Earth: Mostly Harmless

The Unravelling of Labour Britain

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

All’s fair in love and war

Especially when it involves pissing off Cliff Richard.

Italians! Register your blog!

In a massive public relations own-goal, Romano Prodi’s centre-left government in Italy has preliminarily approved a compulsory registration system for any web site involving “editorial activity”.

And it definitely, definitely, definitely doesn’t have anything to do with silencing comedian, blogger and general thorn in the Italian establishment’s side, Beppe Grillo (Wikipedia article).

Definitely not.

Since the story broke, the article in question has been watered down to presumptively exclude ‘personal’ sites, but the discretion to make that distinction remains with the ministry implementing the law, rather than the courts.

Thanks to Maureen Lister for the Times Online article. I expect that she’ll cover the story at some point on her blog too. Maureen makes an excellent point about Grillo in an unrelated post:

Grillo is successful first of all because he is a brilliant comedian, secondly because he comes up with a lot of information (rather than bla-bla opinions) and thirdly because he uses webtools intelligently, something that hardly anyone in the media has bothered to mention.Of course blogs, used by averagely intelligent people, are a serious threat to traditional media, (and therefore to traditional politics) and have the power to undermine the present RAI-Mediaset duopoly.   

More coverage:Beppe Grillo - original postBeppe Grillo - updateSlashdot coverageTimes online articleTimes online updated articleBoingBoing coverage

Barack Obama to support any potential Filibuster on telecoms immunity?

Far be it from me to get involved in the putrid mire that is U.S. politics, but I thought this was an interesting development.For background, the Bush administration is currently attempting to introduce legislation granting retrospective immunity from prosecution to all telecoms companies involved in the illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

Obama will support filibuster of any bill granting telecom immunity:
The so-called “Austin Mayor” says:

Sen. Barack Obama will back a filibuster of any Senate FISA legislation containing telecom immunity, his campaign has just told Election Central. The Obama campaign has just sent over the following statement from spokesman Bill Burton: “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”Link 

(Via BoingBoing.)

Talking about European politics

This is probably a complete brain-fart, but I thought I should post it anyway. I’m studying for an exam on the subject of European integration, and I came across this paragraph by Brigid Laffan. It’s the most eloquent description of the problem of the national political environment within a transnational/supranational body like the E.U.

Political players within the member states have so far not communicated the realities of power in contemporary Europe to their electorates. They persist with an old language of national interest when in reality, janus-like, they serve both the national governments and collective European government.

Laffan, B (1999) ‘Democracy in the European Union’ in Cram, L.,
Dinan, D. and N. Nugent (eds.) Developments in the European
Union, London: Palgrave.
WorldCat reference

Things like the 2004 and 2007 accessions make me nervous about dealing with these things in Britain. They were presented consistently and positively by the media as being in Britain’s national interest, or ’supported by Britain’. The accessions were positive, but for different reasons: historical imperative, for one, and expanding and improving the single market by extending the same freedoms of movement, work and consumer protections as exist here to eastern Europe. But we must do a better job of discussing these things in the UK.

The European Union is not a series of treaty negotiations every few years, where the coffee is brewed strong, tempers get frayed, and we either ‘win’ or ‘lose’. It’s much more important than that. It reaches into almost every aspect of our political lives despite the disingenuous effort, or perhaps unconscious ignorance, of political actors and (sadly) the media to present it as if it is something which the national political space can exist alongside, but separate from.

Sovereignty is dead. Long live the new sovereignty.