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…