Wings Over Scotland

The Irish Times, 26 November 2012:

“The DUP will campaign against Scotland voting for independence in 2014, party deputy leader Nigel Dodds told his party’s annual conference on Saturday. The North Belfast MP said that Unionists watched with sadness the attempt by Scottish nationalists to “undo the bonds of union which bound us through history”.

“But just as we have advocated the Union here in Northern Ireland, so we will be the advocates for the union in the midst of a Scottish referendum. Just as we have been proved right here, so, I believe, the people of Scotland will see that we are better together, better when we are united as one,” said Mr Dodds.

“This party believes strongly that, together, the United Kingdom has significant influence in the world. The break-up of the Union would be financially, culturally and politically devastating for all of the British people. As Unionists we oppose any action that would erode the shared cohesion of the constituent parts which make up this kingdom,” he said.”

Yes. We saw you “advocating the Union” last week.

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The modern Scottish independence movement is 84 years old, dating back to the 1928 formation of the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the SNP. It is a peaceful, inclusive, civic and democratic movement – to the best of our knowledge, and almost uniquely, not a single life has been lost in pursuit of Scottish independence.

Despite this, so-called “Unionists” (more properly described as British nationalists) still regularly try to portray independence campaigners as violent racists. As recently as a few days ago, one prominent Labour activist frequently employed as a commentator on BBC Scotland political shows attempted to perpetuate baseless (but oft-repeated by Unionists) 70-year-old smears that the former SNP leader Arthur Donaldson was a Nazi sympathiser engaged in attempts to collaborate with the Germans during WW2, sabotage the British war effort and set up a Vichy-style government in Scotland. These claims were cited, astonishingly, as evidence of “the SNP’s fascist past”.

Such attacks are all the more bizarre given the constant reminders on the news that the only nationalists attempting to secure their goals by violence in the United Kingdom are those who do so in the name of Britishness, waving the Union Jack.

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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?

Scotland’s future within (or outside) the European Union (EU) has once again hit the headlines, with the Scotsman reporting that “the European Commission has written to a House of Lords committee stating that if Scots voters back independence, existing treaties which cover the UK’s EU membership will ‘cease to apply’”.

The Scotland Office is quoted in the article as saying that Scots have the right to know the full implications for Scotland if it were to “leave the UK family”. But just before we reach the meat of this topic, it’s rather disingenuous to claim that standing on your own two feet is akin to leaving a family.

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Perhaps the paper was confused after watching yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show, on which the host asked the question (at 37m) “Are you in favour of a squeeze on welfare?”, to which the allegedly-Labour politician Mr Balls replied “Of course!”

(Balls subsequently tried to waffle his way out of the response by claiming that he’d reduce the welfare bill by creating jobs, but Marr had expressly asked whether he backed the specific cuts to in-work benefits in the current welfare reform bill, and despite his repeating the question several times Balls refused to give an answer.)

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This last week has seen the publication of a report that saw the NHS in Scotland deliver its “best performance ever”. The NHS Scotland Chief Executive’s Annual Report 2010/11 was full of praise for the organisation and the efforts it has made to improve safety, service and value in times of dwindling budgets.

“Few issues are as important to us as our health and the quality of the health services we receive. When we come into contact with the health service, we want to know that we are receiving the best possible care – care that is compassionate and safe, delivered by the most competent practitioners and planned with us at the very heart of the decisions about our care. We want to have confidence in the quality and effectiveness of any treatment.

“Some of the most significant improvements in quality include the achievement of the shortest ever waiting times for outpatient and inpatient appointments, including progress towards achieving a maximum wait of 18 weeks between referral and treatment, significant reductions in Healthcare Associated Infection to the lowest levels ever recorded and other measurable improvements in safety in hospitals.

There have been impressive increases in the numbers of people accessing smoking cessation and alcohol brief intervention services, increases in the proportion of older people being supported to stay at home through improvements in services for those with long term conditions, and reductions in the need for people to stay overnight in hospital for treatment or procedures.”

The findings were reported in the national news in a generally positive manner, such as this BBC article published on the 24th of November, detailing the efforts of the management and staff in Scotland and the results they’d managed to achieve.

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But enough about Labour. UKIP also put in some strong performances in the three Westminster polls last night, scoring two second-place finishes and one third place on a night when the Lib Dems sank to an astonishing EIGHTH and the BNP outpolled the Tories in the same Rotherham seat. The truly disturbing thing, though – speaking as a current resident of England – was the total absence of a single viable party of the left.

The turnout in all three elections was dismal, with two of them barely scraping past the 25% mark and the most popular just managing to get a third of voters out. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that at least a significant part of the reason for that may be the near-total lack of meaningful choice available.

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Analysis later. If you simply want to read the two passages of the Leveson Inquiry’s report which concern the actions of the First Minister without wading through 2000 or so pages, you’ll find them below. Bored readers may wish to compare the contents with our own assessment/predictions from five months ago. (NOTE: Where it says “emphasis added”, the emphasis in question was added by Lord Leveson, not by us.)

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It was reported in the Scotsman on Wednesday that the President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus had raised doubts over whether an independent Scotland could successfully keep using Sterling, because when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993 it took only 38 days for the currency union to split.

His views led to a rush of comments from supporters of the UK union arguing that a currency union is only possible with political union. Then a spokesman from the Treasury asserted that protectionism grew between the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic after the split.

The evidence cited by the Treasury spokesman was the fall in Slovak exports to the Czech Republic from 42% of all exports to 13% between 1993 and 2003. Conversely, Czech Republic exports to the Slovak Republic fell from 22% of total exports to 8%. He noted ominously that currently 59% of Scottish exports are to the rest of the UK.

While the basic facts cited are correct, the interpretations put on them by Vaclav Klaus and the UK Treasury spokesman are, shall we say, at odds with the truth.

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