A post-feminist future?

Apologies for going slightly quiet in recent days - I've been having a bit of a manic spell (I could tell you what I've been up to, but you wouldn't believe me!). I still plan to write a post about Arthur Donaldson soon. In the meantime, I just thought I'd recommend a rather wonderful article I stumbled upon about the crossroads facing modern feminism -

"More broadly, I am convinced that if feminism is to have a positive future, it must reinvent itself as a gender equity movement advocating for both sexes and against all sexism. Focusing solely on female disadvantage was perfectly understandable when, whatever paternalistic benefits women might have enjoyed and whatever burdens men might have suffered, women were the ones lacking the basic rights of adult citizens. But today, there is simply no moral or rational justification for any fair-minded feminist to ignore (for instance) the more lenient treatment of female offenders in the justice system or the anti-father biases in family courts. The concept of feminism as equality of the sexes is increasingly on a collision course with feminism as a movement championing women."

The way I always put it is that if feminism is simply about equality, then I'm a feminist - but it's a bloody silly word for it, because equality is by definition about two genders, not just one.

Incidentally, I typed the whole 1400 word article into Google Translate and converted it into James Mackenzie-speak, and it came out as just four words - "what about teh menz". Hmmm. It's an admirably concise language at times. In fact it doesn't have far to go to emulate the virtues of Orwell's Newspeak, which of course managed to condense the unwieldy American Declaration of Independence into the single word "crimethink".

Easton sees no Scottishness

There's a really, really odd article on the BBC website by Mark Easton that attempts to portray the census results on national identity as some sort of good news story for Britishness.  I hesitate to call it a propaganda piece, but it has to be said that Easton has in the past made no secret of the fact that he considers himself to be British rather than English or Scottish, and he's not exactly shy in this article of praising his own preferred identity to the skies -

"Britishness is attractive to those with a mixed cultural heritage. It has always been an accommodating label, tolerant of complexity and difference."

Any actual evidence to support that rather grandiose claim? Er, nope. The man's entitled to his personal opinion, but whether he's entitled to shove that opinion down the throats of others on a website that is legally bound to be politically neutral is another matter. And Easton gets well and truly into the realms of fantasy when he tries to discern some statistical proof that "attractive, accommodating, tolerant" Britishness is on the march in census results that are, frankly, nothing short of catastrophic for his worldview. 62% of Scottish residents reported that they are Scottish only, 60% of English residents reported that they are English only, and 58% of Welsh residents reported they are Welsh only. Easton acknowledges that this is the first time that the national identity question has been posed and that it is therefore impossible to make direct comparisons with the past - and yet still feels free to jump to the heroic conclusion that the dismally low adherence to a British identity is probably higher than it would have been in previous decades. Oh, and he expects it to get "higher still" (ahem).

"It may be that our increasingly mobile and cosmopolitan society sees the British identity become more popular than it has been in its 300-year history."

WHAT???? Here's a small suggestion, Mark - take a look at some footage of England football fans waving the flag of the whole UK to celebrate their national team becoming world champions in 1966, then look at the sea of St George's Crosses that have dominated England matches since 1996, and then try telling me that we're on the brink of some kind of renaissance of British national identity.

Much of the article clings to the not terribly impressive statistic that young people in England are fractionally more likely to consider themselves British than their elders - while hastily glossing over the fact that the polar opposite is true in Wales, and that the equivalent statistical comparison isn't even available for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Easton seemingly doesn't think this detracts from his argument much. Tell me, Mark - if three of the four component parts of Britishness don't really count for much in your mind, is this identity really what it's billed to be? Or does it just amount to a fluffier version of Englishness?

For my part, I wholeheartedly consider myself British, but I most certainly didn't tick that box as one of my national identities on the census form - because authentic Britishness (as opposed to Greater Englishness) isn't a national identity at all, it's a multi-national identity.

* * *

This tweet from Better Together made me laugh -

"If you're at #cpc13 [Conservative Party Conference] drop by stall 26 and find out about how you can help keep Scotland a strong & secure part of the UK #indyref"

I wonder if the advice at that stall includes the words "defect" and "disband"? You may as well be brutally honest with them, guys...

We need to talk about independence

As I think I've mentioned before, I hardly ever talk about politics in 'real life'.  In fact, I sometimes wince when I hear people express political views that I agree with, if the context seems inappropriate.  In the run-up to the 2011 Holyrood election, I remember standing in a queue for Celtic Connections, and listening to a woman bore a couple of English students witless with rambling talk about unionists and Iain Gray.  All I could think was "oh for pity's sake, what good do you think this is doing?"

I'm beginning to realise, though, that the equation has completely changed now that we're in the referendum campaign, and that there's far more danger in not speaking out than there is in looking like the pub bore.  While I was off on my travels, I found myself in the company of some English people at dinner in Austria.  When they found out I was Scottish, the subject turned almost automatically to independence - something which has never happened to me before, perhaps indicating that the proximity of the vote is finally starting to attract some interest south of the border.  "Well, I just hope we stay united," one of them said, turning to me with a knowing smile.  My interpretation was that she assumed that any Scot who could bear to have dinner with English people must be anti-independence, and that she could therefore 'risk' taking it as read that I was an ally.  I felt a bit sick, because I didn't really want to get into a political discussion, but I realised that my silence would be taken as assent.  So after a couple of the others had made some disparaging comments about independence, I forced myself to say "I have to tell you, I'm in favour of it".

It became very awkward from that moment on.  First of all, there was the familiar knee-jerk assumption that it must all be about a childish rejection of "us", the English - "do you still blame us for Glencoe?" one of them asked.  Yes, it was a joke, but the fact that questions like that were the first to enter their minds (as opposed, for example, to asking me for my own reasons for believing that Scotland would be a better country if it controlled its own affairs) spoke volumes.  Then there was the phenomenon that I used to encounter regularly at PB - an assumption that political discourse across the UK is so homogenous that the debate on independence in Scotland cannot possibly be any more advanced than the kindergarten stuff in the London media, and that many key issues have therefore yet to be properly thought through.  Someone asked me whether we would keep the monarchy in an independent Scotland, and did so in a tone of voice implying that it was a killer question that nobody had ever thought of before.  I paused for a moment, trying to work out how to explain in a few words that I am personally a republican, but that the likelihood is that the monarchy will be retained for the time being, and that I'm not overly fussed by the prospect.  She leapt on my hesitation and said "ah, you see, he'll have to think about that one!"

I fared slightly better when the usual topic of size came up.  "When you look at all these countries around Europe and realise how big they are," one of them said, "I don't know how we think we can possibly compete if we start breaking apart..."   I struck a 'look around you' pose and pointed out that Austria isn't that much bigger than Scotland, and is much, much smaller than the rest of the UK.  She didn't have an answer to that, but did suggest that it might be time to "stop arguing now".

I went back to my hotel room and felt incredibly frustrated.  It wasn't a dispute I had sought, which is perhaps just as well, because if I'd had any hopes of having my views treated as 'adult' ones in a discussion like that, I would have been bitterly disappointed.  I wondered if perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut, because after all I hadn't even been talking to people who have a vote next year.  But then I thought - no, it's all part of the same feedback loop.  If you keep silent at a moment like that, then it perpetuates the myth south of the border - which is ultimately bounced back to us via the London media - that 'real' Scots don't care about independence.

We have to talk openly about our support for independence, not because it isn't sometimes very awkward to do so, but precisely because it is.  That awkwardness is the sound of silly preconceptions being challenged.

*  *  *

You can't really miss from the masthead that this blog has fared rather well in previous "best political blogs" polls, and I'm delighted to learn that it can now add to that the accolade of having been voted the UK's 36th worst political blog.  I tend to take the view that there's no such thing as bad publicity, so many thanks to my ex-PB chums (I presume) for making it possible.  You're the best, guys!  Actually, it's quite a stellar list by any standards.

Talking of PB, while I was away I effectively won a long-running 'duel' with the PB poster AndyJS about the likely outcome of the German election.  Andy had expected a repeat of the Schleswig-Holstein state election from last year, with CDU supporters voting tactically in big numbers to ensure that the FDP stayed above the 5% threshold needed for parliamentary representation.  I never thought that was remotely likely, because in contrast to Schleswig-Holstein the CDU's own place in government wasn't in doubt, and there was no particular reason to think that CDU voters strongly preferred the FDP as a junior coalition partner to either the SPD or Greens.  I must admit, though, that I was still (pleasantly) surprised that the FDP weren't able to sneak above the threshold on their own merits.

Photos at 5.54 : Inveraray and thereabouts

This is the first post I've prescheduled to keep things ticking over while I'm off on my travels.  Well, actually strictly speaking it's the second, but the first was just to tell you there would be prescheduled posts, so let's not confuse matters.  First up are some photos I took in the Inveraray area back in June.  They were all taken with my mobile phone, which (depressingly) seems to produce a marginally better picture quality than my actual camera!

Up next...

In the highly unlikely event that things have gone according to plan, I should be off on my travels by now. When I get back, I hope to write a post about Arthur Donaldson's brief internment without trial during the Second World War. With the very kind help of Marcia and her friend Tom, I've been looking through the relevant material from the National Archives. You probably won't faint with amazement to learn that the totality of the picture is rather different from the one you may have seen portrayed in certain anti-independence publications a few years back. The "evidence" against Donaldson was almost laughably thin, and many of the documents themselves openly concede that.

In the meantime, don't rush off, because - thrillingly - I may just have the odd prescheduled post for you during my absence.

Boost for pro-independence campaign as ICM show a No lead only half as big as suggested by YouGov

I was slightly worried earlier this evening when Blair McDougall and Euan McColm eagerly retweeted the news of an impending (and extremely rare) ICM poll on the independence referendum. ICM are of course one of the most credible and evergreen of pollsters, so if they had shown a whopping No lead in line with YouGov, it would have been a cause for concern. But thankfully that hasn't happened, and on balance I'd say that Yes should be the campaign to take most heart from this poll - the figures are roughly equidistant from Panelbase on the one extreme with its one-point Yes lead, and YouGov on the other extreme with its thirty-point No lead.

Should Scotland be an independent country?

Yes 32%
No 49%

The No lead is some five points lower than in the recent TNS-BMRB poll, and a full thirteen points lower than in the recent YouGov poll with its dodgy preamble. ICM also join a clear majority of pollsters in putting active support for Scotland remaining in the UK at less than 50%.

We now essentially have three camps of pollsters - Panelbase with an outright Yes lead, Angus Reid, ICM and TNS-BMRB with middling No leads, and Ipsos-Mori and YouGov with much larger No leads.

Panelbase - Yes lead of 1%
Angus Reid - No lead of 13%
ICM - No lead of 17%
TNS-BMRB - No lead of 22%
Ipsos-Mori - No lead of 28%
YouGov - No lead of 30%

That really ought to lay to rest the suggestions from commentators such as Alex Massie that it's "Panelbase against the field" - if Panelbase are outliers on one end of a very broad spectrum, then YouGov are plainly outliers at the other end.

So what can explain the fact that ICM's No lead is markedly lower than YouGov's? Well, basically, they've shown a degree of professionalism that puts YouGov to shame. They do use a preamble to the referendum question, but it's neutrally-worded, and doesn't cast independence in pejorative terms. They also ask how people think they will vote on the actual referendum date, rather than "tomorrow" (eliminating the risk that voters might assume that they should respond more cautiously to a hypothetical question about "tomorrow", because they don't yet have enough information to vote Yes with confidence). Perhaps most importantly, ICM weight by recalled Holyrood vote, not by recalled Westminster vote as YouGov do. The problem with the latter approach is that it's overwhelmingly likely that some people who voted for the SNP in the 2011 Holyrood landslide will falsely recall that they also voted for the SNP in 2010 - and those disproportionately pro-Yes voters will be wrongly scaled down in the weighted figures as a result.

In a nutshell, it's now very much game on.

* * *

UPDATE : There are also some whispers of another Panelbase poll tonight, although so far I can't find any details.

Tweet from official BBC Sport account claims that Andy Murray and Colin Fleming are playing for the "England" team

Let's just double-check the facts here. Andy Murray is from Dunblane, and played for Scotland against England in the Aberdeen Cup team event. Colin Fleming is from Linlithgow, and won a Commonwealth Games gold medal for Scotland in the mixed doubles with his partner Jocelyn Rae. Both men speak with strong Scottish accents. And yet when they lost the third set in their Davis Cup doubles match for Great Britain about an hour ago, this was the summary from BBC Sport's Twitter account -

"Croatia take third set tie-break 8-6, but England lead 2-1."

Wow. We kind of expect that sort of geographical and political illiteracy from American news outlets, and yet we still rightly get annoyed when it happens. Indeed, when the all-Scottish curling team won Olympic gold for Great Britain in 2002, it was the BBC's own Reporting Scotland that mocked an American newspaper for describing it as an "English" triumph. I'm not quite sure how we're supposed to react when our own national broadcaster makes such an unmitigated howler. It would have been indefensible even if they had referred to a GB team wholly composed of English players as "England", but to do it when only Scottish players are on the court for GB is just breathtaking.

The tweet was swiftly deleted, but as of yet there doesn't seem to have been any apology (which frankly should have been instant and automatic).

Ah well. Let's hear it for our Scodavisians. If Murray wins his singles rubber tomorrow, then GB will be returning to the World Group courtesy of three matches won exclusively by Scottish players. It's getting to be ever more like those "British" curling teams...

* * *

There's an ICM poll on the independence referendum coming out tonight. No direct word on what it says yet, but the fact that Euan McColm and Blair McDougall went out of their way to retweet Kenny Farquharson's announcement probably isn't too promising. But let's wait and see. It's been so long since the last ICM poll on independence that it'll be difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the trend (and previous ICM polls have chopped and changed between different formats anyway).

Should the SNP endorse a Labour for Independence candidate in the Dunfermline by-election?

You might remember that back in March, when it briefly seemed possible that there might be a Falkirk by-election, TheUnionDivvie raised the idea that the SNP could stand aside in favour of Dennis Canavan running on a Labour for Independence ticket. Well, we now know for sure that a Dunfermline by-election is in the offing, and on the previous thread Tris mentioned that a commenter on his blog had once again suggested the idea of a Labour for Independence candidate. There are of course a couple of key differences this time round -

1) In Falkirk there would have been an overwhelming logic to a Canavan candidacy, given that he had represented the town as both an MP and MSP.

2) The SNP rather than Labour are the defending party in Dunfermline, and a failure to even put up an official SNP candidate might be interpreted as defeatism.

I don't think the latter point is a killer argument by any means. In the early-to-mid 80s, the Liberals repeatedly stood aside in favour of the SDP in by-elections they might otherwise have won, and yet that was a sign of strength rather than weakness. Ultimately, you're only seen as weak if the tactic doesn't work.

And that's where we come to the crunch. It would only be worth doing if the Labour for Independence candidate was a big-hitter, and realistically that means Dennis Canavan or nobody. He may not have previously represented the area, but he's a local man all the same (born in Cowdenbeath), and in any case he's a well-known and well-respected figure throughout Scotland. With the SNP's endorsement, he might well start as the favourite to win. But on the other hand, if he isn't prepared to stand, a Labour for Independence candidacy would probably be a waste of time, and might even be counter-productive.

My guess is that the SNP aren't even considering possibilities like this, because it isn't the done thing. But this is scarcely the moment for politics as usual - if you want to make things happen, you have to think outside the box now and again. There would be difficulties to be ironed out - current Labour members would risk expulsion if they campaigned against the official Labour candidate, so it might not be possible for Canavan to officially stand on the Labour for Independence platform. But even so, the symbolic power of a successful pro-independence Labour candidate would be beyond value.

The hard politics of Dunfermline

It goes without saying that it's a very good thing that a person convicted of repeated domestic violence (and without really the slightest shred of doubt over his guilt) has been effectively forced to resign his parliamentary seat. But from the point of view of hard political calculation, is this a setback for the SNP? After all, if Walker had pigheadedly soldiered on, the party could have avoided a very tricky by-election, while still distancing themselves from the "independent" MSP. For the avoidance of doubt, a contest in Dunfermline would have been murderously difficult regardless of how it had come about, because the typical (although thankfully not universal) pattern in by-elections is that the incumbent government lose at least some ground - and the SNP government will be defending an absolutely wafer-thin majority.

But the reality is that this was a situation where the SNP just couldn't win. If Walker had stayed in place, he would have remained an acute embarrassment to the party, because everyone knew full well that he had been originally elected as an SNP candidate. So we all just have to put this one down to experience, and hope that lessons are learned that will prevent this entirely avoidable mess from ever occurring again. At least now a line will be drawn - in an ideal world the SNP will retain (or technically gain) the seat with a candidate who bears as little resemblance to Walker as humanly possible, or less ideally they will finish second in a constituency that is in any case traditional Labour territory, and will be seen to have accepted a fair penalty for their mistake in selecting Walker in the first place.

I'm slightly troubled, though, by the efforts I've seen on Twitter to browbeat the main parties into making this by-election an all-woman contest. It would certainly be tactically savvy for the SNP to select a female candidate, and fortunately it just so happens that the best potential candidate I can think of is a woman (Shirley-Anne Somerville). But the message that will be sent out by a deliberately concocted all-woman contest is that men are the guilty parties, who are atoning for their sins by leaving the floor to women on this occasion. That would be entirely inappropriate. These were not crimes committed by "men" - they were committed by an individual called Bill Walker. By all means, let's ensure that the tackling of domestic violence is a key issue for debate in this contest, but that debate should not censor - as is sadly all too common - the voices of male victims of domestic violence, or indeed female victims where the perpetrator was another woman.

'Besides, as one of my aunties put it, that Ruth Davidson has been a bit of a disappointment, hasn't she?'

One observation I made in Michael Greenwell's podcast the other day was that there is, in fact, something positive that campaigners can do about polls, in the sense that (if you have the money) you can simply commission one that pushes your own priorities, and in which the dice are loaded in your favour in terms of getting a favourable result. The findings can then be used to shape the media narrative. Lord Ashcroft has just proved that point by effortlessly getting his latest 'research' featured as the lead story in the Scotsman, although I'm sure it's just pure coincidence that a billionaire No-supporting Tory peer of the realm was able to pull off that trick where crowd-funding Yes supporters failed just a few weeks ago.

So how do we know that this poll was tactical, rather than a dispassionate attempt to uncover the views of the electorate? Well, apart from the obvious point that Lord Ashcroft is Lord Ashcroft, we need look no further than this part of his commentary on the results -

"I also found many voters deeply sceptical about the idea of giving the Scottish Parliament more powers"

Er, no. If you want to know whether voters are deeply sceptical about giving the Scottish Parliament more powers, what you do is ask voters whether they think the Scottish Parliament should be given more powers or not. Lord Ashcroft mysteriously (well, let's face it, not very mysteriously) failed to ask that question, and instead chose to grill his respondents about a string of Tory hobby-horses such as the likelihood of fiscal discipline under devo max. Those results may well be of great interest to him, but shouldn't be of much interest to the rest of us - unless of course we've been hoodwinked by his spin into thinking they mean something that they don't.

But if that part of his commentary is a touch cynical, Ashcroft's closing line is just plain risible -

"Besides, as one of our participants put it, Alex Salmond has quite enough power as it is."

Which is about as meaningful as me saying that I met a guy called Barry down the pub who made some cutting comments about Jackson Carlaw. Seriously, your lordship, a general rule of thumb in polling is that one person's opinion is not statistically significant, no matter how pleasing that opinion may be to your own ears.

Unsurprisingly, the Scotsman has also misrepresented the poll to some extent -

"Researchers also found voters believe the Scottish Government cares more about independence than issues such as jobs, the economy and the NHS, and say this priority is wrong."

Not true on the latter point. We know that 61% of respondents said that the Scottish government should have a different priority from the one it currently has, but since less than half of respondents actually thought that the Scottish government's priority is independence, that isn't sufficient to substantiate the Scotsman's claim.

The referendum voting intention figures from this poll can also be safely filed away as little more than a historical curiosity, as the fieldwork is between four and seven months out of date. (The main referendum question was also asked FIFTH, which ought to instantly destroy the poll's credibility in the eyes of certain unionist commentators if they are interested in maintaining at least a semblance of logical consistency.) The Scotsman valiantly attempt to breathe some relevance into it by pointing to the unusually high sample size, but the reality is that a normal-sized sample of 1000 only carries a very slightly greater margin of error. Meanwhile, the Holyrood voting intention figures (showing SNP leads of five points on the constituency ballot and twelve points on the regional list ballot) are "only" three months out of date.