Former Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown, has called for Scotland to ‘stop obsessing about constitutional issues’ and get on with developing the economic performance and the social justice of the country.
The point is that the very nature of the new powers to be additionally devolved to Scotland ensure that there is no way that the train to major constitutional change is not going to keep running on the tracks to which he personally switched it through.
There is a passing irony in Mr Brown’s position – although it will not be a passing problem for his own party, which we will come to below.
Brown’s intervention at the end of the indyref campaign did secure some votes – but simply because he provided some evidence that there was some semblance of life left in the union, willing to fight for it. That put heart into the desperate.
The matter of his intervention was no less than a bribe that those wishing to support the union didn’t need; and that those persuaded of the rewards of independence could only have seen as a poor alternative to what could be gained by going all out for indy.
For these reasons we maintain that it was the fact and the manner – not the matter of the Brown intervention, that had a positive impact on the pro-union vote.
But the blinkered Cameron, Clegg and Miliband could only see the bribe as the winning ticket – and that it would have to be delivered.
Here Mr Brown made a signal error whose consequences have some way still to run; and will see his party in immediate if not permanent electoral difficulties.
Once substantial new powers had been promised by Brown and signed off in haste by the vacuous trio of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, there could be no going back. The SNP, led by then First Minister, Alex Salmond, quickly declared that they would ‘hold their feet to the fire’ to make sure they delivered.
And nothing was ever going to be enough for the nationalists who want only one thing – separation. This has been proved in the swift reduction to dismissal by the nationalists of what are powers so great that their ratification in law after the General Election will be the formal moment when the United Kingdom starts out on the road to what looks like being an accidental and unmanaged federal union.
The changes to come
Scotland is to see its parliament and government declared, along with Westminster, to be permanent institutions, so there will be no going back on Scottish devolution – although the same does not appear to be the case for Wales and Northern Ireland [and there would be political provocation if it were to be extended to Northern Ireland].
Scotland is being given powers to decide how it is elected and run – including the power to extend the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds, which would enable them to vote in the 2016 Scottish parliamentary election.
Scotland will add to its already asymmetric devolved powers:
- full control over income tax – bands and rates;
- increased borrowing powers, to be agreed with Westminster, to support capital investment and ensure budgetary stability;
- new powers, independent of the Department for Work and Pensions, to make discretionary payments in any area of welfare;
- all powers of support for unemployed people through employment programmes;
- the power to licence exploration and extraction of onshore shale oil and gas;
- responsibility for the management in Scotland of the public assets known as the Crown Estate, including seabed, mineral and fishing rights – with the revenue generated from these assets transferred to the Scottish parliament;
- the transfer to Scotland of half of the revenues raised in Scotland from the current standard rate of 20% VAT;
- control over air passenger duty charged on people flying from Scottish airports – although there are restrictions here on routes; and an eccentric privilege to allow Dundee alone to control this duty on incoming flights;
- holding public sector bidding contests for rail transport licences it awards in Scotland;
- the retention of the Barnett formula for the annual block grant, adjusted to allow for powers now transferred to Scotland – but adjusted to ensure that neither Scotland nor Westminster benefits;
Consequences
These powers create a Scotland that will be overpoweringly superior to England in its ability to shape its own circumstances, economic and social; and greatly superior to the other devolved administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland.
The powers to come to Scotland, added to the asymmetric powers it already has, will see rampant competition within the UK for the first time.
It is wholly to the advantage of the nationalist separatists to use the full spectrum of powers it will have to advantage Scotland as far as possible to the disadvantage of its partners in the Union.
And whatever pro-union voters in Scotland will feel on that isolated issue, who will not vote to support the SNP creating competitive advantages for Scotland, to the benefit of the Scottish economy and those who sail in her – and with no regard whatsoever to the fate of our longtime fellow nations or to the longer term costs and consequences of the actions Scotland will take?
On previous performance, it is utterly improbable that David Cameron, in the short time he has given himself, will come up with any answer to the English question that takes sensitive account of the complexities of this issue.
Below the endless threnody of tactical whingeing and complaint, the Scottish separatists will be exultant.
The rates and bands of income tax could be managed to attract inward migration of working age people from the rest of the United Kingdom – as Scotland needs urgently to grow its population – and Scotland has sworn to retain its free third level education system, to provide a mouthwatering volume of free childcare and is bound to run a more advantageous housing support scheme while enhancing a wide range of other benefits within its control.
John Swinney had already declared that he would borrow heavily to smooth the first years of an independent Scotland. He will do the same with the new powers Westminster cannot gainsay him on borrowing to implement, since this will be a spending administration for a substantial period.
The gamble will be whether enough can be established under the free for all phase to build an economy with the momentum of growth then to sustain the raising of taxes to pay down the new debt.
Distortion from party political self-interest
As things currently stand, while Scottish MSPs will vote on, for example, income tax in Scotland, Scotland’s MPs will also vote on income tax for the rest of the United Kingdom, which no longer concerns Scotland.
This is where Gordon Brown has terminally shafted his own party, in making it utterly impossible for Labour to hang to an eccentric and discriminatory advantage it should never have clung to, once Scottish devolution was established: the right of Scottish MPs to vote on English matters which do not concern Scotland since it decides the equivalents for itself.
The Labour party will fight to the end to protect those indefensible rights – for party political advantage – but this simply cannot continue and England will not now stand for it.
With Labour, until we see the outcome of the May 2015 General Election – traditionally holding the great majority of the Westminster seats in Scotland, the party has been able to use those votes to secure the imposition of its policies – and its budgets – on England, which is predominantly Conservative voting.
The Prime Minister, with his eye firmly on his own party’s chances at the General Election, has sworn that his party, in short order, will bring forward legislation for English Votes on English Laws. This is purely a knee-jerk response to the fact that English is waking up at long last – and angrily – to the extent to which the hash-up of the original devolution of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland left it gravely disadvantaged – and that it is about to be very much worse off now.
Whatever the Prime Minister proposes on this matter – just as what is being proposed and agreed by the main parties on unilateral new powers for Scotland – can only undermine the constitutional; stability of the union further. No one is paying attention to the stresses and strengths of the fabric as a whole. No one is thinking of how best to restructure the union as an entirety, to enable it to play to its combined strengths – the point of union in the first place.
The Financial Times has quoted Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Kings College London [and Mr Cameron’s tutor at Oxford] as saying: ‘This is very dangerous for the country, and the prime minister’s comments [Ed: on accelerating 'English Votes for English Laws'] make it even more dangerous. This is not the way to carry out major constitutional change.’
That is unarguable.
It’s case of ‘Scotland will leave if we don’t throw them this bunch of powers; and we won’t win the election if we don’t chuck something in a hurry at England, to pull a spiked ambush mat under the progress of UKIP’.
Heaven knows what sort of UK will emerge from the serial asymmetric crisis responses being undertaken – but it will not be streamlined or directionally purposive – and it will have internal tensions exaggerated not eased.
Endgame
The United Kingdom as a whole is about to take a roller coaster ride – blindfold, with no overarching strategic direction, erratic steering and no braking mechanisms except coming off the rails.
We will crawl out of this into some sort of mosh-up federation – but, as a united nation, we will have lost crucial time, advantage, stability and resources.
We are headed for a serious constitutional and economic mess under the guidance of vacuous party leaders who are prey to the keen-eyed and energetic raptors of UKIP and the SNP – who have one big chance to make a killing.
