Thursday, July 31, 2014

Yes or No? The Idiotic question with the intelligent answer.

It really is a very stupid question.  Most Yes or No or in or out referenda are about getting popular agreement to a piece of legislation that is already drafted.  We would be voting on the result of negotiations, at the end of negotiations, on a detailed piece of legislation that was the result of those negotiations.  We are clearly not doing that.

So besides being a digital question in an analogue world, the fact that this referendum question is being asked how it is and when it is is the result of a peculiar set of circumstances that will be enormous fun for people writing a history or politics PHD, but that I don't propose to get into now. Time enough when it's all over.

I have said elsewhere, perhaps rudely, that when David Cameron agreed to our holding this referendum the options he had in mind for the Scottish People were that we either Shut Up or F...Off.

The option that was not on the table, (aside from devo max which would have won by a distance which is precisely why that horse is not in the race) was to talk about it.

Yes or No...you decide, he said.  But the one thing we're NOT going to do is talk about it.  We won't negotiate what an independent Scotland might MEAN in the 21st century.  We won't ask or answer any interesting questions about the prospects for the British State.

Most of all, we will not pre-negotiate.  We will not talk. About currency, about economics, about welfare, about defence, about Europe. We will of course then criticize the Yes campaign for not having the answers to questions they can't possibly answer unless we negotiate with them.  But that's just politics.

The crucial thing that the idiot question of Yes or No was supposed  to prevent was...talk.  Talk between us about democracy.  About secret agreements to renew Trident in the Holy Loch without discussion in Westminster, let alone Scotland.  To enter into trade agreements that will prevent national or international governments or trade unions from protecting workers and consumers, that mean that corporate decisions will have the force of international law with out any democratic oversight from anyone.

We certainly don't want to talk about that.

We certainly don't want to talk about the positive reasons that anyone might have for wanting democratic control of Scottish affairs in Scotland when we're doing away with democracy along with the health service and the welfare state as rapidly as possible in England and Wales.

We don't want to talk about how a Yes vote will shake the anti-democratic project to the core. We don't want to talk about negotiations with a Scottish government meaning we have to open the whole can of worms that characterises how power and wealth are distributed in these islands.

We don't want to talk.    We might GIVE you some things to keep you quiet if you vote no. (things that we can take back)

But we don't want to talk about how Britain is breaking no matter what the Scots vote for. That "Britain" is nothing more than an embarrassing historical hangover from an imperial past that is no longer sustainable or worth sustaining in the new finance led global economy.  We don't want to talk about that. We want to keep our eyes shut to that reality.

Which brings me back to the idiot question.  If we are not voting on the results of negotiations, then we are voting,( if we vote Yes,) for negotiations to start.

We are voting to recognise reality. The break up of Britain is long, slow but inevitable process that started a long time ago.

The debate in Scotland is not a cause of that broken-ness.  It is a result of it.  That broken-ness is in our crumbling welfare system and our subservience to gangster capitalism.  It is in our holding America's coat for them when they make terrible mistakes in foreign policy

And to vote No is to pretend that none of that has happened, to pretend that history isn't happening.  You'd be just as well humming Rule Britannia in an earthquake.

The real political meaning of a Yes vote is to give a mandate to start a conversation that can save democracy.  The real mandate is for a Scottish government to start the conversation that can save the best of Britain from the worst that Mr Cameron and Mr Blair and their ugly ilk have in store for us.

To vote Yes is to start the conversation.  Not finish it. To vote No is to disappear, to sign a piece of paper saying we, as a democratic culture, do not count, we do not exist.

We need these negotiations about the meaning of democracy and freedom.  Britain needs them.  Look at the papers.  look at our uncritical support for Israel.  Listen to our politicians denounce Putin while selling him guns.

We are voting Yes because we think we should be talking.  About all the things going on in Britain and the world.  We are voting Yes because we think it's time we took responsibility for ourselves.  We are voting Yes because we're ready.  We're voting Yes to be part of the world.

We're not voting Yes because we want to buy a big drill and cut ourselves off from anyone.  The powers that be may imagine the only possible reason for voting yes is that you're a red-haired maniac with a Mel Gibson obsession. It doesn't make it true.

And if we vote Yes they will have to think again.  They will have to look again.  They will have to treat with us as equals.

They will have to think!  They don't want to think!  They certainly don't want YOU to think.  Who knows where that could lead?

But we're voting Yes for democracy.  Yes for the chance of a decent society.  Yes for responsibility.  I don't think claymores enter into it.

Most of all, we're voting Yes because that's the intelligent answer. It may be very tempting to vote No to shut it all up, to pretend it all go away. But history doesn't stop because you ignore it.

I'm not voting Yes because I believe in pie in the sky.  I'm voting Yes because I believe in democracy.  I am voting Yes because to Vote No or not vote at all would be an unthinkable retreat from my responsibility to others.  Including my friends in London and in the rest of the world.

The intelligent answer is to talk. The intelligent answer is to negotiate. And a Yes vote is how we do it. A Yes vote is where we start.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/all-back-to-bowie-s


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The sad and ugly end of British Socialism


Look at them.  Look at what has become of the "people's" party in Scotland. Look at the narrow, ugly, sad hatred that blinds them to everything else. 
They only know their own resentment.  Their political ambition is that you and I share it.  That we should hate Alex Salmond like they do.  Because he stole their baw. They seem to actually believe that serving up their twisted souls for us to look at will serve them in this debate.  That we'll look at their hatred and think this is what "Better Together" looks like. They think that this is what a happy family of nations looks like.  
His manifesto commitments aside, I really want Ed Milliband to look at what and who he is leading, and just how contorted by their tribal loathing they are.  Just how deep their obsession goes.
And to ask himself. can I trust the judgement of people who think this is a clever piece of campaigning?
Have they considered what it means to win, if this is how they win? They are not only manipulative of the fears of their core voters, they are mendacious on so many levels.
Don't they know that they are burying themselves with this? That even if they win, they are being contemptible in how they go about it? That the means they use will overcome the end they seek? The Yes campaign is not breaking the Union. A union whose party of welfare and progress has been reduced to this is bankrupt of ideas as well as morality. It is already broken. The Yes campaign, it is becoming clearer by the day, is recognising something that is already reality. The resurgence in our already existing independent political culture evident everywhere in the humour and energy and invention of the Yes campaign embodies the independence that it argues for. We are not the cause of the death of empire or of British welfare-ism and solidarity. The death-hauntedness of the No campaign radiates from every word they speak.  They exhale the breath of the grave.

We are getting away from the corpse of the good things Britain used to stand for, which were once embodied in the Labour movement...because the corpse is beginning to smell. 
And this wee squib from Margaret Curran, this wee nugget of hatred and fear is what death smells like. This second rate provocation of anxiety in those very people that Labour's policy in recent years has been to ignore...while flattering and facilitating the rich in the hope of some handouts...this denigration and disenfranchising of their own supporters has rendered those voters confused, vulnerable and unrepresented. Not content with betraying it's own supporters and every principle they were supposed to stand for, these exhausted, venal creatures now argue that hope is for fools and social change is a pipe dream and a lie told by a demon called "Salmond." They find it impossible to conceive of the Yes campaign as being about anything but him.  That there is any reason to want change other than to advance Salmond's fiendish plotting...not for Scotland, but against them.
Paranoia, as Freud said, is the cousin of narcissism.

They think this is all about them. They want Salmond destroyed.  And that is the beginning and the end of their vision.  Their myopia will not let them see anything beyond the narrowest and most banal Party interest.  I suspect they barely know Scotland exists except as a property to be recovered from the man they think stole it from them.  I don't think they give a damn what happens to any of us as long as they can use our fear and our insecurity to "get" Salmond.
A No vote is incidental for them.  I doubt if they've given any thought to what it might mean for the people they represent if we weaken Scotland so critically at the moment before the whip of the anti-state, anti-democratic whip of austerity comes slashing down upon "their" voters.
Any more than they see a Yes as anything ither than a victory for "him" and thuis a defeat for them.  The benefits it might bring, if we all work together, the potential it might unlock in our people, is beyond their comprehension.
And when I look at them twitching with hatred and resentment and at their twisted attempts not to face their own moral and political failure, all I see is slow, ugly death. The sad, slow, ugly death of the British Road to Socialism. 
It's not just in the upper echelons that Labour have been corrupted by their embrace of the money changers. Even the footsoldiers are bereft of hope.
At best they are projecting their own venal, desperate helplessness on to the rest of us. At best they genuinely are pessimists who regard the "socialism" they still croak out at Party conferences in wee Scotland...as a joke. But I think their decay goes deeper.

These people voted with the Tories to make a law that caps spending on social welfare in case it interferes with the low tax, no tax plans of the rich, who are the only constituency they take seriously any more. They are using the fear and helplessness they helped to cause in our society to snuff out even the hope for change in the hearts of the people they so sloppily claim to love, as they cry their gin soaked self pitying crocodile tears at their abandonment of the poor to the privatised market forces to which they are the fawning acolytes. Every bit as much as the Tories, they are the Temple Whores of Capitalism
The political culture this field tested, focus grouped slime oozes from is one of decay and corruption, gasping it's last foetid breath. They insult me. They insult you. Worst of all, they insult the people they persuade against hoping for any better life.
They have no life, no hope, no energy, no integrity themselves. And they want us to agree with them that life is shit. They want us to endorse their failure to find life . They can imagine no life beyond the life they have already written off. They want their spiritual death to be the death of the rest of us too.
If they could articulate anything other than resentment of the life of others, I could respect their arguments. I have been waiting since the campaign began to hear a case for the Union that didn't rely on accepting and celebrating and using the worst things about people, and never appealing to the best. I have been stunned at how second rate and vapid and bitter they have been.

Is this Britain? Is this the best that Britain can offer.  The campaign for this sceptred isle has swung between carping negativity and overblown sentimental love bombs dreamed up after ten minutes worth of bored inattention in some advertising agency. It's stunning how little energy they can drag out of themselves.  It's hard to believe, sometimes, that they know or care a damn.  Which isn't great politics, let alone "a family of nations."

The irony is that there is better thought out, more sincerely felt and far better expressed affection for our neighbours on the Yes side than the No.  They have never got beyond the elementary cretinism of thinking this is all about them

When it's all about us.  Becoming grown ups.  Who will be much better members of exactly the same family of exactly the same nations once we are grown ups.

Anyway, I'm tired of listening to them. I'm tired of giving head room to the same many times repeated many times refuted terror tactics they are using on their own people. . I would find it impossible to live in any society if I thought as little of people as every utterance of the No campaign, over all these months, so clearly proves they do.

Damn them They are wrong. Human beings on both sides of the border are better than they pretend. England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland are not fated to be second rate, just as we are not fated to be supplicants at the rich man's gate.. We all of us have the chance to declare that we at least aspire to be so much better than that, and better than anything they have offered or threatened , better than any qualities they have demonstrated by their words and deeds in this debate. Better Together, in fact.
We will be better together if the relationship changes to reflect the reality of both the divergence of our political cultures, and the convergence of the creative and cultural continuing union of all the peoples of the Atlantic Isles.
Oh.  On the minor point of the currency, should it need saying again. A) we already have a Scottish Currency.  It's called the pound. B) After independence, we'll continue to use it. C) The rest is negotiation.
And looking in Margaret Curran's crystal ball.



Monday, July 21, 2014

Who Are the Scots?

"Who are the Scots? "


Those who live and work in Scotland - those who contribute to it and depend on it - are those who ought to have the governing say in who runs the place. These are the electorate both for the future and for the current campaign.  These are the people we say are "sovereign" - to be entrusted now and in future with our political decision making.


That is, we say that : - 

a) Scotland constitutes a "polity", a political entity, and that

b) democracy is in principle and practice the best way to run a polity. 

Therefore

c)  we ought to have an elected parliament in Edinburgh that can actually take the decisions on taxation and welfare and war and peace that the parliament of any other, "normal" political entity should expect to do.

We believe that if one accepts that Scotland is a real country, and that democracy is the best (least worst) form of government, then, within that definition,  a Yes vote is logically the inescapable choice to make.  We are, perhaps unreasonably, bewildered, frankly, that anyone thinks differently. 

To vote No on September the 18th you have to contend either that Scotland does NOT constitute a polity or that democracy is too good for it. 

Normality? What's that when it's at home?


We in the Yes camp argue, that is, from a position of what we perceive as "normality"  - not that Scotland is a BETTER place than anywhere else, but that it is most definitely a "place" and that those of us who live here ought really, normally, to make the decisions as to what happens here.

Our current political situation is not "normal." Normality is not normal.  It doesn't exist yet.  We have to argue"as if." That "as if" is both the strength and weakness of our position. But people in Scotland are beginning to look at "how things are"as being rather peculiar. 

The No campaign have been reduced, more or less, to repeated variations on a theme of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "why take the risk of change?" or "don't rock the boat". 

We can say : "Tell them that at the Food Bank!"

Or "Look at the level of child poverty in wealthy Scotland"

Or "Look at our disabled people being subjected to the agenda of "austerity plus terrorism" regime currently run by the now hateful and privatised government departments charged with their welfare. "

"But what guarantee is there that any of that would be better with independence?" is the question No voters ask.

And Yes voters should answer:  "WE are the guarantee.  YOU are the guarantee. If, WE, the Scottish electorate elected then re-elected a government that did this to our people, then hell mend us. But do you really think we would do that? The point is not WHAT we would choose, but the fact that WE would have the choice. And if it we found that a government wasn't to our choice any more, we could vote against the cruelty and incompetence and hatred were doing all this to us...and, unlike now,  it would make a difference. It would matter what we did and what we chose. The government would actually change. Right now, we can't do anything except complain about it  in the pub.  We want to make sure that our opinions count.  We want to make sure that YOUR opinions count. Come with us!"


Democracy too dangerous


The only real argument the No side have got is that democratic choice like that is too dangerous for us. The real powers in the world will punish  wee Scotland if we insist on our self determination.  In terms of trade, the EU, the currency...all that...a newly independent Scotland will find itself more less at war with the rest of the world, they say..and we'd lose. 

Underlying almost all of Project Fear is this very specific injunction that we mustn't vote "against" Britain, we mustn't vote "against" the neighbours because otherwise "they might hurt us".

This seems to be  a very negative opinion to hold of the character of the "neighbours" if you really think that their response to our self-determination and adulthood will be one of vengeance and spite.   Apparently it's not the nationalists who have a low opinion of our cousins.  It doesn't make much a positive case for the Union! Yes voters have much more faith that the rest of the UK and the rest of the world will behave pragmatically.

When I've been working in England, I find that most people don't really understand what's going on, but they don't wish us any harm - they don't think we wish them any harm - and they're sure "It'll all work out."

I expect nothing less of our neighbours.

As for us, I believe that if we say No to self government, it will almost immediately seem like an absurd thing to have turned down. This is because regardless of the product of the referendum, the process of the referendum campaign has established popular sovereignty in Scotland once and for all . 

Besides, as I've argued elsewhere, I don't believe that a No vote in September constitutes the foundation for anything like a sustainable political settlement. I think from philosophical first principles of democratic practice it is an accident waiting to happen.

Autonomy/self-rule/sovereignty - What's in a name? 


From first principles, then ; we, as free individuals, autonomous, "sovereign" individuals choose to pool our individual autonomy at our chosen levels of administrative convenience and democratic accountability.  

We do this in cities, regions, nation-states and associations of nation states. 

The new "normal" that has emerged during this campaign surely redefines "the Scots" as what, by any criteria, does indeed constitute a polity or nation.  We have defined ourselves.  The process of this campaign, and especially the huge popular swell of enthusiasm and hope and purposeful thinking it has unleashed all over the country and in every social sphere has entirely confirmed our perception of ourselves as being sovereign in our own country.

The future doesn't come with guarantees.  We know that.  But a Yes vote can guarantee  that the choice would remain in our hands.  

Are we really going to give that away on September 18th?  Are we really going to vote to leave the power in these islands exactly where it is?  Are we really going back to Westminster to ask for another a loan of political power when we have experienced having political power ourselves? Are we really going to vote to give all this away?  

Isn't it time to think about devolving power in the other direction.  To begin thinking, and acting "as if" all power comes form the people, and that we loan that power to governments of our own choosing?  Isn't it time to be citizens and not subjects? Sovereigns and not beggars?

Our cultural distinction as Scots is now entrenched not in tartan and shortbread but in how we read and experience the world every day.  We are already independent in everything except the name.

We are already a nation.  Not "again" but for the very first time. A nation in the 21st century. Who are the Scots? We are.  And we are not climbing back in the bottle.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Responses to Responses

It is very interesting and slightly bewildering that this particular polemic has taken ethernet wing…and has elicited some really interesting Unionist responses of a much higher quality than one gets from the papers, for example, most of the time.  They are worth checking out. 
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/07/17/dinner-with-no-voters-or-what-i-wanted-to-say-before-the-pudding-hit-the-fan/
The argument is all, of course predicated on whether or not one accepts “Scotland” and its electorate as a political entity or not. And it is a perfectly coherent logical position that it isn't and they aren't - which is what the roughly 20% of true British Unionists in this country can and should assert - that Scotland is not suited to running all its own affairs.
 (The same logic applies to all nation/states of any size, by the way – to Britain in Europe, for example. A “nation ” is something in which people identify an agency for themselves within the larger unit. Which is what is I think definitely is happening in Scotland…and may or may not happen in Shetland…or my house…If my bathroom declared itself independent of my house I wouldn't have a logical leg to stand on. But it isn't.)
Turns out Tam Dalyell was right all those years ago when he identified devolution as a slippery slope. Once there was an established democratic mechanism for mandating the government of Scotland …once individual agency and collective democracy are invested in THIS polity…then hang the “recovery” of Auld Scotia…you’re on your way to inventing a nation from the ground up – and what could be better and more empowering than that?
The simple rhetorical trope being that if you accept that a) Scotland IS a polity and b) democracy is the best way to run a polity, then you have to vote Yes.
To vote No from CONVICTION, I'd have thought you have to be convinced  either that Scotland is not a polity or that democracy is somehow inappropriate for it. 
I haven't yet heard an argument from the No camp that doesn't proceed from one or other or both of those presumptions, though only a few, (the best) will admit it.
I think the people with a genuine attachment to the British State have been shockingly ill served by the No campaign, which is so unconvinced of the virtues of the pessimistic, exhausted UK elite…that they have come up only with arguments about our unique incapacity for self rule…or to vaguely threaten that the rest of the world would be so ticked off with us that no realistic negotiations about anything would be possible.
The particular point of my piece was that, even for the most convinced believer in the Union,  we are well past the possibility of a return to status quo ante…that a No vote will also precipitate and cement changes already under way. . I really believe that a Yes vote will begin the disintegration of the power of that elite over everyone in these islands. I really believe they will use a No vote to entrench what English radicals used to call “Old Corruption”
Can, I at this point say a qualified "sorry" to any No voters who've taken offense at my tone., I' m sorry if you feel insulted or patronised.
 (Welcome to Our world!).
And I apologise if I’m sometimes intemperate. 
But I’m not saying that you’re scared. (Some of you said I said that you were scared) I’m saying that I’m scared and that I can’t see why you’re NOT scared. Just a little.
It may be that there was anger in the piece…I was rather angry when I wrote it. I had just been patronised, I felt. And , I was a little splenetic. But my point was very serious. I genuinely believe that if Yes voters are to be constantly leaned on for answers to questions about the results of negotiations that haven’t happened yet and which are being ruled out as impossible before they start, then No voters have to take on a little moral hazard about what happens when we take our single strongest negotiating card ( “we” being an assumed Scottish polity) off the table.
I also genuinely feel that as Gerry Hassan argues so well in Caledonia Dreaming, there has been an unjustified moral superiority at large in our political culture…an assumed left liberal consensus that shelters behind the irresponsibility of NOT being able to influence elections, a comfortable, self serving pre-democratic moral superiority.
And I am saying that this vote, this referendum, one way or another, blows that complacency out of the water.
We ARE going to be sovereign for those 15 hours. We will be responsible Yes or No, for what happens next.
I am unsure about lots of things about an independent Scotland. The future is like that. 
Are you certain about the consequences of a No vote? Do you really think we’ll be able to sit in the Caledonian smugness of it not being our fault anymore.
I really think we won’t. If it goes “Yes” we will have tough, grown up decisions to make about tough grown up stuff. I’m a little scared of that.,
But if we vote No, we will hand all the decisions about the difficult stuff to someone else…actually, positively, as a sovereign people (for 15 hours) choose to hand sovereignty BACK. Aren’t you even a LITTLE worried about that? 
Me, I'm terrified.
In the meantime, if you can offer me a coherent case for the Union that demonstrates the concrete advantages of the new situation that will obtain after September the 18th, then I really do want to hear it
And if you do win, I really hope you’re right…that we will be able to make social progress within the Union….because I will still be living here.
ps
Self rule is a project for everyone everywhere. The Yes campaign is part of what is happening globally. I’ve seen it. In the States, in the Arab world, in Turkey. Self -rule in the 21st Century begins with the individual, then we pool that autonomy in associations like trade unions and neighbourhood clear up schemes…or countries…nation states…or associations of nation states…as we, as sovereign individuals deem moist most effective and most democratically accountable. For me, right now, the United Kingdom of Great Britain scores very badly on these counts. I am hopeful that we can be better and do better…all of us…if we first decide to rule ourselves
pps
Finally, I had hoped it didn't need saying any more, but it clearly does: an independent Scotland for me, for many of us, is a means to an end. And genuine equity and genuine living “better together” on all these islands is the name of that aim.  By the way, the “they” I refer to all the time is not the English…it is the British elite, who batten on all of our necks. And the British elite are, as has been pointed out in many places, disproportionately Scottish. 



A New Union? Of Peoples, not Subjects

To reiterate from first principles: we, as free individuals, autonomous, “sovereign” individuals if you will, choose to pool our individual autonomy at pragmatically chosen levels of administrative convenience and democratic accountability. We do this in cities, regions, nation-states and associations of nation states.  Up until now, we have pooled some of that autonomy at different levels in Scotland, the UK and Europe, and in NATO.  
That is power, in the modern world, starts with us.  With you and me.  Choosing to work together for our mutual benefit.
The question before us right here and now, then,  is whether we think it’s time to extend democratic and fiscal control within Scotland and renegotiate our relationship with the other peoples and institutions on these islands and beyond. And do we do that on the basis of power being "devolved" in the opposite direction.  Do I choose, as a free individual, to pool that freedom with others...or do I treat myself as a subject to real power, and petition others, who have that power, to devolve a bit more of their power to me? 
Where does power come from?  Where does it reside?  
The power of money and guns, of course, is not strictly subject to anyone's vote, but might it not be that we need an alternative collective centre of gravity in our lives to balance that fiscal and military power, rather than ask favours of the powerful that confirm that real power, elections or not, stays where it is?
Again, do we choose to be powerful ourselves, and to come together to devolve that power into institutions?  Or do we remain beggars at the table, looking for a loan to keep us going? 
Are we content  to remain as subjects to an authority who lends us limited power over "devolved" areas within strictly defined limits.  Or are we brave enough to say that power, sovereignty, autonomy, starts with us, and that we devolve it to "them" ...to local councilsHolyrood, and Westminster, Brussels, Washington...as we see fit?
Does power go up from the people?  Or Down from the Crown in Westminster?
Do we now assert that as autonomous individuals we choose to pool our authority how we choose and in the size and extent of polity we choose?
And what are those levels? If we devolve our power, do we want a distinctive Scottish voice not just in the UK, but in the world?
If we started "as if" we were not subjects, but sovereign, autonomous individuals, as if it were our choice and our gift to elect to pool our autonomy in political units  so that we could get things done on welfare, health, education, housing, war and peace? If we could have a say in inventing a new nation through which we could be part of the world, what nation would we choose?
There’s a philosophical experiment I want to suggest. An imaginative exercise.

In a blind test,behind  a "veil of ignorance" as the American thinker John Rawls has it, (where you don’t know where you personally will end up in the hierarchy) would you invent a country that looked to the past (with its familiarity for good and ill) or choose, on the principle of autonomy, on first principles of justice,  to take a chance on something like the future?  
On the morning of September 19th,  if we have had the courage to vote not just for change (which will come anyway) but to engage with that change, to hold that change democratically  accountable,  we will have woken to take responsibility not just for ourselves, but for how we live in the world,

I think we will have taken a step towards a much better , much more hopeful, much more accountable, much more flexible, more agile set of social and economic and cultural ties across these islands and the world, than if we decide we’d really rather not.

And it’s okay to continue to allow Tony Blair, or David Cameron to offer their support to the power structures that they choose, that they inhabit, in our name.

I can't vote for that.  As a subject of the United Kingdom, I find it very difficult to form uncomplicated relationships.

But on the basis that I am a citizen of Scotland, and an inhabitant of the island of Great Britain, and of Europe and the world (and the solar system) I'm open to co-operation, to Union, with everyone.  I want to talk to everyone everywhere about how to pool our sovereignty for the common good. Anyone want to join in?

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Dinner with No Voters or "What I wanted to say before the Pudding hit the fan"

One thing that almost all of my friends who tell me they intend to vote No in September have in common is that they wish that this referendum campaign had never happened. They don't see the need for it.  They think it is needlessly sowing doubt, division and uncertainty at a time when nobody really wanted the debate to happen. They wish the whole damn thing would go away and be forgotten.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with that.  I am sure Alex Salmond does too.  After all, he didn't expect the Labour Party in Great Britain and in Scotland to collapse quite so comprehensively as they did in 2010 and 2011, and thus make possible the election of a majority SNP administration at Holyrood that was bound - trapped even - by history and manifesto commitments into calling a referendum that was not at the time of their choosing.

Where I take issue with my friends, who are still my friends I hasten to add, is in their imagining that a No vote somehow cancels the uncertainty and division.  That life can ever again be like this never happened. I think that to imagine some kind of "return to normality" is not only deluded, I think it is a positively dangerous complacency about the way things have already, irrevocably changed.
And more, how things will change after a No vote, as well as after a Yes.

Part of this change is positive, of course, on line and in the meeting halls and pubs and clubs, the Yes campaign in all of its participatory variety has revealed and unleashed a new and painfully hopeful democratic culture in this country on a scale and of a quality of thought and debate that I never would have expected.  I'm sure that my No voting friends don't really want all that to disappear and be forgotten

It has also raised, less comfortably, the spectre of the crying need  for genuine reform of the creaking, rotten edifice of the British State, and has revealed many less than attractive elements of its defensive, secretive, mendacious culture of self-interested pessimism which I'm sure that all of us, whatever side we're on, would rather not have seen revealed so pervasively in institutions that once held almost universal affection if not allegiance.

In any case, despite the devout wish of many in the BBC and the Labour Party, to name but two, that this whole question had never been raised, the status quo, as I've said before, may well be on the ballot paper, but it is not on the cards. A wish for a return to normal is a wish for a stability that is already in the past.

You can't go home when it's not there any more. Indeed, I would argue that a No vote will change the terms of that "stability" quite as radically as a Yes vote. A No vote is just as much of a vote for change. It is not only Yes voters who should be called on to look into a crystal ball and imagine a future that is radically "not the same"

Before my No voting friends dismiss that as a paradox, may I ask them to consider the following. 

Every vile piece of Westminster legislation that has attacked the poor and dismantled the Welfare State, every policy that has ensured that it is only the poor who have paid the price of the recession caused by the greed of the rich, every act of economic and social vandalism - it has been the comfortable posture of the well-meaning voters of Scotland that none of these things have been our fault.  That we didn't vote for them.

Well, we won't be able to say that any more.

Up until September the 18th, we have all been able to hide behind it all that being someone else's fault.  But either way the vote goes, Yes or No, that comfortable position has already been shattered.  Our moment of self-rule on September 18 only gives us two options: Either we vote to take responsibility for our own economics, our own wealth distribution, our own decisions to make war or peace...or we are voting to mandate away control over all of these matters to Westminster forever. 

Either way, we will be responsible.

If a Yes voter has to take on board the moral hazard of whatever happens for good or ill in an independent Scotland, a No voter must equally accept moral responsibility for having given Westminster permanent permission to do whatever it likes forever. Moral Hazard works both ways.

Whatever austerity measures are coming down the line, all those policies that weren't our fault before September 18th?  After September the 18th, they will be our fault.  No.  Sorry. Every single one of them will be our fault. This is the trap that history has set us.  And I understand your discomfort, my No votiing friends.  I understand your wanting to wish all this away.  But you can't. You're stuck along with the rest of us.

Except of course, (and I apologise for this in advance) we Yes voters are going to be really, really annoying about it. We're going to try to make you feel bad.  We will be unbearable.  Every single day, we'll be reminding you. When the Tories make a formal or informal pact with UKIP and win the election in 2015, despite having no seats in Scotland?  Your fault.  When there is a vote to leave the EU and Scotland votes to stay but we have to leave because middle England votes Yes?  Your fault.

Sorry about that.  But that's the way it's going to be.  In fact, I confidently predict that at dinner parties in Scotland in 2016 it will be impossible to find anyone who will admit to having voted No, so complex and disruptive and chaotic will be the consequences, so omnipresent will the border question be in every single dispute about everything. It will feel very bad to have actually voted for all that.

But my sympathy will fail me pretty quickly.  Because your No vote or your failure to vote will have signified that it in your view it is better for Scotland to suffer neo-conservative governments it didn't vote for than to take responsibility for its own affairs.  You will have voted for Scotland, politically speaking, to cease to exist. For Scotland, considered as as a distinct political unit, to disappear.
Now, hold on...is that fair?  We can't be expected to have thought all that through before it happens!

Well...Think about it now.  Alex Salmond, though he is deemed to be the source and fount of all evil, is not the only begetter of this referendum.  David Cameron agreed to it too.  Now why do you think he did that? Because he is a friend to democracy, perhaps?  Surely only a very small minority of No voters believe that.
No.  You know and I know that Cameron agreed to the referendum in order to call Scotland's bluff.  To settle and silence the "Scottish question" for a generation. Cameron only did that because he was confident of a No vote, of course.  But what else have the Tories, and others in the British establishment, to gain from a No vote?

I think they know that if we take independence off the table, if we remove, voluntarily, that bargaining chip from future negotiation, then there won't ever need to be any negotiations ever again. Everything will be in their gift.  For a generation.  And having actually voted for that, we will have thrown away any electoral influence over what happens next. We will have given them a mandate to ignore us.

Everything we have gained since devolution, in terms of the painfully slow emergence into democracy we are still undergoing has been predicated on the "or else" of independence.  Does anyone in the No Camp seriously expect a prize for loyalty when we remove the best card we've got from our hand? One or two of you can expect knighthoods, maybe, but what can the ordinary No voter really expect as a reward?  

The Yes camp are constantly being asked about what kind of negotiations we can expect after we "reject" the United Kingdom - on currency, NATO, oil, Trident and the rest?  Well, what kind of negotiations do you expect when you've said to other side; "whatever you want to do is fine with us"?

There I go again...being divisive...talking about "the other side". And we’ll still vote in our Westminster constituencies and for Holyrood…

Well, take a listen to the mutterings of the backbenchers from those English and Welsh constituencies who haven't had the bargaining position we've had, that bargaining position you're going to vote so happily to throw away, and see how long all those promises to protect the Barnett formula and add meaningful powers to Holyrood last.

David Cameron wasn't offering us a choice between different forms of democracy.  He was offering us the choice between shutting up and fucking off.  And fucking off might well have its difficulties, but we should be in no doubt that shutting up is exactly what is demanded of us if we don't have the guts to fuck off. 

A replacementfor Trident?  You don't want that?  Shut Up.  A slashing of consequential health spending as privatisation of the NHS in England and Wales speeds up?  You don't like that either?  Shut up.

You voted for it.

Before September the 18th, nice left leaning folk in Scotland chatting about the Welfare State and the decline of local government and the miners and the poll tax and the sale of council housing and the destruction of our industries at dinner parties  could say in their comfortable, pre-democratic way:

 "Oh well, it's terrible.  But it's not our fault.  We're not responsible. We didn't vote for that. "

No more.  After September the 18th, we in Scotland will be responsible for whatever happens to us.  Our choice is whether or not we want democracy to go along with the responsibility.

Right now, thanks to the referendum, however uncomfortably or prematurely, our future is, temporarily,  in our own hands.  A No vote is not a place to hide from that future.  It is just a vote to have no influence over that future after we deliver a mandate to whoever wins in Westminster elections to do whatever they like with it.

I hope you're comfortable with that, folks.  Because if you win,  I promise to devote every waking moment to reminding you of what the hell you just did, even if there are none of you at dinner parties in two years’ time who will admit to it any more than you'd admit now to being a Tory. 

Everything has changed.  Everyone has to face the reality of that. Our only choice in September18th is: Do we make the way we change subject to democratic control within Scotland, or do we leave the management of that change to whomever somebody else votes for. 

Because, my brothers and my sisters, as George Bush once said, democracy, with all of the adult responsibilities that implies, is coming soon to a place near you.  For the first time in history, for 15 hours in September, Scotland will be a democratic country, with its people responsible for themselves.

Putting your head in the sand of a No vote won't make it go away.

Monday, July 14, 2014

"Who are the Scots?" (21st Century Edition)

"Who are the Scots" is the name of a classic book by Gordon Menzies in which he traced through archaeological sources the ethnic and cultural roots of those whose migrations and conquests eventually comprised the medieval Kingdom of Scotland just in time for the Wars of Independence in the 13th and 14th Centuries.

And I'm asking the question again today partly as a result of having just got back from a whistle stop reading tour of the Czech republic, Slovakia and Poland, where I along with 30 other "Scottish" writers were invited by the Brno based publishers  Větrné mlýny to give an account of ourselves and what, jointly and severally we think are playing at. What is going on? they were good enough to ask.  Who are you Scottish people anyway?

Now, there is a liturgical answer to this question we've got used to giving in this campaign to do with a civic identity, that those who live and work in Scotland - those who contribute to it and depend on it - are those, we on our side of the referendum campaign would contend, who ought to have the governing say in who runs the place. These are the electorate both for the future and for the current campaign.  These are the people we say are "sovereign" - to be entrusted now and in future with our political decision making.

That is, we contend that : -

a) Scotland constitutes a "polity", a political entity, and that

b) democracy is in principle and practice the best way to run a polity.

Therefore

c)  we ought to have an elected parliament in Edinburgh that can actually take the decisions on taxation and welfare and war and peace that the parliament of any other, "normal" political entity should expect to do.

We believe that if one accepts that Scotland is a real country, and that democracy is the best (least worst) form of government, then, within that definition,  a Yes vote is logically the inescapable choice to make.  We are, perhaps unreasonably, bewildered, frankly, that anyone thinks differently.

To vote No on September the 18th you have to contend either that Scotland does NOT constitute a polity or that democracy is too good for it.

Normality? What's that when it's at home?


We in the Yes camp argue, that is, from a position of what we perceive as "normality"  - not that Scotland is a BETTER place than anywhere else, but that it is most definitely a "place" and that those of us who live here ought really, normally, to make the decisions as to what happens here.

Our problem is, of course, that our current political situation is not "normal." Normality is not normal.  It doesn't exist yet.  We are caught, possibly with fatal results to the campaign, to arguing "as if." That "as if" is both the strength and weakness of our position.  The No campaign are able to argue from the basis of what already exists , however incoherent and eccentric, and to say that "it isn't that bad, really."

We on the Yes side are assuming a "sovereignty" (to put quotation marks around 19th Century word) that we do not actually have yet. We are acting "as if" the power of political choice, of the pooling of our autonomy as individuals into the autonomy of the political unit we collectively choose, were already a fact.

The truth is, of course, that we are currently subjects and not citizens.  The Queen is the sovereign, as her ministers and soldiery will gladly confirm.  The people of Scotland will be sovereign in Scotland only if and when they take that sovereignty.  Sovereignty is being loaned to us for 15 hours on September 18th.  The choice before us, as Jim Sillars put it so memorably at the beginning of this year, is whether we choose to give it back.  Whether we choose, having had a wee keek at it, that having the power to decide our own destiny really isn't for us. It has been the confident expectation of the powers that be in the UK that this is exactly what we could be trusted to do.  We were Turkeys who could confidently be expected to vote for Christmas.

(This was quite hard to explain to Czechs and Slovaks and Poles...each of whom has their own culture of identity and history of self-determination to deal with.  On one hand, they asked why a nationalist wasn't wearing a kilt?  On the other they asked what's been keeping you all this time? None of them expressed the opinion that the forces of darkness would celebrate a Yes vote or that civilisation would in any way be threatened, by the by.)

The No campaign has notoriously entirely failed to put forward any positive argument.  But then, they never expected that they would have to.  They treat "actually existing conditions" and "normality" as the same thing. What has really, decisively changed in the course of campaign, is where this "normality" locates itself.

I think that people in Scotland, persuaded one way or the other or not persuaded yet, are beginning to look at "how things are"as being rather peculiar. That is, I think that people on both sides of the argument already recognise the principle that "the people as sovereign. But only one side is following through the logic of that recognition. Nonetheless, curiously, it is the Yes Campaign's starting perception of our current constitutional eccentricity and the "normality" of popular sovereignty that has absolutely prevailed.  There is only one version of reality we agree upon, even though our votes remain divergent. The "independence paradigm", as it were, I would argue, has already come to be shared across the board, even by those who argue against its political manifestation.

This being one reason why the No campaign never touches first principles with a barge pole.  It is in asking questions that require crystal ball gazing, demanding conclusions to negotiations that a) haven't happened yet and b) that they won't countenance any way (on currency and trade and border controls etc etc)where lies their lazily illogical, argument averse strength.

(I do sometimes wonder if their constantly appealing to the laziest, most fearful and illogical impulses of the electorate makes them feel...well...dirty at all.  But I digress.)

If it ain't broke, you don't need to vote to fix it.


The No campaign have been have been entirely flummoxed when asked questions based on positive first principles as to "What are the benefits if we stay in the Union?" and have been reduced, more or less, to a repeated litany of variations on a theme of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "why take the risk of change?" or "don't rock the boat".

These positions are of course rather undermined when one points out the level of child poverty in Scotland, to give only one example.  Or by our disabled people being subjected to the agenda of "austerity plus terrorism" regime currently run by the now hateful government departments charged with their welfare.

"But who is to say that any of that would be better with independence?" they demand, to which one replies,

"Well, WE, the Scottish electorate, would have a say.  If we elected then re-elected a government that did this to our people, then hell mend us.  The point is not WHAT we would choose, but the fact that WE would have the choice. And if it we found that a government wasn't to our choice any more, we could vote against the government whose cruelty and incompetence and hatred were doing all this to us...and, unlike now,  it would make a difference. The government would actually change.  We can't do anything right now other than complain about it  in the pub. This is getting annoying for everybody, including the rest of the UK.  Hence we are looking for the political power to make our opinions count."

Democracy too dangerous


The only real argument on the No side, then, given that there is no case they can really make against the principle of democratic choice is that democratic choice is too dangerous for us. The real powers in the world will punish the disruption wee Scotland will cause if we insist on our self determination.  In terms of trade, the EU, the currency...all that...a newly independent Scotland will find itself more less at war with the rest of the world..and we'd lose.  Underlying almost all of Project Fear is this very specific injunction that we mustn't vote "against" Britain, we mustn't vote "against" the neighbours because otherwise "they might hurt us".

This seems to me to be  a very negative opinion to hold of the character of the "neighbours" if you really think that their response to our expressed wish for self-determination and adulthood and no longer depending on them will be one of vengeance and spite.   Apparently it's not the nationalists who have a low opinion of our cousins, if the No side threatens us with their hostility and ill will.  It doesn't make much a positive case for the status quo. It has an even lower opinion of your own country, though,  to hold that democracy too risky for it - that we aren't a "real" enough country for it.  That, uniquely, we aren't good enough for it. That, like women and Africans before us, we aren't "grown up" enough..

By any criteria other than timidity, then, it ought to be obvious.  Independence ought to be, and I believe will be, the obvious choice.  The normal choice. Yet the No side maintains its lead in the polls.  And there will be time for reflection indeed if we decide to turn down self government on September the 18th. We will have some serious questions to ask of ourselves.

I believe that if we say No to self government, it will almost immediately seem an absurd thing to have done. This is because regardless of the product of the referendum, the process of the referendum campaign has established popular sovereignty in Scotland once and for all . The new "normal" that has emerged during this campaign redefines "the Scots" as what, by any real criteria, does indeed constitute a polity or nation.  I don't believe that a No in September constitutes the foundation for anything like a sustainable political settlement. I think from philosophical first principles of democratic practice it is an accident waiting to happen.

Autonomy/self-rule/sovereignty - What's in a name? 


To reiterate from first principles, then ; we, as free individuals, autonomous, "sovereign" individuals if you will, choose to pool that individual autonomy at pragmatically chosen levels of administrative convenience and democratic accountability.  We do this in cities, regions, nation-states and associations of nation states.  It has already been conceded that those powers already devolved from Westminster (where the Crown is sovereign in parliament) become democratically accountable.  That's what happened in 1999..twenty years after the question for democracy was first put in 1979.

The question before us now is whether we think it's time to extend that democratic and fiscal control.  Do we remain as subjects to an authority who lends us power occasionally within very strict limits, or do we assert that as autonomous individuals, we choose to pool our authority how we choose and in the size and extent of polity we choose.

You will notice that though these arguments seem tend towards a Yes vote, what they guarantee is that the choice is in our hands.  Power begins with the individual and radiates up and outward into such other associations as we see fit.  That could be expressed as the "choice" to remain in Britain, the choice to pool our sovereignty in Westminster and accept Tory governments we never vote for as the price of some kind of "safety" (I obviously think that such safety is a pretty spurious prize for which to pay so heavy a price.)

Nonetheless, that would be our sovereign choice...What is profoundly wrong headed about such a choice seems to me to lie in the aforesaid constitutional eccentricities.

Having come into existence as a sovereign people in the course of this campaign, we would, in effect, be voting to cease to exist.  We would still be constituency voters, of course, but we would have voted "Scots" as such back into the Celtic twilight from which we have so recently and surprisingly emerged.

Remember, Cameron's idea is to settle...silence...squash...the Scottish Question.  For a generation.  Even those who vote No, even if they REALLY hate Alec Salmond, should pause and think what that means. That we would have voted away our only power of negotiation, and handed our destiny to whoever wins in 2015 or 2020.

David, Boris or Teresa.  Choose now, because you will have no choice whatsoever in future.

Here is the thought experiment I urge on my fellow subjects.  Start  "as if" you were not subjects, but sovereign, autonomous individuals.  As if it were your choice to pool that autonomy so that you could get things done on welfare, health, education, housing, war and peace?  In a blind test, in a "veil of ignorance" as Rawls has it, would you choose the past (with its familiarity) or on the principle of that autonomy, for the future?


Will a No vote kill independence "for a generation?" 



My main point here is, of course, that even if we do vote No, we can't do that.  A No vote will not "kill" sovereignty any more than devolution "killed " independence no matter how much anyone hates Alec Salmond.  A No vote will not kill our sense of place and self and or negate our now felt and established and inalienable right to govern ourselves. Even those who vote No don't think or feel that.

 Because even if we do choose to pool that individual and collective sovereignty with Westminster, we from our side, will still retain that sovereignty, while in strictly legal and constitutional terms, we will have abjured it. We will retain a sense of being entitled to choose, even if we have voted against that right. It won't hold.  It won't serve. It doesn't make sense any more.  What was eccentric will have become incoherent.  If it happens,  it can't last.  It will be unstable and unsustainable.

This is why the convinced "nationalists" among the Yes camp (I'm not one of them) are so serene about the prospect of losing the vote in September.  Alec Salmond's sense of history made him sanguine about calling a referendum he always expected to lose.

The Nats never expected (when sober) to win this referendum.  But they know that the asking of the question changes everything.  Having the choice makes us sovereign in FACT if not in fact.  Forever.  Once the question of sovereignty is posed is asked, it cannot be un-asked.

The process of the campaign, and especially the huge popular swell of enthusiasm and hope and purposeful dreaming it has unleashed all over the country and in every special sphere has entirely confirmed that perception.  Entirely due to this campaign, something like a positive vision of the future has re-entered British politics.  It is so unfamiliar as hardly to be recognisable.  It is blinking uncertainly in unaccustomed light.  But it is here and here to stay. Nothing can ever be the same.

Everything has changed.


Everything that goes wrong or right with Westminster politics, for us, will be now and forever an evocation of the border question. An Tory electoral   alliance with UKIP?  Further austerity? A vote to leave the EU? Everything will be about the border. Therefore, right now, before the vote,  "Separation" is already a fact. Our experience and understanding of UK politics is already and irreparably "separated".  British institutions like the BBC and the Labour party, for both of which we once had true love, are now irreparably contaminated and structurally undermined.  Our print media is despised as never before.

Our cultural distinction as Scots is now entrenched not in tartan and shortbread but in how we read and experience the world every day.  The commonality of this viewpoint within Scotland and its distinction from perceptions held elsewhere is now established.  Independence is already, as Neal Ascherson pointed out the other day, here already.No in September cannot mean no. It only means "not yet".

We are a nation.  Not "again" but for the very first time. A nation in the 21st century. Who are the Scots? We are.  And we are not climbing back in the bottle.


http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/whatever-the-result-in-september-we-are-independent-now-today.24639453