Lord Smith Goes To Holyrood - where now for Scotland?

I promised (or threatened depending on where you stand) in my last piece that I would cover the Scottish Labour Party’s current leadership contest. So I shall. But there is no doubt about last week’s big story, so first we should take a look at the report of the Smith Commission and, more importantly, at what it means for Scottish politics. The Labour’s Party’s travails, and indeed the challenges facing Scotland’s other four Holyrood participants, now really have to be seen in the context of Smith.

The Vow which sank the Yes vote?

Last Thursday I toddled along to the Edinburgh leg of the Scottish Labour Party’s leadership hustings tour, of which more later. But one common theme emerged from all the candidates and from others present to whom I spoke during the course of the evening. The general consensus was that the Smith Commission’s report has the potential to be a game-changer for all the Parties at Holyrood. In particular, the task now for Scotland’s opposition Parties – and it is a shared responsibility – is to dispel the patronising SNP lie that in September Scottish voters were duped into voting No by the 3 Stooges Vow.

Scots who voted No were quite clear about why they were doing so – because they rejected the Nationalists’ politics of blame, grievance and division, opting instead for the continuation of a successful union dating back to 1707. The result on 18 September 2014 ratified what has for the past 300 years has been the settled will of the vast majority of Scots. It is high time that the SNP accepted and respected our decision.

How Soon Is Now?

Looking at Smith in the cold light of day after the initial frenzy has subsided, the report still looks a remarkable piece of work – a crisp 28-page Agreement to which all five Holyrood parties have signed up, setting out proposals more radical than anyone expected. The Labour-leaning Daily Record, where the original and much misrepresented Vow was published a few days before the Referendum vote, was unequivocal last Friday – Vow Delivered. More considered assessments from the rest of the media, both in Scotland and in the UK as a whole, have broadly agreed that Lord Smith has come up with the goods and that it is up to Holyrood now to make the package work. On time, on budget and to specification, as they say in the trade.

Predictably, the social media’s increasingly desperate rump of Glorious 45ers are doing their best to trash Smith’s recommendations. The separation camp’s new propaganda sheet, the National (or as it was quickly dubbed by No wags, McPravda) surprised no-one by dismissing Smith as a betrayal of the Vow. This week’s Sunday Herald is also calling foul because some of the UK Parties were apparently unprepared to concede the devolution of certain powers. I don’t see that as a man bites dog story, or worth an iota of outrage. The process is called negotiation, and the outcome is called compromise. It is how politics at its most effective works.

But I can’t comment in detail on the Sunday Herald’s piece because I haven’t actually read it. I stopped taking the Herald a while back. I don’t object to the SNP having a house journal but I am not going to pay good money for it.

Sign today, whine tomorrow

John tells Lord Smith what he thinks of his report

The most peculiar spectacle of publication day was the behaviour of senior SNP figures. John Swinney and Linda Fabiani (the SNP’s representatives on the Smith Commission), Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Question Time and Pete Wishart at Westminster all spent Thursday moaning about the perceived inadequacy of Smith’s conclusions. The usual suspects quickly fell into line behind them with sound-bites from the SNP crib sheet.

Ex-First Minister Alex Salmond was at his bumptious worst on Andrew Neil’s This Week programme, shouting down both Neil and Michael Portillo when they dared to suggest that Scots had got pretty much what the Vow had said they would get. Unfortunately Salmond’s tiresome allegations that it was the biased BBC wot lost the Referendum for him have not motivated him to boycott the broadcaster. Since 18 September 2014 the SNP generally have got about as much uncritical coverage as the Queen Mother’s funeral.

This Charming Man

Salmond - on the Spectator's menu

Salmond was fresh in the BBC studios from an earlier appearance at a Spectator lunch where he was receiving that magazine’s award as their Politician of the Year, presumably on the grounds that he was the only Scottish politician which the determinedly right-wing Spectator demographic could actually recognise or name. Obviously there are some Tories with whom Alex Salmond has no problem rubbing shoulders, particularly where a good lunch is going gratis.

Salmond concluded that acceptance speech (which was received more with a tsunami of resentment than a wave of affection, according to one wit who was there) to the audience at the event by sitting down and blowing his nose on a hankie bearing a St George’s Cross. Classy.

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

The attitude of the senior SNP figures towards Smith is baffling and contradictory. Smith’s powers, runs the SNP orthodoxy, come nowhere near what the people of Scotland were promised and expected. Scotland has been betrayed, they howl.

The SNP and the new First Minister seem to preface all their statements now with the claim that they are “speaking for Scotland”. Given that the SNP are a Party who, having been voted into Holyrood by a mere 23% of the Scottish Electorate, then called an Independence Referendum which they then lost badly because they could only persuade 37% of the Scottish Electorate how unfree they were, they can’t really be said to "speak for all Scots”.

But more importantly the SNP, with the other four Holyrood Parties, had freely signed up to Smith the day before they decided to advise Scotland how much they had been betrayed. Didn’t John and Linda tell Nicola what was actually in Smith before she wandered into Holyrood’s debating chamber to face off MSPs at First Minister’s Questions? Didn’t they keep their Leaderene apprised, as negotiations proceeded and the inevitable political compromises were made, as to what they were signing up on behalf of the SNP? If the SNP thought Smith’s package was so unacceptable, why didn’t they just walk away from the Commission?

Agreements? We don’t need no stinkin’ agreements

The SNP’s general attitude towards those cross-party and cross-Parliament agreements which are part and parcel of UK political life is not a particularly mature one. They reneged on the Edinburgh Agreement as soon as they had lost their Referendum, and the promises which they had made to respect the Referendum’s result became inconvenient. Similarly they are now dissing and distancing themselves from Smith before the ink of their own signatures on the document has dried.

Nicola Sturgeon’s petulant beef that Smith does not give the SNP the full powers they wanted is technically accurate. But that is a long way from their claim that it does not give the Scottish people what we wanted. Which “Scottish people” is that, Nicola? Does it include the 2.1m who voted No only two months ago, or are you talking only for your Glasgow Hydro fan club?

Ms Sturgeon speaks for Scotland - well, some of it anyway

The powers which the SNP were demanding would have been commensurate only with full independence. Full independence was never on offer from Smith. Nor was full Home Rule, whatever throwaway comments Gordon Brown may have made towards the end of an increasingly ill-tempered Referendum debate. Not on offer either was Devo Max, that much over-used term which is so freely bandied about but has never actually been defined or delimited.

And the reason none of those package was on offer is simple enough - as the SNP have consistent trouble remembering or admitting, they can’t have the powers of full independence because back in September 2.1m Scottish voters stated that they did not want to separate from the UK. You lost, guys – remember?

What was on offer was “substantial new powers”, and as everyone bar the SNP and wee Patrick Harvie’s Green duo pretty well agree, those substantial new powers have been delivered. It is now up to all Parties, and particularly up to the SNP as the Party currently in power at Holyrood, to take the Smith recommendations through to a conclusion. Maybe then we will see a Scottish Government ready to take on board its responsibility to govern Scotland and to use effectively the substantial new powers, along with the substantial old powers which they already have but have never bothered to use, to make Scotland better.

(What’s so funny ‘bout) Peace Love and Understanding)?

That none of the Parties have secured everything they wanted from Smith is hardly surprising. Holyrood comprises five Parties with very different ideologies, so of course their demands were all different too. But remarkably in Scottish politics, all Parties appear to have made concessions in a spirit of consensus, and a workable compromise has been reached. Scottish Labour in particular made a significant and generous concession on tax-raising powers to ensure that agreement was possible.

So it would have been nice to think that having made an historic agreement, all Parties would stick to it. But the SNP seem determined to use the remainder of their term at Holyrood to continue fostering the mean-spirited division which has been a feature of their preceding 7 years in power. When she took up office, we had pious words from the new First Minister about leading a Government for all Scots. It now appears that what she really meant was for all Scots who voted Yes in the recent Referendum. The other 63% of us don’t count for much.

Lord Smith’s modest post-publication line is that he was just the referee. But a quick scan of the Report’s 28 pages shows that he has done a fine job both of facilitating a consensus and of setting the conclusions down on paper in concise lawyer’s prose. He deserved a better acknowledgement of his contribution than he got from the SNP and Greens, whose representatives pointedly sat on their hands which others generously applauded at the end of his presentation on Thursday.

What Difference Does It Make?

Smith has moved this current Holyrood administration into a new phase, albeit they are going there extremely unwillingly and not without their usual litany of grudge, grievance and blame. Scotland has had 7 years of legislative stalemate while the SNP has pursued its only real policy, independence. That project is dead. Smith has given Holyrood a raft of sweeping new powers. Holyrood already had extensive powers which the SNP have largely refused to use. So it is put up or shut up time for the SNP Government. You wanted more powers, you got more powers. Now let’s see you do the job for which you were elected, which is to run the Scottish Government, not pursue a never-ending campaign for separation.

One way to get Indy off the Agenda for a generation

But where Scotland goes from here depends very much now on the other Parties’ determination and ability to hold Sturgeon’s Government to account. Last week she set out her legislative priorities for the next 12 months. In truth much of it is pretty thin stuff, and most of it would have been tackled long before now by a Government which cared more about Scots and Scotland than about their fantasy of creating the new Brigadoon.

But there are still good things for which legislation is needed. It is now up to the Holyrood opposition, and in particular up to a Scottish Labour Party which needs to re-invigorate itself pretty rapidly if it is to stay in the game, to make sure that SNP feet are held to the fire which Salmond wanted to light at Westminster - but which in the event proved not to be required.

Will the Murphy be bitter?

As anyone who has not just returned from Mars is aware, the No camp’s resounding Referendum victory has been obscured by the embittered departure of Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont. Scottish Party members are currently being balloted on her replacement, and some time after 10 December 2014, Scotland will know whether Jim Murphy, Neil Findlay or Sarah Boyack will lead Scottish Labour into the 2015 General Election and the 2016 Holyrood Election. The bookies’ favourite as I write this is Jim Murphy, but as the voting system is the same Electoral College which gave the UK Party Ed Milliband, nothing is certain.

Although the Edinburgh leg of the Scottish Labour Party’s leadership hustings which I attended last Thursday lacked the pizazz of last week’s SturgeFest 2014 at the Glasgow Hydro, in its own modest way it showed a bit of the same passion. No-one would deny that Scottish Labour is not currently in great shape, but those wishful thinkers who predict the Party’s imminent interment may find that its death has been exaggerated. Certainly those Party members present last Thursday showed both a clear understanding of Scottish Labour’s current predicament and a commendable honesty about the remedial action required.

Panic

Scottish Labour’s latest internal crisis is almost wholly self-created. The Party should currently be riding high: capitalising on a thoroughly convincing Referendum win; attacking the SNP for 7 years of stagnation while they ran the Scottish Government as the campaign HQ for their Indy campaign; attacking their hypocrisy on Child Poverty and the National Health Service; and pointing out that their fantasy oil economics make them the real liars of the Indy campaign. Instead the Party’s disarray has allowed the SNP to position themselves as victims and winners - history as farce and tragedy all at once.

But the decline of the Scottish Labour Party is not a recent phenomenon. The signs have been there really since the death of Donald Dewar, but the serious rot set in after the close and unexpected 2007 result. A more vigorous opponent than Labour’s Jack McConnell, who post-defeat resembled nothing so much as a rabbit trapped in the headlights, would have been ridiculing Salmond’s people for their hubris. Instead, Scottish Labour MSPs (and remember that there were only four fewer of them), clearly shell-shocked by their fall from grace, stayed supine and allowed Salmond to make damn sure that his version of political history was written by the victors.

The following period of complacency and failure to read the political runes has done damage to Scottish Labour. Having set up the two-tier system at Holyrood, the Party’s subsequent refusal to use the List pragmatically has turned difficult Election years into Russian roulette for the Party’s experienced hands. The SNP showed how it should be done – protect your biggest beasts at all costs, nurture new List names and build their profile, then move them to the front line in due course. Not rocket science - but Scottish Labour still got it very wrong.

There is a Light Which Never Goes Out

But all is not doom and gloom. Despite the hubris of the partying Glorious 45ers as they celebrate their defeat, there is no evidence to suggest that if the Referendum was re-run today, the result would be any different. If anything, the No vote looks to be hardening in the face of what is, to many, irritating and unjustified triumphalism by the SNP. A defeated team won’t win a replay by calling the winners cheats and fools.

The Glasgow Hydro Sturgefest 2014 may have been fun for the 12,000 who turned up to the First Salmondonian Freedom Mission to worship at the feet of the Blessed St Nicola the Divine, but the average voter (and as the 18 Sep 2014 turnout showed, there are a lot of average voters out there) was bothered, not a little bewildered and not in any way bewitched by the whole absurd circus. Once upon a time, a wee band from Edinburgh called the Bay City Rollers attracted hordes of screaming fans, and they too were draped in tartan - even more tartan than Ms Sturgeon. Like most fads, that didn’t last. Whether it lasts for Nicola remains to be seen.

How deep is your love?

Scottish Labour’s problems do admittedly run a bit deeper than who should be taking over at Holyrood, as the clutch of Party notables who quickly ruled themselves out of the contest to inherit the poisoned chalice worked out for themselves. Sure, the Scottish Party needs reformed and, sure, its relationship with the UK Party needs to change, though as Labour remains a UK Party and will always be vulnerable to the Nats’ anti-Westminster jibes, they perhaps need to learn how to make a virtue of that necessity.

Nor is the Scottish Party’s malaise the whole story. If there existed among UK voters a serious perception that Labour was in a strong position to oust the deeply unpopular Tory/Lib Dem coalition in 2015, a lot of the noise around the Scottish succession would matter a lot less. But whatever the polls may be saying, and they are increasingly good overall for Labour despite Ed Miliband’s disastrously bad press over the past few weeks, the voter belief just isn’t there.

We can win in 2015

Most voters sympathetic to the Labour cause agree that Ed is a good person. But he doesn’t look like a strong leader. And he just doesn’t look like a Prime Minister in waiting. One of Johann Lamont’s beefs as she flounced out the door of the leader’s office was that Ed didn’t understand Scottish politics. The problem is that to many voters he doesn’t show much sign of understanding UK politics either.

I know that some of the above reads rather negatively. But when you are struggling to crawl out of a hole, it is not enough just to stop digging. A bit of honesty about the hole’s depth and dimensions is also helpful. A good starting point would be if the Party’s spokespeople stopped panicking and recognised that despite the hubris of the losers’ club, 63% of the Scottish electorate have no problem continuing under Westminster rule.

It’s not about the Manifesto, guys

Those members with a vote in Labour’s leadership election perhaps want to consider carefully what kind of leader the Scottish Party needs. The Party’s moral majority will probably feel slighted by the next bit, but I’m letting you into an open secret here - the Party’s current crisis does not spring from the fact that there is a policy vacuum, or from a voter perception that the Party is “not left enough”.

Certainly the Party has over a period of years failed to articulate its core values, or even to define those core values, indulging instead in a series of short term gimmicks. But those Labour purists who think all can be well if only the Party’s manifesto is Bennite enough are at best misguided. The lack of a political strategy has not harmed the Party’s Nationalist opponents - one trick ponies who have flogged to death that one trick, independence as the magic bullet cure for all Scotland's ills.

In an ideal world, we all want to see nuclear weapons multilaterally banished for ever. But cancellation of Trident is not an issue foremost in the minds of the average voting Joe or Jane on the top deck of the No 31 bus. These are people who want clear, understandable messages on the NHS, on schools, on housing, on jobs. They need to be convinced why Scottish Labour will deliver on their everyday priorities, while the SNP can’t or won’t do so while they drag Scotland down another four years of fruitless constitutional wrangling. There is no appetite for a Neverendum.

These voters also need to be reminded that a Party which has failed to deliver anything in the way of Social Justice for the past seven years in Holyrood is probably not going to make a much better fist of it in the next four.

This is not 1980. Scotland is not stuck in a re-run of Life on Mars. The priority is not a clutch of right-on Socialist policies to gladden the heart of the Party’s Lentilista wing. Scottish Labour did not lose the confidence of Scotland because the Party lacked the correct package of Socialist policies. Labour has lost so much ground because Scottish voters no longer believed the Party had the competence, unity or will to form an effective Government. So the task of the new leader, whoever he or she may be, is to convince voters that Scottish Labour can once again be something better than clueless, rudderless and leaderless.

Oscillate Wildly

The next big day out for Scottish voters is the General Election in 2015. Voters need to be convinced that sending SNP MPs to the Nats' despised Westminster so that they can agitate for another Referendum will not do much for their standard of living.

Will it be Jim's job to fix it?

Making common cause with the other mainstream Parties should be a priority for the new leader. UK Parties working together saw off the separatist threat in September 2014. They must continue to co-operate to ensure that the threat stays seen off. You can deduce from my scribblings so far that I do not vote Tory and am unlikely ever to do so. Nevertheless the Scottish Tories’ Ruth Davidson has shown her not inconsiderable mettle during and since the Referendum campaign. And although it is hard to get over-excited about a Party which can fit all its MSPs into one black cab and still have room to pick up a stray drunk on the way home, it would be churlish not to mention the Lib Dems as well – every Parliament needs a Willie, and Mr Rennie too has been constant and effective in his interventions.

That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore

So there we have it. Scottish politics is settling into a more sensible rhythm after the Referendum frenzy. We are where we are, and it is not a totally bad place to be.

My own gut feeling, for what it is worth, is that that the Nationalist hysteria has now peaked. Post-Smith, Nicola and her chums are going to find it increasingly difficult to maintain their Scotland good, Westminster bad schtick. They are going to be increasingly exposed as a Scottish Government who talk the talk but walk a very different walk.

The SNP are presently going for the early gloat. Their prediction, based on a couple of now-outdated Internet polls, is of SNP landslides in both 2015 and 2016. But many of us remember their Free in 93 boast. Their hubris can only be realised if the UK Parties fail to give voters the realistic alternative which is badly needed after 7 years of a virtual Scottish one party state.

And the message is an unsubtle one. If you don’t want another five years of Neverendum, economic stagnation and the Westminster blame game - vote whatever it takes to oust the SNP in 2015 and 2016. There will be time enough to argue amongst ourselves about which socially just angels to balance on the head of the pin when we get our Parliament back. The immediate priority is to oust the Nationalist devil.