You're wrong Yousuf

Feeling wilted? Try fiscal responsibility 

Many happy returns to Yousuf Hamid, 21 yesterday and already one of Scotland's blogging veterans. I have met Yousuf a few times and he was kind enough to invite me to speak at a debate he was organising in Strathclyde University. A very nice chap, full of enthusiasm for political and social change - wish more of his generation were so engaged in the democratic process. However  Yousuf's posting last week on the Campaign for Fiscal Responsibility was unfair and misleading. The arguments he makes - and shares with The Daily Telegraph - need to be countered.  

Yousuf doesn't express a view on the goals of the campaign, a pity given that he has just graduated with an 2:1 in Economics.  Instead, he attacks it, and, by implication the think tank Reform Scotland, which is behind it. Reform Scotland's board of political advisors includes Wendy Alexander, the former leader of Labour in Scotland.

Yousuf wrote: The main reason the SNP and business want fiscal autonomy is so that they can lower taxes for businesses and I don't think in a time of massive cuts that even more cuts should be introduced in order to fund a tax cuts for profitable businesses.

SNP supporting businessmen? Unfortunately for Yousuf's argument, the two main businessmen who have come out in support of the campaign worked closely with the last Labour/Liberal Democrat administration in Holyrood and with Gordon Brown in Westminster. Tom Hunter was a big supporter of Jack McConnell’s Schools of Ambition programme.  Jim McColl was invited by Gordon Brown to oversee Glasgow’s Welfare to Work programme. Both men are passionate about solving Scotland’s high number of NEETS (young people not in employment, education or training)  They have given their money and time because they want to put something back, not because they support a particular party.

If this logic were applied to Yousuf himself, he would stand accused of being in cahoots with the Daily Telegraph's Alan Cochrane and the CBI Scotland chief Iain McMillan, who have both attacked the CFFR.

The odd thing about Yousuf's argument is the idea that business growth is somehow incompatible with good public services. One begets the other. The model on which CFFR is based, drawn up by the economics professors Andrew Hughes Hallett and Drew Scott, is designed to expand the economy by tailoring the tax regime to meet Scotland's needs. If we can grow the economy, we will have more money for public services. The Hughes Hallet Scott solution includes borrowing powers for capital projects like Yousuf's beloved Glasgow Airport Rail Link. It has attracted wide support from the voluntary sector, worried about cuts to budgets if we are dependent on block grant. Campbell Christie, the highly respected former leader of the STUC, who is now involved in community regeneration, supports it for this reason.  So does Douglas Osler, the former HMI Scottish schools inspector and the CFFR's latest high profile signatory. 

There is no reason why members of the Labour Party cannot join this broad church. But Yousuf does not even feel he can express an opinion. He appears to be waiting for the official party line.

The CFFA is not some kind of nationalist front. It issued a press release this week insisting that fiscal responsibility would STRENGTHEN the union. I support the campaign because I think the opposite, ie full fiscal autonomy will show the Scottish people they live in a wealthy country, with no need of subsidy, that they are capable of standing on their own two feet. All those confidence-bashing arguments that Scotland is too uniquely poor/irresponsible/stupid to become independent will be dead. Some nationalists disagree. They believe that fiscal autonomy is a trap to kill independence. At least we can have an open and constructive debate about it. 

Back in the day, Labour also had healthy debates about the best way forward constitutionally.  Now they appear frightened by the whole business. Why are they so threatened by Scotland having economic powers? They would benefit whichever government is in power, not just the nationalists. Unless of course they expect the SNP to be in power forever....  

Yousuf also writes: “The consensus amongst the majority of the Scottish people is that a large state is needed to tackle our deprivation and social ills.”  That comment would be be fair enough if he was a member of The Scottish Socialist Party. But he is a member of a Labour Party that planned deep, budget-balancing cuts, albeit a year after Cameron and Clegg. He supports the leadership bid of David Miliband, a prominent member of the government whose laissez faire approach to the excesses of capitalism got us into this mess. 

To be fair on Yousuf, his rhetoric is similar to that of his new boss at the Scottish parliament, the Labour finance spokesman Andy Kerr. We are asked to suspend our disbelief - and our memory -  and pretend that Labour did not pander to The City, cripple us with expensive PFI deals, lock up the children of asylum seekers, go to war illegally in Iraq, ignore the real hardship caused by above-inflation council tax rises, and failed to tackle the activities of underworld figures who sometimes appear at official party functions in Scotland.  And let's not forget committing billions to upgrading weapons of mess destruction.  But perhaps I'm too cynical...

Let's forget all that and adopt Yousuf's view that Labour will Bash the Rich and use their dosh to link a railway to every airport in Scotland. This is all the more reason for Yousuf to support fiscal powers. The kind of society he says he wants will not be delivered through a block grant from London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Jo]

PS Apologies to Jim McColl for calling him Ian!

[Jo]

Wow @ a 21 year old dismissing the contributions of Tom Hunter and Ian McColl with the "whatever these businessmen might say." comment. You may be bright Yousuf but you should show respect where its due. Its basic manners.

They are at least free to comment openly about their views, unlike CBI (Scotland) which is simply a "Regional" Office of the CBI and must therefore toe the Union line.

[Jo]

Superb piece Joan!

[Oskar Matzerath]

It would be rather nice if someone - anyone - from the Labour Party in Scotland could elucidate an idea without running it past the party hierarchy first.

The dismal sectarian mindset of Labour's west of Scotland membership is abysmally familiar - My Sect Good, Your Sect Bad.

Yousuf, you seem bright - perhaps your unwillingness to engage original, rather than recycled thoughts is holding you back?

After thirteen years in Westminster and eight years in Holyrood, during which the gap between rich and poor widened, and almost a century in the City Chambers, during which Glasgow has fallen from being the 6th largest city in the World, not to mention one of the wealthiest, to being insignificant and stripped of any semblance of a business sector beyond banal service industries, is it too much to ask your party to ask 'Where have we gone wrong?'.

It is rather too late to 'have a debate' or 'research answers' - while this happens, Scotland continues to underperform. Incidentally, Scotland isn't just what the 'S' in 'SNP' stands for. It stands for millions of people who have been constantly been abused by the Westminster system, whose children are the likeliest in Europe to grow up in poverty, are most likely to die violently, are most likely to self-medicate through a variety of narcotics, be that heroin, crack, alcohol or even junk food.

After decades of economic lagging, answer me this - without the levers of full fiscal autonomy, when do you expect Scotland to outperform anyone economically? You will not answer this, for you cannot.

The Labour party was initially founded to enrich people's lives with opportunity, equality and education. Nowadays it exists as a purely self-serving entity, where winning an election is the end product, rather than the starting point. The poor are thought of as little more than vote fodder while beds are feathered.

Here's a prediction - you will, upon graduation, work for an NGO or a Labour-linked organisation or representative. In eight or nine years' time you will lose your first election, while continuing to work as a policy twonk/spin doctor/busy little third sector bee, then at the second attempt you'll be elected, then you'll stop trying, because you will have succeeded.

It is a crushingly banal path, a disgraceful waste of potential and a grotesque disservice to the people you will purport to represent.

However, if you want to achieve something, just take some time out, find out who you are, and think clearly. Do you want to serve a party or a people? If it's the former, then you're already on the right path.

[TartanSeer]

Yousuf, Labour had years to deliver fiscal autonomy but had no intention of touching anything that smacked of 'autonomy'. Hence the stillborn Calman proposals.

As far as cuts are concerned, I didn't hear a cheep from you when it was the Labour party both slashing the Scot Gov's budget & promising to make cuts that were 'deeper and tougher' than Margaret Thatcher's attack on Scotland.

I suspect that if Labour had won the election & Darling had got his way you would be busy defending Labour cuts under the banner 'There Is No Alternative'.

[Yousuf]

Thanks for the birthday wishes at least!

Putting to one side the point about waiting for a party line (how arguing that lowering business taxes is not the best way to boost growth a day after Iain Gray argued that the SNP haven't done enough on business relief if waiting for a party line is beyond me) the case is not against fiscal autonomy (which I've always supported) but the type of fiscal autonomy.

My argument is also not that private sector growth is a bad thing but that the best way for Government to do that is to spend on education, trade links and infrastructure rather than just cutting taxes.

There is a clear economic case that for a mature, developed economy lowering corporation tax is not the best way to create jobs and this is my problem - particularly at this time of tight budgets.

There are a lot of reasons why companies invest in a country but there is evidence that the level of tax is nowhere near important as company bosses often claim.

Bluntly, I think the more important case for fiscal autonomy is if we can raise taxes and borrowing to stop cuts coming Scotland’s way rather than how can exacerbate the spending cuts by offering tax giveaways - whatever these businessmen might say.

Glad to have fulfilled one birthday wish to have featured on a Go Lassie Go blog though!

[Wardog]

A devastating & timely critique Joan.