Weekend Reading

It is a bit of a mystery. Why is the Scottish Government blowing the PR war about the Higher Education Bill?  Those of you with faith in the power of the dark arts might attribute this to the influence of Kevin Pringle. The long-term SNP spinner and Sunday Times columnist recently joined public affairs consultants Charlotte Street Partners, and is reportedly using his considerable powers to advise the university heirarchy on opposing this Bill. 

But the lack of a clear message emanating from St Andrew's House is befuddling - and frustrating - for many folk in academic life, far more sympathetic to the Scottish Government's agenda than the heid yins who manage our institutions. 

The legislation was in Committee in Holyrood this week, and once again, in selling the proposals to introduce a little democracy into university structures, ministers seem caught, inarticulately, between hollow, technocratic wonkiness and a defensive, apologetic political line. This is completely unnecessary. Why aren’t the Scottish Government arguing the democratisation case more clearly?

The short Bill does a number of things. It sets out principles of academic freedom. It introduces rules on the composition of the governing bodies and academic boards of higher education institutions, enshrining, in law, minimum levels of student, academic and trade union representation. It will require every university's governing body - the notionally independent body, responsible for holding senior university officers to account and balancing the powers of principals - to be chaired by a senior lay member elected by students and staff. 

In response, this week, a number of unelected university chairs sent a remarkable letter to the media, arguing that the election of university chairs by students and staff of their institutions would somehow undermine equality and diversity. Iain Macwhirter - a former University of Edinburgh rector himself - gave them both barrels here. 

As I was asked to fill in for Andrew Wilson in the Scotland on Sunday this weekend, I thought I'd take the opportunity to try to make the case the Scottish Government is signally failing to. "Far from the SNP playing fast and loose with the democratic traditions of Scotland, this Bill is in the best of those traditions. Rectors are an expression of the democratic intellect, nourished in our ancient universities, and now, finally, being extended across the country, to our newer institutions."

You can read the whole thing here.  

For those of you with access behind the paywall, I also had a bit in Thursday's Times this week, inspired by this harrowing portrait of Tereszka, and the child refugee's heart-breaking depiction of "home". It has lessons for today too, I think.

EVEL: A Postscript

Photo Credit: @JamesDoleman

EVEL, thundered Iain MacWhirter in the Independent, isn't about Scotland: it's about locking Labour out of power in the UK. After an admirably precise and succinct run down of what the Commons standing order changes will and will not do, Iain argues that:

"... the next Labour Prime Minister could find that he or she is in office but not in power. This is because Tory MPs sitting in the English Grand Committee will have an effective veto on all legislation on domestic affairs. Say Labour tries to repeal the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 that increased the freedom of private firms to bid for NHS contracts. 

MPs on the English Grand Committee could veto it on the grounds that this is an English only bill. It would leave UK Labour ministers for health, education and justice unable to implement the policies on which the government was elected. How could any prime minister pretend to govern when he or she can’t implement their manifesto pledges over 85 per cent of the UK population?"

Now, I realise the idea of a future Labour Prime Minister looks distinctly hypothetical at the moment, as Jeremy Corbyn allows his fractured opposition to drift, drift, drift. But just for the sake of argument, say that the 2020 UK general election throws up a majority of MPs from across the UK who are prepared to back a new Labour government over the Tory minority. What happens?

Reading MacWhirter, you could be forgiven for thinking that we are now stuck with EVEL, and that any future Labour government reliant on Scottish votes would be doomed.  And so it would be, if the current EVEL scheme remained in force. But a critical point I neglected in yesterday's blog, and which Iain neglects in his Independent piece, is that if an anti-EVEL majority is elected to the Commons -- the new restrictions on the voting rights of Scottish MPs will evaporate tout suite. They will melt more swiftly than a sleet shower in summer.

"As every school student knows", our sovereign UK parliament can't bind its successors. And this is as true of parliamentary procedure as it is of primary legislation. A number of critics of the UK government have suggested that it is inappropriate to make fundamental constitutional changes like EVEL using parliamentary rules instead of primary legislation. I'm not so sure. As anyone who has attempted to follow the Scotland Bill well understands, primary legislation is generally a slow and - at least in principle - considered process. It takes time.

Changing parliament's standing orders, by contrast, requires only a majority in the Commons. You may well think the Tories' recent partisan procedural games are unseemly. STV's Stephen Daisley described them as "vulgar". But, it is actually much easier for a Commons majority to alter its standings orders than it is for a Commons majority to repeal or amend an Act of Parliament. There is no ping-pong with the House of Lords, no royal assent. A single, decisive Commons motion does the trick. Because of the bungling, ineptitude and blund-minded malice of Chris Grayling, the EVEL process has been long and drawn out, but it needn't have been so.

It needn't be so, if a new Labour government with pan-UK support and confidence reclaims Downing Street. Ah, but wouldn't they be crucified by the right-wing English tabloids if they even considered dumping EVEL? Maybe. Probably, even. But you never win the fights you don't pick. The political career of Gordon Brown remains a grisly reminder that you have to win the argument. It isn't enough to win office, and sleekitly to do good and right on the quiet.

Caught between the frying pan of EVEL and the fire of governing in England without power, any Labour leader worth their salt would - and could - use their UK majority to consign the "English vetoes for some English laws" experiment to the scrap heap.  If you look at the text of the Standing Orders changes passed on Thursday, you'll see that EVEL is not an "England only" matter. It is for the whole House of Commons to decide how to structure its work. That will be as true in 2020 as it was this week.

Labour, Liberal and Nationalist members took to their pins in the chamber this week to argue the scheme was just plain wrong. The equality of MPs may not cause my viscera spontaneously to implode. EVEL may not do what many folk think it does. But folk like Pete Wishart and Tommy Shepperd at least have a defensible argument to make. So too would any future Labour government, entering office. They might well say something like this. "We are a unionist party. We are against anything and everything which imperils that Union. Anything which rubs salt into the divisions of this disunited Kingdom, we oppose. Our union remains a fragile thing. We are clumsy with it, at our peril." This isn't my politics, but it is not a bad argument.

Nothing lasts for ever. Not even EVEL.

The Scotland to be regained is not a Braveheart nation

Aspiration, lionising "wealth creators", punching coal miners -- the UK Labour leadership election is in full uninspiring swing. And political triangulation is once again the order of the day. I remain leery. Before the General Election, in a piece in the Scotsman, I wrote the following:

When you adopt the discourse of your opponents, when you co-opt their vocabulary and their ideology, you may think you are working a neat political trick, triangulating your way to victory. For a time, it may appear as if you have wrong-footed your enemies, as they struggle to replace the political costumes you have stolen from them. 

Tony Blair was a past master at this. Today, the technocratic and soulless Ed Balls continues to practice these dark arts. But ultimately, triangulation is a way of ensuring that your opponent wins, whether you retain office or they boot you out. It is a recipe for an asphyxiating political consensus, for conceding your opponents’ common sense, and not for victory on something like your own ideological terms.

Power-hungry proponents of triangulation will always be able to give their cynical gambits a realist gloss, casting their opponents as self-defeating dinosaurs insisting that there must be be no compromise with the electorate. The old ghosts of Blairite "pragmatism" - Mandelson, and the great man himself -  have crept from their hiding places to dance the dans macabre on Ed Miliband's political grave. His brother grouses across the water about rediscovering "combination of economic dynamism and social justice." 

Dan Hodges and John Rentoul have been browsing the restricted section, seeking copies of the Secrets of the Darkest Art in the hope of transferring the tarnished former leader's soul into a new political body. And in Liz Kendall, these strange passions seem to have found their perfect vessel. Given her antipathy to much of its historic platform and allegiances, you've got to wonder how the Leicester MP ever found her way into the Labour Party.  And front-runner Andy Burnham seems to be pivoting the same way. 

Starkly, oddly, missing from this discussion is any reflection on how any of these candidates might help the Labour Party to "reconnect with the people" they lost in their Scottish ridings. But ironically, this national triangulation to the right which is prompting another discussion on whether Scottish Labour should borrow another set of consumes from the Scottish National Party - and make a unilateral declaration of independence from their comrades in England and Wales.  The branch office must close. It must be rebranded under new management. It must be liberated to devise its own merchandise and to make its own offers. What cures us in England will kill us in Scotland.  That is the logic, anyway. 

Scottish Labour should be untethered from the UK line and have the opportunity to pursue the distinctive Scottish Labour Scottish line pursued by patriotic Scot Jim for Scotland during his abortive leadership of the party.  The proposal has gained enthusiastic cheerleaders in the press and on the airwaves. Some are speaking up from within the Labour Party. Others are offering gratuitous advice from outside the tent. Iain MacWhirter has been fashioning thunderbolts in his Herald column, arguing that "the tsunami" of the May general election "was the clearest possible message that all political parties in Scotland now have to place Scotland first." Scottish Labour, he argues, must disaffiliate to survive.

Respectfully, this seems like total guff to me. It represents a feeble, doomed attempt at triangulation which mislocates the People's Party's travails and would fatally undermine the principled if quixotic case for the Union which Labour spent months advancing and which probably represents the Union's best last chance for survival in the longer term. As a partisan Nationalist, I suppose I ought to encourage the party to take this primrose path -- but let's consider the facts for a moment. 

The parallels Iain draws with the SDLP in Northern Ireland are inexact. As are those from the German Republic. Practically, you can see how an Independent Scottish Labour Party might manage its relations with and English and Welsh Party. But it it is nigh impossible to see how an ISLP could ever demonstrate its independence in the context of UK wide general elections. The Scottish Liberal Democrats also enjoyed a paper federation with their colleagues in England and Wales. Bugger all good it did them too. 

But more pointedly, as unseated Labour MP for Glasgow South Tom Harris argued this week, Labour "spent three years campaigning, persuading Scots of the value of a UK-wide political union - the benefits of pooling and sharing of resources." Labour UDI would blast this increasingly strained commitment to shared values to bits. In the very fabric of the party, it would cry them hokum. 

Conceding your opponents logic in pursuit of the fleeting hope of victory is almost always a demonic bargain. Labour will not win again when they persuade Scottish voters they have passed some kind of imaginary patriotism test, but only when can translate their tired rhetoric of shared values across these islands into (a) a campaign with a sense of inspiration, mission and vision with (b) a potent and authentic cultural and social basis. 

That may be impossible in the short, medium or long term. But the "Scotland first" diagnosis which preoccupies MacWhirter and his fellow travellers is a sideshow. As Robin McAlpine argued back in December, when Jim Murphy was first elected, the patriotism he espoused felt oddly dated and misplaced: 

"... his pitch to Scotland looks awfully like a Russ Abbot sketch – stand on an Irn Bru crate, wear a Scotland football jersey, eat a Tunnocks’ Teacake. So bad (I think) is his misreading of the mood in Scotland that he has taken to using the word ‘patriot’ like it is the talk of the steamie across the country. He’s even proposing to put it in the Labour Party constitution. The only times I’ve head anyone going on about being a patriot in Scotland it was always a member of the Scottish establishment pretending to be ‘au fait’ with the locals. I really do think he is misreading the mood quite badly. Those Labour have lost don’t want to be ‘more Scotch’, they want out of London-based financial corruption. So far Murphy offers them nothing but platitudes of distinctly the wrong type."

These exaggerated protestations of patriotism had an early 1990s feel to them. But worse, they reified the dubious "surge of nationalism" story which dominated much of the UK media in the aftermath of the referendum. The crass sketches of "Glasgow Man". The picture of swithering Yes voters as dull-minded, policy-illiterate, beer swigging, sport loving sentimentalists who had been taken in by national feeling-- and who could be won back by a few tired performances in a manky old football shirt and an incontinent sprinkling of Scottishness in Labour's campaign literature. 

Murphy even sought to exploit the idea that we want our politicians, like Dick Whittington, to head to London with nothing but a bindle, and to return heavy with gold pauchled from English mansions. It was a picture of crassness and misunderstanding.

I don't know about you, but I just don't recognise the electorate Murphy was trying to address. Not in the tenements of Glasgow. And not in the small town and rural communities in which I grew up. The only place I have seen such a constituency consistently conjured up is in the columns of frustrated, confused, pro-union, right-wing writers -- who feel like their sense of political gravity has deserted them in the aftermath of the 18th of September 2014. 

For Scottish Labour to premise its general election campaign on these tangled, embittered -- and I would argue -- essentially misplaced diagnoses was remarkable. Murphy hoped to ride a wave of national sentiment which does not exist. At least not with anything like the force and intensity he seemed to imagine.  The average elector is not the cybernat of hated preoccupation. Scottish Labour's problems are not due to the perceived dearth of their patriotism, but to arrogance, ideological drift, triangulation, laziness and organisational hollowness. The Scotland to be regained is not a Braveheart nation. 

Forming an independent Scottish Labour party would be a historical blunder of even bigger proportions. Let's hope they make it. 

What the Dickens?

And we're back! As promised, the For A' That podcast springs back into life this weekend. I've a friend's wedding to attend tomorrow (the same character described in the opening segment of the broadcast), so we pulled the show forward and recorded it this morning.  Our guest this week was Callum McCormick, who is a doctoral student focussing on environmental politics in South America, and occasional contributor to our independence-supporting fellow travellers at Bella Caledonia.

Up for the blether this week, the Aberdeen Donside by-election. Triumph or disaster for the Nationalists, Scottish and UK independence-supporting.  Also, a question of context: Aberdeenshire, a hotbed of fervid ethnic feeling? Secondly, we took a look back over three weeks of Iain MacWhirter's Road to Referendum documentaries, looking at the recent political history, bringing us from 1945 to the independence referendum in 2014. A lightly hopping chat, shifting hither and thon, amongst other themes, we had a wee chat about Labour's ambivalent history of devolution, the Scottish cringe, and the national stories which MacWhirter's piece told.  

Finally, leaping from 1945 to the present day, we took a look at the Foreign Secretary's speech on Scottish independence. According to Mr Hague, if we vote Yes in 2014, we may be at risk of losing access forever to the work of Charles Dickens. Never again can you chortle, at the death of Little Nell.  A sobering thought.

Listen right here, right now, or record it to your favoured mobile device for later consumption, either via iTunes, or via Spreaker.  

Beyond The Cringe?

I vividly remember the moment when I first realised that social confidence is created not begotten, not an accident of individual psychology, but in great part, something we manufacture in the assembly lines of culture, family, and school. 

I must have been about sixteen or seventeen years of age. The scene was somewhat out of the usual run, though no great shakes. Part of the Young Enterprise scheme, pupils from a range of Glasgow secondaries congregated in a school hall, somewhere in the city. Formed of students from both state and private schools, representatives of the latter were coded in woollen blazers, dark and light blue, and green. The majority of state school students generally not. Initially, understandably, folk kept to their phalanxes and their friends.  An end was swiftly put to that.

Some diverting "team-building" enterprise, I think it was intended as, the six or seven schools were split up and muddled together for the task.  After half an hour, mission complete, a representative from each group had to take to their hind legs, and report back to everybody on their progress.  For most folk, this might seem a daunting enterprise, extempore speaking in a room festooned with unfamiliar faces. 

When the reports came in, familiar face after familiar face rose to address the assembled.  Blazer after blazer stood.  Most were boys.  Forgetful memory may be playing me false, but only a handful, only one or two groups from perhaps twelve or more, nominated kids from state schools for their spokesmen. A Hutchesons' Grammar School kid, a young lady from St Aloysius, and another, and another. Now, I know public speaking isn't for everyone, and for many, the very idea of having to do so sends a tremor of anxiety snaking up the spine. But even as a callow youth, I realised that attributing this strict pattern of speakers to chance would be woefully naive and incurious. It is probably significant that none of the colleagues who I asked about it, brimming with thoughtless confidence, found this spontaneous order in any way strange. 

This could, of course, be interpreted in a number of ways.  The cynical might see the self-entitlement of private schoolers playing out in it, thinking they are born to rule, brashly taking over.  There's undoubtedly a bit of truth in that, but only a half truth. 

Private schools have their share of ghastly, cocksure thickheads whose limitations, personal and intellectual, do nothing to arrest their assertiveness. But the more significant question, it seemed to me, is how do we foster a whole generation of kids who feel encouraged to speak out, to elbow past the ordinary emotional run of anxieties and inadequacies and speak up? Socially, how do we try to ensure that confidence and a sense of entitlement to speak and argue and make yourself heard is equally distributed across society, just as intelligence, wisdom, human decency and capacity for education is equally distributed? Having attended a wee primary school, of fewer than thirty five souls at its largest, I realise I'd come to take egalitarianism on this score for granted.  Folk obviously had different capacities and talents, but none of the appalling stratification of self-belief which unfolded, totally unremarked upon, that day in Glasgow. 

Worse, I found the same phenomena played out daily in universities, though here, I was more struck by the gendered pattern of contributions to my seminars.  In a recent interview in the Scotland on Sunday, Johann Lamont neatly skewered an experience I know several of my friends went through, only gradually realising that the big-haired public schoolboys in their classes were bladders inflated by hot air and shallow opinions. Their experiences also, inevitably, made me think twice about how I conducted myself in these spaces. If justice is concerned primarily with a just distribution of social goods, then space to speak has to be part of that.  Knowing your effect isn't always as straightforward as you'd like. In retrospect, at times, I dare say I'd have benefited from a slap. Or a gag.

On the first episode of Iain Macwhirter's Road to Referendum series of documentaries for STV, focussing on the period between 1945 and 1979, a number of speakers invoked the idea of the "Scottish cringe".  The concept made an appearance on the second episode this week too.  It has set cogs whirring. For my part, I've never shared in that inadequate sensibility, which makes me wonder if it is partly a generational thing which finds little purchase amongst those, like me, in their twenties and younger.  Contrawise, I wonder if my own experience is a false friend in this respect.

In my upbringing, there was no sense, for example, that speaking Scots was disciplined or to be regarded as improper, as I've spoken what you might call Scottish standard English throughout my life.  There is also, it seems to me, a significant dimension of geography and social class in the particular articulation of Scottish cringe which Elaine C Smith and others identify in Macwhirter's film.  Pared back, Smith expressed a sense that during the late part of the 20th century, west-central Scotland working class voices were missing from the public sphere, from drama, broadcasting and much else.  I've shallow roots in both, being by childhood rural, and until my middle twenties, rejecting the idea of class distinctions altogether as irredeemably reactionary, incapable of shedding useful light on our social and political circumstances.  Since, in the light of experience, my views have evolved, but if I was to feel a Scottish cringe at all, it would be unlikely to take either form. 

So which do you think it is? Are younger folk slowly, gradually, throwing off the shackles which bound their parents, going more confidently, more buoyantly beyond the Cringe, or is its lack of purchase just another coda of my entitlement and privilege?

Is the SNP's Britishness forlorn?

Over the weekend, I was scooting across Oxford in a taxi, when up piped the driver, "So, what do you make of this Scottish National Party then?" The fellow hailed from somewhere in the Middle East - difficult to place where precisely - but he was firmly of the view that Scottish secession would be a mistake.  Clenching his fist by way of illustration, he argued that while thin, extended fingers are liable to snap if buffeted, when our digits are all drawn together into a first, their combined solidity rebuffs all threats. The constitutional analogy drawn speaks for itself.  It was a pithy restatement of the No campaign's "stronger together" motto, quite unsolicited by me, offered up almost immediately when the chap ascertained I was Scottish.

Although the content and pitch of these conversations vary significantly, this encounter was just one of many recent instances.  Whether they be taxi drivers, or an academic stranger plonked next to you at dinner, it's now quite common for folk to ask about my attitude towards the national question in particular, and about the SNP in general. This isn't just me being a tedious obsessive, endlessly shoe-horning independence into every conversation - well, mostly not.  A number of folk down south seem honestly curious about it all, about the character and nature of Scottish nationalism. Are its primary drivers romantic nationalism or pragmatic calculation? Its prime spurs political disagreement with the prevailing UK political scene, or the stuff of atavistic ethnic animus?  

For me, however, the most interesting perspectives on the whole conundrum have come not from folk from south of the Tweed, but hailing from the other side of the Atlantic.  In Oxford, I have the advantage of several (primarily Anglophone) Canadian friends, and their perspectives on the referendum - informed by the legacies of Québécois nationalism and the 1995 referendum in their own lives - has been a source of significant interest to me.  One friend, keen on French and the beneficiary of a francophone Canadian education, speaks of how, as a child, she went to bed on the eve of the poll, anxious that she might wake up to find that her country was no more, if Quebec peeled off from the country's provinces and territories.  Even as a wean, she understood Canada in terms of its dual founding, and the prospect of losing that identity was an unwelcome and discombobulating prospect. She greeted the close failure of the Québécois referendum with an undisguised sense of relief.  

Following on from Ed Miliband's speech on Britishness, another Canadian crony put an interesting - and tricky - question to me. The SNP and others are strongly promoting what we might think of as an instrumental rather than a romantic or ethnic account of their nationalism. As Salmond once put it, "It is not for flags and anthems that I fight, but for fairness and compassion".  Mere bloviation, the skeptical amongst you will surely cry, bloviation and humbug.  Now, one may be somewhat cynical about how programmatic Salmond's idea of fairness and compassion really are, or how thoroughgoing and thought through his ideological commitments might be.  But on the core principle that independence should be envisaged as a means to greater political ends rather than an end in itself , the First Minister's position is absolutely solid.  

As Iain MacWhirter put it recently, contra Miliband's characterisation of the referendum - “To stay in the United Kingdom or to leave? To be Scottish or British or both?” - "this debate isn't about flags and national identity ... it's about power." Who do you want to decide your rates of taxation? The character of welfare provision? To decide whether or not Scottish soldiers are deployed in battle on some foreign field? George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith? William Hague and David Cameron? While the current political situation personalises the rhetoric and gives it a contemporary spice, the point can be framed more generally.  What sort of folk do you want taking decisions about your life? What kind of politics would you like to see for your country? Do you imagine that sort of politics is remotely attainable through Westminster?

The question my Canadian pal put to me was this.  Just how effective will this nationalist framing of the referendum really prove? Will a practical, political nationalist case focussing on who makes decisions impacting on people's lives really be able to displace those questions of identity, as the pencils of the undecided middle hover over their ballot papers? In the end, despite all the practical issues to and fro, might a sizeable percentage of the population not put a rather more simple question to themselves: who am I? how do I feel? And if an idea of Britishness-entangled-with-UK-institutions enjoys any purchase, and excites any fondness or sense of connection, won't they just vote "no"?

A politically-driven, instrumental nationalist approach to the referendum is one which I'd enthusiastically endorse, but if yesterday's Ipsos-MORI poll on independence is anything to go by, nationalists still have some way to go to break the link in many people's minds between (a) feeling British and (b) support for the United Kingdom.  Most folk lingered over the 35% to 55% topline polling against independence, but in the light of last week's blog, I was particularly interested in the table which correlated "Moreno" identities with support or opposition to independence.  The survey asked, "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" Taking the responses of all those absolutely certain to vote in the referendum, Ipsos-MORI found the following spread:

 

A few initial caveats.  Firstly, this data doesn't capture the number of Scottish voters who self-identify with each of the options given, and in particular, in the population at large, there are a far greater number of folk who identify as Scottish more than British than more British or just British.  For example, while 91% of respondents identifying as British not Scottish were opposed to independence, they made up just 7% of the whole number of respondents polled by Ipsos-MORI.  The whole number of respondents to this part of the poll broke down as follows:

 

We may have a lively disagreement about whether these percentages really reflect the underlying Moreno identities of the Scottish population - but it doesn't matter terrifically for our rough and ready purposes. It is clear, and clearly reflected in this poll, that Scottish identities are clustered around the left-hand side of the Moreno scale, prioritising Scottishness, but often identifying to some extent with Britishness too.  Whether or not 33% of Scots think of themselves as equally British and Scottish, nevertheless, a significant segment of the population certainly feels that way, and they are, for the moment, strongly opposed to independence. Just 10% of respondents who felt equally Scottish and British would vote "yes", compared to 41% of those who give priority to Scottish but feel some British sensibility who would do so. 

While caution about conflating correlation and causation is sensible, this data seems to suggest that Miliband's British nationalist proposition - if you feel British, keep the UK - still enjoys a very strong purchase in the minds of many Scots, especially those who comfortably and concurrently avow both identities. As I noted in a recent essay, various SNP politicians have recently been promoting the idea that British identities can be comfortably decoupled from ongoing political union.  They argue that we can be British by dint of our geography, or enjoy solidarity shy of shared participation in a more-or-less integrated state.  Advocates of this position strongly contend that Britishness need not be relinquished on independence, and vitally, should be imagined distinctly from the United Kingdom.  To feel British is no impediment, on this theory, to support for Scottish independence.  This sort of rhetoric has penetrated pretty deeply into SNP discourse. While we've heard a good deal on these themes from Pete Wishart, Salmond and Angus Robertson, on a recent BBC Question Time from Inverness, even Alex Neil dutifully suggested that he thinks of himself as an "Ayrshire man", and British to boot (colour me skeptical about that one).  

This is a understandable strategy for nationalists to adopt.  If independence is framed as a referendum on the extent to which Scots feel British - and we fail to dismantle the connection between British identities and the UK state in voters' minds - we'll get handily drubbed.  Ed's head doesn't button up the back. Neither do the noggins of Salmond, Wishart and Robertson - and this new-found articulation of a Britishness distinct from the UK is clearly an attempt to neutralise the threat of a British nationalist framing of the referendum along Miliband's lines. 

While drawing parallels with Scandinavian solidarity between Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish peoples seems a nimble rhetorical move, on the evidence of this MORI poll, that argument hasn't remotely begun to displace the sort of British nationalism which Ed was promoting last week. It may well be that a sort of "geographical Britishness" decoupled from UK state structures is simply too esoteric a proposition to ever do so.  In particular, how much do Scots really know about the extent to which Scandinavians feel a common, cross-cutting sense of identity, despite their formal borders and distinct states? To your average punter, I'd guess that the Nordic Council sounds like just another abstract European bureaucracy, rather than a crucible of comity between independent states, to be imitated in these islands after independence.  For all of its virtues, and the importance of imagining future affinities between states after independence, I'm exceedingly skeptical that the Nordic parallel really resonates.

The lesson of all of this? For all of the cunning, I'm profoundly skeptical that re-accommodating themselves to Britishness will seriously dent the anti-independence logic which the Ipsos-MORI captures amongst people who feel equally Scottish and British.  The rhetoric may serve other purposes, of course, couching the nationalist project in positive, temperate terms, rather than alienating those sections of the Scottish population - the majority - who think of themselves as British, however slight or thin that affiliation might be.  It is early days, of course, but the ineffectiveness of nationalist rhetoric on Britishness thus far makes it all the more important for nationalists that the referendum not become Miliband's question of identities - Scottish or British, and so independent or in the UK? - but focusses instead on questions of power, and who the people really want to be making political decisions which affect them.

Why are the old, Unionist scare stories failing?

Thanks to Rachel Ormston of the Scottish Centre for Social Research, I've been able to get my hands on a little more of the data behind this week's press reports that as many as 65% of Scots would be willing to back independence, if it made them only £500 better off. In the interest of unaccustomed brevity, I don't propose to trawl through all this material in one go, winkling out the particularly interesting findings in a single, mammoth pile of detail. Regular readers will be familiar with themes which have particularly detained me, analysing past polling.  Under the headline totals, what differences of social class, of gender might the findings disclose? If there are differences, why might these be and what do they imply for nationalist strategies in the referendum? 

For today, I wanted to focus on the economic findings that have much exercised recent discussion. In the Herald, Robbie Dinwoodie wrote up the findings under a headline, suggesting that "Old scare stories lose the capacity to shock", arguing that negative Unionist arguments about the economy of a future, independent Scotland were generating a "diminishing return". I'm not convinced that this reading of the ScotCen figures is entirely convincing. Dinwoodie presents the image of a once potent discourse of economic calamity, now able only to generate an attenuated, quite diminished terror in the population.

What the data clearly suggests is that Unionists' current attempts to do so have comprehensively failed to promote the idea that Scotland would clearly be financially jiggered by independence, by no means does the data suggest that the narratives of financial fear have entirely lost their virtue.  Quite the contrary.  ScotCen's findings suggest effectively peddled images of a hobbled and beggarly Scotland retain their real potential to breed caution and seriously to curtail nationalist ambitions. To put it in Dinwoodie's terms, while the present returns of Unionist economic rhetoric on independence are poor, narratives encouraging fear, uncertainty and jittering chickenheartedness clearly remain a real asset for a negative Unionist case against Scottish nationalism. Let's look at the detail. Take first the respondents' attitudes towards the impact of independence on the economy.

Q1: As a result of independence would Scotland's economy become better, worse, or would it make no difference?

ScotCen's 1,156 respondents answered thus:

A lot/a little better: 34%

No difference: 26%

A little/a lot worse: 29%

Can't choose: 10%

If we combine positive and neutral responses, these figures suggest 60% of Scots believe that Scottish independence would have a positive or neutral impact on the Scottish economy, with less than a third fearing economic deterioration or collapse. To be cheeky, let's also lump the indecisive into that group, as characters who have not been convinced by the stories of a vagabond, indigent independent Scotland. 29% isn't an insignificant segment of the population, to be sure, but is hardly the sort of fearful percentage one might have hoped for, if the arguments of financial anxiety are to be primary points in a pro-Union argument.

ScotCen then tried their hands at a nice wee thought-experiment, where contingency in human affairs is suspended, and the Scottish voter, musing how to vote in an independence referendum, could have a clear apprehension about the economic consequences. How would that effect respondents' views?

Q2: "Say that it was clear that if Scotland became an independent country, separate from the rest of the UK, it would make little difference to the standard of living, and on average people would be no better off. In those circumstances, would you be in favour or against Scotland becoming an independent country?"

On an independent Scotland with economic prospects that are neither-good-nor-bad, folk divided as follows:

Strongly in favour: 15%

In favour: 32%

Neither in favour nor against: 19%

Against: 22%

Strongly against: 10%

Don't know: 2%

By way of comparison, it is worth setting this alongside folk's views in 2011, absent clear ideas about the economic impact of independence. Asked, Q3: which of these statements comes closest to your view? Quoth the respondents...

Scotland, independent and outwith the EU: 12%
Scotland, independent but within the EU: 20%
Scotland, within UK but with some tax powers: 49%
Scotland, within UK but with no tax powers: 9%
Scotland within UK with no elected parliament: 6%
Don't know: 5%

Collapsing the various options into independence or devolution or no devolution, this generates three rough blocks of opinion: 32% support Scottish independence, 58% would prefer a devolved parliament within the UK, with only 6% opposing devolution entirely, fondly recalling the rule of an imperial parliament in London. Contrast this with the results of the thought experiment, where participants are assured that an independent Scotland wouldn't impact on the economy. The difference is stark, with support for independence running 15% higher, if respondents take as given that the economic impact of becoming an independent state would be negligibly positive or negative. What if Q4: "it was clear that if Scotland became an independent country the standard of living would be higher and people would on average be £500 a year better off"? Would you be in favour or agin independence?

Strongly in favour: 29%

In favour: 36%

Neither in favour nor against: 9%

Against: 17%

Strongly against: 8%

Don't know: 1%

To the surprise of many, if assured (or in referendum terms, "able to be convinced") that they will see a relatively modest financial benefit from independence, support vaults up to 65%, with 25% opposed. As Iain MacWhirter suggests in the Herald, the key implication of this finding is the apparent softness of pro-Union opinion; wages of hollowed-out of accounts of the Union's shared purposes and narratives...

"Scots are thinking hard cash because they no longer recognise any coherent moral message from an increasingly eurosceptic United Kingdom, dominated by the City of London, and run by a Government largely composed of ex-public schoolboys. Why should Scots keep faith with a Union based on plutocracy, where personal enrichment is the only mission around?"

While no comfort to those whose convictions are rooted in deep-seated, and stubborn commitment to the Union, Scots "thinking hard cash" by no means deprives Unionists of powerful, negative arguments against nationalists. Take the opposite case, and say voters could be convinced that independence would strip £500 out of their wallets a year. What do their constitutional convictions look like then? Q5:

Strongly in favour: 6%

In favour: 15%

Neither in favour nor against: 12%

Against: 42%

Strongly against: 24%

Don't know: 2%

Imagining their depleted purses, and a lost half-thousand pounds per annum, the figures basically flip, with 66% opposing independence in some degree of intensity if they believe they are likely to lose out themselves. What to make of this? A grim testimony to the fickleness of Scottish public opinion, which is primarily venal and animated only by self-interest? 

For me, one of the particularly interesting questions is, just why is contemporary Unionist rhetoric about beggar Scotland so comprehensively failing to convince the public? Why does such a small slice of the population seem to be hearing the lines endlessly flung about by Westminster politicians? After all, these critical, anxiety-generating-and-sustaining stories continue to receive great play in the media. ScotCen's findings make crystal clear that uncertainties about the impact of independence on household budgets are powerfully capable of making a great many people think twice about independence. So why are they failing? Are nationalists winning the argument? Maybe, but clearly not by a significant margin. Recall that on ScotCen's figures quoted above, general support for independence remains some 15% lower than it would be, if folk believed that becoming independent was economically neutral vis-a-vis individual wealth. 

While these figures are in many respects encouraging for Nationalists, that such "hard cash" thinking will be vital in determining the outcome of the referendum is by no means only encouraging for us.  Indeed, it is easy to envisage that these findings may precisely encourage Unionists to unleash a terrifyingly negative campaign focussed on damning accounts of the impact of independence on household budgets, putting the fear of God into the Scottish population (or should that be the fear that Mammom might desert them?) Needless to say, this is not a terrifically uplifting prospect.

Interestingly, these findings suggest that if the promised sunny and compelling case for the Union does not materialise before 2014 (and increasingly, I suspect it simply cannot), Unionists will still have to find new ways to capitalise on the latent forces of fear and trepidation, if they are to prevail in the referendum campaign.  It may be that the concept of independence remains too abstract, and as voters apply themselves to the question more intently, the hostile doubt-sowing critiques of Michael Moore and his ilk will have more bite. For the moment, however, whatever their potential psychological force, the old Unionist tales about being better off in Britain, and beggared if not, are conspicuously failing to convince.

On MacAskill's Newsnicht car crash...

In an interview with Gordon Brewer on Newsnicht earlier this week on the SNP's anti-sectarianism legislation, Kenny MacAskill used the words "matter" or "matters" no fewer than 35 times in an 11 minute interview. In my experience, the number of times the Cabinet Secretary for Justice uses this particular term is inversely proportional to the amount of sense he is making. It is what I like to think of as Kenny's Goldfish orator mode. Like the little brazen fishlet spinning forgetfully about in its bowl, when flustered, MacAskill has the tendency to lose the stream of his discourse mid-sentence - but not a moment stops nor stays he. With gallant mien, bravely he flippers on, in mounting and often comic circumlocution. Clarity is not its keynote.

Regular readers will know that I am intensely skeptical about the approach being taken by the SNP to its early legislative priority to "stamp out bigotry". Whatever one's view of the generality of the proposals themselves, Kenny's performance on Newsnicht seriously lacked credibility. The party leadership's public pronouncements on their plans thus far have been an embarrassing guddle. Are they proposing to legislate against threats of violence made online - or are they proposing to go beyond violence in a general attempt to criminalise uttering sectarian sentiments? Salmond certainly seemed to suggest so. If the government hope to go beyond incitement to violence, what precisely are they legislating against? Practically, speaking, how can such broad legislative intentions be framed in any satisfactory way in a piece of legislation? These are eminently fair questions, and thus far I'm afraid MacAskill and Salmond haven't been able to produce any remotely clear answers. All of this might be less concerning, if we could anticipate an extended process of reflection and deliberation on the Bill, scrutinised in depth by Holyrood's Justice Committee and subjected to independent analysis by figures outside parliament. In its urgency, however, the SNP Government is committed to passing their law before Holyrood goes into recess over the summer. Practically, this means a third stage vote on the Bill before the 30th of June. Time is short.  To be short on answers when one is proposing to close the book on the proposed law in just over a month, is frankly, idiotic.

I find it utterly incensing to be treated to pious homilies about supporting a piece of legislation, whose contents those proposing it show little indication of having determined or understood. For my part, I have sympathy with the idea of clearly criminalising making threats, if parliament is persuaded to do so might be helpful. As I've explained elsewhere, uttering threats is already a crime at common law, so a statutory offence is no radical departure. Similarly, I wouldn't want entirely to dismiss the idea that such legislation can "send a message", although compliance and (non)compliance with law is a complex social phenomenon. I can envisage how a new Act explicitly relating to conduct in football stadiums might achieve this, although the common law of breach of the peace already covers a great deal of conduct of this character. Again, no radical departure. Legally, such a reform may be of questionable necessity, but if a statute could have some wider social good - I wouldn't oppose that. It is really the third prong of all of this which has got my dander up, Salmond's supremely vague and illiberal proposition that...

 "I am determined that the authorities have the powers they need to clamp down effectively on bigotry peddled online. The Internet is a force for good in so many ways – but it can also be abused by those who seek to spread hatred. That’s why the Scottish Government will bring forward legislation as soon as we can to make such online behaviour, including posts on sites like Facebook and Twitter, an indictable offence with a maximum punishment of five years in jail."

Kenny MacAskill's interview was an excellent opportunity to clear up what all of this might mean in practice and to distinguish what they are and are not proposing to do. For my part, I'd much rather have a clear idea what the SNP is about, and enthusiastically disagree with it, than fray my mental fibres trying to weave something coherent out of a ragbag of inconsistent propositions and doe-eyed reassurances about the good intentions driving the escapade. Here's the transcript of the Newsnicht conversation. If you can make out head or tail of the Bill from Kenny's atrociously vague performance, you are of much greater acuity than I.

Gordon Brewer: "Where are you going to draw the line? I can see that there's an argument that says that if you incite violence against someone, that that should be a prosecutable offence. Is that what you are saying? Or will your internet crime encompass something broader than that?"

Kenny MacAskill: "Well there are two aspects that we're seeking to deal with. One is disorderly conduct, unacceptable behaviour at, on their way, to football games. In the stadia.  That's a matter where breach of the peace would be inadequate in many instances and that is why we do have to have a specific law as well as showing our opprobrium as a community and as a country. Secondly, incitement of hatred is something - and resulting in threats - these are matters that we're trying to make sure that we get the correct balance. Discussions are ongoing. We'll make sure we speak to opposition parties but what we're trying to deal with is those threats of violence in equally, at the same time, those incitement, that are unacceptable to right-minded people in Scotland. This is a small minority - but as I say..."

Brewer: "Hold on a second. There is a very important distinction between inciting acts of violence against another citizen and having opinions which people might find obnoxious. And I'm not clear whether you're saying that you are only going to legislate on the internet for the first, or whether you are somehow encompassing this much more nebulous concept of the second?"

MacAskill: "Well, the legislation won't simply be for the internet. If somebody put it on a placard or waves it on a T-shirt, inciting violence against another person, then that would be dealt with-"

Brewer: "But would it only be if you incite violence?"

MacAskill: "No, I think we have to go further than that. We have to make sure that matters which would be viewed as unacceptable by the ordinary man on the street, or woman, that is what we're trying to address."

Brewer: "Like what?"

MacAskill: "Well, as I say, I think it is quite clear that there are statements that are simply unacceptable on a religious basis and this is what we're looking into. In every piece of legislation, Gordon, the devil is in the detail. That is what's being looked at by parliamentary draftsmen. These are complicated matters."

Brewer: "Sure. But you surely can accept that there are potentially big dangers here. If someone says, in the course of a discussion on the internet, I think the Catholic Church, or the Church of Scotland - take your pick - has been a force for evil in society in 500 years and we'd be better off without them, you're not going to legislate against that are you?"

MacAskill: "No. We're not seeking to interfere with free speech and legitimate comment or indeed illegitimate comment that goes beyond what some ordinary people - many ordinary right-minded people - would think. So as I say, at the end of the day, the ultimate arbiter here will be the courts. It is a matter of common sense in many instances what prosecutors will bring. So as I say - "

Brewer: "But I'm curious about what you think the boundaries are. I mean, if you say someone is a - inverted commas, choose your swearword Catholic/Protestant - is that going to be a crime on the internet?"

MacAskill: "I think what we're looking to do is to deal with those cases where people are inciting matters that cause great distress and fear and alarm and where it goes beyond matters which could be viewed as minor banter. These matters have to be dealt with by the police and dealt with by the prosecution authorities with the ultimate arbiter being the court. What we're required to do as a government is to bring legislation which will provide that balance - and there does have to be a balance in all these matters between prosecuting what is unacceptable and intolerable in a tolerant society and protecting civil liberties."

Does anyone feel any the wiser about what the SNP government is doing? Does anyone feel remotely reassured that Kenny MacAskill has a clear and delineated sense of what the devil he's about? From the jadedness of his performance, you might hazard a guess that the man himself feels rather lukewarm about the wheeze. At one stage, the ordinary fellow in the street is the supreme arbiter of right-reason. If his conscience was offended, this new law would be offended. Moments later, this commonplace customer is told to stuff any sense of outrage he might have, in the name of free speech. Despite perfectly clear, fair and direct questioning from Brewer, the relevance of violence and threats remains totally opaque, although it seems clear the SNP will try to give the idea of "peddling bigotry online" some legal substance. I almost fell out of my chair at the Cabinet Secretary's final remarks - commending that we trust the police, trust prosecutors and trust courts - precisely the suspect formulation I anticipated and criticised in my first post on this issue. At this stage, on this element of the Bill, I thoroughly agree with Alex Massie:

"It cannot, as the proposals stand, be thought fair, proportionate or workable. Nor is it a braw step for the brave new Scotland to create a new class of "Thought Crime", criminalising opinions merely because parliamentarians find those views distasteful. In short, as the proposals currently stand this is a nonsensical, hideously-sweeping and illiberal piece of speech-curbing malfeasance that, in terms of its narrower objectives, is scarcely needed in the first place and that, more broadly speaking, is a grotesque infringement upon liberty and common-sense alike. No wonder it's a favoured party-piece and just the sort of Bad Idea politicians find irresistible." 

So what the devil can the SNP do to get out of this muddle-guddle rapidly and with credible and concrete proposals? The answer, I suspect, will be the same one reached by the schoolboy who forgot to do his homework the night before and finds himself in a morning's panic before his first lesson - he'll peep over the shoulder of one of his fellows, and copy down their work instead, passing it off as his own.  As we discovered by looking into Iain MacWhirter's poorly informed Herald column earlier this week, stirring up hatred against persons on religious grounds is not an offence in Scotland, Tony Blair's broadly-discussed 2006 Act applying only in England and Wales. It would be an obvious and speedily solution to Scottish Ministers' unnecessary self- (or rather Eck-) imposed expedition, simply to amend the Public Order Act of 1986 up here too, so incitement of religious hatred became a stand-alone Scottish offence. It would also provide the opportunity for Ministers to use favoured commonsensical formulations and metaphors about "bringing Scotland into line" with the position South of the Border, supplemented by its air of "modernisation" and "updating" fustian legal norms with lively contemporary standards. 

While an obvious solution to the SNP government's anti-sectarian conundrums, for Holyrood breezily to pass such an offence in a single month ought to be scandal. In Westminster, it took the Labour government a number of attempts and a number of months to pass its Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, the government majority being frustrated at many points along the way, by the House of Lords and its own backbenchers. And Holyrood could do such a thing in thirty days, without pause to consider its implications or time to doubt? For shame.