Scottish Liberal Democrats take (another) step backwards

Willie Rennie, from the little I've seen of him over the years, seems like a decent bloke, and I have a feeling he'll have more of a personal appeal than his predecessor Tavish Scott. Paradoxically, that's partly because he's less polished than Tavish, who often looked as if he was reading from a script even when he wasn't - Rennie comes across as unspun, and therefore more genuine. That's the good news for his party. But where to start with the bad news? The new leader basically had to make two big strategic calls to set the course for electoral recovery. Firstly, he needed to argue the case for the kind of substantial constitutional progress that would break the Scottish Lib Dems out of the straightjacket of being just another shade of grey, humdrum unionism. Secondly, he needed to make a psychological (if not literal) break with the federal party and its catastrophic alliance with the Conservatives. Rennie has flunked both tasks on day one - and he's seemingly done it with his eyes wide open. All he's offering on the constitution is more of the same (after all nothing's really changed, has it?), and he's incredibly offering an even closer relationship with Clegg and the gang than before. As noted here a number of times, Tavish's stance on the latter point during the election campaign was intellectually incoherent - if you wanted to know about something good the UK party had done, he was your man, but if it was something more toxic for heaven's sake go and ask them about it. But at least that showed a flickering of understanding of the kind of distancing that was required to limit the damage. Rennie, by contrast, is giving every indication of being a party leader who quite comprehensively does not "get it" at all.

Specifically on the constitution, it seemed to me that there were three gaping holes in Rennie's line of argument on Newsnight Scotland tonight -

1) He repeatedly claimed that the Calman proposals had to be adhered to because a consensus between "the parties" had been reached. That was a dubious point even before the election given that only three of the five parties in the Scottish parliament were on board for Calman, but now? Can minority opinion at Holyrood really be described as a "consensus"?

2) He stressed that Alex Salmond couldn't claim a mandate for greater powers for the Scottish Parliament, because that issue hadn't been to the forefront of the campaign that won the SNP the election. But he then curiously made the claim that the unionist parties themselves had an "overwhelming mandate" to proceed with Calman on the basis of the 2010 general election result. The difficulty there is that I'm struggling to recall Calman being mentioned any more frequently during that campaign than the SNP's plans for greater powers were during the Holyrood contest. Rennie's own logic therefore surely suggests that the unionist parties can't possibly claim a mandate for their preferred constitutional blueprint - even if we were to accept the dubious premise that the 2010 result hasn't been superceded by more recent events.

3) A key part of the rationale for claiming a "consensus" in favour of Calman was always that of a dual mandate encompassing both Westminster and Holyrood - the unionist majority at Holyrood (which was complacently assumed to be virtually permanent) was endlessly cited as being just as critical a factor as the unionist majority at Westminster, and this interpretation was made concrete by the involvement of the devolved parliament in the scrutiny of the Scotland Bill. Having made such a song and dance of the arithmetic at Holyrood when it suited the unionist case, it simply won't wash for Rennie to now claim that a Westminster mandate alone is sufficient to proceed as if nothing had changed. The logic of the previous stance surely demands that a compromise between the two parliaments must now be reached.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the glee with which the London coalition partners pointed out a year ago that their combined vote in Scotland at the 2010 election exceeded the 32.9% support that the SNP secured in winning office? They must feel so nostalgic for the days when they could fall back on that line...

The Scottish Government's new "spiritual" power

I've just been having a first quick perusal of the plans for the new Scotland Bill, and one particular detail made me laugh. The Calman proposal for Scottish ministers to be given the power to appoint the BBC Trust member for Scotland has essentially been rejected, but you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise from the explanation that is given -

"Following careful consideration of the Commission's recommendation, the Scotland Bill includes a clause that requires UK ministers to obtain the agreement of Scottish Ministers on the selection of the BBC Trust member for Scotland. The UK Government considers that this meets the spirit of the recommendation..."

Really? How? Would simply requiring the Chancellor of the Exchequer to secure the "agreement" of Scottish ministers on the rate of income tax "meet the spirit" of the proposal for a devolved income tax? What utter nonsense.

In the final analysis, can extra powers for the Scottish parliament ever be a bad thing?

The unveiling of the 'Calman Minus' proposals by Michael Moore today marks a distinctly odd moment for the SNP. My greatest worry about the party's election triumph in 2007 was that, historic though it seemed, no constitutional progress at all might be made during their period in office, and that by the time a Labour or a Labour/Lib Dem government returned to power we'd wonder what all the excitement had ever been about. Regardless of the outcome of the election next May, we can safely say that will not now be the case - the SNP government will have its constitutional legacy. An indirect one, certainly, but a legacy all the same. It seems extremely improbable that the Calman process would have been set in train had it not been for the SNP win in 2007, and while the Lib Dems would probably claim they would have pushed for greater powers for Holyrood in the coalition negotiations anyway, it would have been much harder for them to do so successfully had a readymade blueprint not been to hand.

The supreme irony, of course, is that this is a constitutional legacy that the SNP claim not to want, and on the whole I'm inclined to believe they mean it. But if it's true that these proposals will starve Scotland of revenue, I suppose the next million dollar question is whether the public reaction to the resulting squeeze will damage the cause of self-government in the longer-term, as SNP ministers perhaps fear. It's just possible it might go the other way - as the electorate get used to the idea of devolution as a 'process', they might well look to a further substantial enhancement of the parliament's powers (especially over the country's natural resources) as the obvious remedy to the consequences of this cack-handed scheme. It certainly seems thoroughly improbable that they would instead prefer to see the repatriation of the powers to London. And the unionist parties will by that point have deftly deprived themselves of their most cherished fiction - how will they any longer credibly claim that independence or full fiscal autonomy would cost Scotland its "subsidy" when a massive hit has already been taken? We'd be moving into novel "nothing much left to lose" territory.

So, whether the Westminster coalition realise it or not, perhaps their gleeful hijacking of the planned date for the independence referendum will ultimately prove to be a significant milestone on the path to - in the words of the 2007 SNP campaign slogan - a parliament with real power.

Is nuclear power an issue of 'national security'?

For most people, the Calman process is all about exploring the ways in which Scottish autonomy might be enhanced - while the greatest fear for many is that it might turn out to be damp squib and that little will change. But for one small, narrow interest group - namely Westminster Labour MPs - this is in fact a process about stripping the Scottish parliament of powers it currently holds. Oh sorry, I appear to have gone slightly off-message there. What I meant to say is that they see it as an important 'opportunity' to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the devolution settlement and to see in what ways it can be 'strengthened', specifically by examining in a 'mature' way whether there is now a case that certain powers could be exercised more 'effectively' by a different layer of government than they are at present. It's just an extraordinary coincidence that the most appropriate layer of government for all the important powers always turns out to be Westminster.

Yesterday, Scotland on Sunday reported that Labour MPs - but intriguingly not their Holyrood cousins - want to return the crucial planning powers over new nuclear power stations to Westminster. They claim to be motivated by a desire to prevent UK government energy policy being 'frustrated' by the Scottish government's planning powers. Or to put it another way, they don't much care for the fact that the Scottish government is daring to suggest it might actually use its legal powers to legitimately block something in line with the express wishes of the Scottish electorate at the ballot box. That would never do, would it?

Perhaps sensing the weakness of this line of attack, the MPs have a back-up argument - that nuclear energy policy is a matter of national security. In a sense I can see their point - a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station would have devastating consequences, as would the theft of nuclear material. But the irony is that all of this only applies for as long as there actually are nuclear power stations. Labour MPs can rest assured that the SNP's policy is very kindly eliminating that national security worry for them, and they can now sleep easy in their beds. Problem solved.