Lights, camera, court! The People versus Alistair Carmichael...

When the election court convenes in Edinburgh next Monday, Alistair Carmichael's legal argument is fairly simple. "Sure, I lied. Absolutely, I "misstated my awareness" of the memo and how it was leaked on Channel 4. But that fib wasn't about my personal character or conduct. It was only an ickle political lie. And for that reason, m'lud, my election should be upheld." 

Thanks to STV News, that politically unattractive legal argument will now enjoy a much larger audience than it might have. The broadcaster has secured permission from Lord Carloway - the Lord Justice Clerk - for the whole two days of argument to be broadcast live from court one in Parliament House. 

Election courts are ordinarily held in the constituency they concern. STV's intervention will afford the people of Orkney and Shetland much-needed access to the debate about their election. The hearings next week are about the law. Nobody is expected to give evidence. The former Secretary of State for Scotland must be hoping and praying the case against him can be kicked without entering the witness box.

"You say you "misstated your awareness" of the leak. What did you mean by that Mr Carmichael?" "In ordinary language, that's lying, isn't it?" "Why did you lie, Mr Carmichael?" "Are you seriously suggesting that, in dishonestly covering up your role in his leak, you gave no thought to the voters of Orkney and Shetland?" "Are you telling this court that your lies were quite disconnected from your own reputation with your electorate in the northern isles?" 

It is always difficult to tell, but I am not convinced that Scotland's only Liberal Democrat MP would cut an unflustered figure on the stand, his career, income and future hanging in the balance. He does not want his cross-examination broadcast on national telly. 

So what are the legal arguments likely to be? I canvassed these to some extent back in May and June, when I suggested that raising an election petition might be possible. But there is no harm in refreshing the issues, now that the issue has bounced back up the legal and political agenda. An election petition is a special procedure for challenging elections under the Representation of the People Act 1983.

The grounds on which elections can be challeged are convoluted and technical -- to such an extent that the Law Commissions across the UK are proposing that the whole area of law be brushed up, simplified and modernised. But this case will be heard under the old legislation. The recent Lutfur Rahman case, where the mayor of Tower Hamlets was turfed out of office by Richard Mawrey QC, gives a flavour of the complexity of this area of law.

The case against Carmichael, however, is much simpler. It focusses on section 106 of the 1983 Act, which empowers the election court to void an election where there have been "false statements as to candidates." There are four main elements to this which the election court will have to consider. First, the basic tests: 

1. Where a person, before or during an election
2. for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate in the election 
3. makes or publishes any false statement of fact in relationship to a candidate's personal character or conduct they shall be guilty of an illegal practice 
4. unless they can show that they had "reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true." 

If an illegal practice can be pinned on Mr Carmichael, his election will be void. Under the Act, a candidate is liable for the lies of their campaigners only to a limited extent.  But if the candidate is the person who has spread "false statements of fact" about a candidate's "personal character or conduct", they are personally liable. It doesn't matter whether or not they were "materially assisted" in their election by their lies. It doesn't matter whether or not the lies made a decisive difference to the result. 

There remains a good deal of confusion out there about what the petitioners are arguing in the Carmichael case. "But Nicola Sturgeon wasn't a candidate in the general election?" "Could you argue that Sturgeon's implied slagging of Ed Miliband knocked the Doncaster MP's chances?" Both of these questions approach the case from the wrong angle. Both Sturgeon and Miliband are irrelevant. The veracity of the leaked memo is also, arguably, irrelevant. The petitioners are arguing that Carmichael lied about his own personal character and conduct in the "Frenchgate" affaire. By dishonestly representing himself a man of honest nature and behaviour, and lying in public about his involvement in the leak affair during the campaign, they contend, he sought to influence his election in Orkney and Shetland.  

On the admitted facts, it is clear (a) Carmichael did lie about his knowledge and involvement in the leaking of the memo (b) he did so during the election campaign and (c) he could not have believed that the statement which he gave to Channel 4, denying any knowledge of how the leak occurred, was true. As a result, the case seems likely to focus on three questions:

1. Can section 106 be applied to false statements about a candidate's own personal character or conduct? 
2. Did Carmichael lie "for the purpose of affecting" his own return as MP for Orkney and Shetland? 
3. And, were the lies he told of a "personal" character? Or did he lie only about his political character and conduct?

To unpack those questions a little further. 

1.  The idea of applying section 106 to lies a candidate may have told about their own character and conduct is novel and debateable. To my knowledge, the Act has never been used in this way before. However, as the judge noted in his Lutfur Rahman decision, the statutory wording:

"... is deliberately wide: 'for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate at the election.' Although s 106 usually refers to statements made to the detriment of a candidate, the wording is wide enough to encompass a false statement made in favour of a candidate (for example, that he was a substantial philanthropist or had been awarded a medal for bravery) which might affect his electoral chances, albeit positively rather than negatively." [para 104]

Although section 106 has mainly been used to toss out candidates who have slandered their opponents to get elected (for example, Oldham East MP Phil Woolas), as Richard Mawrey QC observes, there is nothing in the language of the statute which excludes the idea of voiding the election of a candidate for fibbing about themselves. But there is at least an argument to be made here. Mawrey's remarks are obiter dicta. If Carmichael's legal team convinces Lady Paton and Lord Matthews that Mawrey was mistaken, the election petition will fall and the petitioners will likely have a hefty legal bill to pay. 

2.  The election court is also interested in intention. It is important why the lies were told. If Carmichael can convince the two judges that his falsehoods had-hee haw to do with his race in Orkney and Shetland, he's home and dry. His skeleton legal argument, published in June, argued the lies he told Channel 4 were not for the purpose of securing his majority in the northern isles. He didn't elaborate on what they were for. If not for that purpose, then what purpose? 

Carmichael's worry, perhaps, is that intention isn't just a matter of law - but of evidence - and might see the bungling parliamentarian called to testify. And that wouldn't be pretty. But judges might be convinced that Carmichael's misrepresentations of his conduct were of such a general nature, to such a general audience, that they couldn't be tied to the race in the northern isles. This is critical. This is a challenge to the result of the election in Orkney and Shetland only. Not the whole 2015 general election campaign.

3. Under section 106, the court is concerned only with lies about "personal character and conduct." A quotation from a past election petition case in North Louth puts the central point clearly:

"A politician for his public conduct may be criticised, held up to obloquy; for that the statute gives no redress; but when the man beneath the politician has his honour, veracity and purity assailed, he is entitled to demand that his constituents shall not be poisoned against him by false statements containing such unfounded imputations."

Carmichael's argument - which thanks to STV, will be broadcast nationally - is that his lies "relate solely to his public or official character or conduct." Glibly, he was lying as Secretary of State for Scotland, in his official capacity, rather than lying as plain old candidate Carmichael, humbly beseeching the good folk of Kirkwall and Lerwick for their support. It was, in the time honoured phrase, nothing personal. 

Is this credible? Heather Green has argued not. Politically, you might struggle to convince many punters that this is an important distinction. But it is quite a thing for a court to void a parliamentary election. None of us should be over-keen to see the judiciary, tossing out political candidates which the people, in their wisdom, decided to support. 

General bribery, intimidation and corruption is one thing. Whatever you think of Mr Carmichael - and in my case, it isn't a great deal - his sin here is arguably of a more modest character. By his actions, he has deprived the people of Orkney and Shetland of an open, honest election campaign. He has deprived them of the opportunity to pass judgment upon him with a clear understanding of his personal nature and behaviour. 

That is certainly enough, more than enough, to justify the anger and disappointment of his electorate. But ought it to be sufficient for a court to expel him from Westminster? You would expect Lady Paton and Lord Matthews to proceed in this case with a degree of circumspection. But parliament made these tough election rules. It gave courts responsibility for adjudicating disputes. MPs invested judges with fearsome powers to cut short their political careers. We shall see.

Notes on "Defcon F*****d"

Believe it or not, in Inverness Nairn Badenoch and Strathspey in the general election of 2010, Danny Alexander's primary challenger was the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrat secured just shy of 41% of the vote in the Highland seat (19,172) while his Labour challenger Mike Robb took 10,407 to John Finnie's (SNP) 8,803. This time out, Alexander faces Drew Hendry for the Nats, while Labour have given Mike Robb a second crack at the seat.  

But given the history of the constituency, its Holyrood voting behaviour, and the failure of the Scottish Labour Party to pitch beyond urban (and increasingly west-central) Scotland, few folk will be expecting Danny Alexander to be unseated by the representative of the People's Party. Robb will hope to run his opponents close, and to build on his solid 2010 performance to make it a three-way race, but Ashcroft's February poll suggests that he has already been pushed into a distant third.

Those of you watching even snippets of the STV and BBC Scotland debates these past two evenings will have been struck by the vehemence with which the old Better Together coalition representatives went hunting for Nicola. And no surprise. The SNP is the only political party which can really be said to be in contention in every single seat in Scotland. Aberdeenshire to the Borders, Dundee to west central Scotland, everyone up there with Sturgeon has something to lose. Everyone, everywhere, has colleagues and comrades, with a Nat potentially nipping at their heels. The same cannot really be said of Labour, defending their redoubts, or the Tories, trying to shore up Mundell and hoping to give the ailing Liberal Democrats a kicking in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. 

Whatever your view of the national question, Nicola was always going to have a big, beaming target on her back. And despite the rough handling and the multiple angles of fire, she held up well.

Deprived of the relative security of a proportional electoral system, first past the post ratchets up the stakes. It forces the candidates - as if they needed any encouragement - to fight like rats in a sack. The risks and rewards of failure are far greater. Think of it this way. If Holyrood had been elected in 2011 solely on the basis of who won in the Holyrood constituencies, the SNP would have won 53 of 73 seats (73%) on the basis of 45% of the votes. Labour would have been reduced to just 15 seats in the chamber (21%), despite attracting 32% of constituency votes. The Blair years tell a similar story. 

Other first past the post systems throw up parallel calamities and triumphs, as marginal winners win big, and marginal losers get decimated. The mild folk of Canada have been particularly ferocious in this respect. In the federal election of 2011, the Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff went into the poll with 77 MPs in the Canadian House of Commons, crashing to just 34. That was as nothing compared to the party's fate in 1984, when the Liberals lost 73% of their parliamentary delegation, falling from 147 to just 40 MPs. The Liberals paid their opponents back in kind in 1993, however, when the Progressive Conservatives conspired to lose 99% of their ridings, belly-flopping from the heights of 169 seats to just two. 

Even the disheartened Scottish Labour MP, complaining of "being set to Defcon f****d", must concede that their own predicament isn't quite so dire -- yet.  But first past the post can be like like Saturn: it devours its own children.    

Anticipation

6th August 2014

Most commentators were last night declaring it a draw on points, as Alex Salmond met Alistair Darling in the first televised debate on the country's constitutional future before polling day. In front of a 350 strong audience of voters at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, the leaders of the Yes and No campaigns fought to persuade Scots that they would be better off inside the Union or independent.
 
While the charismatic SNP leader had been widely expected to outclass the former chancellor of the exchequer, the Labour MP fought back effectively in some of the debate's most spirited exchanges. Darling, never the most lively of politicians but a forensic master of detail, pressed the First Minister on the economy, jobs and Scotland's future defence.  Clearly well-prepared, the leader of the No campaign dominated the first round, landing body-blow after body-blow on the First Minister's separation plans under cross-examination. In one of the debate's testiest sequences, on an independent Scotland's currency, Darling demanded, "When I was at the treasury, we expected our politicians do to their sums properly. Where are yours, Alex?"

But heavy-weight Salmond didn't let down his guard. Parrying the blow, the experienced Nationalist debater hit back hard, knocking Darling off balance on social justice and the detail of the Labour Party's plans for more devolution, but failed to land the anticipated knock-out punch on his opponent. Widely perceived as over-confident and a tough, uncompromising debater, the First Minister's performance proved low key and avoided the anticipated low blows, instead talking up the benefits of independence and repeatedly contrasting the "positive" character of the Yes campaign with the "dreich, dreary dismalism of Project Fear."

John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, said "this was a respectable performance from the First Minister. But in truth, Alex Salmond failed to deliver the gamechanger tonight which the Yes campaign so dearly need if they are to bridge the gap in the polls and pull ahead."

In the STV spin room, pundit and Salmond adviser, Andrew Wilson commented, "this was a great performance from Alex. Upbeat, optimistic for our future, making the positive case for independence. I like Alistair, but I'm afraid all he had to say tonight was old news, old scare stories, and critically, no new vision for a better, fairer Scotland."

A Better Together spokesman said last night, "Alex Salmond is one of the most skilled political debaters in Scotland, but Alistair more than held his own, despite expectations. This was a below par performance from a struggling politician who knows that Scotland rejects his muddled, uncosted, unwanted plans for separation."

Our Constitutional Imagination #1: The Mission

The idea has taken on a quiet sort of momentum. Unheralded, it has become the constitutional common sense. An independent Scotland would have a written constitution, a unicameral parliament elected on a proportional basis, an extensive list of entrenched constitutional rights, including social and economic rights, and strong judicial review of primary legislation, giving judges the power to strike down laws which violate fundamental rights in court. At the periphery, places like Orkney and Shetland might be given more extensive powers of self government, but little in the way of systematic thought has been given to the sorts of government structures which the rest of the country should have, beneath the national level.  

We're racing ahead of ourselves, prematurely closing what should be a more open, imaginative conversation. We know that the Scottish Government propose that a constitutional convention with some sort of populist flavour should be charged with drafting the text.  But how can the people and their representatives make a real choice about the constitution they want, without a sense of the options and the alternatives? I worry that we're being drawn, unwittingly and to little advantage, into a vortex of conservatism, and a constitutional vision for the new state amounting to little more than the Scotland Act plus.

When it comes to the parliament, what are the key advantages and disadvantages of not having a second revising chamber? What benefits might we be forgoing if we carry on without one? What different international models might be borrow from and adapt to our circumstances? The Scottish Government propose to make the Court of Session and High Court of Justiciary collectively our supreme court. Why not consider creating a new apex court, or a distinct constitutional court like other countries elsewhere? What are the arguments on either side? The ability to vindicate your basic rights in court has obvious attractions. But what are the potential downsides and ambivalences?

And beneath the current constitutional consensus, there lurk a whole raft of potential conundrums and disunities. A proportionately-elected parliament, perhaps. But is the current electoral system the best? Against what criteria should the alternatives be evaluated? For example, the additional member system maintains a constituency link, but the d'Hondt method for allocating seats and the current regional structure favours larger parties. Should an independent Scotland fiddle with the system? We might, for example, extend the use of STV from our local to national elections. But that too will involve some compromises, privileging one set of values and principles over others. 

We owe it to ourselves, to our politics, to pause and consider these matters properly. If only to ensure that we embark on building the new nation with a clear understanding of what we're about. As a Yes vote in September begins to look possible, we're going to have to give serious thought to these questions, and resist the temptation to be railroaded into adopting an unsatisfactory basic law by conservatism, simple lack of imagination, or awareness of the alternatives. To that end, over the next four months I'll be writing a series of articles here, touring potential constitutional controversies, exploring the arguments on both sides and gesturing towards some of the informative international parallels which might inspire (or warn) us, as we set out composing our basic law. 

As you might expect, I have views and preferences about many of these issues myself, but the primary function of this Constitutional Imagination series is not to proselytise for particular constitutional causes.  It hopes to serve a more cartographic purpose, mapping some of the alternatives in an accessible way, aspiring to whet your constitutional imaginations, and get the cogs whirring. If Scotland is to have a constitution devised to a significant extent by its people, its people must begin to exercise their minds more seriously about the options.  Through this series, I hope to make a modest contribution towards that goal.  Watch this space.

The Art of Controversy

Rammy. Barney. Tumult. Boorach. Stramash. Whatever your favourite term of abuse, it was doubtless applicable to last week's ugly exchange between Johann Lamont and Nicola Sturgeon on STV's Scotland Tonight. Who did it damage, and why? Is the failure to sustain an audible, respectful, coherent debate a symptom of Scotland's machine politics? Does it attest to a lack of faith in the interest of discussion, without the boxing-pundit format and commentary? The Big Debate, good or ill: our first topic on episode 41 of the For A' That podcast this week.  

The regulars - Michael Greenwell and yours truly - are joined by BBC journalist turned blogger Derek Bateman, Women for Independence's Carolyn Leckie and blogger William Duguid.  Having despatched with Nicola and Johann, we discuss the corporate interventions of the last week. Another damaging development for the Yes campaign, or an expression of the inevitable risks business face, independence or no? Might these threats and menaces be counter-productive for Better Together, as they try to promote a vision of the Union as a mutually-interested, caring family unit? Can an effective lovebomb be crammed with shrapnel and gunpowder?  

Carolyn also updated us on the Women For independence group's latest activities, including the forthcoming launch of a video and report on the findings of their "listening exercise".  Women remain a key challenging demographic for the Yes campaign. The Group are currently seeking crowdfunding to hire two campaign organisers, print leaflets, advertise - and facilitate meetings and discussions over the last seven months of the campaign.  Lastly, we took a look at the other immensely successful crowdfunding developments over the last seven days, and their curious magic. Sites, films, debates, campaigns, all netting funds to take forward projects and schemes to argue the case for a Yes vote.  But is there a risk that the resources of the independence-supporting community aren't going where they are needed most?

You can download the latest show from Spreaker, iTunes, or listen to it here or on the show's homepage.  You can also find our whole back catalogue there. Plenty of interesting folk, and diverting conversations. It is also the season for renewing our hosting and taking a look at upgrading our equipment as we push towards the 18th of September. We were able to cover all of our podcasting cost last year from your generous donations. If you'd like to pop a penny in the pot to keep us on air, you can do so via Michael's site or using the donate button to your right here.

Notes on Govan...

Long-term readers may recall the obsessive twinge which consumed this blog in May 2012.  The spring elections of that year represented only the second time Scotland has gone to the polls to elect its local authorities using the Single Transferable Vote system.

Stuff to conjure with? For many of you, probably not, but for this tragic soul, unpicking how the process worked, how it allocated seats in multi-member council wards, and how voters transferred their support across parties, was marvellous if wonky stuff.  You can still find the fruits of these labours in the sidebar, with a breakdown of how seats were allocated in every Glasgow ward, aiming to show you which races in the city were close and which foregone conclusions.  

One of those wards was Glasgow Govan, which went to the polls in a by-election this week, after the death of Allison Hunter, the long-standing SNP cooncillor in the ward. Labour's John Kane beat the SNP's Helen Walker, winning 2,055 first preferences to Helen's 1,424.  In 2012, Govan was one of the city's most interesting races. The by-election, by contrast, was essentially resolved on first preferences.

In 2012, while Allison and Labour's James Adams comfortably exceeded the threshold on first preferences, the battle for the third seat was a close-fought ruck. The race was complicated by a couple of factors. Firstly, the SNP optimistically fielded three candidates in the ward rather than two, diluting their vote. Labour faced its own difficulties, fending off a "Glasgow First" insurrection composed of deselected former. Labour councillors. In the final allocation, Stephen Dornan ran the second Labour candidate close, eclipsing the SNP's Jonathan Mackie in the twelfth round but falling behind the second Labour candidate, who took the second of the ward's three seats. 

With Allison's untimely demise, a Govan by-election was always going to be a difficult win for the Nats. While the SNP enjoyed a very narrow lead over Labour in total first preferences in 2012, it's important to take a couple of factors into account when considering (understandably cheery) Labour boasts about a whopping great by-election swing their way. If you take Gordon Matheson's word for it, this result represents a stonking, unanticipated win for Labour.  As is often the case, the reality is more prosaic and the People's Party had a couple of important cards in its hands here.

Firstly, in 2012, the leading Labour candidate took the most first preferences of any candidate: 1,727 to Allison's 1,460.  STV elections in multi-member wards are different from an STV election for a single seat, particularly in a ward like Govan, overwhelmingly dominated by two parties, with a tiny knot of alternatives trailing way behind the leading candidates. The number of available transfers are unlikely to disturb the outcome in the first round, unless it is very close, particularly on a low turnout.  Secondly, it's also important to take the impact of 2012's Glasgow First rebellion into account. A full 15% of the Govan electorate supported their former but deselected Labour representatives in 2012, to the official candidates' total of 32%. 

From the looks of this week's result (albeit on a much lower turnout), the Glasgow First folk at least have "come home to Labour".  Let's look at those first preferences again, for this week's poll:

A few other entertaining notes: James Trolland, the Scottish Democratic Alliance candidate, received a single, solitary vote in the Govan by-election. Just the one, which transferred to the Nats. The Liberal Democrats were outpolled by UKIP, a somewhat eccentric secessionist from the separatist cause, Tories, Greens - and the third-placed anti-Bedroom tax campaigner. Having attracted nineteen first preferences, some solitary supporter of the Tartan-BNP in the ward - the schismatic outfit, Britannia - actually thought the Greens next best represented their aspiration for an ethnically monochrome but ecologically sensitive Scotland.  The mind boggles.

And what does the Govan result tell us about the independence referendum, or the approaching Dunfermline by-election? 

Bugger all.

"Eck Salmond came down like the wolf on the fold...

... his caramel log gleaming in scarlet and gold."

It's Sunday morning, and that means a new edition of the For A' That podcast. On episode thirty-four of the show, Michael and I were joined for a second time by Pat Kane and by James Kelly, of the Scot Goes Pop blog.

Up for the blether this week, Scotland Tonight's Sarwar vs Sturgeon rammy on STV, notionally concerned with social security and the welfare state of an independent Scotland.  Was this Scotland's "big debate", or an unilluminating, unappealing boorach? We offer our verdicts. For Pat, it was a "credibility-threatening" performance for one of the participants. I shan't spoil the surprise by revealing who.  

We also discussed the resurfacing of a certain G Broon at a United with Labour event in Glasgow this week, on pooling our resources and entrenching devolution.  We pick through some of the the former Prime Minister's arguments, his legacy, and his surprising constitutional (il)literacy. 

Our final big theme for today was racialism and advocating independence. Over the summer, several folk have argued that the current Yes case lacks green sap, and has managed to make startling constitutional changes ... boring. Is this a problem? Is reassurance the right strategy? Are we, by consequence, disciplining reasonable disagreement and ideological diversity on the Yes side of the argument?
 

We also dip a tentative iambic foot or two into the great #indyref poetry debate. As we speak, I'm busy, scratching out a heroic verse ballad in defence of my constitutional ideals, starring an Ossianic figure, harried by a cunning crow goddess and her fell, carrion-picking minions. Now, all I need do is find a few more words that rhyme with "Unionist"...

Download the show via Spreaker or your iTunes. You can also sign-up for our RSS feed, to ensure no episode will ever run astray.  Or alternatively, just lend it your lugs right here, right now.

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?

"Naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon..."

The spirit of Sir Walter Scott's Mrs Howden took to the streets of Edinburgh this week, a knot of students taking the opportunity of the Aberdeen Donside by-election to barrack Nigel Farage, with cries of "bawbag" and sundry other irreverent observations on the ideology and policies of UKIP's often-lionised leader. From reports of the event, no peebles were involved, but on episode 25 of the For A' That podcast, Michael, guest Kate Higgins and I lobbed a few projectiles in Nickel Foorage's direction. 

Up second, Michael articulated a nagging doubt: "Should we stop worrying about winning the independence debate, and just get on with winning the referendum?" We mulled over what is missing from the current coverage of the independence campaign. 

That segued seamlessly into a broadly positive discussion of STV's more creative approach to broadcasting about the national debate, in a week where Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Moore went napper-to-napper on an experimental Scotland Tonight special on the economics of independence.  Is this an Americanising development, format-wise? Can these shows really help us deal will the knotty issues of the independence campaign? Is a polarised, point-scoring form of debate really going to assist us, as a nation, to come to an informed conclusion in autumn 2014? More broadly, are STV outperforming the BBC in terms of the originality and creativity of their approach to #indyref broadcasting? 

Tomorrow, I'm speaking to members of the Oxfordshire Green Party on the question, why should progressives support Scottish independence? I took the opportunity to pick Michael and Kate's minds on the arguments they would use, to persuade left-wingers in England and Wales of the virtues of Scottish independence, and the positive impact which constitutional change might have furth of Scotland.  The work of ordinary politics hasn't been superseded by the referendum campaign, however little space in the papers may be given over to the latest reforms introduced by the Scottish Government. Taking the example of the important Victims and Witnesses Bill, Kate argues that important changes are being left out of our national debates, constitutionally overshadowed.

You can lend your ears to their answers here, download the episode via Spreaker, or access it via the comfort of iTunes.  To keep updated with the latest editions of the For A' That podcasts, and Michael's Scottish Independence Podcasts, you can also access our RSS feed here.

Langside, recounted...

Tuesday's recount of the local election result in Glasgow's Langside ward produced no drama.  As predicted, when the contents of ballot box 139 was added to the rest of the votes cast in the ward, the Green's Liam Hainey kept the Glasgow Council seat he was first elected to on the 4th of May.  After a few days footering, the Council have now released the full recount data for the ward, including the previously neglected Battlefield votes.  For completeness, I've totted these figures up into a new, revised Langside chart.  To make drawing comparisons more straightforward, I've also attached the original calculation in the ward, to be followed by a breath or two of commentary from me.

And the original Langside result:

 

Commentary:

For the SNP to snatch the seat back the third seat in the recount was always going to be tricky, but as you can see, the Greens actually won more comfortably when the Battlefield ballots were included. Wild speculations about what might have happened if Battlefield proved an unexpected Liberal Democrat haven proved wildly far of the mark.  Paul Coleshill for the Liberals polled only 7% of first preferences in the additional box of papers, effectively ending any chance they might have had to eliminate the Greens in the sixth round of the allocation. Like many SNP candidates across the city, Hewetson suffered for his alphabetical placing on the ballot paper, disadvantaging him against Hainey in subsequent rounds...

 

The other first preferences added to the recount calculation were spread as follows:

One factor which might have weighed against the Nationalists was the increase quota. If Susan Aitken's first preferences didn't keep pace with the increases in the quota, her running mate Hewetson would find fewer surplus votes tacking his way.  In the event, this didn't materialise, and Aitken's first preference support increased more than the quota for election increased, as did Labour's Archie Graham's.  The Greens were greater beneficiaries of Labour surplus transfers (taking 149 votes to the SNP's 81), however, putting them just ahead of the Nationalists on the second round of the recount.  With Aitken's transfers reallocated, Hewetson soon clawed back that lead, albeit with a narrower advantage than he'd enjoyed on the first calculation of the results.  By round six, the Greens had entirely closed the gap, and were eeksie-peeksie with the SNP. In the seventh round of the original allocation, which saw the Nationalist eliminated, he trailed the Green candidate by 121 votes.  In this recount, by round seven, Hewetson was 174 behind.  Not a palatial margin of victory for Hainey, but certainly a more comfortable one than he enjoyed in the initial declaration.

Sighs of Green relief all round.