Are Labour and the LibDems committed to the Union?

Image Credit: The Laird of Oldham via Flickr cc

     That’s the question being asked by supporters and opponents of both political parties after their leaders in Scotland – first Kezia Dugdale of Labour, and then Willie Rennie of the Liberal Democrats – announced that members and parliamentarians (MP’s, MSP’s, and MEP’s) were free to campaign for separation in the event of another independence referendum. Dugdale in particular stated that she wanted to “lead a party that is comfortable with people who voted Yes and No” in the last referendum (which was held last year) in which Labour fought for a No vote and Scotland’s place within the United Kingdom.

     The party had participated in the Better Together campaign – the cross party effort to save the Union – which featured Labour campaigning alongside the Conservatives (Tories) and the Liberal Democrats, the two other mainstream pro-Union and UK-wide political parties, and when the referendum was held on September 18th, 2014, the No side won with 55% of the vote. This meant that the United Kingdom was kept together with Scotland affirming its part in the 300 year old Union.

     However, this victory came with a heavy price.

     Throughout the emotionally-charged campaign, the SNP under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had appealed to traditional Labour voters by portraying a Yes vote for independence as the only way to achieve a “fairer society” for Scotland. The alternative, they claimed, was continued “Tory governments which Scotland didn’t vote for” – a reference to the fact that while the Conservative-led coalition UK government (with the Liberal Democrats as junior partners) at the time had a majority of seats in the House of Commons throughout the UK as a whole, it only held a minority of seats in Scotland (one Tory and eleven LibDem), and therefore in the eyes of the SNP, had “no mandate” to govern Scotland (even though Scotland is part of the UK).

     Labour was therefore portrayed as standing in the way of Scotland being “free” of Tory rule from the British Parliament at Westminster (where Scotland elects MP’s like the rest of the UK), and as such, it was also portrayed as part of the “Westminster Establishment”, where it along with Tories and LibDems were virtually indistinguishable from one another. Being part of Better Together only confirmed this image, which was played to the hilt by the SNP and other independence campaigners.

     Even after they were defeated, the Nationalists saw a spike in popularity as the message about Labour being no different from the Tories resonated in places such as Glasgow and West Central Scotland, Lanarkshire, and Dundee, which had been voting Labour for generations, but now felt disillusioned and taken for granted by a party which had (supposedly) abandoned its traditional working class and left-wing values in pursuit of chasing swing votes in Middle England to win UK-wide general elections, and had been standing “should-to-shoulder” with the Tories during the referendum – leading to pejorative of “Red Tories.”

     The result was that around a third of traditional Labour voters abandoned the party during the referendum, as well as during the general election in May of this year, where it lost 40 of its 41 Scottish seats to the insurgent SNP – ending the promising careers of Scottish Labour’s most talented politicians of this era, and contributing to Labour’s stinging defeat throughout the UK as a whole. Among those who lost his seat in May was Jim Murphy, whose resignation as leader of Scottish Labour ignited an election to replace him, which was won by his deputy Kezia Dugdale, who has been tasked with the awesome duty of recovering the party from its deep political nadir.

     This has led to Dugdale extending an olive branch to the hundreds of thousands of Yes voters who either voted Labour in the past or would be otherwise inclined to vote Labour were it not for the SNP.

     In response, Labour’s commitment to the Union has been brought into question, not least by many of its supporters who vigorously supported a No vote last year, and remain strongly supportive of Scotland being part of the UK. Members and supporters of the Scottish Conservatives (officially the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party) have taken the opportunity to promote themselves as the only party that can stand up to the SNP and truly support the maintenance of the Union, and party leader Ruth Davidson has claimed that she no longer knows what Labour’s position on the Union is anymore, but that her party will always argue for Scotland within the UK.

     Indeed, on its face, it would appear that Labour is retreating on the Union by trying to invite the very people who rejected its stance on the constitutional question and the arguments it had put forward in support of that stance. After all, why would these people want to vote for a party that is pro-Union?

     On the other hand, upon closer examination and thought, it appears that there is more to Dugdale’s positioning than meets the eye.

     Indeed, I believe that Dugdale is trying to put the constitutional questions aside by saying that Labour need not be completely and entirely defined by being a pro-Union party, and instead should be known for what it wants to do to achieve better social and economic outcomes for people in areas such as health, justice, education, and policing, where the SNP are vulnerable after eight years in government, having won the elections to the devolved Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in 2007 (as a minority government) and in 2011 (as a majority government).

     It was that record combined with the questionable economic basis for independence which helped Dr. Scott Arthur to make his decision to back the Union and a No vote through participation in Better Together. He later joined Scottish Labour and campaigned to help re-elect Ian Murray, who is now the only Labour MP from Scotand.

     In response to CyberNats who deluged him with abuse for asking SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on live television why her government voted against a living wage five times, Dr. Arthur wrote some commentary which eventually made its way to the pages of the Daily Record and his own personal blog. In it, he says that Labour must not fall into a trap whereby it can be portrayed as putting the Union before everything else, whilst it is the SNP whose own constitution outlines its first aim as “Independence for Scotland” and the “furtherance of all Scottish interests” in the secondary.

     In contrast, it is Labour whose constitution outlines aims such as ensuring opportunity, publicly accountable (or owned) public services, and the deliverance of “people from the tyranny of poverty, prejudice and the abuse of power.” To this end, he further states:

“Labour must change Scotland’s political narrative by sticking to its values. It must promote itself as the party of social justice. The party which fights inequality and defends public services. Sure it wants Scotland to stay in the UK, but this is because remaining in the UK, even when we have a Tory government, is the best way to deliver social justice in the long-term.”

     In addition:

“The arguments for Scotland staying in the UK are legion. They range from a shared history to a common culture and a collective love of a good curry. These arguments of the heart, and many others like them, have great resonance for many Scots.  However, Scottish Labour’s argument must be about standing in solidarity with the rest of the UK.  It must be about pooling and sharing resources – an easy argument when Scotland’s per capita deficit exceeds that of the rest of the UK.”

     Furthermore, Dr. Arthur adds that in the SNP’s obsessive drive toward independence, it bangs on for more powers while almost refusing to acknowledge the powers it already has at its disposal at Holyrood, and less still, the new income tax and borrowing powers on the way via a Scotland Bill at Westminster – the contents of which were negotiated by the Smith Commission in which the SNP took part and signed off on (before continuing to complain that it wasn’t enough).

     From this vantage point, the SNP only discusses the constitution and demands new powers as a means distract from what they can already do, with the long-term aim being to achieve independence gradually, regardless of if it actually makes Scots better off, or if it provides greater opportunities to those who need it.

     In response, Dr. Arthur cites Sun Tzu and his seminal work, The Art of War, as the way forward for Scottish Labour, for the Chinese military strategist believed that the key to victory was the ability to choose the battlefield, and that for Labour, the battlefield it must dominate is social justice and in developing a narrative about how it will use Holyrood’s powers to achieve it.

     In other words, being pro-Union won’t be enough for Labour to recover, not least because there are not enough No voters to go around for the three main parties. Yes, it is true that the No side won with 55% of the vote on nearly 85% turnout, but in terms of elections, this does not compare favorably with the fact that in the 2010 UK general election, the three pro-Union parties amassed 77.6% of the vote between them and held 53 of the 59 Scottish seats in the Commons. In this year’s general election (with a lesser turnout than the referendum), that share collapsed to around only half of the vote, and along the way, the SNP got 56 out of 59 seats.

     Arguments over electoral reform and proportional representation aside (partly because some of us had no problem with the current system when the pro-Union parties were dominant), this is simple math and brute electoral reality, and Labour must win over people on ideas and policies that can improve the day-to-day lives of themselves, their families, and the greater society at large.

     Remember, the SNP almost buried its nationalism to win at Holyrood in 2007 and 2011 on a platform of governmental competence (in contrast to the 1999-2007 Labour-LibDem administrations) and popular policies having nothing to do with independence, and this resulted in winning over people who at the time were not (and in some cases, still are not) minded toward independence. They got themselves into power by playing up having an alternative with regard to bread-and-butter issues that affect people’s lives on a daily basis, and because they knew that banging on about independence alone was not a vote-winner.

     The old-school fundamentalists in the party did not like this out of concern that independence would be lost in the agenda, but the SNP under Alex Salmond, and now Nicola Sturgeon, has learned and played well the politics of gradualism and the long game. They convinced people to vote for them based on issues relating little to independence, and then worked toward cultivating such people towards supporting independence – a process that has taken place over weeks, months, and years – perhaps all the way to Referendum Day and beyond.

     So far, this method has paid massive dividends to the SNP as a political party and for their cause of separation. They know that not all of their members and voters want independence, but that does not matter so long as they get the votes they need to win seats at Holyrood for a pro-independence majority and therefore claim a mandate for another referendum. At the same time, they will continue to make an appeal to people based on policies outwith independence and cultivate them towards agreeing with the SNP’s first and foremost aim.

     The trick for Labour is for it to do the same thing in reverse to the SNP – challenging its record in government and offering a viable alternative that can get the support of those who voted Yes as well as No. Furthermore, just as there were some people who voted SNP, and only came around to supporting a Yes vote over time because they liked what the SNP was doing in government, perhaps the long-term strategy of Labour is to convince such people to see what it can do in government – both at Holyrood and Westminster – and hope that it will convince them to vote No should another referendum ever be held. Perhaps by that time, the policy of allowing parliamentarians and members to campaign for a Yes vote will be moot.

     Are their risks to this strategy? Yes. It will almost certainly be anathema to Labour voters who have stuck with the party through the referendum and vigorously fought to save the Union, and may serve to exasperate tensions within an already divided party.

     But at this point, and in the face of brute electoral reality, what else can it do? It can’t dream up 300,000 left of center pro-Union voters to replace the ones it lost.

     In many ways, is Labour is paying the price for complacency and taking voters for granted long before the white-hot heat of the referendum. In some parts of Scotland, Labour’s grip was so tight, it was joked that votes were weighed, not counted, and this complacency was ripe for the SNP to exploit as they made overtures to disillusioned and disaffected people in areas that had been habitually voting Labour for generations. Indeed, the referendum and general election may have exposed the difference between committed Labour voters and habitual ones, and the habitual ones were successfully picked off by the SNP for the referendum and general election.

     Some may say that this is Labour’s problem which they brought on themselves with devolution and taking their traditional voters for granted. Tough on them.

     Fine, but Labour’s problems today will be all of our problems tomorrow if they don’t succeed in winning back those voters, for if the party had not lost them (or if the Tories had more seats in Scotland) we would not be having this issue. But alas, this is the situation in which he find ourselves.

     Going forward, Labour must offer an alternative that emphasizes its ambitions which have little to do with the constitutional issues and which emphasizes solidarity – economic, social, and cultural – with the rest of the UK. It needs to expose the SNP as constitutional and separatist obsessives while people starve, can't get a proper education, or can’t get timely medical care eight years after their first day in power.

     With Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the UK Labour Party, the SNP’s claim to being the only true anti-austerity and “progressive” party in the UK has been blown out of the water, and all they have now to beat is the secessionist drum, which explains why they have repeatedly raised the prospect of another referendum in the hope that disenchantment with “Westminster” – to some extent manufactured – will drive Scots to demand another one.

     In the face of this, Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats must change the framing of the political debate from the constitution to real bread-and-butter issues where the SNP are vulnerable when such issues (like policing, education, and health) are afforded the much-needed scrutiny given that the SNP has been running Scotland since 2007, and they won back then by saying that they would do a better job than Labour. It’s high time that the pro-Union parties adopt this mantle of doing a better job, and use it against the SNP.

     For too long, the SNP have been successfully playing the long game in their path to independence, and the results have been on display for all to see.

     Therefore, there must be a long-game strategy for the pro-Union parties. Each of them must play to their own strengths and values to pick off people from the various factions of the SNP – left, right, and center. They must appeal to these people based on issues that matter to them outwith the constitutional questions, and persuade them to vote on that basis. Over time, this may lead to the cultivation of more pro-Union voters should there be another referendum. So yes, this is about emulating the SNP – in terms of tactics and long-term strategy.

     After all, in order to prevent another referendum, there needs to be a pro-Union majority at Holyrood. On this point, some people may claim that Labour is more concerned about power than the country, but the thing is, having Labour in power at Holyrood is massively better than the SNP. The same goes for the Tories and LibDems, because they all played a part in keeping Britain together, and it is hard to see any of them making a referendum on separation part of party policy.

     Bringing in Yes voters may be the first step of what needs to be a long-term effort to get Scotland away from the dividing line of being Unionist or Nationalist, or as some Nats would erroneously have it – “for or against Scotland”, and I certainly do not wish to see Scotland descend into becoming another Northern Ireland.

     All three parties need to recover themselves in Scotland, if for no other reason than there still remains a right wing and a left wing. The Right is almost exclusively occupied by the Conservatives, whilst Labour and the SNP are fighting over the Left, and the LibDems are somewhere in the middle of all this.

     For their part, the LibDems troubles stem from their involvement in the coalition government at Westminster with the Tories after the Tories had failed to obtain an outright majority following the 2010 general election. They were therefore vilified for propping up the Tories and enabling them to go through with policies such as the the increase in tuition fees (which they had opposed in the election), the privatization of Royal Mail, and controversial changes to the welfare system. The result was that they were heavily punished by voters throughout the UK, but especially in Scotland, where the Tories have been unpopular (and seen as anathema to Scotland) since the 1990's. In this year's UK general election, the LibDems lost all but one of their 11 seats in Scotland - having lost many of their voters to the SNP like Labour, and losing a generation of their best talent.

     Only the Tories emerged more or less unscathed, though that's not much to go by given that they have only had one seat in Scotland since 2001 - which again, leads to the charge of "Tory governments we didn't vote for!" However, the Conservatives are almost solidly behind the Union, and few of their 400,000+ voters sided with independence in the referendum or switched allegiances to the SNP in the general election.

     With the Labour and LibDem statements about letting in Yes voters and allowing free votes on separation, the Tories have begun promoting themselves as the only true party of the Union, with the hope that this will help achieve some sort of electoral revival for the party. However, my personal fear is that if the Right claims ownership of the Union, and the Union is seen as a right-wing entity, then where does that leave the Left? Some may undoubtedly come to the conclusion that the if the Right naturally supports the Union, then the Left naturally supports independence, and that is a charge I have been fighting against for the past three years, along with the notion that the United Kingdom is an inherently big bad “right wing” country from which little goody two-shoes “left wing” Scotland must escape.

     The Union can only survive in Scotland if it has natural supporters on the left and right of society, and the last thing we need is people on either side feeling as though they are unwelcome, and at any rate, I feel that there is much that can be learned by people from different political thoughts working together and overcoming their differences, prejudices, and stereotypes.

     Scotland needs to get back to the politics of solving problems that effect people on a regular basis, and each party has something to offer. The Tories can make an appeal being the party of low taxes, property rights, and free enterprise; the LibDems can take the lead on appealing to real concerns about the SNP centralizing Scotland’s polices forces and other civil liberties issues; and Labour can be the party what wants to deliver social justice. Along the way, they must also hack away at the false promises and empty rhetoric of the SNP and spell out clear reasons for why separation is not good, and why there is strength in the unity of the United Kingdom.

     (For my part, I was just as happy to see Labour winning a council by-election, as I was to see the Tories win the first preference round of another by-election, before (closely and so unfortunately) losing  to the SNP in the second round.)

     For Labour, the Liberal Democrats, as well as the Tories and individuals and groups not aligned with any party, the winning message is not “Support the Union, end of story.” Rather, it is: “Support the Union because we believe our values and goals are best achieved within it, and we believe the Union confers enormous benefits and advantages, not just for us, but for all of the UK, with whom we should all firmly stand in solidarity and common purpose.” And as Dr. Arthur said, the arguments in favor of the UK are legion.

     All three parties are committed to the Union because they see it as a means to achieve greater ends which separation cannot deliver, and they believe that this is the best for Scotland and the UK as a whole. They must make this case with repeated vigor and confidence while also outlining their agenda for Scotland if they wish to improve their electoral fortunes, and by extension, secure the future of the Union.

      Strong and effective leadership will be needed by Dugdale, Davidson, and Rennie, so that these three parties – battered and wounded by the experience of the referendum and its aftershocks – can be comfortable in their own skin as parties that have a positive vision for Scotland within the UK, and have a positive and viable alternative agenda from that of the SNP. Some people will never come back to these parties, but with a coherent and realistic intellectual and emotional case fit for the 21st Century, I believe many will.

     The next Holyrood election is less than eight months away. It is time to use our imaginations and think outside the box; time get cracking on our long-game.

Question Devolution

     In recent times, it has become in vogue in British politics to talk about the need for political and constitutional reform. This particularly means the devolution of political power from the UK Parliament at Westminster to other governing administrations within the UK – namely the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as local council areas and regions within those areas and England, the largest part of the Union.

     With regard to Scotland in particular, politicians both nationalist and pro-union from all parties are of the opinion that more powers need to be exercised by the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in isolation from the rest of the UK. For nationalists, they see devolution as another stage towards their ultimate goal of breaking up Britain, but both they and some pro-union politicians use similar language about how Scotland needs more powers to provide Scottish solutions to Scottish problems, and improve outcomes in critical areas such as health and education. Indeed, one of the sentiments expressed here is that policies in Scotland are better made by the people of Scotland.

     This is a fair sentiment to hold, but it ignores the reality that issues that affect Scots are issues that affect all Britons throughout the United Kingdom. As much as there may be issues better decided by the people of Scotland through their elected representatives in Edinburgh alone, there are also matters that may be better decided on a UK-wide basis by the British people as a whole (including Scots) through their elected representatives in London.

     Some politicians and commentators – particularly the nationalist sort – will go on to say that “left-wing” Scotland and “right-wing” England are so different (and drifting apart) politically and culturally that Scotland must be able to decisions for itself in isolation from the rest of the UK in order to reflect the values and aspirations of the Scottish people.

     Not only are such claims of vast Anglo-Scottish differences questionable to say the least, but it must be said that the MP’s elected to the UK Parliament are there to represent the interests of the UK as a whole in conjunction with the interests of their local constituents. Attempting to break British MP’s down to being English or Scottish (with regard to how they vote on issues or their political philosophies) and to say that the Scots and English are monolithically and irreconcilably different in their socio-economic outlook risks pitting the constituent parts of the UK against each other. This ought to be avoided – especially by those who want the UK to stay together – lest it lead to unhelpful perceptions and stereotypes that put the Union at risk.

     There is no problem in acknowledging and celebrating the differences amongst the peoples in the United Kingdom, for there is strength in diversity that can actually lead to bringing the British people together, just as has been done for over 230 years in the United States with 50 states and various nationalities and ethnicities. These differences however, need not be politicized and over-hyped to the extent of driving wedges and dividing people against each other, which gnaws away at the fabric of the Union.

     There are no differences amongst the peoples of the UK that cannot be overcome by the bonds – political, social, cultural, and economic – which bind them together as one. Indeed, there are such things as British values and British aspirations which are derived from the UK’s constituent parts and reflected by its people.

     This does not necessarily mean that there should not be devolution at all, but it certainly should not be done in a way that shreds the critical relationships and structures that allow for all parts of the UK to have an active part in the governing of the country and its political system, or indeed, the ability of the UK Government to govern the UK in its entirety.

     You see, so long as Scotland remains part of the UK, the UK Government must be able to have the tools at its disposal to make the Union work, which means that it must continue to have substantial responsibility over matters such as trade and commerce, fiscal and monetary policy, and lawmaking and law enforcement within the UK. Some of these responsibilities can be shared with the devolved administrations and even local councils, so that each level of government within the United Kingdom has its own ability to set taxes, make laws, and do other things within certain parameters that respect the authority and competence of each level.

     Piecemeal and ad hoc devolution based on what is thought to be “necessary” for one part of the country at a particular time may have been well-intended, but to some degree, it has proven detrimental to the strength of the Union and has not necessarily led to better or more efficient outcomes for those particular areas.

     For example, university tuition fees have been abolished in Scotland on the basis that it helps those with the fewest resources, who come from the lower strata of society. However, in terms of university entry rate amongst such people, Scotland lags behind England, Northern Ireland, and Wales. According to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), England – with tuition fees – has an entry rate nearly two times greater than that of Scotland for those in the poorest quintile of the population. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that according to the Scottish Funding Council, only 6.7% of poor Scots attain the average exam grades required to earn a university place.

     Furthermore, the Scottish Government’s own survey on literacy amongst Scotland’s students (which was taken in May 2014 and released in April 2015) have revealed that literacy rates have fallen, and this is especially pronounced amongst pupils in the second year of secondary education (S2) from the most deprived backgrounds, where only 41% were performing well or very well in writing and 55% in reading.

     Given that education has been completely devolved to Holyrood since 1999 and that the SNP has been in government since 2007, it is an indictment against how education has been handled in Scotland in recent years. For some of the people I have come to know, the Scottish education system has not been served well under an SNP government that needs to do more (after eight years in office) to get more young people into higher education, but appears more interested in showing how different it is to the English system, even if the English system may produce better results, and therefore can provide at least some food for thought for what can be done in Scotland.

     In health – another critical area where Holyrood (not Westminster) has control, and where the SNP has been in charge of for eight years – real-term spending on the NHS rose by only one percent between 2009-2010 and 2015-2016, in contrast to the budget-cutting in Westminster that has seen a real-term rise in health spending in England to the tune of 6% in the same period, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

     Given that the mechanisms of the Barnett formula (which mean that whenever spending changes in England (for any department), it changes by a proportionate amount for the devolved administrations in the rest of the UK), it would stand that health spending would also go up in Scotland as well. But Holyrood is under no obligation to following in tandem with the spending decisions south of the Tweed when it receives the block grant from the UK Treasury. It could have spent an additional 5% on the NHS, but appear to have chosen not do to so, and instead spent the money elsewhere, like the “free” university tuition, “free” prescriptions, and the council tax freeze – all of which arguably and disproportionately benefit those who have the means to pay for them, while doing little for those most in need.

     Several of my friends and acquaintance in Scotland have spoken about long waiting times at the NHS, run-arounds with various doctors, and delays with getting treatments and surgeries. Now to be fair, it would be a mistake to continuously blame the SNP for all of these things. For example, it may well be – as the BBC's Nick Robinson pointed out – that spending for the Scottish NHS may be historically higher than in England (including before devolution), and that England is merely catching up. Nevertheless, it does appear that any budget cutting is due to the actions of the Scottish Government, and it is therefore disingenuous to blame the UK Government for their own problems with the NHS in Scotland, particularly with regard to missing their own targets for improving A&E waiting times.

     Again, this is not to say that powers should not be devolved absolutely, but rather that it should not happen so hastily, carelessly, and without thinking if it is really necessary or otherwise good for Scotland, for if the constitutional debates are about what is best for Scotland, should there not be a vigorous debate on the merits on the devolution of power – especially with regard to how devolved power has already been used (or not)? If it is natural to question the very existence of the UK, or at least the its constitutional structures, then there should also be questions about the devolution of political power, for it may not always lead to better results. (It is probably for this reason that Scottish Green Party co-convener Patrick Harvie, a supporter of independence, has spoken out against the SNP's policy of achieving Full Fiscal Autonomy for Holyrood.)

     It is for this reason that devolution must be questioned at every stage, as opposed to being meekly accepted as an all-around good thing, and also why changing fundamental constitutional and political structures within the UK must be decided upon by all of the UK, for changing the machinery of the constitution in one part of the UK will have effects on the rest of the UK. This is why myself and others have been advocating for a constitutional convention to settle these matters of British governance, for the current model of piecemeal and ad hoc devolution results in a never-ending merry-go-round, in which one part of the UK receives a devolved power, and another part wonders why it doesn’t receive the same treatment. Such a constant rearranging of the constitutional jigsaw puzzle – almost living in a crisis by crisis scenario – does not bode well for good governance, and threatens to upset the stability of the Union.

     A convention would help to establish the powers and competencies of each level of government in the UK, as well as parameters that allow for the mutual respect of such competencies. Some responsibilities may be exclusive and reserved to a certain level of government, and others jointly shared. This points to federalism, which preserves a strong central government to handle matters and issues that require government action for the whole of the country – something which tends to get forgotten in the drive for devolution – while also featuring significant powers for the federated entities to do their own thing within a federal framework.

     But even if federalism is not the result of such a convention, the aim should be to at least provide a forum on what the British people as a whole want and expect in terms of their governing arraignments. It would be up to the people, with due and careful consideration and debate, to decide on the matter of which powers are better handled by, or otherwise require the action of, the central government. From here, there would be decisions on the powers of the devolved administrations and local government.

     Not everyone will agree – the members of the US Constitutional Convention certainly did not – but an effort ought to be made to forge some kind of settlement for the United Kingdom going forward that promotes stability, fairness, and the idea that the Union can be made more perfect.

     That would be a hell of a lot better than the seemingly constant and almost unquestioned flow of devolution, which as Tam Dalyell observed, runs the hazard of leading to the breakup of Britain. The people living there – from the most powerful politician to the postman – can and must do better, if for nothing else than the greater good and general welfare of all.

The Folly of Devolution Thus Far and (Worse) EVEL

The Parliament of the United Kingdom
(Credit: Jim Trodel via Flickr cc)

     Ever since the advent of devolution to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the late 1990’s, there has not yet been an answer to the infamous West Lothian Question, whereby MP’s from those areas cannot vote on matters that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, or Northern Irish Assembly, but can vote on such issues in the British Parliament at Westminster – even though their own constituents are not directly affected.

     Devolution of certain issues to those legislatures meant that such issues – like health and education – were no longer issues of a UK-wide concern, and were now effectively English issues being decided by the UK Parliament at Westminster – including by Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish MP’s, despite English MP’s having no such say over devolved matters in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

     The West Lothian Question is so named because it was brought up by Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for West Lothian during the parliamentary debates on devolution in the 1970’s. It was he who asked how such a then-hypothetical situation could be sustained, and as such, he was a prominent opponent of devolution because nobody could provide him with an answer to his question.

     Now with devolution entering a stage in which substantial legislative and fiscal powers are set to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament (in fulfillment of the Vow made towards the end of the independence referendum campaign), there is an increasing need to answer Dalyell’s 40 year old question.

     Labour attempted to answer it by proposing regional devolution within England following the devolution it had established in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Tony Blair's government succeeded in a referendum to devolve power to Greater London, which involved the creation of the directly elected Mayor of London.

     However, the attempt to create a devolved assembly in North East England was so heavily defeated by the electorate of that region in a 2004 referendum, that the idea was shelved for all the other regions (bar London), and the government effectively kicked an answer to the WLQ into the long grass.

     The answer that is now set to be pursued by the current Conservative government of Prime Minister David Cameron appears to be English Votes for English Laws (EVEL). This has been Conservative Party policy since devolution came about, and it has different variants, but the gist of it is that the Speaker of the House of Commons will determine which bills going through the Commons are applicable only to England (or England and Wales), and therefore require a majority of only English (or English and Welsh) MP’s to pass such legislation. Some variants of EVEL call for an absolute “veto” in which relevant MP’s will have the ultimate say over such legislation, regardless of how other MP’s may vote. Others merely allow for those MP’s alone to vote at the committee stage (where amendments can be made), whilst allowing the full Commons to vote on the legislation at its final stage.

     Either way, EVEL will likely mean some dilution in the voice of Scottish MP’s in the British Parliament because it is simply becoming more difficult to justify their votes on issues that do not affect their constituents – issues which have essentially become English issues because of devolution.

     What’s ironic is that the Scottish National Party (SNP) campaigned heavily at the last election on a platform of “making Scotland’s voice heard” and “giving a louder voice for Scotland” at Westminster – as if to say that Scotland never had a voice there, which is plainly ludicrous, as Scotland as been sending MP’s to Parliament since the Union began in 1707. (Here, they engage in the art form of conflating Scotland with the SNP.)

     However, as an acquaintance of mine in Scotland – a gentleman named Graeme – has said, devolution has “turned the hypothetical ‘West Lothian Question’ into reality, creating a situation in which Scottish MPs were voting on English affairs that English MPs no longer had any say over in Scotland.” Furthermore, he adds that as devolution was being implemented during the last Labour government (1997-2010), the UK had a Scot – Gordon Brown – “representing a Scottish constituency [and] serving as Chancellor and then Prime Minister formulating policies on health, education, policing, etc in England that were no longer within the remit of the UK Government within Scotland.”

     Now with the recent extraordinary success of the SNP in winning 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the Commons and the prospect of further devolution (including the full devolution of setting income tax) to Holyrood, the constitutional anomaly of the WLQ has become “unsustainable” and EVEL “has more or less” become inevitable.

     However, Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman disagrees with such notions, and claims that for decades, Scotland has had to put up with “England’s political preferences.” But this attempt to say that “karma’s a b****” with regard to Scottish influence across the UK ignores the changes wrought by devolution. It also ignores the idea that British general elections ought to be about what the voters across the UK want, as opposed to attempting to break the votes down by certain areas. However, even when you do this, what you find is that since World War II, Scotland has gotten the government it wants more often than not, and indeed on two occasions – in 1964 and 1974 – Scotland voted for and got a Labour government, even though England voted Tory. In a democracy, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose.

     Nevertheless, devolution was brought about to address a “democratic deficit” with regard to Scotland’s place within the Union, and to lessen “English influence” on “Scottish affairs.” With this, logic follows that some people in England may wish to lessen “Scottish influence” on “English affairs.”

     McMillan says this ignores the “brute fact” that the UK is an asymmetrical union in which 85% of the population resides in one part of the country – England, and that EVEL will shut Scotland out of critical decisions that affect the UK as a whole – including Scotland.

     Unionists such as Graeme are then oft to point out that this is an admission that devolution – at the very least – is a flawed concept whose architects failed to think through its implications on Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole, and its implementation in a piecemeal manner failed to engage the UK as a whole on constitutional matters.

     They also contend that the asymmetry to which McMillan refers did not exist before devolution, for with a single sovereign parliament in London, all of the British people were represented by MP’s who could equally participate in the parliamentary process in full without question. This allowed for many Scots to take their rightful place in powerful and prominent positions in government – defense secretaries, home secretaries, foreign secretaries, chancellors of the Exchequer, and prime ministers – and representing the interests of the UK as a whole (including Scotland).

     Only after the high-charged and emotive rhetoric of “Tory government’s we didn’t vote for” and “English laws imposed on Scotland” (especially following the eleven years of Margaret Thatcher’s government – 1979-1990 – during which Scotland repeatedly voted Labour, though the UK as a whole voted Conservative) followed by devolution in 1999 did the fundamental nature of Scottish parliamentary representation come under question – first with the cutting of Scotland’s MP’s from 72 to 59, and now the proposals for EVEL.

     McMillan claims that this is “largely designed to massage the wounded pride of English Tory MPs by offering them a bump up the pecking-order in the public-school politics of Westminster.” However, with the West Lothian Question becoming a reality (as Tam Dalyell had warned), English MP’s – whatever their political stripe – have a legitimate constitutional issue. By attempting to solve one democratic deficit, another one was created in the process.

     This is not to say that EVEL is the optimal response, but after the clamor for “more powers” for the Scottish Parliament (including the prospect of Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA), where all taxes raised in Scotland would go to Holyrood) should anyone be surprised?

     But realistically, given the geographic reality, England will never truly be free of Scottish influence, and Scotland will certainly never be free of English influence.

     Using veteran nationalist Paul Henderson Scott’s description of Scotland’s relationship with England as that of being in bed with an elephant – and the need to be free of the elephant, Kenny Farquharson wrote recently in The Times that this failed to “acknowledge basic geography and economics.” Without the United Kingdom holding them together, Scotland and England may well move to separate beds, but will still have to share the same room – the same island, Great Britain. Being ten times the size of Scotland, Farquharson notes that “England will always be our bigger, more populous, more powerful neighbor” and what it does “politically, economically, culturally — will always have a profound effect on us [in Scotland].”

     In other words – despite what some nationalists may want to believe – Scotland cannot ignore its big sister, the elephant. Farquharson goes on to mention that Scotland’s exports within the UK – to England, Northern Ireland, and Wales – amounted to £44.9 billion, which is a considerable sum when one considers that Scottish exports to the rest of the world combined was £22 billion (and less than half of this was with the European Union).

     Indeed, one of the flaws of EVEL is how to know what issues can be classified as “English only” or “English and Welsh only”, for even though a piece of paper may say that, members from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland can also argue that because of England’s size, legislation that legally applies only to England can (and will) have affects – particularly financial – on the rest of the UK.

     This is why EVEL is quite controversial, for it would create two classes of MP’s – English MP’s with full time access to the Commons and all stages of the parliamentary process in the Commons, and non-English MP’s who would effectively be told to stay out of their own parliament on certain days, even though the legislation and issues debated on those days may indirectly affect their constituents.

     It is also why even though Yes Scotland and the SNP were campaigning on the idea of Scotland being master of its destiny, they were also trying to argue for a form of independence that would retain links with the rest of the UK, but leave it without the ability to shape it, as the continuing Union would continue to substantially influence Scotland – regardless of the constitutional arrangements.

     This points to the importance of maintaining the United Kingdom as something that is in Scotland’s best interests, and maintaining as firm a Union as possible with full and complete parliamentary representation in Parliament for everybody, rather than trying to unravel it and creating more grievances along the way.

     Indeed, one of the reasons for the merger of England and Scotland into the UK was to give Scotland access to the much larger English markets, and this – along with the much wider British Empire – proved to be highly beneficial to Scotland. But even without the Empire, being part of the United Kingdom, as Farquharson points out, has been beneficial to Scotland’s economic prospects more than anything else, and UK as a whole has benefited from Scottish contributions (in terms of human, social, financial, natural, and instructional capital) that have helped to make it a global leader and significant world power, which in turn provides benefits to the UK – including Scotland.

     Attempting to loosen the UK with well-meaning, but ill thought out devolution and EVEL threatens to upset these necessary bonds – political, economic, and social – which keep Britain together. Indeed, one of the disheartening prospects is that there may never again be a Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister from Scotland representing a Scottish constituency.

     On this point, my friend Graeme believes that:

“Nationalism and devolution has not increased Scotland's power and influence within the Union, it has significantly diminished it. It has rendered much of Scotland's influence within the wider UK intolerable to that part of the UK which forms the majority of its population, and has made it very difficult for it to be [constitutionally] acceptable for any Scottish MP to occupy any cabinet post other than that of Foreign or Defence Secratary, because any other cabinet position would make them responsible for policies in England over which the English have no say over in Scotland, which the English no longer consider to be either fair or acceptable.”

     He further laments that thanks to “poorly handled devolution and [acquiescence] to nationalist demands” Scotland and Scots, “once a powerful and disproportionately influential voice within the Union, have rendered themselves in some respects as bystanders to larger issues within the United Kingdom” – many of which will continue to affect Scotland.

     The result, he fears, will be that “England and the English will come to dominate the UK far more than they have ever done” and that this was perhaps the way the nationalists had planned it, for it certainly would give them “even more grievance fuel to further their agenda”, and that some Scots “will believe them when they say that England is unfairly denying Scotland a voice within the UK by freezing them out of influence at Westminster.” It would make the roar of the Scottish lion “sound more like a cat’s mewling.”

     McMillan attempts to get around this by saying that it would be rather pompous for English Tories to talk about “speaking for England”, as if England is a homogenous community when in fact it is not – pointing out that “the England of the 21st century is a vastly diverse nation, which contains millions of people – from Liverpool to Portsmouth, from Truro to South Shields – who are fully as exasperated with the current Westminster establishment, and its failed politics of austerity, as any Scottish voter.” Her solution is to use the House of Lords as a chamber that represents the nations of the UK, as well as the regions within England, which in her view, would meet the “standards of 21st-century democracy.”

     As it is, I have written on how the Lords can be reformed in such a way. Looking back, this probably should have been the way to go in addressing the asymmetries that she refers to, which have also been noted by many pro-Union politicians such as Gordon Brown. If this had been achieved long ago, it may have averted the need for devolution, because it would have guaranteed a level of Scottish representation in the upper house that would have been on par – or nearly on par – with England, so that Scotland’s voice (or rather voices, since Scotland is just as diverse as England) could be heard and provide wisdom and scrutiny to government legislation. Even if a reformed Lords did not have the absolute ability to block government legislation, it could – with substantial Scots influence – force the government to think again on its agenda.

     Indeed, perhaps another flaw in devolution was that it made changes along the edges of the British constitution without also making changes at the center, and this has left the country with an unbalanced governmental structure that is prone to misunderstandings and grievance-mongering.

     Of course, there would still be people making the case for devolution and decentralization from London. In fact, the idea of revamping the United Kingdom into a federal union like the United States has taken hold in some quarters in the wake of the referendum. But even Gordon Brown has remarked that federalism can only go but so far in a country where 85% of the population lives in one area, and most forms of federalism still mean having a strong central government with the ability to levy and collect taxes, and make an array of laws that directly apply to all people throughout the entire union.

     In essence, federalism means that there are some powers exclusively exercised by the federal government, some powers exclusively exercised by the federated governments, and some powers are exercised jointly. For example, in the US and Germany, the setting of income and corporate taxes are a joint responsibility of federal and state governments. The federal governments and legislatures in both countries are quite powerful – though their power is limited in certain areas.

     Indeed, the authority of the British Parliament at Westminster has already been limited in practice, regardless of the fact that it possesses ultimate sovereignty across the UK. The Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, and Northern Irish Assembly are now semi-permanent institutions to the point where no prime minister or his/her government will dare contemplate abolishing them.

     The issue at hand now is how these institutions, the British Parliament, and potential institutions in England can fit into a federal framework for the United Kingdom as a whole. This will require an end to ad hoc devolution (including the proposal for Full Fiscal Autonomy for Holyrood) as well as the crude answers contained in the proposals for EVEL. Joyce McMillan herself acknowledged that the decision to devolve control of setting income tax rates was “strange and hasty”, for the income tax allows for one of the most transparent forms of redistribution from wealthier parts of a country to another, and the concept of pooling and sharing resources throughout the United Kingdom for the benefit of all was one of the main arguments used for keeping Scotland as part of the Union.

     If the Union is to survive at this point, there needs to be the establishment of a UK constitutional convention that will attempt to sort out the issues of British governance and forge a lasting constitutional settlement that is as “fair” as possible to everybody.  It means looking at the United Kingdom as a whole and having a firm understanding of how it ought to work going forward, which – among other things – means defining the powers of a federal UK Parliament (as Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution does for the US Congress), the limits on the federal parliament (Article 1, Section 9), and the powers and limitations on the federated governments of the nations and regions within the UK (Article 1, Section 10).

     It also means defining the values that bring Britain together as a country, and establishing principles upon which the people and their representatives can build on.

     This effort will require an enormous amount of good faith, tact, skill, statesmanship (likely in the face of political party interest), creative imagination, and a sense of vision and purpose to make such a settlement a success.

     It will also require the participation of people from all walks of life in Britain – including ordinary citizens, civic organizations, and faith groups in an expression of British civic participation that may also facilitate bringing people together and forging a sense of a common identity and common ideals for Britain going forward. 

     The brute reality is that Scotland and England have been “interfering” in each others affairs for centuries, and they really can't help it, given the island they share. The Union simply made it official, and in my opinion, it is in everyone’s interest for Britain to remain together, for Britain has so much collective potential, and its people can achieve much more together – not just for themselves, but for the world at large – than they could ever do apart.