Wings Over Scotland

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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The Guardian carries a rather provocative piece today, suggesting that the SNP and the other nationalist parties at Westminster might do a deal with the Tories to push through their controversial proposals on changing (or gerrymandering, as some would have it) the UK’s constituency boundaries, in return for a radical overhaul of the Scottish constitution which would hand an unprecedented package of powers just short of full independence to the Holyrood parliament.

The plans are generally presumed to be electorally advantageous to the Conservatives, who currently have to secure considerably more votes to form a majority than Labour do, and the Lib Dems have vowed not to back their coalition partners on the issue after House Of Lords reform was shelved, leaving the Tories in need of votes from the smaller opposition parties to have any chance of getting the legislation through.

We’ll put aside for a moment the unworthy notion that if the Lib Dems are vowing to oppose the changes then that almost certainly means they’ll end up voting for them, and concentrate instead on the broader plausibility of the story, which appears to be sourced solely from a single former Tory MEP. Would the SNP really enter such a Faustian pact with the Tories for the sake of devo max? Let’s delve into the detail.

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When the No campaign launched its website, the Unionist parties behind it helpfully included video clips of what they called “real Scots” giving their reasons for wanting to keep the UK together. The most repeated assertion in the series of testimonies was that shipbuilding would cease to exist in an independent Scotland.

First there was Tanya, who reckons we’re stronger as a “family unit”, that apprenticeships will vanish overnight somehow (or possibly be made illegal, we haven’t ascertained the logic of them just vanishing yet) and that we should stick together to build big warships to show the world what we can do.

Next up we had Robert, whose view is that there would be no shipbuilding in an independent Scotland. Presumably we’ll just be using strong language to keep enemies from our waters. (In fairness, Robert does admit that he hopes, rather than knows, that shipbuilding on the Clyde will have a future within the UK.)

Then there was Craig, proud to build UK warships and who believes there will be no work under independence. His argument takes a subtly different tack: “There’s no commercial shipping at all, it’s all MoD work, that’s all we get, that’s what sustains us, that’s what keeps these doors open here is MoD work, and Rosyth as well, so if we’re not going to build commercial ships and all we’re going to build is defence and frigates and aircraft carriers then that’s our livelihoods and that’s what keeps us alive”.

Finally we have Frank, who believes that shipbuilding is safe within the UK. “We build ships to the world and we’re fantastic at that!” is his view, though he offers no explanation as to why we would suddenly lose the ability to construct a seaworthy vessel if not ruled from Westminster.

So that’s four repetitions of the same argument – that an independent Scotland would have no shipbuilding as only the MoD uses the yards on the Clyde. But does any reality underpin the assertion? Let’s find out.

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Most newspapers today are reporting concerns over the future of the UK’s three remaining naval shipyards, located in Portsmouth on the south coast of England, and at Govan and Scotstoun on the Clyde. Owners BAE Systems have strongly hinted that at least one is likely to close, with a decision expected by the end of 2012, and the two Glasgow yards (which more or less face each other across the river) tend to be treated as a single unit.

The relevance of the outcome to the independence debate is obvious. Shipbuilding on the Clyde has long been a totemic feature of the argument for the Union, with Labour and Conservatives alike long having insisted that there would be no chance of the rUK commissioning warships from an independent Scotland – Labour MP Ian Davidson is quoted today saying that very thing:

“Obviously if Scotland were to separate from the United Kingdom, then the terms of business would preclude any orders for the Type 26 being placed on the Clyde.”

So the problem for the Westminster government is clear: shut the Clyde yards, handing the SNP and the Yes campaign huge propaganda victories, or shut Portsmouth, costing thousands of jobs in an almost entirely Tory area where only one of the seats currently held by the party (Gosport, a majority of 15,000) could be classed as “safe”.

It’s difficult to picture a world in which the Conservatives would sacrifice 5000 jobs in their own heartland in order to save 3000 in Glasgow, but to not do so would be to torpedo the “Better Together” campaign to devastating effect – an option which the party may find more tolerable if only because the explosion would also damage Labour in its biggest remaining Scottish stronghold.

Of course, the independence movement gets a big stick to beat the Union with in either case – were Portsmouth to be closed, the rUK would be left with no facilities for warship construction at all, making the threats of the likes of Ian Davidson sound even more hollow. Non-combat vessels are one thing, but would the rUK really commission its battleships, frigates and aircraft carriers from the other side of the world rather than a tried-and-trusted contractor a few miles across the border – particularly if it was seeking co-operation from its neighbour over the location of Trident submarines while London found somewhere in its own waters to base them?

Not only shipyard workers will be awaiting the decision with trepidation.

As attentive readers will know, I currently live in the leafy Georgian city of Bath. Just a few miles down the road is a small town called Frome, where interesting things have been happening over the last 18 months or so. Today’s edition of the Independent has a pretty decent one-stop guide to them, which is well worth a read in full.

By way of a trailer, though, we’ll pick out a few soundbite snippets for you.

“united in being fed up with their town council’s institutional wrangling and party-political self-interest”

“set about making their town a better place to live”

“it’s the people who live in Frome that know what’s best for the area”

“hostility, stonewalling and outright non-cooperation from the established parties”

“an incredible 75% increase in voter turnout”

“In Westminster… elected officials toe their party line and avoid contentious issues; maintaining the status quo to the detriment of progressive debate… always eager to discredit their opponents, but much more reticent when it comes to their own ideas… the sole aim of the main political parties is not public service, but to get power, and once they have it to cling on at all costs“

“In contrast to this partisan deadlock, the [Frome] councilors are proud to point out that… they have not yet once failed to reach a democratic consensus on any issue.”

Running your own affairs sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

A press release on the always-positive Scottish Labour website this morning blares a wake-up call to the reckless and irresponsible Scottish Government. “IPPR Report Shows SNP Economic Policy Is Financially Illiterate”, it rages, going on to quote the party’s finance spokesman Ken Macintosh:

“This report shows that the SNP’s economic policy is financially illiterate. Not only do we get more spending than we raise as a result of being in the Union, but the SNP’s commitment to turn Scotland into a low-tax corner of Europe would see revenues plummet and public spending slashed to the bone. Scotland would be crippled by what could only be described as economic suicide.”

Oof. Strong words for sure. Hang on, though – which SNP economic policy are we actually talking about here? The preamble to Macintosh’s furious blast references “the SNP’s plans to cut Corporation Tax to 12.5%”. But the only problem with that is that the SNP doesn’t appear to have any such plans.

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We don’t know if there’s ever been an official competition for “Most British Place In Scotland”, but if there was it’s a pretty safe bet that Ibrox Stadium would win it at a canter. So we don’t suppose we ought to be surprised that this is what happened there just before the kick-off of yesterday’s SFL3 match against Peterhead:

The display was only one part of a touching and solemn commemoration of the fallen of two world wars which also included the firing of an artillery gun on the pitch (“Hey, survivors of enemy barrages, here’s a fun trip down memory lane for you!”), Broxi Bear standing with his big comedy foam head bowed in the centre circle for the minute’s silence and – we promise we’re not making any of this up – a bunch of Royal Marines abseiling down from the Govan Stand roof with the match ball.

Now, we’re sure this whole grotesque circus was conducted with the best of intentions. But anyone juxtaposing the poppy with a national flag – with any national flag – has misunderstood what it is that the poppy is supposed to stand for in the most complete and catastrophic way imaginable. This was the poppy as symbol not of remembrance and sacrifice and tragedy, but of victory.

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It can be a full-time job keeping up with the many inconsistencies and contradictions in the anti-independence campaign. (Labour’s professed hatred for the Tories but willingness to let them govern Scotland when Scottish voters reject them, and the Conservatives’ belief in the UK Union but deep-seated antipathy to the European one, leap out as two of the more obvious examples.) Today’s is a corker, though.

Attentive readers will recall that the “Better Together” camp has spent the five months since its launch constantly warning Scots that independence would be “irrevocable”. Here’s figurehead Alistair Darling being reported in the Telegraph as saying just that at the No campaign’s launch in June of this year (our emphasis, as usual):

“This is not about picking a government for the next five years. If we decide to go down the independence route it is an irrevocable step – you’re talking about a completely different constitutional relationship, maybe for the next 200 or 300 years.”

Pretty unequivocal, then – independence is forever, no going back in our lifetime, or that of our children, or their children, or their children. But wait. Fast-forward to last night and the former Chancellor appears to have had a radical change of heart, in a BBC story headlined “Darling predicts independent Scotland would rejoin UK”:

“Speaking as he delivered this year’s John P Mackintosh Memorial Lecture in Prestonpans, East Lothian, on Friday evening, [Darling] said the ‘most obvious problem’ with a common currency was that ‘sooner or later it takes you to economic and then political union. So Scotland would leave the UK only to end up in the same place as it began, with all the trauma that would entail.'”

Of course, if you’re a Wings Over Scotland reader you already knew the “irrevocable” line was a load of rubbish that could only be true if the core claim – and indeed, the very name – of “Better Together” was a cynical lie. But it’s nice to see Mr Darling admit it this early in the day. Which strident assertion, we wonder, will he recant next?

As with any long campaign, we’re a bit worried that we might have to spend the next two years saying the same things over and over again, because the main Unionist tactic seems to be to keep asking questions after they’ve been answered a hundred times. That said, when you’ve got your hands full with domestic mini-crises (as we’ve had all this week), it can be quite useful to have already covered the day’s main topics and be able to just point people at the archives before rushing off to fight the latest fire.

• On Ian Davidson moaning this morning about the “biased” referendum question.
• On Alastair Darling tonight joining the ranks of those in the Unionist camp who think being “foreign” is axiomatically a bad thing.
• And on Michael Moore yesterday promising new powers if Scotland votes No.

If we don’t have a heart attack before then, see you tomorrow.

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Sources: [1], [2] and [3].

Some alert listeners picked up a curious story on today’s edition of Good Morning Scotland, which was reported on the Tattie Scones blog and which we immediately set about investigating further. It was another outing for the “Scotland could be partitioned after the independence referendum” nonsense first peddled by a Tory peer back in January of this year, and picked up by unhinged Scotsman columnist Michael Kelly in August, but the latest advocate of slicing Scotland into countless separate parts that could require you to cross international borders a dozen times on a drive from Dumfries to Dingwall was our old pal Ian Davidson.

The Glasgow MP, who to the astonishment of alien observers from far-off galaxies has been placed in charge of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee in order to conduct a fully impartial analysis of Scottish “separation”, apparently made the suggestion sometime this week, but GMS curiously failed to include either an interview or a quote in its 69-second news report, which you can hear in its entirety by clicking on this link.

The piece also suggested that some of Davidson’s own colleagues were among those pouring scorn on the ludicrous notion, but declined to identify any of them. It wasn’t repeated in the rest of the programme, and we’re still none the wiser as to when and where the comments were made. (Although we know when it wasn’t.)

If any reader can enlighten us, please feel free.

There was a shock admission from Anas Sarwar, “deputy” leader of Scottish Labour, when speaking about the referendum on BBC Scotland’s “The Big Debate” last night:

“This will be the biggest decision that any of you will make in your lifetime, and what we need actually is Yes.”

It’s not every day we agree with the often factually-challenged MP for Glasgow Central, but this time we think he’s hit the nail square on the head.

(Because it’s fine to just cut people’s quotes short to suit your own purposes, right?)

A front-page piece in today’s Scotland On Sunday expands on Gordon Brown’s attempted intervention in the independence debate yesterday with an extraordinary headline which appears to be based on an actual quote from the former Prime Minister: “SNP plan makes Scotland a colony, claims Gordon Brown”.

Sure enough, Brown is reported as saying that an independence for Scotland would be “a form of self-imposed colonialism more reminiscent of the old empire than of the modern world”. Which raises an obvious question: given that an independent Scotland would by any definition have vastly more control of its own affairs than it does now, doesn’t that mean it must currently be something far less than a colony?

The only status we can think of for a nation that’s arguably lower than a “colony” is that of a vassal state. Wikipedia’s definition of that term certainly seems to apply to Scotland: we pay “tribute” to the UK (by contributing a greater share of its revenues than we get back in spending), and we also “provide military power to the dominant state”, both directly in the form of troops and by giving a home to the UK’s nuclear weapons, an important political tool which it wouldn’t be able to retain otherwise.

Wiki goes on to add that a more common modern term for a vassal state is “puppet state”. If you’ve got a minute, Gordon, can you just confirm for us that you and the rest of the Unionist alliance currently see Scotland as a puppet state of England? Cheers.