Brexit and the Bomb

The Tories may or may not be the Nasty Party, but they certainly cost a bomb.

The Financial Times analysis today suggests that the Brexit bill will be €100 billion. This is the beginning of negotiations, so you can expect that figure to drop, a bit. But it is now up there with Trident, the real bomb, whose replacement (another costly Tory promise) is £100bn.

The Trident estimate is at the start of the process, so we can expect it to rise. Overall, on these two items alone the Tories will spend £200 billion.

No wonder the Tories are making no promises about taxes (expect them to go up) or pensions (expect them to fall.)

The Tories are the Costly Party. Only vote for them if you are feeling rich. Very, very rich.

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.

Cha-ching! The HInkley Bonus

Thank goodness for the Conservative Party. Without them, Scotland's independence cause would be so much poorer.

The potential independence bonus just got £1.8billion bigger, thanks to the Tories and their utterly ridiculous Hinkley Point decision. That £1.8bn is the approximate population share of the cost that people in Scotland - a country which is now generating more than half its electricity from renewables - will pay for building a madness of a £18bn nuclear power station. 

That's £18bn at current prices. You may rely on the cost going sky-high (just like you can rely on the roof of the reactor going sky-high at some point, blighting Somerset and Western England for generations).

If Scotland were independent it would not have to pay for Hinkley Point.

Add to this the Scottish population share of the equally nuclear but horribly more murderous Trident missile system (our share would be around £10bn-£20bn, and rising), and you are looking at an independence bonus of perhaps £12bn-£20bn. 

That's an independence bonus of between £2,200-£3,750 per person.

It is equivalent to the total expenditure on health, wellbeing and sport in the 2016-17 Draft Budget for Scotland, planned for £13 billion. 


Independence will make everyone in Scotland better off. And by pulling Scotland out of the Tories' mad nuclear plans, we will be richer, more sustainable, and safer.

Dropping Billions on the Bomb

The Westminster parliament will vote today to renew the Trident missile system. We know it will vote that way because the Tories and most of the Labour Party support the renewal. In 2007, MPs backed "Tony Blair's bid to spend between £15bn and £20bn" on new submarines to carry the Trident Missiles.

As always happens with major defence projects, Tony Blair's £20 billion turns out to have been an under-estimate. CND's latest estimate is, er, more than ten times that amount at £205 billion.

These estimates are how it looks today. We can be sure that if we renew Trident, and then look back 40 years from now, the spend will be substantially more.

In 40 years, assuming an accident does not happen.

Westminster's atomic bombs are housed west of Glasgow. Upwind of Glasgow. So when there is an accident, a leakage, a wee dropped component or weakened gasket that releases nuclear material into the atmosphere,  it will endanger the entire Central Belt - most of the population of Scotland.

And an accident will happen. As submariner William McNeilly pointed out two years ago, the human errors in safety systems meant that Trident is a "disaster waiting to happen."


And the cost! George Kerevan writes an excellent piece in today's National describing the hidden costs of the atomic bomb. Even if the cost were not to rise - even if CND's maths is wrong and we were just spending the £23 billion that the MoD claims - those are billions that are not being spent on hospitals, on schools or on people living in poverty. Each of these alternatives would produce more prosperity than dropping billions on the bomb.


For Scotland, Trident is worse than useless. As a piece of defensive equipment you'd do better to toss your Sgian Dubhs into the Clyde.

The military threats to Scotland are not going to be answered with an atomic bomb.

Because the bomb is a moral outrage, a weapon that would kill millions of civilians and destroy millions of hectares of land. For what? So that the other side could lob a bomb at us, at Faslane, in turn destroying most of Scotland's people and land.

Despite the cost, despite the uselessness, despite the potential for killing the people of Scotland, Westminster's English MPs will vote today to impose Trident on Scotland. Scotland is abused and degraded by this decision.

Under Water

By the time you read this, submariner William McNeilly will be locked up in a police cell. According to The National he had decided to hand himself in to police today after nearly a year on the run. Why? Because he had written a dossier in which he described the Trident submarines as a "broken system" and warned that with ageing equipment and human errors in safety systems there was a "disaster waiting to happen."

This makes sense. Load up nuclear bombs full of fissile material and stick them in boats that sink, and then keep them sinking year after year... it seems inevitable that an accident will happen. It is safe to assume that many minor accidents already have. Luckily for the people of Glasgow, they have been minor. Because a major accident at Faslane, just 25 miles upwind of Scotland's largest city, would mean disaster. Just recall the effects on Wales of Chernobyl, thousands of miles to the East, and then imagine that happening doon the watter. If, like this writer, you love Glasgow and have close family there, this thought brings a chill to your spine.

If this seems far from this column's normal themes of poverty and social justice in Scotland, think again.

Investment and Return
William McNeilly is talking about a system whose renewal will cost an estimated £100bn. You may safely take that as the baseline figure - look at cost escalation in the Eurofighter project if you want evidence of defence projects running, inevitably, massively over budget.

That is £100bn being taken out of the hands of the poor - this year's proposed welfare cuts of £14bn are a an indication of how the maths works. It's £100bn less on hospitals.  £100bn less on schools. £100bn less on childcare, social workers, homeless shelters... however you look at it the list is almost endless.

In short, it is £100bn less investment in human capital. Instead of making society better by investing in its people, Westminster proposes to chuck it into the sea.

Human capital pays dividends over a lifetime. The child whom you educate, the woman who is earning a living thanks to the free childcare you are offering, the clever 18 year old who can afford university because there are no tuition fees... From all of these people in whom we have invested there is a long term payback.

But not from the dangerous rust buckets that carry Westminster's bomb. We had guessed that they were dangerous. But it takes a brave man like William McNeilly to remind us, at huge cost to his life, how much our lives are at risk.

Ironically, Trident being dangerous could be just what the defence lobby wants to push MPs into committing to the £100bn renovation. "Trident is dangerous - William said so - so let's renew it now before the bloody thing blows up." You can imagine the conversations in the Members Bar at Westminster. Scotland's 56 will be unable to stop this because renewal is Tory, Labour and Liberal policy. They will have to use their most Machiavellian methods to encourage back bench rebels - surely there is someone in the remnants of Labour who has a moral backbone - to join them.

Of course if Scotland were independent it would not have these terrible weapons of mass slaughter doon the watter. We'd invest the money in the people of Scotland, and make our home a better place.

Full Fiscal Fantasy

Martin Wolf, writing in yesterday's FT, says "The SNP has no interest in my country’s success. It cares only about what it can extract from us." He asks "how long can the union between Scotland and the rest of the UK survive?" He then rails against Alex Salmond's call for fiscal autonomy and the principle of "no detriment" to Scotland. He calls this a "one-sided bargain" that heavily favours Scotland, omitting to mention that the "no detriment" meme comes not from Salmond, but from the collective (Tory-Lab-Lib and SNP) voice of the Smith Commission, set up after the September 2014 Referendum.

Mr Wolf wrote passionately before the 2014 Referendum about his love for Scotland; "if Scotland were to depart I would lose an important part of myself". He is a brilliant, well-researched writer. So it's surprising to see him launching this humdinger against an idea that is still half-formed.

We don't yet have any idea what "full fiscal autonomy" (FFA) really means. Do we get FFA with £1,468.5 billion [1] of public sector debt? In other words, will taxpayers in Scotland have to cough up the interest payments for the massive debt built up by Westminster governments since the 1970s? Do we get FFA with Trident? Will Scottish tax income be used to buy the £100 billion bombs in Faslane? How will Marks & Spencer (or any other company operating across England and Scotland) be taxed on profits?

Above all, will we get FFA with some compensatory mechanism for the years of London ravaging the Scottish economy? Years of oil from Scottish waters -used to prop up the City of London - and generations of Scottish children growing up in poverty? To re-write Mr Wolf's subhead; "Westminster has no interest in my country’s success. It cares only about what it can extract from us."

There are so many questions about how FFA might work, how it might be negotiated in a Government whose composition we do not yet know. To argue against FFA is to argue against a phantom, a fantasy, a pile of what-ifs.

But the desire for full fiscal autonomy is a sign of Scotland growing up. We've had enough of being used and abused by Westminster; it is time for Scotland to step up and out, loud and proud. We're going to have to negotiate how that works, how Westminster can compensate Scotland for the years of abuse.

And that is why, Mr Wolf, we need a strong Team Scotland, led by the SNP, in Westminster come 8th May.





1 UK public sector debt was 79.6% of GDP at the end of February 2015. Source: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/psa/public-sector-finances/february-2015/sum-public-sector-finances--february-2015.html

It's a Bomb

Congratulations to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Scrap Trident Campaign. Two tiny organisations that have pushed over the Goliath of Government and made Trident the issue of the day.

CND's total campaigning budget in 2013 was £295,968. Scrap Trident is a coalition of 15 groups including Scottish CND, the Scottish Green Party and Quakers in Scotland. Most of the work of most of the 15 groups is carried out by volunteers. For comparison, the Ministry of Defence budget is around £35 billion. Financially, that is David in one corner with one very tiny 100 gram pebble, and Goliath in the other with a boulder weighing twelve tonnes.


This is a case study in commitment, planning and campaigning strategies. It might also illustrate how people with a firm (in some cases faith-based) belief can eventually topple a global power. CND, founded in 1958 with an Easter march to the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston near Reading, has played a long, slow game. At many points (this writer has been on many CND marches) the campaign seemed hopeless because it was the impotent little people against the huge geopolitical forces of the US, of the Cold War, and of the UK's so, so expensive seat on the UN Security Council. The Scrap Trident Coalition is much more recent, and is a cleverly designed one-issue lobbying campaign with a published list of supporters including many MSPs, writers (Noam Chomsky is one) trades unions and communities.


The campaigns have focused on gathering a wide range of groups around them, and on capturing individual MPs. They are now old enough to have nurtured some of today's leaders; famously, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been a supporter of CND since her youth.

Now that long slow burn appears to be paying off. Trident has become an issue in this election, with candidates in the SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru all stating their opposition to its renewal. An army of lobbyists funded by the defence industry will be deployed after May 7th to persuade the new Government to renew, but it is at least possible that the next Government will scrap the bomb.

The implications go well beyond the simple removal of a nuclear cloud over Glasgow. The "deputy-sheriff" role to the US military, a seat on the UN Security Council, the old colonial power, now toothless... 

Removing one horrible piece of military hardware will help the nations of the British Isles to come to terms with a new place in a different, safer, world.

The Theory of Change

How do we change the lives of people in Scotland, for the better?

The Theory of Change is a way of describing how change will happen. Viewed as a road map for change, it starts from where we are  now, aims at a better place in the future, and lays out the routes for getting there.

Where we are now is not good.

Whether you prefer the statistics and maps of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, or to walk the streets of Glasgow, you'll see poverty, and increasing poverty.

So how do we make change, for the better?

The model provided by the Theory of Change starts with a series of data and assumptions about how things are now. It then lays out different routes - "interventions" - that lead to a better place. So we start with the data in the Scottish Government's Policy Briefing that there were 880,000 people living in absolute poverty in Scotland in 2012/3, and then work out what we are going to do about it.

Charities in Scotland are each applying their own Theory of  Change. Last Thursday's report from the Poverty Alliance showed charities such as the Trussell Trust are intervening with food banks. Their rationale is that we can relieve the most desperate effects of poverty by providing food, and while you are doing that, providing nutrition advice, cookery classes and emotional support. Seventy percent of Scotland's 167 food banks are providing emotional support for their clients.

Meanwhile, Save the Children in Scotland has a different Theory of Change. Their "Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play!" programme, launched in 2012, provides essential household items such as beds, cookers and pushchairs, to families with young children living on a low income. The rationale of Save the Children is that by meeting families needs during the important early stages of development, families can improve the quality of their children's' lives and help them fulfil their potential.

Save the Children also campaigns. So does the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, whose principal rationale is to "work to get a better life for low-income families in Scotland through campaigning and lobbying."

Risk is implicit in a Theory of Change. If your rationale for ending or at least reducing poverty is to provide food banks and emotional support then your downside risk of failure is going to be linked to delivery; how many people can we reach from our food bank? Upside, you know that if you get a package of food into the hands of a poor family then you have fed them for the day, or the week. 

If you campaign and lobby then your risk of failure is high. You are trying to get the system to change - to get politicians to listen to your message and to translate it into policy. That is very hard to achieve. Despite years of campaigning and lobbying, poverty is still endemic in Scotland. The Scottish Poverty Briefing shows that one in six families in Scotland lives on less than 60% of the average wage. There is a substantial, in fact demonstrable, risk that campaigning does not work - it does not translate into Government action.

So why bother with the politicians?

Because while the risk of failure is high, the outcome if you succeed is enormous. If you could persuade a future Government to give up Trident and spend the money on the poor, or, better, increase taxation on those on higher incomes to provide greater shares for those on low or no income, then you would dramatically transform the lives of almost a million people in Scotland. This,in Theory of Change, is "system change."

Politicians are just the pawns in this Theory of Change chess-game. We need them to move across the board in the right direction (not just to protect the Kings, Queens and Knights of our society.) So when you vote in May, vote for system  change. Vote for the party that will change the system in Scotland, for the better.

1.James, Cathy. Theory of Change Review. London: Comic Relief, September 2011. http://www.actknowledge.org/resources/documents/James_ToC.pdf.
2 Image from http://www.relativ.co.za/relativ-impact/theory-of-change-workshop/
3 Scottish Government, St Andrew’s House. “Poverty Briefing.” Website Section, December 18, 2014. http://www.scotland.gov.uk//Topics/Statistics/Browse/Social-Welfare/IncomePoverty/povertybrief.

For Richer, for Poorer. And a Tartan Trident.

If you take a bus down Ferry Road in Edinburgh you will move from wealth to poverty as you head west. Or you can just stand in Stewart's Melville (private) College's playing fields and chuck a stone west to Pilton. You will be throwing your stone from an area ranked as amongst the least deprived into an area that is the most deprived, according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Edinburgh, deprived

This week two reports have talked about poverty.

What Do We Know about In-Work Poverty? [1] shows that most poor people (52%) in Scotland live in homes where at least one person has a job.  Worse, the proportion of poor children in homes with an adult in work has increased from 40% in 1999 to almost two thirds today.

What is going on? Doesn't a job give you an income? Well yes, and poverty is of course related to work (the rate of poverty amongst households where no-one is in paid work is of course higher.) But people in low-paid jobs - earning less than £7.40 an hour - have double the poverty risk of all workers. Low-paid women are especially vulnerable; mothers returning to work are more likely to end up in low-paid jobs, says the report, which highlights the almost 20% difference in wages paid to men versus women in the private sector.

Scotland comes off badly in the low-pay stakes compared to other countries: 19.5% of employees in Scotland were low-paid in 2011 compared to say 14% in New Zealand or 15% in Spain.

Low-wage work is a dead end - workers are less likely to be offered training, and more low-paid workers become unemployed than their better paid colleagues. So families are juggling low-pay, no-pay and benefits and it is, above all, the children who suffer.

Meanwhile, Oxfam has shown in Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More [2] - published this week in time for Davos - the link between wealth, business and tax. The richest 1% own 48% of global wealth - and the trend is upwards, for the rich. The pyramid is skewed so the richest fifth of the population own more than nine-tenths of the wealth, meaning that the rest of humanity, the 80%, scrabble over just 5.5% of global wealth.

Cleverly, Oxfam shows that the businesses that our wealthiest people invest in are the same businesses that spend the most on lobbying on budget issues, particularly lobbying to reduce taxation. Thus there is a vicious circle in which wealth is held by a very few, who ensure via their businesses that taxes…for those few rich…remain low. This explains why David Cameron and Giddy Gordon Osborne have been so reluctant to do the obvious thing - tax wealth, to reduce the poverty gap.

This is stupid economics. As the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has shown [3], a child growing up in a poor household is likely to have a poor outcome - to become a poor adult - because of a range of issues including stress and poor health. CPAG has calculated the cost - to all of us - of allowing poverty to take hold. The cost of allowing 110,000 children in Scotland to be affected by in-work poverty could be £1.1 billion. 

£1.1 billion! We could almost afford to buy our own Tartan Trident for that…

1 What Do We Know about In-Work Poverty? A Summary of the Evidence (Social Research Series. Edinburgh: The Scottish Government, January 21, 2015. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2015/01/3233/downloads)

2 Hardoon, Deborah. Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More. Cowley, UK: Oxfam International, January 19, 2015. http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/wealth-having-it-all-and-wanting-more.

3  Farthing, Rys. Local Authorities and Child Poverty: Balancing Threats and Opportunities. London: Child Poverty Action Group, July 2013. http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/cpag-publishes-cost-child-poverty-every-local-authority-and-constituency.

The Quine's Speech

Nicola Sturgeon, first of the quines of Scotland, has drafted her government's programme for 2014-5. The detail is interesting.

The programme has two axes - business, and equality. On equality, the Government is planning to do battle with poverty and to emulate by 2020 what the First Minister has done in her Cabinet - require 50:50 representation by women in the leadership of organisations across the nation.

The economic strategy is written for the long term - productivity, increasing labour market participation, and a focus on making Scotland a good place to do business.  The steps include good practical stuff, so parents in the workforce (and without) will get more and better childcare: that will help businesses directly.

The government is promising more Modern Apprenticeships too. For many young people an apprenticeship is a great way to get a solid start in work, and much better to get hands-on work than spending years in a classroom.

The equality programme is wide and varied. From cradle to grave it includes continuing protection for the NHS, more free child care for 1-3 year olds, help for people caring for others, payment of the Living Wage in public-sector contracts, and a thoughtful proposal to analyse how best to legislate specifically against domestic violence. There is to be a fund to recompense people for the idiotic Westminster "Bedroom Tax" -  a bizarre example of one government digging a hole and the other filling it in.

The Government purposes legislation on human trafficking, a horrible source of exploitation that especially affects women. Human trafficking is the dark underside of the sex work trade and legislation will have the beneficial effect of shining a light on the (mainly) men who traffic their sisters.

The Government proposes the end, finally, of Mrs Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' scheme under which our best social housing was sold off to private landlords. This might protect the tail end of social housing in Scotland.

Land reform - the subject of much of Leslie Riddoch's Blossom (and today's front page at The National)- will also be tackled. This is going to be a land war, but one worth winning. Scotland, as Riddoch argued, has millions of acres of unproductive land held by unaccountable land owners. The reform proposed will include transparency so that we can see who's who, and a shift in business rates (tax) so that 'game' estates - those that occupy thousands if acres just so that folk can shoot grouse or deer - will pay their proper share of tax. Expect loud bangs when the gun lobby reads about that.

Land reform with power sharing with local communities is the environmental part of this programme. There is more - legislation on landfill and work on fisheries, as well as support for renewables through the "Offshore Wind Accelerator" programme (a pun of a name.)

So what's missing? There is stuff that this Government can't do. It uses the phrase "short of the power to legislate, the Scottish Government is committed to…", or "...within the limits of our current powers…"  to signal those places where it cannot overcome those of Westminster. Amongst the most horrible of the things they can't do: they can't get rid of Trident.

There is little on the non-profit sector apart from support for culture and reforms in the way that universities are governed. But the huge focus on inequality will please many in the sector.

The first quine's speech is a series of promises to do her best to shepherd all this good stuff through the Scottish Parliament. This is how she would like the future to be - but it's a plan, not an audit report.  Some of it might not make the final cut. Today's report by the Smith Commission and next year's Westminster election might open new doors, or close others. 

But as a manifesto for building better lives for people who have little, or nothing, it gets my vote.

Horsemen of Hypnosis

England appears hypnotized. How else can one explain the inaction, inertia, blindness, sleepwalking? The country is heading into a perfect storm which will make the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse look like a Sunday School picnic.

Here they are;

The Pestilence of Poverty

Are England's ruling class aware of poverty, outside their own back door? This is the scandal of the wealth gap - the UK's near-to-worst position (24th in 2011, ahead - just - of Israel, Turkey and Chile...) in the OECD list of countries ranked by wealth gap.

We know from charities and from walking the streets that there are far too many people who have little or nothing. And from walking streets not many blocks away, too many with too much.

Britain, and especially the privileged bubble of Westminster has created a society of two tribes. The Rich Tribe is comfortable in its cars and its brand-name shops, while Sebastian ('he's something in the City, darling') squeezes the max out of his salary and bonus package. Its politicians are happy to reduce benefits and tax the spare rooms of the poor because they never consciously encounter the Poor Tribe.

The people who cross this tribal divide are the philanthropists. Not just the high profile people of wealth, but the thousands of people who know that poverty is not another world and who give their money to good causes. But there are not enough philanthropists to fill the growing wealth gap. And some day the Poor Tribe are going to have had enough. 

There will be an explosion in the streets of Britain.

The War Horse

It is Poseidon's weapon of choice. It sits sizzling just 25 miles upwind of Glasgow. And it is costing you, and you, and you a King's ransom. The UK parliamentary committee that met to approve its upgrade reckon £80 billion over the next twenty years... but that's one of those defence spending estimates that has a habit of increasing, maybe doubling.

And yet the English public seem blind to the atomic war horse that is Trident. Most will spend most of their working lives paying for it through their taxes. Some, the million Scots living downwind of Faslane, may one day sniff it in the air. But only a tiny number seem to care. Think how many schools and hospitals you could build, equip and run for £80 billion!

The Financial Famine

Yesterday's Financial Times reminded us that the UK is horribly in debt, and that the debt is getting worse each year, despite awful cuts to social services. ONS says that the debt is now £1.4 trillion. This year it is likely to be £100 billion more.

Britain is sleepwalking into the red, with a government that is meant to be good at financial management. But this is a neo-liberal government that refuses to the sensible thing (tax wealth to pay the debt.) Instead it has announced tax relief on wealth, and further cuts in benefits for poor.

One morning we will wake to the news that a trader in the Far East, a new Soros, has decided that the UK economy can't support the debt and that the pound is worthless. When that particular horseman arrives he'll be galloping, and the apocalypse will be fast. The collapse of the pound ('if only we'd joined the Euro when we had chance!') will mean hyperinflation and massive social unrest. A very British apocalypse.

The Death of the World

The palid horse of Death also approaches, across the Channel. It is the Death of Britain's world, and the rebirth of Little England. The people of England seem to have become afraid of anything foreign, starting with the 'terrorists' and now encompassing the EU and its massed ranks of 'immigrants.'

England, exporter of migrants to her colonies where they were supposed be a civilising influence, now fears migrants who might civilise the Motherland. Students are now blocked from entering the UK to study here. Entrepreneurs and new corporate recruits (the CBI complained last week) are facing delays and refusals at our borders. And Prime Minister Cameron has flown the dangerous kite that he will attempt to remove the right of EU citizens to move to and work in any Member State. His kite string will snap in the combined storm of protest from Germany and France over this core principle of the EU.

But this fourth horseman appears to be invisible to many in England. To the UKIP supporters and the loonie right of course, but also to Conservative and Labour voters. Can these Little Englanders not see the illogic of their position? 'We emigrate' equals 'good'. 'They emigrate' equals 'bad'. Really? 

And do they not see the dangers? Targeting immigration means targeting immigrants and that smells, quickly, of racism. And of course Britain will be expelled from the EU - even if England does not vote the whole UK out - if it persists with this folly.

 

Hypnotic Men on Horses

Why are the people of England blind to the four horsemen? It seems to be an almost perfect disconnect between the English and their politicians. A disconnect made obvious by the contrast with Scotland, where these topics were aired and discussed for the Referendum and continue to be the subject of writing, thinking and discussion afterwards.

But for hypnotised England the clip-clop of hooves is already audible. We just don't know which horse will come in first; poverty, and social turmoil when poor people finally sicken of the cuts? The a massive sell out of sterling when the markets discover that our debt is unpayable, ever? A 'tragic accident' at Faslane? Or the loss of Britain's largest trading partner? Or will all four Horsemen arrive together in a perfect storm?



Whatever. It's coming. Someone, please: wake up England.

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.