Labour's lukewarm devosomething prospectus

When not indulging in sentimental British nationalist storytelling, Scottish Labour's case for the Union tends to rest on what Colin Kidd has usefully described as "instrumental unionism". The metaphors and tropes will doubtless be familiar to you. The pooling of resources and the sharing of risk; social solidarity; marching on a shared mission of social justice in these islands. Not fluttering union jacks and the trooping of the colour, but an argument that the Union is:

"... as Gordon Brown has suggested, founded on a moral purpose – that no matter where you reside and what your background is, every citizen enjoys the dignity of not just equal civil and political rights, but the same basic social and economic rights. Because we pool and share our resources, the moral purpose of the union is to deliver opportunity and security for all UK citizens irrespective of race, gender or religion – or location" (p.3)

Unsurprisingly, these arguments are well to the fore in today's report from the party's Devolution Commission, charged by Johann with dreaming up a compelling alternative vista to tempt Scots to vote against separation in September. The proposals are already being criticised by the usual suspects, but I wanted to pick up just one curious strand of argument running through the document.  Justifying their decision to rule out the devolution of "the core of the Welfare state", the commission revisit the theme, emphasising the importance of maintaining:

"... common UK-wide pensions, common UK social insurance, common UK benefits, a common UK minimum wage, and a UK system of equalising resources, so that everyone irrespective of where they stay benefits from fundamental political, social and economic rights."

Continuing:

"... in this union, we pool and share resources to ensure hard-working people, pensioners and those in need have equal economic, social and political rights throughout the entire UK. This is an idea – founded on solidarity, community and fairness – that is much greater than any notion of creating an independent state."

As grounds to justify their refusal to transfer key benefits, this argument is not without its allure. An instrumental politics of the union in this line is only possible if we are held together by the redistribution and exchange of resources across the whole country.  Invest Holyrood with responsibility for great tranches of welfare, and the Labour party is left making the instrumental case for Union on the basis of reserved forms of taxation - good luck with that one - or by appealing to the lip-quivering patriotism recently espoused by the Prime Minister in London. 

The husk of an instrumental case for the union can survive Iain Duncan Smith's parsimonious tenure in the Department for Work and Pensions; devolution of great tranches of welfare decision-making to the Scottish Parliament would reduce it to dust. It is not a surprise, therefore, that Johann's commission has declined to endorse it. 

I do wonder, however, how far this "solidarity and fairness" logic can really be taken. The Commission state boldly that it is integral to the stability and ethical purpose of the union that folk have access to the same "social and economic" rights irrespective of "location". But is this even true under the current devolution settlement? For example, education is widely considered to be a core social right, yet the English undergraduate must sink £9,000 into debt to fund her degree each year, while her Glaswegian cousin studies for free. This has been widely criticised as an inequity in parts of the media, and by politicians like Boris Johnson, but is fundamentally what devolution is all about, allowing spending to be allocated differently according to different political preferences, giving different substance to key social and economic rights which citizens have access to in different parts of the UK. 

There are other examples. The right to access to health care is another core social right, but there are already cross-border differences. If your Aunt Peg needs regular statins for her dicky ticker, the Scottish Government will foot the bill, but your Yorkshire cousin with a lardy tooth will have to stump up for his own pills. NHS England maintains a cancer drugs fund, the Scottish government has decided not to, to criticism in Holyrood from Ruth Davidson. A right to housing is another social right, but if you live in Berwick and find yourself impoverished by the Bedroom Tax, you're on your own; if you're north of the border, by hook or by crook, compensation for the reduced housing benefit will be found.  

From the citizen's perspective, your location in the UK already has significant implications for the scope of key social and economic rights available to you. Jobseeker's allowance may be identical, but it is a gross overstatement to claim that we currently enjoy the same basic social and economic rights in this country from John O'Groats to Land's end. Conceptually, welfare devolution isn't so readily insulated from these wider issues. If we are, as Ed Miliband insistently proclaims, "one nation", what justify these differences in treatment? If the integrity of the Union relies on having the same civil, political, economic rights everywhere in these islands, how can devolution and its outcomes be justified? Do tuition fees and free prescriptions not, at least to some extent, undermine the sameness and solidarity cited to keep almost all of social security reserved?

One of the curiosities of the referendum debate is that many of the writers who are explicitly keenest on a federal solution to Britain's current constitutional crisis - the Scotland on Sunday's Kenny Farquharson and David Torrance come to mind - are also enthusiastic proponents of the idea that political opinion among the wildling tribes of Scotland is more or less similar to those living south of the wall. As Gary Dunion observes in a piece on the European elections this morning, of Better Together:

"Crucial to their campaign is the argument that Scotland is politically no different to the rest of the UK, that our apparent predilection for more progressive policies is nothing more than an illusion brought on by our lack of fiscal responsibilities, a symptom of our subsidy junkiehood."

What bemuses me about the Torrance-Farquarson position is that, if true, it undermines not only the case for independence, but also for maintaining the current devolution settlement. If our political values and preferences are seamlessly of a piece across the country, what's the point in having an expensive assembly at the bottom of the Royal Mile to follow the English lead at a slower pace? If we don't have distinctive political aspirations in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, why enshrine or extend the powers of these institutions at all? It is a question to which I am yet to hear a tolerably satisfactory answer. 

Scottish Labour's invocation of the values of equality, solidarity and fairness to reject devolution of welfare will serve for today's rearguard action in defence of their lukewarm prospectus for more powers. It does not answer the more fundamental question. Labour always insists that they are "the party of devolution". But why? To what end? Today's report is entitled "powers for the purpose", yet the party has struggled since 1999 to produce a compelling and sustained sense of what to do, having completed John Smith's "unfinished business".

Under Miliband's Westminster-centric "one nation" vision, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Labour Party's political imagination is fired primarily by a unitary vision of the British state, leaving their flailing northern functionaries at a loss as what to do with this awkward institution they helped found.