Breaking up isn’t hard to do

October 25, 2011 by · 8 Comments
Filed under: Politics, Public policy 

I am greatly relieved that Philip Stephens wrote this piece in the FT today. The last time I commented on political affairs north of the border I faced a mini barrage of criticism, so I had been holding back on my dismay about the apparently unstoppable tide of Scottish independence. Philip’s excellent column gives me some cover.

Let me first say that whether or not Scotland leaves the UK is ultimately a matter for Scots. I respect the intentions and motivations of those who want independence, among whom I am sure there are many Scottish RSA Fellows. But as someone who would be deeply sorry if Scotland became a separate nation, I also agree with Stephens that the argument is currently being lost almost by accident.

It is difficult to know who to blame more. In defiance of the theory of loss aversion, the Conservative (and Unionist) Party is apparently substantially more motivated by repatriating some regulatory powers from Brussels than by saving the UK. Anyway the Party has almost zero credibility in Scotland. The UK Labour Party simply doesn’t care. If that seems like a bald statement, you must judge people by what they do not what they say and what almost every ambitious Scottish Labour politician over the last twenty years had done is the same – they have moved to London. And the Lib Dems are tainted in Scottish eyes both by their collaboration with previous Labour administrations in Scotland and now by being a part of the Westminster Coalition.

With the SNP and their strategically brilliant leader Alex Salmond in almost hegemonic political control and now awash with money, independence (or independence-lite which is probably a more accurate description of what the nationalists call devolution-max) seems inevitable when the referendum comes. You would have thought there would be signs of a ‘no’ campaign mustering but my Scottish friends tell me there are none. Beyond apathy and tribalism there are two deeper reasons why such a campaign may be difficult to develop.

The first is that in stark contrast to the inclusiveness of the rainbow coalition which comprised the Scottish Constitutional Convention (a body key to winning the case for devolution in the nineties) Tories, Labourites, and Lib Dems in Scotland must feel that if they joined forces they would only manage the not inconsiderable feat of looking even more unattractive than they already do.    

The second problem is what on earth would be the top line argument of the campaign to keep the union in its present form? Virtually no one in Scotland wants to wear the mantle of unionism but to say instead that you are a bit of a unionist is like hoping people will warm to someone who admits to  being only an occasional wife beater. The other tactic, which is to scare people about loss of public service entitlements or jobs, may be ever so slightly less powerful when the economy is tanking and the UK Government is perceived to be imposing the deepest cuts in three generations.

This will probably only reveal my gross naivety, but if I were crafting a campaign I would make it about choice. At the moment Scots can choose to be Scottish in most things, British in some things and European in a few. As anyone who has been to Scotland recently knows, the idea that the current constitutional settlement denies Scots a distinct identity or different policies is laughable. So my campaign would say ‘don’t let the nationalists tell you – you choose who you want to be’.

If I was running a subtheme it might be to ask what the effect on the Scottish coffers would be if tax powers are devolved and the many tens of thousands of middle class Scots who currently work in England during the week paid their taxes to a separate Whitehall Treasury (I really have no idea how much money this is but it would be interesting to know).

Anyway, I won’t be part of any campaign; my support would be bound to make it even more unpopular. But when the referendum happens and the Scots exercise their legitimate right to choose, I will be hoping against hope that a country I love and about which I feel genuine British pride (it was after all the cradle of the enlightenment) doesn’t become a foreign land.

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The centre cannot hold

March 25, 2008 by · 6 Comments
Filed under: Public policy, The RSA 

I know, I know, everyone tells me to write shorter blogs…maybe next time

Looking forward to Jack Straw’s speech here tomorrow. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (as is his title) will be officially launching our Prison Learning Network. I understand that Jack plans to say some very interesting things about how to embed the criminal justice system more concretely in local communities.

I’m sure there will be a couple of new announcements in Jack’s speech. These will add to the seemingly unstoppable tide of policy ideas, proposals and commitments emerging every day from Government. Although I find myself agreeing with a lot of what I hear, I can’t help wondering about the sheer scale of the Government’s objectives.

The scope of central Government is subject to continuous and sometimes substantial change. In the 1980s the privatisation of utilities meant Government went from running industries to providing a framework of regulation. More recently, Labour’s alleged ‘control freak’ tendencies have been somewhat belied by two massive transfers of power away from Whitehall: the independence of the Bank of England and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But the extra items coming onto the Cabinet agenda dwarf even these shifts away from the centre. As well as all the responsibilities Labour inherited in 1997 has been added the whole slew of law and order, security and identity management issues, responding to climate change, and a growing set of complex ‘behaviour change’ challenges like obesity, poor parenting and binge drinking. Gordon Brown is also seen to be prioritising international development and national values and identity. Yesterday it was briefed that the Government plans major reforms on Party funding, the House of Lords, a Bill of Rights and the voting system.

I am all for constitutional modernisation and – recalling how difficult it was to get senior Cabinet ministers to sign up to this kind of thing when I worked for Tony Blair – I envy the political authority Number Ten has to drive radical change. The question is whether any corporate centre, even one as full of clever people as Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, can manage this scale of external challenge and internally generated initiatives.

There are libraries of research and recommendation about modernising public services and the civil service but in a brief internet search ahead of writing this piece I couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to the sheer scale of central Government’s task. Among some of the more thoughtful newspaper columnists there is a growing critique of Labour’s competence in governing, but while some ministers may be overactive, terrorism, climate change and binge drinking weren’t problems made up by Whitehall.

The obvious strategy to deal with central overload is devolution, and as I have said before, the Government really does seem to be trying to hand more power to local authorities. But is this enough, especially when central Government will still be held accountable for overall public service performance and if things go badly wrong? I have spoken about the need to move from a ‘government centric’ to a ’citizen centric’ way of thinking about social change but can Government itself facilitate this?

This is a very broad brush attempt to open a debate. Another way of kick starting it is a proposal of my own. How about Government transferring responsibility for major areas of constitutional and democratic reform (like voting system, Lords and party funding) to Parliament? Parties would still have their own policies to which they would be accountable at election time, but the task of policy development, consensus building, as well as the detailed drafting of legislation would move from Downing Street, the Cabinet and Whitehall to MPs backed by a beefed up Parliamentary secretariat. This would arguably be in line with Gordon Brown’s commitment to enhance the status and powers of Parliament. It would certainly take some tricky items off the Cabinet table.

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