12 January 2017

New Year’s Greetings from North of the Border

Happy Hogmanay

By Antoninus

By the time you read this it may be mid-January. Never mind.  I still wish you a happy new year.  In Scotland we wish folk a happy new year until … oh, it seems like forever if we haven’t met them for a while: it may be a cautious exchange with neighbours in the street, a handshake from the boss at work, or for the more adventurous amongst us, a decorous peck on the cheek for the opposite sex. We are Presbyterians after all.

That’s not to say we’re immune from superstition.  This blond Sassenach has been pushed back across the New Year threshold more than once because of the requirement for a first-footer to be tall and dark.  And woe betide the innocent who provokes bad luck with a ‘Happy New Year’ before the bells without a qualifying ‘… when it comes.’

Still, universal amongst humankind seems to be the impulse to look back at the last year and forward to the next.  So here, for those with any lingering interest in events North of the border, is a wholly partial view of what was in Scottish politics in 2016 and what is likely to be in 2017.

2016 is easily dealt with.  We elected members to our own (some unkind souls say toytown) parliament in May.  The SNP lost their overall majority and form a minority government while casting occasional smiles at the Scottish Greens (nationalists and separate from the English Greens) in the expectation of their votes.  Labour are much reduced, as everywhere in the UK, the Lib Dems ditto, and only an unexpectedly rejuvenated Tory party under youngish leader Ruth Davidson provide a semblance of organised opposition.  On Brexit, we were too exhausted by our own existential ‘indyref’ in 2014, the 2015 general election and our Holyrood election to get as agitated as everyone else.  Afterwards, we noticed with a slight surprise that like London we were one of the few areas of the UK to vote Remain (by 63%).

That vote threatens to dominate Scottish politics in 2017, albeit in a different way from the rest of the country.

The votes had scarcely been counted when our first minister Nicola Sturgeon was flying hither and yon to seek common cause with others uneasy at Brexit. A quick flight South to touch base with Sadiq Khan, then off to Gibraltar, Dublin, Berlin and Brussels to see whoever would talk to her.  Foreign affairs are a matter reserved to Westminster under our devolution settlement but, never mind, off she went.

Her initial plan was not clear, but to be fair neither was, nor is, the UK government’s.  In the run up to Christmas the Scottish government published ‘Scotland’s Place in Europe,’ a 50-page document that voiced the unsurprising conclusion that Scotland’s best option was to remain in (they really meant join) the EU as an independent state.  Failing that, it set out a series of proposals to allow Scotland its own approach to the EU while staying part of the UK.  Three of her own panel of EU experts, including the British ex-diplomat who drafted the famous Article 50, have made their belief clear that there is no way the SNP’s proposal to somehow remain part of the EU and the UK is realistic.

Where does this leave our devolved government?

The answer is in a difficult position.

The over-riding aim of the SNP is independence/separation and the only way to achieve that constitutionally is another referendum. But recent opinion polls have shown the majority of Scots do not want that, at least until the UK’s Brexit decision has been implemented in two or more years’ time.  Those polls also show there is a consistent majority of around 55% in favour of Scotland remaining in the UK.

This is almost precisely the result of our 2014 referendum.  So in two years the appetite for independence has scarcely changed, and this despite the election of a Conservative government at Westminster and the gift of the Brexit decision to a supposedly Europhile Scotland.

I cannot see the fallout of the Brexit decision for Scotland in 2017 being anything other than a source of continuing grievance for the SNP. Their ability to do anything practical about it will be limited not only by those polls but by the UK’s government’s unwillingness to countenance another Scottish referendum (their agreement is needed) as well as the EU’s indifference or hostility to a Scottish membership approach when they have so many bigger issues to resolve. (Additional hint: if you don’t want Spain to veto your approach, don’t make common cause with Gibraltar or, as the SNP also do, with separatists in Catalonia.)

How the SNP’S opposition to Brexit will play out at Westminster, Lord only knows. The precise role of parliament is in the hands of the Supreme Court as I write and we still don’t have a realistic view of HMG’s intentions less than three months before their self-imposed deadline to invoke Article 50.  If nothing else, expect continued SNP grumpiness on the subject.

In Scotland itself, the SNP are in their third term of government, never a good place for a political party as ideas and energy seep away in what seems to be an invariable pattern.

Pre-Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon announced her government’s first priority was going to be education.  So it should be. Scotland has slipped down the rankings in the OECD triennial PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey to, the ultimate shock for Scots, below England.  This after a long ten-year school reform programme called Curriculum for Excellence initiated by a previous Labour/Lib Dem administration but carried through by the SNP that is now seen to be flawed and the subject of a major review. Meantime, although Scottish students enjoy fee-free higher education, a lower proportion from poor backgrounds goes on to university than in England.

Whether our opposition parties make the most of this and the SNP’s other weaknesses is a moot point.  Both the Lib Dems and Scottish Labour seem pre-occupied with ideas of a federal UK, something the SNP would only favour if it were a step on the way to independence, not a destination itself.  In the run-up to the EU referendum all five party leaders were united in declaring themselves Remainers.  And our parliamentary chamber, a semi-circle, was designed to encourage consensus.  Which is one reason the place lacks the drama and sense of occasion that Westminster can engender.

To end where I began, on a personal note.  Locked into our two camps (pro- or anti-independence) we avoid conversations about the issue, circling each other warily until we establish whether friend or foe before opening up.  Or not.  Is it the same in England with Brexit?  It’s all very sad.  It’s what nationalism does.

If you enjoyed this article please share it using the buttons above.

Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the ShawSheet