Blinded by the Westminster prism...

On the theme of significant political images, yesterday afforded another telling little scene, courtesy of the BBC's midday Daily Politics.  Jo Coburn was sitting in for Andrew Neil and the discussion, understandably, turned to the issue of Scottish independence, and Cameron's jaunt up to Edinburgh to subscribe to the deal.  In an earlier segment of the programme (starting about 7:00 minutes in), Coburn interrogated SNP local government minister, Derek Mackay, about the Nationalist position on a range of topics, opening with the gambit that "the terms of trade have been agreed, but we don't yet have a question.  What would you like the question to be?"

Now, I don't object to this style of interviewing, which poses, as if from a position of ignorance, critical questions, permitting politicians to make their views plain. But I wonder if there might be more to it than this. Coburn then proceeded to put several needling propositions about independence to Mackay, as is her right and indeed, journalistic duty. James Caan shared his unrecognisable, tin-eared interpretation from a position of palpable cluelessness.  Somewhat later in the programme, after a few shots of Cameron bounding up the steps of St Andrew's House, Coburn introduced her panel to "discuss this historic moment".  

A balanced bench of judges, this, consisting of Deputy Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, the Liberal Democrat MP for Solihill, Lorley Burt, and for the Tories, Steve Brine, MP for Winchester.  None of which were, as you can imagine, particularly complimentary about Scottish independence, as is their prerogative.  During this section, she announced, as if it was news to anyone, that the SNP does indeed have a preferred referendum question, squinting down to consult a note, as if she'd only just discovered this from the lips of Derek Mackay. Seasoned Scots political watchers no doubt fell out of their armchairs in shock at this startling revelation.

For the nationalist, the gripe about the political balance of the piece composes itself.  This was like an edition of Scottish Questions in the House of Commons, where the vast majority of participants agree that nationalists are a bemusing cadre, to be reported as the somewhat eccentric, Other, marginalised in the conversation and certainly not to be taken too seriously.  As a representative balance of political opinion on the topic, it was a signal failure.

But bracket the issue about the representativeness of the conversation broadcast. On this critical day in the referendum's progress, it's more than accidental, but significant and telling, that the BBC should cobble together a debate, reflecting not the realities of contemporary Scottish politics, but the old Westminster spectrum of opinion, in which a complete spread of views need only include beams of red, blue and canary yellow.

As someone living down south at the moment, I'm interested in what folk in England make of the process, and what significance, if any, they can see in the referendum for their own vision of politics and of the United Kingdom. I'm keen to hear, from time to time, how pro-federal English Liberals talk about Scottish independence, or listless half-unionists from the Tory benches defend their, often modest, enthusiasm for "keeping Britain together", or the extent to which apparently non-nationalist democratic socialists from the Labour benches account for their universal adherence to the United Kingdom.

I've written before about devolution, and the accelerating social disunion we can already detect, as the political spaces of Westminster and Holyrood - and their attendant reading and broadcasting publics - pull apart. Despite the proliferation of potential sources for the journalist or reader based furth of Scotland, despite the relative ease with which folk can find out more about the emerging sense of a distinct Scottish political space, we don't see a London media showing greater savvy about issues at the core of the referendum debate. Instead, hackneyed imagery of nationalism are endlessly repeated, reportage is dominated by the implications of distinctly Scottish politics on Westminster - isn't it unfair that you charge the English for tuition fees? Why should Scots get free prescriptions, and the English pay?

The binary language of "them" and "us" is often employed, oblivious to the significance of such pronouns, and the presumed audiences they purport to distinguish and address. One doesn't have to be a devotee of Scottish nationalism to recognise this ongoing trend, and the social and political drift which underwrites it. The Spectator's Fraser Nelson, no friend to the SNP, has repeatedly identified the phenomenon of a drift apart in UK public affairs,  Even under devolution, the social union is breaking down, precisely because a shared politics is part of constituting a shared social and public life.

For all of their hostility towards Scottish nationalism, it is ironic that through the exclusions of their reporting, and the projection of Scottish politics as a foreign vale, populated by curious natives whose political convictions refuse neatly to fit into the categories of Westminster-centric political analysis, these self-same London-based media outfits foster a critical sense of difference, and reinforce the boundaries between UK and Scottish constitutional and political space, by increasingly seeing and writing and talking about Scotland as if it were a foreign country, covering Scottish stories as they might developments in France, or German politics. To put it another way, albeit unwittingly, the unionist UK media are helping to create the conditions which Salmond was able to exploit yesterday, making Cameron look like a foreign dignitary, rather than a Prime Minister on his own turf. I'm reminded again of Michael Ignatieff's description of political life in Canada, and the effect of the divergent political conversations happening in Quebec, and the rest of the country:

“The problem here is that we don’t have anything to say to each other any more. There’s a contract of mutual indifference which is very striking for someone of my generation ... Now effectively – effectively – we’re almost two separate countries."

This already looks like a recognisable and escalating feature of the relationships between the "London centre" and the "devolved periphery" to me.  What is interesting, too, is that you find curious and telling manifestations of this sort of feeling everywhere, beyond the papers, the news bulletins and discussion programmes. I recently attended an otherwise engaging lecture in Oxford.  The (English) academic in question was keen to subvert the (pervasive) idea that the international recognition of a right of peoples to self-determination was rooted in Wilsonian idealism in the wake of World War II.  The speaker was keen, instead, to promote an alternative genealogy of self-determination, rooted not in American liberalism, but instead in communist and socialist political history. 

To underline the significance of his study, he listed several "independence struggles" for self-determination from across the world.  Quebec warranted a mention, as did the Catalans and the Basques., along with Palestine and the Chechens. I waited for the S-word.  His longish list ended, and he moved on, having identified, as he saw it, all the important examples of self-determination which his audience might be interested to consider. I sat, at once astonished, and on another level, hardly surprised, that the independence movement on his own doorstep, imminently imperilling the integrity of his own state, didn't seem to warrant inclusion.

Looked at abstractly, this is profoundly strange omission, and reflects remarkable complacency on his part. When I challenged him about the domestic gap in his account, he shrugged it off as an accidental exclusion, a meaningless oversight, and not to be read too much into.  I was unconvinced. The absence of Scotland from this English lawyer's imagination was not incidental, but tells us a good deal about how a sense of understanding about Scotland is circulating (or not) within the UK, despite his considerable resistance to seeing it that way.

In what other state but the United Kingdom is it even conceivable for smart, highly-educated scholar of self-determination, listing significant instances of his topic, not to think of secessionary movements within his own borders immediately, not first, not second - but not at all?