Sunday, June 12, 2016

A few responses on the EU referendum dilemma

There was quite a bit of reaction to my post the other night about the dilemma I'm facing on how to vote in the EU referendum.  Some of the points raised were perfectly fair, but there were also quite a number of misconceptions that I'd like to clear up.

First of all (and I've now made this clear in three different blogposts), I am not particularly arguing for tactical voting in the referendum.  Of the two potential arguments in favour of a Leave vote that I raised, I think the prospect of more powers for the Scottish Parliament is much the stronger one, and tactical voting is much the weaker.  The point I did make, though, is that tactical voting is perfectly viable, in the sense that there is a reasonably simple calculation to make if you want to maximise the chances of a UK Leave vote being coupled with a Scottish Remain vote.  As things stand (and the polls may change dramatically over the next ten days, in which case the calculation will also change), a Scottish Remain vote does not look in much doubt, whereas the UK result could go either way - meaning that a budding tactical voter should clearly be more preoccupied with trying to influence the UK outcome.

The reason why voting on a tactical basis alone isn't a good idea is not that it can't or won't work, but rather that it's open to question whether the tactical objective of a UK Leave/Scottish Remain is actually a good thing or a bad thing.  I think there's a better than even chance that such an outcome would lead to an early independence referendum, but it's anyone's guess whether we would go on to win that vote - and if we didn't, we'd then be stuck inside the UK and outside the EU, partially as a result of our own handiwork.

To return to the practicalities of tactical voting, though, a number of you pointed out that a UK Leave/Scottish Remain combination isn't enough in itself - we'd need a significant majority for Remain in Scotland to emphasise the gulf between the public's wishes on each side of the border.  I don't dispute that for a moment, but my most basic assumption about tactical voting hasn't changed since we discussed the issue in respect of the Holyrood election.  The point is that any tactical voting is likely to be very small in scale.  It'll be restricted to political obsessives, and therefore won't make much of a dent in the seemingly huge Remain lead in this part of the world.

Aha, comes the next objection, in that case the whole exercise is futile, because we'd need to drag the Scottish Remain vote all the way down to the low 50s before we'd have any chance of influencing the UK outcome.  Well no, that's not true, actually, and the low 50s figure is plucked out of thin air.  If the final batch of polls show the UK result to be on a knife-edge, we won't know how many votes are required to swing the balance between Remain and Leave.  It's conceivable (unlikely, but conceivable) that it could be a very, very small number.  In the notorious Florida election in 2000, there were roughly 6 million votes cast, and the final gap between George W Bush and Al Gore was just 537 votes.

Turning now to what I consider to be the sounder potential reason for voting Leave, ie. a repatriation of powers to the Scottish Parliament, a number of you were adamant that this was a bogus argument, either because the EU's powers on agriculture, fisheries, etc. would automatically revert to the UK government after Brexit, or because the UK government would just steal those powers back anyway.  The first of those two claims is pretty easy to deal with, because there is no doubt about the legal position.  Unless a power is explicitly reserved to Westminster, it is devolved to Scotland - except to the extent that EU law has supremacy.  Matters such as agriculture and fisheries are not reserved, and therefore after Brexit those powers would default to Holyrood.  Now it's quite true that the UK parliament can change the rules to suit itself, but there's no sleight of hand available to them - they'd have to clearly and openly strip the Scottish Parliament of the powers.  That would almost certainly mean the first substantive breach of the Sewel convention since 1999.  Professor Alan Trench, for example, has been explicit in his view that the Sewel convention has evolved to mean that powers can't be added or removed without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, which in this case is surely not going to be forthcoming.  By any stretch of the imagination, a major breach of Sewel constitutes a 'material change of circumstances', and would trigger a constitutional crisis.

What might happen, though, is that the UK government will recognise the danger, and instead of simply grabbing the powers back, will say to the devolved administrations : "Let's be reasonable about this, chaps.  There has to be a certain amount of central control over agriculture and fisheries, so let's sit down at a constitutional conference and thrash out the appropriate post-Brexit distribution of powers."  So whichever way you look at it, there would be opportunities for Scotland - either the EU powers would simply revert to Holyrood, or there would be a massive constitutional crisis in which London would be seen as the transgressor, or the Westminster government would be forced to open up the UK's constitutional framework for negotiation between the various administrations (and it could be expected that Westminster would have to make big concessions during those negotiations if they wanted agreement on clawing back the agriculture and fisheries powers).

*  *  *

During the televised referendum debate on Thursday night, I had another reminder of how certain things that should be totally uncontroversial have somehow become unsayable.  I made a straightforward observation that seems to me to be irrefutable - that five of the six participants in the debate were female, that the presenter was also female, and that if the situation had been reversed there would have been complaints.  Simply as a result of pointing that out, I lost roughly ten followers on Twitter (unlikely to be a coincidence, because it's unusual to lose that many in one night), and I was deluged with indignant responses - one or two of which I considered to be downright offensive.  In a nutshell, the charge was that I had some sort of "problem" with the very rare occurrence of a mostly-female panel, which should in fact be unreservedly applauded by every right-thinking person on the planet.

To state the bleedin' obvious, identifying a slam-dunk example of a double-standard is not the same thing as arguing that all-female or mostly-female panels are in any way undesirable.  The people who instantly complain about each and every example of a mostly-male panel on TV or radio have really got to get the story straight here.  It's perfectly reasonable to argue that the frequency of male-dominated panels should be reduced, but if you're going to say that a female-dominated panel is a "wonderful" sight (as many did), you can't then say that male-dominated panels should be eradicated.  If a mostly-female panel is sometimes a good thing, then the occasional mostly-male panel is not only OK or tolerable, but a good thing.  It really is pretty simple, and I would respectfully suggest that the people who react so angrily to that entirely logical line of argument are suffering from more than a touch of cognitive dissonance.

*  *  *

You may already have seen this, because Roseanna Cunningham linked to it earlier, but it's a jaw-dropping insight into the Kafkaesque antics of the UK immigration authorities.  If that's the way a young, white American woman can get treated, the mind boggles as to what must sometimes happen to people of other nationalities/ethnicities. (And yes, I know the American immigration authorities are even worse.)

28 comments:

  1. I hear that labor and corbyn are gonna take lead in " North of England" for stay? What does this mean? Cameron approval down to 22% so he will not front PR campaign. How can a country be run by a party and leader of the two biggest issues have been fronted by the opposition? On the female issue, James, I think the point may be that they not care if you are right, just that maybe 400 years of mostly female panels are needed to even it out. I think this is a " why did you kick me under the table" moment, LOL!

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  3. James Kelly,

    Is there any truth in this?

    From the Herald:

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14550840.New_poll_gives_Brexit_campaign_a_10_point_lead_as_Scots_seem_to_want_to_Remain/?ref=mr&lp=3

    I have no idea whether that is a legitimate poll or not. Any comment?

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    1. That's the ORB poll from last week, and it was a legitimate poll, although it now looks likely it was an outlier. For the avoidance of doubt, though, the Opinium poll published today supposedly giving Leave a 19-point lead is a load of garbage.

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    2. Bit of a coincidence, as the IndyRef poll just before the vote brought the whole UK State out on high alert.

      How feasible would it be for state security to hack-in to the data?

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  4. Sturgeon making it up pish every day during this period and apparently speaking for Scotland.

    We had her statement that we get £10 back from Europe for every £1 we put in, yet the leave £10bn net loss on our contribution she called a “lie” despite it beings the government’s own figure; we had her statement that adopting something like the Australian points system or similar would increase immigration! (And she kept a straight face); we had Brexit making IndyRef2 “inevitable”, but seemingly no longer; She then calls out her own side of remain for scaremongering, then scaremongers more than anyone in the ITV debate … then she wants to build “progressive” left wing alliances, but remains committed to being controlled by an increasingly centre-right neo-liberal Europe committed to ‘sound money’ and austerity across the Eurozone. Then she decides that the second chamber House of Lords is more of an undemocratic threat to “governing” us than the undemocratic European Union who actually do govern us.

    Then we have to have uncontrolled and welcomed all immigration, despite acknowledging problems in her constituency in Glasgow for housing, health and schools, but her answer is to spend yet more money on public services despite criticising the £1.6tn debt, and Sturgeon recording a record budget deficit in her own backyard of 10%+ of fiscal gap. Yet the solution is to spend more to end austerity. Unbelievable dross from an FM.

    Sturgeon’s ‘solution’ to the lack of democratic consent or accountablity over major areas of public policy (like migration policy) is to ignore the democratic deficit and presumably to let the ‘free-market’ in movement to do whatever. After all the EU is ‘progressive’ along with Davie Cameron, Georgie Osbourne and the City of London and all the other rogues of the UK establishment. On top of that she endorses Project Fear mark 2 yet will swear till she is blue in the face that those arguments from the “experts” are right in the context of Brexit but totally bogus in the context of independence!

    One has to take her utterings seriously, as they are so incoherent, contradictory and her language confrontational and always divisive (we have to win over Unionists wakey wakey screaming “evil Tories” isn’t enough now). Now we have iScotland keeping the pound, with no UK currency union (why keep the currency of a state you want to walk out on???). It’s getting worse.

    Sadly no-one around the SNP seems to want to acknowledge any of the above. As a supporter of Scottish independence I feel Sturgeon has to raise her intellectual game ASAP. Does anyone in the SNP have the balls to raise any of these issues with Queen Nicola?

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  5. If you are a resident of Scotland, THERE IS NO TACTICAL VOTE.

    Residents of Scotland who are pro-Independence must vote Remain. There is not another option if you believe in Independence. Tactical voting does not exist.

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    1. Well, this is an interesting role reversal, isn't it?

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  6. By any stretch of the imagination, a major breach of Sewel constitutes a 'material change of circumstances', and would trigger a constitutional crisis.

    So in other words, we have to trust the Tories not to be petty, tone-deaf, myopic idiots with no sense of the consequences of their actions? The same Tories that voted down every SNP/Lab/Lib amendment to the Scotland Bill, including a motion whose rejection ripped The Vow to shreds? The same Tories that broke purdah in the last weeks of the indyref and were possibly complicit in the RBS leak? The same Tories that are currently under investigation for the biggest case of electoral fraud in recent memory? The same Tories that have historically manipulated everything from the Troubles to sexual abuse cover-ups?

    And think: if it's a Leave vote, then Cameron is out. Say what you like about Cameron, he's a paragon of tact and competence compared to the extremists in his party. I can imagine Cameron, Osborne, and the others dealing with a bit of guile. But Johnson, Gove, and IDS?

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  7. Seriously? You are going to argue that since male-only panels could at some point happen only occasionally that people MIGHT still complain about them that we shouldn't be glad on the rare occasion when women actually make up a majority? *bangs head on desk*

    I probably wouldn't unfollow you if I saw the comment, but I have to say that frankly that strikes me as at best idiotic.

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    1. The answer to your question is 'no' and 'yes'. No, your summary of what I said is - as you know - not accurate, and yes, I was serious about what I actually did say.

      Let's all try to avoid any more unnecessary desk-related mishaps.

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  8. James,

    I am afraid that Scotland can no longer really rely on the Sewel Convention to prevent Westminster stripping Holyrood of powers. The convention originated from a House of Lords debate over the original Scotland Act 1998, when Lord Sewel said:
    ;However….we would expect a convention to be established that Westminster would not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters in Scotland without the consent of the Scottish parliament.’

    You will note that Lord Sewel limited the scope of the convention to the possibility of Westminster legislating in regard to policy areas that have been devolved to Holyrood and, as originally stated, the convention does not limit Westminster’s ability or authority to legislate in regard to which policy areas are reserved and which are devolved.
    However, Devolution Guidance Note 10 (issued by the Department of Constitutional Affairs in 1999) extended the original scope of the Sewel convention. It stated that the consent of the Scottish Parliament was normally required not only when a UK Bill makes provision for devolved matters but also when it alters the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament or the executive competence of the Scottish Ministers even although these are reserved matters. This is how the Sewel convention has been operated in practice since 1999 and has been accepted as such by both the UK and Scottish Governments. Indeed, the most recent example of the Sewel convention operating in this way is Legislative Consent Motion lodged by the Scottish Government in regard to the Scotland Bill 2016.

    Sadly, Section 2 of the Scotland Act 2016 reads:
    ‘2 The Sewel Convention
    In section 28 of the Scotland Act 1998 (Acts of the Scottish Parliament) at the end add—
    "(8) But it is recognized that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament."
    It is therefore difficult to come to any conclusion other than that: Westminster has defaulted back to the original interpretation of the Sewel convention and that Westminster is free to legislate on scope of devolved competencies as it wills or feels inclined unencumbered by the need to secure Holyrood’s agreement.

    You will find a detailed explanation of this here:
    http://www.scottishconstitutionalfutures.org/OpinionandAnalysis/ViewBlogPost/tabid/1767/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/7001/Iain-Jamieson-Putting-the-Sewel-Convention-on-a-Statutory-Footing.aspx

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  9. The third option is that Westminster will simply refuse to negotiate and stand on the claim that as powers given to the EU were reserved they remain so even after Brexit. As those powers went to the EU from Westminster to the EU on a Brexit they return to Westminster. Given the way the HoL shat on our renewables industry by contriving a reserved power that could be invoked do you seriously think Cameron's successor post-Brexit will be inclined to miss an opportunity to stand fast against Scotland. Especially if the margin for Brexit is so narrow that a stronger Remain vote outwith England would have prevented it?

    Obviously there might be considerable arguments about it but if there is it'd be from a starting point of Holyrood fighting to regain powers which some, if not all of us, might rather were held by the EU rather than a Westminster parliament with a history of allowing a reverence for political dogma to ruin the UK's industry.

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    1. "The third option is that Westminster will simply refuse to negotiate and stand on the claim that as powers given to the EU were reserved they remain so even after Brexit."

      No, I did my best to explain why they can't do that. The powers revert automatically to Holyrood - that's the legal position.

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    2. Looking at the Scotland Act there's little to no actual mention of the EU. Yet the reality is powers are currently held by the EU. Those are the powers the Leave campaign want returned to "our" hands. The danger here is that some of the key players in that campaign want as few powers in Holyrood's hands as possible. They will most definitely play a Leave result as implying a willingness for those powers to revert to Westminster.

      Also note that one of the explicit reservations in devolution is that any powers covered by international treaty are reserved.

      Remain or Leave both imply you want the powers controlled by the EU to be outwith Holyrood's remit. Leave doesn't guarantee that anything defaults to Scotland. The argument will be that devolved powers are by their constitutional nature outwith the control of Holyrood.

      The level of bullshit fired off by the No campaign in the last referendum has left me a tad cynical to say the least when being promised that if I vote in a certain way Holyrood will get an increase in powers.

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    3. I agree with Ian. The legal position is no guarantee of anything. They will find ways of achieving the powers they want. The only part that I agree with you James is that they will be careful to be none too obvious about it. I am still reeling from the sleight of hand they played with Evel. They got away with that didn't they? Who will we appeal to?

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  10. To use a well worn word, I find it astonishing that people want to vote out, you have to lookam at the scottish fugures and contributions we get back from the EU. Yes fishing has suffered, but, lets be fair regarding this, if there was sufficient westminster support for the fishing industry, kt would not be in the state its in, the sea has been over fished, some regulation was required to control that to get stocks back up and yes, there were countries taking the piss but thsts why you need meps who will back up and fight for the industry,not nigel fucking farage.

    You have to look at things from scotlands perspective, we do well out of it. Areas of scotland and england, cornwall for example, have had massive funding from tje EU, westminster would not fund these areas.

    We cannot leave the tories to destroy workers rights and god knows what else. If we are out of the EU they have free reign.

    Vote out at your peril because if scotlands vote is close to out, then there will be no indyref2

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  11. James, if you're disturbed by the present UK government policy on immigration, you have to vote for Remain. The recent discussions have illustrated that if the Leave side wins, they will have to massively crack down on all immigration (from both the EU and rest of the world) to get anywhere near their desired levels.

    For instance, Marr pointed out to Farage yesterday that his desired level of immigration is about 40,000, yet last year there were 43,000 examples of people being let in for marriages. Therefore Farage would have to get all other immigration down to basically zero. Johnson and Gove are basically the same; they have criticised Cameron for failing to adhere to his "tens of thousands" pledge. That gives them a little more wiggle room than Farage, but not much. They would have to greatly restrict immigration from all over the world, not just the EU.

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  12. Do you remember the protests when Blair set up the Supreme court, which can overturn the Scottish civil courts decisions. Taking power away from the Scotish legal system which has existed independently since the Act Of Union, should have instigated a constituational crisis. Guess what it didn't and the UK just did what they wanted and ignored us.

    This is exactly what they will do with the fisheries and agriculture and anything else that comes back from the EU. This is what they did with Devo Max. They gave us a watered down set of miniscule powers and we are still in the UK. They broke the Vow and got away with it. This is what WM does over and over again. It's politically naive to think an out of control London outside the EU will help Scotland.

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    1. Aye, a post-Brexit UK would be more likely to centralise what power it has left. UK is still in a dubious financial position (annual deficit ~£80B, debt ~80% of GDP), so Brexit would lead to pressure from the markets (selling shares and currency). This would have some moderate economic effects in the short-term (prices of imported goods going up).

      Therefore the central government would want to have as much control over affairs as possible, particularly those with an impact on the economy.

      Farming would be quite a good example of this. Although farming itself is a relatively small share of the economy, it has wider impacts (food prices, self-sufficiency). These are issues that have not really been of any concern while inside the EU and its common policy.

      If we leave the EU, the fact UK only produce about 2/3 of its own food becomes much more important. Would tariffs apply to the imports? Would the UK government want to drive up production to be more self-sufficient? So although in theory farming would be devolved to Holyrood, a Westminster government may be reluctant to do this. At least until things settled down again.

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    2. Creating an artificial crisis is always a great way of justifying centralising decision making "temporarily". Driving up production would mean stepping in and "allowing" GM foods to be introduced into Scotland in an uncontrolled manner. Nothing against them in principle but not too keen on rushing in.

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  13. On your final paragraph, this is what happens when petty little people are put in charge of Border security. It is a tad obvious that someone coming on a speaking tour is unlikely to be an illegal immigrant. Yet, because this underbelly of bureaucratic bullshit is tolerated by our society, it just gets shoved under the carpet.

    I wonder how much worse the experiences of ordinary people have to get with UKBA before something is done.

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  14. After quite a bit of reflection, I will be voting for Brexit. The European Union has been a source of controversy and calamity for as far back as I can remember - and is quite clearly reaching the stage where it will either collapse or progress to a federal state. I don't want Britain to still be involved when either happens. Leaving the EU will also give us back control of our borders - a crucial, fundamental element of any state worthy of the name.

    As far as the SNP goes, Brexit does some serious damage to their cause and puts them into a very difficult to manage and stressful situation that they will have largely brought upon themselves by endlessly banging on about referenda. Hell slap it into them!

    Aldo

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    1. After quite a bit of reflection, I will be voting for Remain. The Union of Parliaments has been a source of controversy and calamity for as far back as I can remember - and is quite clearly reaching the stage where it will either collapse or progress to a federal state. I don't want Scotland to still be involved when either happens. Leaving the Union will also give us back control of our borders - a crucial, fundamental element of any state worthy of the name.

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    2. Well said, Edna. And I concur. I too will be voting Remain.

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    3. After not a lot of reflection, I decided that Nichola Sturgeon was right. Within we can reform, outside we cannot.

      Much is made of the fact that Europe, and that includes England, has avoided war after centuries of embracing it.

      On that metric alone, whether you see the EU alone as having achieved that, or NATO or whatever other force, it seems to me that giving up on an organisation that tries to stop Europreans hating each other, just because we could, is a desireable institution, for reasons politicians would avoid. The elephant in the room is you. There is no desire for pan Europe peace, there is only a desire for pan Europe war.

      Your mileage may vary.

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    4. Edna, no one claims Scotland to be a "state".

      Leaving the UK does not mean reclaiming control of our borders if we simply join the EU the next day. We will lose control of pretty much everything as we are forced to go 'full fat EU' (Schengen, Euro, extra taxes etc).

      Freedumb, not freedom.

      Aldo

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  15. I'm probably missing something here because I'm fairly sure everyone was already aware of this, but is it not relevant? http://newsnet.scot/archive/fury-after-unelected-peers-strip-power-from-scotland/

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