The SNP risks a great loss in putting Independence on the back-burner. They have the huge energy of the street Yes campaign behind them. Shifting from fifth gear to reverse risks not only loss of momentum, but damage. “Go out and work for Independence!” is what 80,000 new members want to hear. “Go out and work for Devo-Max and a supply and confidence agreement with Labour at Westminster”, is not.
I was not too concerned at reports that Alex Salmond had said that Independence may not feature in the SNP’s coming Westminster manifesto, and it would be up to Nicola Sturgeon. It was just one interview, and the great man was possibly just musing, I thought. But then we had Nicola Sturgeon’s message to all members, repeated as adverts in the newspapers, setting out the stall for the General Election. This makes no mention of Independence at all.
I think there are two major mistakes here. The first is that rather than state its fundamental beliefs, the SNP is tailoring its message to be appropriate to a specific tactical situation – a hung parliament with the SNP able to sustain a Labour-led government, in return for certain demands. Tailoring the message to this circumstance is a mistake because it is a scenario which is entirely beyond the power of the SNP, or even Scotland, to bring about. And my very firm prediction is that it will not happen.
Labour and the Tories are neck and neck in recent polls, but I fully expect the Tories will make ground, as the incumbent government always does in the final months before a UK general election. They have the opportunity of a populist budget to boost them. UKIP support will dip, disproportionately returning to the Tories. Murdoch will back Cameron, along with the Mail, Express and Telegraph. The Tories have over twice the campaign funds of Labour. The LibDem vote will plummet but they will hold on to more of their own seats UK wide than a uniform swing would indicate. I am willing to bet that the Conservatives remain in power, probably still as the ConDems, after the General Election.
In this scenario, what happens in Scotland is irrelevant to who forms the UK government – as so often. Whether there are more Labour or more SNP on the opposition benches will make little difference to Cameron and Osborne. What will happen, however, is an increasingly urgent demand for Scottish Independence in the face of five more years of unwanted Tory rule in Scotland.
It is tactically essential that, in this scenario, the SNP MP’s can claim to have been elected on a clear mandate for Independence. The SNP may have a majority of Scottish MP’s after May. There will be a vote on whether the UK leaves the EU. Should the UK vote to leave the EU (which is not improbable), the demand for Scottish Independence may become overwhelming. If at that stage we have a majority of Scottish MP’s clearly elected for Independence, there are a number of possible options for achieving Independence. If however those MPs were elected only on a platform that prioritised Devo-Max, the arguments look very different.
The second major mistake is that Devo-Max is unobtainable. Whitehall and Westminster will never agree to hand over to Scotland its full oil or whisky revenues. It is in any event not possible for Scotland to run an expansive fiscal policy within the overall control of the Treasury and Bank of England. It is possible to get limited extra powers for the Scottish parliament. The Smith Commission is very close to the limit of what Westminster will ever agree within the Union. Even were Smith to be fully implemented (which like Calman it won’t) it is no substitute for Independence.
And as I have frequently stated, so long as our foreign and defence policy is still controlled by Westminster, so long as they can still send Scots to fight and die in illegal wars, so long as they can involve us in hideous torture and permanent conflict in the Middle East, we have not obtained ethical responsibility, and the rest means little.
Many No voters already regret their vote. The SNP does not need to pitch its message to appeal to continuing unionists. As the Independence vote is heavily behind the SNP, while the Unionist vote has more significant diversions between Labour, Tory, Liberal and UKIP, under first past the post the Yes voters alone will sweep the board – which is precisely what opinion polls show as happening.
The other thing we know from the Referendum is that a significant number of SNP voters, voted No. The truth is that not every supporter of the SNP is a fervent supporter of Independence. Certainly a great many members do not relate to the social radicalism and desire for sweeping societal change that motivated so much of the astonishing street Yes campaign.
The SNP has now a substantial professional class. It has MSP’s, Scottish ministers, MP’s and MEP’s, and all their research assistants, secretaries, constituency secretaries and SPADs. It has paid councillors, committee chairs, leaders of councils. It has a Chief Executive and HQ staff. If the process of gradualism has brought you a good income and a comfy living, it is a natural temptation to see the accretion of a few more powers, and the addition of a lot more jobs for MP’s and their staff, as all part of useful progress, without wanting to risk anything too radical. Independence can become a misty aspiration, lost in the day to day concerns of genuinely ultra-important stuff like running the NHS or schools or local transport.
The SNP is not the small band of noble rebellious souls it once was. It is now a major institution in itself, and part of the fabric of the British state. Institutions, even composed of the nicest people, always develop and protect their corporate interest.
I worry that the downplaying of the Independence goal for the General Election may drain the fire from those 80,000 Yes-oriented new members. I worry even more that this may not be an accident.
It looks like we’ve got the ‘B’ team tonight.
I’m glad Fred’s here, too.
Fred, you wrote that you thought the price of oil, before it started dropping rapidly last September, had been kept artificially high and would now return to its proper value, which it had been in some specific year. I don’t remember which year, but quite a while ago. Have I remembered right?
How and why would you say it was kept overpriced?
Would people please stop taking pot-shots at each other. I’m trying to engage in a rational discussion here.
Off to bed.
Clark – Fred is IMO quite right about the oil price. Informed and credible opinion (excluding mine, perhaps) suggests the range $70-90 as desirable. The hike was as artificial as the fall. And the usual very fat cats riding the roller coaster will cash in as the price rises again. At the moment people like Soros are attempting to bugger up other markets on the tail of this. The only thing I take issue with re. Fred is HIS INCESSANT REPETITION OF A SINGLE OBVIOUS POINT with no other aim but to annoy. Sorry, carry on.
Ba’al Zevul, thanks. Which other markets are they trying to bugger up? If the bugger-uppers force oil prices down, fracking and renewables become loss makers. Each presumably have critical price thresholds and critical time-scales. Do you have any estimates on these please?
“Fred, you wrote that you thought the price of oil, before it started dropping rapidly last September, had been kept artificially high and would now return to its proper value, which it had been in some specific year. I don’t remember which year, but quite a while ago. Have I remembered right?
How and why would you say it was kept overpriced?”
Did I say that?
Looks like I was right.
Once again, a very astute analysis from Mr Murray. I believe Nicola and the SNP leadership are aiming to hoover up the NO vote, especially among the last remaining Labour voters. But I agree with Craig’s reasons why this is a mistake and might bring more problems than it brings votes. And anyone thinking that the SNP will be invited into a coalition or given anything at Westminister, especially by the Red Tories, really needs his/her bumps felt…
There is one good thing — thank heavens we have Holyrood and the 2016 elections. Half the country now wants independence and the genie is out of the bottle forever, we are never going away and our voice will grow stronger and stronger as the young come of age. Any non-unionist party not campaining first and foremost for indy in 2016 will be slaughtered.
When indy comes, I fully expect the SNP to eventually disappear, because the “moor” will have done his duty and the moor can then go… I think this will be a good thing, because then we will be able to choose on issues other than just getting indy. We will have a broad range of parties offering their different visions on what road Scotland should take, ranging from Tommy Sheridan on the far left to more moderates such as Lesley Riddoch or the vision pursued by Business for Scotland…. we will even still have our Blue Tories! So the SNP actually faces the ultimate dilemma, because to secure its cherished dream, the reason the party ostensibly exists and for which it was certainly founded, will probably lead to its own demise (which is why if Labour were a real party and not Blue Tory stooges, they would of course have campaigned for YES).
Clark, can’t give anything definite, more a mood. But I’d say a conscious effort was being made to bump up precious-metal prices, and the oil price crash doesn’t exactly favour sustainable energy or fracking. Which I think is part of the reason Saudi isn’t closing the valves. Another part may be that Saudi is moving out of OPEC, with an eye on Chinese custom. China, in turn, may have spotted that Iran’s production and refining capacity is negligible, while its reserves are huge, and be contemplating a little more local influence. The implications are not easy to foresee.
And – I hope it’s obvious I’m no expert – don’t blame me if investments made on the back of this sink without trace.
Bedtime for me.
I thought Fred’s whole argument about Scotland being an independent country, with the current price of oil, means there would be a deficit.
But i remember reading somewhere that every country runs a deficit apart from Norway (or somewhere similar).
Is it just me or am I missing something? I wasn’t aware that the SNP was putting “independence on the back burner”. It is the party’s raison d’etre surely. Football teams don’t have to explicitly state that they want to win all their games- that is what they set out to do. And the SNP is working towards an independent Scotland- as noted elsewhere on this thread this is why I and 10,000’s like me have joined the party.
In the selection of my local candidate for GE 2015, all those talked about working to get independence. And, at this moment in time, the only *practical* thing we can do is return a tranche of SNP MPs to Westminster who, while may not be the deciding factor in power as Craig suggests they are aiming for, will certainly kick up stink and keep Scotland on the radar.
The work for “more powers” is surely to give us ammunition on Indy Ref round 2? When England wants to drag Scotland out of the EU against our will in 2017, Nicola Sturgeon can quite rightly say “you have reneged on the promised further powers and you want to force us out of Europe- referendum now!”. I mean after all, we are not about to do anything stupid like UDI are we?
I personally don’t really see any alternative- get as many SNPs as possible to work with Stuart Hosie, campaign for more powers (actually hoping that Westminster will break promises) and then look for #indyref2 in a couple of years?
I am off to bed. I should like to add that Fred is always welcome, as are other Unionists who want to put their viewpoint. Technicolour is also one of the longest serving commenters on this blog. I have however deleted a couple of Technicolour comments just now for referring to unhelpful and irrelevant arguments from other threads.
Calum
“I mean after all, we are not about to do anything stupid like UDI are we?”
I don’t think we should close off any options, Calum. We are entering a period of dramatic political development. Support for the “mainstream” parties has collapsed fast, leaving a vacuum in England (but not Scotland). I don’t rule out UDI in the event of the UK leaving the EU and populist far right policies being implemented in the UK.
Institutions are funny things. The Guardian, for example, under the aims of the C P Scott Trust is supposed to promote liberalism, but it ended up supporting the war criminal and attacker of human rights Tony Blair.
‘Labour and the Tories are neck and neck in recent polls, but I fully expect the Tories will make ground, as the incumbent government always does in the final months before a UK general election.’
The ‘incumbent government’ in 78-79 actually lost ground, as Callaghan played such a bad hand during the ‘winter of discontent’. Call me Dave is just as likely to be tripped up by ‘events, dear boy’ as Sunny Jim- just look at the NHS, lurching from crisis to crisis- and his political judgment is inferior to Callaghan’s, a wily old fox until he met his nemesis.
Call me Dave is even desperately invoking the spirit of ’79 with his latest anti strike proposals, which are accompanied with dated rhetoric about ‘holding the country to ransom’ – truly pathetic, given that the only power ‘holding the country to ransom’ this century is the bankster elite, to whom he is in thrall.
‘UKIP support will dip, disproportionately returning to the Tories.’
If Syriza wins in Greece in a fortnight, throwing the Eurozone into a tailspin, Farage & co would be the most likely beneficiaries.
‘The SNP is not the small band of noble rebellious souls it once was. It is now a major institution in itself, and part of the fabric of the British state. Institutions, even composed of the nicest people, always develop and protect their corporate interest.’
I assume that the reference to ‘the nicest people’ here is a joke, in the light of Craig’s recent defenestration as a prospective SNP candidate !
Crude oil prices 1947-2011
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif
“Fred is HIS INCESSANT REPETITION OF A SINGLE OBVIOUS POINT with no other aim but to annoy”
You pompous fucking arrogant arsehole. Just who the fuck do you think you are?
You post article after article for day after day of utter fucking off topic delusional crap but I can’t post a few words about something that actually on topic and matters.
Fucking Nationalist Nazis. Just go on campaigning for independence despite the majority being against, pretending they won the referendum and conveniently ignoring the economic reality of oil prices only being a fraction of what they said they would be then hounding and intimidating anyone who dares point it out.
Peripherally: Tony Blair –
The Telegraph, and any other outlet short of a story this morning, and not too squeamish about plagiarism, have raked over some very old news (Blair is very rich, but his accounts are not available for scrutiny) here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11337856/How-Tony-Blair-Inc-spent-57-million-in-four-years.html
If only The Telegraph, and any other outlet short of a story, would do some digging at Gibraltar Companies House, I am sure they would have some new news. In addition to Blair’s ten-company Windrush/Firerush scrutiny-avoidance structure, two companies uncoincidentally named Windrush Ltd and Firerush Ltd were registered in Gibraltar – not here – in 2010. The MSM haven’t noticed these at all, despite being prompted. We may plausibly speculate that money vanishing into the Blair vortex might find its way, viathe two UK-registered, scrutiny-opaque LP’s he controls, to these, and from them, possibly, to an even more advantageous tax regime.
On other pages, Tony Blair, HE The Quartet Representative to the Middle East, expert in practically everything, (please enquire through his spokesman to learn his very reasonable rates for addressing bar-mitzvahs and globalisation fora)….him…was in Cairo yesterday bringing peace to the Middle East. This is something he does so often, it should be no surprise.
Also no surprise is Tony Blair’s forthcoming address to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (prop. Israel):
http://www.friendsofsimonwiesenthalcenter.com/news_room_2014.aspx
PS, @ the Daily Telegraph – Tony Blair is no longer chartering G-CEYL from Aravco. Would anyone seeing him step off a plane at an exotic location,please note the tail number and pass it on? Thank you.
Like it or lump it, the 2014 referendum was lost and it is unlikely that another one can occur any time soon. It is therefore sensible for the SNP to set itself some other, potentially realisable, objectives – such as trashing Labour in the 2015 Parliamentary election. Political movements are like bikes: they have to move forward or topple over.
Whether the SNP is in the process of further embedding itself in the British elite is another issue.
Secret Recording from Torrie Party HQ
Dick Dastardly: We did it! The energy is drained from the street campaign and the SNP has become part of the Establishment. Oil and whiskey revenue are ours. The independence campaign is lost forever. Nyah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
Master Bron : Ek-sell-ent!
Muttley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKm5xQyD2vE
“I thought Fred’s whole argument about Scotland being an independent country, with the current price of oil, means there would be a deficit.
But i remember reading somewhere that every country runs a deficit apart from Norway (or somewhere similar).”
Deficits have to be paid for somehow, either borrowing or printing money. Scotland would have had no credit rating, no currency of their own and no central bank. The austerity cuts we have seen so far would have been nothing, we would have been worse off than Greece.
The Scottish government is asking Westminster to invest tens of billions of pounds in the North Sea just to keep the industry alive, to keep the workers in jobs and to keep all the support industries solvent. If Scotland had voted yes where would that money be coming from?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-30731793
…trashing Labour in the 2015 Parliamentary election.
…is probably the best option, if options are being considered at all. The point is that the leadership is becoming entrenched, sclerotic, and is making all the compromises it would have derided in its youth. A very heavy campaign, on the ground, to reduce Labour to a rump in its heartland – where the SNP has far more credibility as a leftwing choice – and eliminate it altogether where it got in by accident – would
a. provide a continuing focus for activism
b. very much strengthen the case to be made that Scotland is a separate entity.
c. extend the distance between the SNP and the British establishment This is not a separate issue. It is integral to any discussion; Craig is quite right.
Brent crude $48 a barrel dropped $1.20 since opening of trade.
where would that money be coming from?
It would be borrowed or printed to order, just like all the other money coming from Westminster. Give it a rest, for Christ’s sake.
Brent crude $48 a barrel dropped $1.20 since opening of trade.
Fucking great, Buy oil futures and STFU.
Martin Rowson gets it;
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cartoon/2015/jan/11/martin-rowson-charlie-hebdo-anti-terror-rally-cartoon
Ouch.
Fred, I have enjoyed your posts and I am very happy that you support the Palestinians but I must say that calling Scottish Nationalists Nazis is just too much.
I am sick to death of hearing pompous little Britnats running off at the mouth when over the past few cenuries your precious British Empire must have come a pretty close second to your Germanic cousins across the sea in terms of genocidal atrocities.
YOU are the NAZI
Wrong thread, this thread is about Scottish politics, please try to stay on topic.
Craig, I agree completely with your article. Independence IS our “raison d’etre”
Are the SNP getting too comfy in the seat of (limited) power.
Hey Fred I bet your Anglo-Zionist pals in bitter together got a wee heads up about the coming manipulation in oil prices and that’s why the lot of you have been spinning like Catherine wheels on the subject.
Liars. Cheats. Thieves Perfidious Albion indeed
“Fred, I have enjoyed your posts and I am very happy that you support the Palestinians but I must say that calling Scottish Nationalists Nazis is just too much.”
No it isn’t. Scottish Nationalism isn’t politics it is blind faith, dogma, not rational, based purely on tribalist and supremacist ideologies.
Why do you think they don’t like anyone posting the actual facts.