We didn't vote for independence - did we?

Well, King Alex is safely sworn in as First Minister and he has announced his new cabinet.  And so the  electoral cycle begins again.

Alex says it is as inevitable as anything ever can be in politics that Scotland will be independent.  The wily old dog!

There is one problem.  I don’t think we voted for independence. 

The SNP seemed to gain support as a broadly competent government of whom we should have no fear.  I don’t think their record was particularly scrutinised that deeply as Labour tried to run against the cuts – or whatever Labour were trying to do.  And the others weren’t that effective either.

The writer Gerry Hassan, writing about the Scottish Spring picked up on a deep long term transformation which has been occurring for decades.  This is a change from an age of identifying with the Labour party and seeing the world defined by the workplace, politics and class.

I think also the passing of the generations who lived through World War 2 and identified with a sense of Britishness through that experience has played its part in this transformation, and with it seen the decline of the Conservative and Unionist Party in Scotland.

Into this void has come the SNP, and during the 90s and 00s the Liberal Democrats – particularly under Charlie Kennedy.  Well, the LibDems have blotted their copybook big time while the SNP have grown.

Scotland has changed, tribal loyalties are decaying and the electorate is more volatile

The SNP positioned themselves with a wonderfully coherent sense of positivity and positioning,  A moderate left of centre party able to appeal to working class and middle class, and urban and rural Scotland.  A national party of Scotland.

Of course, the SNP also prospered from the perfect storm of a weak, poorly targeted Labour camapaign with a weak leader, and the collapse of the LibDems because they had gone with the Tories and lost credibility symbolised by the English tuition fees debacle.

So the SNP won and won big!  They have established, at Holyrood at least, two party politics of Labour and non Labour.  One party old, conservative and slightly authoritarian, the other modern, forward looking and aspirational.

But this doesn’t mean we voted for independence!

There does however seem to be support for increased devolution of power to Scotland.

Back in 2007 I for one did not foresee that the SNP were beginning to become more popular.  This may have been because I lived in Edinburgh which was not at that time an especially strong area for the SNP.  Nevertheless, their victory then surprised me.

I thought they would then follow a de-stabilising agenda seeking to undermine the relationship between London and Edinburgh.  In fact they didn’t.  They were much cleverer than that.  Alex Salmond has sought to evolve the parliament at Holyrood, little by little, into an independent Scottish Government.  Independence by stealth.

It is quite cunning and manipulative – but that is ok, that is politics.

With the SNP project has come a growing movement.  They have money, and the support of many key people in business and the arts.  With this comes resources for research, clever young strategists and thinkers.  They also have a cause.  Scratch many a nationalist and you find a hopeless romantic.  Labour have the moral high ground (or so they like to think!) The Tories fight for their values and prosperity.  So too the Nats have a cause that brings passion, people and bright young Turks.

Indeed, with many bright thinkers they are redefining what they mean by nationalism and independence.  For their thinkers Independence is about “...interdependence, partnership in these islands and more widely across Europe.”  They are talking about Scotland, the UK and Europe all still being connected but in a different and more appropriate way.

This is all very interesting.  It strikes me, as a firm believer in a federal solution for the UK and for Scotland , that the SNP may be coming round to a position I hold – maybe!

The Nats have placed their focus firmly on Holyrood.  This includes all their resources and intellectual capital.  It is another reason why they are winning at this level.

The LibDems and Labour need to use the intellectual capital they have with their Scottish contingents at Westminster if they are going to do well again in Scotland – this is especially true of the LibDems who have just taken such a pasting at the Holyrood election.

It is in fact a point I feel is important to not forget – Holyrood is Just one level of government!  Just because the SNP focus on it to the exclusion of other levels and have the agenda at the moment does not alter this fact.

This is the SNP agenda – to evolve Holyrood into a national government – which is not what most of us Scots want!

The Holyrood administration is not, for example, running the economy.  It was noticeable how irrelevant Alex Salmond was during the banking crisis and I can’t imagine how we would have coped with massive global entities like RBS or HBOS with balance sheets many times bigger than that of Scotland’s, if we had been independent!

 I therefore feel there is far more that binds us in the UK together that separates us.  I am a proud Scot and I want to see a strong measure of devolution.  At this juncture in our history I feel it is important we emphasise and celebrate that which binds us together lest we slip unwittingly into the nationalist spider’s web.

We are one island with one language – this is huge!

We are part of one economy – so many of our large companies are British companies based in Scotland.

This is nothing to say of the ties of kinship and friendship across the borders.

I also believe there are many British cultural traditions – some English in origin which have become assimilated into Scots culture like the waters of two streams merging together.

I think of things like:

·         Parliamentary democracy

·         Shakespeare

·         Morecambe and Wise or Coronation Street

Cultural things, English in origin, that have become part of our own culture.

I talked to one Nat recently who pointed out that Scotland once had its own parliament.  I know this! But it never reached the depth and the maturity that the English one did.  Nor did the Scots develop the tradition from medieval times, of rule with the consent of the people from Magna Carta, through the reforms of Henry iV, to the Tudor Settlement of sovereignty in parliament.  These natural rights of Englishmen, tracing themselves right down to Tom Paine, are part of the Scottish radical tradition.  True we have other traditions of thought and politics as wellt that are Scottish in origin, but we must not falsely separate our culture from other parts of Britain.

‘Wha’s Like Us?’ We have so, so much to be proud of as Scots for such a small nation but we should not build up a myth of superiority and wonderful traditions that are not quite as perfect as we would like.  But then sometimes nationalists do this.  Sometimes they are no strangers to a good measure of baloney!  

So there we have it.  I am concerned that the nationalists seek, through Holyrood, to drive a wedge to separate Britain by stealth.

This is not what most Scots want I believe.  A move towards a federal settlement may on the other hand be something there is support for and a basis on which we can do business.

It is important in the UK, before we run away with the nationalist fairy, that we recognise there is far more that binds us than separates us.

After all – we didn’t vote for independence – did we?

What next for the LibDems in Scotland?

No getting away from it but the results for the LibDems last week were an unmitigated disaster!

In England and Wales it takes them back to the early 90s but in Scotland it takes the Scottish Liberal Democrats back to where they were in 1979 - if not before.

That is over 30 years of incremental steps flushed down the toilet - disappeared like snow off a dyke, destroying all the advances under Ashdown, Charles Kennedy and Chris Rennard!

Someone in the blogosphere said to me before the results, that In Scotland it looks like we are finished – no-one is listening! And sure, I have already noticed the BBC completely marginalising the LibDems from their political discussion - perhaps given our derisory result this is fair!

But, there are a few crumbs of comfort.

Where we had established MPs in the UK as a whole the LibDem vote held up.  The wipe out came where we had made very recent advances in Labour areas – perhaps that is entirely understandable.

In fact, we held on in many parts of the south and the south west.

I am conscious that a 15% vote is a whole lot better than our poll ratings and not far off our typical between election ratings – albeit at a local election where we always do tons better than at a General.

Scotland is where it is most dire and where I am worried about the future.

But even here let us think some more about where we are.

This is a low water mark with a freak tide.

In these conditions there are still several seats where we achieve a large vote. Much like we had in 1979! It is imperative for the LibDems to stay engaged and active with the electorate in these areas and make sure we hold as many Westminster seats as possible and can come back at a subsequent Holyrood election.

This is of course no mean feat because some of this ground once lost could be gone forever.

A new leader will bring with it a chance for renewal.  At time of writing I am expecting this to be Willie Rennie.  We need him to have all the charisma and intellectual rigour he can manage.

The UK context

We must also remember that in the UK context - and yes Scotland is part of the UK - we are still a big party – and in a UK context bigger than the SNP.  We are also in government.

We need the LibDems to be distinctive within a coalition of two parts! We need Clegg to be our leader.

We must also beware! Beware of looking too English.  It doesn't always do us much credit here in Scotland, but to look too English is political suicide.

The LibDems at Westminster need to realise this.  We need Charlie Kennedy and Ming as an elder statesman.  We need our stronger performers like Jo Swinson and Alistair Carmichael.  We need Danny Alexander to look as bright and able as he is - and he doesn't always get this over. And we need Michael Moore to step up to the plate more than he has done. 

Our fortunes are very tied in with the coalition and the perceived performance of the LibDems and of Nick Clegg in particular.

What of Nick Clegg?

Clegg has had a torrid time - and there is a fair amount of absolute bilge written about him.  However, he has not always seemed sure footed with political nous.  Last year I was very impressed with the preparation for and the run up to the election campaign.  The website was good, the positioning was good, the party platform was good, Cable played a blinder, the launch was excellent, Clegg showed real quality in debate, and the Daily Fail et al trying to kill him off was seen off well - not least with the internet trumping the print media!  I was a little unsure of how Clegg handled the close of the campaign allowing himself to be too drawn on the who would you support afterwards question.  I felt he handled that less well than his predecessors.

Since the election I felt they handled the coalition negotiations well - but, with hindsight some mistakes have been made and Clegg seems to lack political nous at times.  The way tuition fees was handled was a huge mistake.  The way the coalition operates and the way Clegg appears as an ambassador for the Coalition rather than the Liberal Democrat's leader appears not quite right.  Someone has suggested some of this may come from working in Europe where the fighting is done behind closed doors more than our public bear-pit adversarial tradition.

Whatever the case I am glad Clegg is coming out fighting, as are others.  They need to think this through and to change perceptions.  And, I would say that Ashdown, who was an enormously successful leader, was wooden and unsteady in the early days.  So all power to Clegg who, I think, as more steel and more intellectual depth than his enemies realise.
  
LibDems defecting to the SNP

The SNP gained lots of previous LibDem voters.

We need to remind this group of why they liked the LibDems in the first place if they are going to come back to us. 

We lost badly because of the loss of credibility over English tuition fees and going into coalition with the Tories - still an unforgivable sin in Scottish politics.

I knew the writing was on the wall for the Scottish LibDems when three things happened in that final week. 

First, a co-worker announced they had voted LibDem last time and no-one would be voting LibDem again.  No hostility just for him a complete lack of credibility because he perceived we had gone back on our platform and gone with the Tories which he could never accept.  We had become irrelevant to him.

Second, a close relative who is also English (unlike me) announced they would vote SNP!!!  They don't like the SNP, as an English person they don't really realte to them.  But to them the LibDems couldn't really be trusted to do anything they said if in a coalition situatuion and they liked the SNP stance on tuition fees given they have kids coming to that stage in the next two years.

Third, when I read Tory Gavin Brown's good morning leaflet which very effectively put over that the LibDem vote had collapsed all over Scotland over the campaign.  It was so effective and spoke to the polls and the national mood - we had no credibility even as an electoral force in our strong areas.  This meant all those pretty bar grapphs and betting odds were de-bunked with a few words.

I knew then that even our rump support and LibDem fanboys would be washed away by an electoral tsunami.

We need to rebuild


We need to reassert who the Liberal Democrats are and what we stand for - and we need to particularly do this in Scotland.

We have been down before - the late 60s when we had only 6 seats in the entire UK.  The late 70s when we fell back from the success for the 74 elections, again in the late 80s following the bust up of the Alliance when the Greens outpolled us at the Euro-elections and the national poll ratings weer worse than now!. 

Then, as I hope now is the case, we came through because there was market demand for many to vote for a moderate left of centre party! 

There is however a problem in Scotland - that is EXACTLY how the SNP present themselves! They also have a charismatic and polical genius of a leader in Alex Salmond.  They have the credibility of being in government and being perceived as doing ok.

This is of course an easier gig.  They are the government not the junior partners.  They don't have the fall-out from a global financial storm of the century to deal with directly.

So cracking Scotland will be very hard.

We could build credibility using the local elections.  We are after all in power, with the SNP, in Edinburgh.  But this will prove difficult as the ill fated trams project threatens to derail this as the vehicle back from the brink - as local government did for us in the 1990s.  

Our future is bound up in how the public perceive the SNP over the next few years every bit as much as our future is bound to how the LibDems perform and are perceived to perform at Westminster.

The future

The SNP will have their challenges over the next few years.  However, Salmond is clealy a political genius.

The SNP were nowhere in 80s, slowly stumbled forward in 90s and early 2000s but over the last 5 or 6 years they have got professional.  I always think you can tell the party that has mementum at an election count because they have lots of young people in suits! Last Thursday the SNP had a lot of young people in suits! 

The LIbDems need to pin a lot of hope on the SNPs fortunes over the next few years or otherwise.  Will they prove to be a house of cards?

There is a tough time ahead.  While they can hope to deliver some low hanging fruit in terms of policy initiatives the deficit cuts will bring challenges.  The Scottish government will have to deliver cuts and the expenditure environment will restrict their room for manoeuvre, and possibly their room for deivery on their agenda. 

They are also Nationalists, hitherto most of Scotland is not.  Much of what they do and the national discussion will be seen through a prism of the relationship with the rest of the UK.  There is a risk that some of them will start to sound shrill! (Even if in election mode they have done so well to sound positive)

The Times on Saturday put it very well - the vote for the SNP was a vote for an aspirational Scotland, not a vote for independence.

Of course in the wave of enthusiasm and optimism the SNP may be able to change hearts and build confidence in this matter.  Time will tell.

However, I am sensing a fair amount of tosh been written about the constitutional question at the moment.  The election of an SNP government with a majority means this question will be to the fore and we will debate this a lot in the next few years - and all the options of developing autonomy.

I look forward to it.  I hope we get it right.

LibDem positioning

The LibDems have always been a non socialist alternative to Tories - and in Scotland we have been a non nationalist alternative to Labour. 

We must be clear of this and rebuild on this basis.

Never mind anyone else - we need to communicate who we are and what we are about from first principles upwards.

I believe we understand the needs to have a have a successful business environment to empower Scotland as a country and to prosper.  We also believe in having first class public services free at the point of delivery.

We are Internationalist in outlook and believe in reform and looking forward.  We are modern and aspirational and open minded.

Being green is part of our DNA and has been since it was less fashionable - we have a passionate interest in developing renewables and alternative forms of energy for the future.

We are also great believers in community politics, of decentralisation - and I think empowering micro groups out in society doing things.  The big, blunt statist solution is not for us.

We want Scotland to grow and to prosper - both as a society and as an economy.

The SNP may be similar but Salmond, rather like Tito and the old Yugoslavia, holds a disparate group together – they are doing it rather well but it may not always be so.

We have to be us.

One good thing is that Scotland's political world has been turned upside down with the debunking of Labour.  It opens up the chance to have a new politics that is not ruled by a Labour single party state.

The old tribal loyalties are dying as the generations move on.  As in the rest of the UK the electorate is far more volatile.

These changes have delivered growing success to Salmond’s SNP

In the recent past they delivered success to us in the suburbs of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, in parts of rural Scotland - an aspirational open minded electorate.

Scotland has always done well as we our outlook in terms of science, ideas and trade look beyond our borders – and our dreams and ideas are allowed to soar.  The SNP, ultimately, may not be the best vehicle for this.

Holyrood is about to see the return of two party politics and a stale fight of little differences between SNP and Labour.

In that fray we need to take our part in the thought leadership of the nation.  We need to be clear about who we are and what our ideas are that will allow Scotland to prosper. 

I think we also need to be clear that we are very much part of the UK - the time has come to remember the things that hold us together because I believe they are rather more than the things that tear us apart.

And we must play our part in Europe - because globalisation will not go away whatever UKIP or some Tories may think.

In conclusion

There we have it.

The LibDem future in Scotland depends very much on the pereception of the LibDems at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood.

But we must also work hard at playing a full part in the thought leadership of ideas to take Scotland forward - and then establishing a simple and clear positioning.

We need Willie Rennie to be good and our Westminster MPs to be strong and visible.

None of this will be easy but I hope we succeed - I know we will try!