Wings Over Scotland

Herald View in the Sunday Herald, 24 November 2013:

“The geriatric forecasts of the IFS are surely a vision of Scotland if it stays in the UK. Without a new immigration policy and economic policies that keep skilled Scots families in Scotland, how can we avoid an ageing population?

Carwyn Jones has also joined the clamour for the Barnett Formula on Scottish public spending to be cut. The message is clear: within the union Scotland faces a future of public spending constraints, falling population and economic decline. Scottish representation in Westminster will likely be cut under the McKay Commission into the consequences of devolution.

The Scottish Parliament will have to pay its way by raising taxes in Scotland, without having access to oil revenues or the ability to legislate for growth. Scotland may be dragged out of Europe if it remains in the UK.

This is the off-the-peg future offered by the unionists. They’d better have a care: Scots might actually start listening to what they say.”

It’s nice to know that – finally – we’re not the only ones paying attention.

So we’re pretty embarrassed that we’ve only just put these two things together. We’ve been spending a fair bit of time recently pointing out that there’s almost no chance of the Barnett Formula – in essence, a mechanism for returning to Scotland some of the excess money it sends to Westminster in the form of oil revenue and tax receipts – being retained after the next UK general election.

We’ve also spent a good six months highlighting that the possibility of Holyrood being given “more tax powers” after a No vote is actually a trap, not in reality offering more power at all, but more responsibility. (Because it does you no good to have to collect your own tax revenue – the power lies in deciding how your tax revenue is spent.)

And duh, it’s taken us till now to see the connection. Boy, is our face red.

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That’s how often they tell us.

“The Barnett Formula, under which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive more public spending per head than England, has long rankled south of the border. Even Joel Barnett, who was chief secretary to the Treasury when the system was introduced in the Seventies as a temporary measure, subsequently disowned it.

 If the Scots vote to remain in the UK, as we hope they do, it cannot be as a result of a bribe from the English. A few years ago, the Calman Commission recommended scrapping Barnett, reducing income taxes in Scotland and then allowing Holyrood to levy its own rate on top, introducing an enhanced element of accountability and fiscal self-governance.

Such reforms should be openly debated ahead of the referendum: for the Scottish people are entitled to know that even if they vote to stay in the UK, the current method of financing public spending should not be allowed to continue.”

Our emphasis, from today’s “Telegraph View”.

The Barnett Formula is worth, by our sums, approximately £7bn a year to the Scottish economy. Bear it in mind when you’re being told about the “black hole” in Scotland’s finances after a Yes vote, because even if you vote No you can wave bye-bye to Barnett, and then Scotland really WILL be looking into a black hole.

We’re getting fair warning, folks. Pay heed.

Here’s the Labour First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, one year ago:

“Asked if he could see Barnett reformed without touching the current generous allocation of funds to Scotland, Mr Jones said:

‘It would be difficult to envisage a situation where there would be widespread Barnett reform with an independence referendum pending in Scotland, and with a Scottish Chief Secretary to the Treasury I think that’s unlikely. The problem has been in years gone by that you can’t address the Barnett Formula unless you address the whole of it.’

The First Minister said it was difficult to predict a timescale because there was no timetable for the first step – Barnett reform. Asked whether he got a sense from Danny Alexander that he had an appetite for reform, Mr Jones said:

‘No, I don’t – and I can understand why. He’s a Scottish Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Reforming a system that wouldn’t help Scotland is not something that would be high on his agenda. I certainly can’t see it happening before 2014 and the Scottish referendum.‘”

Jones is all over the papers today with his bizarre delusions-of-influence assertion that he would have some sort of veto over a Sterling currency union between the rUK and an independent Scotland (“Wales could block efforts by an independent Scotland to join a pound-sharing pact”, reports the Scotsman).

For perspective, imagine Alex Salmond being given a veto over the result of a UK referendum to leave the EU. Stop laughing, the article’s not finished yet.

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This site has been warning for a few months now of what lies in store for Scotland should its people vote No to independence in 2014, and in particular if Labour should defy the odds and win the 2015 general election.

Quite openly and in public, safe in the knowledge that the mainstream media (and most importantly the ever-loyal Daily Record) will ignore it, senior Scottish figures in Labour have said repeatedly that Scotland will receive a lower share of UK public spending, with the money being diverted to poor parts of England instead.

It turns out that we could have saved ourselves a load of analysis.

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Blair McDougall, director of “Better Together”, Dundee University, 30 October 2013:

“UK ministers are not going to fall into the trap of acting against Scotland until Scotland decides to leave the United Kingdom”

You heard it straight from the horse’s – well, let’s be kind and say “mouth”, folks.

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Because we keep telling you what a No vote really means:

“That is why I am talking quite passionately about getting English Labour MPs back up the road and for me, sitting down with Neil [Findlay] and Richard [Simpson] and Rhoda [Grant] and others and saying, let’s get health policies that can be consistent across England, Scotland and Wales.

Wouldn’t that be a good thing, pulling in the same direction as opposed to pulling our separate ways?

Devolution, in its early days, was about doing something different and it needs to enter a different phase where we start talking again more about a UK-wide policy because in the end, that helps everybody.”

That’s Labour’s shadow health secretary Andy Burnham talking to Holyrood Magazine this week, in comments strangely unpublicised in the rest of the Scottish media.

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Arch-Unionist and BBC-favoured pundit (hey, what a freakish coincidence! What are the odds?) Professor Adam Tomkins of Glasgow University has a blog post up today. A reader asked us to go and tackle it, but Prof. Tomkins has one of those infinitely irritating twatblogs that won’t let you post comments unless you hand over all your personal details and give permission for spambots to assail your Facebook and Twitter accounts with annoying gibberish, so we’ll have to do it here instead.

It won’t make any sense unless you read the post first. It’s here.

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Isn’t it weird how since we did this, everyone’s suddenly started asking much more interesting questions in opinion polls about independence?

After months with almost no polling at all, and what there was being restricted to boring Yes/No affairs, there’s been an explosion in surveys conducted by every conceivable pollster for everyone and his dog, and nearly every one has followed our lead in digging below the headline response and trying to find out what makes Scottish voters tick when it comes to their views on the constitution.

Today has two new sets of data to chew over, with fascinating results.

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In our view, it’s a serious mistake to treat prominent Labour activist Duncan Hothersall as someone sincerely concerned with the best interests of the Scottish people, differing only in how those interests are to be best served. His sole aim is to advance the fortunes of the Labour Party, and himself within it.

But that’s only an opinion, based on extensive personal experience of Hothersall issuing a long string of despicable lies, defamations, smears and general falsehoods in an attempt to discredit this site, chiefly among the more gullible elements of the Yes campaign. So let’s forget about Duncan’s toxic, cowardly excuse for a personality and examine his philosophy on its own merits, because it’s an exemplary case study of the wider ideology of Labour in Scotland’s opposition to independence.

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We’ve been hearing tales today of people who signed up for the top secret “public meeting” of No Glasgow yesterday and received written confirmation that their application had been successful, but were then mysteriously refused admission when they arrived – a curious occurrence when by most accounts there were 70-80 seats going begging in the 400-seater auditorium.

We, naturally, had about 50 spies in the room, one of whom audio-recorded the entire thing. We’re still plugging our way through it – it’s hard to maintain focus when the tired old platitudes you’ve heard a hundred times already drone on and on from the stage, and we keep finding we’ve forgotten we’re listening and have wandered off to do the hoovering or something.

By far the most compelling argument we’ve heard so far, though, came from a gentleman in the audience. It’s transcribed below. Take a moment to read it.

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To the ASTONISHMENT OF ALL, the Scottish media has leapt to cover a new poll today. It was conducted on behalf of the cross-party “Devo Plus” group, which we were mildly surprised to discover apparently still exists despite the previous two posts on its website being dated February 2013 and November 2012.

Being far more fair-minded than other news outlets, however, and not ones for bearing petty grudges, Wings Over Scotland is more than happy to run some analysis on it.

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