There was an entertaining exchange during First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood today. Annabel Goldie, the Tory leader. thought she could snare Alex Salmond with a clever line of questioning regarding the status of Scottish banknotes. She succeeded in making headlines:

Tory leader Annabel Goldie said today that Alex Salmond wants to make Scottish pound notes a foreign currency north of the border by ditching them for the euro.

The SNP favours adopting the euro if Scotland became independent, although party policy states there will be a referendum on the issue.

Miss Goldie said that under the SNP people will be able to spend Scottish banknotes in Brighton but not in Banff and Buchan – the constituency Mr Salmond represents at Westminster.

She challenged the First Minister on the issue the day after Tory MP David Mundell launched a private members’ bill at Westminster to make shops in England accept Scottish notes.

full article

But the attempt totally backfired. Not just because Salmond had a good answer ready, but because of the inference she was trying to make. After all, trying to paint Salmond as a radical separatist doesn’t fly – he embraces that image. And the issue of the Euro is, at long last, becoming considered as a serious option in the UK. So the point about sovereignty, of trusting a ‘centralised’ private bank, is probably moot too.

In Scotland, of course, the ‘debate’ about the Euro – to the extent that there has been any – is substantially different from the rest of the UK. The traditional argument against it, specifically that centrally-set interest rates don’t suit marginal areas and those with different types of economies, is less powerful here. There is a perception that this sort of thing has been going on for decades already. The argument goes that the Bank of England sets interest rates primarily with the economic base of the south-east of England in mind, so Scotland already faces this problem.

On another note, let’s hope that the Private Member’s Bill forcing English and Welsh firms to accept Scottish banknotes is passed. The situation at the moment – that Scottish notes are not legal tender anywhere, even in Scotland, is utterly ridiculous – and the scourge of many a a Scottish traveller. The concept of ‘legal tender’ doesn’t exist in Scottish law, which is why Scottish notes are ‘promissory’ in law. In England and Wales, only Bank of England notes are legal tender. But if the UK Parliament can figure out a way round that thorny issue, then all the better.

Okay, so we have some modified TGVs running on High Speed 1, but it only goes between central London and the Channel Tunnel. And we have some Pendolinos which now run pretty fast.

But such scraps alone do not a genuine high speed network make*. The crucial elements you need for a successful high-speed network are (a) >200 kph operation, preferably >250 kph, (b) dedicated or mostly dedicated tracks, (c) a decent range of routes, (d) ease of use, including good connections, and (e) everything being built to good specifications.

None of these conditions really exist in the UK. Anyone who has ever travelled on the West Coast Main Line will know why it’s known as the most congested long-distance passenger railway in the world. The line is used so much that it’s amazing that there aren’t more delays, frankly. Carriages are too small and always single-deck due to the restrictive loading gauge compared to the Continent, and often are too few per train, which makes overcrowding worse. Connections are improving but sometimes unpredictable, and ticketing is extremely confusing (Advance Apex Cheap-Day Return Non-Refundable with Young Person’s Railcard anyone?).

Every few years, UK governments announce that they’re going to embark on a Shinkansen or ICE style network, and it always gets shelved or watered down beyond all recognition. So it’s with interest that I note the noises coming from various parts of the political landscape that suggest that perhaps interests are beginning to converge. The Tories have been ostensibly backing the idea for a while, seeing it as a logical alternative to a third runway at Heathrow. But recently, Alex Salmond, First Minster of Scotland, also threw his weight behind a possible maglev network, and this week the (Labour) transport Minister Lord Adonis backed the creation of a radical new network in the most recent Prospect magazine:

“Equally significant for future policy are Japan’s evolving plans to pioneer the next generation of high-speed rail technology with a “maglev” line between Tokyo and Nagoya—to be open by 2025—cutting the existing “shinkansen” bullet train time for the 214 miles from one hour 40 minutes to less than an hour. What impressed me on a visit to Japan in November to study the “shinkansen” experience was not only the potentially revolutionary nature of the “maglev,” but that the justification for the new Tokyo-Nagoya line, to be entirely privately financed, depends on traffic saturation on the existing 45-year-old shinkansen line, and not a desire for even higher speed travel per se. Packed trains with up to 1,600 passengers leave every five minutes from 6am until 10pm on the existing line, which is close to capacity.”

Significantly, what seems to have re-ignited Adonis’ interest is the recent vote in California to authorise a bond issue to fund the construction of a TGV-style line between Sacramento and San Diego.

What’s this? A Labour minister impressed by a publicly-financed infrastructure project? Surely not! And really, isn’t it a little embarrassing that we should be taking our cues in rail infrastructure from the Americans – one of the most passenger-rail-phobic nations on earth?

Still, the intentions are good, and I hope he carries through on the ideas in his piece. The trouble is, Britain’s rail network is still mostly privatised, which (aside from being a Bad Idea anyway) would make delivery and co-ordination difficult. There’s little to no chance of a private company being able to invest the sums required given the current difficulties of obtaining credit – let alone having a decent chance of a return on the money. Public funding could be difficult too. As The Economist points out, although the Keynesian aspect of such a large public engineering project would be a welcome boost to consumption and employment in these difficult economic times, UK public finances are already in a pretty dire state.

So I wait with interest to see who puts forward a solid proposal, if anyone. I guess the Tories and SNP have more to make of it politically, but past schemes have vanished in ball of hyperbole before.

Anyway, I must go and catch a TGV to France. Or shall I take an ICE to Germany? Or a Pendolino to Italy? One is spoilt for choice in Zürich.**

* Quasi-German word order there. I apologise.

**Yes, I am a smug bastard.

–Update

A re-cap of some of the teething troubles (and outright accidents) which the West Coast Main Line has experienced over the past three weeks has been posted by BBC News.

And also, things don’t always go smoothly in Switzerland…

Significant changes are underway in British politics, and Scotland has a crucial role.

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Scottish politics is changing, and that it is having important implications for the assumptions that UK politics is based on.

The incumbent UK Prime Minister is Scottish and in a spot of bother* over the 10p rate of income tax, a poor showing in the local elections and a general impression of being out of touch (and other trivial matters**). As a traditionally strong source of support for the Labour party, the current troubles of the Scottish Labour Party are causing severe worries for the UK party.

In the past few weeks, the issue of a referendum on Scottish independence has come to the fore oncemore. The Scottish National Party, the largest party in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood and a minority administration, is committed to introducing a referendum in 2010. The Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander attempted to outmanoeuvre the SNP by declaring support for an immediate referendum (her mind, it is said, was changed during an interview on a BBC show). The threat was empty: Scottish Parliament legislative rules prevent private members’ Bills being introduced if the government of the day is planning to legislate on the same issue, so the SNP referendum bill would take trumps. Alexander’s move spectacularly backfired, leaving UK PM Gordon Brown having misled the UK Parliament about her views and the two sections of the party dramatically out of step, with the UK party opposed and the Scottish party committed.

And Alex Salmond (SNP First Minister of Scotland) looking even more smug than usual.

What can we say for sure? There will be a referendum on independence in 2010, after Salmond’s National Conversation finishes up. It is unimaginable that Labour could go back on that now. But the devil will be in the detail – wording matters greatly to the result, as does the selection of options present.

And the result? Anyone’s guess. Polls show anywhere between 25% and 75% support, depending on the questions asked. But an option is likely to be included offering greater powers for Holyrood – an option which would have overwhelming support. The presence of a Tory government in the UK Parliament might be enough to tip the scales toward independence.

Gerry Hassan from Demos provides an excellent summary of the issues leading up to the events of the past two weeks:

 

Gerry Hassan on The Unravelling of Labour Britain   (via Scottish Futures)

The advent of devolution created two different political systems in Scotland: the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. In the later Labour dominance still continues – the only part of Scotland still elected now by First Past The Post and the only part where Labour have a majority of the seats on their customary minority of the vote.

The Scottish Parliament is elected by a broadly proportionally system which means that all political parties are parliamentary minorities. From the first elections in 1999 which Labour finished as the leading party, the SNP established themselves as the clear challengers and opposition to Labour.

Thus, from the onset of the Parliament the dynamics of the two institutions and the parties within them have beat to a different pulse. The party sits in Holyrood in a Parliament where its main opponents sit to the left of them and unashamedly stress their Scottish credentials. At Westminster Labour have most often had to worry about losing votes and winning them from the right and a party emphasising its British qualities. Scottish Labour and British Labour have also had very different internal cultures and external strategies.

 Scottish Labour has had to emphasise its ‘bridge building’ qualities – stressing its Scottish qualities at Holyrood and its British at Westminster. It has had to do this with nuance and a deft touch: while being Scottish at Holyrood also emphasising the merits of the British union and at Westminster using its British agenda to sometimes stress the need for greater sensitivity to Scottish concerns. Pre-devolution the Scottish party under such titans as Thomas Johnston and Willie Ross managed this ‘bridge building’ strategy with great aplomb; it is the dynamics of the Scottish Parliament and devolution which have created the circumstances which have made this more difficult.

* Diplomatic license utilised

** And again