I’m sure we all remember THAT debate on Monday night between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond. It was what we call in Scotland a right rammy. Two men standing up on stage shouting at each other has typified the independence debate has generally been going on up here. It’s not edifying. I took part in STV’s live blog of the event and you can see my take on it here.
Although Salmond is widely judged to have won the debate, the pivotal moment came when he laughed at me. Well, not actually at me, but at anyone who wants reassurance that we’re not risking higher interest rates or economic instability over the fundamental issue of the currency. When Alistair Darling, on behalf of people with those concerns, continued to question he First Minister on the risks that sterlingisation would put us under, and to challenge the wisdom of not taking a share of the UK’s debt, Salmond laughed. In a very sneery way. And then he called Darling a One Trick Pony. You know, when you’re trying to persuade people to trust you and make the massive change you want, you need to show you understand their concerns and address them, not treat them with contempt. It’s no wonder that the main theme in my Facebook was that people were fed up and were switching off.
Salmond could learn a lot from Charles Kennedy. The former Liberal Democrat leader took part in a televised debate with Finance Secretary John Swinney, Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont and pro independence columnist Joyce McMillan. You can watch it here. He took time to acknowledge the audience’s views and responded directly to them. He was also more inspiring than anyone else in the pro UK campaign has been on the subject of poverty, invoking FDR. He was very clear that this is something we all need to sort out whatever the result on September 19th.
Here are some of his best bits:
NHS
..it isn’t as it’s been pointed out by some that if you vote no you would be essentially be an accomplice to finishing off the National Health Service in Scotland. Utter rubbish and an insult to the intelligence.
More powers after a No vote
What we are moving towards, bit by bit is a more decentralised, federal United Kingdom. We;ve already made big moves in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast and in London with the elected mayor and London Assembly and it’s going to have to start happening in the regions of England as well, part of the impetus behind that march in Jarrow as we speak and the voices that are being raised in Yorkshire.
Now, we’re more likely to get that and we’re more likely to meet Joyce’s very fair point and anxiety that she expresses if Scotland is in there, absolutely in the vanguard of that move towards a more sane, federal United Kingdom that respects and reflects its constituent parts than if we just take our bat and ball away and leave the rest of it to their own devices. That’s got to be the challenge.
Tackling poverty
We’re in govt and I’m not an uncritical member of Better Together and I’m certainly not an uncritical member of the Liberal Democrats as my speaking and voting records in the House of Commons makes clear.
If you look at the whole of history, poverty has been best addressed when the politicians actually get beyond what is all too often our poverty of ambition. One of my political heroes is Franklin D Roosevelt. (Read John Steinbeck, the Grapes of Wrath) and in the midst of the most appalling depression in the 20th c he came forward with the New Deal.He shook the timbers of the establishment right across that continent and he transformed it in a way that he built a consensus that lasted for 40 or 50 years.
Now, that’s what we need to do in the UK as well. One of the things that struck me both as a participant but as an observer of programmes like this over the past few weeks in particular, there is no poverty of ambition in Scottish and I would also say UK politics. What we need to do if it’s a no vote and equally I suppose if it’s a yes vote from September 19th onwards, is to use the cdaer political ambition that’s there right across the spectrum with freshen thinking, new ideas and a greater sense of impetus than we’ve had before. We can do it in Scotland and in a reforming United Kingdom and we can do something about poverty in an imaginative way that has not been seen post war in this country. That has to be the ambition and the challenge that we are putting in front of ourselves as Scots.
Currency
In going on the front foot, Salmond said “I have 3 plan Bs”. This could be a clever tactic in the sense of kick as much dust in your opponents’ eyes as you can. That might work for him but I don’t think it will but he also said I want a mandate. This is a development of the argument we hadn’t heard before and it’s a very interesting development in this campaign. I want you to give me a mandate, ladies and gentlemen, to go and negotiate the best outcome for Scotland. Now, think about the language for a moment. I say to you “give me a mandate and I’ll go and get the best deal I can”, the implication is I’ll come back and tell you what it is and you’ll say whether you’re for it or agin it. He doesn’t remind you he’ll go away, he may try and get a deal, he may or nay not get one.
Let’s concede as much to this as Alex as possible, that he does get a deal. He’ll sure as anything come back and say that this is the best deal he could get but he won’t then ask you in a second referendum if that’s what you want. That is the implication of the mandate argument and it is a complete ruse on people and it will, be, I think, his downfall.
The dangers of sterlingisation
But it’s a pound which isn’t backed by a central bank so If there’s a run on the pound, unlike today, you’re stuffed. It’s a pound in which you don’t have the reserves and it’s a pound, remember, which if you were using it in that independent fashion, not the UK sterling we have at the moment, Alex Salmond made clear if they don’t give us that, we wouldn’t shoulder our bit of the debt. And if he didn’t do that, never mind London and the terrible people down there, international markets would have you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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4 Comments
Charles Kennedy is right to talk about poverty of ambition in the UK. The British political debate right now is dominated by the view that nothing should change, and the idea that nothing can change. Most of those who believe in the first one would like things to be better, but have no confidence that any change will bring improvement. And many of those who believe in the second would like to help make changes, but have no confidence in the leaders and organisations who are meant to be making it happen.
Insurgent movements have stepped into this vacuum, but the disaster for the wider British politics is that it is the ringleaders for the Nothing Should Change bunch mobilising the Nothing Can Change people into supporting a party that offers only cosmetic change, leaving the power structures that those ringleaders rely on untouched. And I do mean cosmetic – if UKIP score a total victory, then the country will be whiter, you won’t hear any language but English and there’ll be no public displays of anything that doesn’t conform, great if you’re that sort of person. But the wealth gap will still be growing, public services will still be worsening, the environment still degrading… in short, none of the issues that worry people in their day to day lives, that combine to create the massive political despondency we have today, will be affected.
In Scotland, the successful insurgent political group is the SNP, and while they are infected with nationalism, their record in government reads more like an old labour administration than anything else. Not that I wholly approve – I am a liberal and there are plenty of things that socialists do that I cannot agree with. But they do offer an alternative with substance.
I would prefer it if that alternative were available for the whole UK. In some happy dimension, history unfolded differently, Alex Salmond put his considerable political abilities to work on taking over a Westminster party and steering the whole British political conversation away from Thatcherism… Unfortunately, we don’t live in it and have to deal with what is actually in front of us.
Which is a referendum on Scottish independence. Do you think Scotland should be an independent country. If I were to vote completely honestly, I would write on the ballot ‘this is the wrong question to be asking’. But that really isn’t the point – right or wrong, they’ve asked that question.
Every ‘no’ is just a vote for the status quo, and campaigning for a no, well, then I’m just another white English bloke out to make sure nothing happens that inconveniences me.
Whereas coming out as the joint least enthusiastic supporter of the yes option, well, that means I can stick with my principle that I oppose the status quo. I don’t have to give the Westminster Parliament my vote of confidence, it doesn’t deserve it as presently constituted anyway. And, on the 20th, when we all wake up and find out that we’re all still in the same country, I know that the signal of discontent with the way things are didn’t get dampened by one five millionth due to my attachments. It also means that I can be far more comfortable talking with more enthusiastic yessers. ‘I supported your idea, now can you help me with solutions to the same problem that don’t necessarily involve independence’, or a line to that effect.
Of course, if we end up pushing too hard then I’ll have helped by one five millionth to cause independence. Hmm. But, its not the end of the world, and as a 2010 first time Lib Dem voter, I have had to very quickly get used to second best solutions and to watching my vote being used to justify things I don’t like being done by people I can’t stand. Second best it certainly would be, but a strong no win I think would be worse.
There is no great support for independence in Scotland but if it happens, t hen I think it will be as a result of the 3 big Westminster parties treatment of the working class.
This poll http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/scottish-independence-working-class-boost-for-yes-1-3515052 was done by speaking to 18,000 people on their door steps in working class communities and when undecided voters were stripped out around 2/3rds supported independence. The nationalists are now working to mobilize these voters, it could happen.
The results were 44% for independence, 25% against and 31% don’t know. With less than 50% actively in support of independence I don’t believe most people really, really want it. It is more like a large minority (44%) want it and another large minority (31%) don’t see the status quo as working for them and therefore could be persuaded to try something else.
I doesn’t matter who is in government in Westminster the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The social housing gets sold off, more and more is privatized. First the Tories under Thatcher and Major did it, then Tony and Gordon came along intensely relaxed about inequality and people getting filthy rich and continued with privatization, introduced student tuition fees, let the city run riot etc. Under the Conservatives and the Lib Dems it is the samething only worse. Much higher tuition fees, the bedroom tax, more benefit cuts, the Royal Mail sold off etc… Same **** different colour of rosette. It doesn’t matter who is in power because in government they all turn out to be the same and this just isn’t working for the traditional working class on housing estates. So they’re open to considering independence.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: You guys really should have let Salmond have his referendum in 2007. It would have been the liberal and democratic thing to do and there is a lot less chance it would have have been a yes vote under a Labour government in Westminster than under a Conservative/Liberal one. If the nationalists win it will be by the skin of their teeth and Salmond should thank the Lib Dems for making him wait until their was a Conservative Prime Minister in No 10 and he’d had a good few years of successfully running Scotland before having his referendum, after all he’s only got one shot at this.
The business case and the social justice case point towards a No vote. Scotland has a Scottish parliament and the UK parties compete for votes in Scotland and often come up with ideas such as devolution. Independence is unnecessary.
Scotland might be able to get away with dumping a little bit of its debt, but I still can’t see any option being as good as staying in the UK, not even getting the UK parties to change their minds and enter a currency union without a political one.
Significantly different laws between Scotland and the rest of the UK could lead to people prioritising the UK for investment. Scotland would have to collectively lower its prices. Alex Salmond recognises this in corporation tax, but the same principle applies elsewhere too and it’s not being talked about.
Those on the left should be thinking how a more powerful state combats the power of business. Independence looks inefficient.
T-J
“UKIP score a total victory, then the country will be whiter, you won’t hear any language but English and there’ll be no public displays of anything that doesn’t conform, great if you’re that sort of person. But the wealth gap will still be growing”
Hardly, the wealth gap falls under a shrinking economy (it did post ’08 before widening) and if UKIP win and put up a wall to immigration the economy will start shrinking. Inequality will fall and absolute poverty will rise. We all lose.