Keeping a Yes from a No

Scotland stripped itself of political power on the 18th of September. We now have a Lord who will tell us what we may get, and we are not in a position to bargain for more if we think it is not enough. But that is only part of the consequence of voting to become impotent.

The people of England are about to speak, as they are entitled to. Scottish devolution will now be judged by them, the overwhelming majority, in the context of a unitary state, where all suggestions for change have to be judged as either compatible with or contrary to their view of a union. Scotland will, of course, continue to be called Scotland in any devolutionary settlement, but for the purposes of disposing of power, we are effectively a region of England. 

One thing is certain, you can forget devo max, and the federal ideas of the Lib Dems. That would give more power to Scotland than any English MP, of whatever party, could accept. That is why Cameron could not agree to it being on the ballot paper. Had Scotland voted for that, then a national mandate would have been in place, but one that our larger partner in the Union could not possibly concede. 

You can also forget Gordon Brown’s claim that the constitution can be altered to entrench the Scottish Parliament to the extent that it could not be shut down. At the heart of the hybrid British constitution – part written, part convention, part residual royal prerogative – there is a rock solid principle, that Parliament is sovereign, and that being sovereign one Parliament cannot therefore bind its successors. If a former Prime Minister did not know this, it is astonishing. If he did know it, and he must have done, then he knew when he spoke that he was spouting nonsense. 

It was the same with Brown’s claim that no power outside of Scotland could enforce privatisation of our NHS. TTIP, the trade and investment pact being negotiated between the EU and the USA, is about opening up markets, in the public as well as the private sector. That the NHS in England is being opened up to market forces and Scotland’s is not, will carry no weight when US companies seek to enter our health service. If there is no exclusion clause in favour of the Scottish NHS, then we shall be seen as a part of the UK health market which, in legal terms, we are.

TTIP will be like WTO, a rules-based organisation, where states can be held to account for not adhering to the rules, and be required to do so. Like WTO, it will have its tribunals, appeals tribunals and final binding decisions.

Of course, if the British Government asks and obtains an exclusion on UK health services from the ‘free trade and open access‘ rules there will be no danger of privatisation of our NHS. But I understand that Health Secretary Alex Neil’s request for such an assurance from the UK Health Minister, has not so far received a reply. I don’t think he will get one. A case for Brown to turn up more often in the House of Commons and pursue this, given its importance. 

What I have found comical in the post-vote days, is the belief by the likes of Ms Lamont that the constitutional issue is now off the agenda for at least a generation. That might be the view advanced by some people, but there was no binding declaration as such on the ballot paper, or from the people I campaigned alongside. We may have had, to their shame, 79 per cent of those over 65 voting No, but they cannot bind their children and grandchildren to their decision as though it came from them as gospel from the gods of our society.

It is true that we cannot, in the light of the vote, call for an expression of decisive support for independence in the immediate future, but given that the No campaign was laced with lies, are going to be exposed even to purblind Unionists, there is much that can be done to advance Scotland in the 2015 General Election.

If there is enough guile and willingness to cross political barriers, the broad Yes, which includes the SNP, can make next year’s Westminster election interesting, and nerve testing on the Unionist side.  If agreement can be reached, and given the SNP only has six seats to defend, it should be possible to field a single ‘Devo max now’ candidate in each of the 59 constituencies, with the aim of taking them all. That would constitute a mandate.

With England being split up between Tory, UKIP, Lib Dems and Labour, it is quite possible that such a Scottish block vote could hold the balance of power with which to extract the maximum powers consistent with remaining inside the UK – now wouldn’t that be ironic? Getting devo max would not be a legislative problem. All that needs to be done is to transfer the powers laid out in Schedule 5 of the 1998 Scotland Act, which would give us everything except Foreign Affairs and Defence. Perhaps that is just a dream.

What is not a dream is what can be achieved in the 2016 Holyrood election, as there is time to build an institutional political structure on the Left which can take on and beat the Labour Unionist Party.  Down south they are saying no more referenda for Scotland. Fine, we can instead employ the Margaret Thatcher measure – a majority of votes and seats. I hope somewhere, some people are thinking about this. If this, my last article for this magazine, sows those seeds I shall be happy.

My intention was to go back into retirement on 19th September. Others want me to reconsider. Not an easy decision at my age. In any event, I am retiring from this column as I don’t want to be tied down to specific commitments on specific dates.