Six-Party State

Westminster is befuddled about Brexit.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/1f91316c-8099-11e6-bc52-0c7211ef3198

It is now 91 days since England voted us out of the EU, and there appears to be no plan, no action, and a divided Parliament.

We now have a six-party state:

1. ToRemain
2. TorLeave
3. Labomb
4. Labairns
5. Libwhos
6. SNP

ToRemain is the not-so-far-right part of the Tory Party, who would really like to forget the EU Referendum and stay in the EU, whilst tinkering mildly with the rules on free movement. These ideas are supported by all kinds of people including Martin Wolf, chief economist at the Financial Times, who calls the Referendum 'consultative.'

TorLeave are the crazies who are currently in the lead in the Cabinet, who want a hard Brexit. BoJo wants out, now, whatever the consequences.

Labomb supports the renewal of Trident. The UK Parliamentary party at Westminster wants to blow £100 billion on the bomb, whilst keeping it upwind of Glasgow (just in case the Branch Office revolts).

Labairns is the tiny Scottish Branch Office of the former Labour Party. It is opposed to the renewal of Trident, favouring #BairnsNotBombs. As the very irreverent Wings Over Scotland pointed out this week (a) the bomb is a reserved issue and (b) the tiny wee Scottish Branch Office can't outvote the big boys and girls in Westminster - the numbers just don't add up.

Libwhos are the hirsute rump of the LibDems or Liberals or whatever they used to call themselves. They have no policy apart from reminding us that they didn't enjoy being in bed with the Tories last time.

Which leaves just one coherent, effective, political party at Westminster. A party that turns up for debates in the Chamber, that makes good strong points about policies that matter - Mhairi Black's continuing battle for women's pensions is a great example - and that is clearly against the Bomb, and the bombs. It's a beautiful irony that the SNP is the only functioning political unit in the English Parliament.


There is a parallel with the situation in Spain; Madrid is unable to form a government because it also has multiple parties which are unable to agree with each other; PP, PSOE, Ciutadans, Podemos, and others including the Catalan parties Esquerra Republicana and the Partit Demòcrata Català. The two Catalan parties have their differences, but both stand for one clear policy; independence for Catalonia.

Scotland needs to free itself from the horrible mess that is Westminster - to free itself from Westminster's wars and its Trident bomb, from Westminter's neoliberal politics and from the inequalities that creates. 

We must do this before a confusion of Tories, led by an unelected Prime Minister, drags Scotland out of the EU.

It's not the money

The SNP's decision not to create a 50p top rate of tax is an odd one. 

According to the Scottish Government's analysis, published a few days ago, there are just 17,000 people, 0.7% of the taxpaying population, who would pay the tax. The analysis says that there is a risk that this handful of high earners would move home/job/residence to England, and thus that the Scottish Government would not benefit from the tax revenue.

They might. But they might not; France has a wealth tax (ISF) which is paid by about 300,000 people there. They have not moved en masse to Switzerland. (OK, ageing rock star Johnny Hallyday has, but that still leaves 299,999 ISF tax payers in France.) People of wealth will stay in Scotland because that's where their family is, where their work is, where they love to be. As the Lallands Peat Worrier points out, extra taxes mean better services, and that means you and me, as taxpayers, benefit.

But that is not the point.

Thomas Piketty, in 'The Economics of Inequality'* demonstrates that tax does not close the wealth gap. Yes, the wealthy pay more and the poor pay less, but tax alone does not effectively redistribute wealth from rich to poor. He says that 'the countries where household income inequality is slight are the countries where salary differences are small, and vice versa, and not the countries where redistribution by tax would have reduced an initially large salary gap.' 

OK that's not very readable; what Piketty is saying is that this is cultural. That countries with large differences between top and lowest salaries cannot close that gap with tax.  Countries - such as some of the Scandinavian countries - with smaller differences in salaries have those smaller differences because they think that is the right way to live. It is how we want to be, not how we are taxed that defines the size of our income, and wealth, gaps.


Iain Macwhirter says the same in today's Herald; 

But revenue raising isn’t the only function of taxation, as the financial geographer Danny Dorling has argued. It is about fairness, equity and the kind of society you want to live in.
 
Does Scotland really want to create that more communitarian, harmonious Nordic society where income differentials are held in check and top rates are up to 60 per cent? Or are we content to join the low tax, devil-take-the-hindmost society of the UK under the Tories?


I hope the SNP will rethink. It's not the money. It is the signal that we are giving as a society in Scotland. We should be signalling equality, fairness and a fight against poverty. The 50p, or 60p tax band will help send that signal to all of us. 

And no, 17,000 people will not leave our lochs and glens. They like it too much to go.


PS: Happy Independence Day. Next time, it's a YES!

*Piketty, T., 2014. L’économie des inégalités, Paris: la Découverte, p101.

Swedish Dreams

Politics disappoints. Just when you thought that the politicians had understood a good idea - for example, the idea that we would head toward a Scandinavian social model, with a tax system that captured a wee bit more from people with more, to redistribute it to those with less - you find that they have not. This week's Scottish Budget is a case in point.

Kevin Hague, in his chokka blog demonstrates the point. Mr Hague, who is not in favour of independence but is good at maths (an unusual combination), shows the effect of a one penny increase in income tax. He calculates that a person on a £14,000 salary would take home just 65 pence less per week as the result of the tax rise. Meanwhile someone on £60,000 would take home £9.50 less. That looks like redistribution, doesn't it? People with more, paying more?

Yes, the Scottish Government is hobbled by the idiotic rules that mean that they have to put a penny on everyone's tax bands. They can't do what they say they would like to do which is to increase tax for the better off and leave it as it is for people on lower incomes.

But all through the independence debate we heard the dreams of Sweden. Of building a nation based on a more Scandinavian model, where we all contribute more, and where those with more contribute a lot more.

The SNP is riding on a wave of immense political capital. It would win next May's Holyrood elections even if it were to introduce a policy of boiling poodles. And it could signal to the electorate - including its  middle class, middle income supporters (amongst whom, me) - that yes, everyone has to pay a wee bit more if we want to build the Scotland that we dream of; a fairer, finer, land where people in need, children in poor families, and older people in fuel poverty, can get the help they so desperately need. The Government could have stood up to the cynicism and selfishness of Osbameron me-me-me politics by signaling that Scotland can be independent in thought (and taxation) even if we cannot be independent in law.

But they didn't. Thus we wake, disappointed, from our Swedish dream.

Tax Stupid

Westminster's system of taxation is byzantine. Its complexity allows Facebook, Starbucks, Google (yes, the host of this blog...) and others to dance around the system, paying next to nothing whilst taking profits from all of us.

The system appears even stranger when it comes to Scotland.

This week, John Swinney will publish his budget for next year. This should be an opportunity to tackle poverty in Scotland - to find new and better ways to help people in need. The, excuse me, bleedingly obvious thing to do is to vary tax rates such that people on higher incomes or with greater accumulated wealth put a wee bit more into the communal pot to help out those with less. Simple redistributive taxation.

But Mr Swinney can't do that. Thanks to the recommendations of the Calman Commission (2009), converted into law by the Scotland Act 2012, our Scottish Government has to change all the rates of tax if it wants to change one. These devilish details are in the small print, the stuff that most folk find too boring to read, but in essence they mean that if Mr Swinney wants to add a penny to the tax paid by someone on a high income...he also has to add a penny on the tax paid by everyone on a low income. You can find out why this does not work here and here.


So under the current rules, Scotland can do almost nothing to tackle the blight of poverty. Westminster has, yes, given us powers to change income tax, but it has bound us up like a turkey for Christmas in rules which make those powers meaningless. Rules hidden in the detail that voters will not read - so that Osbameron can continue to crow that "Scotland has the power to alter taxation" even if what he means is "We've stuffed the Scottish turkeys again. Hurrah."


When will Westminster stop treating us like children?

Vow II, and Fear-Max

Today's poll results from TNS-BRMB showing that SNP has 52% of the vote* is just like that once-off pre-Referendum poll showing a majority for Yes. The result was Westminster and Whitehall panic, The Vow, and an agitprop campaign - Project Fear - turned up to full hallucinatory volume.

Up to and including May 7th expect the same, times ten. Another Vow, and Project Fear-Max. Oh yes, and MI5 will find out something nasty about Nicla and put it into the Telegraph.


* That's 52% of the 978 people aged 18 and over who were surveyed. Read Scot Goes Pop to find out more from James-the-psephologist about what it means, and where the trends are.

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.

A new map for Scotland

This is the change that people are talking about. A new political map for Scotland, that is SNP-coloured, not Red Tory coloured:

Chris Hanretty, Reader in Politics at the University of East Anglia and one of the team behind Election Forecast UK, is interviewed in today's Financial Times blog. He reminds us that "party identification" ('I was born a Labour voter, and always will vote Labour') is still the strongest prediction of voting patterns. 

It appears that the SNP have broken that pattern in Scotland, but Hanretty is urging caution.

We still have to get every door chapped, every vote in.

Not a Party

Scotland and Catalonia are struggling with the same issue.

In Scotland, according to the Herald, the SNP is moving away from suggestions of a Yes Alliance of the pro-independence parties. The two smaller parties - Scottish Socialist Party and the Greens - are reported as saying that "the SNP have decided they are not open to that kind of arrangement."

In Catalonia Artur Mas the President of the Generalitat, and of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya announced his "route plan to independence" with the idea of presenting a joint list at decisive In-Out elections. He proposed that the party list (here, we vote for a list of candidates from a specific party, with proportions of that list actually getting seats depending on the votes cast) should be made up not of politicians but of noteworthy people. 

Sr. Mas' idea has been rejected by the second largest party here, ERC, led by Oriol Junqueras. The two are talking, but there is little chance that ERC will agree to Mas' proposal.

What's going on? Why can't these politicians agree on this one apparently straightforward topic; independence, or not?

In a healthy democracy (yes, I know that democracy is just the least worst system for running a country) political parties are about power and vision. The collective of members and supporters has a vision. In order to get the power to make that vision they form a party, and get themselves elected. We've had that here with the creation of Podem, a fast-growing new party that grew from the civil protest movement here.

At the centre of the vision it's all very clear. SNP, Greens, SSP, Convergència and ERC all want independence for their two countries. 

But it's tunnel vision: at the edges it's all blurry. 

Do you want independence with a side order of dismantling capitalism? Then vote for the SSP. Do you want independence in a moderate, mildly conservative state? Then vote for Convergència.

If the vision meets at the edges then parties merge. This has happened when Tory defectors have a vision shared with UKIP. In their case a vision through the bottom of an empty beer glass.

Why can't the nationalist parties agree? Because their vision does not meet at the edges. And, yes, because of personal agendas, personal egos and lust for power, all aspects of the soft underbelly of democracy and all necessary aspects of why it's an imperfect system.

And for us, the voters? We need to see the vision of our politicians - the stuff in the centre of the tunnel and all the blurry edges. This was why Scotland's white paper on independence was so important. It was the whole vision of a political group - including the detail at the edges. Now there are differences. The SNP, Greens and SSP share the same central vision - independence - but have different edges. 

I want to vote for an entire vision - edges and all - and that means a party. Repeat after me: "democracy is the least worst system of government..."

Making the tea for the SNP

I am the luckiest of men. 

Through a personal connection I was able to spend seven extraordinary days leading up to the Referendum as a volunteer in the office of the Scottish National Party in Edinburgh. These have been some of the best days of my life.

It was the people, of course. 

A tiny group of people backed by almost half a nation. They made me welcome, laughed with me, involved me in their decisions and drank the tea I made. It is that style of place; no horrible formalities of hierarchy, an open-plan office and a boss who is as willing to find the stapler as he is to discuss voter demographics.

It seems extraordinary to say it of a political party in an era when we are so cynical about politicians, but the SNP works inside what it preaches out. People of all classes are there, all ages, women and men working side by side with sexism stamped on should it ever raise its head (it did, once.) The politicians - their fame multiplied during the Referendum media crush - become normal men and women in the office. There is frantic activity but few raised voices and only the occasional swear-word (this IS Scotland.)

And at the centre, intense concentration, and calm. The calm radiates from a clear-eyed, round faced man squeezed into a desk between two others. He always smiles - with his mouth and his eyes, so you know that he means it - he never shouts, and he simply keeps everyone focused on the one job.

This is the SNP's Chief Executive. A leader unlike any I have ever met - intellectual, clear-headed, and focused on just one simple goal, one clear message. Always ready to listen, ready to leap up to find you a seat or a pen if that would help you get us to the goal. Dragging staff away from the television screens to refocus them on real people, real doors to knock, real work to get out to vote.

There is calm but there is also speed and productivity. This was at its most obvious in the media room known as 'The Bubble' but was true all around the office as people phoned in to check on their voter registration, or as my desk neighbour organised flights for a First Minister caught in Scotland's fickle fog. It was like sailing with a good crew. Everyone knew what she or he was doing in a ship whose course had been set months before.

Which is not to write a hagiography of the SNP. These are human beings making human decisions and dealing with human issues, and historians will no doubt find errors in their strategies or plans. I overheard phone calls from irate voters swearing down the line at SNP staff. The fleet of 170 people carriers that were to ferry people to the polling stations caused a couple of headaches and a resigned laugh when one had its door comprehensively ripped off in an accident two days before polling.

But the crew knew what to do. And that made working there a complete pleasure. Their confidence helped me to be confident, their smiles made me smile.

My immediate boss embodied the new Scotland. A straight-speaking woman who had served as an MSP, she had the armour plating of a politician but the heart - you could see her heart through her eyes - of a lover of people, real people. She spoke economically - no hot air - and directly. In a taxi on the way back from a press conference I heard the politician in her as she gave the driver a clear run of the main arguments for Yes. Her voice took on a tougher timbre as she did so, and I imagined her on the stump at a public meeting, drilling supporters on what to say and how to say it.

And then there are the others - the cast of a dramatic, funny, gritty play by a modern Shakespeare. The Aberdonian, despairing at her neighbours' greater interest in handbags than in politics, the data team, working all hours to squeeze the most from the voters, the senior staffer phoning editors to tell them, one more time, that their reporters had a story wrong....

But my strongest impression will be of a positive, determined calm. This tiny crew of men and women fuelled on a diet of haggis wraps and chocolate were determined, together, to make Scotland better for its people, for the ordinary people whom they all knew. And so long as I was working to the same goal, I was welcome, and here's a desk, and here's a phone and here's a team mate who'll help you, and now let's just do this.

And then there was the result. The party's after-party, which bounced out of its seat for Glasgow and Dundee, but which spent most of that teary Thursday night subdued and quiet. I went back to the office around midday on Friday to thank the team for taking me into their lives; just three people were there, unslept and a bit sad, but composed and ready for the next step. 

They will pick themselves up, they will be cheered by the 10,000 people who have joined the party since the vote and, because these are people who think about people, they will do good.