What's the crime?

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It is just possible that I have watched too many detective dramas on television over the years. They’re all very formulaic: a crime, usually a murder (or, for Scottish viewers, a myrrdyrr) is committed, the police investigate, and the culprit is identified and arrested. It’s the order that is important – crime, investigation, arrest. Real life is obviously more complicated than that, as we’ve seen in the police investigation into the finances of the SNP.

I won’t claim to be exactly an impartial observer; I want the SNP to achieve its aim, and I have long been impressed with the political ability of Nicola Sturgeon, and her ability to give straight answers to straight questions, speak from the heart, and show a degree of empathy which is so rare in the average UK politician. It follows that I might possibly be allowing my own preconceptions, as well as my understanding of the normal flow of events, to colour my opinion on the events that are unfolding. But what’s still unclear to me is what crime the police think they’re investigating – and indeed, whether there has even been a crime at all. And I’m not entirely sure that they know either; if they do, they certainly haven’t been very forthright about saying what it is. It all seems to revolve around whether money raised by a party whose sole raison d’être is to gain independence for Scotland has been spent on a specific campaign for a specific referendum which has yet to be called or has been used in other ways to promote the idea of independence with an implicit understanding that a similar amount will be made available for that specific campaign if and when it happens. The idea that money would simply be locked away in some sort of separate account for years in readiness for a campaign which might not happen for some time is a strange one for anyone with any understanding of political financing.

Whatever, the very fact of an investigation and a series of high profile arrests on suspicion of ‘something or other’ has been a gift to the anti-independence forces in Scotland, and I really can’t blame them for making the most of it while they can. They’re hardly going to wait for the outcome of an investigation which might very well conclude that no crime has been committed before attacking the SNP, are they? Even if there is a potential for a large volume of egg to end up on their faces. The police are, I suppose, just doing their job: they’ve received one or more complaints and are investigating them. Whether the investigation really needed to take as long as it has is another question. It seems to be grindingly slow in coming to any sort of conclusion and that slow pace is certainly allowing the SNP’s enemies to make the most of their opportunity, although I suspect that the slowness is more to do with lack of resources than with any political motivation. An investigation into something where there might not even be a crime is not – and should not be – the top priority for any police force, however politically inconvenient that might be for those under investigation. It would be an outrage, though, if the investigation were to drag on in such a way as to impact the outcome of the next general election, especially if the conclusion were that no action should be taken. That would look to be very political indeed.

Winning doesn't prove a gambler to be right

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The compulsive gambler who stakes all the money he has on the spin of a roulette wheel producing a red number will see a win as a vindication of his strategy, whilst a loss is merely a spur to find more money to try again. He ‘knows’ that his strategy is right: it’s just a matter of time. Most of us can see and understand that whether the wheel comes up red or black is purely down to chance, a matter of luck rather than judgement; but winners always need to believe that there’s more to it than that; that they possess a special skill and ability to judge.

It is our great misfortune at a time of pandemic to have the UK led by a gambler, prepared to take risks with the lives of others in the belief that he knows better than the rest of us. If Omicron turns out not to have the hospitalisation and death rates which some feared, he and his supporters will describe it as a vindication of his approach; if things go the other way, it will simply be a case of bad luck. In truth, of course, the biggest factor is simply luck either way; there wasn’t enough information available to be able to claim that it’s about the application of any skill or ability. If ignoring all those voices who warned him that strong urgent action was needed turns out not to be a disaster, that actually tells us nothing about his judgement – but will probably encourage him to do the same again in the future.

If it really turns out that the cost of his recklessness is only in the hundreds or low thousands of additional premature deaths (which is the best case scenario), that doesn’t prove that he was right not to do more to prevent them, any more than it proves that Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon were wrong to take stronger action. Equally, the converse is true – if it all goes horribly wrong and there are tens of thousands of additional premature deaths, that doesn’t prove Johnson wrong and Drakeford and Sturgeon right. The truth is that they’re using different criteria to judge ‘success’, and those criteria are based on completely different sets of values and priorities.

The leader elected by the voters of England, albeit under their badly-flawed electoral system, prioritises money and wealth over lives and health. As his remark about ‘letting the bodies pile high’ indicates, he regards the number of deaths – however high it might go – as a price worth paying for protecting the economic interests of the few. Measured against that criteria, his decision not to act was always the ‘right’ one, regardless of the consequences. He’s not so much hemmed in by the crazies on his party’s fringes, as some have presented it, but freed by them to follow his instincts rather than having to accept the advice of experts who don’t share his values. The leaders elected by the people of Wales and Scotland, on the other hand, prioritise the protection of citizens over mere monetary considerations, and their natural instinct would be to act even more strongly were they not hamstrung by London’s control of the necessary resources. From their perspective, acting strongly was always the ‘right’ thing to do, even if the number of premature deaths avoided was much lower than it has been.

People often claim that the UK is a single country with a single set of values, but the pandemic has clearly shown that to be a gross oversimplification. Our problem has been not that Wales and Scotland have dared to express that difference by diverging from England in responding to the pandemic (as the Tories and their media supporters keep claiming) but that the union prevents us from diverging as much as electoral politics in Wales and Scotland suggests that we might have liked to do. The union has become an obstacle to expressing our values, and we could well do without it.

Being used as the stakes in a high-risk gamble

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Whilst in theory the Welsh Government has the power to determine what steps should be taken to minimise Covid risks, in practice the scope for divergence from England is limited by the tight control of the purse strings being retained in London, the long and porous nature of the border, and the shared media which inevitably highlights what is happening in England and can lead to a degree of confusion when the rules differ. Despite that, the Welsh Government has tried to maintain a safer environment in Wales than that pertaining in England, and has succeeded, by and large, in keeping most of the population on board with its decisions.

It has been clear since the emergence of the latest variant that the desire of Wales (and Scotland) to take stronger action that England is still strong, with the First Ministers of both countries openly demanding tougher action, a demand which Johnson has rejected outright. It isn’t just non-Tory politicians who are expressing their concern – just yesterday, Johnson slapped down the head of the UK Health Security Agency for her entirely sensible advice that people should try and avoid unnecessary socialising. The PM, apparently, is all in favour of unnecessary socialising whatever the risk. Today, senior doctors and NHS leaders have warned that the government needs to take stronger action on a precautionary basis, describing it as “bizarre” to wait until a spike happens before acting.

Whilst the government is entirely correct to emphasise that advisors advise and ministers decide, a decision not to act in the face of such strong advice from so many experts indicates that the government has decided to take a gamble. How much of a gamble remains to be seen. It may be that they end up being lucky: the new variant could turn out to be less of a problem than some think likely. If that happens, they will retrospectively claim that they took the right decisions, ignoring the degree to which luck plays a part; if things are as bad as others fear, the gamble will cost thousands of premature deaths. None of us – not even the most knowledgeable experts – have enough information at present even to make a reliable guess as to the outcome; only time will tell. Johnson might get away with it this time – that would be a good outcome in the short term, but might also simply encourage even more recklessness in the future.

What is clear is that the UK government is being less than honest with the population. Their rejection of the suggestion that all arrivals into the UK should self-isolate until after a second negative test on day 8 (as put forward by Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon) was on the basis that it would have a detrimental impact on the travel industry, which demonstrates that impacting one particular industry sector is a more important consideration for Johnson than hospitalisations and deaths, let alone increased pressure on the NHS. Presenting sound and sensible public health actions as being ‘restrictions’ on ‘liberty’ not only presses the right buttons with the Tory party’s increasingly influential extremists, but also encourages the public to overlook the fact that our lives are the stake in Johnson’s massive gamble, a gamble which puts profit ahead of people. And, to return to where this post started, as long as Wales is tied to England, no matter how much the Welsh Government might huff and puff, Welsh lives are part of that stake as well.

He's behind you (and behind everyone else as well)

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This time of the year is traditionally panto season. The theatres may be closed, and the professional actors furloughed, ‘resting’, or looking for alternative employment, but as the saying goes, ‘the show must go on’. We just need to look elsewhere for it. One of the more well-known pantomime characters is Wishee-Washee, although many know him less affectionately as Keir Starmer, a knight of the realm and scourge of the Scots. Fresh from his triumphant demand for “strong, clear and decisive leadership” during the pandemic (why he would lay down criteria which so definitively exclude himself as well as Boris Johnson is beyond the scope of this post), he’s ventured into the Neverland of federalism which has seen so many of his Scottish colleagues join the brigade of lost boys.

In evolutionary terms, a dinosaur on auto-repeat in hot pursuit of the federal fairy (aka Tinkerbell) is almost as useful as (or, to use the corollary, marginally less useful than) a crocodile which has swallowed a clock, so step forward Gordon Brown. He has apparently been closely advising Wishee-Washee on what to say, and that advice – given how effective and useful it’s been over the last ten years – has inexplicably been taken by Wishee. The result is that his grand plan to save the union, which Wishee passionately desires for reasons which he can’t adequately explain (but which don’t matter anyway in the magic of Neverland), amounts to a proposal not to have a strong, clear, or decisive policy himself but to set up a commission under the tutelage of the crocodile to tour the realm and find out what other people think before deciding what he may or may not think.

Thereafter, and always providing that the commission comes up with the right answer – the responsibility for ensuring said answer has been devolved to the crocodile, but can be withdrawn at any time as befits a devolved power – he will promise that, in the unlikely event that he wins the next election, he will implement further devolution of powers to Scotland. Wales is largely considered irrelevant because it’s in a different pantomime; and anyway Nobby the Panda Drakeford (a non-speaking role) has managed to ensure that the peasantry still vote for the ‘right’ party here. The probability that any commission advised by either a crocodile or a dinosaur will come up with concrete answers to the key questions about how devolution can be made irreversible whilst characters such as Abanazar Johnson stalk the land, and how any federal or quasi-federal system can deal with the fact that one of the member states has 85% of the population, power, and wealth is low. But it is a fairy-tale, remember. And it’s a fairy tale with a purpose – the prime objective is to provide an apparently rational basis for Wishee to agree with Abanazar that the Scots should be denied a vote on their own future whilst the commission take a few years to come up with a non-answer to the wrong question.

In a good pantomime, the villain always loses in the end, and the hero wins. It’s interesting to note that one of the best-known pantomime heroes, Peter Pan, is usually played by a petite adult woman. I’m sure the Scots can think of someone suitable for the role. And as long as life imitates art (and it usually does), the outcome is assured.

Responding to Scotland

Tweet To the great surprise of precisely no-one,  I disagree with the response of Carwyn Jones to the announcement by Scotland's First Minister that she is going to take the first step towards calling a second independence referendum.  But in saying that the nations of the UK are stronger together than apart, he is at least recognising the alternative possibility.  I take the opposite view on the desirability of independence, but despite what some may say, I don't see anything particularly unpatriotic about arguing that perhaps a country can be independent if it wants, but that it should choose not to.  It's a stance which betrays an utter lack of confidence in the ability of the nation he purports to lead, and in the capacity of his own party and government to improve things, but none of that makes it unpatriotic or anti-Welsh.

The response of Plaid Cymru hardly displayed any more confidence.  Brexit might prompt calls for "greater control of our own affairs" is a statement which looks like it's either trying to say independence without using the word or else threatening to maybe perhaps ask for a few crumbs.  It's not the confident approach of a party which knows what can be done and is ready to lead; it's the approach of a party afraid of losing votes by taking a clear and unequivocal stance.

The Tories have shown their usual inability to deal with the substance of the question, as well as their total failure to understand why anyone in politics would want to have an aim, let alone try and achieve it.  And UKIP have resorted to their usual nonsense of claiming that membership of the EU is equivalent to surrendering all power to Brussels.

The decision taken by Nicola Sturgeon is high-risk for the long term cause of independence for Scotland.  The result is by no means as certain as many independentistas seem to be assuming, and there'a s long hard road ahead.  Failure for a second attempt in such a short timescale would set the cause back by decades.  Much of the news coverage is suggesting that yesterday's announcement caught the UK Government on the hop.  Perhaps it did - but it should not have.  There is no excuse for not seeing what was about to happen, even if the precise timing was not so clear - it should have been obvious to the UK Government that the course on which they have set themselves was going to create a situation in which the Scottish Government was left with no credible choice; the fact that they seem not to have realised that speaks volumes.  

But the point that the UK Government doesn't understand it is no reason for the rest of us not to understand it - the SNP Government were left with little choice or room to manoeuvre.  Any sensible timing for the referendum, for all the reasons outlined by Nicola Sturgeon, is severely constrained by the decisions already taken at Westminster.  Many independentistas are naturally enthusiastic for the forthcoming campaign, and optimistic abut the result.  But the scale of the challenge is greater than some seem to think.

Who really wants failure?

Tweet Two days ago, Cameron made the extraordinary claim that Scottish nationalists “don’t want the country to succeed”.  Obviously, he wasn’t talking about Scotland when he used the words “the country”, for it would be a very strange nationalist party that didn’t want its own country to succeed.  But if he was instead talking about the UK, it would still be a very strange form of nationalism which wanted the ‘country’ of which the Scots are still a part to do other than succeed.  And even if he was referring to the UK minus Scotland, there is still no evidence that the SNP actually want the country to ‘fail’.  Indeed, much of what Nicola Sturgeon has said throughout the election campaign seems to be saying quite the opposite.

If Scotland is to remain a part of the UK, it is very much in the interest of the Scots that the UK should be an economic success.  And if Scotland were to become independent, it is very much in the interest of the Scots that their largest trading partner should be an economic success.  Both of those things must surely be as obvious to Cameron as they are to me.

It’s easy to dismiss Cameron’s statement as electioneering nonsense, but I think that it tells us something very important about the unionist psyche, and underlines why the unionists will ultimately be defeated.  It tells us that he cannot really conceive of anyone pushing for a second referendum on independence for Scotland other than as a reaction to failure.  He doesn’t understand – can’t begin to understand, apparently – that the movement for Scottish independence exists regardless of the economic arguments, let alone that the certainty of economic success would only boost the nationalist cause. 

Particularly telling is his apparent failure to grasp that economic failure helps the ‘no’ camp more than the ‘yes’ camp.  Fear of economic failure was, after all, the basis of much of the ‘no’ argument during the referendum.  How to achieve economic success is an issue on which there is clearly a significant gulf between him and the SNP; but the goal of achieving it is a shared aspiration.

Panicking politicians don’t look for reasoned debate about alternative approaches to achieving the same goal; they only look for ways of scaring people into voting the ‘right’ way.  This time, though, it doesn’t seem to be working.

It's all an act

Tweet I doubt that there’s anyone who really believes Cameron’s line about not wanting to take part in leaders’ debates because the Green Party has been excluded, even himself.  He’s simply calculated the potential risks and benefits and decided that the downsides of participation are greater than the upsides.  The line about the Green Party isn’t entirely the fig-leaf as which it’s been painted though.  Part of his calculation will have been that having Farage present as a perceived alternative to the Tories might at least partly be countered by having Natalie Bennett there as a perceived alternative to Labour.

The others are just as calculating.  Farage probably calculates that the status accorded to him and his party as a serious player, coupled with his ability to play the outsider, can only be a plus.  Miliband should be very wary of going head to head with Cameron if he has any sense at all, but is milking Cameron’s refusal to take part for all it’s worth.  I can certainly see why he’d calculate that going ahead with the debates without Cameron might help him.  As for Clegg – well who knows what goes on in the mind of a Liberal Democrat?  Probably that nothing he can do can make things much worse, so any chance at all of redeeming his party's position is better than nothing.

The way that they and their advisors are calculating the risks and rewards of these debates isn’t the only similarity between them of course.  When it comes to policy there isn’t that much to choose between them either.  And four middle-aged male millionaires from the South East of England, saying and believing much the same, aren’t exactly a representative or exciting prospect.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of leaders’ debates anyway.  Partly that’s because of the exclusion of any serious alternative viewpoint, and partly it’s because the election is about electing a parliament not a president.  (Although I wouldn’t have a major objection to separating the election of the executive from the election of the legislature, as it happens – indeed, I can see a number of advantages to doing that.  But while we're still electing a parliament rather than an executive, treating the votes of all the citizens of the UK as votes for one or other of the ‘leaders’ is to treat local MPs as nothing more than lobby fodder.  That may well be what they are much of the time, but that’s another problem which needs to be addressed not reinforced.)

However, neither of those objections are really what concerns me.  My biggest objection of all is that they’re not even proper debates.  They’re staged to suit the broadcasters’ wish for good television. 

The participants have all been coached and rehearsed and we’re encouraged to distinguish between them on the basis of their performance.  It’s all an act where the ‘winner’ is the one who has the best coaches and the best memory.  Remembering to look sincere in the right places, to display the right degree of outrage at others, to deliver the scripted sound bites and even the scripted jokes – all of these are more important than the substance of policy.

Would it be any different if Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood, or Natalie Bennett (or even all three) were included?  It would certainly look different, but how certain could we really be that they too wouldn’t have been coached and rehearsed to perform well?  And how well would the format really suit the presentation of a serious alternative viewpoint?

I’m not at all confident on either score, much as I’d like to believe otherwise.  Unintentionally, perhaps Cameron is doing us all a favour by finding an excuse to block the debates.  For sure, the broadcasters will complain about the impact on democracy, but in reality it’s no such thing.  And believing that the broadcasters are interested in democracy rather than ratings would be as silly as believing that Cameron really cares about excluding the Green Party.