Scottish Futures

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Thanks for visiting Scottish Futures - a weblog, community and ideas-forum dedicated to exploring strategies, policies and visions for progressive Scotland.

Gerry Hassan on The Unravelling of Labour Britain

From his forthcoming article in Compass, Gerry Hassan anatomizes the meltdown of Labour in Scotland. An excerpt:

The old British state has proven itself incapable of reform and renewal despite all the hype of Blair’s ‘New Britain’. For all the hope and rhetoric of 1997 there is something blocking any fundamental overhauling of the British polity within the political system, and something lacking in Labour’s analysis and power in the UK. Wendy Alexander and Gordon Brown’s lack of political touch and antenna has exposed a much wider set of truths: about the paucity of Labour in Scotland, the party’s lack of understanding of the UK, and the fact that others can for the moment better advance the cause of social democracy than Labour.

The article can be read in full by clicking "Continue Reading..." below. All comments welcome.

Passports at the border

From Iain MacLaren: Whilst the mainstream media reel over Wendy Alexander's 'gamble' on an independence referendum what are those of us that argue the case for the next logical step in self-government to do? Prepare ourselves for the barrage of conflicting polls with proposed referendum questions ranging from the eminently calm 'begin negotiations' to the raving 'carve asunder' ? Grannies cut off from their families, machine-gun posts at the border, national bankruptcy and all the other gems of previous Labour electoral campaigns look to be pulled off the shelf once more and non-partisan intellectual debate pushed to the sidelines.

It is however still a high-risk strategy and not just because it gives the electorate the stark choice between Brown/Cameron/Alexander and Salmond/Sturgeon, between a future thralled to the sinking ship that is British nationalism or one of uncertainty (but opportunity), but also because it gives that significant proportion of Labour voters who favour independence scope for expressing their view without having to vote for the SNP. Whether that particular voice is allowed to, or organised enough to assert itself ("Labour for Independence"), we'll have to wait and see, but if it does, then Wendy might find herself regretting opening Pandora's ballot-box.

Chris Harvie: Salmond, Iceland and American History

From Chris Harvie, responding to two recent columns from the Herald's Alf Young:

Alf Young upbraids First Minister Salmond for over-easy parallels between Enlightened Scotland and the Founding Fathers, in order to sell independence on the other side of the pond; and over-hasty inclusion of Iceland into the 'arc of prosperity'. As I am down to travel to the latter place within a month, as a member of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee examining its government's approach to tourism, I will leave detailed consideration of it until later. Though an Observer columnist, recounting Iceland's addiction to Big Retail, financial whizzkiddery and inflated property prices, was moved to conclude 'Remind you of anywhere?'

Jefferson is not perhaps the American parallel I would have made: Andrew Jackson, Andrew Carnegie, John Muir or Woodrow Wilson fit the bill better. On song, the First Minister does a pretty good Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Jefferson lived at the right time and is known, and hence attractive: citing him is an example of the necessary compromises travelling statesmen make in order to get on the wavelength of the target group. There could be more learned choices in the enlightenment constitutionalist line. John Witherspoon, the Princeton Founder-Professor and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, is far closer to the Scottish common-sense mainstream. But if he isn't best known to the other side, then a lot of time is going to be spent in tedious biography. Moreover when someone is moved by all this to read the whole business up, then he or she might discover other, less creditable ambiguities. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves. But so did a lot of people in Scotland at that time. Some of their slaves were also white, Scots, mined coal, and didn't get free until 1799.

Less useful to the independence side was the seeming invincibility of 'loadsamoney, and no questions asked' arguments to our forefathers (be they convinced Unionists or independence-minded) when contemplating foreign trade. 'Tobacco and sugar in, firewater out' characterised the first century of the Union, oiled by not a little smuggling. Once the serfdom of the colliers was got rid of, there were Messrs Jardine and Matheson (the latter of whom had suffered the Hanoverian knout as a tacksman's son in Lairg) elbowing aside the East India Company to sell opium to the Chinese. This doesn't get into these Bible-Class Prize books currently being churned out by Downing Street. 'Courage', 'Bravery', 'Steadfastness', etc., is the familiar rhetoric of humourless exploitation deployed by the Great British racket, as someone involved in it like George Orwell could record honestly.

As for the westward arc, Celtic/Nordic tigers or whatever, there is in fact no uniformity to their formulae for success. Maybe small size, which detracts from world-power delusions (eg, aircraft carriers occupying the hours of technicians who might be perfecting wave-generators). And more generally, they display a determination to understand how their socio-industrial organism works, and develop this in a pragmatic way. The Norwegians used the power of the social-democratic state brilliantly in the 1970s to create Statoil, their national hydrocarbons corporation, and are now twice as wealthy as the British. I will always remember the former chairman of the British national Oil Corporation, Sir Alastair Morton's lapidary answer to a question about what Mrs Thatcher did with North Sea oil: 'She blew it on the dole.'

The Irish determination to do something similar was given an intellectual prod by Professor Joe Lee's brilliant analysis, Ireland, 1912-1985 in which the career of republican economics was subjected to merciless scrutiny. (Compare this with Simon Schama's BBC-commissioned tosh). Lee, reflecting on Ireland a decade later, gave European policy high marks – 'The Greeks nearly always had a better case for funds, but we honed our applications and got them in on time.' There were well-picked winners like pharmaceuticals and software (which in the late 1980s the Scottish Development Agency couldn't be bothered with) – and not least, the marital piety which produced big families up to about 1985: 'Lots of bright, well-educated youngsters, and thirty-odd years before any of them fall ill.'

Scotland isn't as fortunate demographically and oil was not handled well, but this applies to the UK as a whole. In Scotland there are the skills to fix up the necessary European deals, particularly with Germany, which requires both renewable energy sources and carbon capture. It can be done, though the result of the necessary deals (perhaps a Scots-German green-front confronting a peculiarly uncomfortable Anglo-French bloc nucleare) will look very strange even to the folk of today.

What is interesting is the migration of 'oor girn' – 'a chip on the shoulder, growing and growing' – to somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Mail and the Telegraph. Early on in the life of the Salmond regime I was struck by the attitude of Edinburgh civil servants to a Whitehall parcelled out among cabinet factions: if ever a mystique had been blown away, this was it.

'All Gordon's horses,
And all David's men,
Can't put Sir Humphrey
Together again.'

Alf Young on the new argument for independence

Say what you like about veteran Herald commentator (and erstwhile Labour researcher) Alf Young - and the 'Eeyore of Scottish politics' is one of the harsher soubriquets - but he is consistently the clearest writer on ideas, mostly economic, in Scottish letters. From his independence-sceptical perspective, we were delighted to read his synthesis of recent events (well reported here), into the 'new argument for independence'. Responding to Salmond's position that Scotland might be able to ride out financial peaks and trough better, because small-nation governance might be more adroit and responsive, Young makes this point:

It is all part of a carefully-crafted, evolving narrative which insists that, even in a globalising world, it will be the small independent states that will, inevitably, come to dominate in terms of the levels of prosperity they bring to their peoples and the enlightened practices they bring to government and economic management.

Earlier this month, Tom Nairn, author of the classic 1977 tract, The Break-up of Britain, gave this new thesis in its most-highly-developed form yet. Nairn was delivering the latest Edinburgh lecture, under the auspices of the Scottish Government. "The old question used to be: Are you big enough to survive in an industrialising world? The advent of globalisation is replacing this with another, something close to: Are you small and smart enough to survive and claim a positive place in the common global culture?"

Nairn dismisses the "old lags" of the bigger-and-better epoch, such as America First, Great Spain, Great Russia and, of course, Great Britain, and what he calls newer members of the "body-builders' club" of nations, like muscle-flexing India, Indonesia, Iran and China, as being best-placed to go on profiting from an ever more interconnected world.

If globalisation means we are now "all in the same boat", watch out instead for increasingly assertive members of what Nairn dubs "the stowaways' club", the smaller nation states condemned, until now, to languish below decks, to break out and take over the bridge and the engine room.

"The broader picture remains unmistakable - a springtime of victorious dwarves," Nairn argues, with Scots, pre-globalised by the Union and the diaspora, coming to the fore as the whole global economic order is reshaped.

That's Nairn's new deal, a fresh synthesis of globalisation and nationalism. An intellectual under-pinning for the inevitability of an independent Scotland claiming a prime place on that bridge.

And if he's right, Iceland will presumably shrug off all the daunting challenges its economy now faces, and avoid the humiliating fate of other hedge funds. We shall see.

Does the Lisbon Treaty fatally diminish the sovereignty of small nations?

Some useful commentary from Pat's blog covering the National Conversation event on Comment Is Free, points perhaps worth picking up and developing here.

First, a an exchange on how the Lisbon Treaty threatens the sovereignty of small nations:

Pat Kane: Free The Planet, I respectfully disagree with your characterisation of the European Union - in terms of the two European wars that impelled its creation, it's a vision and recipe for peaceful and profitable co-existence between previously belligerent nations that we shouldn't deride. I go with Jeremy Rifkin in the European Dream: "Rather than becoming a super-state or a mechanism to represent the enlightened national self-interests, the European Union has metamorphosed into a third form. It has become a discursive forum whose function is to referee relationships and help coordinate activity among a range of players, of which the nation-state is only one. The European Union's primary role has become orchestral. It facilitates the coming together of networks of engagement that include nation-states, but also extend outward to transnational organizations and inward to municipal and regional governments, as well as civil society organizations." Note that nation-states are still part of the mix.

As far as I understand the Lisbon Treaty, 56000xp (nice to see that droids are also part of the CiF community :-p), there has to be unanimity in the new European Council - comprising all heads of Member States - before any action on foreign policy and defence can be collectively taken. Otherwise, Swedish and Irish neutrality could not be respected. The SNP has a difficult relationship with the possibility of Scottish troops in an independent Scotland - see Salmond's recent assertion that Scottish squaddies would share the same degree of scepticism about the Iraq and Afghanistan expeditions as the rest of the citizenry. The SNP;s instincts, along with most of the rest of the Scottish parties, are reliably pacific - so an independent Scotland in Europe, participating in unanimous security votes, would be another voice for peace and diplomacy. Surely a good thing?

56000XP: The veto can be bypassed by a solidarity clause which states that should one member be the victim of an attack or a terrorist attack then all the members shall act in solidarity. Now you don't have to be a genius to see how this can easily (for a powerful member) amount to the annulment of the veto on defence issues. Suppose Germany wants to attack Uzbekistan, it get's it's security services to set up a terror attack and point evidence at the Middle Asian nation, bingo! all of Europe is at war with Uzbekistan. Now you could say other large countries might endeavour to prove Germany is lying if it didn't want to attack Uzi. All this would then mean is that several powerful nations would between them have the power to declare war using all of Europe's resources on anyone if they agree to support such a conspiracy. Now, we already know some EU countries have no problems formulating dodgy dossiers and lying in order to go to war already.

In any event the treaty is a terrible one for small independent minded nations. It takes away veto power on many issues replacing it with majority voting - this means nations lose their sovereign rights... small nations lose their voice and large nations move the wheels of how the new state is governed, indeed my own country will lose the right to have an automatic commissioner so for some periods of time the commission will be making laws that govern Ireland and Ireland will have no say, in effect we will no longer be a country - just a province. This points to a way in which Scotland might actually be better off staying in the Union if Lisbon is ratified, the UK will be one of the main powers and decision makers - alternatively they could become like Iceland - a sovereign nation.

There was a case called the Laval case, basically the EU ruled that Sweden must allow companies to import foreign workers and pay them not a swedish salary but a salary equivalent to what they were paid back home! The Lsibon treaty will make this ruling binding on all EU countries so we could have a situation in which companied in Ireland can pay Romanian salary to Romanians working in Ireland - threatening Irish workers' rights and bringing wages down - they are terrified of this in places like Denmark where they have no minimum salary.

There are also some serious ramifications for human rights, habeus corpus could be threatened. We could see a situation in which one EU country wants to hold you without trial for a year, your government (if it fails the qualified majority test) will not be able to protect you and you could be exported to the other country. Veto power would be gone in this key area. In Ireland we are guaranteed habeus corpus but in the UK they don't have this so if a qualified majority agrees with the UK then UK laws can be applied to Irish citizens in Ireland this way.

There is a major loss of democratic accountability involved, commissioners were once appointed by heads of state, after Lisbon they will be apointed by (unelected) commissioners. The elected representatives MEP'S will have the least power, even then the unelected commissioners decide on the limited powers the MEP's will have. The EU post Lisbon will also for the very first time be able to make laws governing issues like policing, crime and immigration. The Irish constitution (the envy of all Europe) will be over-ruled should any of these laws come into conflict with ours. The most disturbing thing is the anti-democratic nature of how the change will come about, people generally think they live in democracies and that these are the best systems, why no referenda for Europe? If this is a good treaty then why not sell it on it's merits? The European people have already rejected these ideas when the French and Dutch said no in referenda, most of what was in that is here too - in fact the craetor of the rejected constitution admitted that 98% of his constitution has been rescued for Lisbon - but they changed symbols - names, eg the foreign minister has a new title, there is no mention of constitution etc. What power can be so great, it's goals so important that it can over-ride and short-circuit the will of the people?

Any answers to these charges from any of you out there? The status of an independent Scotland vis-a-vis the evolution of Europe seems to be exactly the kind of linkage between abstract aspirations for independence, and the step-by-step process of its achievement, that the participants in last week's National Conversation were asking for.

Talking our way to the future

A busy 48 hours for the McChattering Classes (welcome a' ye!). Wendy Alexander's constitutional commission (or is it a review?) was launched today, and already the crippling contradictions of Scottish politics were leaping out of her mouth: "The SNP's National Conversation has only one desired result, while ours..." Leads to anything but independence? Meanwhile tomorrow, Salmond launches the next stage of his process, consulting the 'civic institutions' of Scotland (delightful to see Linsday Paterson's argument about the Autonomy of Modern Scotland - or at least the autonomy of its institutions - become the common-sense of governmental reform.) We'll be attending the launch, and may raise aloft our trusty camera-phone, to see if we can capture some meaningful clips...

Just to also alert you to an event less heralded, but an example of Scottish reform in action - the next stage of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission's consultation, covering 'cultural' issues. The report will be available here, and the evidence (including a transcript interview from SF's Pat Kane, and his essay on the Democratic Interact) will be available here. Our feelings about the 'economic' discussions in SBC are somewhat mixed - a disappointing metropolitan 'me-too-ism' about too many of the television production companies and executives interview. Is commissioning How To Look Good Naked really the acme of ambition for Scottish television makers? What would a Scottish broadcasting be like that didn't have to think about getting through the 'gatekeepers' of the London media elites?

Nae mair, bonnie callants: Salmond's next military challenge

From Mike Small, Bella Caledonia:

I recently engaged Angus Macleod, Scottish Political Editor of the Times about why they still referred to the 'Scottish Executive' when no such body existed. Nobody, not the Tories, not even the British government refer to the SNP administration as anything other than 'the Scottish Government'.

In a give-away line that anarchists would love he explained: "The reason why the term Government might not be appropriate is that the devolved body does not possess all the powers of a government e.g. declaring war (I'm not being entirely flippant - that is a government - defining responsibility)."

Alex Salmond claimed yesterday that Britain's involvement in the war in Iraq was "the most disastrous foreign policy decision of recent times". He should put his convictions to the test. Scotland with 8% of the UK population but 11% of the UK war dead in Iraq is following an ancient tradition of disproportionate representation in the British Armed Forces. This Easter we should pull our troops out.

As the war of words intensified a furious Des Browne issued a personal challenge to Alex Salmond to visit British troops in Iraq after the First Minister was accused of undermining morale. Remarks by Salmond made about Scots soldiers being "kicked in the teeth" by the Westminster government were labelled "outrageous" by his Labour opponents.

On the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion, Mr Salmond told BBC Scotland: "I don't believe, incidentally, the views of the Scots squaddies are any different from the Scots population. They do their job because they are professionals and they do it bravely and completely." He then said: "They get kicked in the teeth when they are in Iraq by their regiments being wound up. They get treated disgracefully by the government - across a range of ways - which has broken the military covenant." None of which is really debatable.

What was telling though was the response. Salmond’s getting “too big for his boots”, they argued. Far from it. Salmond should take the next step and explore how to bring our troops home.

Beannachtaí Na Féile Pádraig

From Iain MacLaren: As a fully functioning independent state and with peace in the North, Ireland, it could be argued is operating in a post-nationalist phase. No longer having to seek to justify its right to self-government or indeed stake its claim in the international community, it has since the '90s at least emerged from its stagnant, drawn out birth to carve a space in the European imagination of a successful, thriving economy with an entrepreneurial and creative population.

How much of course that reflects reality on the ground, particularly with the impact of the looming global economic crisis and much local debate about the effective 'seccession of the successful' from public sector services such as education and health (if not also the tax system thanks to those other small nations, the Isle of Man and Lichtenstein) is another matter. Nonetheless, what better way to explore how a nation is at peace with itself and its identity than perhaps by gauging its attitude to its national day?

David McCrone: the uses of 'civil society'

Well-referenced and well-written sociological essay from David McCrone, professor of sociology at Edinburgh University, on why the classic Scottish Enlightenment concept of 'civil society' should be retained. A quote:

Why should 'civil society' be an important part of current Scottish public discourse? As Krishan Kumar observed: 'If we wish to continue to use the concept of civil society, we must situate it in some definite tradition of use that gives it a place and a meaning'. In late 20th century Scotland, it became plain that the political realm was at some odds with the informal and quasi-formal networks of civil society; in short, it was perceived to be unresponsive to its needs and demands, across the socio-economic spectrum, from professional bodies, voluntary groups, to trades unions. This was in large part because of what became known as the 'democratic deficit', the fact that no matter how people in Scotland voted at Westminster elections, they got a government elected by people in England; not unreasonable, given that they represented 85% of the UK population. The task was not to overthrow the state, but to fashion a state - parliament and government - more in keeping with the wishes of the electorate. I have observed elsewhere: '... people think of themselves as Scots - and they do, in increasing numbers, over being British - because they have been educated, governed and embedded in a Scottish way. It is a matter of government, not of sentiment; and, if anything, the latter derives from the former'.

Pointy-heided blues

Scottish Futures' two favourite intellos have occupied either end of the publicity scale recently. Tom Nairn is featured on the Scottish Government website for this season's Edinburgh Lecture on 'Globalisation and Nationalism - The New Deal' (the full text is here, and there's a summary clip from YouTube below. You can hear the whole lecture on audio here).

For his pains, according to Google News at least, Tom gets two mentions - one in the Herald, and the other in Anthony Barnett's Our Kingdom blog (which furnishes us with the above pic, the entirely thrilling spectacle of Scotland's greatest living political philosopher being commended by the political leader of the country). Tom's point - that Scotland has always been globalised, in the sense of always having adjusted its sense of identity and cohesion to wider political frameworks, and that the current state of globalisation encourages a 'new deal' for Scotland's relationship with the world - has been well and often made in these pages. His philosophical tone comes out very strongly in this speech, however:

Globalization will have to perpetuate Babel, as well as confronting all its difficulties and contradictions. At bottom, the reason is that human universals arise only via contrasts, by the transcendence of borders, via cross-fertilization, through hybrids and surprises, from the unheard-of, in communities not just 'imagined' in Ben Anderson's celebrated phrase, but previously unimaginable, from presences whose spell makes the past into a bearable future.

And how on earth can anything like that be achieved without 'independence'? In this context independence surely isn't - or isn't only - backward-looking or inward-looking me-first, chip on the shoulder time, and so on. It's more like seizing the chance - and making sure it isn't the last chance - as the clock-hands move so decisively forward, the chance to contribute and to endure (or increase) with an emerging purpose not yet wholly known, because societies must retain, or rediscover the power and confidence to surprise themselves. As (I would argue) both Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did in May of last year.

Beautiful, dignified stuff. But on the other hand, Christopher Harvie...

Conversations, Commissions, Reviews & Fora...

Scottish Futures contributed its 250 words to a round-up in the Sunday Herald today, on how to break the deadlock over constitutional change in Scotland, strung between the SNP's 'National Conversation' and the Unionist parties' Constitutional Commission. As ever, the distance between original copy and edited version is never insignificant, so here's the original version:

It's one of the classic farce moments of Scottish party politics. The SNP and the Unionists know deep in their ideological hearts that the result of any new referendum on Scottish self-government would be something close to the federalism of the Steel commission - that's the implied result of both the National Conversation (which generously lays it out in equal detail to independence), and Wendy's soft-nationalist instincts. But in the usual adversarial way, four hard-bitten political parties can't get to "yes". I think it's thus vital that some outside, non-party-political actors restart the Constitutional Convention, and provide a crucible in which all the forces that wish to reform (and transform) Scottish governance can get a voice, and 'McChatter' their way towards a consensus.

Only one further qualification: Scottish Futures' desired horizon for Scottish governance is as an independent nation-state, given the urgent policy challenges the country faces, as outlined by Christopher Harvie below. But the independence process will be neither healthy nor authentic if it does not proceed through the most vigorous and inclusive democratic practice (as Iain Macwhirter says, there's a danger that the SNP government, "blinded by their own ratings, would seek to impose independence by an act of Leninist voluntarism, by giving history a push. This would be a big mistake". We agree).

This morning, Gordon Brown has muddied the waters again, conceding that Scotland should have more fiscal autonomy, but could equally countenance losing some powers to Westminster (over environmental policy). The clash between constitutional philosophies in this is acute. Could anyone who believes in the "sovereignty of the Scottish people" accept any reduction in powers, from a Whitehall "review" of devolution? We agree with the majority of views in the Sunday Herald review: the more Scottish-civil-society-based (indeed, "neo-endogenous", to use the PM's language) these discussions are, the more robust and legitimate they will be.

Beyond minor sleaze and major budgets

Like many, SF has been watching the mediocre-level controversy over Wendy Alexander's funding misdemeanours, and to a lesser degree the SNP's wrangling over its budget for the next three years of government, with some degree of exhaustion and weariness. (Read the average edition of the Irish Times, or the Helsingen Sanomat, and its domestic and political pages seem to be preoccupied with the same mix of neo-bribery and glacial coalition maneuverings. So perhaps this is the expected political theatre of the autonomous small Northern European nation. Ho hum.)

Three of the leading Scottish newspaper columnists have responded to this reasonably-tumultuous week, and there's value to be taken from all them. Ian Bell in Saturday's Herald is sharp on the parliamentary chutzpah of Salmond's SNP government:

Mr Salmond had threatened to resign if his government's Budget was rejected. Cut through the technicalities - particularly the provision that allows parliament 28 days to cobble together an alternative administration - and the challenge to the opposition was clear. If you want your heart's desire, if you want me out, take it to the electorate.

How best to put this? Here's how: confronted with that choice, Labour ran away. It did not have the stomach, the confidence, the organisation or (a lovely irony) the cash to take on the Nationalists. In that, not in £950 cheques or strange abstentions, lies the lasting damage to Ms Alexander.

How do you tell voters that Mr Salmond is doing untold damage to Scotland yet refuse the invitation to attempt to remove him? Even if Labour and the Liberals had failed to muster all the votes required to defeat the Budget, cause the First Minister to resign and force an election, it might, surely, have seized a half-chance. Not a bit of it. The last thing it wanted was another trip to the polls.

What was being acknowledged, I think, is that the SNP has become stronger in government. Put bravado to one side: at no point did Mr Salmond anticipate losing seats in an election. But nor did Labour believe that it could win back constituencies. The effect has been to make a minority administration seem bigger, more powerful, than its actual numbers would suggest.

Bell is an SNP fellow-traveller, and Alf Young - his fellow heavy-hitting columnist in the Herald - is strongly oriented to Labour. But Young is to be valued for maintaining a proper scrutiny of the actual Budget proposals, with his usual research-based (and characteristically well-written) critique. Independistas need to answer, with some details, his claim on Friday that an SNP vision of sustainable prosperity might not indeed raise all boats equally, and whether the business-friendly tax rates agreed with the Tories will really start to grow GDP:

[The Government] has just published a discussion paper on tackling poverty, inequality and deprivation in Scotland. In it, the SNP government proposes a cohesion golden rule which seeks more balanced growth across Scotland to give all Scots "the chance to succeed". But research it has commissioned shows just how hard it might be to deliver on that. Between 1995 and 2005, according to findings on page 17, Scottish GDP increased by, on average, 2.5% a year. Over the same period, annual growth in two of Alex Salmond's arc of prosperity countries, Ireland and Finland, averaged 7.5% and 3.5% respectively.

Should we assume that higher growth then led to greater fairness? Not a bit of it. Between 1995 and 2005, despite that stratospheric growth, the percentage of people in poverty in Ireland rose from 19% to 20%. In Finland, it climbed from 8% to 12%. Inequality also increased in Denmark and Sweden. In low-growth Scotland, the percentage of those in poverty actually fell, from 20% to 18%.

Harvie on the "New Democratic Intellect"

Another welcome prognosis from Christopher Harvie MSP, the nation's most prominent and vigorous futurist-pensioner, in his forthcoming address to the Urban Regeneration Forum. The lecture - available in full in extended post below - is titled 'To Scotland In The Coming Time'. An extract, calling for a 'New Democratic Intellect' adequate to our post-carbon Scottish future:

Accessibility of power, its conservation and re-use in subordinate, ecologically-sustainable ways, are the keys to our future. We may only be able to capitalise on this by moving our population and industry north, though this can of course be aided by such projects as railway electrification. But for this we need something of a revolution in the way we think and we are an old society, which can communicate but not always learn, and an immature society, which can surf the new technology but in a rather isolated way, and can’t communicate about it: caught between the greybeard and the geek.

Saving the planet at Grande Vitesse?

Today the French engineering company Alstom unveiled the successor to the highly successful TGV, the AGV (Automotrice Grande Vitesse) with an operational speed of 360 km/h. On the same day, Ryanair announced a drop in profits with a warning of a tougher year ahead. The battle between environmentally friendly, high speed rail travel and short-haul flights then continues to be fought across much of continental Europe, whilst Britain languishes in its shambolic, privatised farce of a rail system.

Ireland also has announced lots of shiny new trains for its network, albeit that the concept of high-speed rail is somewhat alien to the infrastructure planners. A pity - we're more and more dependent on those flights with carriers such as Aer Arann, Ryanair, Flybe, City Jet and Aer Lingus criss-crossing a country that being flat as a pancake (an apt expression for today) would in principle present little technical problem in the building of a decent TGV-type service linking the major centres.

But increasingly, much of contintental Europe is being woven together with glistening steel threads.

Hector wakes up

One can't really run a blog called Scottish Futures and not mention the arrival of an astoundingly powerful supercomputer to Edinburgh University, called Hector (and here's more supercomputers). Quotes like this set the pop-science fanboy in us all a quiver:

The group manager at Edinburgh University's parallel computing centre, Dr David Henty, told Radio Scotland Hector would keep British scientists at the cutting edge.

He said: "There are still the traditional branches of science which are theory and experiment, theory using a pen and paper to work out what you think will happen and experiments using telescopes and things like that.

"Nowadays, a new strand is to write computer programs to simulate things that are as small as a sub-atomic particle, through to things that are as big as the whole universe. It really can do whatever you want it to do."

Let's see if another Dolly-like paradigm-shaker comes out of this. Though we are reminded of the classic SF story by Frederic Brown, 'Answer', and the questions you maybe shouldn't ask a supercomputer:

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."

He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.

"Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

Watch that internet link, Doctor Henty ...

Wendy to the end

In the midst of Wendy Alexander's travails - which betrays as much a general crisis of the proximity of politicians to corporate and business interests (hello the SNP, Soutar and transport policy), as it does the mediocrity and mendacity of the Labour hegemony in Scotland - we turn to the BBC's Bryan Taylor for some weathered counsel:

Team Alexander - Wendy plus her close advisers - got carried away. They saw themselves as the vanguard that would transform their party. They saw themselves stirring the stubborn, thrawn beast that is Scottish Labour. They were to be the bright new dawn.

Remember the early bold talk about changing the very nature of the Labour Party, sorting out HQ, altering the ground rules. (That project, by the way, is now somewhat on hold and won’t, as promised, be presented to the spring party conference.)

How could the vanguard, how could the bright new dawn scrimp and save? Big, serious, transformational politicians had big, serious, corporate budgets. They must have one too.

So why keep the donations deliberately below £1,000, the point at which they must be declared to the Electoral Commission? Same reason. It’s what big, smart people do.

Constitutional Patriotism, and the colonial truth

Very interesting post (sent by Glasgow University's Doug Gay) from Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher, looking at the German concept of 'constitutional patriotism'. That's the idea (developed by Jurgen Habermas) that you can be loyal to your country's form of good governance, its democratic and liberal practice, rather than to an identity that's more exclusivist or essentialist (the German context is obvious). But Taylor takes it in an important direction - one that's not stressed in the SNP government's there-are-many-threads-in-our-tartan multiculturalism:

Universal values of liberal democracy should attach me to any such democratic society; and in a way they do. I’m rooting for all of them. But my attachment to Canada or Quebec has to be stronger than this. It has to motivate a degree of giving: serving in the armed forces, accepting the transfers of income involved in welfare states, and so on; kinds of giving which can’t be asked of the average citizen when directed to other, even friendly societies. True, we want to stimulate more transfers to developing countries, but we do this partly by playing on national pride. (Canada is way below the Scandinavian countries in the percentage of our GNP we contribute to international aid; our shame at this ought to push us to do more.)

So what’s the extra motivating element? Here’s where I think that Habermas’s term “constitutional patriotism” is useful. It’s constitutional, because we rally around moral/political principles, but it’s patriotism because we are fiercely attached to our particular historical project of realizing these. This easily generates chauvinism of a certain kind, familiar in the American case by phrases like “the last best hope on earth,” but which often arise in Canada around things like multiculturalism, and certain feelings of smug superiority when we look at some unfortunate developments in a nearby country. Chauvinism takes the form: our democracy/social regime/mode of liberalism is much superior to that of all you others. We have to fight against this, and particularly avoid forcing our models on others, but in general it is one of the least malign forms of chauvinism.

It’s the least dangerous form of social-political cohesion: “I am proud of my country’s institutions, its principles, its track record, its history.” What distinguishes this is not the general goals, but just the bare particularity of its being THIS particular project. This price and identification is impossible without reference to history. And this means a powerful motivation to whitewash this history and make it look good. This is the second possible casualty of patriotism, the truth. And this can be disastrous, because in a world which is overturning various forms of historical domination, being able to admit the truth may be a crucial necessary condition of living with ex-subaltern groups and societies. In the world in transition, “truth and reconciliation” is often a necessary, unavoidable step.

Very important last point. Which is why some of us still hold a flame for Hamish Henderson's Freedom Come A' Ye as the national anthem. As we progress with all due confidence to the future, when will we be confident enough to reckon with our imperial and colonial past, as willing administrators and beneficiaries of the British Empire? And in doing so, make ourselves genuinely ready for the world? As the great man wrote, "Broken faimlies in lands we've hairriet/Will curse 'Scotlan the Brave' nae mair, nae mair/Black an white ane-til-ither mairriet/Mak the vile barracks o thair maisters bare".

NLR on Nairn's 'alternative reading of the times'

To all stern socialists peering from their mist-wreathed dialectical mountaintops, we thoroughly recommend Perry Anderson's 'Jottings on the Conjuncture' from this month's New Left Review - again, one of the most elegant writers in English that we know of, delivering a stunning overview of the last seven years of global politics, post 9/11. (The only weird omission, almost entirely, from his geopolitical overview is Africa - as if even the old leftists have given up on it as any kind of agent in world politics).

But the reason to quote it in Scottish Futures is that our old magus Tom Nairn pops up at the end, as part of a quartet of political-philosophical seers that Anderson invokes as mapping a progressive future, beyond more American blunderings, European sclerosis, and China's gathering might. Anderson mentions a 2006 Nairn book that had entirely passed us by - Global Nations - and which we'll grapple with in coming weeks. But very usefully, Anderson gets right to the core of Nairn's developing thesis (highlighted here many times) about the true relationship between nationalism and globalisation:

Tom Nairn’s account goes roughly like this. Marx-ism was always based on a distortion of Marx’s own thought, formed in the democratic struggles of the Rhineland in the 1840s. For whereas Marx assumed that socialism was possible in the long run, only when capitalism had completed its work of bringing a world market into being, the impatience of both masses and intellectuals led to the fatal short-cuts taken by Lenin and Mao, substituting state power for democracy and economic growth. The result was a diversion of the river of world history into the marshlands of a modern middle ages. But the collapse of Soviet Communism in 1989 has now allowed the river to flow again to its natural delta—contemporary globalization.

For the core meaning of globalization is the generalization of democracy around the world, fulfilling at last the dreams of 1848, crushed during Marx’s life-time. Marx, however, himself made one crucial mistake, in thinking class would be the carrier of historical emancipation, in the shape of the proletariat. In fact, as the European pattern of 1848 already showed, and the whole of the 20th century would confirm, it was nations, not classes, that would become the moving forces of history, and the bearers of the democratic revolution for which he fought.

Macwhirter lays out the options

The Sunday Herald's Iain Macwhirter is, certainly stylistically, the best political columnist writing on these islands at the moment. And for independistas, it's also been a joy to watch him consistently respond to the SNP administration with an open mind and a fair-dealing stance. His latest centre-page column for the Guardian newspaper - gathering hundreds of comments - lays out the stark realities for the Brown administration, if it has any hope of retaining the Union: full, coherent federalism. If not, Scottish independence will become an inevitability, given the clear policy divergences between the nations (but particularly between Scotland and England, nuclear power being the most glaring recent example). A quote:

There is unstoppable momentum now behind the disaggregation of the UK, and time is running out for the political establishment in Westminster to respond. This country is changing - and, it has to be said, largely for the better, as the old centralised apparatus disintegrates before regional democracy. Now that the unionist parties in Scotland have all but given up, the UK faces a choice: adopt some form of federal solution, or prepare for political disintegration, on the lines of Czechoslovakia's "velvet divorce" in 1993. It is as serious as that. While Brown launches fatuous "Britishness" campaigns, the very fabric of the country he claims to love is being torn up and stitched anew.

Let Scotland Decide?

Iain MacLaren writes:
The Scottish Independence Convention has announced the launch of its petition for an independence referendum (on Thursday the 24th January in the Scottish Parliament), followed by a social gathering/fundraising dinner at Oran Mor in Glasgow the following Sunday (27th). The convention, which is now under the convenorship of Elaine C. Smith, has been in existence since 2005, but has recently undergone a number of changes in stategy, particularly given the election results of May and the advent of the National Conversation. Indeed, it will be interesting to see the extent to which that 'conversation' really takes off (or not) in this coming year as the end of the honeymoon period for the new government might be expected to be drawing near and as Gordon Brown tries yet another relaunch of his failed premiership. Once again some of his colleagues are hinting at a written 'constitution' for the UK with a possible referendum at some time in the 2010 timescale. Would that be before or after we've got identity cards, a DNA database, CCTV in every public space, nuclear power stations, a replacement for Trident and private healthcare?

The much talked about unionist challenger to the conversation (the "national monologue"?) which bans freedom of expression and thought through its refusal to let anyone into the room that mentions the big elephant in the corner, is also expected to start trundling along, just as soon as the Labour leader can extricate herself from her current legal difficulties, no doubt.

Best wishes for an action packed 2008!