Cock-eyed Cochers cocks a snook...

Devolution is "a motorway without exit" to a separate Scottish state. So contended Tam Dalyell. I've long found the Telegraph's Alan Cochrane's lapses into this mode of thinking rather befuddling. What does a Unionist politics look like, if you subscribe to this sort of devolution determinism? If you are travelling on Dalyell's motorway - you may accelerate, decelerate - but cannot u-turn. Onward ever onward you vroom, however unwillingly, with no prospect of changing your direction of travel. Strictly speaking, I suspect he and others like him may well entertain fond dreams of flattening Holyrood and "repatriating" devolved powers to a restored Westminster - but for the foreseeable future, the engine has fallen out of that political project, leaving the old banger wheezing far back on the hard shoulder.  

Many - and I share their skepticism - would write off Dalyell's metaphor as whizz-bang rhetoric to underline his anti-devolution argument, rather than a serious sociological diagnosis that independence is rendered inevitable by the mere existence of a Scottish parliament. But for the black-hearted Unionist who does hold this curious deterministic position, the fatal moment has come and gone. The Union may not have gasped its last, but is certainly lying on its bed of death. Care at this point can only be palliative, all hopes of a cure perishing with the "yes" vote in the 1998 referendum.  For old time's sake, you may strive to keep the patient alive for as long as possible, deferring her dissolution by bloody-minded but purposeless interventions in public life. On this theory, Dalyell and Cochrane and their ilk are reduced to murmuring their Dylan Thomas - "Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light" - ever more world-wearily. As politics go, this is a macabre business. The perplexity and dissatisfactions of this position were called to mind, hearing Cochrane's response to a recent speech from John Major. The former Tory Prime Minister argued that ...

"Why not devolve all responsibilities except foreign policy, defence and management of the economy? Why not let Scotland have wider tax-raising powers to pay for their policies and, in return, abolish the present block grant settlement, reduce Scottish representation in the Commons, and cut the legislative burden at Westminster?"

Predictably enough, Cochers is appalled to hear such sentiments expressed by a man who once stoutly opposed devolution on the grounds that Scots were "sleepwalking towards independence" and that it represented "a stepping stone to separation".  On Newsnicht, Cochrane sputtered his astonishment: "I found this the most incredible intervention in recent years - months. For John Major to say this, is absolute havers." The BBC journalist who put the piece together styled Major's proposition "moving towards a weaker Union" - a profoundly problematic proposition, baldly to advance. Indeed, it is precisely the Union strengthening qualities of more radical devolved powers which is at issue between these conservative characters. For Major, and Darth Murdo Fraser - and as I understand him, David Torrance - the rationale for embracing a much more extensive, settled and federal devolution settlement is precisely that it will end the "unsustainable" situation we currently occupy, characterised by political instability and the slow "appeasement" of nationalist demands.  Baillie Bill Aitken's appeared in the same edition of Newsnicht, arguing that devolution is a process, not an event.  It is this endlessly parroted phrase that Major is seeking to expel from our political vocabulary, tying down the open ends of devolution into a settled federal structure.

For Cochrane, by contrast, the Calman Commission, Scotland Bill and prospect of much more extensive devolution of powers - are sops that enervate the Unionist soppers without soaking up Nationalist feeling. While I'm sure old Cochers does not count Maximilien Robespierre amongst his intellectual influences, his views echo a speech made by the latter in the Jacobin Club after the King's abortive Flight to Varennes in 1791. Said Robespierre:

"What frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone. And here I need to be listened to until the end. Once again, what frightens me is the very thing that seems to reassure everyone else: it’s that since this morning, all of our enemies speak the same language as us."

In Cochrane's case, the logic is precisely inverted. What concerns him is that his friends speak the same language as his enemies, not just conceding but adopting the Nationalist political logic of an ever-empowered Holyrood. For Cochers, they do Salmond's work for him and win no appreciable benefit for the Union in the process. For him, any concession is a defeat, weakening the Union. Victory is curbing Nationalist ambitions by bluntly telling us to sod off. For what it is worth, my own feeling is that Cochrane's response is quite wrong-headed and that Major's two propositions, while superficially contradictory, are not incompatible. It is perfectly plausible to hold (1) that you believe devolution is and was a "a stepping stone to separation" but (2) if voters reject argument (1) and you end up with devolution, preserving the Union may behove finding ways to stabilise the devolution settlement, to extinguish, or diminish the demands of self-determination.

Devolution was never just about relocating decision-making powers from institution A to new institution B after all. Politically, it doubtlessly empowered the SNP, transforming them from a very small handful of MPs in a very large House of Commons to a party of primary opposition, then minority government in 2007 and a majority in 2011. More broadly, it created the possibility of a distinct public sphere in Scottish politics around Holyrood. Although this outcome may not have been foreseen by those voting on the Scotland Act 1998, it ought to have been clear that devolution would displace Westminster's monopoly on "official" political life and fundamentally alter the character of - and in the short to medium term, strengthen - the SNP.  As a Unionist, one can conceiveably oppose the emergence of a distinct Scots political agora, and nevertheless recognise that once such a public space exists, think about ways to reconfigure the powers exercised by the institution and its creatures, better to serve your aim of preserving the Union. Cochrane, by contrast, seems to see no such distinctions.  Which, given his lapsing into the Dalyellesque logic discussed at the outset, is something of a curiosity.

Discussing the same topic of "the Conservatives, the Union, Scotland and the British State", Gerry Hassan notes...

"The Tories are moving on the union, doing what they do best, being pragmatic and conciliatory on the surface, while doing all they can to maintain the union which is central to their politics and identity, and just as crucially, maintain the bastardised nature of the British state. It won’t work, because constitutional change has consequences for the political centre, but don’t write off the Tories genius at reform to postpone more fundamental reform. They have been at it a rather long time." [My emphasis]

For what it is worth, I think Cochrane is right on the Calman process and the current Scotland Bill. It stabilises nothing and settles nothing. An unprincipled trimmer's expedient rather than a settling and principled architecture for the future, mute but determining, the Scotland Bill's rank ad hockery is fundamentally driven by a policy of preserving the political centre and tinkering with the periphery. Gerry is absolutely right. It is the reflexive, transforming implications of federation for the British political centre which will make it intolerable and unworkable. A federal politics requires a federal mindset that is basically incompatible with the Westminster status quo and its cherished constitutional nostrums.  Either the old pieties of the "pragmatic", sovereign constitution must yield, or federalism cannot prosper. Contra Dalyell, there is nothing inevitable about Scottish independence, once devolution is conceded. However, if independence is achieved, I'm convinced that it will be owed in no small part to the refusal of British politics to countenance its own transformation.