Go Lassie Go

So do the Lib Cons have a mandate in Scotland?

 

Alastair Allan MSP on Newsnicht refused to budge on the assertion that the coalition has no legitimacy here, and the Lib Dems are just propping up a Tory government with one seat, which was opposed by 85% of Scots who voted. But the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives last week scrapped slightly more than the SNPs share of the Scottish vote in the 2007 election. So is AA trying to defend the indefensible?

There is a key difference - and not just the one advanced by Allan, that the SNP actually won, whereas in Scotland this is a government of losers.  The SNP tried and failed to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2007  - the latter now find the Conservatives more acceptable bed fellows. Only after being rebuked by the Lib Dems did Salmond chose to govern as a minority, accepting that he would need to bring others on board policy by policy. The nationalist Holyrood government does not dictate to Scotland - the arithmetic doesn't allow it.

The Con Lib Alliance does. They will decide what's good for us then force it through parliament with English MPs. There was lots of talk tonight that the Lib Dems had a mandate due to their healthy number of Scottish MPs. But perhaps a better way of judging their "right to rule" would be to consider the parts of their manifesto relating to Scotland. How much of these made it into the partnership deal announced today? 

Trident - of particular interest to Scotland since these weapons of mass destruction are currently squatting on the Clyde. Total Lib Dem cave in- they misleadingly gave the impression during the campaign that they were against renewing the missile system.

Accelerated budget cuts: Lib Dems said they were against the Tory plan to start cutting deeply this year. Total cave in again. Unemployment in Scotland is now higher than in England and we are more vulnerable to a double dip recession as a result of this decision.

Abolish the Scotland Office: I'll believe it when I see it. Young Danny looked VERY pleased with his new job.

No tax on incomes below £10k. This is a concession from Cons to Libs which could benefit poor Scots but no timetable when it will happen.

Funding: Libs are making a big deal of how their plans for health and education will have consequences for Scotland. This just means what happens at the moment. Spending decisions are made about English health, education, police  etc based on English needs and priorities. The rise or fall is passed proportionately to Scotland through the Barnett formula. We have to make the best of it, even though our needs were not considered when determining the funding.

So do the Lib Cons have a mandate? I think we all know the answer.

The man who thinks a £6bn deficit cut is chickenfeed

As the coalition talks chunter on, we keep getting told that the markets demand strong government to hasten deficit reduction. Translate the markets into the money men who caused the problem in the first placed - and who will not be suffering as a result of any austerity programme. (Why did they get off so lightly in the election campaign anyway?) Still, it was refreshing to hear one of the money men break ranks this weekend and tell my colleague Gillian Bowditch that we are over-reacting to the financial crisis. Martin Gilbert of Aberdeen Asset Management - the biggest independent fund manager in Europe, said:

" As for the deficit, it suits them all to say how bad it is.” He believes that the situation is not as bad as has been painted. Suggestions that we may turn into another Greece if the new chancellor does not get to grips with the economy quickly are overblown, he says. In fact, compared with most businessmen, he is positively optimistic. “Our debt as a percentage of GDP is less than Germany’s,” he says. “The problem is the deficit, not the level of debt. As long as we cut the deficit, we’re okay. As for fears over the £6 billion that the Conservatives intend to cut from the budget this year, Gilbert is sanguine.“All three parties would have been constrained on public expenditure. They are all going to have to cut. The only difference between them is that the Conservatives want to cut £6 billion straight away. It’s such a small amount of money in terms of the deficit, in terms of where we are, it’s tiny — a rounding error — but everyone is making a meal of it.”

For the full article go to The Gillian Bowditch profile in Sunday Times Ecosse

As a post-script, I keep reading the Clegg and Cameron are making deficit reduction the priority in their talks. Wonder if that means Clegg is insisting that the Tories postpone the worst cuts till next year to let the economy recover? Both he and Vince Cable were adamant about this during the campaign. Then, again, there is talk of six cabinet seats...maybe that's the price of a double dip recession for the Lib Dems. As well as selling out on electoral reform of course.

The last Liberal-Conservative coalition was the National Government of the 1930s. Remember the Hunger Marches anyone?

The grins on the faces of  many Scottish Labour MPs last night might suggest a great victory. In fact the General Election of 2010 saw Labour win the lowest share of the vote across Britain since the defeat of Michael Foot in 1983.  It's also lower that the share taken in 1931, when Arthur Henderson lead a shell shocked party to defeat (on 30.8%) against a National Government of Conservatives, Liberals and Labour "traitors", notably the former leader Ramsay MacDonald and his chancellor Philip Snowden. That also came in response to a financial crisis, and you cannot help but compare Nick Clegg, in a very olique way, to MacDonald. He went to the electorate as a radical but ended up stabbing them in the back.  Back in 1930, the Labour government under MacDonald was being pressed by bankers (yup, them again), to cut the deficit by reducing unemployment benefit by a fifth. The aim was to keep the pound strong and tied to The Gold Standard, a primitive measure that suggested a pound sterling had to be worth a certain weight in gold.   The Labour cabinet couldn't agree to that so PM MacDonald went off to join the Tories and Liberals, in a government, who were happy to oblige.   Unemployment benefit was slashed, a hated means test split families and tariffs were introduced which extended and intensified the global recession.  Henderson was left with something of a rump (James Maxwell took the thinking left out in another breakaway). The electorate bought the line that only a tough talking government in the national interest (sound familiar) could get Britain out of its mess and voted for it through the 1930s.   The National Government was eventually forced to abandon the Gold Standard. But not before the economy had been demolished and millions of people were thrown into penury. No doubt Brown will be thinking about the 1930s in his own attempts to build a "progressive coalition" with the Lib Dems.  England will not let that happen and a Clegg Cameron alliance could see a new National Government emerge. Scotland suffered disproportionate harm during the last one.   We remain a wealthy, resource rich country with a progressive politics. Our best option is to go it alone.

Election	Number of votes for Labour	Share of votes	Seats	Outcome of election
1900	62,698	1.8%	2	Conservative Victory
1906	321,663	5.7%	29	Liberal Victory
1910 (January)	505,657	7.6%	40	Hung parliament (Liberal minority government)
1910 (December)	371,802	7.1%	42	Hung parliament (Liberal minority government)
1918†	2,245,777	21.5%	57	Coalition Victory
1922	4,076,665	29.7%	142	Conservative Victory
1923	4,267,831	30.7%	191	Hung parliament (Labour minority government)
1924	5,281,626	33.3%	151	Conservative Victory
1929‡	8,048,968	37.1%	287	Hung parliament (Labour minority government)
1931	6,339,306	30.8%	52	National Government Victory
1935	7,984,988	38.0%	154	National Government Victory
1945	11,967,746	49.7%	393	Labour Victory
1950	13,266,176	46.1%	315	Labour Victory
1951	13,948,883	48.8%	295	Conservative Victory
1955	12,405,254	46.4%	277	Conservative Victory
1959	12,216,172	43.8%	258	Conservative Victory
1964	12,205,808	44.1%	317	Labour Victory
1966	13,096,629	48.0%	364	Labour Victory
1970	12,208,758	43.1%	288	Conservative Victory
1974 (February)	11,645,616	37.2%	301	Hung parliament (Labour minority government)
1974 (October)	11,457,079	39.2%	319	Labour Victory
1979	11,532,218	36.9%	269	Conservative Victory
1983	8,456,934	27.6%	209	Conservative Victory
1987	10,029,807	30.8%	229	Conservative Victory
1992	11,560,484	34.4%	271	Conservative Victory
1997	13,518,167	43.2%	419	Labour Victory
2001	10,724,953	40.7%	413	Labour Victory
2005	9,562,122	35.3%	356	Labour Victory
2010	8,601,441	29.1%	258	Hung parliament

Clegg says Cameron won it

Don't like to say I told you so, but Nick Clegg says The party with most votes and seats has a right to govern.  That is The Conservative Party. He is right in so much that a coalition with Labour, as Brown is seeking, would be unacceptable to the majority of people in England and the press there.  But if Cameron has a right to govern England for that reason, it follows that he has no right to rule in Scotland, something that has never crossed Clegg's mind. As I said in my last post, Scotland is completely without a voice within the UK Union now.

I notice Clegg mentioned electoral reform today, having translated it into "clean up politics" during the campaign - it always came fourth on the list of pledges. That must have led some people to question his integrity in the last few days of the campaign and resulted in his party's poor performance. 

Might he consider a formal coalition with Cameron? It's possible, and senior Lib Dems were certainly preparing us for that last night. Alastair Carmichael was quite shameless in an interview: running down Labour, saying how they lacked any progressive policies (how come you governed with them in Scotland for so long then?) He then seemed to suggest that Cameron was something different, a man they could work with.  Later, in the early hours, I shared  a radio studio with a Scottish Lib Dem who also tried to defend moving into government with the Conservatives, when they had found it impossible to support the SNP in Holyrood. "So you find the idea of coalition with the SNP repulsive but would enter talks with the Conservatives?" asked Derek Bateman. He assented, blaming the referendum. That referendum now offers three choices, including more devolution which the Lib Dems are suposed to support. So it's really democracy they find repulsive.  As I said before,totally without honour.

Taking part on the BBC's election night coverage tomorrow. What time do you need me till? I asked, naively.  We'll we go on till 6am. This on the day that new research shows folk who miss out on sleep die early....

Workload is quite heavy at the Sunday Times this week as you might imagine, Lassie may be quiet for a couple of days. May try twittering from behind the scenes at the BBC on election night, if my dodgy blackberry doesn't give up too early....

In the meantime, my eye was caught be this piece on which parties best understand devolution and how it works. Alan Trench at Devolution Matters has carried out a detailed analysis of the manifestos of every party for an Edinburgh University Working paper. Alan has tried to assess how well each party - including the SNP and Plaid - understands what devolution means, and how it translates into all policy proposals (rather than just the ones about constitutional matters).   Interesting reading for true political junkies...and some of the scores might surprise.

Nick Clegg - what will he give for a bite of power?

     
  Clegg                                                                                     a cleg

I have just watched Nick Clegg interviewed by Adam Boulton of Sky and heard him on Radio Four earlier today. On both occasions he was asked about preconditions for coalition in the event of a hung parliament. He says there are no preconditions.  If Cameron gets most seats, that would involve Clegg doing a deal with the Conservatives -  propping up a defeated Brown would simply not wash with the public in England. One Lib Dem contact on facebook this week advised "hold your nose" and vote in such a way that will guarantee voting reform next time around. But when was the last time you heard Clegg mention proportional representation? It used to by the first phrase on any Lib Dem leader's lips. But no previous Lib Dem leader has been so lip smackingly close to power.  In both the interviews, Clegg lists his priorities for reform: the £10k tax threshold, smaller class sizes, sorting out the banks/economy, and - it's always number four - "cleaning up politics". What does that mean exactly? After all, everybody wants to "clean up politics", even those who, like Clegg, were forced to pay back expenses money to parliament. This is not the same as changing the voting system. Unattributed newspaper reports have already been softening us up for this - suggesting that tax reform is more important that PR, which might be sacrificed in a Cameron/Clegg coalition.

In Scotland, we are used to Lib Dems not being quite living up to their sales pitch. They are all for local democracy and constitutional reform, but refuse to support a referendum on Scotland's future. They are supposed to be federalists, but support the Calman Commission, which falls far short of their favoured constitutional option and the commission headed by their elder statesman, Lord Steel.  They were so hostile to the SNP government, that they could not come together to create a sensible alternative to the council tax - which both parties had pledged to replace. Their insistence  that the leadership debates on television fairly reflected the options for Scotland put them in the very same camp as the "old parties" they denigrate. And how can the Liberal Democrats in Scotland justify a coalition with a governing UK party which is likely to have no seats and therefore no mandate here? They were leading players in the Scottish Constitutional Convention of the 1980s and 90s which was predicated on the Claim of Right document that upheld the traditional Scottish position that sovereignty lies with the people. 

Clegg - whose name means horse fly in Scots - has some things in his favour. A wife who refuses to be an appendage, a love for Samuel Beckett, and a vow to break up the banks. But that last one was Vince Cable's idea and as the Cleggmania has taken hold, St Vincent has been airbrushed out of the campaign. Is that a warning, I wonder?

I would therefore advise everyone to vote for what they believe in this Thursday...and avoid disappointment later on...

Whither Scotland in Cameron's New Austerity?

All this talk about going back to World War Two, powdered eggs and austerity, has got me wondering. If the UK was almost bankrupt in 1945, how on earth did it recover? It's not as if it didn't spend. Attlee's government set up the NHS and implemented Beveridge's proposals to introduce a cradle to grave welfare state. It was a time of full employment, (though unemployment was always a higher in Scotland) and they had to reintegrate tens of thousands of soldiers back into the workplace. They had a big council house building programme too, not just to replace blitzed homes, but to clear slums and find accommodation for a million extra people. In Scotland we had big infrastructural projects such as the electrification of the highlands. American loans helped, particularly the Marshall Plan. But how did we go about paying it back?  An austerity plan - presided over by Labour Chancellor Stafford Cripps - appeared to consist mainly of an extension of war rationing and a huge effort to export as much as we could and spend as little as possible. Those were the days when governments negotiated pay restraints with trade unions, who represented many more workers in the private and manufacturing sectors. There's a good piece here on the BBC History site by an economic historian who says Britain wasted its Marshall plan loan.Instead of modernising the industrial infrastructure, as they did in France and Germany, Westminster maintained a huge defence budget to keep up the pretence that it was a world power.  Indeed the First post war Labour government was eventually brought down by its decision to support its American ally and paymaster in the Korean War.Sound familiar?  Notice that the historian, Correlli Barnett, compares the squandering of the Marshall plan loan in the 40s and 50s with the Thatcher government's reckless use of North Sea oil revenues in the 80s. 

From a Scottish point of view, what is the lesson from history?  It seems that you can carry debt for quite a long time providing the economy is growing.  The story of Scotland in the UK union after 1945 was not that encouraging however. The failure to invest in industrial modernisation hit us particularly hard. Our manufacturing base declined and we lost control of much of our business to London. The UK's post war structural deficit caused repeated sterling crisis, which Margaret Thatcher tackled with high interest rates that devastated industry, but boosted The City. Could this happen again under Cameron? Will Scottish resources be used again to fund mass unemployment and tax cuts? Most of us are braced for a period austerity, but only if it makes things better in the long run. If we get a Tory government on Thursday, they have made it clear that an absence of Scottish Conservative seats will make no difference to how they govern. They regard every non SNP vote as a vote for the union and an endorsement of whatever programme they choose to impose on us.  Their programme is focused not on boasting new industries, as far as I can see, but on calming jitters in The City, as is underlined by the Financial Times's endorsement of them today. 

NOTE Alan Trench offers a useful guide here to how the parties are all dishonest about their programmes 

We have seen the future: it involves powdered egg

 If you are one of the many with election ennui, you probably take some comfort knowing it will soon be over. The politicians will no longer hide behind slogans and refuse to reveal exactly how they will reduce the UK’s terrifying £789 billion debt burden. We got a hint of it last week from Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, who confided to an American economist who then blurted to an Australian television presenter: Britain will experience a level of austerity last seen during the second world war. So there you have it, albeit third-hand from the Aussies: we have seen the future and it involves powdered egg.

Except for viewers in Scotland, to adapt a phrase used in those televised leaders’ debates. We will remain in election mode because we have another vote, for Holyrood, next year. The grinding war of attrition will go on — and so will the fudge, evasion and simply not telling it like it is. For the rest of this article go to The Sunday Times here

Going Underground

Depending on the outcome of the election next week, some of you may feel the need to hide away. If so I can recommend going underground on the island of South Uist. If you still have a job that offers paid holidays...

What it's really like to live on benefits

David Cameron opened the debate last night with a list economic priorities. No 1 on his list were benefit scroungers - whom he ranked ahead of bankers as the folk who have brought the country to its knees. So this piece on "shirking scroungers" by the Guardian's David Conn is  timely.

Ask around among people comfortably off, agreeably in work, how much they imagine unemployment benefit is in these recession-bitten times, and, in my experience, they guess, generally, about £100 per week. Enough for a difficult life, not servicing any luxuries, but paying, just about, for necessities until the job market picks up. These people are invariably as palpably shocked as the newly unemployed themselves are when they turn up to sign on, to discover that jobseeker's allowance pays £65.45 a week to a single person over 25. Those under 25, hardest hit in this recession, including thousands of graduates struggling to find work, must make do on just £51.85 a week.To read the rest of David Conn's article click here

This is much worse than the early years of mass unemployment under the Thatcher government. I remember a good many people then getting work under the Manpower Services Commission scheme, which paid a basic wage, and often funded some quite worthwhile community projects such as summer childcare schemes and pensioners lunchclubs. MSC jobs were, however, filled by young people. What of the older unemployed, depicted in Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff?  Yosser, or at least Bernard Hill the actor who played him, went on to find gainful employment as King Theoden, ruler of the mighty horsemen of Rohan in Lord of the Rings. The real world is not so accomodating to the redundant middle aged. I remember "older people" in their forties and fifties at that time who never worked again.

The 1980s will seem like luxury compared to what's in store once the cuts come. These are cuts none of the parties will detail  - hence the SNP dubbing this the Iceberg Election.  Whoever wins will pay in the long run though. The victor next Friday will be unelectable for a generation because of the austerity measures he will be forced to apply, according to the Bank of England governor Mervyn King whose private thoughts were reported in The Times today. The bankers will be fine though.