One reason why "devo max" won't be on the #indyref ballot...

Term time in Oxford is just a little demented. Heaven knows how the undergraduates do it. The demands on one's time: academic and social - the serious and the engaging to the delightfully frivolous and engaging - are extraordinarily pronounced, even without the hostage situation that is working away at a doctorate (in which circumstance, one is never sure whether you or the thesis is the kidnapper or the kidnappee).  To this, February's light peat worrying thus far is to be attributed.

Just a wee thought or two, then, for this balmy Sunday night.  Many aspects of our political discourse in Scotland at the moment are, frankly, surreal. Nationalists pursuing independence suggest the inclusion of a "devolution max" question in the independence referendum, despite claiming to prefer a single question referendum (which seems increasingly implausible, at least as far as the party leadership is concerned). This despite the fact that the inclusion of any "devo max" alternative, whether in a head-to-head conflict with independence, some more elegant three-option affair, or what have you, would likely cause nationalists no end of troubles in the increasingly moderately-posed independence campaign, advancing an even more "moderate" solution, of more powers for Scottish institutions. Simultaneously, many Tories and Liberal and Labour politicians - now apparently including the PM - who oppose independence but more or less concretely believe in a better, fuller devolution including economic powers, argue that on no account should a question on that topic be put to the Scottish people as part of the referendum process. This too, despite the evidence that the nationalism they oppose could be handily shellacked by enhanced devolutionary strategies.

In the midst of all of this confusion and paradox, the obvious question is: why? Given popular support for this median position, and given their more or less clearly declared and determined constitutional goals, set on envisaging and realising a better devolution, why the reticence to include any devolution opinion in the referendum? Just why are Unionists so wary of including any devo-max referendum option? Why do some nationalists (particularly the SNP leadership, but also others) seem so keen to facilitate the inclusion of some sort of devo-maxy question, which does not seem likely to make easier the realisation of Scottish independence by referendum? In response to my earlier piece, in defence of process, Groundskeeper Willie quoted me...

"Just because I didn't compose a carefully pitched definition hardly means that it is impossible to compose such a question, and put it to the people. That wasn't my business here"

And asked...

"O.K then smarty pants. Draft the question."

A fair demand. Though Willie's challenge appears to assume that the proposition of "devo max" is basically unstateable in a form amendable to a referendum, which seems immediately daft, it is certainly true that to pose any "more devolution" question presupposes basic agreement on a range of important and basic political questions, unanswered by waggling about the unsatisfactory, still essentially vague concept of "devolution max". It is also true that the accepted conventions about how referendums ought to operate present particular challenges for Unionists politicians, keen to retain their substantive privileges to decide what powers lie precisely where within the United Kingdom, but who are also keen to ask the public about "more devolution".

One clear expectation of plebiscites is that referendum questions will be reasonably clear and reasonably concise. Say one was a UK federalist or suchlike, and keen on seeking democratic legitimacy for more devolution. How do you phrase it crisply, comprehensively? It is not that a pro-devolution question couldn't be cleanly and clearly proposed, but that the underlying agreement required to pose such a question simply doesn't exist.

Interestingly, when various pollsters have tried their hand at devo-max question, they have borrowed the logic of the Scotland Act, asking about explicitly reserving powers rather than exhaustively enumerating those which are devolved. Emphasis here soon lies on the maximal form of potential devolution. Take, Ipsos-MORI, for example, who have asked:

"As you may know, the Scottish Government plans to hold a referendum on Scotland's constitutional future during the next Scottish Parliament. The referendum is likely to contain two separate questions. The first question will ask whether you agree or disagree with the proposal to extend the powers of the Scottish Parliament to include more laws and duties and all tax-raising powers, while Scotland remains part of the UK. If the referendum was held tomorrow, would you vote to agree or disagree with this proposal?" (my emphasis)

TNS-BMRB have also conducted polls, asking for preferences, and opposing various options:

(1) Keep the current arrangement of a Scottish Parliament with its existing powers.
(2) Transfer more powers from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament, including tax and welfare but excluding defence and foreign affairs.
(3) Full independence for Scotland.
(4) Don't know. 

One early conclusion which seems indicated is: given the pressures to ask concise referendum questions, practically, it will be exceedingly difficult to frame, never mind ask any devo-max question that doesn't borrow the Scotland Act's structure, enumerating reservations rather than powers to be devolved. Moreover, because of the pressures to ask short questions, tersely phrased, the inclusion of a devolution max question in any pre-legislative referendum would tend to discourage long lists of reservations, and promote much increased rather than more limited devolution.  As a pro-devolution Nationalist, this is a fact I can cheerfully endure, but is rather more difficult for those devolutionist or UK federalists who fancy including such a question, but who are knotted in anxiety about taking the ostensible will of the people - as they'd see it - too seriously.

Amongst pro-Unionist politicians, the desire to set policy at the representative level, in parliament, is exceedingly pronounced. While able to convince themselves that the people really want Holyrood to have more powers, these characters will be much more reluctant to accept that if Scots vote for all tax powers to be devolved, that they really mean all.  However, the ballot paper starts getting pedantic and debatable, if you ask: do you agree with devolution of all taxation, save for corporation tax, VAT, national insurance - and so on, and so on, across policy areas where some Unionists would (perhaps not unreasonably) prefer powers at a UK parliamentary and ministerial level within a reimagined, reconfigured United Kingdom.

Take this example. While some folk may be keen on devolving much more taxation than the Scotland Bill presently proposes, others may baulk at the idea of signing up for a referendum on devolving all forms of taxation.  In a de facto or de jure federal future UK, for instance, we know a number of folk would wonder whether corporation tax or VAT should be reserved or devolved? Hence the worry that any nationalist-defined devolution question - and more broadly, any pre-legislative referendum including a "more devolution" question of indeterminate form - represents a "beartrap" for Unionists, apt to promote Nationalist logics about where in the UK decision-making powers on a raft of topics ought to be located.

If there is going to be a devo-max question - these are knots to be unravelled. Realistically, there probably isn't time. Despite the popularity of the message of "more devolution", it seems highly unlikely to me that the pro-devo max body of opinion, keen to see it on the ballot, will get their acts together, coalesce, and negotiate away the range of thorny topics lying barbed beneath the banal, unsatisfactory, surface support for Scottish institutions enjoying more powers. Increasingly, I am of the mind that we'll end up voting on a simple yes-or-no question on independence, though not for want of effort on Salmond's part to see a multi-opinion plebiscite posed. In great part, this is simply due to the failure to find a political proponent of the devo-max question in the campaign, substantially thanks to the dismally enervated contribution of the Scottish Labour Party to these debates, one way or the other. The outfit remains - to an astonishing degree - a clueless, stammering, tedious, irrelevance: directionless, complacent, supine and insubstantial.