J'accuse Moderates

There is a figure who crops up time and time again in our media as a talking head.  We all know who he is, he was an advisor for Tony Blair during his final term as Prime Minister but other than that is a Labour person in name only.  Yet this person not only has a career as a fully paid up member of the Anglocentric commentariat but also a carer as a media and election strategist.  Quite why remains to be seen as he helped Julia Gillard to defeat in Australia, was Jim Murphy’s chief of Staff when Labour lost 40 seats to the SNP in the post-Independence Referendum Tsunami and was in America last month helping Hilary Clinton to defeat.

True, McTernan’s only electoral victory this decade is that he has had a hand in that Independence Referendum, but since then we have seen a shuddering earthquake which has dramatically altered the British political landscape.  I had previously argued that the Independence Referendum, the 2015 General Election, the EU Referendum and the Chilcott Report have destroyed the generation long political philosophy in this country of Third Way Politics.  You maybe know this as Neo-Liberal politics, or Blairism, but Third-Wayism is the term that I’ve gone for.  It was the philosophy of triangulation and of chasing middle ground/centre right voters (to the exclusion of centre-left voters) which won Bill Clinton the White House in 1992 and entranced two visiting British Politicians in the spring of 1993 – Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.  When Tony Blair became Labour leader in the aftermath of John Smith’s death over the summer of 1994, he shifted Labour rightwards adopting Clinton’s Third Way philosophies and adapting them with the values he & his advisors held, Blair surrounding himself with Lib Dem and previously SDP people – as a result creating New Labour.  It’s birth being traced to the scrapping of Clause IV.

If this brand of politics has now ended in the UK, then what do we make of it’s catastrophic defeat in last week’s US Presidential election?  Firstly, let us not make any mistake here, this is a defeat of Third Way Politics.  Bill might have been the President, but Hillary is reckoned to have been intellectually his equal at least.  For example Hillary had been a key proponent of the Democrats previous attempt to reform Healthcare, before collapsing in the face of a hostile legislature. Mostly though, the Clintons & the Democrats as a whole have been key supporters of globalisation.

If the Independence Referendum was a harbinger that the end of Third Way politics was on it’s way, then what has caused this sea change?  One of the drivers of both referendums and Trump’s victory has been the perception of key voter groups that they have been left behind and that living standards have not kept pace and that this has fuelled a desire for change.  That squeeze in living standards leads us directly to the economic event that began with the Credit Crunch and encompassed the global Banking Crisis.  That global recession has not been fully reconciled by the political classes.  There have been no changes in government macro-economic policy either here or in the US, there has been no lessons learned and there has been very little in the way of repercussions. If anything Moderates on both sides of the Atlantic have been the keenest defenders of low regulation within the financial sector.  They have, as well, been the keenest advocates for the new style of multinational treaty/trade deal.  The types that have the capacity to undermine public services and to dramatically slash the reach of elected governments around the world.  The EU’s own Lisbon Treaty being the first of this kind, being the treaty which brings the outsourcing and privatisation of public services into EU thinking and regulations.  Since then we have seen the evolution of both TTIP and CETA, both trade deals that gives corporate interests a means to undermine democratically elected governments. And deals wholeheartedly promoted and defended by the Third Wayers.

That the political landscape has changed only tells half of the story though.  If the third wayers were flexible in their beliefs to modulate their policies and negotiate the bumps in the road, we would not have seen what has happened to the Labour Party here in the UK or saw the rise of Trump.  In some cases the problem is the smug, sneering attitudes of those supposed moderates. We saw it during the Independence Referendum when the so called moderates sneered at pro-Independence supporters.  Granted, the SNP did make it easy to be sneered at with their White Paper which had more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese, particularly the areas concerning currency & relations with the EU.  But that referendum was (or at least should have been) about who should govern Scotland, not about the SNP’s own policy preferences. The sneering continued even though it became clear that the so called Vow had been stiffed by Cameron during his 7am Downing Street speech, just minutes after the Referendum result became official.

The smug, self satisfaction continued throughout last years Westminster election.  Complacent within their own bubble, the so called Moderates comforted themselves over Labour’s election defeat with the thought that Ed Milliband wasn’t really one of us anyway.  He was dangerously left wing and didn’t follow the true New Labour doctrine, so that’s why he lost.  Well that was the attempted whitewashing of the election anyway when the likes of Peter “Dripping Poison” Mandleson, Chukka Umuna, Tristram Hunt and Liz Kendal swamped the television studios. It is also here that we see the start of a pattern that has been repeated since – that of a rotten, right wing candidate – unsuited to public office – winning election in no small thanks to the deficiencies of the opposition – partly adhering to neo-Liberal/Third Way policies.  The biggest deficiency in 2015 being Ed Ball’s signing up to Osborneomics.  Hook, Line and Sinker.

In the US, these mistakes were magnified 10 fold.  We had a populist left candidate (Sanders) who was manoeuvred out of Hilary’s way by a combination of Democrat party managers and by a misguided belief that Hilary was the best candidate to take on the Republican candidate.  Even when the Republican candidate emerged as the mouthy egomaniac property developer, Donald Trump.  He had made claims and policy pronouncements which are deeply worrying and will have deep repercussions on the United States and the world at large.  And yet during three debates Clinton could not deliver the knockout punch.  Clinton did not deliver the comprehensive defeat that she needed to put away Trump.  Trump was able to counter jab with accusations over Clinton’s judgement, over the signing of the NAFTA trade deal and the e-mail controversy. 

Clinton should have went hard on Trump’s non disclosure of Tax receipts.  Hilary already had a dubious image within sections of the population, with allegations that she was involved in illegal activities going back to the Whitewater accusations in the mid 90’s.  The e-mails controversy was only ever a smokescreen to bring Hillary’s dubious image back into the front of people’s minds – so when the director of the FBI re-opened the investigations into the e-mails it was essentially game over for Hilary.

When Moderates pontificate on the media about Corbyn or Brexit or Trump we should remind them of their part in that.  If they were prepared to listen to the soft left and not denigrate those people, then Labour wouldn’t have Corbyn.  The same lack of respect also contributes to the collapse in Scottish Labour and the probability of another Independence Referendum within the next 3 or 4 years. If the Neo-Liberals stood their ground and stood up for immigration and multi-culturalism and not appeased UKIP, then we would have had a proper debate on the merits or otherwise of a rotten & corrupt European Union. If the Democrats had read the runes better and seen the collapse of Third Way politics better, they would have not aided and abetted a poor continuity candidate but would maybe have let the Democratic Primary process run it’s course and pick a candidate that would have offered the change desired.  Neo-Liberals, Blairites or Third Wayers – whatever you want to call them  - have been almost complicit in the rise of the new Right and we should not tire in reminding them of the consequences of their actions.

Too Soon

Last week’s announcement by David Cameron that he is to step down as MP for Witney saw another bout of retrospection on Cameron’s time in Number 10.  Among the reminiscences was his part in the Scottish Independence referendum, now 2 years ago.  To say his part appears to have been built up is perhaps the diplomatic way to put it.

In truth, Cameron was a ghostly presence during that referendum.  His total output being not very many visits north in the run up to the referendum and no meet and greets – with engagements behind closed doors and in office blocks in Edinburgh’s financial district.  In truth, the claim of supporters of Cameron that he saved the Union is a completely hollow one.  Gordon Brown, the now notorious ‘The Vow’ and the SNP’s policy positions on currency and the EU all played their part in the no vote confirmed two years ago today.

Yet the defeated side, the SNP, are champing at the bit to put us through all of that again.  They have never come to terms with the result, let alone stopped to look in the mirror at their own failings.  Yet they are certainly ready to plunge us all into another referendum campaign.  A campaign that, I’d have serious reservations that they’d win with their current tactics and mindset.

The most striking thing about the SNP and their group of strident supporters is that there does not seem to be any evidence that they’ve learned lessons from two years ago.  True, there’s now a discussion on an Independent Scotland’s currency options.  But this should really have been the first port of call for the SNP.  Instead the (false) narrative that it was all the fault of The Vow and the dastardly ‘Scottish based’ media has been allowed to grow and grow.  The Vow certainly didn’t win the referendum, it just stopped the haemorrhaging of soft ‘no’s defecting to ‘yes’.  As for the media, well if the SNP had a spin operation as ruthless as the fabled New Labour rapid rebuttal unit, we’d be Independent.  Salmond & (particularly) Sturgeon relied far far too much on attacking bad business news as “scaremongering” rather than a concise rebuttal.

So, sort out policy positions and the SNP’s spin operation and a pro-Independence vote is all but assured, yes.  Well…  no.  The issues over Sterlingzone masked the SNP’s inability to win the economic argument.  That the businessman and part time blogger Kevin Hague was able to undermine the economic case for Independence whilst showing up the bloated and grandiose Business For Scotland into the bargain shows that the SNP should have prioritised the winning of the economic argument much more.  It’s something that I may come back to, but even though I take different conclusions from Hague’s figures.  It is his delivery and presentation skills which showed up Business For Scotland’s leaps of logic from figures to conclusions without any workings.  Hague and his approach is something the SNP will possibly need to learn to love given the deteriorating deficit and the state (on figures built on the poor performance of the UK’s revenue service it has to be said) of Scotland’s finances.

The SNP’s biggest problem though is the concept of ‘material change’ and their own interpretation of it, versus the general population of Scotland’s interpretation.  You may have noticed that in June there was another referendum, this one on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union…

The United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, not Scotland, United Kingdom.  Got that, good!

Well, this referendum produced a victory for those people wanting to leave the EU, by a victory margin of 3.8%.  Both England & Wales voted to exit the EU while both Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain within the EU.  Indeed, Scotland produced the biggest pro-EU vote (in percentage terms) within the British Isles.  62% of Scots voted for the UK to remain within the EU.  And this appears to have given Nicola Sturgeon the green light to talk of material change and a second Independence referendum being “Highly likely”.  It’s just that 62% seems like a light figure to be talking about material change.

I’d previously speculated that Sturgeon might be surprised at how alike Scotland and the rest of the UK are in terms of attitude towards the EU.  I’d also though that if Sturgeon was to successfully prosecute the material change line, then about 65% would have been the minimum figure that they had to get.  Lets also factor into the equation the left leaning eurosceptic’s voting remain out of a desire to spike the prospect of a right wing hard Brexit and wholesale deregulation of working practices and human rights.  Add in the stat that, according to Michael Ashcroft’s polling, we think that as much as 36% of SNP voters (at the last Westminster election) voted leave.

Added together, this makes Sturgeon’s claims of a Scotland 100% behind the European project a flimsy one at best.  If you take into account the theory of the eurosceptics voting to remain because of the prospect of a right wing takeover, and this was a view advocated by Owen Jones, Paul Mason and Iain McWhirter, then 62% doesn’t look like that big an endorsement of the EU that Sturgeon has been making out.  This also undermines her claim for the EU referendum to be a trigger for a second referendum, and certainly explains some of the lukewarm polling that this question has been gathering.  Indeed the average polling for Independence has now settled on 48% - a gain of approximately 3% and far short of the 60% target set by the First Minister.

The only argument where the SNP’s actions make any sense whatsoever is the argument that says that Sturgeon is on manoeuvres simply to keep the hard-line Yes-ers onside.  That the hardline Yes-ers, agitating for a referendum re-run have been pressing for that since what they perceive as a material change.  That Better Together were correct in their claim that the only certain way for Scotland to exit the EU was to vote to exit the UK seems to have bypassed those hardline Yes-ers in much the same way that Scotland’s name appears nowhere on the various EU Treaties.  Otherwise, pressing for an early referendum re-run when the case is flimsy and lightweight makes no sense and would be a recipe for disaster.

If Sturgeon has the political chops that people believe that she has, she should wait.  Remarkable as it may seen, time is on the SNP’s side.  Given the state of the Westminster parties and the mess being made of the country, Scottish People could conceivably coalesce towards Independence as a viable alternative.  Of course, that’s entirely dependent on the SNP performing as a government like they did between 2007 & 2011.  If they do get their heads down and perform, if Labour continues to fall apart as a political party, if the Tories become the TINA party by default, if the EU referendum fallout continues to poison UK-EU relations and if there is no sign of the near federal solution promised in ‘The Vow’… then conditions could play into the SNP’s hands.

The SNP’s Indyref2 manoeuvrings do not look like a party confident and in control of events.  By aggressively attempting to re-write the post EU Referendum narrative, Sturgeon is displaying a lack of patience which will do nothing to attract the voters needed to bring the prize of independence. Scotland is already split down the middle between people who crave a second Independence referendum and those who think that it’s too soon for that question to be asked again.  Rather than pressing the issue so soon after the 2014 Independence referendum, the SNP should be looking at why they failed and how they should rectify the situation in the future.

The Art Of Learning From Your Mistakes

Friday was of course the first anniversary of that referendum.  In the run up to it, we have had all manner of reminiscences about what happened last year.  Fine if you are seriously nostalgic about events from the near past, but tiresome if like me you’d prefer your history programmes to have some sort of distance.  The referendum is still to raw for people to really get some perspective.  For me, the day itself was about getting away from it all, so I voted early then took myself off to the pictures.

One of the things that has been raised is the prospect of a second Independence referendum, the whys and why not has been looked at here.  I’ve previously said that a second referendum was pretty much inevitable, given the result and also Cameron’s ‘business as usual but we’ll look at English Votes for English laws’ speech barely an hour after the final result was announced (pictured above). That’s not to say that it should be straight away.  However one of the reasons for not having a second referendum within the lifetime of the next parliament is the distinct lack of a post mortem from the SNP regarding their failure to carry the country last September.  It’s this lesson that the SNP are showing no signs of learning from.

Over the last month or so, the reasons given by the SNP for the loss have ranged from railing against the media bias against Independence to the now notorious “The Vow”.  The former First Minister, Alex Salmond, has been most vociferous in attempting to pin the blame on the media and the Vow, all of which ignores the fact that Salmond himself had a decidedly mixed referendum campaign.  It was Salmond who championed the millstone around the pro-Independence campaign – Sterlingzone – and became more dogmatic about that policy the more criticism was heaped upon it.  It was also Salmond who spoke the most about the behaviour of the BBC, whether it was Nick Robinson’s strop at a press conference or the BBC report about RBS.  It was however a collective SNP leadership failure to successfully rebut The Vow.  It may have been the stories about companies leaving Scotland if we voted no that set the template, but the SNP’s retreat into “scaremongering” betrayed a tiredness and an irritability.

So if there is to be a second referendum, the SNP really should be looking at what went wrong for them as well as the things that went right.  Sterlingzone killed them in so many ways, not least because it blocked the SNP from even discussing their vision on how an independent Scotland could be economically viable.  Smack, brick wall right there.  I’m also probably alone in thinking this, but the SNP’s spin operation I thought came up short in those crucial final days as Salmond, Sturgeon & co tended to overuse the word “scaremongering”.  Concise, clever rebuttals were needed and were not forthcoming.

All this is something for a future where the UK Government and pro-Union politicians here in Scotland ignore the lessons that they need to learn from last September.  Chef amongst those being that the final result of 55% to 45% (rounding up/down) does not represent the overwhelming vote of confidence in the Union that those politicians blithely assert.  Had the referendum been won by the figures suggested by the polling when Yes Scotland launched its campaign in May 2012, then the 70%-30% victory would have settled the debate for generations.  Instead, the people of Scotland have decided to stay within the union but this is firmly on a trial basis.  To extend Douglas Alexander’s “divorce is an expensive business” analogy, both sides would be at marriage counselling trying to keep a failing relationship from complete collapse.  Yet Cameron, Mundell, the Westminster parties and the pro-Unionist politicians are behaving as if it was business as usual and that the union has been saved.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the perception of the new powers being offered to Scotland.  Social Security powers have not been proposed to be transferred en bloc.  There will be no Full Fiscal Autonomy.  If anything, Smith looks more of a fudge than Calman.  So far, so predictable after Gordon Brown’s casual referencing of touchstone Scottish Dates.  St Andrews Day, Burns Night were all used as deadlines, presumably March 1st was given a bit of a steer.  It all sounded too slick and too well designed to push the buttons of waivers that I smelled rotting fish straight away.  In spite of SNP orthodoxy though, the next referendum won’t be caused by Brown or the notorious ‘Vow’ but by the current occupant of Downing Street.

As long ago as the Edinburgh Agreement, Cameron could have stiffed the Nationalist’s short term ambitions by agreeing to that second question.  Had he done that, Devo Max would have won and independence would have been off the table for a generation, perhaps more. I’d suspect as well that Cameron’s cowardice in not making any meaningful contribution to the pro-Unionist cause harmed the union as well.  After all, if the leader of your country can’t be bothered to defend the existence of your country, well…

Cameron’s biggest mistake though has been his reaction to the referendum result, believing that a win is a win and the green light to carry on as if nothing has happened and that there is no consensus-building to be done.  His speech minutes after the official referendum result reopened the door to independence that had been closed pretty much since Clackmannanshire declared at about quarter to 2 in the morning.  Cameron’s latest bout of treating us like his forefathers would treat the colonies was the announcement that there will be amendments to the Smith inspired Scotland Bill – one of which being an amendment making Holyrood a permanent fixture in the UK government architecture…  three months after his party voted down the same amendment from the SNP.

Labour are all very quiet about this, but then again they have lessons of their own to ponder and learn from.  Their own conduct during and in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, where their hierarchy were too cosy in working with the conservatives and too happy to parrot conservative attack lines at the SNP/Yes Scotland, provided a realization for many Scottish people of how close to the Tories New Labour have become.  Better Together has in essence become Scottish Labour’s own Poll Tax moment.  Not the finest moment to hand the reigns to the most inexperienced figure ever to be anointed the figurehead of Labour in Scotland.

A year on from the referendum, there are reasons why both sides have not come to terms with the result and it’s aftermath.  For the SNP they need to come to terms quickly if the dream is not to die.  For the pro union parties, they need to learn the lessons to ensure that there is not an unstoppable demand for Independence.  Both sides though are showing every sign of carrying on as normal.

The Slow Slow Death Of Scotish Labour

“Act in haste, repent at leisure” – proverb

Why, It's The Man Who Saved The Union

If I’m honest, one of the reasons I voted the way I did on Thursday was the speeches given by Gordon Brown in the final 10 days re-iterating the promise of more powers for Holyrood.  With all the, on the face of it, impressive talk of timetables and motions and the liberal sprinkling of touchstone Scottish dates…  I wasn’t alone here in thinking that this was Grade A horseshit from Brown was I?

Well apparently I was, because enough people bought it for to keep their vote firmly in the “no” camp.  Those people will, I suspect, be looking out the receipts for their votes as I type this.  Even more so in the coming months if Cameron’s speech at just after 7am on Friday morning (below) is anything to go by.  Essentially Cameron tied the whole devolution question to the Tories own bugbear – English votes for English People.  It is of course designed to trap Labour, but watching them during the referendum debates willfully walking into bear traps has become something of a forte for Labour politicians and Scottish Labour in particular.

All through 2013 when the Spare Room subsidy was brought in, representatives of the Better Together campaign who were Labour politicians for their day jobs were with stunning regularity ambushed on Scottish current affairs shows by supporters of Independence.  Labour, you see, had no position on the Bedroom Tax so when they were attacked for being in favour of the Bedroom Tax, they couldn’t respond without couching their responses in the terms of being their personal opinion.  Of course when Miliband removed the member of the shadow cabinet who thought there was no economic case to scrapping the bedroom tax (Liam Byrne), he could then change his policy.  By which time the damage had been done and Labour were shown up as being too obsessed about pandering to the swing seats than be genuinely interested in a key supporter group of theirs.

That’s Scottish Labour’s problem in a nutshell.  Since they ousted Wendy Alexander as leader…  no scratch that, since Henry McLeish’s ousting as the leader of Scottish Labour group on the Mound, Scottish Labour have been more focused on the concerns of “Middle Scotland” and not rocking the boat with their Westminster colleagues and have abandoned their raison d’être.  What will have shocked so many people – about 35% of Labour voters if Michael Ashcroft’s polling is correct about those that voted for Independence – is the comfort that Labour politicians felt in spouting Conservative attack lines.

“Too wee, too poor” is the SNP characterization of Scottish Labour’s rebuttal of Independence – something Better Together distanced themselves from which in itself was a tacit confession that the slogan was untruthful.  What was interesting about the whole “Project Fear” episode was that, save for a few tweaks here an there, most of it will be re-run next year by Cameron & the Conservatives trying to repel Milliband from power.  Indeed one wonders what Ian Murray’s thoughts will be if the power companies come out and describe Milliband as some sort of mad Stalinist for having the temerity to stick his oar into the power market – given he thought that companies who advised employees to vote against Independence were indulging in their democratic duty to flag up their concerns.

Cameron, about to put a large spanner in The Brown Plan

Sorry to disappoint Mr Murray and the rest of the “Scottish” Labour mafia, but if that happens I’ll just be laughing at hapless ineptitude and inability to see it a coming around the mountain.

What the Independence referendum showed was that Scottish Labour has become something that it only defines itself in terms of what it is against.  It is against separation and is against the SNP.  That’s about your lot, which for a party who’s biggest success is recasting Thatcher’s three governments as the Bogeyman made flesh says it all.  Fear keeps the troops in line and keeps them voting Labour.  Lamont keeps saying that the SNP have put government on hold, so hopefully now that the referendum is over we will see what policy initiatives Scottish Labour have for both next year’s Westminster Election and the battle for Holyrood in 20 months time.  And that’s the problem.

There are no policy initiatives.  There are no fresh ideas.  Lamont has positioned Scottish Labour to the right of the SNP, so she talks about targeted help but uses crude methods that will only put off those who need aid and assistance from the help they need.  She also falls into the trap of repeating a Daily Mail agenda – hence why the “Something For Nothing” speech was so offensive to many people.  Lamont is a lame duck leader and Scottish Labour is tottering on the precipice on her watch.

I’m not even sure that if Labour actually fulfil their promise to enact their (pitiful) devolution proposals to the Brown timetable that this would save them.  If they didn’t though, it would exacerbate things greatly.  After all only 1,617,989 people voted for Independence.  I’m sure those people can be easily ignored…  er…  So for Milliband to play politics with the Scottish people is disgraceful.

Since the demise of the SSP there has been a vacuum on the left in Scottish Politics.  The SNP occupy a sort of centre ground/MacNew Labour position but both the Lib Dem’s and Scottish Labour have vacated the centre left ground.  For Labour, this move has proved disastrous and will prove even more disastrous as the pro-Independence groups look to fill that ready made ground.  At least events like an Independence referendum only happen once in a lifetime…

Except as I’ve already said, I think there will be another referendum.  Cameron’s tying of devolution powers to reform of the House of Commons under the UKIP friendly banner of “English votes for English laws” has made it even more difficult to push through the Brown plan.  Cameron’s speech has I think sown the seeds of discontent that will lead to another referendum within 10 years.  Next years General Election will be another flashpoint – as we see how hopeless Milliband is.  Those people looking to punish New Labour for Thursday really should be formulating a sort of decapitation strategy for next May – target key constituencies - rather than spread resources over 40 odd Labour seats.  Then there’s Holyrood 2016 where the lame duck get’s roasted.

Scottish Labour is in all sorts of trouble.  Not even fighting a referendum covered that particular fig leaf.  I’m not even sure that had we voted for Independence that would have saved Labour – as has been claimed.  All that would have happened is that the Murphy’s, the Alexander’s and the other members of the Compass Group wing that are Scottish would have decamped north.  The Emperor has no clothes and it is our duty to let everyone know about it.