One Man, One Vote, One UK Result on the EU

/

     Yesterday, former SNP leader Gordon Wilson raised the prospect of Scotland being ejected from the United Kingdom if it ends up providing the deciding votes for the UK to retain its EU membership in the referendum to be held on June 23rd. Specifically, he talked up the scenario in which England – with 85% of the British population – is “forced” to stay the European Union because of the potential for a strong pro-EU in Scotland cancelling out a narrow anti-EU vote in England in the overall UK-wide result, which is a scenario that the opinion polls have been consistently projecting.

     Such a scenario, said Wilson, would cause a “constitutional crisis” which may result in English agitation for a referendum on its own independence which would effectively dissolve the UK and cause Scotland to become independent regardless of whether the majority of its residents want to keep the Union going.

     This is total and absolute nonsense, just as is the long-running suggestion from his party that Scotland could be “dragged out” of the EU against its will if there is strong vote against the UK’s membership from the rest of the UK. Indeed, it follows in the vein of some in the SNP – as well as others, including English nationalists – to saber-rattle and stir up division amongst the people of the UK by hyping up differences and blowing them way out of proportion with suggestions of the different parts of the UK voting different ways on the EU issue and using it to suit their political purpose: the break-up of Britain.

     To be clear, Wilson has not stated his position on the EU and has warned independence activists against looking at the issue through “tartan glasses” in the hope that divergent referendum votes will result in a second referendum on Scottish separation from the UK, and added that the gaining independence as a result of the “Scottish remain, English leave” scenario would be “undignified.”

     Nonetheless, the fact that he brought it up fuels the fires of those whose mission it is to break up Britain and who would like nothing more than to play the grievance card by complaining about being “forced” to do this or being “dragged out” or “blocked” for that reason, all due to fact that Britons just happen to vote differently.  

     The SNP and those minded towards them have for years been trying to write off the EU question as the obsessions of Westminster, the Tories, UKIP, and the English. Not only is this cheek given their own constitutional obsessions, but it is a false premise given that around 60% of Scots are themselves “Euroskeptic” – slightly lower than the overall UK proportion – according most recent British Social Attitudes Survey. Nevertheless, it suits them to hype up the differences between England and Scotland, so as to further their independence agenda and claim that Scotland will be dragged out of the EU via English votes.

     However, it should not matter that England has 85% of the British population because this is a UK-wide vote. Indeed, if the result is a knife-edge, I would suppose that the half of England that voted for UK membership of the EU will be quite happy that the overall vote throughout the United Kingdom resulted in the maintenance of the country’s membership of the EU, if that is what it desires.

     In this binary referendum, just as with the Scottish referendum nearly two years ago, it’s all about one man, one vote, and everyone’s vote throughout the UK is equal to one another, whether they reside in Aberdeen, Liverpool, Swansea, Dover, Newcastle, Glasgow, Downpatrick, or Aberystwyth.

     Above all, it must be remembered that the question on the referendum ballot will be:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of
the European Union or leave the European Union?

     It will not say “Should Scotland remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, nor will it say “Should England remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”, and still further, it will not say “Should Wales remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” or “Should Northern Ireland remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

     Why is that? Because, in the most respectful of terms, none of them have EU membership; the United Kingdom does, and it should be abundantly clear that whatever the outcome of the EU referendum vote in any one part of the United Kingdom – however defined – it is the overall vote throughout the United Kingdom that matters.

     This means that an overall UK result in which English “Leave” votes are strong enough to take the UK out without a majority of the other Home Nations is perfectly legitimate, and the same goes for a scenario in which the “Remain” votes of the other parts of the UK are enough to keep the UK in without a majority of the English. Both results, as well as several other combinations, are legitimate as they will represent the majority will of the British people in their totality, and should not cause resentment on the part of anybody so long as the vote is conducted fairly and held to the highest electoral standards.

     If the vote in England is split roughly evenly and means that the results among the rest of the UK in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales may be decisive in tilting the overall result one way or the other, then so be it.

     This is why David Cameron – as a British citizen and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – has been and will be campaigning throughout the UK to press his case for keeping the UK’s EU membership (a position which puts him should-to-shoulder with Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP). This is why every vote in the referendum will count equally wherever it is cast throughout the United Kingdom, and this highlights the need for every eligible citizen to be registered for voting and then actually vote on the day that really matters. In this, the people of England will be voting alongside people who are not foreigners, but their fellow Brits and only the overall result matters. The same goes for the people of Scotland and everywhere else.

     As the results trickle in on the night of the referendum, they will come from each local council or district throughout the United Kingdom (save for Northern Ireland, which will be treated as a single voting area) one by one; perhaps the result from Wiltshire will be followed by the result from Midlothian, which in turn may be followed by the result in Anglesey, before all being fed into regional and national results leading up to the ultimate UK result, so that the results have no respect for the internal boundaries within the United Kingdom.

     As former Labour MP Tom Harris said of Scotland in the Telegraph, the reality regarding the EU debate and referendum is this: “it’s not all about you, Scotland.” Indeed, having watched as a “significant minority of Scots took to the airwaves and the doorsteps to explain their desire for a divorce from them” during the two year long independence referendum campaign, their “English, Welsh and Northern Irish compatriots have displayed a patience above and beyond what might be required of fellow citizens.” Now that the UK is having a referendum on EU membership, it should be plainly obvious that this about the United Kingdom as a whole and not about any one part in isolation of the others. Again, this goes for England as well.

     In the end, the issue of whether the UK remains a member of the EU ought to be decided on its own merits alone and the result should not used as a vehicle for other purposes – certainly not for breaking it up. Hopefully, as the late Labour MP John Mackintosh said in 1975, most people throughout Britain will focus on the main issue of EU membership. They need to think about the vote and the implications for themselves, their families, and the country in which they live – the United Kingdom – and go forward together with the decision made together as one.

Dugdale a "Closet Nat"? Not Likely.

/

“I was genuinely really sad to read today that Alex Salmond has signalled his intention to sign up Scotland for its own Olympic team. It transpires that he’s not even discussed the plans with his own cabinet, let alone had the opportunity to debate it in the parliament and seek the views of the Scottish people with an open consultation process.

During the election campaign, Tony Blair made a keynote speech at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange to audience of local business men, party members and rather randomly, Scottish members of the British Judo Team. One of my friends took the opportunity to chat to them and find out what they thought about the election. They were first of all, so proud to be part of the British Olympic team. They argued that the high levels of competition to get into the team made them work all the harder and made the result all the sweeter. They’d made great friends and travelled all over Europe together. The[y] had grumbles about the amount of funding their team got and hoped that Scotland would win the bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games so that additional cash came all the faster, but they didn’t want independence.

Winning the 2012 London Olympics was a British success, with tens of thousands of Scots demonstrating their support on the official website. I remember listening to the live result at work - 8 or 9 of us all hoarded around a computer screen struggling to hear the radio. We screamed and jumped with joy at the result. Such a fantastic achievement. I was proud to be British that day, just as I was proud to be Scottish just a few days before when the Make Poverty History march rode through the streets of Edinburgh.

Hosting the Olympics is a success that the whole country should celebrate. It will inspire the youth of today to become the champions of tomorrow and will also unite the whole country in a sense of community and sporting endeavour - I want to be a part of that as a British Citizen.

It’s not the colour of the sporting t-shirt that makes us Scottish, it’s the history, traditions, culture and beliefs that we share. I don’t need Scotland the Brave playing when we win to make me any surer of that fact.”

     This was written on May 24, 2007 by Kezia Dugdale on her personal Facebook page. At around this time, she was a member of the Scottish Labour Party’s policy forum, had recently served as an election agent for Labour politicians Sarah Boyack and Sheila Gilmore, was a Labour researcher at the Scottish Parliament, and would begin service as parliamentary office manager for Labour MSP Lord George Foulkes.

     The parliamentary elections had concluded just weeks before, and after eight years, the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition which had governed Scotland since the beginning of devolution had been dislodged by Alex Salmond’s SNP – with Labour as the largest party in that coalition falling behind the SNP by a solitary seat. A minority administration had been formed under Salmond as first minister, but Salmond was quick to put on a show that there was nothing cautious or minority about him, and among the first things he began talking up was the idea of a Scottish Olympic team separate from British one in time for the 2012 summer games.

     Such an idea was of course, ludicrous, not just because Scotland was (and still is) part of the United Kingdom, but because it came about only two years after the capital city of London had been selected to host the games, which effectively gave home field advanced to Team Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The whole country rejoiced – that is, except for the SNP, whom Hamish Macdonell of the Spectator described as “churlish and grumpy” with regard to their attitude toward the Games from the moment they were awarded to London, and further stated that it “took only one minute for the first snippy SNP press release warning that Scotland might not get its ‘fair share’ from the Games.”

     Now two years later, here was the SNP first minister of Scotland – thinking of nothing but stoking division and creating differences – proposing to break up Team GB at a time when most people were enthusiastically looking forward to a united British effort, including Kezia Dugdale.

     She is now leader of a Scottish Labour Party that has fallen on its knees – having lost a significant chunk of its traditional vote to the (losing) separatist campaign in 2014 and to the (winning) SNP in 2015. In last few weeks, she has come under criticism and even suspicion as she and her party head toward this year’s Scottish Parliament elections for what almost certainly appears to be another shellacking.

     Having already announced that the party is open to accepting members and parliamentarians who voted for independence two years ago, she recently said in an interview that it was not “inconceivable” that she could support separation in a hypothetical scenario where the United Kingdom as a whole voted to terminate its EU membership without a majority of Scots and if Scottish re-entry into the EU did not prove to be a difficult manner or otherwise unfavorable to Scotland. Then last week, it was leaked to the press that Dugdale had attempted to get a job working for an SNP politician whilst she was still a student at the University of Aberdeen in 2003. This, combined with the fact that her father Jeff is an SNP member has given credence to the notion that Dugdale is not strong on keeping the UK together and is perhaps even a “closet Nat.”

     Dugdale may be a lot of things, but I do not believe that she is a closet Nat or anything of that sort because of the influence of her father – who it must be remembered, was a Conservative long before he switched to the SNP, like so many others in the northeast who also abandoned the Tories for the SNP and turned once-loyal Tory bastions in Perthshire, Morayshire, Banffshire, Aberdeenshire, and Angus into the first SNP heartlands of the party’s modern era from the late 1980’s forward (and giving credence to the “Tartan Tory” jibe).

     For that matter, her flirtation with the SNP may have been nothing more than a student trying to get political experience with any party once she graduated from university. How do we know she did not apply for similar positions with the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, or Labour? The thing is, we are not supposed to know unless she wants us to know because such records of job applications are supposed to be private, which brings in the question of who leaked this information.

     That aside, it is also a possibility, as said by former Labour MP Tom Harris in the Telegraph, that “like most voters, she was briefly willing to give the other side a chance” before settling on her current party. Indeed, how many people have actually joined one party and stood for election with that party before joining and standing for election in another?

     David Mundell, the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland and MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale, and Tweeddale was a Young Conservative as a teenager before switching to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and serving as a Councillor for Dumfries and Galloway, and then switching back to the Conservatives in 1988. Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, the SNP MP for Ochill and South Perthshire, was a Conservative and stood for election in the Glasgow Govan constituency in the first Scottish Parliament election before having a brief stint with Labour and settling with the SNP. And of course, Winston Churchill went from the Conservatives to the Liberals and back to the Conservatives throughout his five decades as an MP. In America, Hillary Clinton was a Republican before she became a Democrat, and Ronald Reagan was vice-versa.

     So switching parties is nothing new, and in Dugdale’s case, it would appear that she has only ever been a member of the Labour Party. In that role and as an MSP, she was a forceful advocate of a No vote during the referendum to keep the UK together, and she has since repeated that Scotland was right to turn down separation because of the benefits of being part of the United Kingdom, which are ever more apparent because of the dramatic collapse of oil prices, and has ruled out another referendum if Labour forms the next Scottish Government. In fact, she made it clear in that interview that she would prefer for Scotland to remain part of the UK and for the UK to retain its EU membership, and implied that if in the event of the UK leaving with EU without a majority of Scottish voters, she would stick with Scotland being part of the UK if she believed the terms of re-entry into the EU were unfavorable for Scotland.

     This may not be the position of a convinced pro-Union person who believes that the UK ought to stay together in all circumstances, but we must remember that the majority of Scots currently do not fit this category and nor are they those who believe in separation in all circumstances. The majority supported keeping the UK together because they believed it was in their best interest and Scotland’s best interest to do so, as well as due to a sense of solidarity – in many forms – with the rest of the UK. Dugdale made this case two years ago because she believed it was the right case, and I believe she will make the case again if need be. After all, unlike Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP, her basis for supporting separation depends on very narrow circumstances, and it is likely that in the event of Brexit, keeping the UK together will still be the best option for Scotland.

     All this means that those who wish for the Union to continue in the long-term must continue to put the best arguments forward for the Union to continue, for there will be many people who may reexamine their position from 2014 and decide on whether to retain that position or go the other way should there be another referendum (hopefully not for another 15 years at least). This is where organizations such as Scotland in Union and United Against Separation are going play significant roles in the coming years to ensure that pro-Union arguments are made and disseminated as effectively and convincingly as possible, alongside individual efforts.

     For now though, Dugdale supports the Union and until she actually states otherwise, she should be considered a supporter of the Union, even if this is not her main focus. Indeed, she and other pro-Union politicians and activists must do all they can to focus minds on bread-and-butter issues such as taxation, welfare, education, housing, transportation, health, etc., because the SNP would live nothing more than to keep Scotland perpetually in a pro-Union/anti-Union divide. This divide must be broken up as soon as possible so that debates on the constitution can be replaced with debates that matter to the everyday lives of Scots and all Britons throughout the United Kingdom.

     As for Dugdale, she made it quite clear in 2007 that she was proud to be British and was enthusiastic about Scotland taking an honored place as part of Team GB and sharing in the sporting success with the UK as a whole. As such, she has used the hashtag #BacktheBrits on Twitter when cheering on British athletes on several occasions. Along with many Brits (including Scots), I imagine she will do so again during this year’s summer games in Rio de Janeirio as Team GB, with athletes from all across the UK, competes under the red, white, and blue of the Union Flag once again.

Losing Faith in the SNP?

/

     Yesterday, Darren McGarvey – known as Loki the Scottish Rapper – wrote an open letter to Nicola Sturgeon on STV in which he laid out his frustrations with the SNP and the independence movement, along with his intention to not vote for the party on Election Day in May.

     The letter consisted of McGarvey describing the harrowing details of his mother’s upbringing in Gorbals, one of the worst slums in Glasgow, and how she had to deal with alcoholic parents who could not look after their children – leaving McGarvey’s mother to take up the slack. He spoke of the disgusting filth and squalid conditions of their home, personal belongings sold off to purchase cigarettes or alcohol, the lack of privacy (in the old-fashioned way), the debt collectors, the drug dealers, and the disgrace of children being made to fight over scraps of food as a spectators sport for drunks.

     It was in short, not really a home so much as it was an “open-plan torture chamber where deprivation, in the truest sense of the word, was the absolute default position” and where “poverty had not only corrupted people, but left them grotesquely deformed.” There was no place to hide and no one to find for comfort.

     Without a support structure, McGarvey’s mother could not properly cope with life’s challenges, and would descend into her own bout of alcoholism following the birth of McCarvey himself. From here, he vividly described his own upbringing, which included being at the receiving end of her drunken sprees, watching her calm herself with drugs via needles, the abandonment brought upon him and his siblings, and generally living in a chaotic atmosphere.

     Eventually, he too would fall into a similar trap with alcohol and drugs which rendered him unable to look after his brothers and sisters as the family tore itself apart.

     Thankfully, he has come out of this, been sober for over a year, is back to being active in the lives of his siblings, and celebrated the birth of his first child. Unfortunately, his long-suffering mother passed on long ago at the tragically early age of only 36.

     McGarvey’s heart-breaking personal story is one that can repeated throughout multiple generations in Scotland, and it speaks to the sort conditions which have led to what he describes as a “desperation for change.” For him and many others, this was seemingly answered by the SNP and the idea of independence, and as he continues to speak to Nicola Sturgeon (as well as the rest of us), he tells of how he has been voting for the SNP since 2006 “because something radical needs to be done about poverty in this country” and saw independence as a means of “paying more than lip service to tackling the deep social inequality that creates the conditions for deprivation to thrive.”

     He explained that Sturgeon was the first politician he ever believed in, and now he finds himself disappointed in the some of the proposed policies of Sturgeon and the party going into the election only a month away – policies such as keeping tax rates the same as the rest of the UK and halving air passenger duty, which are “aimed at affluent communities who voted No in 2014” and “providing assurances more of the same awaits them should they throw caution to the wind and decide to vote Yes at the next referendum.”

     The result is that he wonders that if this is going to be the case in a devolved Scotland within the United Kingdom, what does the future hold should Scotland become – as he campaigned for in 2014 – an independent country? How can Sturgeon expect to get the well-off to pay more in taxes as an independent country when she, “the most powerful First Minister ever”, won’t ask them to do so now for fear that they will leave Scotland?

     He watches as the SNP pursues policies based on pragmatism and the need for votes from the middle classes, and he expresses his frustration at the party “cultivating a tolerance for low taxation coupled with moderate incremental reform, peppered with comforting social justice rhetoric that barely tweaks the status quo never mind challenges it.”

     For McGarvey, separation was not simply about “getting over the line”, but it was about achieving a new direction with new policies which spoke to urgency of dealing with poverty. With the new powers under the recently-passed Scotland Act, Holyrood under Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP – with a fresh mandate expected in May – is in a greater position than ever to act on many of Scotland’s generational societal ills in a way that the SNP (dubiously) claimed could not be done under the old constitutional arrangements. Separation may be desirable in the long-term, but it is not necessary now to achieve many of the goals of McGarvey and others like him who have “more than just a passing interest in social justice.” His life experiences have shaped who he is, and as far as he is concerned:

“There is no pragmatism where inequality is concerned. There is only action and inaction. If you can't make an argument for slightly higher taxes to a class of educated people who are fortunate enough to be doing well in a terminally unequal society then I already know what is required of me as a citizen.”

     He further laments that Scottish independence appears to be “an increasingly elastic notion” with no real substance behind it except aside from being all things to all people, which breeds centrist policies to maximize votes and not “scare the horses”, but which fail to even come close to the radical vision he and so many others bought into.

     For many of them who voted Yes in 2014 and for the SNP in 2015, McGarvey goes so far to say that the current circumstances present a dilemma; some – likely most – are so committed to the dream of independence, that they will look the other way and will continue support Sturgeon and the SNP in a “bold and unwavering fashion.” McGarvey believes that this dilemma must be confronted head-on, but in the absence of that, he does not believe that the SNP is worthy of his vote this year.

     His story and his view is one that is being repeated throughout Scotland: people who voted Yes because they believed that separation would bring the change they desired, and then voted for the SNP because they saw it as being the best party to deliver that change – in or out of the UK.

     They had believed that with separation and breaking up the UK, Scotland could pursue radically different policies than the rest of the UK. Indeed, they bought into the rhetoric that Scotland and the rest of the UK were so different in political and economic thought, that separation was necessary; they painted a vision of radical Scotland needing to free itself from the reactionary conservatism of Tory England.

     They had believed the rhetoric of the Labour Party being “Red Tories” who were too scared to offend the English middle classes with radical policies and higher taxes, and that Scotland was much more egalitarian and amenable to paying more in taxation to pay for more public services and reduce poverty. They believed that the actual Tories were the root of all evil (and all of Scotland’s problems – not to mention “anti-Scottish” in the words of Nicola Sturgeon herself), that the LibDems were lapdogs at one stage or another for both parties, and that the Union was incapable of delivering on progressive policies because the overall electorate was too “small-c” conservative and required the main parties to compromise and be pragmatic.

     Now they are discovering that Scotland is hardly as radical as they had believed, that the Scottish middle classes aren’t that different in temperament and political/economic values as their English counterparts, and that the SNP – when given the choice – will stick to the middle ground on a centrist platform which embraces pragmatism, you know, like most political parties which aspire to have power and achieve other political goals.

     For the SNP, their main goal has been and always will be separation and breaking up Britain, and they know that they will need moderate Middle Scotland to carry them over the line. So while it is convenient to use left-wing rhetoric to get votes from the Scottish Left and displace the Labour Party, the reality is that the SNP will not do anything to cost them votes where they matter the most. If anything, the SNP is doing what the Tories and Labour did during their periods of dominance in the 20th Century: appealing to where Scots are comfortable at, and that’s in the moderate middle, which again, is the same winning formula in most Western democracies – including the United Kingdom as a whole.

     These sort of points were made time and again throughout the referendum to combat that simplistic notion of left-wing Scotland vs. right-wing England, but it was a notion that proved intoxicating to many people, including Darren McGarvey. If anything, the SNP shamelessly used long-term tragic circumstances such as his to get votes for the independence cause based on the idea that only with independence could Scotland build the sort of fairer society where children would not grow up in dire poverty like McGarvey and his family.

     Again, this was countered by the fact that there is deep poverty in other parts of the UK – in Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, Swansea, Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Belfast, and London itself – and that it made more sense for the UK to stay together as a country in order to achieve progress together through common solidarity among the British people and the pooling and sharing of resources.

     The SNP slickly attempted to appeal to people’s fears and anxieties by telling them that independence would make it all better, and many – feeling they nothing to lose – voted Yes. Since then, they have stuck with the SNP, and as they watch to see the SNP make compromises to stay in power, some have become dismayed like McGarvey over tax policy. Others are concerned about the Named Person initiative, the lack of transparency in government, and more recently, the SNP cozying up to China. Increasingly, they are venting their frustration on social media, some are leaving the party, and prominent independence-sympathetic writers such as Iain Macwhirter and Kevin McKenna are warning the SNP to not forget the people and ideals they had brought to the fore in 2014. At some point, people may question the point of separation and ask whether it is truly worth it.

     But in the words of columnist David Torrance during the leaders debate on March 24th:

     That being said – and with Labour and the Liberal Democrats proposing tax increases – it is difficult to imagine the SNP not being in power once again – likely with another majority. However, there does seem to be a realization on the part of some people that the SNP and its vision for separation are not magic bullets that can solve anyone’s problems. The sooner this is realized by more individuals, the better, so that folks of all persuasions throughout the United Kingdom can join together to move forward to create the better society that everyone wants.