A possible sighting coming up later today, readers, according to The Scotsman. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, this could be the big one.
We’re standing by.
There are some stories which persist long after they’ve been debunked, a recent example being Joan McAlpine’s supposed accusation that anyone opposing the SNP was “anti-Scottish”. However many times it was shown that she didn’t say any such thing, however often she explained what she HAD said, the lie kept being perpetuated (and will doubtless continue to be in the coming months and years) by people who knew full well it wasn’t true, because it suited their agenda to do so.
The notion that Scotland is massively subsidised by England is another such political legend, and we don’t imagine for a second that this story from today’s Sunday Times will stop the endless stream of idiots on the Telegraph, Mail and Express (both above and below the line) from continuing to assert it at every opportunity.
But at least now you can handily link them to the actual facts, even if they don’t want to hear them. The full article can be read below.
The Scottish independence campaign has been left reeling today, after two alert Wings Over Scotland readers brought our attention to the calamitous striking of a hammer blow that seems certain to all but guarantee a No vote in autumn 2014.
We don’t quite understand how persuading the English of anything is going to help, since they won’t have a vote in the referendum, but who are we to interfere in Unionist business? Rather more relevantly to the interests of this blog, the piece goes on to note that according to an unnamed “Scottish Tory spokesman”:
“We have to make a positive case for the Union.”
We couldn’t agree more. We are, as ever, all ears.
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TIME ELAPSED: 32 years, 0 months
ACTUAL SIGHTINGS OF POSITIVE CASE FOR UNION TO DATE: 0
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Keen followers of the “is it or isn’t it?” debate surrounding the legality of an independence referendum conducted without “permission” from Westminster have had much to digest recently. The much-travelled Dr Matt Qvortrup wrote a piece for the Herald yesterday [paywall] averring that – if we might strip it down to its barest bones – the legal status was actually quite strong, but didn’t really matter anyway as political reality would trump boring, nitpicky old law.
Unsurprisingly, this enraged Lallands Peat Worrier, who took several of the good Doctor’s assertions as something akin to a professional slight and launched a stinging rebuke in uncharacteristically blunt and earthy terms. Meanwhile, the UK Constitutional Law Group (comprising a number of distinguished academics) published a paper more in keeping with the Peat Worrier’s usual loquacious style, thoughtfully analysing both the legalities and the political ramifications and concluding that everyone really needed to knock their heads together and deliver the requisite mechanisms to Holyrood with the least possible delay.
Support for this view came from the Electoral Reform Society Scotland, who offered the opinion [Herald paywall link] that Holyrood should be given the explicit legal right to conduct the referendum by the UK government without any strings attached. Indeed, perhaps surprisingly the organisation went even further in suggesting that the Electoral Commission would not – despite the strenuous and sustained demands of the Unionist parties – be the appropriate body to oversee the vote.
Finally, blogosphere newcomer the Scottish Times revealed that the Scottish Democratic Alliance (yep, a new one on us too) has asked the Council of Europe to step in and monitor the referendum, fearing interference from Westminster that would contravene the UN Charter on the right of peoples to self-determination.
Pressure from impartial quarters does seem to be building on the UK Government to confer a Section 30 order on Holyrood swiftly and without conditions, although as we saw with the blunt refusal last May to enhance the Scotland Bill with measures commanding cross-party support in Edinburgh, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll listen. But with the SNP having added 2000 new members in a single month since David Cameron’s initial intervention in the debate, perhaps they should.
The image below is a (slightly edited) graph (untouched original here) from The Poverty Site, an independent blog which monitors official UK government stats relating to poverty. It shows the gaps between the two richest and two poorest deciles of society, and covers almost the entire period of the last three Labour governments.
We haven’t amended the data in any way – all we’ve done to it is add a couple of shaded grey boxes to make it easier to judge the positions of the lines over time, and two thin vertical black lines immediately to the right of the vertical axis, again for ease of illustration. The line on the left shows the size of the gap when Labour came to power in 1997 (about 26%) and the one to its right shows the size of the gap in 2009, just before Labour lost the 2010 election (about 29.5%).
What that tells us is that under 13 years of UK Labour governments with thumping majorities, the size of the inequality gap between the richest and poorest grew by around 13% – or if you like, a steady 1% a year. (Luckily and famously, Labour were “intensely relaxed” about that.) So next time you’re thinking of voting Labour – or voting to remain in a Union where either they or the Tories will always form the government – because you want a more equal society, all we’re saying is, maybe bear it in mind.
As our fast-growing number of readers (all viewing records broken again last week) will be glad to hear, we’re just about back online after a weekend cursing the ineptitude of the laughably-named TalkTalk Business (“Here to help you 24/7, where by 24/7 we mean 10/5”). We’ve still got a somewhat restricted service, but fortunately enough access to direct you to this excellent piece on Newsnet Scotland, which eschews the site’s unfortunate tendency towards wild-eyed polemic in favour of a calmly insightful and perceptive look at the reality of one of the Unionist camp’s favourite scare stories – that Scotland would be kicked out of the EU if it became independent.
It’s a terrific bit of analysis, pointing out how disastrous such a scenario would be for the rump UK and how it would also mean Scotland being able to walk away from the Union without any share of Britain’s crippling £1trn (and rising) debts. Call us optimists, but we’d love to believe it means the end of that particular tired old canard from the FUDs. We’re not holding our breath, though.
Proceedings in the House of Lords are little seen by the public. While it’s possible for the determined to locate online coverage in the depths of the internet, very little ever makes it to popular broadcast media, and as a result the general public remains mostly ignorant of what goes on there. So we’d very much recommend you find a few minutes to watch some of this. (Annoyingly requires Microsoft Silverlight.)*
It’s the Lords debate on the Scotland Bill, which took place on the 26th of January 2012. It starts at 11:36.55 in the embedded video above (we think the timestamp on the clip represents the time of day the debate took place), and goes on for some hours. Don’t panic, you don’t need to watch all of it – you’ll get the gist from the first 20 minutes or so, by watching the speeches from Lord Forsyth and Lord Foulkes.
There are no SNP representatives in the House of Lords. This is how they talk about us when we’re out of the room.
This blog doesn't share the eagerness of much of the centre-left to either abolish the House of Lords or make it an elected body. Politicians pandering to the public's most primitive prejudices in pursuit of power are responsible for much of the atrocious state of British democracy, and while we're uneasy with the exercise of mostly-unearned privilege, the Lords were responsible for obstructing some of Tony Blair's worst attacks on civil liberties, and have been the only voice speaking up against the coalition's brutal welfare "reforms". We're not so sure we trust them less than MPs, who regularly stand for election promising one thing then do the precise opposite in government.
There's also nothing exclusive to the Lords about ham-fisted attempts to insert ludicrous amendments into new bills. But it so happens that the most recent example has come from that direction. Conservative hereditary peer the Earl Of Caithness (who owes his position to ancestors over 600 years ago) has put forward a series of extraordinary alterations to the unloved Scotland Bill, currently making its weary way towards a likely rejection by the Scottish Parliament. They're unlikely to be passed, but even the attempt reveals a great deal about the mindset of Scottish Unionists.
(See here for the whole story.)
Northern Ireland’s politicians seem keen to get involved in the debate at the moment, with the latest contribution coming from Lee Reynolds, Director of Strategy for the Democratic Unionist Party, writing on the Slugger O’Toole blog.
“The Unionist case needs a Scottish and non-party political voice that will sell a positive narrative.”
Reynolds’ piece runs to over 750 words, concerning itself entirely with the need for the Unionist case to be made positively rather than negatively and insisting that the FUD camp needs to “sell the benefits of our Union”. Unfortunately, perhaps due to pressures of space, Mr Reynolds was not able personally to specify in the article what any of those benefits actually are. We’re confident someone will soon.
TIME ELAPSED: 31 years, 11 months
CONFIRMED SIGHTINGS OF POSITIVE CASE FOR UNION TO DATE: 0
(See here for the whole story.)
An alert viewer drew our attention to the latest call to arms, published in Tory Hoose and penned by Tom Elliott, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
To be honest we could barely be bothered building our hopes up this time, and sure enough out came the familiar tune. An independent Scotland would be bankrupt in a matter of days, just like the Republic of Ireland (hmm, no agenda there, we're sure), and Greece and Portugal and Iceland. The UK has saved us from economic disaster – um, you might want to take a look at the books, Tom – and "the choice facing the people of Scotland may be between a broke but independent Scotland or a comparatively prosperous Scotland still within the Union".
If that's the "convincing and positive case", we sure as heck wouldn't like to meet Mr Elliott when he's down in the dumps.
TIME ELAPSED: 31 years, 11 months
CONFIRMED SIGHTINGS OF POSITIVE CASE FOR UNION TO DATE: 0
There's an aspect of the recent constitutional brouhaha that we're a little surprised nobody's looked into (so far as we've noticed). Let's assume for a moment that the Scottish Parliament, as claimed last week by the UK Government's Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, does NOT have the legal power to conduct any kind of referendum into Scotland's constitutional future (far less a legally binding one). And let's assume, for the sake of argument, that for one reason or another – perhaps the refusal of the SNP to play ball in negotiations – Westminster declined to give it that power.
How, then, could the people of Scotland ever legally choose to leave the Union against England's wishes?
It is an inviolable democratic principle, in this country and many others, that no administration can bind the hands of its successors. So despite the wording of the Treaty Of Union which stated that its effects were to endure "forever after", the Treaty cannot be imposed for eternity by those who signed it in 1707. But if the Westminster Parliament is the only arbiter permitted to allow the Scottish people a plebiscite on revoking it, and it chooses not to do so, how might the Scots legitimately extract themselves from the UK without armed revolt?
Electing MPs to Westminster is no good – making up less than 10% of the Parliament they can't force any legislation through, even were every one of them to represent a nationalist party. And in the Scottish Parliament, where it IS possible to elect a majority government dedicated to withdrawing from the Union, we've just been expressly told that there is no authority to even ask the question, far less act on it.
A mass petition? Millions demonstrating on the streets? The people of Britain tried that with the Poll Tax and the Iraq war, and a fat lot of notice the government took.
The UK government currently IS offering to empower the Scottish Parliament to hold a referendum, but while hinting at all manner of terms and conditions and limitations. It could, of course, also withdraw that offer at any moment. So can anyone tell us the democratic means by which the people of Scotland could assert and enact their desire to leave the Union, without asking for England's permission first?
Should such a means not exist – and it would seem that it doesn't – then the idea of Westminster imposing any rules whatsoever on the referendum mandated to the SNP by the Scottish electorate is a plainly indefensible outrage against the most basic rights of civilised peoples. We are not England's prisoners, and for that reason if no other, we are confident that any legal "obstacles" will be overcome. Roll on 2014.
(See here for the whole story.)
Once again, we were lured into foolish optimism. "The irresistible case for England and Scotland remaining united", thundered the Daily Mail's editorial headline. Sadly, the reality turned out all too familiar – a lengthy rant about how Scotland was too wee, too poor and too stupid to go it alone, how we'd be crushed by a £140bn (new high score!) share of UK debt, how we couldn't afford to bail out the "Scottish" banks again (yawn), how we'd struggle without the £10bn a year subsidy from England (oh dear). But then our hopes sparked momentarily into life again:
This time, here it must surely come! The fabled, mythical "positive case"! But sadly not. Like so many before it, the Mail apparently assumed this positive case to be axiomatic, so self-evidently obvious that it required no explanation, and the editorial came to an abrupt end. We should know better by now.
TIME ELAPSED: 31 years, 11 months
CONFIRMED SIGHTINGS OF POSITIVE CASE FOR UNION TO DATE: 0
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
