This isn't just any consultation response, this is a quality unionist consultation response

Just when you think you've seen it all. It appears Michael Moore has given up hope of manipulating the raw numbers in the UK government's referendum 'consultation', and is instead trying a different tack, if this tweet from Torcuil Crichton (approvingly retweeted by @Admin4TheYoonYoon) is anything to go by...

"Moore says consultation will be judged on qualitative responses - strength of arguments - not quantity. Code for cybernats need not apply."

Hmmm. Perhaps this novel principle could also extend to the referendum itself - ie. quality of votes counts for more than quantity.

Code for Yes voters need not apply.

The Lib Dem message to Scotland : stop being so 'difficult'

I really should know better by now, but given the special occasion, I thought I might as well pop round to PB yesterday to put up some kind of defence of the nationalist position against the inevitable onslaught. It turned into yet another four-hour epic. It's hard to choose the 'highlight', but perhaps I'd marginally give the nod to this exchange with Liberal Democrat poster MrsB, who innocently claims that she supports votes at 16, but that it's simply impossible to implement (yes, really!).

MrsB : James I have said this before and I will say it again now. The legal age for voting in the UK (which Scotland is still part of) is 18.

I support voting at 16. Currently it is not legally possible.

It might be possible to get votes at 16 through at Westminster before the referendum but I really really doubt it.

Therefore the issue of whether 16 or 17 year olds should get a vote in the referendum is a non-starter.

Without that change to the legislation actually running such a referendum which had any credibility would be impossible. There would be no electoral roll for the 16 year olds, though some 17 year olds would be on it because their 18th birthday would fall during the year. How would you ensure that all 16 year olds got the vote fairly? And don't say "use the school rolls" because I am pretty sure that would not be allowed under Data Protection legislation. It wouldn't be comprehensive anyway.

Like I say, I am in favour of the principle of voting at 16. However, when it comes to the referendum I don't see how it is possible to make it happen.

Me : MrsB, a simple question : do you support or oppose Michael Moore's proposal to ban 16 and 17 year olds from voting in the referendum? If you support it, please don't insult our intelligence by pretending that your support for votes at 16 is meaningful.

I'm reminded of Mo Mowlam's wry reply to her Tory counterpart : "I welcome his support for the Good Friday Agreement. I now look forward to that support extending to the actual contents of the Agreement."

MrsB : Under current UK law 16 and 17 year olds cannot vote in ANY elections. Why should they be entitled to vote in just the one referendum in one part of the UK? That is not correct.

Were there to be a piece of legislation lowering the voting age to 16 it would apply to all elections and referenda and would be fair. But we are not going to get that.

So yes, I do support Michael Moore's position. But it would be better if he made more of the point about the legal voting age and so that it would be more difficult for Nats to depict him as someone trying to find an excuse for stopping people voting for independence.

Me : "Why should they be entitled to vote in just the one referendum in one part of the UK?"

MrsB, as has been pointed out to you several times, the SNP are in favour of giving 16 and 17 year olds the vote for ALL elections - just as the Lib Dems are supposed to be. The difference is that they are trying to implement their own policy, whereas the Lib Dems are moving heaven and earth to block theirs - just as they are doing on enhanced powers for the Scottish Parliament.

Bizarre. Just bizarre.

"But it would be better if he made more of the point about the legal voting age and so that it would be more difficult for Nats to depict him as someone trying to find an excuse for stopping people voting for independence."

It would never be difficult for us to make that 'depiction', because that's exactly what he's doing, and even the dogs on the street know it.

MrsB : FFS James, stop distorting things.

This is very simple.

If there was a way to get the voting age changed to 16 for all elections before the referendum is held then 16 year olds could vote in it.

There isn't. So they won't be able to.

Answer this for me: if the voting age is not lowered from 18 before the referendum, do you think 16 year olds would be able to vote in the referendum?

And stop being silly about who is trying to manipulate what. The unionists are indeed pushing it - but they are amateurs beside Salmond. Both sides are at it, so stop pretending the SNP are whiter than white.

Me : Oh, come off it, Mrs B. This is the argument of mock-liberals down the centuries - of course we want Africans to govern themselves (or whatever), but it's too soon, they're not ready, there are immense practical difficulties...come to think of it, you're sounding just like Sir Humphrey.

Time to make up your mind whether you really believe in all those radical Lib Dem policies, or if it's just words.

"if the voting age is not lowered from 18 before the referendum, do you think 16 year olds would be able to vote in the referendum?"

If the Scottish Parliament legislates to lower the voting age for the referendum, then your question is a nonsense. Get out of the "Westminster is God" mindset.

MrsB : Dear James

Being this difficult even with people who basically agree with you but just take account of inconvenient reality, suggests that you are not going to be able to win many people over to the same side of the argument as you.

Can I suggest you make sure you are not involved in the independence campaign?

Love Mrs B

Me : MrsB, if you "basically agree" with me, stop supporting Michael Moore's plan to ban young adults from voting. If you do support that plan (and you've already confirmed that you do) then you do not "basically agree" with me - you in fact disagree with me.

Can I respectfully suggest that you do not take part in Lib Dem campaigning at the next GE? After all, not all voters (of any age) are looking for a passive-aggressive mother figure who tells them that by disagreeing with her they are simply being "difficult". We don't want your party's poll ratings going down any further, now, do we?

Love,

James

* * *

Nobody does comedy quite like Malcolm Rifkind. Not content with claiming that the proposed referendum question (which even Ruth Davidson accepted was fair and clear) is somehow biased, he then suggested that his own preferred wording of "do you want to leave the United Kingdom after 300 years?" was not remotely "emotive". Tell you what, Malcolm, why not chuck in "cast adrift without food, warmth or shelter" to make it even less emotive?

* * *

If you're looking for a soothing time-out from the nationalist v unionist War of the Worlds, I can highly recommend a listen to Darcy DaSilva's performance at Celtic Connections on Saturday. I particularly liked her rendition of Blackbird, the middle song of the three.

For "eminently sensible" read "weird"

Willie Rennie had a Red Riding Hood moment on Newsnight Scotland tonight as he embarked on the impossible task of defending Michael Moore's plan for a constitutional "neverendum". Sporting the most innocent, wide-eyed facial expression he could muster, he informed us that Moore's wheeze was "eminently sensible" and that quite frankly he couldn't "understand what the fuss is about". Willie, mate, if you seriously can't see what the fuss is about, I can introduce you to approximately five million people who can. Let me put it this way - if an opinion pollster asked the public whether the issue of independence should be decided by one referendum or two, what do you think the answer would be? I think I'm on reasonably safe ground when I suggest that most people would regard the idea of having two referendums not so much as "eminently sensible" as...well, bizarre. And peculiar. And weird. And if it was pointed out to them that there would only be a second referendum if the unionist side lost the first one, the word would then be "anti-democratic".

But if Rennie is still confused about what the problem is, a couple of examples may be of some assistance...

Exhibit A : In the mid-1990s, the Labour party performed an astonishing u-turn by declaring that devolution could only happen if approved by a referendum. Menzies Campbell later spoke publicly about Labour's "betrayal" of his party - so not only did the Lib Dems categorically reject the notion that two referendums were necessary for that major constitutional upheaval, they didn't even think it was appropriate to hold one. But it gets better. One of the major complaints about Labour's referendum plan was that it separated out the taxation powers of the parliament in an additional question - there was a feeling in some quarters that this was a Blairite plot to sabotage the tax powers and thus neuter the parliament. But George Robertson had a cunning plan (billed, hilariously, as a "compromise") to reassure those who made this complaint. He proposed that even if Scots voted Yes to a parliament and Yes to tax powers, there would have to be yet another referendum before the tax powers could actually be used - the theory being that this would make a Yes-Yes vote much more likely first time round. This crackpot idea went down, unsurprisingly, like a lead balloon, and I'll give you three guesses as to which party was at the forefront of those ridiculing it. I vividly recall being in stitches as Andy Myles (then chief executive of the Scottish Lib Dems) turned to the TV cameras to "plead" directly with George Robertson to return to the path of sanity : "Think again, George. Drop this strange plan to hold a referendum with two questions - and then another referendum."

Well said that man. Think again, Michael.

Exhibit B : On Newsnight Scotland tonight, Gordon Brewer helpfully paraphrased the Lib Dems' position in a question to Stewart Maxwell. The SNP should be really happy about this proposal, he said, because after all they wanted a proper mandate for independence, and therefore the more votes that were held on the subject the better. Maxwell struggled to maintain a straight face. Oh absolutely, Gordon, the more the merrier. Perhaps seventeen referendums producing a Yes vote to independence won't quite settle the matter - how about holding another twenty-three? That sounds "eminently sensible" to me.

*

In their posts yesterday on the unionist "neverendum" plan, both Gerry Hassan and Lallands Peat Worrier made unflattering reference to Vernon Bogdanor, who in spite of being openly hostile to Scottish independence would have us believe that his personal view that two referendums are required (for which there is no international precedent whatsoever) is somehow an objective, indisputable fact drawn solely from his constitutional "expertise" (or perhaps from a tablet of stone passed down to him from the Almighty). What I find most curious about this is that you'd have thought the very first thing someone like Bogdanor would be pointing out is that referendums themselves are totally alien to the British constitutional tradition - there were none at all until the 1970s. There certainly wasn't one when Ireland was granted its de facto independence in 1922, for instance - the principle that applied there was that the sovereign parliament made the decision, and any suggestion that parliament had no business acting without a particular kind of 'permission' ought to leave a Westminster constitutional traditionalist like Bogdanor feeling distinctly nauseous. So this whole idea that a legally-binding, Westminster-conducted referendum is a "requirement" can be safely dismissed as the obstructionist red herring that it is. In the British system, a referendum is only ever held if parliament decides that it should be, and a referendum outcome is only binding if parliament passes a law specifically saying it will be - in other words, every referendum is an optional extra, regardless of whether it is "consultative" or "binding". By definition, therefore, if a second vote is held in this case it will be for nakedly political - rather than constitutional - reasons.

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.

Why is less democracy always the solution?

Interesting to learn from Subrosa that Their Man In Edinburgh, the esteemed Michael Moore, is touting the idea that the one-off planned five-year term for the next Scottish parliament should be made a permanent arrangement. Subrosa poses this question -

"The cynic in me ponders the benefits to unionist Westminster; there must be some or the idea would never have been mooted, although there is evidence from Germany that when Bundestag and state elections (which are conducted by Länder rules) are the same year, the state elections were completely overshadowed. Yet what are the benefits to Westminster?"

I actually don't think there's any great mystery about what's going on here - it must have finally occurred to some bright spark in the Lib Dems that the 'solution' of putting the 2015 Holyrood election back a year doesn't even begin to address the problem thrown up by five-year fixed term parliaments at Westminster. If the Holyrood parliament starting in 2016 runs its natural course, there will again be a scheduled election that would clash with a Westminster contest in 2020 - presumably necessitating a further 'one-off' extension, and the whole process will continue on into perpetuity, leaving everyone (not least London Lib Dems) looking extremely stupid. Of course, this snag could have been deferred for quite a while if only the 2015 election had been brought forward by a year, rather than put back. Three-year parliaments work perfectly well in Australia without the sun falling out of the sky - but it seems giving the public more democracy rather than less is an option that would never even occur to our masters.

But my own question is this - what happens if (as is perfectly possible) the Westminster coalition collapses in a heap well before 2015, rendering all these shenanigans totally redundant? Can we have our own election back then, please?

Subrosa also makes this observation -

"All these constitutional changes we're hearing about at present favour the libdems. No matter how badly they do in future voting, if the AV result is a yes, then they will be the king-makers."

That's not really true. As a majoritarian system, AV will for the most part continue to produce majority Tory or Labour governments, which for the avoidance of doubt is a bad thing not a good thing. Because of the specific circumstances of UK politics, though, with a medium-sized third party that is ideologically somewhere between the two larger ones (and thus well-placed to attract second preferences) it will give the Lib Dems more seats than the current system would, and therefore make future balanced parliaments very slightly more likely. The Lib Dem-sceptics among us shouldn't be squeamish about that, because without balanced parliaments there's simply no hope of achieving more meaningful electoral reform at a later date. The idea that a majority Labour government would ever voluntarily introduce PR is in the realms of fantasy.

The test for the decent Lib Dem rank-and-file : at what point do they say 'up with this we will not put'?

Probably all of us who hold (to one degree or another) a partisan political stance are sometimes guilty of making mischief at another party's expense when we know that the true position is at least marginally more nuanced than we care to let on. But my conscience is clear on that score over the last 36 hours or so - I've been genuinely dumbfounded not only by the extent of devastation that is being wreaked on the poorest and most vulnerable in society, but more particularly by the Orwellian attempts to pretend that black is white and that "those with the broadest shoulders are bearing the greatest burden". I had a rare chat about politics with my mother this evening, and her final comment to me was this - "the truly frightening thing is that they're in for the next five years". Well, perhaps - but that isn't a future that's yet set in stone. And this time the people who ultimately get to choose whether it comes to pass aren't the headbanger No Turning Back brigade of the Tory right, but a group of people who for the most part actually care about social justice - the Lib Dem rank-and-file. So, knowing what they now know, why wouldn't they seize the opportunity to put a stop to the horrors that lie in wait?

We've heard all the rationalisations by now. "Coalition is about compromise, not about getting everything you believe in" - OK, but what if the Liberal Democrats could have delivered more of their principles through a cooperative and hardheaded approach to politics outside this government? A more limited confidence-and-supply deal with the Tories would have left them free to join a principled ad hoc alliance with Labour, the nationalist parties and the Greens to vote down the most gratuitously vicious of the welfare cuts announced on Wednesday. As for "we don't want to do this, but we had no choice", that argument is always the last resort of the political scoundrel. Just because the government had to do something about the deficit, it doesn't somehow follow that singling out the very poorest as the group to be squeezed until the pips squeak was unavoidable. That was a choice, and to pretend otherwise not only insults the intelligence of the electorate, it insults the intelligence of those otherwise decent Lib Dems who are frantically pretending to themselves. If they look at this CSR at it truly is, and not the Hollywood version in which glossy graphics are always at hand to magically prove it's all very progressive, can they honestly say that this is what they entered politics to achieve? More pertinently, can they say that it doesn't in many senses represent the polar opposite of what they entered politics to achieve?

And if Scottish Lib Dem members were looking for reassurance last night as their consciences and opinion poll ratings started to prick, they certainly wouldn't have found it in Michael Moore's excruciating appearance on Newsnight Scotland. His remarkable ignorance about (and disinterest in) the impact of the welfare cuts in his designated patch has of course been well-documented, but something else also leapt out at me. When Gordon Brewer asked him if someone on Employment and Support Allowance in a deprived part of Glasgow would have their money cut off if they'd failed to get back into work after one year in spite of their most genuine endeavours, Moore said this -

"we are not going to allow a situation where people get trapped on benefit for year after year"

Bearing in mind the context in which he gave that answer, the only possible inference to draw is that Moore's curious idea of "liberating" people from being trapped on benefit is simply to remove their benefit regardless of whether they have work or not (or indeed any means of properly supporting themselves at all). Of course, there are some on the right of politics who genuinely believe in the brutal logic that if you leave people to sink or swim, many will find a way of swimming. There may even be a grain of truth in that - but inherent in that logic is that if some are bound to sink rather than swim, that's a price worth paying. Again, is that really typical of the values that most Lib Dems came into politics to further? For the Orange Book tendency now at the apex of the party the answer may well be yes, but what about the rest?

I don't want to become a broken record on this subject, but...

From today's Scotsman -

"The First Minister yesterday dismissed claims that holding a referendum on voting reform on the same day as the Scottish elections would save £17 million.

The claim was made by Scottish Secretary Michael Moore who said that holding the two votes at the same time would save the taxpayer money.

But Alex Salmond, who has written to the Prime Minister David Cameron demanding a rethink over the plans, said that holding the AV referendum across the UK would cost up to £100 million and that none of the main parties at Westminster supported that form of proportional representation."

If even a major newspaper still can't get its head round the elementary fact that AV is not any kind of 'form' of proportional representation, what chance have the British public got of making an informed choice, whenever the referendum is held?