Day trips to Scotland

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The PM took himself off to Scotland yesterday, for a series of carefully staged photo opportunities visits to see what’s happening on the ground in England’s northern possession. Part of his objective was to highlight all the wonderful things that ‘the union’ does for Scotland. As most expected, what shone through was that special sense of English exceptionalism and superiority which comes so naturally to people like him that they don’t even realise that they’re doing it. The words might have said ‘look what we’re doing together’, but it came across as ‘look what we are doing for you’.

One of the reasons for this dissonance is that he and his ilk start from an assumption that anything and everything done by the UK government is automatically a ‘benefit of the union’, because it is done by the government in London rather than by the government in Scotland. The fact that some things can only be done by Westminster as a result of a constitutional settlement which reserves the relevant powers to London seems to escape them. Looked at objectively, something is a ‘benefit of the union’ if, and only if, it is something which an independent Scotland could not do itself. That presents a real problem to unionists because there is, literally, nothing that an independent Scotland might wish to do that fits in that category.

Apparently, “[Tory] Insiders talk about a focus on showing the tangible benefits of the Union”, but all the ‘tangible benefits’ that they come up with are things which the Westminster parliament has simply reserved to itself in the first place. They refer to the way in which UK armed forces have been used in Scotland to help with the vaccination rollout, as though those armed forces are nothing to do with Scotland and as though an independent Scotland wouldn’t be able to call on its own armed forces. They talk about the money ‘given’ to the Scottish government to help in the Covid response, as though an independent Scotland would, uniquely amongst independent states, have no money of its own, and as if Scotland owns no part of the UK’s money. The one tangible benefit which a union could deliver is a pooling and sharing of resources between its constituent parts (whether nations such as Wales and Scotland or regions of England) on the basis of need, but that’s the one thing that unionists (whether Tory or Labour) have consistently failed to do. ‘Levelling up’ is just a slogan; it’s not a policy, let alone a plan.

Yesterday, former First Minister, Carwyn Jones, referring to Boris Johnson’s Scottish day trip, said, “…I’m sure this visit will be a success. Just not for him”.  The good news for independentistas in general is that the inability of the Tory English nationalists and Labour Anglo-British nationalists to understand how their own Westminster-centric mindset works against them, let alone change it, means that their efforts to win over the Scots will indeed bring about a great success. Just not for them.

Read his words carefully - they may accidentally reveal the truth

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As part of his very unapologetic use of the word ‘sorry’ earlier this week, after the UK hit a ‘world-beating’ death toll in the pandemic, Boris Johnson said, “We did everything we could have done and we will carry on doing everything we can”. There are plenty of people who have helpfully provided lists of all the things which could have been done differently, and there is absolutely no doubt that, under more competent leadership, the UK’s death toll due to the pandemic could have been considerably lower than it is.

That doesn’t make Johnson’s statement untrue, though – merely incomplete. There are two meanings to the words ‘can’ and ‘could’ in this context: one is about that which is possible and the other relates to the capability of the doer. Note that he didn’t claim that they did everything that could have been done, merely everything that they could have done. Superficially, the two things sound similar, but the meaning is completely different. If we add the implicit words: “… within the limits of our ability, imagination, and ideology” to his statement, we get a much clearer statement of the problem. It is not that there were other things which could have been done, but that the current government was utterly incapable of doing them. And the worst of it is that those three constraints – lack of ability, lack of imagination, and ideology – aren’t going away anytime soon.

Flightless pigs

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the report on ‘radical federalism’ from a fringe group of Labour Party members. It appeared to me then (and re-reading the report hasn’t changed that view) that the proposal had more to do with finding a way of preserving the union than with addressing the needs of the people of Wales, not least because its assumptions about which powers ‘cannot’ be exercised at a Welsh level were axiomatic – pulled out of thin air with no attempt at explanation or justification.

This week, Nation.Cymru published an article by one of the report’s sponsors, Mick Antoniw MS, which ‘clarified’ his own view on the matter – and which seemed to move considerably further towards a position of acknowledging that ‘independence’ is an option. OK, he’s a member of the Labour Party, and had to get in the statutory dismissive jibe about independence being “a separatist model”. He does make some valid points, though – not least when he says that “…our understanding of independence must be more expansive and inclusive and go beyond mere structural concepts”. It has been a regular theme of this blog that the word ‘independence’ can mean different things in different contexts: for most independentistas, there is nothing at all contradictory about an ‘independent’ country deciding to share sovereignty with other countries on a voluntary basis which recognises the rights of each country. So, when he writes that, “Radical federalism and independence are not mutually exclusive concepts. What radical federalism proposes is an option which guarantees Welsh sovereignty but recognises that in the modern world in which we must share sovereignty where there is common benefit and mutual interest.” (sic), I find it hard to disagree. The devil, though, is in the detail.

Needing to share sovereignty doesn’t predetermine with whom we might decide to share it, yet the assumption that it means ‘with those other nations of these islands which happen to be part of the current UK’ seems to be taken as read. And defining “common benefit and mutual interest” is not at all the same thing as deciding from the outset – as the original paper seemed to do – that certain matters are automatically reserved to Westminster. Nor is it the same thing as saying that even on matters which allegedly lie wholly in the remit of the Senedd, Westminster would set the standards under which the Senedd must operate. Whist federalism and independence may indeed not necessarily be mutually exclusive, such a proposal is neither federalism nor independence. It is simply another form of devolution, where real power remains at the centre, rather than with the people of Wales. And it fails the test which Antoniw himself sets, i.e., “…guarantees Welsh sovereignty”. It does no such thing.

The big unanswered question to which the federalists are unable or unwilling to offer any sort of answer is how any federation can work when one part of it accounts for 85% of the population and votes. I cannot disagree with Antoniw’s statement that “The choices for England are for England and cannot be allowed to determine the choices we must consider in Wales.” However, the viability of any federation which includes both Wales and England depends completely on how – or, rather, on whether – that imbalance can be managed. I’d have a lot more time for the federalists if they came up with some workable and practical solutions which would be acceptable to any of the political parties which has any chance of governing England. Unless and until they can do that, federalism will remain a wingless beast of the porcine species.

Too little, too late

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If the Tories really, desperately wanted to encourage the Scots to vote for independence, the best thing that they could do would be to raise Thatcher from the dead and send her on a tour of Scotland to extol the advantages of London rule. They’ve reluctantly had to accept the impossibility of that, so they’ve opted for the second-best approach – Boris Johnson is going on a fleeting visit this week instead. Apparently, he’s set to deliver an ‘impassioned plea’ to the Scots to reject something which he refers to as ‘narrow nationalism’ in the hope that they’ll enthusiastically embrace his peculiar brand of English nationalism instead. Leaving aside the tiny little problemette that Johnson has never been known to do passion – lies, bluster and poor jokes with an occasional Latin or Greek allusion may appear to be the same thing, but only in his eyes – it demonstrates a massive failure to understand how much things have changed in Scotland, and how irrelevant his London-centric views have become. And talking (as he apparently intends to do) about how the union can be reformed so that it works better, in the immediate aftermath of passing legislation to undermine the existing settlement and claw back powers, looks like an attempt to pretend that the last two decades never happened.

It isn’t just the Tories suffering this strange failure to comprehend recent history – Labour have their own problems as well. Unlike Thatcher, they didn’t even need to try and disinter their former leader: Gordon Brown still lives. And he’s made another of his increasingly frequent ‘interventions’ in politics, warning that the UK faces a choice between reform and failure. One of the great mysteries of politics in the twenty-first century is why so many Westminster politicians, to say nothing of the London commentariat, believe that Brown has huge influence in Scotland and that the Scots are hanging on his every word, despite the lack of any evidence (or indeed the presence of masses of evidence to the contrary). Maybe it’s because he at least sounds Scottish, something which the Tories’ tame Scots, such as Gove, singularly fail to achieve. Still, if Johnson can do his best to destroy what remains of the Conservative Party in Scotland, it’s only fair to allow Brown the opportunity to do the same for Labour.

There is another potential point of commonality between Johnson and Brown. Brown is calling for fundamental constitutional changes led by a “commission on democracy” that would “review the way the whole United Kingdom is governed”, whilst Johnson is apparently toying with a similar idea – as Martin Kettle of the Guardian puts it: “One minister tells me the plan is for Johnson to announce that he considers the UK’s existing constitutional architecture is not working. Whether these issues are to be remitted to a constitutional commission of some kind … will soon be made clear”. There have been similar calls here in Wales – just a few days ago, Senedd member Mick Antoniw repeated his call for some sort of “Welsh constitutional convention”. There’s nothing wrong with a constitutional convention per se, but there are three big caveats.

The first is about timing and how long it will take. Waiting until the end (of the union) is literally nigh and then demanding a process likely to take some years to come to fruition looks like exactly what it is – an attempt to kick the can down the road. Delaying the inevitable for as long as possible in the hope that something will turn up, or that the Scots in particular will decide that they can’t be bothered any more simply isn’t a viable strategy – it’s about denying their democratic rights, not honouring them.

The second is that none of those individuals or parties have a clue what to do about the huge and inevitable built-in imbalance which England, with 85% of the population, will represent in any conceivable alternative structure. Setting up conventions in the vague hope that either someone will come up with a solution or else that everyone else will come to a consensus view that they have to lump it is a substitute for addressing the issue. And an extremely poor substitute at that. Political parties could and should, instead, just put forward their own ideas – the problem is that they don’t have any.

The third, and most important of all, is about the terms of reference and who sets them. Terms of reference which start from the premise that the UK can and should be reformed (which seems to be what is being proposed) are terms of reference which set out, from the outset, to close off rather than openly discuss all possible options.

Still, the good news in all this is that it doesn’t matter. By the time Johnson has finished selling the advantages of the union to the Scots, everything else will be just a question of the belated locking of doors on equine residences.

Government rocked by new scandal

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It was revealed over the weekend that, in a break from normal practice for the current government, officials in the Department for International Trade had been caught out giving honest and accurate advice to businesses hit by the new rules on trade following Brexit. It seems that firms reeling under the impact of additional customs and border control red tape which asked the Department for assistance to get round the rules were told that there was no way of doing so, that the rules aren’t going to be changed any time soon, and the best thing for those businesses to do was to close the relevant parts of their businesses in the UK and set up new operations inside the EU.

The affair raises serious questions over the future of International Trade Secretary, Liz Truss. Whilst incompetence is regarded as standard operating practice, and the ability of ministers to lie repeatedly direct to camera is highly valued by the PM, there is considerable doubt as to how long he will tolerate any minister who is found to be in charge of a department giving out honest information. Some are even wondering whether the government itself can survive a bout of honesty without imploding. However, those expecting swift action to deal with this breach of protocol are likely to be disappointed. There are currently no signs that the PM is going to break his long-standing habit of prevarication just because one minister has been caught out defying his expectations.

Dogma kills

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Despite various suggestions floated or leaked to the media, the UK Government is strongly resisting any further tightening of restrictions in order to fight the pandemic, clinging instead to the early signs of a slight reduction in infections and the hope that vaccinations will start to make a difference before too long. Instead, they say, they are concentrating on ‘enforcing’ the existing set of restrictions. The problem is that they seem to have a very narrow view of what ‘enforcement’ means.

There is no doubt that failure to comply with the rules which have been set is a major problem in fighting the virus; non-compliance gives the virus the opportunity to infect and ultimately kill more people. There is also no doubt that the more flagrant breaches of the rules which get reported – house parties and the like – annoy many of those who are doing their best to follow the rules. But an approach to ‘enforcement’ which concentrates on identifying and punishing those who engage in such activities largely misses the point. Punishment as a deterrent is an article of faith to Tories, despite limited evidence that it works. It depends on an assumption that people carefully weigh up both the chances of getting caught and the likely penalty before engaging in the activity, an assumption which is highly dubious. More importantly in this context, punishing people after the event doesn’t prevent the potential damage done by the events, which is what the real objective should be. Worse still, those flagrant breaches which they are targeting are not the biggest problem.

We have known for months that most of those who should be self-isolating are not fully doing so, and there is recent evidence that some people with symptoms are not even getting tests for fear that they will be positive and thus lead to a requirement to self-isolate. This means that there are thousands of individuals quietly wandering around spreading the virus in ways which are much less obvious – and more harmful – than the tiny minority who organise house parties. They’re also harder to identify, and a policy based on fining transgressors will not improve compliance amongst this group. The reasons for their non-compliance have also been well-known for many months. People who don’t qualify for the various government schemes, people who could lose income, or even their jobs, by not working – these are the ones probably doing most to spread the virus. Identifying and fining people who are already on the financial margins just makes things worse, in terms of both the financial impact on the individuals who are caught and encouraging others to do more to conceal their infection. It doesn’t have to be this way; the government could, right from the outset, have done more to help people to self-isolate by providing a proper support package. It’s not too late, even now, to put policies in place to make self-isolation easier, but another article of faith for Tories is that governments should avoid giving poor people money. It’s a rule which doesn’t apply to their millionaire backers and supporters of course, but it most definitely does apply to the most financially vulnerable.

Articles of faith, or dogma as they are otherwise known, are the last thing we need in current circumstances, but are the first tools out of the box for the current UK government. The current appalling death toll was neither inevitable nor accidental; it’s a direct result of Tory dogma.

Independence is about joining the world, not returning to the 19th Century

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The ‘modern’ diplomatic system dates back to the fourteenth century, when the term ambassador first started to be used. Rights, obligations, responsibilities – to say nothing of quaint but arcane processes such as presenting one’s credentials to the Court of St James – have accumulated over the centuries. Amongst those is the concept of diplomatic immunity, one of those things that makes eminent sense in theory (providing safe passage for accredited representatives and guaranteeing that they won’t be persecuted by the host nation), but has been extended in practice to prevent prosecution of even the most heinous of crimes. There is no obvious reason why the range of those covered should be extended as far as it has been, nor why diplomats should be exempt from following the laws of the country in which they serve, both issues raised by the recent case of Anne Sacoolas.

But, for all its imperfections, the system of ambassadors works reasonably effectively most of the time. It allows and facilitates communications (including the confidential variety) between governments, encourages trade, provides representation and support to citizens, and generally ‘oils the wheels’. Given the UK Government’s repeated statements that it wants to have the warmest possible relationship with the EU after Brexit, the decision not to recognise the EU’s representative as an ambassador with all that that implies appears at first sight to be perverse. I can’t imagine the EU’s ambassador to the UK being particularly put out at not having to get dressed up to travel to St James Palace to formally present his credentials to the monarch, and I hope that he and his team would not be exceptionally upset at not having the right to ignore and breach UK law at will. But when 142 other countries across the world have decided to give the EU’s representatives the same ambassadorial status as any ‘nation-state’, it would be understandable if the EU were to be a little miffed at the only state – and its nearest neighbour to boot – which refuses to do likewise. And if we ask ourselves ‘who loses as a result?’, the obvious answer is that the UK is set to lose more than the EU from what most will see as a rather petty decision.

That is, though, to ignore the Brexit mind-set, to say nothing of English exceptionalism. Brexiteers have argued throughout that the EU should not become, and therefore should not be treated as, a state. They tried (and failed) to negotiate directly with the bigger member states, particularly France and Germany. From their perspective, it is the member states which have legitimacy, not the EU as a bloc. Brexit could only ever be the beginning – being on the doorstep of a bloc like the EU without being part of it makes sense only if it’s a prelude to cracking that bloc apart. Part of that is conducting diplomacy directly with the member states, not with the EU. Post-truth politics demands that the EU not exist if we treat it as though it isn’t there. Brexit has always been a long-term project, just ask Rees-Mogg, and Brexiteers have always been clear in their own minds (although not so much in their public statements) that there would be economic losses for most of us in the short term – just the first half century or so. And we can always eat sovereignty in the meantime.

The underlying principle by which the English nationalist government works is that there is one, and only one, legitimate source of power in the world, and that is the nation-state. By that they mean not that the state is defined by the nation (which is perhaps the traditional definition), but that the nation is defined by the state. Treating the EU as some sort of lesser body with no real legitimacy is the same way that they regard the governments of Scotland and Wales, as we’ve seen in their actions to date. Over-ruling and ignoring Wales and Scotland isn’t oversight or carelessness, it’s the direct result of a world view in which only Westminster has legitimacy. They are simply applying the same rule both internally and externally. The choice we face in Wales is between joining their project, accepting their nineteenth century definitions of nation, state, and legitimacy, or joining the rest of the world in adopting twenty-first century definitions. Independence isn’t about opting out of an outdated English exceptionalist view of the world so much as opting into a modern internationalist world. The choice is ours – unless we allow it to become theirs by default.

Blackmailing Labour would be counter-productive

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Before the last Senedd election, Plaid Cymru announced with great fanfare that they would hold a referendum on independence in their second term of office as the government of Wales. It was always an odd statement to come from a party which claimed to be committed to obtaining independence for Wales. The stated rationale was that that was what had happened in Scotland, but the comparison was a specious one. The only reason that the SNP didn’t call for a referendum in their first term of government was that they were a minority government; there was simply no majority in the Scottish Parliament for holding one. The determinant of whether a referendum on independence should be held is not how many times a majority has been elected on such a platform but the simple fact that such a majority exists. Plaid’s position looked more like an attempt to woo voters opposed to independence by promising not to do anything about it for the five years of a Senedd term than a means of advancing the cause. The announcement last month that Plaid would call such a referendum if it won a majority in the Senedd in the forthcoming election was a welcome correction to a strange stance.

However, the suggestion this week that Plaid would make the holding of a referendum part of any coalition discussions with Labour would be a step too soon and too far. I agree with Mark Drakeford that the route to holding a referendum is to secure a majority of members of the Senedd pledged to holding such a vote. Trying to blackmail those elected on a platform of opposing a referendum into supporting one in order to be able to form a government isn’t at all the same thing.  Drakeford’s agreement that if a majority of members of the Senedd are elected on a platform of holding a referendum then a referendum should be held strikes me as entirely reasonable.

It sometimes seems as though the aim of holding a referendum on independence is in danger of eclipsing the underlying aim of gaining that independence. I entirely accept that, whilst a referendum isn’t the only possible or legal route to independence, in the particular circumstances of Wales in the twenty-first century a legally recognised referendum is the best way of ensuring both a smooth transition and rapid international recognition for the new state. But such a referendum will work best if it is a means of expressing and legitimating an opinion already widely-held – the job of winning it has to be done before calling it, not after announcing the timetable. Holding a referendum under a coalition government, the larger party in which only allows it to be held in order to retain power and then proceeds to campaign for a ‘no’ vote, looks more like a way of setting the cause back than advancing it. If parties supporting the calling of a referendum cannot even win a majority of seats in the Senedd, then it is highly improbable that a year or so later they will find a majority of the whole electorate for the substance of independence.

I can see why Plaid would want to mobilise all supporters of independence behind one party. After all, polls suggest that a majority of Labour supporters are at least open to the idea, and there’s no doubt that the idea is gaining ground. To succeed in that objective, though, requires that all of those who support independence will see that as their main priority and the key issue in the Senedd election, and will therefore vote with that aim uppermost in their minds. ‘Optimistic’ is one possible word to apply to that (I can think of others); there’s a lot of groundwork to be done first. To date, independentistas haven’t even succeeded in normalising debate on the subject, although Yes.Cymru have done a good job of laying the groundwork. There are, though, no short cuts: winning hearts and minds comes first.

An ill wind

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The problems which Brexit has brought to Welsh ports are extremely serious, particularly for those whose jobs and livelihoods are threatened. And there is no doubt that the reduction in trade is likely to be long-term rather than ‘teething problems’ given the way in which hauliers are bypassing the UK and using more direct ferry services between Ireland and the European mainland. That will unquestionably damage GDP and prosperity in Wales. But having said that, I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t an environmental benefit being delivered by avoiding trucking goods offloaded from a ship on one side of the UK all the way across to the other side where they’re put back onto another ship (or train) to cross the water to the mainland.

If we started with a clean sheet of paper, would we really design systems the way that they were working prior to Brexit? I’ve often asked myself why (in the case of goods which are simply transiting across the UK) we don’t simply put them on a train at one port and then take them off at the other port – or even in Calais, after going through the tunnel. It would require investment in rail infrastructure, of course (although it might avoid, or at least delay, some investment in the road infrastructure by reducing the volume of heavy freight traffic) but would probably provide a faster overall transit at lower environmental cost than a stream of lorries. Avoiding the UK ‘land bridge’ by using longer distance ferries probably achieves similar environmental benefits, at the cost of a longer transit time.

Seeing benefits in Brexit isn’t something that comes entirely naturally to me, to say the least, but could the reduction in the number of lorries travelling across the UK from one port to another be a benefit? It’s clearly not an intentional benefit – the UK government seems genuinely surprised at the consequences of the deal it signed in such a rush. The problem is that, precisely because it is an entirely unintended and unforeseen (by the UK Government at least – clearly the Irish government and the ferry companies saw this one coming a long time ago) consequence, the government has not planned for it, or given any thought to the impact on jobs, livelihoods and communities. Rather than calling for changes to the deal so that we can go back to the way things were, might it not be better to start, even now at this late stage, thinking about how we respond to that impact, rather than act as though it is only going to be for a few weeks?

If I give you the vaccine, I won't have any left for someone else...

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Some years ago, I worked in an office where the stationery was zealously guarded by the department’s administrator. Basically, the staff weren’t trusted to take only what they needed to do their job, and had to ask every time they needed a new pencil or biro, presenting the shortened or ink-depleted old one as evidence. On one occasion, I needed a floppy disk (yes, it really was that long ago!), and took myself off to the administrator’s desk, strategically placed in front of the locked stationery cupboard. “I’ve only got one left,” she told me. “That’s alright,” I replied, “I only need one.” “But if I give you this one, I won’t have any left if someone else wants one,” came the response, and no amount of pleading, let alone logic, would get the cupboard unlocked and the disk released into my custody.

What brought the incident to mind was yesterday’s astonishing statement from the First Minister that, because the supply of Covid-19 vaccines which has been issued to Wales has to last until the beginning of February, the government is eking it out to use it at a consistent rate over that period rather than using it all up as soon as it is available in order to vaccinate people more quickly. His argument for this is that, if we use it all at once, members of the vaccination team will then be sitting around idle until more supplies arrive. It’s not much of an argument; if the capacity to use it all in a shorter period exists, then the implication is that that capacity will be underused over the whole of the period rather than completely unused for part of it. To use the timescales quoted by the First Minister: in broad terms, the amount of resource needed to deliver the vaccines is roughly the same whether they’re done in a week or in six weeks – either way, a substantial portion of the capacity goes unused. It’s just that non-activity for five weeks is more obvious than under-activity for six.

Either way, it implies that the Welsh Government has put more capacity in place than it currently needs to deliver the vaccines available to it. Given the urgency of the programme, and the uncertainty of supplies, that’s not something for which it would be fair to criticise Drakeford. Much better to have excess capacity sitting around waiting for the supplies than to be under capacity when the supplies arrive, particularly if it is hoped and anticipated that in the fairly near future the rate of supply will increase dramatically. On the whole, Drakeford has come out of the pandemic looking more competent and compassionate than his English counterparts, even if the results haven’t always been as significantly different as we might hope; but his performance has not been perfect. Unless he has a better or more complete excuse than he’s offered in this case, he looks to have called this one wrong.

It would also be interesting to know whether the other parts of the UK have been following a similar approach. Just because the question seems only to have been asked (and therefore answered) in Wales, it doesn’t mean that a similar question elsewhere wouldn’t prompt a similar response (although in England, asking a question wouldn't necessarily lead to a response at all).