A Mandate To Oppose

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself at odds with an argument being put forward by some folk with whom I usually agree. It concerns the 'mandate', or lack of one, which the LibCon coalition has in Scotland, and whether or not pointing out their lack of majority support constitutes a 'grudge and grievance' agenda better suited to the 1980's.

Wherever you stood politically the 80's was an eventful time, with the sense of great issues of principle being tussled over at home and abroad. For those able to adapt to the dramatic social change, the personal possibilities seemed limitless as old orthodoxies, for better or worse, were torn down. With the ending of the Cold War and the redrawing of the European map, it seemed that a new age of self-determination, liberated from the stifling power politics of the post-war period, was set to be ushered in.




Culturally, Scotland flowered in opposition to the Tories. Denied devolution in 1979 by the unwillingness of a weak Labour government to take on its backbenchers, the home rule cause was galvanised and emboldened, with the sense of there being a different Scottish polity taking hold across the unionist/nationalist divide. With the argument being advanced, even by staunch unionists that the Scottish people were sovereign, the idea of the Tories, by then reduced to 11 seats out of 72 holding no mandate to govern Scotland, took hold in the popular imagination.

To say that the present situation in Scotland is not like the 1980's, as Gerry Hassan has done several times since the election, is certainly accurate, if a bit of a straw man. Circumstances for the moment are quite different – for one, Scotland now has her parliament and seems increasingly at ease with herself, in contrast to the brittle assertions of difference once used as a common currency by Scotland's social democratic left.



The second difference is that the current Prime Minister gives the impression of being a far more emollient character than Margaret Thatcher, who managed systematically to irritate and ultimately alienate white collar 'middle Scotland'. Thirdly, and crucially if you are to believe those disparaging the no mandate argument in its newly resurrected form, the Tories are in coalition with the Lib Dems, who following the election have a combined total of Westminster seats and votes double that of the SNP.

This is true, although why the SNP should be chosen here as the yardstick by which legitimacy is measured is beyond me. However, whether in votes or seats, the Lib/Con coalition falls well short of a majority on both counts. Leaving aside the discomfort which a number of Lib Dem voters must be feeling at their party's shotgun marriage with the Tories, the parties combined still have only one more MP than did Margaret Thatcher at the height of her crisis of legitimacy in Scotland, following the 1987 'Doomsday' election.

Another reason why this argument is bunk is that while the SNP was allowed by parliament to form a Government, if it wants to legislate, it still has to gain the support of a majority of parliamentarians elected within Scotland under a proportional system. Compare and contrast with the LibCons, who have gained their ability to govern Scotland solely through the combined strength of their First-Past-The-Post performance in England.

There is also a fourth dissimilarity which is not being spoken about, but which makes all the difference right now. Simply, the new LibCon government hasn't yet had a chance to do anything unpopular, and most people will for the moment be inclined to give them benefit of the doubt. It's only when the effects of controversial decisions – such as the impending and well-trailed spending cuts – begin to manifest themselves that people will start to question the wisdom of the government, and the level of support it has for its agenda.

If the new LibCon government is shrewd, it will live up to the rhetoric of its self-proclaimed 'respect' agenda by behaving consensually and recognising the limitations of its Scottish mandate. In what are being trailed as some early 'wins' for this approach, it is being hinted that progress might be made on releasing the £180m from the Fossil Fuels levy to Scotland, and on granting borrowing powers to Holyrood. Evidently, a nationalist 'grudge and grievance' agenda can become an agenda of 'respect' when carried out by a unionist!



So, the mandate issue, just like the funding issue, is one which is very much alive and lurking away in the undergrowth, however much some might like to assert otherwise. However, where they are on to something is in identifying that an obsession over the matter right now would look premature, and runs the risk of making anyone who uses the argument too forcibly look peevish and out of touch.

There is a further risk, which is in fairness nailed very effectively by Hassan. Throughout the 80's and indeed the 90's, home-rulers of all stripes seemed far better at defining themselves by what they were against policy-wise rather than in terms of what they were for - something which arguably left us with a hangover of unrealistic expectation when we finally got our parliament. If we approach the new Westminster government solely in terms of the comfortable slogans of yesteryear, we run the very real risk of repeating that mistake, and slowing the progress to independence in consequence.

With that said, the mandate argument still deserves to be made and heard as a corrective to aspects of the of the Lib Con administration's agenda, and could very well prove to be a useful restraint on the untrammeled power of a Westminster Government. That’s something which Scots of all persuasions might become grateful for in the not too distant future – whether they voted for the coalition parties or not.

The Euro Political Map

Last night was a late one for a Sunday, what with staying up for the Euro Elections and all. I'm really pleased to see the SNP topping the Scottish vote, although there's more than a twinge of regret that we didn't get Dr Aileen McLeod elected. Just another 5% would have done it, but nevertheless, the overall result goes to show that 2007 was no flash in the pan.

For Labour, it's the individual stories that are probably more damaging than the overall result: losing the popular vote in all but 3 Scottish council areas; beaten into 3rd place in the English popular vote; coming behind the Conservatives in Wales; finishing behind Mebyon Kernow in Cornwall; and (sadly) what became the story of the night - the BNP picking up a seat in the North west and another in Yorkshire and the Humber.

Anyway, numbers are all very well in charting an election, but here's how people voted in Scotland by local authority:


Incredibly, that's 3 Labour (they 'won' Fife by only 205 votes!), 3 Lib Dem, 4 Tory including East Renfrewshire (where the SNP came a close 2nd to push labour into 3rd - bye, Jim) and 22 SNP.


In Aberdeenshire, the SNP topped the poll comfortably (35%) with the Conservatives second (23%) and the Lib Dems trailing some way behind in third (14.5%). The SNP vote is up over 10% on 2004, with the Lib Dems down over 4%.

That's a 7.5% swing from Lib Dem to SNP since last time - a figure which given their poor showing last time in Banff & Buchan, is going to be even larger when applied to Gordon [declaring an interest...] and to West Aberdeenshire. Again, this suggests that our advances here in 2007 are not only solid, but are being built on.

The results from Aberdeen City were every bit as encouraging for the SNP:

Given that the Gordon Westminster seat has a fair chunk of Aberdeen North in it including Dyce and Bridge of Don, from my perspective, it's all good.

All told, it's hard to see any positives for Gordon Brown in this. As one backbencher said last night, their choice seems to be instant death in an election led by a new leader, or a slow death next June with Brown. Who'd want to take over if that were to be their fate?

A Glimpse Of The Future?

It was the afternoon of Friday 7 May 2010. Following some nail-biting recounts, the final results of the UK General Election were in. After months of polls showing a Conservative lead, a collapse in the Lib Dem vote allied to a last minute swing to Labour had resulted in the first hung parliament at Westminster since 1974.

The Tories had a majority of votes and seats in England. Labour, despite suffering heavy losses at the hands of the SNP, still returned 25 MPs from Scotland. There were bitter scenes at election counts, as Labour candidates, victorious and vanquished, vented splenetic attacks on the ‘nats’ and the ‘numpties’ in the Holyrood Labour group, whom they blamed for their predicament. Despite this, those 25 seats were enough to keep alive the hope that they could remain in office.

The Lib Dems, smarting from a halving of their representation, repeated their demands for PR. However, there was no appetite amongst either Labour or Conservative to comply and after what was being seen as a disastrous result, a consensus developed quickly that the Lib Dems were in no position to play for such stakes. As in the aftermath of the Scottish elections, a feeling began to emerge that the Lib Dems weren’t really serious and would rather slink away to lick their wounds.

All manner of previously unthinkable permutations began to be mooted in a bid to break the deadlock. Slowly, attention turned to the sizeable group of SNP MPs. Unthinkably, the arithmetic had fallen in such a way that the SNP could either return Labour to power, or stand aside to allow the Conservatives to form a minority administration, from whom they could then pull the rug at any time.

Days passed. After copious quantities of caffeine and nicotine, rumours began to circulate of a breakthrough. With Labour emissary Douglas Alexander insisting that the SNP take the Labour whip on English-only matters as the price of any deal, and offering only a Commission without timescale on funding arrangements for Holyrood, SNP negotiators found it easier than expected to walk away and let events run their course.

Correspondents filed excited reports from College Green. Gordon Brown, nails bitten down to the quick, was urged by the loyalists in the last ditch to try and form a ‘national’ government. Receiving bad advice from a fatigued inner circle and with willingness to accept Realpolitik in short supply, it fell in the end to Jack Straw and the Cabinet Secretary to break it to the Prime Minister that his time was up.

Things began to move quickly. The Government Jaguar and Special Branch Range Rover whisked David Cameron to Buckingham Palace. As ever, the honeyed tones of a Dimbleby captured the moment for the benefit of an expectant nation. And there, blinking in the sunlight, Britain had its first Conservative Prime Minister in 13 years, albeit one leading a minority administration.

First Minister Salmond was amongst the first to offer his congratulations, even extending an invitation to meet at an early date at Bute House in Edinburgh. Later that afternoon, a grinning Angus Robertson was spotted walking along Downing Street to hold preliminary talks with Cameron, his Chancellor George Osbourne and the new Scottish Secretary.

Despite feverish speculation, in the end it turned out that no deal had been struck. Without the interference of the SNP, the Conservatives were – just - able to legislate in England. However, the SNP presence was enough to secure early concessions on Council Tax benefit, allowing their Local Income Tax policy to be introduced before the 2011 Holyrood elections. Attendance allowance, withheld in a fit of pique after the introduction of Free Personal Care in Scotland, was also subject to a swift rethink.

It couldn’t last, though. English commentators on both left and right began to fulminate about this ‘Scotsgelt’ and demands to scrap the Barnett formula reached a crescendo. The SNP response was simple – their MPs would vote to end Barnett, but only in exchange for greater financial powers at Holyrood. Faced with the prospect of a new election, Tory backbenchers fell swiftly into line with a policy which many of their senior figures had secretly been favourable towards for quite some time.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government, still riding high in the polls, was looking forward to the 2011 election. Having won fiscal freedom from Westminster, the so-called ‘Wendy Commission’ had been completely outflanked and had collapsed in recrimination. Holyrood’s unionist majority had still voted down the referendum bill, but despite protestations to the contrary, no-one seriously believed that was the end of the matter. For one thing, even if no referendum deal was possible in Edinburgh post 2011, there was now an avenue which could be used to deliver at Westminster.

David Cameron really hadn’t wanted to go down in history as the PM who ‘lost’ Scotland, but eventually, it just seemed like the best option for everyone. With a popular SNP administration in Edinburgh and the party holding the balance of power in London, public opinion had swung against the union on both sides of the border. There seemed little point in delaying the inevitable and by getting rid of Scotland’s MPs, he could get the Westminster majority he craved. In any case, the Tories had opposed devolution all along, and could hardly be blamed for what they had long said would be the inevitable outcome of John Smith’s ‘unfinished business’.

Countries come and countries go, he reasoned through the bottom of a glass of Jura. As it burned on its way down, he reflected that maybe Alex Salmond had been right all along - the Scots would make better neighbours than they had lodgers.

Why I Want Rid Of Council Tax

SNP plans for a Local Income Tax (LIT) seems to have become the target of choice for the opposition now that the budget and council tax freeze have gone through. As if on cue, out is being wheeled by Labour and others the archetypal hard-working, 2-income family, whom we are being invited to believe will under LIT be left subsidising pensioners in big houses who live off bloated share portfolios.

First things first - comparatively few people are in a position to live off their investments, but presenting a more balanced picture wouldn’t have the desired effect in terms of trying to whip up opposition to LIT. However, as a strong supporter of LIT, I thought I’d throw two very real examples into the mix, which have resulted from my own domestic arrangements over the past few years, which help explain my complete disdain for the council tax, or for that matter any kind of property based tax.

I own a flat in Edinburgh, which when I lived there at first, I shared with my partner of the time. As a band ‘B’ property, our combined water and council tax bill came to about £1,200, or £600 each. However, after we split up, even with a 25% single person’s discount my bill shot up to £900 – or about 5% of my household income at the time. I hadn’t become any wealthier in the intervening period and made no more demands of local services than I had previously. However, purely as a result of a change in my personal circumstances, my Council Tax had increased overnight by 50%.

Fast forward a few years to the present. As work for the moment requires that I have somewhere to live in London, I rent a room in a 4 bedroom semi-detached house in Lewisham, in the south-east of the city. Nice as our bit of town is, Notting Hill or Hampstead or trendy north London it most certainly isn’t (actually, that’s probably a good thing). It’s a very diverse area, with a high proportion of young families and a large number of homes of multiple occupancy.

There are 5 of us living together in the house – myself (parliamentary researcher); an IT consultant; a banker who shares a room with his fiancée (who is also a parliamentary researcher); and another banker. Fortunately, we all get on very well, although this may be helped by our different work start times and the fact we have a big kitchen and 2 bathrooms, so it isn’t quite as cosy as it sounds!

Based on salary alone, the five of us probably have a combined annual income of between £250,000 - £300,000 (I should make clear that myself and the other researcher lag quite some distance behind the rest). However, as a band ‘E’ property, the bill for us all comes to just over £1,500 – or £300 a skull if we split it 5 ways – just 0.5% of the total household income. It’s quite a difference from the £900 I used to get stung with for living on my own in Edinburgh, and an obscenity when you consider the couple with two pre-school kids over the road who have to pay an identical bill out of just one income.

And that in the end is my beef. Council tax hits households with low incomes disproportionately. Since it is based on the value of the house, there is little correlation between this and one’s ability to pay. Worst of all, the eventual bill you end up paying hits those who live on their own the hardest.

While being young, professional and childless means we don’t make huge demands of the services of Lewisham Council, on balance, we’re happy that we’re making a contribution towards policing, parks, adult education, libraries, schools, trading standards, refuse collection, the fire brigade, social services etc in the area. Splitting the bill 5 ways makes us better off financially, but I don’t think any of us would object seriously to being asked to make a bigger contribution given that we’d all be more than capable of so doing.

There will be winners and there will be losers in any change to a tax system – something which those calling for council tax revaluations and extra bandings and additional rebates would be wise to remember. Instead of conjuring up grotesque, false spectres of families being downtrodden by the supposedly idle rich, Labour and the Conservatives should be honest enough to explain why they believe that the rich man in his castle should pay a lower marginal rate of tax than the poor man at his gate.

Olympic Financial Control? Fallen At The First Hurdle

Some folk may remember that shortly after Christmas, my goat was got by the Labour Party. Specifically, their repeated and tedious claims that the SNP was somehow trying to deprive vulnerable groups of public money, through a reduction in the amount of 'ringfencing' in local government finances.

Never mind that this is also what the Labour Government was doing in England. Never mind that Labour Councillors in Scotland have been queueing up to support the initiative. Homelessness; mental health services; children's services; disabled children and families; Hogmanay celebrations; flood prevention... all at risk from the SNP Barbarians at the gate. Truly, in her desperation to seize the agenda, Wendy Alexander's campaign of scaremongering left no shroud unwaved or ambulance unchased.

How ironic, then, than within the last half hour, Scottish Labour MPs have voted through a measure to divert £675m of further Lottery funding towards the financial black hole that is the London Olympics. Note that that this isn't a hypothetical reallocation of money, but an actual diversion of resources which would otherwise have gone to benefit some of our most needy communities.

Scottish Labour's claim to a monopoly of concern in matters of social justice has always been a complete fraud. Hopefully, it's now there for all to see. And how sad that in backing the government on this matter, the Tories and Lib Dems have elected to hide behind the flimsiest of figleaves - a government 'assurance' that this will be the last raid on Lottery cash to pay for the Olympics.

Hmmm. And the band played believe it if you like...

Lincolnshire Poacher Turned Gamekeeper

Try and contain your excitement... the MP for Grantham and Stamford, Quentin Davies, has defected to the Labour Party from the Conservatives.

In a letter to David Cameron, Davies apparently wrote that the Conservative Party seemed "to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything".

"It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda."

Surely even Davies must recognise the irony in citing these as being reasons for joining Labour? After all, hasn’t the incoming Prime Minister done every bit as much to put Labour in its current sorry state as the man headed for the exit?

Other Blogs:

Iain Dale

Davie Hutchison

Nick Robinson

Reactionary Snob

It's Early Days

Well, that's two weeks into an SNP government and the sun still rises in the east; the earth still turns on its axis; no-one's been forced to sell their first born son into slavery; and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seem curiously absent from the horizon. More prosaically, business confidence appears to be on the rise, exposing those who claimed to foresee a flight of business from an SNP-run Scotland as the charlatans they always were. With no-one leaping out of the top floor windows of a burning Standard Life building, or running for the first shuttle to London (Michelle Mone's gone awfy quiet, don't you think?), it looks like another demon has been exorcised.

I had my doubts about minority government, but thus far, the signs look reasonably promising. Having to build up consensus for policies instead of being able to railroad them through, might spare us the legislative diarrhoea which afflicted the first eight years of devolution. Fair enough, after 300 years of being a legal afterthought, much needed done. But banning fur farms which don't exist or getting into a fankle over fox hunting? I mean, come on.

Although it will probably take the Lib Dems a while to get used to not being in government, oddly, it seems to be the Tories, the last bastions of FPTP winner takes all absolutism, who have best grasped the possibilities offered by minority government. Sure, the potential is there for the other parties to bring everything to a grinding halt, but with a 2/3rds majority needed to bring down the administration and the SNP having over 1/3rd of the MSPs, it ain't going to happen unless a few SNP MSPs decide to vote against their own side in a confidence motion.

No, while Labour still chunters away as if Scottish voters have somehow conspired to cheat the party of its birthright, the Tories are the ones bringing forward proposals to the SNP on which they'd be prepared to co-operate. Together with the Greens on ship-to-ship transfers, and potentially the Lib Dems on council tax, a coherent program for government should be possible with sufficient give and take on all sides. Only Jack McConnell is left arguing for a demolition derby of unamended manifesto proposals.

There's been a marked improvement in the quality of ministers, and so far partisanship has been at a premium. Keeping Elish Angiolini as the Lord Advocate but out of Cabinet was a shrewd move, allowing the SNP to retain a talented member of the government while responding to concerns about the politicisation of the prosecution service. As Iain MacWhirter writes in today's Herald, it might come back to bite the government later, but it was still the right thing to do.

It's not all good, though. I'm still trying to stifle a yawn at the myriad 'conflict with Westminster' stories which have cropped up to date (is it too cynical to wonder if most were drafted in advance?). If revisiting the issues of attendance allowance; fishing representation in Europe and reminding people that nuclear power is neither economical nor necessary in Scotland can be seen as provoking 'conflict', it just goes to show how unambitious previous administrations must have been.

Nothing that the SNP has said so far in government would have raised so much as an eyebrow in Flanders, Bavaria or Catalunia. But the relationship between Edinburgh and London does need to be tested, if only to establish some ground rules on how the two governments will deal with one another in future. Labour's informal networks could allow differences to be resolved privately in the past, but with both Blair and Brown apparently refusing to lift the phone to the First Minister, some government protocols and political lines of communication need to be established.

Conflict for its own sake is a waste of everyone's time and energy. However, honest dialogue which establishes boundaries, clarifies relationships and resolves areas of contention, can only be of benefit to Scotland and Whitehall. Having government ministers who won't always feel compelled to keep their counsel when differences appear between Holyrood and Westminster is a huge step forward for the good governance of Scotland. Handled properly, it can be a maturing process for both parties.

New Brooms

Leaving aside the current tango between the SNP and Lib Dems over whether a Holyrood coalition will be possible, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the outcome of the local government elections:

SNP – 363 councillors (29.7% of the total)
Labour – 348 councillors (28.48%)
Lib Dems – 166 councillors (13.6%)
Conservatives – 143 councillors (11.7%)
Others – 194 councillors. (15.9%)

Much of Labour's power base in Scotland came from the local authorities, and the subtle and occasionally not-so-subtle control which this allowed them to exert. Thanks to PR, Labour has now lost 161 (almost a third) of their councillors, sweeping away their one party client states in all but the most unreconstructed parts of West Central Scotland. Even there, they will now face scrutiny from a new cadre of SNP, Conservative and Lib Dem representatives, who will doubtless be keen to subject their local administrations to unprecedented levels of accountability.

Scottish politics was changed utterly and forever last Thursday - I'm just not sure how many of the politicians yet realise how different things are going to be.

Raindrops on roses

There’s a rather worrying story over on Nick Robinson’s blog. It seems that as part of the bid to make the Conservative Party appear nice, cuddly and ‘in touch’ with the voters, some of David Cameron’s policy wonks are considering how market forces might be used to tackle ‘social bads’.

Enthused by how carbon emissions trading is being advanced as a panacea to global warming, the party’s ‘Social Responsibility Summit’ has apparently come up with a similar wheeze. This time, it’s to ‘enable’ a trading scheme for companies which make alcoholic drinks or fatty foods and so restrict our consumption of said goods.

According to Dave, “It's still at quite a conceptual stage, but clearly emissions trading is working very well at putting a price on carbon, and reducing carbon emissions. So, the argument goes, well why not try and do this with some of the social bads as well as the environmental bads?" We are also invited to contrast this ‘market-oriented’ approach with Gordon Brown’s addiction to ‘state-control’.

I thought New Labour had taught us all there was to know about how to remove personal liberties in the name of freedom. However, it seems that here, in all its foulness, is the equivalent Tory verbal trick. Cameron might be all ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens’ at the moment, but the desire to meddle in people’s lives seems to be as alive and well in the Tories as it is in New Labour.

I’m never entirely happy with the tendency in politics to try and legislate or ban things whenever a social problem rears its head, and that applies to my own party as well. However, trying to restrict the types of food which intelligent grown adults choose to feed themselves is an intrusion too far in my book.

Give us the facts about a healthy lifestyle by all means. But Dave, once we’ve made up our minds for ourselves, regardless of whether or not you approve, please just go away and leave us alone.