troops.

Jose Manuel Barroso must be marvelling at it today. Time after time after time he’s quite unmistakeably said “I am NOT referring to Scotland, I’m talking in generalities”, only for the British media to report it, with a single unified voice, as the EC President making clear and specific proclamations directly about Scotland.

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Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, has said that in the event that Scotland votes for independence in 2014 then the new state of Scotland would have to apply for EU membership all over again. Well, I hope Scottish residents vote to stay in the UK and I think the possibility that they may not is mainly media and political hype. But I’d hate to see the kind of tosh we’re being treated to today become central to what should, after all, be a serious debate.

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Unionists are very excited this afternoon about the latest development in the EU membership debate. A BBC interview with European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso repeated the assertion (or rather, the deduction from an implication) that an independent Scotland would have to apply for entry to the European Union as a new state. We’ll limit ourselves to a few factual observations.

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There’s a remarkable consistency from defence experts when it comes to the question of the relocation of the UK’s nuclear “deterrent” in the event of Scottish independence. Time and again, when anyone who isn’t a politician is asked the question, they give the same answer: it can’t be done.

The latest is Sir David Omand, a man described by the Scotsman today as “Tony Blair’s spymaster”. The former head of GCHQ offered the view that “I don’t see a feasible alternative site at reasonable cost. My fear is that it would precipitate the UK out of the nuclear business”, adding his weight to an opinion previously expressed by the former First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord West and other “senior military sources”.

That opinion is curiously at odds with that of most Unionist politicians – particularly Labour ones who insist that independence would merely move Trident “a couple of hundred miles down the M74” and therefore not make any significant contribution to global nuclear disarmament (and therefore be pointless). It’s easy to see why they would make that claim while trying to defend the Union. It’s rather harder to see why the various defence experts would have to gain from lying about it.

More remarkable still, though, is the second part of the Scotsman’s piece on Sir David, in which he’s quoted by the paper as saying “it should be made clear to Scots that before any referendum that the government of an independent Scotland would be forced to cover the cost of any removal of Trident.”

It’s a suggestion rather akin to if you’d let someone park their car on your driveway as a favour in return for them occasionally picking up some shopping for you in it. Then you decide you’d rather rip up the driveway and have a nice front garden (and get your own shopping in future), but your acquaintance demands that YOU pay to have the car towed away and to build them a new garage to keep it in.

We don’t think those negotiations would last long, do you?