Skin in the Game

Politics is a dangerous game. It can appear childish, or pointless, or it can appear that despite much jaw-jaw there is too much war-war in either the literal or the metaphorical sense. But beneath all the hot air, the postures and the editorialising there are people, sometimes many people, with skin in the game.

That is how it feels here in Catalonia, now. After the extraordinary events of the last few weeks – extraordinary in the sense that the creation of a new nation state is definitely out of the ordinary – we have had the anti-climax of leaders leaving to seek asylum in Belgium, and of a fudged takeover, in which civil servants in Madrid will run Catalunya at least until we hold a new set of elections in late December.

So that was the outcome of more than two million people voting, in polling stations defended, over the weekend of 1^st October, by thousands of volunteers. Of more than a million people turning out each year on 11^th September to create massive demonstrations in Barcelona, or along the Mediterranean coast. Of bloody attacks by Spain’s militarised National Police and Civil Guard on people in lines at voting stations. Of what Julian Assange has called the first Cyberwar in Europe (yes, his hyperbole is sometimes a little far-fetched). Of widespread censorship. And of locking up the leaders of two charities on charges that could put them down for up to 15 years.

All of these people had skin in the game. Many will be charged with mediaeval-sounding offences such as rebellion and sedition, knowing that the courts in Spain – where this type of justice is still a relative novelty after years of dictatorship – are unlikely to be lenient in sentencing. More than 700 town, village and city mayors, for starters. Many civil servants. The bosses of Catalan radio and television stations. People – such as my neighbour, a farmer – who were selected at random to run the voting stations on 1^st October. People – such as this writer – who have written about the referendum in positive terms. All of them, all of us, have skin in the game.

And for what? So that the Sixth Catalan Republic could last just one weekend, from 15:27 on Friday 27^th October, when the vote in the Catalan parliament, the Generalitat, was announced, to around mid-day today Monday 30^th October, when we heard that the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont had arrived in Belgium and was seeking political asylum? All of the brilliant planning before the Referendum – hiding the voting boxes so that even Spain’s ‘intelligence’ service could not find them – wasted on a grey Monday afternoon with the disappearance of the team who led us this far?

For what? 

For community. 

Because the people who had and have skin in the game are people who have built a community. We’re a community of sufferers, today. But we showed the incredible power of a mass movement, enough power to create, even for a weekend, a new state. Power and organisation enough to evade an entire police force and intelligence service. Power to force Spain to reconsider its relationship with Catalonia. Power to move the bond and stock markets. The people are not powerless pawns in the grip of multinationals, media and our Imperial Leaders. We have power, we have wielded that power, and we can do that again – whether the cause is Catalonia, saving the environment or rights.  We have the power because we are willing to risk our skins – literally in the case of the people attacked by the National Police – for a cause that we believe in.

Referendum, just for the record

Just for the record of having taken part, for the record of Yes votes, for the record of a wonderful, terrifying emotional weekend, a few notes on the Catalan Referendum on Independence, 1st October 2017, as seen at Sant Esteve de Palautordera, the village in Montseny, Catalonia, that is my home:


We got the call-out on Thursday. Everyone should be at the old primary school - the polling station for the village - on Friday night. The fear was that the police would seal the polling station. In Catalonia and Spain this official seal (it's done with Police sticky tape) makes it illegal to enter a building. So we had to make sure that the police did not seal us out.

Friday Night

By 6pm on Friday there were a couple of hundred people in the school playground. The numbers grew during the evening. We organised food, there was street theatre from Tortell Poltrona of Circ Cric and a story from the Marduix theatre group. And we watched Pride, dubbed into Catalan. The struggle of the lesbian and gay community in London to support, and be accepted by, the striking miners seemed especially appropriate as our tiny village took on the might of the Spanish Empire.

The film was still running when around 1am on Saturday morning the shout 'Police' went out. We shut off the movie, and crowded round the entrance to the playground. We phoned and texted friends and within three minutes there was a crowd of 250 people and growing, jammed into the entrance of the playground. Two very calm, decent Mossos d'Esquadra (the autonomous government's police force) drove up and told us that they had to read a charge against us. Was there any single organisation behind all of this? 'The people of the village' we replied. Was there any one person who was responsible? 'The people' went the shout. The police then told us that they would be back - and this time there might be four of them - at 06:00 on Sunday morning to 'precintar' (officially seal) the school. But that if there was 'such a big crowd that, in our judgement, we might cause public disorder by closing the school' then they would be unable to seal the gates. They repeated this message so that we all understood clearly.

I slept, fitfully, that Friday night at the school with around 50 other people, waking repeatedly at small noises and shouts in the night. In the morning, with three other volunteers and the generous donation of wonderful fresh croissants from the Valflorida bakery we made breakfast for around 150 people.

A Festival for Democracy

Saturday morning was a festival. The group organised dance classes (I took part in tap-dance, and Menorcan 'ball de bot'), drawing classes and talks. There was music, and people contributed food and drink -  we were all avoiding alcohol so it was soft drinks all round - to sustain the crowd. There was another visit by the Mossos with the same message about the timing of their Sunday visit, and the relevance of the crowd. And so into Saturday evening, now with some 500 people in the school and the playground. I retired home for a few hours sleep, and then came back at 05:00 to make breakfast. At 05:30 we served over 200 breakfasts to the volunteers - so many that the local café's coffee machine broke down with the demand. By 05:00 there were at least 500 people there, and by 06:00, the appointed hour that number had grown to represent more than half the number who would eventually vote.

The police did come back, but made the sensible judgement that the crowd was too big to control (it was two friendly Mossos, and 800 people at the school.) The Mossos stayed with us all day, parked just a little way away from the school, watching the entrance to the playground.

The Voting Boxes

Just before 08:00 the shout went out 'Police!' By then we had been drilled to block the entrance, and climb onto the barrier fence surrounding the playground. The crowd was enormous, all of us facing outwards, packed along the fence. Behind us, and thus completely hidden from the two Mossos in their patrol car, three people appeared with black bin bags. The voting boxes! The famous voting boxes that had been hidden so successfully that the entire Spanish police force had been unable to find them! They were smuggled into the school behind our backs and out of sight of the Mossos. And then, realising what had happened, realising that this had been a false alarm designed to distract attention, we all cheered. The boxes, with the voting slips and envelopes were safely in the polling station.

Now an enormous queue formed. We heard that - another masterstroke by the Generalitat - the Catalan government had introduced a universal census so that people whose polling station had been shut down could go to any other station to vote. This depended on access to the web, and so the team had organised IT specialists to be on hand, backed by a team of hackers somewhere in Catalonia, to keep the census open against attacks by the Spanish intelligence service.

Police Brutality

Then we started to see the videos. The awful videos of brutality by the Policia Nacional and the 'Civil Guard' against defenceless voters. The rubber bullets - banned across Catalonia two years ago after an incident in which a woman was blinded. We were all thoroughly scared. WhatsApp and texts began to arrive from friends in other places who had been attacked or seen the attacks. We reorganised the queue to ensure that the oldest people could vote early and leave. And we did more drills to prepare for what we presumed would be an armed attack by Spain's militarised police.

We uncovered a secret police officer. She was identified (in our village, everyone knows everyone so it was particularly stupid of the Civil Guard to send in a plain-clothes cop), surrounded by a group of women, and gently moved away until she left the village.

The Farmers (and Firefighters) Save the Day

Then the tractors came. The local farmers came out in force to support the referendum, and used three tractors to block the main access to the polling station. One farmer parked a livestock truck across a fourth entrance and the fifth was closed with four tonnes of sand, courtesy of a local building supplier. The firefighters arrived - the roar of pleasure from the crowd must have been audible a kilometre away - and added to the blockade by parking a fire tender across the road. 

That was all a relief, but it did not stop us being vigilant, especially when, during the afternoon, we heard that more than a dozen Policia Nacional vans were parked on the main road a few kilometres from the village. People were still frightened - at one point in the afternoon an old lady asked me, from outside the playground, if it was safe to come in and vote; I reassured here that here, now, it was safe.

The young people of the village were incredible, reinforcing a weak section of the fence around the playground with street barriers, and zipping around on their scooters and bikes to watch out for arriving police.

As the referendum closed, the brim-full voting boxes were smuggled out of the school in a reverse of their arrival, and the counting team was taken to a safe house in the village to compile the results.

Democracy Wins

In the end, aside from the plain-clothes police officer, no-one came to assault our village. The people of the village, together, saved the day. The evidence is in the figures - in a village of a couple of thousand voters we achieved the highest ever result for voting in an election or referendum;  85.36% participation, and 95.8% (1,525 people) voting Yes.

It was an extraordinary day. A day of mass participation, of powerful emotions - fear, laughter, many, many tears of pain (when we saw how the Policia Nacional hit old ladies to try to prevent them voting) and joy (at the farmers, the fire fighters, the four tonnes of sand). It was a day of new friendships, of many hugs and much dancing. And a day when democracy, the will of the people, proved that it was stronger than the 'argument of force' from Spain. A day to remember forever.

Light Shift

There was a moment this morning, under the trees, when the three-quarters moon cast a shadow as the dawn light from the East caught the topmost leaves. The moon's brilliance outshone the sun.

That is how it feels in Catalonia. The cool, quiet, clean light of a tiny planet outshining the raging solar flares from Madrid.

Catalonia has outmanoeuvred Madrid at every step of the referendum process, keeping calm and carrying on while Madrid sent in its violent militarised police to beat people standing in line to vote. The Catalan government successfully delivered voting slips, envelopes and voting boxes to more than 2,000 polling stations despite a vast operation over weeks by the Spanish police force. Crowds of people, this writer included, slept over at the polling stations and barricaded the entrances to stop armed police intervention, all so that more than two million people could cast their votes. Teams of hackers kept our voting system operational despite mass attacks by others, assumed to be the (patently slightly useless) Spanish 'intelligence' service.

And now the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, has made the move that is check-mate to Madrid's blundering game. Having won the referendum he has declared independence, but has asked the Catalan parliament to delay the actual moment 'for a few weeks' to give time to Madrid to negotiate.  A brilliant move, this forces Madrid to take a decision; carry on the violence, the arrests, the trumped up charges against Catalan politicians? Or accept that the Catalan people have spoken and negotiate a settlement, possibly with an international mediator.

Madrid will know the consequences of the first option; an immediate confirmation of independence and widespread revulsion, here and internationally, of the Spanish government.

But don't rely on Madrid to care. It is perfectly probable that the Spanish government will carry on its long tradition of bullying the Catalans, in the vain hope that they will submit. International opprobium does not seem to concern Madrid.

The comments on the village street last night were approving: Puigdemont had made another brilliant move. People here have a lot of confidence in him - one person told me that 'selecting Puigdemont was the best thing that [former president] Artur Mas ever did'. He and his team of advisers have played a brilliant game so far, and the expectation here is that the team have worked out the next few moves in the game, whatever Madrid do.

So now we wait. Wait for the next move from Madrid. And ready ourselves for a long, steep road to independence.

#LoveDemocracy

It's a simple idea. Vote yes, or vote no.

But the government in Madrid will do almost anything to stop the Catalans voting yes, or no, on 1st October 2017. The referendum on independence, the clearly-stated aim of the government here in Catalonia and one for which the public voted at the last elections, is the subject of a complex game of chess with Madrid.

The latest move has been that the Minister for Local Government in the Spanish Government, Roberto Bermúdez de Castro, has written to the mayors of Catalonia telling them not to provide facilities (schools, town halls or other public buildings) for the Referendum.

The effect has been immediate.In less than 24 hours more than 560 mayors have signed a decree stating that they WILL collaborate with the referendum by providing facilities.

Here's the mayor of my village, Sant Esteve de Palautordera, signing:

Citizens of Sant Esteve de Palautordera, you can vote!

Down here in the villages and towns of Catalonia it's simple; people simply want to vote, quietly and calmly, yes, or no. Txarango's new song sums it up; people from the coast and the hills, reaching for the new horizon.

I can't vote, but a campaign - #votaxmi - has been launched to support the Referendum, aimed at anyone who lives here but who cannot vote. We #LoveDemocracy.

See's a pound, son

The Scottish Government is starting to make noises about a currency for an independent Scotland...with the predictable response of the Tories that 'the SNP want to take the pound from your pocket.'

The media are stuck in their old trope - that it was love of the pound that saved the Union in the September 2014 Referendum.

In fact, as Rob Johns at the University of Essex showed in a fascinating and detailed analysis after the Referendum, the pound was only one of a number of factors.

Dr Johns uses data from two large-scale (n=5,000) studies prior to the Scottish Referendum. He shows that voters in Scotland thought it likely, back then, that if Scotland stayed in the Union, the UK would vote to leave the EU. They felt it was likely that the gap between rich and poor would grow wider, and that welfare benefits would go down.

In other words, prior to the September 2014 Referendum, voters were already factoring in these consequences of staying in the Union.

But 42% of voters said it was unlikely that they, personally, would be better off if Scotland became independent, against 23% who felt that it was likely. Combine this with the fact that older people intended to vote no (around 70% of the 70+ age group intended to vote no) and you had a No-wins combination. 

Keeping the pound was a small part of the picture, and may be linked to the willingness to take risks in general. Yes voters were much more willing to take a risk than No voters. No voters felt that there was a danger that they would lose out in an independent Scotland.

So it's not about the pound. It's about whether we can show the voter, especially older voters and women, that they will be better off (or at least, not worse off), in an independent Scotland.
 

Boris' Balls

This could be the nightmare scenario.

Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister, Theresa May the Foreign Secretary, and Michael Gove, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Boris confesses to feel 'jolly sorry' about the the idea that Scotland would leave 'our wonderful United Kingdom.'  He delays enacting Article 50, and then delays it more, and finally decides not to pull out of the EU at all, saying that 'losing Scotland would be too high a price to pay,' and, 'we voted to escape from Brussels, not from Edinburgh.' Boris dismisses Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's call for a second independence referendum for Scotland. 

Boris does not have the balls to exit the EU and lose Scotland.

But then the nightmare gets worse. Because now, after an EU Referendum that was just a very complicated way of choosing a new Tory leader, we have a further right Tory Government (as Nicola Sturgeon warned us) with more austerity cuts and a lock-down on migration. The Labour Party does another round of back-stabbing, and continues to be wholly ineffective as an opposition.

Poor people and people with disabilities have their benefits cut further by 'Super-Austerity' Chancellor Michael Gove. Migrants are made to feel thoroughly unwelcome with discriminatory legislation put in place by Theresa May. The Human Rights Act is revised to make it 'more flexible.' Read 'V for Vendetta' and you'll see where my nightmare comes from.

Westminster, the London media led by the Daily Mail, and a xenophobic campaign of fear have combined to persuade the voters of England to leave the EU. They have brought on a sharp right turn in the Tory party. 

And they have once again imposed all of this on Scotland, against Scotland's express will. How long can we live with this nightmare?

Goodbye, Little England

It has been a long relationship, with lots of good stuff and lots of not so good. But now it is time to say goodbye.

Not to Europe, but to England. 

Scotland has voted to Remain and that is precisely what we should do. Whatever weirdness happens in Westminster, and it is going to get pretty weird (Farage for PM, anyone?), we should be backing Nicola Sturgeon as she fights to keep Scotland in Europe. 

We have voted for the workers' rights, for the openness, for the wider international view that Europe offers. We must not be denied that, whatever happens.

Three further points:
The vote in England illustrates the divisive politics of Westminster, which coddles London and the South East and abandons the rest. The demarcation between the people Westminster cares for and the people it does not is marked by the Leave/Remain divide in England.

Scotland's politics and its politicians have been much more inclusive. The gender equal cabinet, Nicola Sturgeon's response to the Belgian bombings - she gave her statement in a mosque, next to the Imam, to emphasise Scottish inclusion - the range of sexualities of our leaders, all of these help to ensure that more people feel that Holyrood represents their interests. When you feel that a parliament takes an interest in you, you take time to listen to what your politicians say.

Nicola's campaign in Scotland was outstanding. She was the only UK political leader who stated clearly, and repeatedly, the positive benefits (workers' rights, women's rights, travel, business) of EU membership. She never tried to frighten us. And she won. Perhaps there is a lesson there for the Westminster scaremongers.

 

Nicola's Right

The EU Referendum turns out to be a simple vote. Here, electors, are your voting choices:

David Cameron, Tory Right

Boris Johnson, Tory Further Right

Both of these splendid fellows studied at Eton. Both live comfortable, wealthy lives at the top of English society, so they are ideally placed to lead their fellow citizens and then to receive the Knighthood they so richly deserve.

It's not much of a choice, but as Nicola Sturgeon pointed out yesterday, 

 "a ‘Leave’ win would be a victory for politicians who actually believe George Osborne and David Cameron are moderates, and it would leave Scotland at their mercy. Outside the EU but within the UK, with most economic power still concentrated at Westminster, Scotland would be left vulnerable to the most right-wing Tory government in modern history."

This new government, created out of a vote which on the surface is about the EU, would be right-wing in every respect. 

Austerity and cuts that would affect poor people, not the rich. The removal of employment laws that protect the street-cleaner, not the banker.

And the horrible undertone of racism that has been central to the Leave campaign, where 'immigration' is the vote-winning ghoul that Johnson, Gove and Farage invoke. 

If you, dear reader, are like me an EU migrant then you can expect to be pilloried by a Boris Johnson government. And if you are Ahmed, or Reem, or Rajshree or Aliyah or anyone else that Leave can paint as an 'immigrant' then you can expect much worse from a right-wing Westminster government untroubled by human rights legislation, workers' rights or any other of the pesky EU regulations.

The EU Referendum is a vote about the Tory Party. I am only going to ask you to do this once in my life; 

"Vote Right, not Further Right."


#Remain

Dear Aymara

23rd June 2036

Dear Aymara

Happy 20th birthday!

When your dad - my son - met your Mum in that refugee detention centre in Greece back in 2015 her situation was desperate. She had escaped with her sister from the cluster bombs of Aleppo and then spent three months walking across Turkey trying to avoid the kidnappers and the people-traffickers.

You were born on the day that Britain voted to stay in Europe.

Thanks to a massive vote in Scotland in favour of staying in, the UK voted 51% to 49% to remain. It was horribly close. The campaign for the EU Referendum was particularly nasty, focusing on migration in a way that hinted at, even if it did not directly condone, discrimination. This was especially ironic in Britain whose islands were populated by migrants who had settled there after the last ice age, and then by endless waves of peoples - Romans, Vikings, Normans… after that. Britain had been the source of huge migrations to Canada, the USA and Australia, and then had taken back the people of the world either as refugees (the Jewish children and the Norwegian resistance during WWII) or because it needed the labour force. The result is that the Glasgow I know and love is a wonderful mixture of Vikings and Pakistanis, of Picts and Italians (Mr Nardini in Largs always made the best ice cream!), of Afro-Caribbeans and Irish.

I am a migrant, one of the hundreds of thousands who has taken advantage of the EU to move to Catalonia (remember your tenth birthday, when we cerebrated Catalonia becoming independent? That was a p-a-r-t-y!!!) You spent last year as an Erasmus student in Paris being a migrant. You and I know that migrants are good for their adopted country; you were able to help your new friends in Paris to understand what happened in Syria all those years ago and I saw the lovely pictures of the dinner you cooked for them; dolmades from Greece, Kebab Halabi from Aleppo and cranachan from Scotland!!

In the end the EU referendum was not about migration. It could never be about migration in a country made by migrants. It was about beliefs.

The closeness of the vote, like the Referendum in Scotland two years previously, made us all think. What did we believe in? Did we believe in a US style of capitalism, focused on individual freedoms? Or in the European style of welfare state that protects people who are poor, in pain or in need?

Thanks to the EU Referendum our special European model, the welfare state, was revived.

That meant the end of a set of political beliefs started when I was about your age by a Westminster leader called Margaret Thatcher. She believed (it sounded reasonable at the time) that if you cut back on the state's responsibilities and cut taxes, the rich would be encouraged to be more entrepreneurial, building new businesses and creating new jobs. The result would be that the wealth would 'trickle down' to the poor.

By the time you were born (under a different prime minister called David Cameron - but I doubt you know his name, he left no mark in history) it was obvious that this idea, called 'neoliberalism', did not work. The gap between the rich and the poor had widened. Not only had neoliberalism made hundreds of thousands of people in the UK poorer, it had allowed people of wealth to stash away billions in secret hiding places, including many former British colonies. The wealth was not trickling down. It was bleeding out.

The people of the British isles - migrants all of us - voted for our belief in a welfare state.  The revival of the welfare state has finally started to close the gap between wealth and poverty. You and I and 500 million other people across Europe have benefited in the last 20 years from the results of that choice by the people of Britain. We have had opportunities - from your education to my pension - that we might not have had, had Britain voted itself out of the arms of Europe.

Enjoy every day of that - your birthday especially.

Love

Grandpa

Putting the frighteners on

If you have read Joe Pike's "Project Fear" you will know, more or less, how the current EU Referendum campaign is going to run. The debate is being led today by a Cabinet Office paper predicting a decade-long plague of locusts (or something equally terrifying) if England votes Out.

The result of Project Fear (the Scottish Referendum version) was a collapse in the No vote. They held the line, just, but the impact of fear was simply to drive voters toward the much more positive Yes campaign. As First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has pointed out today, "the In campaign in this referendum doesn’t have a 20-point lead to squander."

Except that in this campaign both sides are running Project Fear. It's Project Fear vs. Project Fearty, or Terror versus Horror, Bad versus Worser. None of the Westminster pack seem remotely interested in making the positive case for Europe. A positive case that includes basic rights for workers, that protects our privacy and data, that encourages international exchange and learning and that has meant peace in Western Europe.

This Horrible Hydra of a campaign will remind people in Scotland of the manipulation and propaganda of Project Fear in the Scottish Referendum. We will recognise the symptoms; the CEOs of banks, retailers and mobile phone companies who will announce that they will quit the country/close the banks/put up prices/shut off the phones if we vote the wrong way. A  desperate last-minute 'Vow' from David and his chums promising a lifetime of milk, honey and beer to anyone who will vote Stay. The media persuaded by the Cabinet Office to toe the Stay line. And a leak by Alistair Carmichael of a conversation between the North Korean Ambassador and The Muppets that purports to show that Dr Who wants to bed Boris Johnson.

We are going to see inside David Cameron and Boris Johnson's heads over the next three months. It's not going to be a pretty sight.

Carry on Catalonia

The Catalans have voted Yes. Just, but definitely Yes to independence.


The sums are straightforward, as is the direction of travel;
 
There were two groups with a clear manifesto pledge to go for independence; "Junts pel Si" (Together for Yes) and CUP ("La Candidatura d'Unitat Popular", or Popular Unity Candidature). Junts Pel Si won 1.6m votes and CUP won 335,520 votes. With the proportional system here that meant that Junts Pel Si won 62 seats and CUP 10 in the Generalitat, the Catalan parliament. Thus the parliament is now controlled by pro-independence parties.

Other parties were, to varying degrees, against independence. But there was one group formed from the Green party and various others that stood on a manifesto pledge to let Catalonia decide its own future. Called "Catalunya Si que es Pot" (Catalonia Yes you Can), this group won 364,823 votes. This group was neither clearly Yes nor No.

To decide which side won the argument I am going to deduct from the total 4m votes the 364,823 Catalonia Yes You Can votes. That leaves 3.7m people who voted clearly either "Yes" or "No." On that basis Yes won 52% of the vote and No won 48%.

A clear win, just, for independence. Now starts the negotiation and the gaming.

And back to Scotland; it's your turn next.

Project Fear meets Yes, Minister

The announcement by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood that there will be an inquiry into the memo that was leaked - oh the surprise - to the Telegraph means only one thing. The memo DOES say something damning, so the powers that be have decided to let it run on a bit, to continue to attempt to derail the SNP campaign. We can expect further "news" about the memo, claims that it is a true record of what was said behind closed doors, and the continuing suggestion that the SNP is not to be trusted. Whether it was a memo written by someone who was not at the meeting, or whether the memo says that the moon is made of cheese - it does not matter. It's a piece of paper with nasty words about the SNP on it.

What the Government does not realise is that we have been through all of this before. This is Project Fear all over again. Project Fear driven from the Treasury and the Cabinet Office just as it was in September 2014. Remember what happened then: Sir Jeremy Heywood was the architect of a statement from the Queen just before the Referendum expressing her worries. And Sir Jeremy Heywood spent the days before the Referendum "on the phone to business leaders asking them to speak up about their concerns” over independence, according to Financial Times editor Lionel Barber.

And now that same Sir Jeremy has set up an inquiry into a leaked memo. Sir Jams is someone we can trust, in the sense that he is someone we can trust to support his friends in Government.


But this time round the Government is dealing with a case-hardened Scottish electorate who know that mainstream news - especially when it appears in the Barclay twins' newsrag - is propaganda.

Which means that they will have to up their game, to produce something really shocking, if they want to bring the Scottish electorate back to heel. So we can expect schlock-horror stories involving cuddly toys and rude photos and politicians' dark pasts and so on. Look out for "lost" emails being rediscovered and more "secret" memos being released. 


Bring it on. We won't believe a word of it.


One day this will blow up in Civil Service faces. Because we need a Civil Service that is truly impartial, to balance the very partial politicians. We don't have that in Whitehall. We are learning that we cannot trust the Civil Service any more than we can trust the politicians.

That has to change. The values expressed in the Civil Service Code ("integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality") should be strengthened and enforced and the mandarins reminded that they are servants of the people, not of the Tory party nor of the Establishment. Sir Jams and his mates in the rotten top of the Service must go.

Another Brick in the Wall

Two days before the Referendum I was campaigning on Crew Road North in Pilton, Edinburgh. There was a bunch of us around a wee folding table packed with leaflets, stickers and posters. My job was to catch people walking by. 

A man - auburn hair, mid-40s, upright, wiry build - stepped off a bus and came by. He looked anxious, knew that I would step into his path to ask him a referendum question. Saw the blue sweat top with "YES" emblazoned across it. Knew what I was going to ask him:

"Which way are you going to vote in the Referendum, sir?"

"Oh God. Don't ask me that."

"Why, sir? Are you finding it difficult to make up your mind?"

"It's just that...it's just that I work in the finance sector. I would like to vote Yes, but I cannot bear to have all those lost jobs on my conscious. I've got friends at work who are single parents, people who just get by on the wage they earn. I can't be responsible for throwing them out of a job."

I tried to persuade him that it was propaganda, that Project Fear was running a concerted campaign using the banks and finance sector as allies to frighten us into voting No by threatening our jobs. To no avail. He would not take the risk.

And now we learn, thanks to Sunday's Herald, that a press release announcing that the Royal Bank of Scotland would move to London came direct from the Treasury written by "...Robert Mackie, the son of Catherine MacLeod, who was a special adviser to Better Together leader Alistair Darling."

Robert Mackie's boss is Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. Sir Nicholas - there is a certain inevitability about this - was educated at Eton, and Balliol College, Oxford.

This was just one wee email. Another brick in the wall.  The wall that keeps things in Britain as they are - comfortable, safe, normal, calm. You don't want to live in a place where the system changes all the time - it is very disconcerting to wake up in the morning to martial music on the radio and another new General in charge. But do you want to live in a place that is the opposite, where the system is unmovable? Where a tiny elite trained in the walls of Eton, Windsor, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, keep Britain on the straight road despite the whims of the electorate?

That elite was part of a system that ensured that my auburn-haired financial sector worker voted No. Voted No so that Scotland remained in stasis, locked into a system that keeps society stable. Which would be fine if society was functioning for all of its members. But it is not. The system keeps the poor, poor (and the rich, rich). It fails to look after the society it governs.



This single email did not change the voting minds of 55% of Scots. But the story illustrates how and why the UK has to change. Scotland must take back the power held by the hypnotists from Eton and Oxbridge. Scotland must make itself independent of that rotting system.



Memo to Robert Mackie and Sir Nicholas Macpherson: 

We don't need no thought control.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

To the Smith Commission, with love from Catalonia

Dear Members of the Smith Commission

I live in Catalonia, one of millions of Scots living abroad.

Scots abroad are the ambassadors of Scotland. We talk about Scotland to neighbours, friends and colleagues. We support Scotland in debates about anything from football to fisheries. We promote Scotland, Scottish products and places. We welcome Scots to our homes, and help Scots in need.

We could not vote in the Referendum, but by goodness we care about the place we still call "home."

1          Current Situation in Scotland; Issues

1.1        Power, and Responsibility

There is little that links the people of Scotland to those in power in the UK.

Scottish affairs occupy very little of Westminster's time and appear to be of little interest. This lack of interest comes from the top: Prime Minister Cameron was absent from Parliament for debates on 6th May 2014: Wales Bill/Scotland Wales symmetry, 25 Mar 2014: Disenfranchisement debate, 29 Nov 2012: Scotland and the union, 15/3/2011: Scotland Bill and 7/3/2011: Scotland Bill. Between 2004 and 2010 he mentioned Scotland in the Commons an average of just three times per year, including two years in which he never spoke about Scotland at all (source: Hansard).

Local Government and local democracy is in a poor condition in Scotland. The abolition of the Parish Councils, the County Councils, and the District and Regional Councils has pushed democracy further and further from the people. Politics in Scotland feels (excluding the brief moment of sovereignty that was the Referendum) like a very distant place.

1.2        Poverty

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation showed us what we already knew - there is deep, widespread poverty in Scotland. People who live in Ferguslie Park, Possil Park or other deprived areas of Scotland are three times as likely to be unemployed and if they are unemployed, almost five times as likely to be sick and unemployed as folk living in the least deprived areas of Scotland.

Poverty needs local solutions, and the UK Government in Westminster has shown itself to be unable to deal with Scotland's poverty.

1.3        Peace Dividend

The Westminster Government has followed its US allies into a succession of wars, principally in the Middle East. It maintains and is about to renew its Trident nuclear missile system, based close to Glasgow. The cost of these adventures is awful in human lives. It is also economically destructive. The Trident Commission Final Report, July 2014, states that the cost of replacing Trident is "£2.9bn in 2012 figures, or 9.4% of the defence budget" over 20 years.

Scotland’s share of £2.9 billion per annum over twenty years (the Trident Commission predicts that the actual cash cost will rise to a maximum £4bn per annum) is money that could be going to education, health or the alleviation of poverty.

 

1.4        Oil, Gas, Renewables

The Scottish Parliament does not control licensing for oil extraction in the North Sea...nor for fracking under the Scottish Central Belt. The Scottish government does not control the tax revenues arising from these activities, meaning that it cannot use licensing and taxation to manage extraction, nor can the people of Scotland benefit in any way other than the direct or indirect employment these industries create. This is a situation very similar to the extraction of raw materials in the Global South, where nations are left in poverty despite the extraction of valuable mineral wealth.

1.5        Representation Overseas

Scotland is poorly represented overseas. We had direct experience of this here in Spain during the weeks before the Referendum when a group of Scots in Spain had to ask the British Ambassador in Madrid, Simon J Manley CMG, to cease tweeting comments against the Yes campaign. He replied that he "articulated Her Majesty's Government's views on this subject." [Source, letter from Simon J Manley, 24 June 2014]. He did not articulate the views of many in Scotland.

The distinctly Scottish voice on foreign affairs, including the Scottish orientation toward the Nordic states and the EU, and the Scottish thinking on a range of topics from energy to migration are not adequately represented by the UK’s Ambassadors.

1.6        EU and international

Catalonia and Scotland have much in common, including a positive view of the benefits of EU membership. This positive view is not shared by many in England and there is now the real possibility that Westminster could remove Scotland from membership of the EU, against its democratically stated will.

1.7        Migration

"We are all immigrants", the first line of The Scots - a Genetic Journey (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Scots-A-Genetic-Journey/dp/1780270321), reminds us that Scotland has immigration needs that are not shared by England. We have more universities per head than any other country in the world. Access to these wonderful universities is being hampered by the UK-wide single policy on immigration. Scotland has land that it could share and an ageing population that needs balancing with younger people; we have space, and the need, for more immigration.

2          Principles

2.1        Rebuild democracy in Scotland

People in Scotland should feel that they have a say in how their local area, their region and their nation is run. Those in power locally, regionally and nationally should know (not just morally, but constitutionally, and legally) that they are responsible to their electors

Only the powers that absolutely have to remain at Westminster should do so – the principle of subsidiarity. Westminster should retain powers over foreign affairs and defence, within the provisos below. All other powers - including all forms of taxation and State income generation, and all forms of expenditure - should be devolved to the Scottish people and their Parliament.

2.2        Poverty

Scotland’s government should have a constitutional requirement to reduce poverty. A simple threshold would suffice – for example, to reduce poverty to the levels experienced in a basket of Nordic states.

2.3        Defence

Scotland's defence needs are simpler and cheaper than those of England, with a focus on inshore patrols and no need for an A-bomb deterrent. Scotland should enter a military alliance with England and Wales, with an agreed level of participation by Scottish regiments, air force and navy units, and an agreed budget. Scottish taxpayers would not have to support Westminster's defence programme, and as a symbol of this new alliance, Westminster should remove its Trident missile system from Scotland.

2.4        Natural Resources

Scotland's wealth of natural resources should be used to benefit the people who live there. Oil and gas licensing including licensing for fracking, and all oil/gas taxation revenues should be managed in Scotland by the Scottish Parliament, with a proportion representing the English geographic share of oilfields in North Sea waters being paid to the Exchequer in London. Tax revenues from hydro, wind, tidal, biomass and other renewable energy systems should also be received and managed by the Scottish Parliament. The levels of tax and subsidy should be set by the Scottish Parliament.

2.5        Foreign affairs

Scotland's viewpoint is different from that of England or Wales. The UK should have formal structures through which Scotland's views on foreign affairs are expressed, including a Scottish Foreign Affairs committee in the UK Parliament, and a substantial, influential Scottish Foreign Affairs office within the FO.

Scottish High Commissions - a form of Embassy - should be established in countries with large Scottish communities and in countries such as India with large migrant populations in Scotland. Their role would be to promote Scottish trade and exports, promote Scottish interests in the country and region, and to provide a hub for migrant families in Scotland and migrant Scots abroad. Scottish High Commissions should be established in the USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Belgium (Brussels, EU), Spain, United Arab Emirates, India, Pakistan, China, Australia and New Zealand.

2.6        EU membership

The Commission could consider a settlement that allowed Scotland to remain in the EU even if England chose to leave. The relationship between the Channel Islands and England provides a constitutional model; one nation outside the EU, the other inside, and both linked together by the Crown.

2.7        Migration

Scotland's distinct needs should be reflected in different policies. Specific categories of permitted immigrant to Scotland should be created so that students and young economic migrants from outside the EU could live in Scotland. This is similar to the situation in Canada where individual territories set immigration policies relevant to their needs, within an agreed national framework.

3          Devolving powers and responsibilities

Devolving powers and responsibilities to Scotland would recover democracy there, and that in turn would mean a stronger society, a stronger civil society, and a greater degree of social cohesion. These are social goods with an economic value that will repay the investment in time and money required to build them.

The necessary first steps are in the fields of taxation and revenue generation, meaning that all taxation revenues from oil and gas, as well as income taxes, land and corporation taxes, and sales taxes would flow to a Scottish Exchequer. With this flow of funds Scotland could afford to build a stronger democracy and to tackle the many causes of poverty.

4          Conclusion

With power over all forms of taxation and the economy, with a peace dividend arising from a new arrangement for defence, and with a powerful say in foreign affairs, Scotland could thrive. Without these powers it remains, as now, at the whim of a Parliament focused on other issues, other places, and other battles.

Thank you for considering this submission.