Scotland’s extra-parliamentary groups are carrying on as if polling never happened, while Lord Smith was given just three months to deliver a new constitution
It is just a month since Scotland voted, by a decisive margin of 55% to 45% to remain in the UK. But it doesn’t feel like it.
Normally, when parties lose elections they go into a period of introspection and consolidation. But the Scottish National Party, under leader in waiting Nicola Sturgeon, has seen its membership more than triple since the referendum defeat. She is embarking on a speaking tour and in one day sold out Scotland’s biggest performance venue: Glasgow’s Hydro.
The Scottish Green Party campaigned for independence and has seen its membership quadruple to over 8,000. The group Women for Independence held a meeting in Perth two weeks ago expecting a turnout of 400 and more than 1,000 appeared. The Radical Independence Campaign is expecting 5,000 at its meeting next month.
Almost every weekend there have been demonstrations, many thousands strong, calling if not for another referendum, then certainly for further constitutional change. This weekend it was the Scottish Trades Union Congress; two weeks ago, Hope over Fear brought 6,000 to Holyrood. We haven’t seen this kind of street politics since the anti-poll tax campaigns in the 1980s.
It’s not entirely clear where all this activity is leading because the outgoing First Minister and SNP leader, Alex Salmond, made clear he did not foresee another referendum happening for at least a generation – about 20 years. His successor, Sturgeon, has endorsed this – though both figures are suggesting that, well, circumstances can change.
Parliamentary Scotland’s attention is now focused on the Smith Commission, which is taking submissions from the main parties, with a view to a draft devolution bill in the new year. But the positions of the parties seem so radically divergent that it is hard to see how any workable compromise can be reached.
Labour proposes only minimal reforms – another 5p in the pound of income tax to be raised in Scotland. The Scottish Conservatives want all income tax powers and bands to be devolved and for VAT to be assigned to Holyrood. The Scottish Liberal Democrats want federalism, including fiscal devolution and a new constitutional status for the Scottish Parliament. The SNP, for its part, wants all powers bar defence, foreign affairs and monetary policy – what has been called ‘devolution max’.
Lord Smith – a crossbench peer who made his name organising last summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow – has three months to cobble together what could be the foundation of a new UK constitution. Prime Minister David Cameron has said any further powers for Scotland have to go ‘in tandem’ with legislation for English Votes for English Laws. This would set up a de facto English parliament, in which the 59 Scottish MPs would withdraw from votes on exclusively English matters.
Everyone, including the SNP, agrees there must be consequences for the rest of the UK in further devolution, if only to answer the West Lothian question. However, to do this all in the timescale being proposed looks like constitutional insanity. If Lord Smith were Thomas Jefferson himself, it would be a tall order. There is a risk of an unintelligible fudge.
Meanwhile, Scotland continues to be in a kind of permanent referendum campaign with some extra-parliamentary groups carrying on as if nothing had happened last month – Common Weal, National Collective, Radical Independence, Yes Alliance. At some point there will be a collision between aspiration and political reality, though I’m not sure when. It is exciting for those of us in the business of politics. But it looks as if Gordon Brown’s insistence on early legislation could be a recipe for constitutional (half-)baked Alaska.
Iain Macwhirter is political commentator on the Sunday Herald
This opinion piece was first published in the November issued of Public Finance magazine
