Unveiling the UK government's 'neverendum' on maintaining the union

One of the constant refrains of unionist politicians is that SNP rule will lead to a 'neverendum' - a carbon-copy of the Quebec experience whereby the 'separatists' (cue demonic music) keep losing independence referendums, but then keep calling a new one until they get the result they want. In truth, the jibe is well wide of the mark even in relation to Quebec, where so far there have only been two independence referendums, fifteen years apart, with the most recent one a full sixteen years ago. Indeed, the second one only came round so 'quickly' because of the total collapse of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords on constitutional reform (which, incidentally, ought to be a warning from history to unionists who think the way to see off independence is by being as intransigent as humanly possible). Even now, the Parti Québécois seem to have no plans for a third referendum if they win the next election. So the Quebec experience actually lends considerable weight to Alex Salmond's reassurance that a No vote in a Scottish independence referendum would resolve the issue for "a generation" - and at the very least that any attempt to call another referendum sooner than that would require a clear, fresh mandate at a Holyrood election.

But can unionists - and more specifically the UK government - say the same about a Yes vote? If we are to take Michael Moore's latest pronouncement seriously, it appears not. They seem to think that a No vote should kill the matter for all-time, but if there's a Yes vote, not to worry - we'll just hold a second referendum with a much more complicated question a couple of years later to see if we can get a result that is more to our taste.

I'd suggest they're playing a very dangerous game here. The whole reason that unionists have invoked the spectre of the 'neverendum' over the years is that they know full well that the public think there is no case for a quick second referendum on the same subject - that No should mean No, but by the same token Yes should mean Yes. And since the public are sensibly inclined to think that one side of the argument should not be given a second bite of the cherry if they lose the vote, the following question may well start to be posed of the UK government - if you really think that a consultative referendum wouldn't provide a sufficient mandate for independence and that there needs to be a referendum on the details of an independence settlement, shouldn't the latter vote be the sole referendum? In other words, isn't the logic of your own position that you should enter into full independence negotiations now with the Scottish government, and that there should only be a referendum once the settlement has been thrashed out?

The other danger of the game Moore is playing is that, if he gets his way, it may well make a defeat for the unionist side in the "first" referendum much more likely. After all, we know that many people not yet convinced by the case for independence were quite happy to back the SNP on May 5th, because the double-lock of the referendum pledge meant that it was safe to do so. Bizarrely, Moore seems to be hellbent on also making it 'safe' for these people to vote Yes to opening negotiations on independence - because the message will be going out loud and clear that such a vote won't finally settle matters. They can suck it and see, which may not be such an unattractive proposition after a few more years of Tory rule.

It was suggested on Newsnight Scotland that Moore's intervention may be just one part of a new strategy of 'muscular unionism', which also involves ripping up the 'respect agenda' (will this be the sixth time?) by refusing point blank to budge an inch on extra powers for the Scottish Parliament. Since Moore's party are supposed to favour many of the powers that are being requested, it seems this 'muscularity' is largely being used to punch the lights out of the Liberal Democrats' own beliefs.

I heard it said forcefully at the Political Innovation conference in November that it was quite wrong to call the Lib Dems a 'unionist' party - they are, in fact, 'federalist'. Did Muscle Man Moore get that memo? As a Lib Dem contributor to a later package on Newsnight hinted, perhaps the party's Scottish prospects would be a little brighter if they remembered that they are actually a Home Rule party by tradition. That means breaking out of the self-destructive, almost unthinking impulse to forever lump themselves in with the Tories and Labour as just one more part of the unionist mush, in opposition to the nationalist 'other'. Here's my advice to Michael - take a step back, stop talking to Tories for a little while and start talking to your own grass roots, and then consider whether the time isn't in fact ripe for some Muscular Federalism.

In your eyes, I see the light, leading me hame again...

The new Labour Hame site (which I assumed was a spoof when I first heard about it) shows encouraging signs of filling the massive void in my life left by the demise of And Another Thing and Scottish Unionist. A couple of choice examples to kick off with -

After Jeff Breslin's thoughtful article in which he lists about two dozen specific and varied reasons why he can't imagine himself voting Labour at present, the commenters home in on just two of them (opposition to nuclear power and GM crops) and announce "we don't want the likes of you, Breslin, stick with the Greens!". Now, that's what I call a core vote strategy...

After Kezia Dugdale test-drives her latest contrived wheeze about a "Citizens' Convention" deciding on the referendum question in place of the citizen-elected Scottish Parliament, a commenter (presumably sympathetic to the SNP) points out that any such convention would logically have to reflect the composition of the parliament anyway. But the second commenter ("Dave") suggests that the convention should reflect each party's share of the popular vote, not seats in parliament, thus cunningly stripping the SNP of their majority. Just one problem there - if we have the same system of proportional representation for the convention that Labour carefully selected for the Scottish Parliament, presumably the composition of the two bodies will be...well, identical. Oh, and a second problem - even if we had an Israeli-style system of pure PR, there would still be a pro-independence majority courtesy of the regional list vote.

But other than that, what a truly fabulous point, Dave.

The boundary between appointment and election

It's refreshing to finally find something to agree with Daniel Hannan about, namely that our esteemed former Presiding Officer David Steel has lost the plot (and his radicalism) by supporting a fully appointed House of Lords. Just a pity that Hannan ruins his whole argument by framing it in the following terms :

"Why remove the only elected element from the House of Lords?"

Now, you may well be baffled by the suggestion that there is an elected element at present, but believe it or not he's talking (sigh) about the 90 remaining hereditary peers. Ah, the Tories - bless them. Only they could seriously believe that the grotesque process by which a few dozen highly-privileged individuals select another highly-privileged individual in some way confers upon the latter person the status of an "elected politician". If we were to follow that logic to its natural conclusion, Steel and Hannan wouldn't have a cigarette-paper between them, because a House of Lords appointed by committee would indeed be entirely "elected" - albeit by an electorate consisting of approximately fifteen people. Come to think of it, aren't life peers currently "elected" by David Cameron? An electorate of one is enough, surely, Daniel?

Worried about elective dictatorship at Holyrood? Just think of it as a system "that works".

It's a bit rich to hear the opposition parties grumbling about the dangers of Scotland becoming an 'elective dictatorship' under majority SNP rule.  Perhaps the Liberal Democrats might have some credibility making that claim, but certainly not Labour or the Tories - any party that believes in royal prerogative powers and a majoritarian voting system for Westminster by definition believes in elective dictatorship.  That's what the Westminster system is all about, and it successfully delivers it 95% of the time.

One specific concern that is being raised relates to unicameralism - the committees are supposed to do all the work a revising chamber would do in a bicameral system, and it was never anticipated that a single-party government would have a majority in all the committees.  But the reality is that in bicameral systems it's scarcely unusual for governments to have majorities in both chambers.  Most obviously, every Tory government at Westminster until 1997 had the House of Lords in its back pocket thanks to the hundreds of hereditary peers.  No wonder it was only ever Tories who described the previous composition of the upper chamber as an "anachronism that works".

Andrew Reeves

Just a quick note to say how shocked and sad I was to discover via Caron's blog that Andrew Reeves has died.  In fact, I had to do a double-take when I saw the name, because I couldn't quite take in that it was the same Andrew Reeves I was thinking of - I knew that he was only in his early forties. 

I must admit I know absolutely nothing about Andrew's real-life political work for the Liberal Democrats other than his job title, but I discovered his blog about eighteen months ago after he left a comment here, and I've been a regular reader ever since.  He was undoubtedly one of the leading lights of both the Scottish and Lib Dem blogospheres, and he'll be greatly missed.

Foulkes : the answers

The wait is over - here are the nineteen words, names and phrases you were looking for in Wednesday's long-overdue George Foulkes word-search puzzle...

Baron : That's what George is.

Cumnock : That's where George is Baron of.

Lothians : The region George used to represent in the Scottish Parliament.

Belize : According to Wikipedia, George is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for this hot Caribbean country.

The Dominican Republic : According to Wikipedia, George is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for this hot Caribbean country.

Trinidad and Tobago : According to Wikipedia, George is vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for this hot Caribbean country. Please don't be cynical - George simply takes a keen interest in Caribbean affairs.

Cybernats : For George, it's a love thing.

Oswestry : The town in Shropshire where George was born. No wonder Richard Briers and Penelope Wilton moved there in the final episode of Ever Decreasing Circles.

Iain Macwhirter : In what I can only assume was the worst case of vote-rigging since Glenrothes, Macwhirter "defeated" George to become Rector of Edinburgh University in 2009.

ID Cards : George is a fan. He has nothing to hide, and therefore nothing to fear. Can you say the same?

Disorderly : George resigned as Shadow Defence Minister in 1993 following a conviction for being drunk and disorderly. Quite clearly a fit-up.

Xenophobic : George famously called Alex Salmond xenophobic on an edition of Question Time. This controversial outburst appeared spontaneous at the time, but of course a master tactician leaves nothing to chance. It was revealed in Michael Portillo's recent documentary that this key moment in the Foulkes Story was meticulously pre-planned, and rehearsed the night before in the bath.

Hearts : George was the chairman of this football club.

Vladimir Romanov : The reason George is no longer the chairman of the aforementioned football club.

Clare Short : George's boss at the Department of International Development. They got on like a house on fire until George realised she had some weird problem with Tony Blair's illegal wars.

Senior Labour MSP : This is George's official name. "George" is a nickname that stuck, but the Scotsman and the Herald generally favoured formalities.

But is it wise? : At a 1990s meeting of the Scottish Grand Committee, George assured us that if Scotland became independent, he'd do his best to make it work. He then paused, and asked in hushed tones "but is it wise?". The subsequent hysterical laughter from the SNP benches remains a source of bafflement to this day.

Arrogant little : In the early 90s, George stood up in the Commons and referred to Tory cabinet minister Douglas Hogg as "that arrogant little s**t". The Speaker Bernard Weatherill immediately demanded that he withdraw "that word", to which George replied "which word - arrogant, little or...?". "Don't say it again!" screamed Weatherill at the top of his voice, in an apparent attempt to re-enact the stoning scene in Life of Brian.

Deliberately : As we know, George simply says it as it is. And in one celebrated BBC interview, he spoke a truth that most would have shirked from - that there is nothing wrong with the SNP government making Scotland's public services better than England's, but the problem is that they are doing it deliberately...

So there we are. My heartiest congratulations to anyone who found all nineteen. You are indeed a Foulkesian worthy of the name.

Tony Kelly's lawyerly inconsistency

Just as a quick follow-up to my earlier post about the Supreme Court controversy, I was more than a touch bemused by Tony Kelly's defence of the status quo on Newsnight Scotland tonight. He has a very confident air about him, as if it can be taken as read that he's talking common sense, but in fact with each answer to one of Isabel Fraser's questions he seemed to be cheerfully contradicting what he'd only just said in the previous answer. For instance, when she asked him if it wouldn't be a good idea to ensure that the Supreme Court had a majority of Scottish judges when it dealt with Scottish cases, he made a high-minded 'juges sans frontières' point that it shouldn't be about checking a judge's passport or birth certificate. But then Fraser countered by suggesting that Scottish judges would have a better understanding of the context in which the decisions of lower courts had been made, to which his rather startling reply was "exactly". He added that this was why the presence of Lord Hope and Lord Rodger in the Supreme Court line-up was so important. OK, so suddenly it is about "passports and birth certificates" after all, Tony?

But he saved the best for last. When asked if it wouldn't be better to bypass London altogether and go straight to Strasbourg, he said no, because all the judges would be "foreign" - presumably in this instance meaning anyone from outside the UK. Yup, that inspiring, idealistic point you made about judges leaving their passports and birth certificates at home is really looking in fine shape now, Tony.

A proxy argument for British nationalism? Perish the thought.

The human rights red herring

Has anyone noticed how the 'defence of human rights' has suddenly been seized upon as a convenient proxy for unionism? The legal experts wheeled out on Newsnight last night seemed to have an unanswerable point when they claimed that the SNP's politics were blinding them to the benefits of a system that allows for speedy human rights appeals to the UK Supreme Court - unanswerable, that is, until you remember that a Scottish court could easily perform precisely the same function. As Alex Salmond pointed out, the 'speed' issue is also a red herring, because a dedicated Scottish bench for human rights cases could do the job just as quickly as the UK Supreme Court, with the possibility of a laborious appeal to Strasbourg still there as a final safeguard, just as it is in every other European jurisdiction from Ireland to Russia. When you bear all that in mind, the experts' argument is stripped down to the basic assumption that they daren't utter aloud - that a predominantly English court is bound to be superior in quality to a Scottish court. The cringe rears its ugly head again.

That very assumption led Isabel Fraser into an amusing circular argument on the same programme. She suggested to the First Minister that the Scottish courts couldn't possibly be left to their own devices, because they had been shown to be wrong before. But how precisely had they been shown to be wrong, Isabel? Because, she explained, the UK Supreme Court had overruled their decisions, therefore they must have been wrong!

To sum up :

1) This isn't about human rights, because the European Convention is incorporated into Scots Law and no-one in government is suggesting that should change.

2) This isn't about speed, because a Scottish court could act just as fast as the UK Supreme Court (or faster).

3) This isn't even about the Supreme Court's ability to adjudicate on genuine devolution matters. The problem is the way that the Scotland Act irrationally defines anything relating to the European Convention on Human Rights as a devolution issue. Since the High Court of Justiciary performs exactly the same function in Scotland as the final court of appeal for criminal cases that the UK Supreme Court performs in England and Wales, it would be far more logically consistent for a Scottish court to also deal with human rights appeals in criminal cases, and for the Supreme Court to do the same for cases in its own criminal law jurisdiction. The present (or should I say emerging) set-up is colonial in character.

Word-Search Wednesday : a George Foulkes spectacular

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to despair of the Labour blogosphere. Just how long are we supposed to wait for a word-search puzzle that celebrates the life and work of George Foulkes? Aren't we entitled to expect that Kezia, of all people, would have got round to it by now? Frankly, my patience is at an end, and I've decided to go ahead and do the deed myself. Sue me.

(Click to enlarge)

OK, you're looking for nineteen words, names or short phrases associated with His Eminence - the Wikipedia biography will be able to help you with most (but not all) of them.  The answers will be revealed on Friday.  Incidentally, any thoughts on the idea of having a regular 'Word-Search Wednesday' slot?  Be warned - I may interpret silence as enthusiastic assent!