The Debatable Land

Meanwhile, in Scotland...

Sometimes Scottish politics is far too exciting for its own good...

An SNP pledge to give children free access to swimming pools is not being delivered, according to Labour.

Scottish Labour sport spokesman Frank McAveety said only two councils provided school children with free, year-round access to pools...

Mr McAveety said: "The SNP have been in power for 18 months now and we have seen absolutely no progress on their pledge to ensure that youngsters have free access to council swimming pools."

No wonder the Scottish parliament's dealings are, quite reasonably, characterised as "Hamster Wars".

Karl Rove and the SNP

I doubt many Nationalists would welcome the comparison but facts are stubborn things and the fact is that the SNP and Mr Rove have quite a bit in common. Just as Rove orchestrated campaigns in 2002 and 2004 that portrayed the Democratic party as being, in some odd sense, fundamentally unpatriotic (principally for the crime of not being Republicans) so the SNP's default presumption is that any opposition to any of their policies is somehow an attack on Scotland itself. They are the only patriots in town. No-one else really has the country's best interests at heart. How can they, after all, when they're in thrall to a "foreign" power (ie, Britain)?

Thus, for instance, when Ian Gray suggests that the Nationalists economic policies aren't all they might be, Finance Minister John Swinney dismisses such criticism as "ill-advised and ill-informed".

"They are actually an attack on Scotland and our potential as a nation, and Labour's unremitting negativity will be extremely badly received by families and businesses across Scotland."

In other words, it's impossible to oppose the SNP without also opposing Scotland, or the idea of Scotland. For sure, the Nationalists talk about an open, inclusive, civic nationalism, but the manner in which they seek to stifle debate by playing the flag card suggests a rather narrower, pinched definition of patriotism...

[Via Scottish Unionist.]

The Scottish Tory Dilemma

Someone needs to tell Tom Harris MP that the "Unionist" in the "Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party" referred to the Union with Ireland, not that between Scotland and England.

Equally, the fact that the Conservatives (in London) and the SNP (in Edinburgh) sometimes seem to be reciting similar talking points should scarcely come as any great surprise: the Labour party is their common enemy. True, the Conservatives oppose the Nationalists north of the border but as far as the UK party is concerned that's a secondary front and one, more particularly, on which there's little need for a fresh offensive this year.

If, as Alan Cochrane hints, the Scottish Tories have dropped "Unionist" from their name then fine, even if they might actually be better off dropping the "Conservative" bit. That remains a tainted, even toxic, brand in Scotland - not least because the electorate doesn't care that the Tories have spent the past decade on their knees begging forgiveness for their supposed sins. As is so often the case, the Bavarian model is the attractive one here.

Cochrane asks how the Tories are supposed to win back support if they don't distinguish their attacks from those salvoes the SNP are hurling at Labour. Well, the easy answer is that they can't and so they should concentrate on a) incremental gains and b) winning the Battle of Ideas. That means having some.

Since it is the nature of the electoral map that an SNP-Tory alliance is the safest, most natural way of defeating Scottish Labour, the Tory agenda should concentrate on developing policy ideas that, if implemented in coalition with the nationalists (a trick the Tories missed: Salmond is happier alone than he would have been in an SNP-Tory coalition) would move the governance of Scotland to the right and, theoretically, therefore in an encouraging direction.

Sure, there's the constitutional question, but the Tories ought perhaps to have some faith in the people: there might be some desire for the devolution of additional powers to Holyrood, but there is no massive groundswell of support for outright independence. At least not yet. But that's a battle and an argument for another day. The bottom line is that the Tories can't fight Labour and the Nationalists simultaneously. That means they need to be opportunists, shamelessly so in fact and take their chances wherever they arise.

I maintain however that the Scottish Tories should prefer a Nationalist ministry in Edinburgh to a Labour one. It presents greater opportunity (not least because there are, after all, quite a number of Tories inside the SNP, whereas there are none in the Labour party.)

Chump of the Day

The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian's Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of money. Then again, it's a pretty nifty painting (though my own tastes run a little later - to Caravaggio and Velazquez in particular).

Anyway, it's hard to imagine there being any discussion in France or Italy or Germany of the rights and wrongs of committing public money to the fund-raising effort. And while I have some sympathy with the notion that the arts should be self-supporting or rely upon private patronage, frankly I'd rather see the government lavish millions on the arts than on many (most?) other areas in which they currently squander billions.

None of that seems to really concern Labour MP Ian Davidson, however. In a display of provincialism startling even for a paid-up member of the West of Scotland Labour mafia, Mr Davidson told the BBC this morning:

"It is difficult to argue that this is part of Britain's cultural heritage when it's a picture by a long dead Venetian - it's not as if it's Jock McTitian...Very few people will ever have heard of Titian, many will have thought he was an Italian football player. What is the point of wasting this money in this way?"

Now there's an endorsement of the education system north of the border...

UPDATE: Mr Eugenides weighs in too.

Tartan Blogging

A reader notices an absence of blogging on the subject and asks: "What's happening in Scotland?"

Answer: Bugger all.

Why will no-one support independence?

Commenter Rab O'Ruglen  doesn't have much sympathy for the crisis afflicting the Tartan press:

While I have every sympathy for those who find themselves in employment difficulties through no fault of their own I cannot say I have any sympathy for the Scottish print medium whatsoever.  If you are looking for an example of a people less well served by its press than Scotland's, you have to go to totalitarian states to find it.

It is incredible that when the Independence movement has reached the stage of forming a government, all-be-it a minority one, that every single one of Scotland's public prints is pro-Union.  Sometimes vitriolically so.  These instruments in the main for the propagation of right-wing propaganda and the Union, supposedly in support of free market forces, seem remarkably resistant to the idea that they might not be able to make a profit indefinitely out of forcing on their readers a point of view with which they do not concur.

I know that this is a point much-cherished by many SNP supporters, who chafe at what they perceive to be the press's bias against the party. But it can only be a keenly pertinent point if it is, like, true.

First, there is not, at present, and, a couple of rogue polls aside, ever been a majority in favour of independence. If one assumes that, roughly speaking, at any given time somewhere between 25 and 40% of voters actually truly support independence, any newspaper that endorses the idea risks alienating the majority of its readers. Now if you could guarantee that all SNP voters would flock to buy a pro-independence paper then you might have a commercial argument for endorsing the idea. But you can't make any such guarantee. Are SNP voters in Glasgow going to purchase the Scotsman if the Edinburgh paper supports independence? This seems pretty unlikely.

Furthermore, it's worth recalling that the press is vastly less hostile towards the SNP than it used to be. The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and the Sunday Herald all endorsed the nationalists at the last Holyrood election. Granted, that had a good deal to do with the failures and tedium of the Lbour-Lib Dem coalition and granted, too, that these were not endorsements of independence at all. But still.

Finally, the idea that the Scottish press exists "for the propagation of right-wing propaganda" is entirely laughable, given that there isn't a single conservative paper in the country. No, not even the Scotsman. And SoS has certainly moved towards the left since the days when I wrote editorials for the paper.

And a last point: if no newspaper supports independence, that's as much a reflection of the SNP's failure to make an entirely persuasive argument as it is of any proprietorial hostility towards the party and its Big Idea.

Department of Names

Much blogospheric hand-wringing on whether to refer to a great Indian city as Bombay or Mumbai. This is a road I've been down before. Ezra Klein says that "Bombay is the term of the colonialist oppressors. Mumbai is the term of the people who live and vote and die there."

Well fine. Does this mean Americans will cease referring to Edinburgh as Edinboro?

UPDATE: Commenter Deiseach makes the essential, and correct, point: "I presume when you were in college in Dublin you referred to Kingstown, Kingsbridge Station and King's County? Anyone who thinks they have a consistent way of using place names in these situations is kidding themselves." As it happens, um, I did from time to time refer to Kingstown and Sackville Street and all the rest of it. Of course, some people thought I was a prize ass.

Local Hero: 25 Years On

Until the BBC's Culture Show reminded me of it this evening, I had no idea that it is now 25 years since Local Hero was released. Christ, that makes one feel old. If Bill Forsyth's classic is not the best British movie of the past quarter century, it is certainly the loveliest. And, oddly, timely too these days. Anyway, in celebration, here's a clip:

Further Adventures in Brave New Scotland

Can this really be true? Why yes my friends it can.

A teenager from Ayrshire who was caught posing with a sword on the social networking site Bebo has been fined £200 at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court.

Anthony Bowman, 19, pleaded guilty to displaying the image on Bebo between January 2006 and July 2008.

His case came to light after police conducted a trawl of the internet in a bid to cut crime and disorder.

Bowman was then identified by officers from the Strathclyde force's Violence Reduction Taskforce.

The teenager's case was reported to prosecutors as part of Operation Access - an ongoing campaign against violence.

Kilmarnock district procurator fiscal, Les Brown, said: "This case demonstrates the benefits of using creative investigative techniques to gather evidence of crimes of violence and anti-social behaviour.
   
"It sends a clear message that those responsible for such crimes cannot escape justice.

"During this operation, we have worked closely with local police divisions to ensure that cases detected through internet sites can be prosecuted effectively.

"Knife crime blights many local communities and we are committed to taking prompt and effective action to pursue those responsible and stop them in their tracks."

Ch Supt Bill Fitzpatrick, of Strathclyde Police, said Operation Access had been introduced to "crack down on youth violence and anti-social behaviour within communities across Ayrshire".

He added: "It provides us with an opportunity to identify young people who associate themselves with violence and the tools of violence.

"It is one strand of a very comprehensive strategy intended to bring about a reduction in violence by tackling it at source and in the most direct fashion.

"Youngsters who use social networking sites irresponsibly should be warned that their activities are being monitored and they may get a visit from the police."

Emphasis added, of course. Makes you proud to live in this country doesn't it? Apparently the poor kid was convicted of the pretty heinous crime of waving-a-sword-about-in-a-public-place (an being photographed doing so, of course). This is the kind of country we now live in. Happy times, eh?

Question for the lawyers out there: if the police were somehow to access, say, Facebook pages that had been designated "For Friends' Viewing Only" would that constitute an illegal search? And, for that matter, even if your account is "public" what grounds do the police have for mounting this sort of fishing-expedition?

Glenrothes By-Election Stunner!

It's all very well and good getting excited about the American elections. But let's face it, they were but the appetiser before today's Westminster by-election in Glenrothes. The Kingdom of Fife is a strange place indeed, a sentiment confirmed by the whispers we now hear that Labour have managed to hold the seat.

On the face of it, defending a seat against the 14 point swing needed for you to lose is no great triumph. And yet on this occasion it is, in fact, a rather spectacular victory for Gordon Brown. True, it's his back yard (he represents the neighbouring constituency) and both he and his wife have campaigned in Glenrothes. In such circumstances it would be highly embarrassing for Labour to lose. Worse still, it would have confirmed the sense that the Prime Minister has benefited from the global financial crisis. Perhaps the voters really do think of El Gordo as some kind of economic superhero?

Well, maybe. But I hae ma doots. Labour have lifted themselves off the floor, but they're still a long way from persuading anyone that they deserve another term. Tellingly, their campaign in Glenrothes was almost exclusively concerned with local issues, blaming the SNP-controlled Fife council for, well, just about everything.

But of course Labour didn't need to rely on national issues when the financial crisis was the backgound music to the entire campaign. And in that respect outside events do indeed seem to have damaged the SNP. Salmond's unfortunate past praise for Iceland came back to make him seem foolish in the extreme, while the government bailouts of HBOS and, in particular, the national champion, RBS dented the idea of Scotland and Scottish success - the kind of tartan brio that was supposed to float all boats upon a nationalist tide.

I actually think the financial turbulence ensured that Brown would have survived a defeat, even if a loss in Fife would necessarily have terrified every Labour politician south of the border. That being so, the PM is going to be unbearably smug if Labour have held on, albeit with a reduced majority. There will be mch talk of the "Brown Bounce" about which I remain extremely suspicious.

However, this result would seem to be calamitous for Alex Salmond. The SNP honeymoon at Holyrood - which, with Labour in power at Westminster,  permitted votes for both Labour and the SNP to be counted as "protest" votes - has come to an abrupt end. Salmond co-opted Barack Obama's slogan, vowing the other day that "Yes we can, yes we will". I suspect that some voters will have seen that as Salmond over-reaching himself. Just a little too clever, just a little too pleased with himself.

Still, perception matters. This is therefore a terrific result - if confirmed - for Labour and a terrible night - their first in more than 18 months - for the SNP. That's something Unionists in other parties can cheer. But it's too soon to suppose - partly because of the nature of the SNP-Labour relationship - that it's clear that a Labour victory in Glenrothes tells us very much about the future prospects for Labour's fight with the conservatives in England.

In other words, David Cameron is another of tonight's winners.

UPDATE: The final result shows a feeble 5% swing to the nationalists. That's a very disappointing result for them. Hubris is rewarded.That said, it's the LibDems and the Tories whose support has plummeted. Between them, the two partis garnered fewer than 2,500 votes. I'm guessing many of their voters hopped over to Labour, partly because of the financial crisis and partly because of local issues.In any case, they voted against the SNP rather than for Labour, I should say.

Iran-Iraq War Replayed in Glasgow

Anyone whose had to spend much time in the company of Scottish football journalists and members of the Scottish Parliament could only hope that a "charity" football match between the two groups could end in serious injury, fiasco and with both sides losing. In that last sense, then, it's just like the Iran-Iraq war. Happily, in a story I missed earlier this week, this seems to have been the case. More or less.

A football match between politicians and journalists was called off after tempers boiled over, it has emerged.

The match was stopped after 55 minutes following a number of contentious challenges between the MSPs and the sports journalists they were facing.

BBC Scotland broadcaster Chick Young was taken out of the game by what he called an "evil" tackle, after which the MSP John Park was sent off.

John Park, sir, along with the rest of a grateful nation, I salute you.

Tales from Brave New Scotland

Good grief. Needless to say, one of the more depressing elements to this story is the fact that it won't prove terribly controversial. That's to say, there won't be a fuss or a rumpus and you won't - alas - see any outrage from politicians in any party.

Pub-goers in Aberdeen are facing a drugs test before entering bars as part of a crackdown by Grampian Police.

Officers in the force will be the first in Scotland to use an Itemiser - a device which can detect traces of drugs from hand swabs in a matter of seconds.

The test is voluntary, but customers will be refused entry if they do not take part. They could be searched and even arrested if traces are found.

The device was trialled by the police force in the area earlier this year.

The Itemiser allows police officers or door staff to swab customers hands as they enter a pub or club. It can tell almost instantly if drugs are present - including cocaine, cannabis, heroin and ecstasy.

Customers who get a green reading are allowed entry to the pub, those who get amber are given a drug information pack and those who get red could be searched by police.

Det Supt Willie MacColl, national drugs co-ordinator for the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), said: "This project offers an opportunity for collaborative working to implement an alternative intervention that will help change attitudes and reduce demand for controlled drugs.

"We hope that over time the model can be developed and used by community partnerships in other towns and cities across Scotland to reduce the harm caused by drugs."

Ch Insp Innes Walker, of Grampian Police, said that as a result of the trial period in October "people had a greater confidence that they could enjoy a night out without fear of encountering drugs".

So, no need for anything like probable cause, no need for anything as quaint as the presumption of innocence and, naturally, it will be a "voluntary" scheme unless you want a drink. So, not so very voluntary. But, sure, it's only the people with something to hide who have anything to fear, right? Wrong. Who needs ID cards when we suffer this level of intrusion anyway? (Though ID cards will, of course, only make matters worse). Ghastly.

Cameronian Unionism

A cynic might say David Cameron has an interest in a strong SNP. After all, a meaningful Tory revival in Scotland seems as far away as ever (though it would be closer if the SNP withered away) and this being so, the Tories have an interest in seeing the nationalists win Labour seats at the next election. In that limited sense then, to vote for the SNP is, in one respect, to express the preference that Cameron, not Gordon Brown be Prime Minister. And, of course, there are plenty of nationalists who think that a Tory victory at Westminster will be Scotland's opportunity. (More on this later). Perhaps. So, a temporary alliance of convenience? Well, only up to a point.

As I say, that's the cynical view of Cameron's comments in Scotland on Thursday. I think there's more to it than that. Campaigning in Fife, Cameron took a commendably broad-minded view of the Union. Of course, he said, an independent Scotland would not immediately or automatically be a basket-case:

"Of course it is possible that Scotland can stand alone – that is true. I just think it would be better off in the United Kingdom. Better off for all of us.

"I don't think we'd ever succeed in saving the Union by frightening Scots to say you couldn't possibly make it on your own. That's not the way I approach it. The Union to me is about generosity – we're stronger together because we share so much together."

The contrast with the kind of sneering, boorish Unionism that stresses economics and presumes some kind of crippling inadequacy that renders Scotland unusually incapable of ordering things is a) significant and b) encouraging. I think it probable that you can win the Unionist argument on economic grounds, but doing so demands that you sour Scotland in order to save her. The country is unlikely to be at ease if the constitutional question is settled by scare tactics. The idea that independence isn't feasible is both infantile and, worse, infantilising. It breeds a chippy sense of resentment in a country already more than well-stocked with the stuff.

No, the case for the Union - and it's a perfectly strong one - needs to be made in terms of culture, not economics. It's a question of temperament, of history, of, yes, values and culture and all the other stuff that's bundled together and covered by the Union Flag. Three hundred years is a lot of water under the bridge.

The other importance of the cultural argument for the Union is that it's a positive argument. Something that people can be proud of, not humiliated into supporting because without it we'll be left destitute in the streets, impoverished and even more malnourished than is currently the case. The economic argument comes too close to being a Unionism of charity; the cultural argument rests upon three centuries of a remarkable partnership. Not just a lesser Scotland without England but a lesser England without Scotland. And so on.

I think Cameron appreciates this. If so then that's to his credit. (And perhaps the influence of Michael Gove too?) It shows Cameron to be a bigger politician than is sometimes supposed and one, moroever, with a sense of the bigger and for that matter longer-term questions of Britain, the Union, Britishness and Unionism. 

UPDATE: As you might expect, Scottish Unionist has more.

RBS is Nationalised

The big news, obviously, is the collapse of RBS as an independent entity, now that the government is going to pump in as much as £20bn and take 60% of the company. In the long-run this is probably a good deal for taxpayers. At least in as much as that 60% ought to bring a return once (if) healthier times return.

Still, it is a stunning fall from grace for RBS. And for Scotland. The financial implications are one thing, so too the political and, just as importantly, the psychological impact. It's not a coincidence that Alex Salmond was always quite happy to let folk know he had once been an oil economist at RBS. Equally, the battle between RBS and the Bank of Scotland to buy the English giant Natwest was a significant moment in modern corporate and psycho-political history. This was Scotland ascendant. Confident. On the march. No more would Scottish firms be snapped up by foreign or English predators, instead they would be sailing the high seas looking for bootie themselves. In the new global economy, distance didn't matter so much and Scottish firms could compete with their London and international peers. Oh, heady day!

True, the Bank of Scotland was forced into an unhappy- and, as it proved, dangerous - forced marriage with Halifax once it lost the battle for NatWest to its Edinburgh rival. But at least the HBOS HQ was, at least notionally, in Edinburgh. And anyway, there was RBS sailing off into the distance. Heck, their American interests alone made them one of the top ten banks in the US. Then there was a deal with the Bank of China. The bank's ambitions new no boundaries. RBS was a whale; a high-roller wlecome anywhere there was mone to be made. The fifth largest bank in the world, according to some measures.

And then there was ABN-Amro. RBS initially wanted the Dutch giant's American operations. But those had been promised to Bank of America. So RBS, confident in its ability to do, well, anything, switched targets and decided to carve-up what remained in alliance with Fortis and Santander. The cost? £49bn. Even some of the tough guys at RBS's Gogarburn HQ blinked once or twice before swallowing this.

And it has been a disaster. Unravelling and restichting ANB-AMRO has proved hideously expensive and complicated. Add this to the dangers of the bank's exposure to "toxic debt" in America and there's a cocktail too bitter for anyone to swallow. Perhaps RBS could have survived one or other of these calamities. But not both. The shareprice fell 90% in a year. Even a successful rights issue - the largest ever - couldn't make much of a difference.

So here we are. (Note too, that Fortis, an ABN-Amro co-conspirator, has also been nationalised.) What's going to happen next? Well, one consequence of this, I suspect, is that it has made a referendum on Scottish independence in 2010 less likely. Not because I think that an independent Scotland would necessarily have been wiped out by recent events, but because confidence matters enormously and confidence has taken a hell of a beating lately. What's more, if the UK government controls two of the country's most significant financial institutions, I suspect there are plenty of people who will not wish to upset anything or take on fresh risk for a while yet. That is to say, the mood may not be so favourable to the nationalists as it has been recently. The status quo may not be so intolerable either, not while the UK acts as the gurantor of last resorts, just as it did, in effect, back in 1707 in the aftermath of the Darien fiasco.

Where will it all end? Whae can tell? But there's a new tune all of a sudden.

Financial Crisis: Cui Bono?

Unionists of course. That. at any rate, is Alan Cochrane's argument in the Telegraph today.

With his acknowledged acumen in this field, Mr Salmond has tried to put himself at the very epicentre of this crisis but with every day that passed he has looked more and more like a spear carrier in a major production being directed by people altogether more powerful than he.

HBOS and RBS may have their brass plates in Scotland, but the measures needed to cope with the crises afflicting them required action on a scale far outwith the capabilities of one small nation. Mr Salmond’s actions have looked increasingly puny, revealed for what they are — mere whistles in the dark of a global disaster...

With the oil price shooting up and down like a yo-yo, it has already been difficult to see how the SNP can base Scotland’s economic future on North Sea Oil revenues. Gordon Brown, who faces a difficult by-election in his own back yard four weeks today, will be hoping that the banks’ fate — unhappy and unsettling though it undoubtedly is — will prove to be another nail in the separatists’ coffin.

It's an ill-wind that blows nobody any good, right enough. And for sure there's quite a bit to this. After all, Iceland and Ireland aren't looking like such good examples any more. Equally, the current financial crisis does seem to offer some support for the "safety in numbers" school of political thought. This is no time for wee boats to be out in the open sea, you may feel. (Of course, nationalists would say that an independent Scotland would be sheltered by EU membership.)

Nonetheless, Mr Cochrane (a friend and former colleague I should mention) comes perilously close to advancing the case that the collapse of HBOS and, especially, RBS would at least have the cheery upside of denting the nationalist case for independence. Never mind, for a moment, that the largest and most important company in the country (RBS) would have disappeared. See the nationalists squirm instead! Now I doubt that Alan would want this, but he comes closse to making this argument. This is the logic that says my enemy's enemy is always my friend. But this is not necessarily so.

And it is also a narrow, negative view of the Union, that still sees Scotland as being too poor and too hapless to be its own wee player on the international stage. In other words, Scotland remains a palsied infant. Maybe she is of course. But if so then that's scarcely an enthusiastic endorsement of nearly 300 years of Union. No, the case for the Union needs to be made positivey and not merely by harping on what Scotland would lose with independence. Alas rather too often Unionist logic at the meoment suggests that they would rather see Scotland poor and unhappy and in the Union than rich and successful and "independent".

But then that's the distorting impact of the constitutional debate. Everything becomes a zero sum game that either aids or hinders the nationalists. This creates perverse incentives that do few folk much credit and no-one any real good. Maybe Gordon Brown and the Telegraph will take some grim conslation from the financial hurricane approaching Edinburgh, but that risks formenting an ugly backlash, blaming England and the English for mistakes made in Scotland. Such a backlash is likely to do more harm than good. As so often then, be careful what you wish for...