So, Was That It?

So, was that it, then? The Calman Commission – the grand Unionist masterplan – the one which was going to stymie independence and the SNP? The Commission which began with no preconceptions, except that Independence was a bad idea? The Commission that no unionist party saw fit to argue for before the SNP took power? The Commission, in short, designed to improve upon what was already perfection?

You must surely have seen the ecstatic crowds, the cheering throngs ever grateful for being spared the burden of being asked their opinion in advance, hoisting Peerie Kenny aloft? The sundry 3 cheers for Iain, Tavish and Annabel? The melodious sound of a band striking up the Unionist jig to which Alex Salmond would now surely be made to dance?

Nope? Me neither.

Forget all the hokum, flim-flam and flapdoodle about this being an 'intellectually rigorous report'. It's nothing of the kind. Quite simply, it is the result of empty minds being brought to a problem which essentially has no right answer. It is the lowest common denominator solution to how far Labour, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are prepared to allow Holyrood to progress, carrying with it the pseudo-scientific conceit of being somehow 'evidence based'.


Ah, I hear you cry! But surely there were all sorts of brainy Professors involved! Iain McMillan was there to speak for the CBI! There was even a big Brother contestant to make sure that the kids were who they were down with! How can you be so cynical about such a stellar panel of critical, enquiring minds?

Easy. Just look at the proposals for financial powers – in fact, you needn't bother looking all that closely at all - and it will explode any vestige of belief that we might be dealing with any kind of worthwhile analysis here. Half of income tax revenues raised in Scotland are to stay in Scotland, we hear, in order to improve accountability. Well, cock-a-doodle-doo. What happens in a recession when income tax receipts fall? Why not broaden the base by supplementing this with VAT or Corporation Tax revenues? Why is it a good idea to tether the basic and top rates so that they cannot be altered independently of one another? More to the point, why no control over the North Sea tax regime? Really, if it happens it will be a Potemkin power – there for show and nothing else.

The problem with this power, as many eminent economists have pointed out, including some of those on Calman’s expert committee, is that it removes the certainty of the block grant without substituting it for the benefits of full fiscal autonomy. Without an enhanced funding base, Calman’s funding proposals have the potential to do more harm than good.

While proposals to devolve control over air guns and drink drive limits are welcome, let's not forget that these are areas where the SNP was accused in the past of 'picking fights'. Together with proposals to transfer animal welfare (remember the shenanigans over foot and mouth?), it seems that these are matters which perhaps should, in the opinion of the supreme arbiter, be devolved after all. Is this vindication for the SNP here, or is it simply an approach which owes more to reading back through the papers than any attempt to work out what the best division of responsibilities might be within a union state?


It's exactly the sort of timid and irrelevant stodge you'd expect to get when you seek the resultant of the politically inept but nonetheless enormously self-important great and good. And for that, the SNP should probably be grateful – after all, it now means that people can see exactly how little difference 'more powers' would actually make. This is as little as the British State is prepared to concede – if you want more, you're going to have to vote SNP and keep the prospect of independence at the top of the agenda – it really is the only language they speak.

Even then, as one Commission member put it, 'The potential for long grass is considerable'. How true – the Conservative Scottish Parliamentary Group is split on the matter, while you assume that the Lib Dems would have preferred it to go much further. Meanwhile, Labour are back to their old tricks again, with Jim Murphy claiming that the Scottish Parliament funded report is the 'property' [I kid you not] of the British Government and the parties party to the Commission. Despite there being unanimous agreement across Holyrood about the implementation of certain powers, according to Labour the report can only be implemented as a whole, and to suggest otherwise is SNP politicking.

Which must be news to Calman himself, who has said publicly that elements could be progressed fairly quickly. Meanwhile, there may not be sufficient parliamentary time left to allow Labour to implement any or even some of what has been recommended. Irony of ironies, it may be left to a future Prime Minister Cameron to implement the scheme on behalf of a party that has never entirely come to terms with the devolution we already have.

It promises to be an interesting aperitif to the independence referendum or the 2011 election – whichever comes first.