Labour, nationalists of the blood
Kate Higgins makes an excellent observation over on A Burdz Eye View today. In passing, while commenting on the whole referendum furore, she picks up on an extraordinary piece in yesterday's Scotland On Sunday (that we didn't have time to go into in all the mayhem of Cameron's sudden fit of insanity), revealing that a Labour peer has put forward an amendment to the Scotland Bill which if passed would give the vote to any Scots-born UK resident, regardless of whether they live in Scotland.
At first glance this just seems like a crude and possibly unwise attempt to tip the scales of the vote in favour of the No camp, based on the rather shaky presumption that expats living in England are more likely to be Unionists. (Speaking as one such expat, I can assure Baroness Taylor of Bolton that she's right out of luck.) But looked at more closely it's something much more reckless and sinister.
Opponents of nationalism as a broad ideological position have trouble making their objections stick to the SNP, precisely because the SNP's brand of nationalism isn't really nationalism at all in the conventional sense of the term. So-called "civic nationalism" is not based on a person's ethnicity, but merely on where they live. Whatever colour you are, wherever you're from and whatever deity (if any) you believe in, you can become "Scottish" simply by moving to Scotland, and have exactly the same rights as anyone born and bred there. It's a highly inclusive, heartwarming creed reflected in the SNP's positive, welcoming attitude towards immigration, compared to the viciously resentful one more commonly seen in England.
But Labour's ill-considered intervention places the party firmly on the side of "ethnic nationalism" – the poisonous, bitter strain of the concept that has led to bigotry, wars and genocide across the globe. The logical extrapolation of the view that where you were born is what matters is that non-native Scots shouldn't be allowed a vote in the referendum, and while Labour aren't quite stupid enough to have actually put forward such a thing in the amendment, the inescapable racist undertones of the proposal (while doubtless not consciously intended) have opened a can of very rotten worms that they'll do well to get away from the stink of. For that at least, they're likely to be offering prayers of thanks to David Cameron for grabbing all the headlines.
Why should where someone was born matter at all? Are they seriously suggesting someone who was born here to English parents on a temporary job placement, and who moved back to England at the age of two months, should have a vote? What about if it was American parents, and America they moved back to?
Wait for them to start suggesting this should be widened to include anyone with a parent or grandparent born in Scotland. Then, do we deny people the vote who have lived here all their lives, just because they were born in Carlisle? Or New York? Or maybe they don't qualify because although they were born here and have always lived here, they have a parent or grandparent born somewhere else?
The term "slippery slope" doesn't even begin to cover it. It's completely pernicious.
i have a degree of sympathy for those who have only recently moved away from scotland, say within the pass year. however, i fully understand that to enfranchise individuals outwith the country would be extremely qestionable.
Morag: Or how about, say, if a Scottish person were born to Scottish parents whilst they were temporarily resident in the U.S.? Oh, erm… http://supreme.justia.com/us/169/649/case.html.
Jus soli is much less common than jus sanguinis where citizenship is concerned, but in and of itself it's also not an especially outrageous concept; "slippery slope" would be better described as "perhaps slightly moist but not in the least bit precarious". What would concern me more in this particular instance is that Baroness Taylor apparently sees fit to impose on Scottish ballots something that was very specifically removed from statutes on British nationality nearly 30 years ago.
That happened to a school friend of mine. She was born in the USA when her mother gave birth prematurely on a short visit. She got US citizenship whether she liked it or not. Her parents said they would have got if oficially rescinded if she'd been a boy – the Vietman war was on at the time, with the draft. I don't think she got the vote in the USA though!
But it's not about where you were born, it's about where you're resident. There are going to be some hard cases, but as soon as you start bending that, you're into a lot of potential trouble.