Fairness and equality for Scotland? Only with independence
I’ve been asked a lot about what my position on independence is. It’s not an issue I find particularly easy. I grew up in Belfast where constitutional debate is a like a dead hand on politics. The five larger Northern Irish parties all contain almost the full ideological spectrum, and it’s still not clear to me how social policy is decided within or between them. All that matters is where someone stands on the border.
In December 2010 40,000 people in Northern Ireland were left without running water as a result of a complete failure to invest in pipe infrastructure. For days, even weeks it seemed that no-one in the Northern Ireland administration had any idea what to do. There was an election the following May in which I fully expected the governing parties to be defeated. They were returned with an increased majority. Their success was due to the strength of their position on the consitution. The fact that they couldn’t run the place was irrelevant.
It still amazes me that a government in a developed state can leave large swathes of the population without water over the festive period, and yet be re-elected merely months later with an increased majority
All five parties promise higher spending and lower taxes, Blairite modernisation of public services, with none of the associated loss of universality. Politics was an exercise in promising all things to all people and delivering little to anyone. Sometimes not even running water.
I dreaded the emergence of constitutional debate in Scotland. It seemed that everything would get lost in the politics of ‘where you stand on the border’. The real politics could and would have to be done under whatever constitutional settlement we ended up with. The important things were to make people’s lives better, to act as a good global citizen and to try to stop the advance of corporate power. Would that be easier in an independent Scotland? Maybe, maybe not. It was most important to focus on the things that mattered, and at that time I didn’t believe that was the constitution.
But I’ve changed my mind. And only partly because the constitutional debate in Scotland is a lot fresher and more interesting than it will ever be in the north of Ireland.
I’ve changed my mind because it is much clearer just how resistant to change the British state is. We have a state that has been totally captured by large corporate interests. It is corrupt to the core, with clear collusion between cabinet members and the owners of the media. There is a tiny plutocratic elite aggressively using our state to further their own interests.
The Westminster Government’s persistence with austerity, cuts and rolling back of the state demonstrates that this is ideological rather than pragmatic. These policies are harming the economy, but Cameron and Osborne persist with them because they suit the plutocrats for whom our state is run.
The House of Lords is desperately in need of reform. It is outdated, designed not by compromise but by centuries of compromise. It cannot fulfil its purpose. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat government decided to destroy the NHS, with no electoral mandate and despite explicit promises to the contrary. An effective upper chamber would have saved the NHS. The House of Lords failed. Yet the ferocious resistance to Lord’s Reform shows how important even the failed elements of the British state are to the governing elite.
The failure to secure a change to the Alternative Vote system speaks to just how those who benefit from the elite control of the British are totally committed to preventing any change. In short the London government has become a tool for the ultra-wealthy to plunder our common wealth, and it’s hard to see what we can do to stop that. If even a small change to the electoral system is unacceptable, how can we turn the British state around? How can we make the state serve the interests of those who aren’t already billionaires?
We have a government that suggests we cut £25bn from welfare and benefits. It wants to take the vote from unemployed people while cutting the taxes on rich people. It will veto a Robin Hood Tax that would stop financial speculation and raise billions in much needed revenue. It is doing these things not because they are right, but because they suit the rich.
I think the clear answer is that we can’t hope to win back the British state. Even a Labour administration is likely to be in the pockets of the same plutocratic elite that is currently doing so much damage. That’s why they won’t commit to reinstating the 50p tax rate on high earners. It’s why they want to keep student fees at £6000 a year. They’re as much a part of a problem as they are a part of the solution. What hope I had for change in the British state that was dashed with Blair’s failures on international policy, democratic reform and, to quote Peter Mandelson “being intensely relaxed about the filthy rich”. We need to leave reforming the British state to the English who control it.
So the only way we can hope to have a better country is to have our own country. A Scottish state would have none of the ‘important traditions’ of the British state like unfair voting systems, or an economy run in the interest of financiers in the City of London. And the dead hand in this context is not the constitutional debate, but the media-political-financial elite in London. Freed from these self-interested actors we can create the state that the many want. We can care for the vulnerable, we can decide how our economy works; we can be the good global citizen that the British state has so comprehensively failed to be.
While a similar elite exists and will develop in Scotland it has little of the resource or position enjoyed by its equivalent in London. And the stakes are much lower for it. A Scottish elite won’t be defending a bastion of wealthy power. The members of our Scottish elites are much more disparate than their London counterparts. Much of the wealth and influence of the Scottish elite is in London, isolated from Scotland, and therefore much less likely to be able to stop change. Independence will wrong-foot our elite and for a time we will have substantial opportunities to create a state that has equality and justice at its heart.
I’m not naive about how corporate elites will attempt to capture the Scottish state. I don’t believe that independence will make everything better. There will be a Scottish elite similar to the British elite. But there will be much less entrenched advantage for this elite. And independence will make it possible to make things better. We’ll have to fight to win our vision of a Scottish state. It is, though, a fight we can win.
Yes for independence,I have faith in my country,and trust in my country-men/women.I can see that some may seek out problems ,I would rather seek out solutions,and we have some great people here who look for solutions,and unfortunately we also have some “politicians” who seek to cause problems so that they can further their own ambition,these types are their own enemies.
The article clearly stated that an independent Scotland might be fixable, while ‘Britain’ is too far gone to fix. That seems a good enough reason to vote for independence. At least independence gives Scotland a chance to be better off. To make that chance a reality, more pressure will be needed. You didn’t think it would be easy, did you?
But you don’t explain why there’s a chance of reforming the Scottish state, as opposed to the British state.
You quote Iceland. Apart from having a very different cultural and political tradition (more different than Scotland and England, I suggest), it has a population the size of Wakefield.
I suggest that if European banks tried to load their debts onto Wakefield (directly rather than disguised via banks and the state), there may be a similar response to that of Iceland. And quite right too.
So this tiny population has taken a rather firmer position on debt, default and devaluation, than we have heard being advocated here. And surprise surprise, their economy is the better for it.
But that is not happening here.
Why do you think that reform of the state can happen when we have in power the kind of cringing, forelock-tugging nonentities that we presumably agree take up space in what should be a democratic assembly?
Can you show how a vote on independence will move us on? Because with all respect, I don’t think you have, so far.
Peter, thanks again. I think that the crucial point I’m trying to make here is that there is absolutely no chance of reforming the British state. There is a chance of reforming the Scottish state. While the sort of party of government you describe doesn’t exist, there’s every chance that it might.
In fact, I suspect the predatory behaviour of international capital that you describe upon independence is actually rather likely to produce that sort of response, as it has in Iceland.
It certainly seems more likely than any reform to the British state. Isn’t it worth a try? Are you really suggesting that we can take the British state?
(And on the PM point, I was mostly referring to the good people of England who voted for Cameron in no small part because he was presentable, unlike “that awful Gordon Brown”, but I take your point).
Well, the point of my comment was rather about corporate capture of the state, and how I see little relation between independence and a challenge to that corporate capture – as you initially seem to acknowledge, but later dispute.
I don’t see that you make a case that any likely Scottish government under independence would either wish, or be able to deliver, a government free enough of that corporate dominance to do things differently.
You fall back on what you think the Scottish people would vote for, versus what the south east of England would vote for. Yes, I’m sure there would not be a majority in Scotland for savage cuts to benefits and the NHS. (Nor would there be in large swathes of the south east, by the way, if they were ever invited to express a view). But on what basis can we credibly believe that there would be a government able and willing to create the resources to provide these things? Unless the government can fund these, then they won’t come about just because people would prefer them. It just means the failing government gets thrown out of office a little more quickly, and replaced by – well, what? Europe is playing this out in slow time.
Do you not think that independence would be immediately followed by either hostile acts, or at least a failure to co-operate, which will leave the Scottish state needing to take radical action to control its currency, impose capital restrictions and so on? And is there the faintest appetite to do this? I don’t detect it.
If there was a credible party of government in Scotland proposing policies to take control of the economy in times of hardship and under siege, stating how they would do so in practical terms, acknowledging the nature and extent of opposition they would face, and expressing commitment to fight it and explaining some of the tools they would use (capital controls, creation of a proper currency, nationalisation of natural resources) then independence might be an interesting possibility. As it is, it seems more like a discussion of another outfit for Mr Toad than a real political alternative.
Oh, and I know that your comment about public school-educated PMs was only a debating point, but it’s worth noting that two of the high points in (relatively) recent Scottish political history, Jimmy Reid and Red Clydeside, and the Poll Tax resistance, were against grammar school PMs, not the usual Eton lot. That was because the level of class war being waged was actually greater at those moments, than under some other PMs. Just saying.
Peter, thanks for your comments. As I say in the article, I’m not naive about the pressure on an independent Scotland.
I worry as you do about the prospect of an independent, but corporate run, Scotland. That’s not what I want and it’s part of why I wrote this article. We have to ensure that whatever happens we put the case for a a popular democracy not a state run for corporate interests. I’m no more enthusiastic about the prospect of tartan clad politicians running the country for big business than you are.
However I am much more concerned by the extent of corporate capture in the British state than you seem to be. I don’t honestly believe that there is no difference between the Scottish national polity and the British one.
I simply can’t see the Scottish people voting for brutal cuts to benefits with the enthusiasm that people in the south east did. There’s little enthusiasm for the retention of trident. I can’t see us being obliged to have a head of government that went to public school, I can’t see a Scottish government dismantling the NHS.
Yet all of these things happened in England. Surely victories on these things are worth something? And surely we are more likely to be able to make progress in a Scottish state than a British one.
Fundamentally I think the British state is lost. We have no way to get it back. It will be dominated totally by corporate interests until it collapses under the weight of its own grubbiness. And so I believe we are best trying to win the arguments in a Scottish state.
Well, Peter, some pretty big claims here, which perhaps need a bit more justification.
“A Scottish state would (not have) an economy run in the interest of financiers in the City of London. And the dead hand in this context is not the constitutional debate, but the media-political-financial elite in London. Freed from these self-interested actors we can create the state that the many want…
While a similar elite exists and will develop in Scotland it has little of the resource or position enjoyed by its equivalent in London. And the stakes are much lower for it. A Scottish elite won’t be defending a bastion of wealthy power. The members of our Scottish elites are much more disparate than their London counterparts. Much of the wealth and influence of the Scottish elite is in London, isolated from Scotland, and therefore much less likely to be able to stop change…
There will be a Scottish elite similar to the British elite. But there will be much less entrenched advantage for this elite.”
It reads as though the elites in question are principally national ones, as they might have been two hundred years ago. But in fact they are global elites, who don’t see themselves as “Scottish” or “English”. Independence won’t affect their interests and the source of their power – if you think it will, then how?
In what way would independence free us from, for example, the limitations imposed by the international financial system? Is there a serious prospect of any conceivable Scottish government taking back from banks the power of money creation, or making determined and credible attempts to control the movement of capital out of the country while it brings international capital under its influence? What would such a programme even look like, and who is proposing it? Yet that is what would be called for in order to achieve the claims made in the article.
What I see is the SNP toadying to corporate interests, and the Labour Party saying little in criticism of the current system and less about what they would do to change it. Neither wants to rock the boat. And yet without one or both of these parties saying, and believing, that radical change is needed, it won’t happen. We will have the same power relationships, with a pointless change in the veneer; the minister still tending to the interests of the financiers, but wearing a tartan tie while doing so.
That doesn’t represent progress, but it seems to be what’s on offer.
I think that it’s far from impossible that we could end up with an Irish situation (indeed I worry that that’s what the SNP have been angling for). But that’s a far easier problem to tackle than the one we’ve got, which is a state run not by the brothers in law of the powerful, but by the hyper-rich, who are able to afford satellite news channels and tabloid newspapers to justify what they’re doing.
I suppose what I am asking is this: is there a chance it will get worse rather than better? Will Scotland be more like Norway or more like Ireland?
I hope you are right Peter, but what about the problems of cronyism in a small country? I know this was a huge problem in the crash of the Rupublic of Ireland – property developers and politicians being each others brothers in law ….. Was that a peculiarly Irish problem or could that happen here? I know an independent Scotland will be what we make it, but will those of us who want the best for the whole population really be able to prevail over those who want to – and are in a position to – shore up their immediate friends and family’s interests over the greater good? What are the mechanisms that drive that?