Hot TTIP - Letter to Ed

Had an email from Ed Miliband. All about his £2.5 billion to save the NHS. Plus asking for money and my loyalty. Now how could I join the Labour Party after all they’ve done for to Scotland?

Ed  

Thanks for your email a week ago about joining the Labour Party and donating. I’ve been thinking…  

I watched the Party Conference with interest and the very significant announcement you mention in your email. £2.5 billion for the NHS! I’m a bit troubled, though.  

First of all, I wonder why this level of need wasn’t explored, or even mentioned, in the run-up to the Scottish Referendum. I’d have thought it was hugely important. After all, if the threat to the NHS, and I presume you mean the UK as a whole in these post-referendum days, is so great, failure to secure a £2.5 billion extra cash, or a proportion in England alone, would have had ramifications in Scotland as a result of Barnett consequentials. Why did you keep quiet? I can’t believe a politician with a social conscience would have stayed silent just for political gain.

Secondly, Labour sided with and eventually fronted the NO campaign in Scotland for the Tories. Why didn’t you put a coherent plan, a vision, before us? I waited two years to hear that and nothing emerged. Alistair Darling made much of a Plan B for currency in an independent Scotland. I suspect that was to knock down any answers he’d get. But Labour didn’t even have a Plan A. Not of your own. We had a poorly thought out pink Tory look-alike and so badly presented even the mainstream media rubbished it. Now you talk of austerity in the same vein as the Tories and support another ludicrous military adventure. HAs nothing changed? Have your roots shrivelled so much? No we have clear water at last on the NHS, but wait, there’s a problem with that.  

Thirdly, you have a £2.5 billion plan. Before we applaud the cavalry coming over the hill, lets consider. You may find that £2.5 billion lining the pockets of private US healthcare corporations. Not once did you talk about TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). You must know that’s on the horizon. Vince Cable is working on it now, in secret, I presume. The Tories have made it clear that the NHS must be part of the deal (other countries have removed healthcare from the negotiations). You must know TTIP sets out to deregulate trade between the EU and the USA and has implications for every regulation now in place, including workers’ rights, food safety, toxic chemicals, digital privacy. Expectations are that it could be finalised by the end of the year, Too late for the next election. Too late for the promises, even if kept, made to the Scottish electorate in the Vow.   

Why isn’t TTIP your top political priority? You said not a word at the conference, yet here's £2.5 billion to pay US corporations who, incidentally, will have the right to sue any successor government if their bottom line is threatened by democratic changes they introduce to limit this. 

Here are the references, if you’ve not been briefed:

• What is TTIP? | War on Want 

• John Hilary’s Paper on TTIP 

• Wikipedia  

• 38 Degrees Petition 

So, you see, I’m uneasy. You’ve just made a promise on the NHS you can’t keep unless you do something now. You’ve made a promise to the Scots you can’t keep for the same reasons. You got in bed with the Tories for what, political expediency, solidarity with the workers of the UK? I think the former, a political quickie and how they suckered you. I think you’ve lost your way, corrupted by the power you once had and so desperate for the fix, you’ll lie with the Tories, the City and turn your back on your roots.  

I can’t join you. I won’t give you money. I can’t support anything you do from here on. I’d say sorry but I’d not mean it. Actually, you should say sorry to a lot of people.  

Yours   

Ed(win)

Slack Water, Après Moi…

There's a feature of tides when the flood has reached its height, a moment, not of actual stillness but of turmoil. Slack water. Then the tide will begin to ebb…

In less than two weeks the flood that brought the referendum to its peak, nearly overflowing into independence, we've seen the same flood increase membership of the YES parties and a huge swell of undiminished commitment to a continuing YES movement.

In Westminster, slack water has been the word. In a chaotic aftermath, we've seen the Vow translated into the English question, hints that any new powers Scotland receives will be balanced by take-aways elsewhere, promises of another five years' of austerity, reductions in rights of protest (fracking), even hints that social media could be switched off to prevent uncontrolled coordination of dissent (Cameron said terrorism and criminality, but what's in a definition?). That came so thick and fast it surprised even me.


Meanwhile, Brown's timetable rumbles on, hardly spoken of. Behind closed doors. Britain goes to war again. Scotland is forgotten, even while the parties squabble between and within about it all.

And you have to wonder, is this the politics-as-usual I predicted a fews weeks ago? Is it politics-as-usual-PLUS? Using the turmoil to advantage, fuelling it, even, to set the agenda for the next step and keep most of it out of sight?

I think so.

I think they are waiting for the ebb to start. The huge political party sign-ups may be disconcerting but the old arrogance predicts it'll happen. They're waiting for it. On it depends the fudge which will be the Brown 'consultation'. Once the proposals for the Scottish settlement emerge (any minute now), the consultation begins. With whom? How? How long has it got? I can't see it being fully public, can you? No, it'll have a gloss of consultation but it will rely on the expected ebbing enthusiasm for concealment.

Image taken from the BBC. Here.

The consultation will be over by November. Go figure.

So the dynamics, post-ref. Why don't we all shut up? Why don't we accept the result? I've said elsewhere (as has Derek Bateman), you don't ask political parties to abandon their politics as a result of a defeat. The Scottish people have made a decision. 1.6 million still believe what they believed and are engaged enough to carry on. And besides, this is about the settlement we voted for collectively. This is about the deal for Scotland, as promised. We all have a stake in that, to see it's the best possible and not a half-baked fudge or a recipe for revenge after our sheer cheek to ask for something different.

So Westminster is waiting for the tide to go out. Hoping. It's true there's a period now where we look at strategies for the way ahead. We look for responses to the avalanche of pronouncements from the South and from our cohort of NO parties as they jockey for position.

I remember, and we all should, if the tide goes back, that's the way of things, and tides rise again. What Westminster needs to recall, is the further it falls, the greater the flood to come. Before the tsunami the shoreline lies bare, before the wave. Before the wave.

Settled Will or Unsettling Testament

In Scotland, the Labour party didn't win a majority at the last Holyrood election. I guess that meant the Scottish people didn't want them to govern. Now, I'd not suggest for a minute (even in a rant) that they should now desist from proposing policies or framing a vision, even a modified one, of a Labourite Scotland in future.

Same for YES and NO. I hear some regard the result after the18th represented the settled will of the Scottish people. 'Will', I can accept but 'settled' is a vexed question. If for no other reason than the point above.

I know, we've had a referendum not an election. Plenty were happy to point that out or fudge it as required. Still, I saw nothing in black and white, to say the question should never be asked again, that it was settled, as some say, for a generation. It was a referendum, granted, seeking an answer to a point of principle not to elect representatives. There's no reason for the question of principle to have a time of deferment attached to it.


We don't say to a political party not elected, give up and go home, never again darken our doors with your discredited ideas. However much we might wish it, their principles, policies and objectives are their own and they have the right to express them in the political process.

Scotland's settled will, then. 55% to 45%. Pretty near a 50:50 split. About 10% difference between two visions of the future. We need to tease out what those visions were. Lord Ashcrofts poll, strangely enough, analysed why YES and why NO and the reasons differed on the issues most compelling to each. YES put the social justice-fairer society high on the list along with our future in our own hands. NO were unconvinced on currency, unwilling to risk independence, generally in favour of the union.

For me, as aYES, it was clear. I found NO entirely lacking in vision and with no positives for the Union. Even at the last, the Brown package held no detail though, if it had, it could have been the vision so long awaited. I wondered why so late. Now, I still wonder at the timetable, on which so many may have voted NO, as it has nothing inspiring in it and certainly no detail.

So, indeed, the people of Scotland have spoken. I respect the decision but I still fundamentally disagree with it. 1.6 million did with their votes and, I suspect some have already crossed over in the days of fudge in Westminster that followed. This is a matter of principle and a matter of facts, for me. Principle, in that I believe in what YES felt Scotland could be in its own right. That embraces ideas of fairness, justice and an open, internationalist place in the world. It was as much about self-determination as our example to the world: passionate, peaceful argument through a democratic process as an example to troubled planet, including a new flavour of politics, a spirit of co-operation and not conflict.

I feel Westminster have already said all they will about the achievement, having wiped their brows and returned to the run of politics they know. The UK should be proud. We had this debate without guns and coercion of that kind. We did have misinformation, a hostile media and a coalition of parties who gave us nothing until the last minute, who could not or would not make a coherent positive case for the Union based on their own principles. That was shameful.

In the last analysis, I have to say, I will not set aside my own principles. I won't give up on social justice or a different kind of political discourse. I won't tell the YES movement to stand down.

I will use the UK political arena to make these principles a reality. I'll stand firm with my UK counterparts on that goal, just as I would have as a good-neighbourly independent Scot. Solidarity, after all, cross all borders, as any socialist will tell you.

I will continue to expose lies, duplicity and unalloyed spin for the sham it is. I'll call out any politician who tries to varnish the truth for their own advancement. I will honour all shades of opinion expressed by honest people according to their hearts and minds.

If the opportunity to ask any question again arises, I'll ask it. If the chance to ask YES or NO to independence comes again, I'll seize it with both hands.

The people are always speaking.

By Their Conspiracies Shall Ye Know Them

Cartoon by Robert Crumb

I'm wary of conspiracy theories. I worry they're part of another conspiracy altogether.

We've had a few 'dirty foul, ref!' moments since the 18th September. Oddities at the counting, unexplained fire alarms, confusion over YES and NO piles, ballot papers blank on the back. After the fact, these are shown in fuzzy images shared on social media. We all get a bit twitched by it.

I'm certain we need to look into things like this but the key thing is evidence. Investigate, build the case, put up the evidence. Let's face it, the first rule in conspiracy is cover-up. The next is plausible deniability. The third is these people are deluded fanatics and can't believed, about anything. If there had to be a fourth, it's break rule number one, leave a fuzzy trail so you can use two and three against your opponents. Five, if you really want a fifth, is distraction.

So there's the challenge, how to unpick the several allegations carefully and rationally without appearing hysterical and deranged. Be informed, be aware, but above all, keep a calm sough.

Now here's another caveat. All politics is based on conspiracy. We form a world view and from it structure the world as we believe it should be. We choose to interpret the work, events and the people in it according this structure. It colours our behaviour and the way we understand the behaviour of others. Nothing wrong with that. It's the human condition.

We form communities, societies, political parties out of this, of course. We live in communities and societies and conformity is a subtle pressure for most of us. There's room for variation and, all being well, live and let live prevails. Politically, though, the motivation is to mould society and community and to garner the power to do it with. People sign up, toe the party lines and there you have a collective of individuals agreeing to interpret the world in a broadly similar way; agreeing to trying to make the world into their image of it. To me, that's a conspiracy.

An uncritical acceptance of the given world view begets the party hack, the unprincipled apparatchik, the prevaricator, the dissembler and, in the end, the bigot, the zealot and the fanatic. That's why I believe we can never uncritically accept demands of loyalty from any political leaders. We have to make loyalty dynamic, a process of inter-related loyalty, us to them, them to us. Otherwise, political belief and commitment, become blind faith. Applied unconditionally, it can lead to the worst of conspiratorial behaviour. Blind eyes, sleight of hand, half-truths and falsification.

What I believe, too, is that truth wins out because it's self-consistent. It is what it is. Lies and attempts to pervert the truth introduce inconsistency. When what you say is true, or you believe it honestly to be so, whatever you say is basically consistent. Of course, argument arises around facts and interpretation, feelings and their expression but, fundamentally you have no need to twist your story to fit a construct. Liars leak their inconsistency as they try to maintain the shape of their imposed construct. Look at Gordon Brown's body language with Dimbleby. More than nerves, that, the sheer effort of a man trying to avoid the pitfalls of his own fabrications.

That's why I think conspiracy is not the opposite of cock-up but its progenitor. The effort of lying is so great that liars end up exhausted keeping up the facade. They thrash themselves against honesty and fair-mindedness until their mendacity is plain to see. As that unravels we have to be sympathetic to those snagged in their net of manipulation, the ones made complicit because they believed the fabrications and became the second hand proponents of it.

So, in the world of referendum conspiracy, let's be sanguine. Some of what we've heard may reflect our own misunderstanding of the process*, or be within a normal margin of human error. It could be the work of misguided individuals or even some clandestine part of a bigger picture. In the last of these, my concern is: the smartest conspiracy of all would set out to feed our suspicions, leak these fuzzy images until we leap up with anger, fuel the indignation until we're distracted. Then they would deny it, call us deranged, take over the moral high ground and leave us mired in an argument manufactured to kill our focus and energy.

So, I repeat, gather information, find facts, the evidence and quietly build a case. You need to have a grasp of the processes and the rules and be able to lay them out. Until then, keep it quiet until there's enough for you to speak out.

In the meantime, we should watch the collected political conspiracies of Westminster. We should be vigilant. I've no doubt they'd rather we were still arguing with the referee while they're trying to break from the pack for a run at the goal.

---

* Wings Over Scotland published a piece on this, by Douglas Daniel, an official referendum agent for Wings. He said:

"Believe me, if anything dodgy had been happening, this vile cybernat would have been screaming it from the rafters."

On lying: an article in the US journal, The Atlantic, Is Lying Bad for Us? discusses why.  On page 1, near the end, and on page 2, it touches on how stressful it is and how it distorts the liar's world view.

Divides and Divides to Be Crossed

Let's be clear on how Scotland has been divided. More importantly, the several ways…

The referendum split 55-45, a gross figure and, not as some have portrayed it, so decisive. The coarse red map of NO with wee blue things nestled in it does't reflect the truth. In reality the distinction is a pointillist mosaic of red and blue dots. Many towns and villages voted like Glasgow. That isn't part of the 'decisive, settled for a generation' view. Nor does it sit well with the collective amnesia rising like a fog in Westminster as the main parties wrestle for political gains of their own.

Look at it another way, we are a coalition of YES campaigners and voters alongside the persuaded NO and forever NO campaigners. I sense, among the first of those categories, a horrible realisation that the Brown promises of a week ago were just that, made-up muck (for want of a less polite word).

Cameron has tied 'The Vow' into Devo-Plus for all and the English answer to the West Lothian question. He's got a brawl to come with his own back benches but he can sell it on the wholesale destruction of Labour - for a generation. He's already poised to whittle away Barnett .

Milliband is, as he so often was in Scotland (on the street), silent about Scotland. Ed Balls has the temerity to stand up for cuts to child benefit, more austerity, benefit caps. He's more red than Tory by a bawhair, politically a hideous puce.

Clegg is, as usual, liberally quiet. Looking for a fence to sit on. Never mind, he's Orange Book. When the fence turns up he'll sit on it but his feet will be on the side where the rich people live.

Back home, we have the rump of these, our local stooges, the Lamonts, Davidsons, and Rennies witheir attendant Darlings and Murphies. Never a chink of light between, arms linked in a resolute wall of opposition to Scottish purpose. Be sure, that purpose of social justice, fairness and creativity, for all they pay lip service, are diametrically a threat to their corporate allegiances. The division there lies between their covert coalition of dread and our own coalition of vision.

In Scotland, the SNP, the Greens, Scottish Socialists, Solidarity along with community and local groups came together with a positive spirit of unity. We set differences aside to reach a collective goal. And that put an indelible stamp on our political nature. We aren't afraid of disagreement. We are prepared to respect sincere NO voters. Of course, we'll argue, discuss and persuade but we recognise that argument is the foundation of real democracy. We expect our opponents to show integrity and we'll respect them for it.

Deep in the South, I suspect these views have no place. Westminster will bray in the same monotonee as before. Respect is not even skin deep there. It's a shred of scurf, nothing more, brushed aside in a moment of distaste. What's more, in narrow party interests, they'll divide us and divide us to their hearts' content, if it serves them.

Here, we have many bridges to build, between YES and disappointed NOs, and many to maintain. The political movement we grew is nurturing itself, its voice unstilled. That is also the voice we have to project to reach though the rupturing Westminster turmoil.

It must ask questions:

• Where are the promises of change?
• Where is the detail you hid from us when you made them?
• Where is the real consultation about that, for Scots, English, Welsh and Northern Irish voters?
• Why so late? Did you think you'd get away without offeringf it?

It must provide the answers we want:

• Nothing short of Devo-Max will do;
• Full fiscal autonomy - with control of ALL tax revenues, including oil;
• Social justice - no bedroom tax, end demonising the poor and disabled, no more food banks;
• Regulate the banks and the City;
• Regenerate industry;
• Scrap Trident.

That's a start. But if we don't ask the questions and provide the sample answers it'll all be swept aside in a tide of self-serving politics. The Westminster carpets hide too many demands that have turned to dust.

It's feet to the fire time.

Straw in the Wind

So what's this? Jack Straw thinks we should now legislate so the Union that is the UK can never be dissolved (read it here at the Times). Forgive my foaming at the mouth. Has he any understanding of the act of Union that began this? Scotland's people are sovereign in this whereas the people of England are not. Parliament took sovereignty from the monarch at the time of union but Scotland, as set out in the Declaration of Arbroath, made the people sovereign.

The implications of the Act of Union and the Declaration, as I read them, are that the UK Parliament can't just pass a law to make it impossible (illegal) to pursue independence ever again, without settling the question of sovereignty. Otherwise, any attempt to rule as he suggests, would be a breach of that act and in itself tear up the union.

Christine Graham MSP made a statement in the Scottish Parliament on the subject in March 2014*.

* This is an audio-only clip and it repeats after 6m 30s.

But it's the mindset. Don't you think? Jack Straw thinks of Scotland as a region. In his eyes, the Act of Union eradicated the Scottish nation. It didn't, it merely transferred decision-making to a new parliament in London.

David Cameron, very likely, takes a similar view. His answer to the West Lothian question points that way. It's rather simplistic to think a separation of voting rights, so Scottish (and Welsh or Irish) MPs are barred from voting on purely English matters. This is also regional thinking. It ignores the interplay between parts of the UK (so highly regarded by NO in the Referendum debate) as if purely English decisions would have no implications for the rest of the UK. It also creates a two-tier political process where our representatives operate with differently weighted votes.

You can't argue that the UK is better together as a union and then go on to say we exclude parts of it from voting in the place where mutual interests reside. This is a recipe for discontent if not disaster. Fully devolved regional and city assemblies might achieve some form of parity but, if the UK accepts MPs from all of them, their mandate is to act in accordance with the views of the peoples and regions they represent in the interests of the union. With no exceptions.

The Westminster reluctance here is clear. Full devolution (as in Scotland's elusive Devo-Max) would involve not just tax varying or tax raising powers, but control of ALL tax revenues. Independence in all but name. This exposes the establishment's propensity to fiddle the figures. For Scotland, oil revenues are usually book-kept out of the equation, attributed to the Treasury as a UK asset. Other tax revenues are fudged and finally top-sliced to pay for Westminster expenses, the Lords, infrastructure projects of little benefit beyond establishment heartlands.

With clarity here, all of us would know where we stood but Westminster would have to own up to essentially having its fingers in the till. It would be like your accountant, having long trumpeted his competence and trustworthiness, was exposed as the one who used your funds to finance speculation on the money markets, in military adventures, favouring one client over another and never you.

So, Straw. Introduced the Human Rights Act; also proposed the end to trial by jury of terror suspects; Home Secretary at the time of 9/11, he presided over the Iraq war. He also strengthened extradition rules in favour of the USA, and was accused of making them too one-sided. He was also accused later of complicity in the USA's practices of extraordinary rendition and torture.

Don't get bogged down in accusation and defence here, that's for other forums. Just reflect on the mindset. Straw's is typical, suggesting clandestine deals between hawkish figures, spooky shenanigans on the world stage, and the smoke-filled rooms of Old Labour. Political fog, smoke and mirrors. Transparency. Just a word.

That's the signature of a kind of politics we don't want any more. And it's reasserting itself. Jack Straw is an indicator of the prevailing mood. He's wrong about Scotland. They all are. Being wrong hasn't stopped them before.

Picking up the Pieces

Something was born two days ago; different offspring but ours just the same. The voice is till there, the passion and the will to build a future regardless. We need to find the energy to carry on.

Somewhere south of here, there's something about change in the air. But the politics of same-old is there too, dragging us back to spin and manipulation just like before. The Great Vow under-scribbled by the Three is already being turned into a Vow to appease Greater England, to become a party-political battleground, a fait accompli for our southern cousins they won't even have two years to wrestle with. Its a recipe for fudge. It'll run into the sand and, in some watered-down form, trickle out roughly on time but awfully deformed.

In that timescale, no-one, English, Welsh, Irish and Scots, not the least, will be consulted. There's simply not enough time. Given that the NO campaign never understood the real issues for YES, where will that leave their new powers bill? The Conservative, Lord Ashcroft, published poll results which show the differences. But the NO campaign and presumably the Westminster establishment they represented seemed to think it was about nationalism, currency, pensions when it was about self-determination and social justice. The first favours the Westminster economic model their world is built on while the other aspires to a social agenda for which economics is a driver.

Worse still, the arguments that will now follow may well set us at loggerheads. It's classic divide and-rule. In the end there's an out, conveniently staged, how can we sort this out with these disagreeable bairns we have as an electorate? Let's just make their minds up for them.

Still, there's another divide in divide-and-rule, the one we've spent two years wrestling over. It's between the Three, between all who align themselves with the politics of power, elites, privilege, organised wealth, and those aligned with people, inclusiveness, openness, responsible wealth creation. YES embodied a real coalition of the willing, brought together the SNP, Greens, socialists with a common purpose and reached out to previously unengaged ordinary folk. No matter what differences we might argue over for practicality, the sovereignty of people in that process was paramount, self-determination and honesty at its core.

I don't believe the Westminster machine can embrace this at all. It's too mired in subterfuge and deceit, too interconnected inside its London bubble to see beyond the finance-media-political cartel consolidated there. I do believe it will dilute, delay and distort the promises it made to Scotland and at the same time pander to divisive forces in England while silencing the concerned majority with obfuscation and distraction.

Here in the rarified North, where we've lived through an inspirational campaign and seen engagement with it, YES and NO, on a huge scale and largely good natured, we have something to share. We have the whole gamut of argument and counter argument, contention and promise, to hold the feet of the establishment to the fire. We are the fire and there are many over our imaginary border who would to join us to achieve the same aims.

The pursuit of social justice and self-determination isn't going away and the turn of events that puts the question out in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, opens the debate there too. If YES goes on in Scotland as it seems it will, the calling to account of the old establishment will remain a rallying point. If it goes on as it might, our YES becomes a YES to social justice, self determination and grassroots power for all parts of this tortured island.

We, in Scotland should be open to that. For our part, we must make the demands now for the 'new powers' settlement. Not the closed-doors sham consultation which will never happen, We have to state clear objectives for it. Not just what it delivers in the terms of Gordon Brown but what it has to deliver as a coherent promise for Scotland, and particularly the NO voters who supported it. There has to be real power. Real transparency. We need to see the economic flows from us to the Treasury and back again, the top-slice retained and what it pays for, We need to understand that tax-raising powers mean just that and aren't a back way to slash public spending and then make us pay for it again at our own expense.

To these ends, the YES Movement goes on. I favour of working with all shared interests in Scotland to achieve our goals of independence, social justice and a new politics. We should also take these issues across the UK since we've been committed to our part in it and find common cause there.

PS 1.6 x 10⁶ is just the numerical 45% - 1,600,000 YES voters. God, I'm obscure…

Determination, Then

My subtitle for this blog was too prophetic: the long road to social justice. Sorry about that.

I've just caught up with the feelings the NO vote has generated. A lot of us are despondent, gutted, downhearted. The deepest gloom is the thought that, given the chance, we have given a mandate to the Westminster machine, that we've collectively bottled it.

Maybe that is merely testament to the doubts sown by what was still, in my view, a relentlessly negative NO campaign. Too many people didn't want to take the risk. It is what it is.

The up side is the huge turnout, the clearly deep engagement in the political process. Scotland has spoken. What we have to embrace isn't just this expression of participative democracy, we also have to keep the voice we've found.

This is especially true when we accept that the NO vote has been translated into a YES to new powers. This has thrown a huge task into the laps of the coalition of the identical fronted by Gordon Brown. As I said before, YES or NO, we must use our new voice to ensure these promises are not only kept but the detail of them not yet revealed actually meets our requirements. We have to keep the timetable, make a case for what Devo-something actually delivers. For example, if that means tax raising powers, we should also demand real transparency in tax transfer from Scotland to Westminster, direct tax raising in Scotland (including North Sea oil revenues) not just for additional funding but collecting revenues with powers of retention before transfer to Westminster.

This is crucial because, I believe, for many NO voters, in particular, honouring promises is pivotal. If the proposed extra powers run into the sand, their voices will be heard along with those who said YES. They will be part of one single Scottish voice. Personally, I'm doubtful the powers can be effectively delivered against the background of Westminster in-fighting. We have to try. We've been promised the social justice Scotland aspired to in the UK as a whole. We have to speak out to make sure we get it.

The work goes on. There's even more to be done. We've thrown our hat in the ring. Let's add our voices to that clamour, if only to bring some sense, and share our experience and skill in popular engagement. If we're better together we've all got to make sure we are, together.

Unanswered Question

Tonight is YESmas eve. The snow of leaflets has almost stopped. Tomorrow is the day we all have control of our destiny. What we decide will keep it there, or not.

So a note for the undecided, the ones it would seem the Labour party are desperately calling on to rise and vote NO. Having signed on their website to ask a few referendum questions of my own, they have me on their mailing list and, boy, have they been busy. Four times today alone, have I had emails from them: from the party itself, Gordon Brown, Johann Lamont and, a few minutes ago, Ed Milliband himself. I politely declined the first three and two of my answers are posted here. Ed Milliband, I steadfastly ignored. At least I wasn't in public transfixed by a real person, looking like as duck in the crosshairs. The question I'd asked, by the way, remain unanswered.

That's been a theme, a mantra of the NO campaign. Too many unanswered questions. It cuts both ways. We've had 'answers' from NO which in themselves have been questionable, answers they've spontaneously provided to questions about currency and pensions, for example, where they said the opposite of what, when checked, was true.

NO's missing answers actually boil down to this: none of the answers YES give are ones we like. The truth is out there, as they say, on websites, social media, in the Wee Blue Book, even in the mainstream media, if people seek out what they need to know. Some don't suit the NO campaign, some do. Information is like that. You may pick and choose, build your argument. Just be honest, though, when you simply dislike or disagree with some of the answers you've been given.

In the last week, of course, there's a wholly new set of unanswered questions. These are contained in the Gordon Brown surprise package. In this case, we have no answers either. Partly because the unseemly timing hardly allows anyone to ask; partly because answers with meaningful detail have to wait until we've taken the decision for which they're crucial. The package, ratified ('rat' being the operative syllable) by the three superheroes of Westminster without a nod from either party nor electorate, is a bucket of fog.

There's the difference. Choose, if you're NO, between answers you have actually heard but may not like and obscure promises no-one might even deliver but which you want to believe in because they sit on the other side of the decision. Choose, if you're YES, between a future you aspire to or a future shrouded in misdirection, a political conjuring trick.

This is the eleventh hour, or will be when I finish this. Actually the only unanswered question is the one we answer tomorrow. Put, as Justin Curry said, our saltire in its box. It's now or never. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Hold the line.

Oh, aye, eat your cereal.

Oh, dear... Dear Douglas...

Oh, my God! The Labour machine is working overtime. Now Douglas Alexander wants me to be so inspired by Gordon Brown's performance at the NO rally today that I'll vote NO tomorrow. This is too much. What a waste of bytes and bandwidth. I've had to let him down too. Sob.

This email also came from Labour HQ in London. Does that mean Scottish Labour is as irrelevant as I think it is?

He sent me this:

Here's what I emailed back.

Dear Douglas

I don’t think he did. He was extremely impassioned but, to be honest, there are too many unanswered questions. The new powers package came too late for me. I’ve been waiting for two years to hear a vision for Scotland’s future in the Union. To produce something this late is simply an insult. You’re asking me to sign up to something with no detail that you’ll piece together afterwards. And you have to get the party to agree to it, then the Tory and Lib Dem parties. The Tory back benches have the knives out already. And if you think Labour will win in the next UK election, you’ll really need to deliver on the mystery box well before it or else the Scottish NO vote will be adding their voice to a continuing YES-oriented movement. They’ll desert Scottish Labour at the first mis-step. The outcry will be loud, very loud.

As for Gordon’s performance. From what I’ve seen, there was passion in it but he still comes across as smug and hectoring. His performance with David Dimbleby was an even greater testament to a man not being entirely frank. He grinned too insincerely and too often, he was rude to David Dimbleby and his foot-tapping body language showed he was leaking badly.

Also, I saw you in the Milliband debacle video the other day. I don’t know if Ed meant to actually say something but standing there like a duck facing a retriever was hardly edifying. I guess you had to step in. Then after Johann quoted the experts over Trident and put her hand on her heart to say ‘if I thought that the YES campaign would save those poor children, I'd be voting YES’. By which time Ed had snuck off, followed by minders and camera crew, then you and Johann. Not much engagement there.

Well, you've guessed it, I’m for the other way. I’ve voted Labour in the past but I'm very unlikely to do that again. First the earth will have to stop heaving in Cumnock New Cemetery (Keir Hardie - remember him - he’s deid and buried there. Then you’ll need to tak a tumble to yersels. Big time.

So, it’s a YES for me.

Cheerio

Edwin

I'm off to watch Bake Off.

Dear Gordon…

I've had three emails today from Labour. One from Johann Lamont and two from Labour HQ in One Brewer's Green, London. One of the latter came from the man himself, Gordon Brown.

So, apart from Johann telling me to phone somebody so I can help the reffy rend-em effort, the rest come from darkest London. Very in touch, I thought. 

The first asked me to donate a tenner to the campaign. It's hard to see how they'll spend that in the next 24 hours, but, hey… I replied (since it's a proper email address, onenationpolitics@labour.org.uk) and said sorry. I added they'd blown it for me and that I hear Keir Hardie is spinning in his grave.

But Gordon, now, he sent the following:

Edwin,

News broke yesterday that could swing the outcome of the referendum: the SNP have been hiding plans to make £500 million of cuts to our NHS if there's a Yes vote.

The NHS lie of Alex Salmond has been exposed. People need to know the truth about what he will do to Scotland if they vote Yes. 

Can you share this on Facebook now?

Tomorrow we will cast the most important vote of our lives, a decision we can never go back on. It's vital that people can vote based on the facts — not Alex Salmond's falsehoods. 

Click here to share the graphic now.* 

Thank you.

Gordon

* I couldn't bring myself to show it here. It appears, Yessified, above, though. Oh, and I removed the link. Don't want to distract anyone…

I had to reply. I doubt if he'll ever read it but…

Once again sorry, Gordon. 
 
You’ve misrepresented the threat to the Scottish NHS from changes in Barnett consequentials triggered by spending reductions as privatisation affects NHS England. The Treasury has the final say on the formula and can block (as they did with the Olympics) any beneficial knock on through Barnett to Scotland. 
 
Despite Andy Burnham saying, loud and clear, the NHS in England is under threat from privatisation, you haven’t even discussed or acknowledged that. Here you follow the Tory line, an almost opposite view..
 
You’ve never acknowledged how TTIP represents a huge threat to the NHS nationally in the event of a NO. Even though the Tories have publicly stated (on the BBC) that it’s right to include the NHS in the arrangement. Despite representations from unions and campaign groups, Vince Cable has refused to remove it from the table.
 
If there’s a financial gap to plug in Scotland it’s because of successive cuts already in Barnett, caused by Osborne’s austerity, an austerity you have pledged to continue if you return to government.
 
A YES vote secures to the Scottish people the power to vote for a government which will bring them the changes they want. This may be the SNP but it could be Labour (despite you dodging the question with Mr Dimbleby). Indeed, you actually suggested you’d rather Scots suffered the occasional Tory government in future rather than being able to elect governments for themselves, even they were Labour ones.
 
Most galling of all is the fact you have been so willing to align with the Tories. In particular, you silence yourselves up here and never even utter the criticisms you voice in another place. For a former Labour voter like myself, you’ve confirmed my disaffection. I think you’ve betrayed your deepest principles. The fathers (and mothers) of the Labour movement in Scotland have simply been betrayed.
  

As for lies, I noted, last night, you rested your case on several points which had already been contradicted by events or pronouncements from the UK government. Pensions was one. There is no threat to existing pensions because the UK government guaranteed them. Future pensions are another matter but as uncertain in the Union as you imply in an independent Scotland. To refer to a pensions threat in so broad a fashion, was so disingenuous as to be, effectively, a lie. So much of what you and your NO partners say is in that vein, at best a grain of truth spun into huge falsehoods. 
Finally, I have to conclude your eleventh hour contribution to the debate is a calculated strategy. The ‘new powers’ package and the collective vow from all three of you is planned deliberately to flash a deal before the people so late they have the briefest moment to say yes or no to it. Otherwise, if it is actually an afterthought, it’s lateness is an insult. Why could you, in Labour, at least, not have embraced adult debate, published this vision for the future in time for it to be discussed? Was it your buy-in to the arrogance of Westminster? And did you also subscribe to the London view that Scotland is a joke with self-determination as its fantasy punchline?
 
You continually raise the question of uncertainty. Independence is full of it, I agree. Yet you never acknowledge the uncertainties of the continuing union, except to say vote for us and we’ll fix it later. Now, when you say there are too many unanswered questions, don’t you see how that also applies to your last-minute mystery package? There far too many unanswered questions there too. Too many contradictions as well, Gordon, for me to believe in.
 
So, sorry, Mr Brown. It’s a YES from me.

Ah, well, time to tell Johann to shove it.

Wow, the Vow

The Vow, so late in the day, is still a pig in a poke. This is the vision we've all been waiting for. Now it's waved under our noses with moments to spare. No time for scrutiny.

Why so late? We're being treated like the followers of the Great Prophet Zarquon whose second coming was eagerly awaited. He eventually turned up in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe seconds before the end. Cheers, then BANG!

At least, for Zarquon, that was his second coming. For the No Better Together campaign this is the first we heard of it. Unless you count the sporadic morsels of future policy dribbled out since the spring by the individual parties.

For me, such abyssmal timekeeping is just disrespectful. Really, it's despicable verging on wicked. It's also calculated to deceive. We're being asked to sign up quick, and never mind the small print. Sign now or the game's a bogey. Why wasn't this presented clearly to us months ago? Is it really a back of the fag packet effort? Or is it a calculated sleight of hand to spoof us with a bag of half promises too tangled to tease out in the final days and too complicated to deliver.


Here's the gift, the vow they didn't call a pledge in case we remembered how Nick Clegg broke his last one on tuition fees. More powers, more fairness, guarantees of Holyrood for ever, Barnett set in stone. Not a lot of it bears scrutiny.

The powers are poorly defined, broadbrush headlines. If you consider them a moment you get this: Scotland sends its taxes to the Treasury (as before), they send only some of it back (Barnett), then Scotland gets to tax itself some more to do the extra stuff like protect the NHS. Westminster still keeps a chunk back, like it's done for years. That's left hand giving and right hand taking. A shyster's trick.

And fairness, laudable but vague. Where has it been throughout the last Labour administration and the years of Cameron's Tories? Buried under austerity, food banks and endemic inequality that began as New Labour polished up what was left of their principles and joined the spiv establishment.

Holyrood enshrined. But, as ever, no government can bind the policies of another to come. Enshrined but still vulnerable to the political weather. Or just plain revenge.

And Barnett, preserved. Not in law. Barnett is a Treasury mechanism and can be varied as they see fit. Remember the London Olympics? The Barnet formula should have added a proportional amount to funding for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland because of the extra public spending on the London infrastructure. That didn't happen because they decided the Olympics benefitted all of the UK. If public spending is reduced, we lose; if the Treasury wants to finagle us into not getting so much, they'll just do it regardless.

Then, against a background of growing Westminster indignation, we see Tory MPs say this pledge comes at too high a price. English people feel the same because no-one asked them. How can three parties who oppose each other, yet have stood hip to hip against Scottish independence, how can they hope to deliver any of this? Not while the back benches fume and sharpen their little political knives. Not while the groundswell of English and Welsh public opinion echoes Scottish cries for fairness (hah!) and self government.

Even Nick Robinson, recovered from his embarrassment over the Treasury business, said tonight on the BBC,  they have no detail on these proposals. They can't give any details.

I watched Eck tonight with David Dimbleby. His was the affable, reasonable politician speaking to 'David'. Brown preceded him, 'Mr Dimbleby, you don't understand', he said several times. Compared with Eck's relaxed commitment, Gogs had his customary smug grin and his endlessly tapping feet. They showed just how much he was leaking. Body language is a curse.

Pledge? The Vow? There's nothing there, just a headline with no story. The poke has no pig in it though it's full of porkies. Wake up you NO people! These jokers have you by the snouts. The only pigs around are the flying kind, migrating to warmer latitudes for the duration.

We've better things to do, us and you, than go on listening to this. We've a huge job ahead. We're building the future. That is something we can do better together.

Genies and Bottles

Do you think, when it’s done and dusted that’ll be it? I mean, YES or NO, the whole scene in Scotland and the UK has changed. The can of worms is opened, the genie is out of the bottle, the stable door is open and the horse, well, whatever way it turns, has bolted.

Politics as usual is the phrase that haunts me now. That’s because I don’t think we can go back to it. 

Once upon a time there was a public meeting. About a local issue. Feeling was high: the local council was thought to have acted against the interests of a community. I remember one councillor spoke in support. Even he, in apparent solidarity, said, now the community had voiced its concerns, we should leave it for elected members to deal with.

We can take it from here. Now you’ve spoken, be silent again. Let us take care of it.

I realised then, democracy is about the right to dissent, not just the right to agree.

 

In the referendum YES is the dissenting voice, shifting away from the status quo of the Union; NO is the voice of no change and, I fear, politics as usual. 

For me, democracy is free speech, every voice’s right to be heard, never silenced once a vote is cast, to let others run reckless with its mandate. We should always remember, if assent is a rubber stamp, dissent is proof of democracy working; argument and debate is its beating heart.

So we come to genies and bottles. Come next Friday, do we just stand down? Do we accept, if it’s NO, the promises we’ve seen writ large on tabloid front pages? Do we let the politicians in Westminster (because that’s where the promises have to turn from vague puff about fairness and guarantees into power), do we let them make the running? Should we watch them settle back into the yah-boo arguments of Westminster, making decisions and amendments to decisions because we voted them the right?

Or will we continue the popular engagement we’ve created here, both sides, YES and NO, and use its voice to demand change and that promises are kept?

Come next Friday, if we’ve said YES, do we just stand down or will we, as one older woman said to Robin McAlpine, not go back to our sofas? Will we run with the vision, from the White Paper, from the Greens, from the radical left, and build a Scotland where the voice we’ve raised now is still heard? Can we re-engage with, maybe even change, Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems who are left here in Scotland?

Can we do politics in a better way than the complacent, haranguing politics on the green benches of London? Can we make it more inclusive, further devolved so that it’s full of argument and a white heat that shows our mettle without rancour?

Make no mistake. The challenges begin on the 19^th, whether we’re holding Westminster to account as never before to honour their commitments within the Union, or making sure the mandate we’ve given as an independent nation to negotiate a settlement with the Union is pursued with vigour.

The work has hardly started. The genie is out of the bottle all right. It’s in our voices now and it will be heard. Think about your choices. 

If you vote NO, be prepared to raise your voice with ours to get what we were offered. 

If, like me, you vote YES, be prepared to work together as a nation, to speak out, raise our voices to build it.

Ordinary People - Where Did They Go?

Weeks and weeks ago, when all this began, everyone was ordinary. At least, that was the claim. I remember the new websites, the blogs, the media scoops. The people we heard about were always ordinary: single mums, pensioners, office workers. Every one was concerned about our future but none claimed special status or importance of any kind. Never mind that some turned out to be activists, well-heeled party donors, the great and the good climbing their respective greasy polls to influence and office.

This was a very much a feature of the NO campaign and a bit suspect, part of a duplicitous urge to misrepresent.

But I remember thinking, who's ordinary? What's that about? I'd followed National Collective, and lots of other YES sites, and found the tone of stories there tended more toward how extraordinary ordinary people were. There didn't seem to be much need to claim some just-plain-folks label to give political choice validity.

So, what was the deal with ordinary? I felt it sprang from a need to hide the hand of power as it fiddled about and manipulated. It presented ordinariness as a front which, in the end, said to me, they think ordinary people are puppets, hollow, lifeless shapes to be animated by an unmentionable purpose.

I believe the YES side emphasised the opposite: people were amazing, creative, different, welcoming difference. Paradoxially, it said, we're in this together and embraced everyone from company directors to labourers and didn't make a fuss about it.

That was how it was and the status quo, NO, was represented by figures, unassuming, normal, just like the rest of us. Except they weren't. Under the surface, there were the vested interests, those who wanted us to accept a smokescreen of the same-as-you when that was so far from the truth.

All very well. We saw the rise and fall: the Vote No Borders nonsense, embarrassing attempts to puff a whiff of the grass roots from nothing; the intransigent flannel from Scottish Labour, trotting out discredited horror stories from the mouths of the faithful; the long line of put up jobs and corporate jobsworths showering gloom on our heads like some dismal rain.

And now we see it. A northbound in-flux of Westminster might, the charge of the great hundred galloping to our rescue. Messages of doom wrapped in this strange love-hate they have. The long line of bankers and business big cheeses giving us their lines of prospective failure, temporary good times, long-term decline and, generally, our complete uselessness and hopelessness in the face of a future we can't comprehend and certainly can't handle.

Now, amongst all these prominent figures, who's no longer there? Mr, Mrs and Ms ordinary. These poor sods, once pushed to the front, are floundering in the wake of the figures who are really important. They've outlived their usefulness. Nobody needs their homespun sincerity, even if it was manufactured, They're dead ducks. They can't save the Union. They never could, but for a while, they served to stave off the notion of independence.

Now that strategy's stopped working, the big guns are wheeled out. The ordinary, the closet NO activists, the party faithful, a few door-chappers, the flag-knitters and wavers, all of those folk, doubtless sincere in their way, are left by the wayside. Now's the time of the ones who matter: the bankers, the party leaders, the business executives, tame academics, mandarins and apparatchiks, the fantastically wealthy. They're the ones who'll save the Union. Sod the little people.

I hardly wondered where the ordinary folk had gone. I'd half-expeected them to be swept aside. Expendable. I'm truly sorry for them. They must have lent their names, their faces and their heartfelt beliefs to the cause, only to find the seven hundred horsemen of the establishment ride over them like a wave, also too wee, too poor and too stupid to make a difference. We knew you never could. You were the electoral cannon fodder, the diversionary tactic, the dispensable and gullible troops in our war of blind self interest. Stand aside for the elite!

Truth to tell, there are no ordinary people left. NO has trampled them under their parade of the important. YES has never thought ordinary was any way to describe people who engaged themselves in our different visions of a collective future. All I can say, to all the ordinary NOs, don't be so easily sidelined. Vote with your hearts (and I, for one, will respect it) but don't fall for the disrespectful trick that raised you up and chucked you aside when the chips were down.

To YES, I say, go on. Be extraordinary, surprise us, principally yourselves. Ordinary was never a word to describe any of us. Rise to the occasion. Be as magnanimous in victory as you would be proud in defeat. Honour the same in your opponents. We have a country to build. None of us are ordinary people. We're so much more.