28 May 2020
Timing New Normal
Bin the Scots?
By John Watson
The slogan “the New Normal” has taken over from its predecessor “Brexit means Brexit” as a source of bemusement to the public. What does it mean? No, I understand that the word “normal” refers to some status quo which society will duly adopt. The problem is the word “New”. It clearly points to the future but when does that future start? Are we talking about “normal”, as it will be once the infection rates from Covid have declined to nil? Or is it “normal”, as it will be once the economy has resettled itself, either reviving or collapsing as the case may be? Is it the normal which will be established when the other uncertainties of our national life have been resolved?
A semantic question, maybe, but one with important practical implications because, as periods of change are inevitably destructive and painful, we would all like to get through them just as quickly as we possibly can. The Covid pandemic will alter British society. Sometimes it will be for the better, for example by boosting the rate at which bicycles take over from cars in the inner city. Sometimes for the worse. But the pandemic-driven changes will not be the end of the story because Brexit will follow and, if there is a gap between the two, order will then be disrupted again, destroying the very structures which citizens and businesses were in the process of erecting. The house of cards will be knocked down part-built and we will have to begin all over again.
The idea of having successive seismic shocks to our society, each with its own concomitant changes, is a very unattractive one. Would it not be better to have the shocks together so that, once the dust settles, people have a reasonably secure foundation on which to build? Whether that is at the heart of the government’s decision to press forward with Brexit as soon as possible, it is hard to say but certainly there is an advantage in getting the Brexit deal done before the readjustments from Covid have worked their way through.
But it does not stop there. If the aim is to create a patch of smooth water when “our new normal” can be established, other reforms need to be expedited as well. There need to be shifts of resource, from the old to the young and from the wealthy to those who are poorer; some of those seem likely to happen anyway and it will be no surprise to see a Tory government using the pandemic as an excuse to reverse its hex on tax rises and to remove the fixed element of the pension formula. More fundamental is another question. What do we mean by the word “our”? Who is “us” going to be? Because Scotland has long been debating whether or not it wishes to be part of the Union and we need to know whether the Jerusalem we are to work for is to be built on Scotland’s green and pleasant land as well as on the rest of the UK. A lot of energy is about to go into the revival of the North of England. Should we be focusing on Scotland too, or is their future something they would rather sort out for themselves?
In macroeconomic terms it probably doesn’t matter much. Losing Scotland would save the rest of the UK a great deal of money and, with the focus on new sources of power, the risk of losing some of the North Sea is no longer as worrying as it was. True, there are submarine facilities which are valuable to us but no doubt something else could be arranged at a price, and the move of naval shipbuilding south of the border would be welcomed by English shipyards. But the point is not really an economic one. We are about to enter into a period which will involve considerable sacrifice as the price of economic opportunities which we are going to have to struggle to create. It is a great and frightening adventure and the Scots need to decide whether they wish to be part of that adventure or whether they do not.
Whichever way they go, it really is best that they choose soon because otherwise they could add a third separate seismic change to their own society and also to the UK as a whole. And if in the end they are to go anyway, at least we would be spared the irritation, when the going gets tough, of hearing continual whinging from over the border.
