18 March 2014

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. 

18 comments :

  1. The equation of the UK Unitary-State with a transcendent moral essence (that is still somehow ethnically specific to the Brit-Volk) looks sorta dodgy.

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  2. Indeed. It seems to me that Labour embraced devolution in order to (1) kill nationalism stone-dead and (2) provide Labour with a platform during Tory governments at Westminster. From that point of view, devolution was clearly a major failure, and devo-max would probably only make matters worse. Unfortunately for Labour, there's no easy way out of this mess because the Scottish public actually is now rather fond of devolution.

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    1. Thomas - 'the Scottish public actually is now rather fond of devolution.'

      So fond that only 50% of the electorate came out to vote at the last Holyrood election, compared to 63% for Westminster.

      I know that opinion polls say 'Oh we love this and we love that' but when it comes to actually making the effort to vote it's another matter.

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    2. I don't deny that turnout has been disappointingly low for Scottish Parliament elections. However, my point is that I don't think the Unionist parties could get away with abolishing devolution. Even people who are normally rather lukewarm towards it would suddenly be up in arms.

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    3. But is anyone serious actually advocating abolishing devolution? It would be like the proverbial back-into-the-tube toothpaste.

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    4. I agree. My point is that Labour's current leaders seem to be struggling with understanding why they wanted devolution in the first place. They know they have to offer enhanced devolution, but it really looks like they'd much rather roll it back.

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  3. Good points, LPW.

    It's a tough one for Labour, or indeed any of the No campaigners, to argue that on the one hand we benefit from all those shared resources, economies of scale, shared culture and traditions, extra influence, leveling off peaks & troughs (never mind those London weightings) through the larger collective, without implicitly undermining devolution.

    It would be a rather delicate argument to make that the current level of devolution is *just right*, but it seems nobody is doing so. Instead, the classic Clinton and Blair triangulation of a-bit-more-in-our-opponents'-direction based on no underlying principle other than avoidance of defeat.

    I'm sure we will have the same person & party claiming there is power in the Union, more devo would be nice, but "postcode lotteries" (aka regional policy differences) are a scandal.

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    1. Though of course, that "just right" thesis would seriously imperil their attempts to frame a No vote as one endorsing or anticipating additional changes. At it stands, their position seems to be almost just right. Restoring that missing 5 pence strikes the right "balance", to use the metaphor Johann kept harping on on Newsnicht last night.

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  4. As the only other person I know of who regularly cites Colin Kidd, I salute you on that one. From which of his many works are you drawing that quote from, old bean?

    I've often found Labour's constitutional contortions (one of your phrases, I think) to be among the most politically painful and torturous spectacles one can witness in modern British politics. They resemble the Rump Parliamentarians of old, fearing to concede even the slightest point or policy to the royalists for fear that unavoidable disaster lay that way, at the cost of effective government. When one roots one's political agenda in the rejection of another's, one begins to regard every deviance from it as a slight, a betrayal, and worst of all, a collaboration. A youth spent on the terraces of Celtic Park trying to understand my family's visceral rejection of all-things Rangers prepared me well for examining Scottish Labour's tribalism, so I find it interesting that you are among the most lucid commentators on these matters despite never having had "Scotland's Shame" inflicted on you (save perhaps a few choice comments on the subway about your double-breasted overcoats and powdered wigs, I suspect).

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    1. An experience, happily avoided! On the other hand, I of the fourth generation of an SNP mad family, so my chances of turning out pro-union and Labour voting were always pretty slender...

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  5. The desire on the part of unionists, and not a few pollsters, to suggest that Scots are fundamentally no different to the rest of the UK is akin to those who would argue that black is actually a slightly darker shade of white, despite all the evidence of our senses.

    Apart from the fact that the Scottish Parliament is evidence of the opposite its worth taking it to the logical conclusion, which is that presumably an independent Scottish Parliament would closely resemble the politics of the rUK. Silly, isn't it?

    Devolution is supposed to allow for policy choices, which lead to policy differences, which is what we have. Independence is the logical conclusion of that. Unfortunately, Labour's position appears to take us entirely in the other direction. Hence the schizophrenic quality of what they are saying.

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    1. Freoboy,

      There's also something wider going on about the social authority which quantitative data is able to claim. Who do you believe, the evidence of your lyin' eyes or this highly problematic, pseudo-scientific mechanism to divine the authentic views of the punters? It is always important what folk are uncritical about. Attitudes towards polling data seem particularly important on this score.

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  6. It's interesting that all recent Nat comment, including this blog, seems to be anti-Labour, anti-Tory, anti-London, anti-Westminster. Been a long time since I've seen any attempt to make a positive case for "independence".

    Because there isn't one?

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    1. How would you recognise it, Councillor? You wouldn't know a positive campaign if one flew up your arse in a helicopter.

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    2. Try me if you have one....

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    3. Truly, one of the most boring points of rhetoric on both sides of this debate is that there is no positive reason to adopt the alternative view. It is just nonsense.

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