The faltering Old Music...

It is all getting a bit fraught. It was always going to, but you can feel it, the pot simmering as we get close. It has never been more important for folk on all sides to keep the heid, but also, perhaps, to remember a human faculty which has sometimes been neglected in this process and is most at risk in its dying days: empathy. 

Put away the caricaturist’s sketch. Don’t be tempted by the grand generalisation. Yes or No, win or lose, in the course of this campaign I've met countless good people of goodwill on both sides, explaining the world as best they understand it, balancing complex values, doing what they think best.

We've got to keep hold of that, as the temperature rises, and our perspective wobbles. If there is one lesson of the narrowing polls, it is that the boundaries between us are porous. This isn't a moment in which you're going to hear a lot of ambivalence articulated on the airwaves and on telly, but many of the folk I've met, out and about this weekend, embody this swithering sense precisely: even those who've made up their minds to vote Yes and No.

“The independence referendum: my journey into indecision.” The confessional has arguably become the characteristic genre of referendum literature as we hurtle down the slope towards Thursday’s final big decision. In a religious sense, confession is an opportunity to own up to your weaknesses. In Scottish politics, however, this superabundance of confessions characteristically explain unexpected conclusions, often reached by Damascene routes, often in convoluted archaeologies of self, unearthing surprising discoveries and ambivalent feelings. They have more in common with the psychiatrist’s couch than the cleric’s box. Most of these confessions are written with a certain sense of surprise about their contents. This appeals to me.

In the street last week, I bumped into an acquaintance, a lady from a working class background in Leeds who has, with considerable reluctance and surprise, finally hopped into the Yes column: someone who never imagined that she’d participate in a vote on Scottish self-determination, never mind endorsing it. In Glasgow, I encountered the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson, in newsboy’s jaikit, dishing out free copies of his magazine, calling on Scots to reject independence. The gaucheness and sincerity of the scene made me feel quite fond of him, despite our political differences. It’s a funny old referendum.

The poll, in a public sense, represents an attempt at a major conversation about public and political goods in Scotland and the UK. But for many folk, it has been a public process driving a personal dialogue – and private process of clarification – about their own feelings, commitments and priorities. If there is one lesson to be taken from the Guardian’s recent polling, the two campaigns have to a great extent talked past one another, peddling their preferred frames of political reference. 

For many, I know this has sometimes felt like hard, uncertain digger’s work, trowelling away in the murk, slowly clearing away the sediment, till you strike home hard on a point, till you snag on something solid. I’ve seen these processes at work in my own family, all Yessers, but the sense of conviction has undoubtedly intensified, as the day approaches. I’m reluctant to describe this as being radicalised, given the problematic freight that term now carries, but it represents a gradual and unexpected realisation about what your political priorities are and the intensity of your feelings about them. 

Clarified may be a better way of putting it. My friends have swithered. Like most folk’s friendship circles, there are sceptical folk inclined to vote Yes and No, hardened proponents and opponents of independence, whether on grounds of identity or politics or perceived economics. But the referendum process has undoubtedly focussed minds, the doing of it gradually illuminating what folk care about, and why.

Many have found themselves swayed towards independence, quietly, despite themselves, by the character of the campaign and the quality of its arguments. The No campaign and its new wave of advocates are still talking about Scots needing to “wake up”. They allege that the impulse to vote Yes is an expression of “anti-politics” rather than clear-sighted understanding, that it is rooted in a flip or childish reaction, rather than a well-considered conviction, born of political self-education, consciousness of the risks, challenges and opportunities of independence. That's not my experience.

And most of us are large enough to contain multitudes, to see some of the logic and feeling on the other side, and share in some of their ideas and affections. Massie gets this precisely right in his recent affirmation of his intention to vote against independence on the 18th, surprised by how much Britain means to him, moved by sentiments sloshing around, unclarified once, once undetected, suspected perhaps, but never brought out full out into the open – until now.

Yes, it is also about perceptions of risk and opportunities, political, economic and social, about doability and desirability. But without sounding too much like an economist, in reaching a decision, for most folk, it is about which compromise to strike. Yes, I feel a bit British, but how do I want to be governed? Is there any realistic chance of realising the politics I want to see within the current constitutional set up? Sure, the way the UK works at the moment is dismal, but I want to stay part of it, somehow. Shouldn’t we give it another chance? I don’t want to be governed by the Tories, but is an independent Scotland going to be able to pay its way? Which sets of values and concerns should I privilege, come the day? For some folk, one or other of these views with have a diamond hardness. Over the weekend, I met another old soldier who was a British patriot to his bootstraps, and not to be persuaded. I didn't try. But most folk I encounter see far more shades of grey.

It may be difficult to detect in Better Together’s final deluge of negativity, attempting to relitigate the tried and tested question of whether an independent Scotland is even viable economically, but this commonness gives me great hope for us after the millions of ballots are assembled and counted on the night of the 18th of September. Much has been made about the referendum’s divisive and polarising effects. Some folk, notably the Scottish Labour Party, have felt this more keenly than most. I'm sure it has been difficult for some. But for me, the lesson of the last few years is that most of us have much in common, but we divide sharply on the means by which these common concerns should be addressed.

Although we will make a binary choice on Thursday, it is an incomplete story. Much distinguishes the many folk endorsing independence both tepidly and enthusiastically, and much unites those who will find themselves voting Yes and No on the 18th of September. For me, to vote No is unthinkable, and as a consequence, in a funny way, only thinkable. Unlike many folk, over the last four years, I’ve made no real constitutional journey. Because my ballot was cast in principle long ago, and I’d never seriously consider voting against independence, this campaign has been an opportunity, more than anything else, to consider the boundaries of this conviction. To try to work out why, beyond the rhetoric and the sloganising, the slick cases and the accepted terminology, I feel like I must etch an X in the Yes box on Thursday. 

And here, my heresies begin. As I have written before on the blog, I have a weight of family inheritance on the independence question. My ancient old great-grandfather pulled our family into the SNP from the party’s origins. The loyalty stuck. My granny went to her grave with an SNP symbol on the order of service. But that’s an ambivalent inheritance, and by no means a binding one. The dead have no say in tomorrow, however honourable or sincere their political feelings were, however much we benefit from their forgotten agitation and effort. We must make our own choices, today.

Intellectually, I'm sympathetic to the achievement of a multi-national state. The old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, even the Union: the principle that folk with different identities can cooperate strikes me as an attractive one, and a principle perhaps worth preserving. Some folk on my side of the constitutional fence argue that the “natural” state of a nation is independence, as if the stitchwork of the United Kingdom was Dr Frankenstein’s work: I disagree. There is nothing natural or inevitable about nations, or the desirability of their independence. Yes, Britain is a muddle, but I'm yet to hear a persuasive indictment of that muddlement, which doesn't amount to a Jetsonist tendency to laud some vague "modernity" for Scotland. I can't endorse independence on that prospectus.

We build nations. They are socially constructed. I don’t mean that in the flippant way in which the phrase is often used – that nations are a delusion, an illusion which sensible people have no truck with – but in the sense that we build and sustain them through social action and cognition: they don’t spring from our flesh and blood. We imagine them into life, generating their boundaries, porous or otherwise. They can do good and bad things, and all have brighter and darker sides and potential.

Some folk on the No side have argued that Scottish nationalism is a unique pathology, pushing the country along the road to authoritarian government and heaven knows what. This too is codswallop, elegantly nailed by Fintan O’Toole last week. The Yes campaign is normal, in the narrow sense that it articulates a basic, respectable desire for self-government and responsibility, a desire rooted in an idea of democratic decision-making and political self-organisation. It respects the fact that political ideologies are important, and can (and perhaps ought to) diverge, and those divergence could and (perhaps) should be given institutional expression.

This insight is also the kernel of the 1980s Claim of Right. The Yes campaign may amplify its logic further than some proponents of Scottish devolution are comfortable with, but the arguments for independence are cognate with those agitating for greater powers for Scottish democratic institutions. Yes voters take them a stage further – no quibbles from me on that score – but they spring from a similar place in principle. Yet in this campaign, the Labour Party have, very unsystematically, been laying political powderkegs beneath their own increasingly incoherent thinking on devolution. Indeed, the party have been stoking up a rich store of political problems which will outlast the result, come what may next week, but it has been striking how vigorously its key proponents have junked and scorned thinking central to the devolution project.

In their rush to toss around damning epithets, the No campaign often miss out the positive potential of nationalism’s Janus faces, playing the lawyer’s trick of relabeling that positive dimension “British patriotism”, and sinking the potentially unattractive dimensions of British nationalism into the permafrost of the unconscious. I have friends who are thoroughgoing anti-nationalists who reject any political thinking premised on nationalist concepts. I respect the coherence of that. What I cannot respect, however, is the refusal to reckon with what has become the No campaign’s primary positive case for the Union – British nationalism.

Some folk will think that messy combination of identities is worth preserving. In some ways, it appeals to me too – though I’ve never really felt British, and like my Irish pals, seemed to get on fine during the many years I lived in England being a plain Scotsman from the already-near-abroad, without sharing Westminster government and all that entails. But disguising this British nationalism as a sort of internationalism-in-one-country lacks any credibility. It is a neat trick, to conflate the multi-stranded identity Massie articulates with internationalism, but it isn’t a convincing one. It tries to get out of the conceptual bind which anyone making nationalist arguments ought to face up to: all nationalisms are integrative and disintegrative, premised both on inclusion and an exclusion. That’s unavoidable. For the selective anti-nationalists, Britishness is only redemptive and civic, while Scot Nattery represents only the bum end of nationalist thinking. 

As the force has gone out of the Labour-dominated Better Together campaign's instrumental case for the Union, this is what we're left with: with talk of foreigners. For me, a vote for independence isn't a vote against complexity, but for a different kind of complexity. It isn't about separatism but finding new, more functional, more satisfactory ways to work together. It isn't about a hard, self-contained conception of sovereignty, but about refashioning those valuable bonds and ties between us, on a more equal footing.

I've come to realise that I support independence with some regrets. Part of me wishes Britain was reformable and rescueable, but I'm profoundly pessimistic. It is, no doubt, an overstatement to say that its capacity to reinvent itself is "spent", but the omens don't look good. A radical renovation of the UK from the inside would put me in a sticky place, but there are few serious indications that such a transformation is attainable or desired without independence.

While you can understand the longing lying behind the Guardian and Scotland on Sunday editorials against independence last week, they have an deep air of unreality, preferring the magic primrose path to candyfloss castle, to any serious engagement with the realistically attainable and the possible.  Federalism is not an idea whose time has come, but a proposition without advocates, without support, with shallow political roots in a moment of panic.

It was difficult to explain, to English friends in Oxford, that it was nothing personal – quite the opposite. Alex Massie is happy to have that inchoate, beguiling feeling of muddled togetherness trump concerns about how Scotland and the UK is governed, and which parts of our society it serves. I am not, but I can understand where he’s coming from. In voting Yes, and voting No, we’re striking a different compromise.

The porousness of the boundary between the two has both confused and put the fear of God up Westminster, but it shouldn’t be surprising to folk who’ve been paying attention to this process in recent years. The two choices aren’t a million miles apart, but the either/or nature of the poll doesn’t admit of such subtleties. In these last few days of this campaign, we shouldn’t be overwhelmed by that simplicity, and forget the wider commonalities of sentiment and aspiration which this referendum has identified.

I can’t in good conscience say that sacrifices won’t have to be made if we vote Yes (and by some folk more than others). Part of me will feel profoundly sad for folk like Chris Deerin, Adam Tomkins and other articulate proponents of Union, if Scotland does vote Yes next week. No legerdemain about Britain being a geographical concept can or should soften the initial blow. We Nationalists should at least reckon with, and recognise that.

The other day, when YouGov first reported a Yes lead, I was on the cusp of texting a Unionist pal telling him to “chin up” before realising how misplaced and odd that sentiment would be. The text went unset.  Yes, the idea of Britain isn’t exhausted by our shared political institutions, but nor is it entirely separable in the way some advocates of independence have suggested. The concept of the social union expresses an important and credible sense of how much we have in common with the other nations of Britain, and how little that is imperilled by independence.

But we need to reckon with the loss some of our citizens will feel. Nothing in that loss inhibits me for a moment, from urging folk to support independence for a better kind of democracy, winning the powers to tack our own course and set our own priorities, a responsible state and a politics capable of reflecting our ideals. The people will speak on that question, and have ample opportunity, if they wish, to strike a different compromise between their competing values. 

I never thought we would win this referendum. In my gloomier moments, I wondered if we’d even come close. Now and then, there have been flashes of optimism, as the No campaign let golden opportunities fly by, neglected critical lines of argument, even when the first clutch of Yes posters sprouted in windows across the south side of Glasgow. Silly, I know, but that visible sense of political comeradeship affords a wee lift. My pessimism throughout the campaign has been pretty overwhelming. To burst into the final, fretful week more or less eeksy-peaksy always struck me as improbable, yet here we are. We can do it. That's thrilling, and it is anxiety-pinching.

I’ve spent much of my life in institutions and environments, where support for Scottish independence was unthinkable, even ridiculous, a minority pursuit easily and unsympathetically caricatured. I know some folk on the No side are smarting right now, gripped by a sense of mortal dread. In that bewilderment, as the old certainties collapse, hard things will be said. Don't take them to heart. They're understandable.

But it isn’t our fault that the old music isn’t what it once was. It isn’t our fault that you’ve struggled to make the old sang shine, and all too frequently, can only remember a few attenuated bars. Nobody’s been stopping you from making that case; nobody has silenced you. You’ve clearly found your own authentic voice difficult to find, but that’s your problem, nor ours. I’m sorry you feel this way, but I tell you this: things aren’t as gloomy as you think they are, folk aren't nearly so far apart.

On Labour for Independence...

This morning, we've seen several statements from Labour politicians online, pooh-poohing the Labour for Independence group as an SNP confection, a front, as if it was unthinkable that such a group, however large or small, might emerge from amongst the ranks of Labour supporters, voters and members. 

Part of this concerns the involvement of SNP politicians and Yes campaigners in the group's activities. I've no interest in that here. What does interest me, however, is how keen these Labour politicians are to leap on the notion that Labour for Independence must be inauthentic. This enthusiasm seems significant, and highlights an incongruity between Labour's rhetoric and its constitutional politics which has always struck me as interesting.

It's a familiar sang. I didn't join the Labour party because I'm a Unionist.  Nor am I a British or Scottish nationalist, either.  That's not my politics.  I joined because I'm passionate about equality, about addressing poverty, about ensuring that workers - all workers - enjoy decent wages, good conditions and are not exploited, mistreated, or their interests marginalised.  I see the constitutional question - indeed, any constitutional question - through that lens. 

It's impolite to accuse folk of bearing false consciousness. This sort of thing encapsulates the views of many of my friends, and generally speaking, I take them at their word.  They hate all the right things. Jingoism, deference, crony capitalism. The United Kingdom and its politics frustrates them in many ways I share. On the nationalistic front, at most you could accuse them of being lethargic advocates for European or world government. Practical souls, they're generally prepared to toddle along, quite quiescent, within the limited confines of the British state.  They wear no concealed Union jack underpants.

In the public eye, we hear similar rhetoric from many of the party's elected politicians about not being political nationalists. Sometimes this takes on a suggestive Marxisant shape, albeit that of socialism in one country (the UK) rather than the internationale, with talk of the shared interests and struggles of working people on both sides of the border.  The power of capital, by contrast, rarely gets much of a look in.  

Of these elected Labour figures, it is all too tempting to diagnose a lack of political self-awareness, or of disclosure. As we've seen in the referendum debate, the Labour leadership has, from the very top, increasingly de-emphasised these instrumental Unionist arguments about achieving favourable political outcomes within UK political structures (pace Colin Kidd). Supplanting it, Labour figures have begun to draw more concertedly on the resources of British nationalism, to make their positive case for continuing Union. 

But it's puzzling.  Apparently no unionists and no nationalists, you might expect agnosticism from Labour supporters on the Scottish national question, not uniform, passionate opposition to independence. Deprived of the ultramontane Tory's love of Union for tradition's sake, or the British nationalist's sense of national (or even ethnic) solidarity, believing that shared culture, goods and interests should entail shared institutions of government and politics, this Labour supporter would have to engage in a different calculation. Would independence for Scotland advance or retard socialist strategy, however vaguely conceived? What are the likely consequences of such a constitutional change, for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom as we know it today? 

If Johann Lamont and her colleagues are to believed, there can be only one answer to this strategic question. This is unconvincing. Wouldn't we expect at least part of a truly non-nationalist, non-unionist party to support independence? Surely this, above all, is an issue where reasonable folk may reasonably differ in their assessments.  As Better Together never tire of emphasising, it isn't so easy to look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not.  You've got to exercise your reason, and your judgment, and resolve one way or the other.  If for Labour supporters, it's simply a question of democratic socialist strategy, and not primarily a question of identity or national feeling, wouldn't it be a touch strange if everyone in the party agreed that Britain's best in that utilitarian calculation?

Why might this be? One explanation might be that all of the democratic socialists who see independence as the most viable route to a leftier future have already bled away to the left of the SNP, alienated over the years by the drift of leadership and policy.  Generally unremarked upon, one of the interesting challenges faced by the Yes campaign, and its attempts to be distinct but accommodate the SNP, is that the Nationalists and much of their support are arguably already the independence movement: a muddled, ideologically motley clamjamfrey of folk who support the party as the best motor for their constitutional preferences, liable to suffer mutinies and runaways once (if) independence is realised. 

But what gets lost in all of this partisan zeal, and the simple binary between Nationalists and Labour, is the more interesting, muddled, ambivalence many more Scots may feel, who've been both Yorkists and Lancastrians in their days.  One of Gerry Hassan's favourite topics is the ensemble of stories constituting what he calls "Labour Scotland".  That tradition still has a strange glamour.

Despite Labour's dire current polling, despite the savagery with which many nationalists attack the outfit, the smack of nostalgia - and the abiding hope of redemption - is remarkable.  Whatever frustrations and hostilities the really existing Labour Party in Scotland provokes, many independence supporters, and even some SNP members, stoke a cherished, if low-burning, flame of hope, for a Labour Party they could believe in again. 

"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. "Speak to me..."

I confess, Nicola Sturgeon has never before struck me as a likely devotee of Thomas Stearns Eliot, but I'm always happy to be surprised. Subverting the tyranny of Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan in the First Minister's book of quotations, his Deputy today opened a speech at the University of Strathclyde, with an epigram or two culled from the poet's Little Gidding:

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time..."

 

Her topic was, unsurprisingly, Scottish independence, and Sturgeon's title "Building a Better Nation".  I dare say a scrap or two of her remarks might find their way into the Scottish press, or be briefly recounted in the sagging corner of a Scottish edition here or there, but they are unlikely to impinge on the consciousness of a UK audience, one way or the other.  On one level, this is perfectly creditable omission on their part, and it would be a surprise if Nicola's thoughts were to invade kitchens across Britain, to be consumed avidly  alongside a gulp of coffee or hasty crumb of toast. On another level, however, that Telegraph or Mail readers will not encounter the sort of nationalistic case Nicola is articulating, is a pity. 

One may wonder what impact, if any, Ed Miliband's "Defending the Union in England" speech over the summer made on the public consciousness.  His remarks were, however, interesting and important in another respect: they attempted to frame understandings and the debate about Scottish nationalism in England in a very particular way. Around half-way through, the Labour leader made the following observation.  He said...

"Why does this matter to the debate about the United Kingdom? In my view, it is absolutely central.  Of course, there are economic and political arguments advanced for Scottish separatism. But even though they often don’t admit it, the logic of the nationalists’ case goes beyond politics and the economy. It insists that the identification with one of our nations is diminished by the identity with our country a whole. After all, they want to force people to choose. To be Scottish or British. I say you can be both."

"Clean-up in aisle five. The stuffing has fallen out of Mr Miliband's straw man." That "of course", dispensing with economic and political reasons for independence, is doing an awful lot of work, and the general gist of Ed's argument seems pretty plain. For Ed, the resolution of the national question in Scotland ought to turn, finally, on the question of identity. His formulation is simple: if you feel British - even a smidgeon, a smudge, a frisson, a flutter - vote no.  That's some heavy-duty gloss he's applied to the "really-existing Scottish nationalism" whose constitutional hopes Miliband hopes to extinguish. The devil of it is that this highly misleading account of the character of contemporary Scottish nationalism is arguably the dominant understanding of the phenomenon which you meet here in England.

As those of you who regularly follow our For A' That podcast series will know, the state of the Scottish independence debate across the UK is a well-worn hobby horse of mine.  There are several reasons for my interest, not least that I have lived in England since the autumn of 2009, while retaining a strong interest (often via this site and the conversations it has sparked) in what has been going on in Scotland. Squinting north from the lee side of Hadrian's wall affords a certain perspective, and chatting to people in England about the prospect of independence, you come to a view about the sorts of images and accounts of Scottish nationalism which are gaining purchase among thoughtful, inquiring people. They're generally unrecognisable to me, or sketchy beyond measure. If you accept the Miliband model, Scottish nationalists are pre-eminently seen as a rather suspect, bamboozling, ragbag, potentially even slightly sinister, band united around the lurid tat of tartan kitsch and howling Braveheartism.  "I say, old chap. Steady on."   

Let's bring Nicola back in here, and consider the following section from her lecture today...

"One of the great intellectuals of the nationalist movement - and someone we all miss dearly – the late Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, distinguished between what he called the existentialist and the utilitarian strands of the nationalist movement. The former described those who thought Scotland was entitled to be independent simply because we are a nation, the latter that independence was a tool to deliver a better society.

While I recognise the distinction Neil drew and realise that there are some in our national movement who base their political beliefs more on the fact of nationhood, I would suggest that today most SNP members are an amalgam of these two strands.

For my part, and I believe for my generation, I have never doubted that Scotland is a nation. And while I might not go on about a thousand years of history and that sort of thing I take it for granted as a simple fact that Scotland is a nation with an inalienable right to self-determination.

But for me the fact of nationhood or Scottish identity is not the motive force for independence. Nor do I believe that independence, however desirable, is essential for the preservation of our distinctive Scottish identity. And I don’t agree at all that feeling British – with all of the shared social, family and cultural heritage that makes up such an identity – is in any way inconsistent with a pragmatic, utilitarian support for political independence.

My conviction that Scotland should be independent stems from the principles, not of identity or nationality, but of democracy and social justice."

On twitter, the journalist David Torrance described the speech as a whole as "the most lucid statement of modern Nationalist thinking [he'd] seen". And with due credit to Nicola, I'd concur with that assessment. The frustration, however, is that this lucid account will - inevitably - struggle to dent the accumulated woad-smacked, plaid-bound banalities which thrive in the images of Scottish nationalism cultivated by the UK media.  It is significant, too, I think, that not only is Sturgeon's logic lucid - it is also representative of the thinking which underpins a much wider, popular nationalist analysis: if independence is the answer, what is the question that it answers?

At the Radical Independence Conference in Glasgow two Saturdays back, a couple of features of the debate were particularly striking. Firstly, the broad gamut of speakers were absolutely united by their fatalism about their ability to realise anything like the sort of politics they wanted within the confines of the British state. More significantly, perhaps, was the mostly unarticulated, undebated, taken-for-granted proposition that an independent Scotland would be better placed to begin realising delegates' left-leaning goals. This found expression in simple, but I think telling ways.  The big crowd-pleaser in plenary and workshop sessions was not independence, per se. The ideas which merited spontaneous cheers and applause included the collective ownership of renewable energies generation, opposition to austerity and welfare cuts and to Nato and to nuclear weapons. 

The critical point is this: here was an assembly of some nine hundred folk, none of whom the reader, lead by the nose by the UK press to expect romantic impractical Bravehearts, would have found remotely recognisable.  Although Sturgeon and the anarchist-marxist-feminist-socialist-environmentalist campaigner who sat in the Radisson Blu last week would likely find a great deal to disagree about politically, and how the institutions of independent Scotland ought to exercise the liberty which constitutional change would afford them, it is fascinating how far these two core assumptions about the case for Scottish independence are i) shared between mainstream and "left-radical" proponents of Scottish independence and ii) both are largely misunderstood and left out of UK press reports only occasionally dipping in to Scottish affairs.

It is a point I've made a few times before, but on a day when Sturgeon's persuasive statement of contemporary nationalism will likely find itself stoppered within the confines of Scottish commentary, it is important to understand we can already detect the straining signs of the UK's accelerating "social disunion". For those who favour the status quo, this drift must surely be concerning.  While it may seem to suit partisan anti-nationalism to see folk like Sturgeon reduced to convenient cyphers and straw (wo)men to be flattened, that the United Kingdom doesn't even appear to be interested in the possibility that all will be changed and changed utterly for it in 2014, hardly speaks to a lively social and political union of reciprocal interest and concern.  Indeed, it perhaps recalls another frustrated passage, from another, arguably more famous, Eliot poem...

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. 
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

Labour for Independence?

Beyond the pale, disreputable, thoroughly discreditable, incredible, unthinkable. At some point in our lives, most of us should have encountered a moment when we were surrounded by people for whom some cherished conviction of our own was absolutely anathema. Whether representative of the wider population or not, this "common sense in the room" can be intoxicating. For an extreme instance, watch Scottish Questions at Westminster, which is now devoted to pouring vial after vial of scorn over SNP heads. In the great baying mob of MPs, the isolated Nationalist delegation's voices are thin, reedy and invariably drowned out in a haughty chorus of gleeful insolence.

I blogged a wee while back about my experiences at the high table of an Oxford college (which will remain nameless), at which Scottish nationalism wasn’t exactly held in high regard. Indeed, it was dismissed summarily, out of hand, as if the proposition was a transparent absurdity, and any soul who conceived otherwise was surely a silly sausage, and certainly not to be taken seriously. It matters who and what we feel able to write off out of hand, in a casual, argument-slaying shrug. In that piece, I suggested that Scottish Tories are likely to find themselves victim to this sort of chortling scorn, scorned to be taken seriously, the possibilities for reasoned argument foreclosed by your interlocutor's contempt.

Few Holyrood watchers could have failed to notice that hitherto a similar spirit has ruled much of the independence referendum debate. At First Minster’s questions, Ruth Davidson and Johann Lamont habitually inveigh against nationalism, full of fulmination, damning Salmond’s eyes for a daffy, Quixotic fellow on a fool’s errand. Despite occasions in the past where both women have explicitly recognised that Scotland is fit for self-government, rhetorically at least, both have done their weather best to characterise nationalism as outlandish, pathological, and unthinkable. The other day, it struck me that this discourse is dependent on the logic of partisanship, assuming that all of the SNP align behind YesScotland, and all of Labour and the Tories form up with BetterTogether. As the name implies, it may be surprising for your average supporter of the Conservative and Unionist party to support independence – but what about Labour? 

As some of the party’s supporters never tire of telling us, they are not nationalists, nor unionists, but understand their politics to be animated by rather different gods. Some, undoubtedly, still identify as democratic socialists, or at the very least as social democrats, and see their primary purpose – their project – in those terms, whatever intersecting national borders their political struggles may cross. All well and good, and for the moment, let’s take them at their word and accept their political self-diagnosis. If their attitude to the referendum is essentially about means rather than ends – and their question, what means best secure our ends, Union or Scottish independence? – wouldn’t it be a little strange if there was no disagreement whatsoever about which constitutional strategy the party ought to pursue? 

Which got me wondering, where's "Labour for independence?", and is such a movement even thinkable in the contemporary Scottish Labour party? You have Dennis Canavan, of course, but he's been out of Labour politics for yonks now.  I don’t know enough about the ins and the outs of the outfit to tell. One thing is obvious: Johann obviously feels no need to be circumspect about the views of the membership of her party, or for that matter, her fellow parliamentarians in Westminster or in Holyrood.  All are assumed to share her sovereign contempt for the motives and missions of Scottish nationalists.

It may well be that, in the atmosphere which has governed Scottish politics these last years, premised on daggers-drawn between Labour and the SNP, you couldn’t get elected an MSP or MP without being committed to an uncharacteristic, reflexive Unionism of the sort espoused – albeit rather limply these days – by the Tories. I doubt very much, however, that this unwavering phalanx of pro-Union opinion can be representative of the whole Labour movement.  After all, in their own terms, they are neither unionists nor nationalists, and there is at least an argument that realising democratic socialist goals in an independent Scotland would be more straightforwardly accomplished than in Westminster. 

Many folk have been protesting that they're keen for a civilised, intelligent, substantive debate on independence.  It may well be that the first step to doing so is the emergence of a Labour pro-independence group of any significance - or at the very least, a shift in unionist discourse from the idea that nationalism is discreditable, unserious folly, but is instead a viable perspective on politics and the constitution with which they respectfully disagree.  We all know that the atmosphere around the SNP has changed in a number of respects these last years.  In 2006, Mike Russell published a co-authored tract, calling for a "new Union" in these islands.  Various other figures in the party have been taking another look at Britishness, and instead of casually rejecting it, are finding interesting new articulations of the idea. For myself, I tried to contribute in a small way towards obliterating the gridiron binaries and recrimination which has characterised the debate by outlining my own ambivalences about the nationalist project.

These aren't concessions to a opposed worldview, nor I think signs of Nationalist weakness.  Quite the opposite.  Occam's razor a clumsy instrument. Things are complicated, and compromised, and owning up to that's no vice.  We may despatch such ambivalences to a gloomy gulag in the back of our minds, but the niggling little thoughts cannot so easily be exorcised. Folk like Gerry Hassan have been arguing for a long while that the crude Manichean spirit which dominates Scottish politics is pernicious. These past months, we've arguably seen movement on the nationalist side of the argument, but little or no evidence of  Unionist attempts to understand the compelling dimensions of the nationalist case, not as a declaratory ethnic project, but one based on ideas of responsibility, self-government, of a better politics afloat on something other than endlessly repatched, creaky, leaky British ship of state.

I enjoy a good flyting. I'm no wilting bloom, opposed to a dry line, the cruel laugh, the mirthful, malicious put down neatly deployed to disarm an opponent.  Don't let's be prissy. But a precondition of meaningful debate is understanding your opponents ideas, their language and ambitions. We'll never achieve that, without nationalists occasionally borrowing unionist wellies, taking them out for a traipse, and vice versa.  As Johann Lamont's recent performances at FMQs has shown, imperious scorn can be the stuff of effective stand-up comedy but not, I fancy, of illuminating dialectic. 

A nationalist liferaft, but who is it for?

By nature, I'm something of a switherer.  I could try to paint this as a virtue, suspicious of the verities of one side and open to alternative arguments, but it makes for a damn predicament when critical moments of choice come along.  And for a nationalist, the question whether or not we should incorporate a second, devo-something question into the independence referendum is one of those moments of choice.  A few months back, I felt flatly in favour of a yeah or nay vote, independence or not, and then I wobbled. 

I’ve been trying to discern why.  Not, of course, that my say so or nay so matters a jot, but it’d be nice to see clearly through the constitutional fog, for my own sake.  The polls are obviously part of the calculation.  On the best evidence we have before us, most Scots do not currently favour independence, being partial instead to a reformed Union which nobody is offering, and a Scottish Parliament with extensive new powers over taxation and welfare which hitherto, all of the UK parties have stridently resisted devolving. As someone with democratic sensibilities, it would be churlish to ignore those demands, whatever your political persuasion. As Duncan Hamilton recently wrote in the Scotland on Sunday, in a significant piece from the former MSP and Salmond aide:

“The campaign is clearly for independence but, as gradualists, most independence supporters (like me) also see the merit in working with the majority opinion, which is currently overwhelmingly in favour of a second question on the maximum devolution short of independence.  We want Scotland to move forward united, and if that means accepting a slower pace towards independence, so be it.”

On the other hand, the polls show that we’ll be accepting “a slower pace towards independence” by significantly diminishing support for independence in the process.  Of course, the polls may yet change before 2014 – upward or downward for either side – but we’re in the process of framing this referendum now.  Its legal basis will have to be in place at the very latest in the first quarter of 2013.  While it is a fond thought that come 2014, Cameron may find himself pitched into panic as YesScotland succeed in aligning mistrust of Westminster and political suspicion of Tories into support for independence, no late changes to the number of questions posed in the referendum will follow.  This just wouldn’t be practicable. No, we’ve got to decide on the final formal shape of the poll over the next few months, on the current best evidence about the state of public opinion.  So what’s to do and why to do it?

The calculating nationalist might consider recent political parallels. Take the abortive reform of the electoral system.  In 2011, the Alternative Vote referendum was defeated by a margin of 32.1% to 67.9%.  While we may debate whether the whole process represented a set-back or a knee-up for the causes of electoral reform in the longer run, in the short and the medium, it has largely been construed as a triumphant reaffirmation of the first past the post system, a fillip for comforting Britannic narratives of parliamentary sovereignty, “strong” government, and the solidity of Westminster’s creaking edifice.  The idea that the referendum presages a shift towards a more proportional electoral system deserves a black laugh.

Now consider the national question.  Imagine you are a nationalist who is pessimistic about the likelihood that Scots will embrace independence by 2014.  You are understandably keen to secure the best outcome possible in terms of Scottish self government, and the greatest reign of power for Scots institutions.  What do you do? A hefty “yes” vote in the referendum might do the trick, but if the dominant story is “independence defeated”, with no alternative tale to tell about Scots’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, why should one expect that the Unionist parties will be minded to make concessions to a defeated Scottish Nationalist party?

For those who favour a single question, and who are pessimistic about the consequences of a “no” vote, the vista is simply bleak.  No obvious route to more devolution. No independence.  Nowt.  For folk like Gerry Hassan, we’re putting it all to the touch, to win or lose it all.  He’s written supportively of a single, crisp referendum question.  In a recent discussion on twitter, Gerry was also critical about unilateral federation in these islands. Can it be legitimate for Scotland to try to use concepts of national self-determination to enforce a more federal structure on the rest of the United Kingdom? Surely you cannot unilaterally seize federation, but have to come together, all of your constituent parts, properly to constitute one? Constitutional buccaneers are likely to be impatient with this, and to dismiss it as an unnecessarily abstract council of woe or an excess of political scrupulousness, whose upshot is nothing less than self-denying political paralysis. 

If unilateral Scottish action – through a devo-something question in a referendum, for example – seems the only way to secure what the majority of Scots seem to want, and a powerful pan-UK campaign for federalism cannot be expected and will not materialise, then damn the niceties and confound the cavils! Press on with a campaign to secure devolution by employing nationalist language and arguments.  The outcome will crown the work, and if some folk find that conceptually messy, I’m sure they’ll get over it come the day Holyrood takes over its taxing and welfare powers.  That’s the argument, anyway.

For the Devo-Buccaneer, a second question is absolutely necessary.  For him, it won’t answer that Holyrood hasn’t the power unilaterally to deliver a much-enhanced devolutionary package of powers: this is politics, the stuff of persuasion – and putting the fear of God into your enemies.  If this is the only conceivable way to make the slack British political establishment snap to, and deliver further, substantive powers – so be it.  Critically, these picaresque devolutionary adventurers are likely to be sceptical about Westminster’s reaction to a “no” vote in Holyrood, absent a strongly-endorsed alternative answer to the question of Scotland’s powers.  If independence is posed alone, loses, and loses big – say the order of defeat the AV vote went down under – the political impetus will be away from more devolution, not towards it without another question.  It is not in Britain’s nature to reform its centre.  In the absence of a clear, noisy, democratic endorsement of change, its servants and politicians may be expected to kick against the pricks, advance at best at a brisk Calman dawdle, and do everything in its power to compromise and equivocate, to avoid change.

For my part, I suspect my ambivalence and equivocation on the second question is partly due to my ‘federal nationalist’ inclinations.  Biographically, there are plenty of reasons why the concept of sovereignty and even independence isn’t one which particularly fires my imagination. I am a Scottish nationalist, currently live and work in England, and study the greater Europe encompassed by the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.  For nationalists, it seems to me essential that the independence debate focuses not on question of national identities, Scottish-and-or-equally-British, but instead on political powers. Who do you wish to make decisions affecting your lives, on taxation, on welfare, on war?  By including a devo-something option on the ballot, we tilt the debate more in that direction.  Against this, folk tend to argue that devolution and independence are fundamentally different, and to suggest that the two are on some sort of spectrum of Scottish self-government is bunkum, a category error.  As the polls show, that is simply not how most Scots currently see the constitutional debate. As a nationalist who will on some level regret Britain’s failure to save itself come independence, I sympathise. 

Most of my friends are flown here from every corner of the earth, but many are locals. I do not see myself as a “narrow nationalist” of any persuasion.  As someone with a background in critical sociology, I cannot but approach ideas of ethnicity, of nation and nationality gingerly, with a hefty dose of suspicion.  Even hailing from what has been a nationalist-leaning family for some generations now, and not identifying as British at all, I’m not immune to the sort of feelings of cross-border connection and solidarity which I’d hazard many of those opposed to independence feel, albeit unburdened with the idea that these are “British” connections, and imply views on Westminster’s jurisdiction to make political decisions effecting Scotland.

I’ve recently completed a long-term theatre project with a brilliant, cheerful, personable group of folk, most of them Oxford natives: decidedly town not gown.  It was a marvellous experience for a range of reasons which I needn’t go into here – but as we all sat down together after much work and laughter shared, with food, drink and convivial chatter – a familiar question formed, though not one which regularly suggests itself to me.  Wouldn’t we lose something between us if we split, an ineffable tie, difficult to articulate, but indubitably there? The thought hastily qualified itself: we counted an Australian chap and an Irishman amongst the glad company, and the separate statehood of the lands from which they hailed interceded not a jot, to exclude them from the rest of the troupe.  Interesting, though, how such thoughts can steal up on you, even when your position on the constitutional question is clear and decisive.  A timely reminder – and we often need reminding – that the hard binaries of Unionist and nationalist fail to capture the much more nuanced and compromised spectrum of feelings this debate stirs. 

If the UK adopted a radical scheme to de-centre the British state, re-coining a vision of a stable, federal United Kingdom, empowering Scottish institutions, excising its worm-eaten political core, and exorcised the bloody imperial ghosts which haunt its imagination, I can easily envision myself abandoning the independence project altogether.  Yet survey Westminster.  Note its dominant spirits, their political preoccupations and their rhetoric.  Only a fantasist could inspect those green and scarlet benches and see the germinal seeds of an imminent revolution in the way UK politics is imagined and conducted. 

Mine is a nationalism more in sorrow than in anger.  If I thought it practicable to reform the British constitution better to accommodate Scottish demands for self-government, I’d cheerful adopt it.  Hence, I think, Scottish Labour’s rhetoric is essentially “form up for another forlorn hope”. I say it sympathetically, but how many more of the glorious dead must choke the ditches of the Union before we recognise that this is a failed political strategy? I’d rather be cracking on with creating a more just republic for our people, than singing constant requiems for departed hopes, distracting us from the hopelessness of our situation. There is nothing inevitable about independence, but if it transpires, I firmly believe it will be attributable in large part to the unbending sclerosis which paralyses the British political imagination.  My feeling is that independence shouldn’t be necessary, but has become so.  In some sense, ironic though it is, devolution-max isn’t just a lifebelt cannily packed by the vanquished nationalist to keep them afloat during the coming squall, but can be seen too as raft flung to a floundering, waterlogged Britannia.  It appeals to the undecided, and to nationalist folk like me, who cannot but seriously entertain the idea of independence with a pang of regret.  Not for the end of Westminster rule, mind you, or abandoning the dismal British political consensus, but for the alternative, unrealised possibility of a better British polity that never materialised, and brought us to this pass.

I began swithering.  I hoped by scribbling this up, I’d have hacked my way through this intertwining thicket of sensibilities – and cleared some space in my head – but I swither still.  Does it come to this, that in some corner of my mind, I’ve not entirely given up on finding a way out of our predicament without resorting to the radical measure of independence? For a nationalist, this is an uncomfortable, niggling thought.  And yet, you don’t throw a life-belt to a drowned man, do you?    

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.