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.

It's The Economy, Stupid...

Something that surprisingly bears repeating is the adage that the key battleground for elections in this country is the economy.  Every election going way back has been won on the election.  The same can be said of last years referendum too, where the failure of Yes Scotland to convince enough people to vote “yes” can be attributed to Sterlingzone and a failure to win the big economic arguments.

Those arguments re-surfaced again last week when the latest GERS figures were released, showing that expenditure was outstripping revenue by £2,328 per head.  On first reading it does look like a blow to supporters of Fiscal Autonomy. Even more so when the SNP deployed the ‘we would do things differently’ argument… without really explaining what they would do.  Given that 2016 will be the first Holyrood elections that will feature a fiscal debate thanks to the Calman recommendations coming into law gives the SNP an incentive to look at the finance side of things without adopting the “two in the bush”-isms of their love of Laffer style corporation tax cuts.

Do the GERS figures blow a hole in the case for Fiscal Autonomy, as has been argued here?  Well… no, not really.  For one thing, Fiscal Autonomy is the logical conclusion of devolution (Scottish solutions for Scottish problems and all that) and for another, well the GERS figures do not take into account the so called “tax gap” – the gap between the tax that should be paid and the amount collected by HMRC.  You would hope that Revenue Scotland would be better at gathering money than it’s UK level counterpart.

We would like to think that the SNP would be better at making the case for Fiscal Autonomy than they were with the economic case for Independence.  For all that the BBC have found themselves cast as the bogeymen de jour of pro-Independence supporters, the real reason for the no vote can be found in the SNP’s failure to win the economic argument. Oh and Sterlingzone.

What did occur in the referendum though was that there were people who were immune to the bad policy of Sterlingzone.  I hypothesized that currency would not be as much of a potent argument for people with very little currency.  Those people immune to the failures of Sterlingzone would also be very immune to Osborne’s supposed economic miracle as the Tories still remain level pegging with Labour in the polls in spite of being a country mile ahead of Labour when it comes to polling on each parties economic competence.

Osborne has staked his parties’ fortunes on the economy, which is why there was the emphasis on the job being half done, on the work still to be done and on the dangers of leaving it to Labour.  Yet the figures in Osborne’s budget do not add up.  His claim that wages are coming back to pre-recession levels is something that is not being felt.  He has missed his deficit target, borrowing is still rising and the country still feels in recession.  That Osborne is still ahead in economic competence says more about the ineptitude and, frankly cowardice, of the two Eds.

Competence because Milliband (and Balls) have allowed Osborne’s arguments about the recession being the fault of Labour’s overspending (rather than their adherence to Laissez Faire economics, or as Brown rebranded it “Light Touch Regulation”) to become conventional wisdom.  Cowardice, because of Balls reluctance to formulate an alternative to George’s Scorched Earth.  It is this which has provided the room for the Greens and more pertinently the SNP to come and hoover up votes from people who do not agree that Austerity is working.

It is obvious that this election will feel like no other election.  That the conventional arguments about the economy have been replaced by a weariness of austerity is still to be added to the calculations of the main parties.  It could even be argued that the main parties still haven’t quite understood that stagnating wages have exacerbated the economic troubles rather than helped.  In the meantime the SNP & Greens seem to be making hay at the expense of those who claim there is no alternative to austerity.

First Footing 2015, With The Best of 2014

First of all, can I wish you a Happy New Year?

Last year saw 36 posts.  A wee bit light given the year Scotland has gone through.  I’d have liked to have posted more but time constraints and all that.  It won’t surprise you to know that the referendum dominated the most read posts list, so without further ado (insert own preferred countdown music, be it Pick of The Pops, Phil Lynott or Paul Hardcastle…)

At 10, it’s the post about the first referendum debate between the Chairman of Better Together, Alistair Darling and the First Minister Alex Salmond.  A Wasted Opportunity was not the last post about currency, but Darling’s brutal slaughter of Salmond’s currency position told us what some people knew already – Sterlingzone wasn’t going to win the referendum.  As a contrast, the post at number 9 asks, in the week of Salmond’s resignation as First Minister, Just WhatHas Alex Salmond Ever Done For Us?

The second Darling/Salmond debate is partly the subject of the eighth best read post of the year.  A Tale of Two Debates compares & contrasts that debate with the Paisley hustings which featured Jim Sheridan MP, George Adam MSP, Fiona McDonald (from the PCS Union) and Tommy Morrison (from Clydebank Trades Union Council).  Both debates took place on the same night in August.  At 7 was my take on the whole Wiiings/Lally/Rowling/Cybernats thing. Cyber-twats probably tells you everything about what I think about every hardcore pro-Indy supporters favorite blogger with alarmingly UKIP acceptable views and a line in appropriating Laibach’s imagery.  Just outside the top 5 and at 6 is a post about that debate.  No not that one, the one between Sturgeon and Lamont.  So How Did Lamont Lose That Debate reports on Johann Lamont’s successful attempt to take Nicola Sturgeon to extra time and then penalties in their Scotland Tonight debate.

So, top 5, and at 5 is “The Lie of The Land – What Now For The 45?” which looks at the evolving post referendum landscape and the SNP’s task in making inroads to Labour’s 41 seats it will be defending in May.  Essentially, it will be hard.  The fourth best read blog of 2014 was the post sifting through the wreckage and foot in mouth moments of Johann Lamont’s leadership – The Political Suicide ofJohann Lamont. Ah, the wee things.

We are now into the top three, and the third best read blog of 2014 keeps that Labour theme going.  The Slow Slow Death of ScottishLabour pinpointed the issues Scottish Labour had accrued during the referendum campaign, and highlighted the reasons why voters might be thinking of not voting Labour in the onrushing General Election.  Being held off the number one slot is the second Sterlingzone post of the year – confusingly titled Sterlingzone – Part 57.  This one was in the aftermath of Osborne’s speech ruling out a currency union – closely backed up by the 99p shop Dennis Healy and the ginger haired one off the Muppets.  Punningly, Iain MacWhirter dubbed this event “The Sermon on The Pound” as he identified that Osborne’s behavior could backfire on the pro-Union parties.  Political mastermind my bahochie.

Which leaves us with the most read post in 2014.  At number one is “The UKIP effect” – a post looking at the rightwards drift of the Westminster parties as they are (without justification) looking to stem the light trickle of voters defecting to UKIP.  A rather prescient post that explains the (suggested according to polling) decline in support for Scottish Labour to the SNP, given it was written in February.

So that’s that for 2014.  A year like no other the blurb went, all rather obvious given that 2014 will only happen once.  Proper blogging will resume shortly…

"The Political Death of Alex Salmond"

You may remember that last year, I had a minor spat with a low rent wannabe Nostradamus in relation to his use of the above phrase.  My bone of contention was that Salmond would survive beyond the referendum because of his…  er… opponents.  The crap nostradamus' opinion was that Salmond would be damaged goods after the referendum.  I’m claiming victory over that one because, though Salmond has resigned, it was at his own choosing and as I previously blogged you can’t really blame just Salmond for the referendum result.  In short, at the moment his stock is still very high.

Scottish Independence Referendum, 18 September 2014 – Final Result
Yes	1,617,989	44.7%
No	2,001,926	55.3%

Yes, the pro-independence campaign did make several tactical mistakes – and those could be attributed to Salmond.  But you can’t really blame only him for the result.  Maybe Salmond himself does.  Perhaps with hindsight the “air” campaign looked a bit tired & jaded and slow to respond to the pro-Union claims in the last days of the campaign.  It’s certainly not a criticism you can level at the canvassers.

 

Will we see this outpouring of political sentiment again?

The criticisms you can make are the one’s I always thought would be decisive – Currency & the Economy – sovereignty (in terms of the EU) just did not appear as an issue.  I’ve blogged long and hard about Sterling zone during the campaign and it appears as if Salmond’s choice of a currency union, the settled will of Westminster not to entertain the idea and Salmond’s non appearance of a “plan B” was a decisive factor among the commuter belts that voted against Independence.  What hasn’t been discussed is how much Sterling zone sucked out of the campaign.  Darling & co went for that issue time and time again, yet Salmond & yes couldn’t formulate a response until the second television debate.  Currency union looks like the big policy mistake, when other more common sense options were available.

The economy is a much less straightforward argument.  Yes Scotland had the better arguments, but again got tied up in a fight – this time in the last weeks over big business making (false) claims regarding increased costs and the moving of headquartered facilities.  There was also the claim that an Independent Scotland would have a deficit on day one of £6 billion.  Whether that was true or not, it went unrebutted – bearing in mind that in 2010 £6 Billion was the amount raised by increasing NI by 1p.

In the post mortem, it’s too easy to gloss over what went right though.  When I made my original prediction two years ago, I thought that it would be a thumping win for the No camp – with Scotland still very much a default pro-union country.  Not any more.  Scotland has changed.

What the Yes supporters have done very…  very well is that they have mobilised a grass roots movement for a fairer, more equal society.  If you hadn’t guessed, last Saturday will live long in these memory banks.  1.6 million voters to leave the union is a remarkable achievement and torpedo’s Cameron’s ludicrous claim that staying in the union is the settled will of the Scottish people.  Salmond would have settled for more powers, and thanks to Westminster repeatedly hitting the panic button last week should get some sort of powers – though still far short of Devo Max.

So why has Salmond gone now.  Possibly he felt as if he had taken the SNP as far as he can & that the referendum was a once in a lifetime opportunity missed (something I don’t agree with…  but that’s for a future post).  Already buoyed by their victory at the polls, the NO camp quietly celebrated the demise of the most able politician in the country, certainly someone that can best Cameron, Clegg, Milliband…  only Brown is perhaps Salmond’s equal.

What is not in doubt is that Salmond leaves behind a huge hole in the SNP.  Apart from the Swinney years, Salmond has lead for all but 4 years since 1990.  That’s Ferguson-esque service in the one job.  The favorite to take over will be his deputy Nicola Sturgeon.  She is able and very capable – at times she has outshone Salmond.  My only quibble would be the record of anointed successors in this country is not a happy one.  Certainly Sturgeon was one of the few front line politicians to come out of the referendum campaign with their reputations enhanced.

Friday was not a happy day for pro-Independence supporters, even before the sectarian toned disturbances in Glasgow late on.  It may not look like it now, but Scotland did take a huge step towards cutting it’s ties with the Union.  Cameron’s assertion that Independence is off the table for a generation (quoting Salmond) badly misreads the situation the union finds itself in.  In the meantime, the feeling that pro-Independence supporters have that victory was close is no sort of consolation.