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.

Avoiding broken promises

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In this story last week about the Chancellor’s little local difficulty over the increase in National Insurance, the Tory MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire came up with a real humdinger of a suggestion; or at least it would be if he followed it through to its logical conclusion.  In essence, as he sees it, the problem isn’t that the Chancellor broke a promise, it’s that the Tories were silly enough to make the promise in the first place.  Matters such as taxation policy are best left vague, so that the government can respond to changes in circumstances.

That needs to be followed through, though.  Clearly, without knowing what any putative government is going to do on taxes, it’s difficult to make any spending pledges either.  And it isn’t only financial circumstances that might change, so perhaps all policies should be left unstated in case the government feels it needs to do something different.  It’s an approach which would lead to very short manifestos.  One sentence would be quite enough:

“We will do whatever we think needs to be done at any point in time.”

I’d like to think that it’s an approach which would never catch on, but it actually strikes me as a refreshingly honest statement of the current government’s approach.  I’ll bet that the PM won’t be overjoyed at seeing the cat let out of the bag.

Identifying what's actually broken

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Yesterday’s news was full of accusations that the Chancellor broke an election promise by raising the level of National Insurance payments for self-employed people.  I think, though, that people are aiming at the wrong target.

In the Conservative Party, policy is made by the leader; the leader is ultimately responsible for the content of the manifesto; and the leader is responsible for keeping any promises.  So the ‘promise’ which Hammond broke yesterday wasn’t one made by him, nor by his boss, the Prime Minister.  It’s a promise made by a man who is no longer involved in politics and is in no position to either keep or break any promises he made.

Cameron may well have been elected on a manifesto containing the said promise, but we no longer have a Cameron government.  We’ve had a change of government, and under the UK system, it’s a fundamental principle that no government can be bound by its predecessor.  Neither can any Tory leader be bound by anything his or her predecessor may have said.  New leader = new government = new policies; any expectation to the contrary flies in the face of the whole history of the Conservative Party and the UK constitution.

Now some might object that all the Tory MPs were elected on the basis of that same manifesto and they should all be bound by it.  Actually, no they weren’t.  Under the UK constitution, people don’t vote for a party and they don’t vote for a set of policies.  They vote for one person in one constituency, and once elected, that person has the constitutional right to vote for or against any issue, solely as he or she pleases.

What’s my point?  This whole issue shows that something is indeed broken, but it isn’t a throwaway pre-election promise.  What’s broken is a constitution and electoral system which allows a change of personnel to become a change of government and a wholesale change of policy and direction with no elector input at all.  I’m not even sure that ‘broken’ is the right word for this – it was unfit for purpose in the first place.  Either way, in fairness to ‘Spreadsheet Phil’, he isn’t the one who broke it.  And I’m absolutely certain that hounding him for it isn’t the way to fix it either.  But then, who of those attacking him really wants to fix the underlying problem?

Why not do the job properly?

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It’s likely that Labour’s promise to force all those earning over £1 million a year to publish their income tax returns will prove popular, although the likelihood of them being called on to implement this promise any time soon is low, and based on past performance, no promise given by a politician before an election can be relied upon to become fact once the people have voted.  They are, though, appealing to a general feeling that the richest in our society are not paying their fair share, and that they are using clever accountants and advisors to come up with ways of paying less than they should.

The problem, however, is that most of what they do is perfectly legal – there is an oft-stated distinction between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion.  And if people are doing something entirely legal, it leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling that Labour is, in effect, arguing that the media and public should be allowed, nay encouraged, to hound them into doing what’s morally right rather than simply what’s legally right.  It’s almost encouraging an outbreak of mob rule.

That doesn’t mean that I support the idea that anything goes as long as it’s legal.  I don’t agree that people should be allowed to use the fact that something isn’t actually illegal as a defence for doing something which offends the public sense of what’s ‘right’.  But I know, even as I say that, that I’m making some assumptions about what public morality is, and about who has the right to define what is, or is not, acceptable; let alone take enforcement of such morality into their own hands.  And let’s be honest, based on the utter dishonesty of some sections of the press in the UK, do we really want to put that definition into their hands?  Yet that could be the effect of what Labour are proposing.

None of that means that Labour don’t have a point.  But here’s an alternative suggestion: instead of using legislation to force people to undergo a semi-random process of ritual public humiliation for doing things which are entirely legal, why not legislate to make those dubious practices illegal?  Why not simplify and reinforce the UK’s hopelessly over-complex tax code, and employ adequate resources to ensure compliance with the law?  That would seem to me to be a better and more consistent and evenly-applied use of government power than reinstating the medieval practice of “hue and cry”.

But then, perhaps it doesn’t make for such an easy headline.

Defining nationality

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Hot on the heels of the PM’s visit to Scotland, there was a piece by Melanie Phillips in yesterday’s Times setting out why Scotland has no valid claim to independence.  The piece itself is behind the paper’s paywall, but here’s a link to an archived copy, for which I thank Wee Ginger Dug, who was one of those commenting on it yesterday.  My first reaction was to check the date; but April 1^st is still some way off, so I suppose we have to treat it as a serious statement of her views.  If I’d tried to parody the position of some unionists, I doubt that I’d have done better.

In essence, her argument seems to be that only ‘nations’ have the right to seek independence, and since Scotland (like Wales and Ireland) is not a nation, it has no such right.  ‘Britain’ is the only ‘nation’ in these islands, and no-one has the right to seek to split that nation into two or more parts.

She has a clear notion in her own mind about what constitutes a nation, although what exactly that might be is not actually articulated.  But given the detail of her comments, it is obviously highly dependent on history (Ireland’s nationality is dismissed as tenuous largely because the republic has existed for less than 100 years).  I have a number of problems with such a definition, even leaving aside the fact that her grasp of the history of these islands seems to be a bit, shall we say, shaky.  (And the idea that the peoples inhabiting these islands in Roman times, and even before that, saw themselves as being in any sense of the word a ‘nation’ invites ridicule.)

However, the question of what is or is not a nation is far from a simple one to answer, and I say that as one who has spent decades trying to arrive at a definition which satisfies me.  Of course, history, territory, language, place of birth, and institutions can all be factors in leading people to a perception of nationality, but the key words there are “perception of nationality”.  People believe themselves to be Welsh, English, Scottish, British, or whatever, and it seems to me impossible to escape the conclusion that nationality is ultimately something subjective.  If different people can look at the same range of factors and come to different conclusions about their own nationality, then the idea that the nation is some objectively definable construct becomes impossible to sustain.

Ultimately, a nation exists because people believe that they are part of it; all the external factors mentioned above may strengthen or weaken that perception, but it is the perception that gives existence to the nation.  From that perspective, nationality is also fluid; it can change over time.  As evidence for that view, polls have consistently shown a trend in Wales for people to move away from self-identifying as solely British towards identifying as solely Welsh – with plenty of people in between those extremes who consider themselves to be both, to a greater or lesser degree.

It can also be complex; I’ve known independentistas over the years who have tried to argue that everyone must choose to which nation they belong, because they cannot be both Welsh and British.  My reaction is to ask simply “why not?”  If there are people in Wales who consider themselves to be both Welsh and British (and there are – I know plenty), then who are we to tell them they’re wrong, or not allowed to be what they consider themselves to be?  That is to seek to impose a definition of nationality on people, which seems to me to be counter-productive, even if anyone were actually to believe it to be desirable.  And that wish to impose a definition seems to me to be part of what Phillips was seeking to do in the article.  A unionist telling people that they are British, whether they like it or not, is as futile as an independentista telling people that they are Welsh whether they like it or not.  If the only way a nationality can project itself into the future is by seeking to impose itself on all those who live within its territory, then it’s probably already doomed.

However, my second disagreement with the article is perhaps even more fundamental – who decided that only ‘nations’ can govern themselves?  For those of us who believe that sovereignty is a bottom-up phenomenon rather than a top-down one, any group of people living in a defined area always have the right to determine how they should be governed.  It’s a viewpoint which can lead to conclusions which are uncomfortable to many independentistas, I know, but it’s at least based on a clear principle, which is about the rights of peoples inhabiting an area.  What is the principle that allows anyone to determine which groups of people have a right to self-government and which do not?  What is so sacred about ‘nationality’ as to make it inviolable?  (And that latter question is as much a challenge to independentistas as it is to unionists.)

The question as to whether people should choose to exercise their right to self-government is a separate one to deciding whether the right exists.  There are practical issues which are likely to deter individual groups or communities from seeking to exercise such a right, of course.  And it is always far more likely people will choose to exercise that right if they feel that they have a shared identity or nationality: that is why most movements for self-determination are built on a concept of nationality leading to a common desire to shape their future.  But it isn’t the only conceivable basis, nor can it be.

The article by Phillips seemed to me to be, in a way, another slant on the idea of British exceptionalism, a concept which underpins the established order in the UK.  But in trying to give an artificial and unique historical validity to one particular nationality, and one particular conception of nationality, it also exposes the sheer lack of real substance supporting the whole edifice of British nationalism and exceptionalism in the 21^st Century.  For that, we should surely be grateful.  

Can anyone be wrong all the time?

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I haven’t always been entirely kind to the MP for Monmouth in this blog.  Well, actually that’s something of an understatement – I don’t think I’ve ever been kind to him.  There’s something about him which provokes an instinctive antipathy in me, and it hasn’t been helped by things such as his call for dental checks on refugee children and his persistent attempts to raise devolved issues in the UK Parliament and for Big Sister to intervene to sort out the Welsh.

On the latter point, he was at it again last week in relation to the Circuit of Wales project, expressing his concern that the Welsh Government might be about to be taken for a short and very expensive ride.  There’s something very shifty about recording a conversation without telling the other participants, but it does make it harder to contradict what he has said about the content of that conversation, and I can’t help thinking that he might actually have a point this time.  It really isn’t a matter for the House of Commons where he raised it, and his comment that someone who can’t make a success of a company with a turnover in the hundreds of thousands can’t be trusted to run a company with a turnover in the millions shows a lack of grasp of the nature of entrepreneurialism, where multiple failures are the norm.

But his core point, that this project is something of a pipe-dream looks to me to be quite possibly right.  One of the things that has become clear over the years is that ‘business plans’ written to be submitted to government agencies and bodies which control the allocation of grants and guarantees often owe more to creative writing skills than to accountancy.  They are written to tick the boxes for the funders or guarantors rather than as an accurate reflection of what will actually happen and the more unique and – dare I use that dreaded word – ‘innovative’ the project, the harder it is to make accurate predictions.

I can understand the desperation of communities where jobs are short and deprivation rife, but this whole project looks to me like clutching at a straw because it’s there rather than because there’s a solid case underlying it.  I can understand the drivers which might lead the Welsh Government to back it with huge sums of public money; they need to be seen to be doing something to help the local communities, and this is, after all, ‘something’.

Sometimes though, tough as it might seem, governments have to have the courage to say when a project is the wrong one at which to throw large sums of government money – money which will not then be available for other and better projects which may come along later. 

Even someone who arouses as much antipathy in me as David Davies probably can’t be wrong all the time.

Closet independentista?

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The UK Prime Minister took herself off to the Scottish Tory conference at the end of last week to deliver her profoundest thoughts on the future of Scotland to the assembled handful, in an event held in a hall with inverse Tardis-like properties.  (Those booking it must surely have assumed that it would be smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside.)  The main point in her speech seems to have been an accusation that the SNP have tunnel vision because they are continuing to argue for independence rather than concentrating on managing the decline in Scottish services which her government has mandated through its approach to setting the Scottish budget. 

In fairness to her (and to many other UK politicians), I can understand why the idea that a party sets out a goal and then tries to achieve it must appear a very strange one.  Having an aim and trying to realise it is not a concept which much troubles the UK parties, for whom the only objective is to get elected, and for whom policy is what you say to achieve that aim, not what you actually intend to do after the election.  For the SNP to try and do what they have always said they wanted to do is clearly not playing by the accepted rules, and thus inherently unfair.

She repeated the usual guff about the UK being the bestest and strongest union ever known to mankind, which has created a land of milk and honey across the whole of Scotland, whose people would be begging from each other in the streets were it not for the munificence of the UK Government.  Or something like that.  (There is just the teensiest possibility that she may have over-egged it a bit by telling the Scots that one of the great ‘benefits’ of the union is that they get to host the UK’s nuclear weapons systems.)

What she understands, but those SNP types seem completely unable to comprehend, is that the UK is a part of the natural order of things.  It was created by divine intervention; a beneficent intervention which also gave us the Windsors to rule over us, as well as the right to tell the rest of the world what to do.  That simple fact is what explains not only why the UK is so much stronger by being a single united whole but also why the UK is so much weaker as part of a greater whole.  Anyone who thinks that there is the slightest possibility of contradiction in that is obviously mistaken.  It isn’t about being bigger or smaller, it’s about being the UK; no further argument is required.

To cap it all, just for good measure, she added that the Scots might be labouring under the delusion that matters such as education are devolved, but she’s still Prime Minister of the UK, and education in Scotland is as much a matter for her as is education in England.  

During the EU referendum, she managed to give the impression that she was a supporter of the Remain camp, albeit a very quiet one.  The enthusiasm with which she’s embraced doing that which she predicted would be a disaster suggests to me that she was actually a closet Brexiteer.  I wonder if she’s trying the same trick in relation to Scotland – her speech certainly makes a great deal more sense if we assume that she secretly wants to see Scotland independent.

Irrelevance in ermine

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Despite all the ferocious warnings that they were given not to get above their stations (and there’s a curious thing for commoners to tell aristocrats, isn’t it?), their lordships decided to go ahead anyway and pass what most of us would see as an eminently reasonable amendment to the Brexit Bill.  But treating foreigners as people rather than as bargaining chips in a negotiation isn’t the style of the UK Government, so they will be seeking to reverse it, as is their right - in constitutional terms, even if not in moral ones.

I found the remarks of the Tory MP for Monmouth in the report on the stern warning that he gave their lordships interesting in what it told us about his mindset (and presumably the mindset of many of his colleagues).  He told us, in effect, that he’d never previously given a moment’s thought to whether the House of Lords performs any useful function or whether it needs to exist at all. 

At one level, I’m not really surprised; the acceptance of ‘what is’ as the natural order of things is a central belief to those whom he describes as ‘true blue conservatives’.  But at another level, the lack of critical thinking and analysis of the way in which the UK is governed, and the blind adherence to the way we’ve always done it, goes to the heart of the problem in the way we are governed.  Are the honourable member for Monmouth and his colleagues about to stumble, by accident, on an important truth?  I suspect not; there will be a stamping of feet and some over-the-top rhetoric, and then things will return to normal, with their lordships told to stop trying to behave as though they’re a meaningful part of the legislative process.  And they'll dutifully obey, won't they?  They know their place.

Missing the detail

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One of the problems with opinion polls is that, although they usually provide a snapshot view of the way the public is thinking at a point in time, they frequently don’t have enough data to explain the results.  Yesterday’s BBC poll was a case in point.  Some of the findings are very interesting, but not immediately explicable from the information given.

What do we make of the finding, for instance, that significantly more people (44%) believe that Brexit will have a negative economic impact on Wales than believe (33%) that it will have a positive impact?  Despite that finding, the indications are that the majority still wants the government to press ahead with Brexit.  There are those who argue that voting habits are always driven by people’s view of their own best economic interests, but at first sight this finding seems to run counter to that interpretation.  One obvious possible interpretation is that some people believe that it’s a price worth paying for the other perceived advantages which flow from Brexit.  Alternatively, in the case of those opposing immigration, it might be that they believe that stopping the perceived dis-benefits to them of what they see as uncontrolled immigration may make up for the losses due directly to Brexit.

And, on the subject of immigration itself, how about the finding that 74% agree that only those EU citizens with the “right” skills or qualifications should be allowed entry?  My first thought was to wonder what they think the “right” qualifications are for fruit pickers, but then I suppose fruit-picking isn’t a core industry in Wales.  More generally, how do we fill those jobs which EU immigrants are currently filling where the “right” skills and qualifications are, effectively, no skills or qualifications?  Or does having no qualifications in such circumstances count as having the “right” ones for the specific jobs?  If it does, it makes the response meaningless.

I wonder, though, if part of the problem is that people have a perception about immigration which is significantly at odds with reality.  It would help to explain why some of the areas showing the greatest hostility to immigration are areas which have the lowest incidence of it.  It certainly appears that there are people who, based on what they’ve read and heard, are living in fear of the hordes of immigrants who they think are coming to steal their jobs, homes, school places, and hospital beds.  Yes, the whole idea is at odds with their own direct experience, and they usually don’t mean that they want to get rid of the immigrant family next door, or the doctor who looks after their children, or that nice young man in their son’s class at school, or the people who re-opened the corner shop after it closed, or…  It’s just the ‘other’ ones who are the problem.

The response of people when individual cases are highlighted is often warming; but the reaction to the identified specific seems to be at odds with the reaction to the unidentified general.  It would be interesting to explore this apparent dichotomy further; it might just be that a significant part of the antipathy towards immigrants owes more to a fear of the unknown than any antipathy to the real people involved.

Foot in mouth disease

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The British Labour Party seems to have scored two spectacular own goals in Scotland over the weekend, by despatching both its leader and the Mayor of London up to Perth to put the SNP in its place to address the Scottish branch conference.  As is often the case when British (or English – they’re much the same in this context) nationalists try to put down Scottish (or Welsh) independentistas, their remarks tell us more about them and their attitudes than about the subject matter of their words.

Corbyn merely managed to undermine completely his branch manager’s pitch for a rethink over the nature of the union between Scotland and England, and in the process probably destroy the only slim chance his party had of salvaging something in Scotland.  But that as almost as nothing compared to Khan’s success in equating Scottish nationalism with racism and hate, a comparison which all his subsequent ‘clarifications’ did nothing but confirm.  Between them, it was quite an achievement.

It isn’t only Saddiq Khan who sees Scottish nationalism as being about hatred and division, of course.  The idea that the whole idea is based first and foremost of a hatred of England and all things English is the standard assumption of most metropolitan commentators (and, when they can be bothered to think about Wales at all, they make the same lazy assumption).  I don’t think that it’s true (but then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?), and I don’t see any good evidential basis for it.  That’s not to deny that there are some people who do display such an irrational hatred; of course there are – just as there are some people in England who display a similar irrational hatred of the Scots and Welsh.  But extrapolating from a few examples to the axiomatic assertion that the SNP’s whole rationale is based on such hatred is equally irrational.

Some of the people making this assumption are far from stupid – so why do they do it?  Clearly one reason is the very cynical one that painting people as racists and haters is a lot easier than engaging in adult debate about options and alternative futures.  And there’s quite a lot of evidence that playing to prejudices works as a political strategy, more’s the pity.  But I think that there are other factors as well, and I’ll touch on two.

The first is that very English sense of superiority and exceptionalism.  When you “know”, with no scintilla of doubt, that the “British” way of doing things is the very best and most successful in the whole wide world, it can be very difficult to understand why anyone would ever want to do anything different.  Clearly, anyone who does cannot be motivated by logic or reason, and must therefore be driven by emotion.  And the only emotion that can cause anyone to reject the ultimate perfection of Britishness must be hatred.  From a certain perspective, that is blindingly obvious.

The second is that their own nationalism (you know, the one that they always deny possessing, even when Corbyn is making his appeals to British patriotism) is inherently driven by a sense of superiority and difference.  As often as not, they subconsciously define themselves by what they are not, rather than by what they are.  And if their own variety of nationalism is driven by such factors, it is entirely reasonable for them to assume that any nationalism in Scotland is driven by the same factors.

And once they “know” that Scottish nationalism is driven by hatred of the English and an innate feeling of Scottish superiority, it’s easy to explain why they talk as they do.  The result, of course, is that the scope for debate with people who already know that anything you say is so motivated is so limited as to be worthless.  The only thing left to do is to ignore them and get on with the task of building the case from within.  There is, though, one other thing that independentistas could usefully do – and that’s stop referring to these people as possible allies in some sort of ‘progressive alliance’.  All that does is hinder the exposure of their real beliefs.