World enough, and Time

Orrery of the Long Now clock

Last night I listened to an episode of the Politics Galore podcast which utterly depressed me: not because the content was depressing (although it was), but because the analysis was so shallow. It analysed Scotland's current dilemma solely in terms of the Westminster political game played by Westminster's first past the post rules. It suggested that the next independence referendum could be, and tactically should be, delayed until the late 2020s, as though nothing in the world would change in the meantime.

Human beings are programmed to believe that nothing much in the world, on a macro scale, will change very much from one year to the next. We call this inductive reasoning, and over the past million years it's served us pretty well. On the whole, tomorrow has been more or less like yesterday; on the whole, next year has been more or less like last. And for most of that time, what lay over the horizon was literally unknowable: oncoming crises, no matter how inevitable, could not be predicted or prepared for.

This is no longer the case. Multiple interlocking crises — the changing climate, the mass extinction of species, the concentration of wealth and power — are changing the world rapidly. We can now see over the horizon; we do now have the tools.

Consequently, you can't now discuss Scotland's politics in isolation from our geopolitical context. I'd identify several key factors:

1. There is a strong risk that the UK will diverge sharply from EU over the few months after December 2020;
2. There is a strong risk that climate change is running substantially faster than IPCC have allowed for, and that action to mitigate is lagging far behind;
3. The new digital propaganda tools by which well-funded actors can manipulate elections are rapidly maturing; and consequently
4. There is a strong risk that the English-speaking world is sliding towards something resembling real fascism or at least oligarchy.

Both Scotland and the UK are bit-players in all this; we don't move the tides of history, we have to ride them. The attack by Russia on electoral processes in the UK is not primarily aimed at the UK so much as at creating chaos and turmoil across the West. In that sense the UK's only geopolitical significance is as a keystone in the defences of the European area of stable peace against chaos, and it's a keystone which no longer has any structural integrity.

For clarity, in saying 'the attack by Russia' I'm not saying that the attack is made solely by Russia, nor that the attack is in the long term interests of the Russian people or state. Rather, it's an attack by an emerging oligarchy, which currently controls Russia. Nor is this oligarchy monolithic; rather, it's made up of a class of ultra-rich individuals who very largely do not see themselves as a collectivity and who very largely do not coordinate their actions, but nevertheless each act 'rationally' to protect and enhance their accummulated wealth and influence.

They include, but are not limited to, those who profited from the ill-managed privatisations in the collapse of the Soviet Union; absolute rulers of oil states in the Arabian peninsula and elsewhere; the hereditary aristocracy of Great Britain, including the House of Windsor; 'tech entrepreneurs' including Gates, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Brin, Page; the financial services elite; and the controllers of major organised crime cartels. These groups, of course, socialise, intermarry, interpenetrate, overlap; that is the nature of a collectivity.

Surrounding the oligarchs themselves — who may or may not be consciously malign — there's a penumbra or Oort cloud of actors who clearly are malign: people like Murdoch, Bannon, Yiannopoulos, Rees Mogg. They are, in a sense, the intellectuals or ideologues of the oligarchy, forging an ideology which allows the oligarchs themselves to 'rationally protect and enhance their wealth and influence', by undermining and destroying the democratic institutions which would otherwise allow mass action to erode those accummulations. But they're not oligarchs themselves, although they may aspire to be; they're hangers on.

One very worrying thought made powerfully by Umair Haque, when he says "climate change accords perfectly with the foundational fascist belief that only the strong should survive, and the weak — the dirty, the impure, the foul — should perish", is that the oligarchs (or their ideologues), rather than putting their shoulders to the wheel to resist climate change, may consciously be seeking to accelerate it.

To say 'but we can't resist these forces' is probably true, but that way leads simply to despair. If human life on earth is to continue, people (including Scotland as a bit-player) must resist these forces, now. It isn't sufficient to go on playing the Westminster game, and, in particular, there isn't time to think about the long game. As John Maynard Keynes said, but with particular force now, in the long run we're all dead.

Pulling focus back to Scotland, what worries me is that the SNP's analysis is as shallow as Politics Galore's. Like the podcast, they believe that the future will be much like the past; like the podcast, they ignore the turbulent geopolitical forces which mean it won't be.

Salmond was a risk-taker; Sturgeon is not. She will play it safe. As the tides of history tear our society and our economy apart, she will wait irresolute for a 'perfect moment' which will never come. The merit of Angus MacNeil's 'Plan B' was not primarily that it actually was a strategy (Sturgeon's wistful hope that she can somehow extract a Section 30 order from a triumphant English Tory government is not), but that it gave us a fresh bite at the cherry with each successive Westminster election.

But there (probably) isn't time. Measurements in Greenland and the Antarctic show that the Climate Emergency is moving much faster than predicted, and meantime the oligarchy and its ideologues are honing its anti-democratic toolkit.

Scotland alone cannot swing the UK back to a path of sanity. We're structurally weak, and, as Johnson gerrymanders the electoral system to lock in Tory majorities, we'll remain structurally weak. Our escape route is to bind ourselves to the European bloc (EFTA or EU), and then to work to strengthen — and radicalise — that bloc; but we cannot do that without independence.

We don't have, for reasons I've given above, much time. You would not have been wise, in 1935, to make any political plan for three electoral cycles hence: the tides of history would have washed it away. 2020 will be 1935 on steroids.

I still believe — and believe strongly — that an independent Scotland could be a positive actor on the world stage, both in seeking to build peace, justice and stability, and in seeking to resist climate change and slow the rate of extinctions. But time is short; the crises are urgent and rapidly becoming more so. If we cannot achieve independence within a very short time frame, it will be time to abandon indulgences like constitutional tinkering and seek to build alliances to defend our planet. Indeed, it may well be that time already.

An independent Scotland on a dead planet would be a very hollow victory.

Brexit: selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege

selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege

Brexit: We got into this mess because some Conservatives couldn't cope with the fact that we weren't the top power in Europe: because, while we won almost all of the votes Europe ever had, it wasn't quite totally all. They couldn't cope with the fact that Germany was more influential than us - because Germany outperforms us at manufacturing, finance, exports, and, critically, diplomacy.

After Brexit, Germany will still outperform us at manufacturing, finance, exports, and, critically, diplomacy - and Germany will be part of the most powerful trading block in the world while we will have NO FRIENDS AT ALL.

The extent of the own goal here is staggering. Brexit will not only not fix any of the things the Brexiteers were upset about, it will make all of them MUCH worse.

The Brexiteers will still blame the same boggarts: they'll blame the EU, they'll blame Germany. But the problems aren't in the EU or Germany, they're in our own disfunctional constitution and our own disfunctional economy. Nobody in Britain wants to face this. We all know it's true, it glares us in the face. Our national governance doesn't work. Our commercial governance doesn't work. Our industrial governance doesn't work. And the reasons are all pretty much the same across all three sectors: selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege.

Our elites don't want to fix these things, because they benefit from them; so they direct the blame outwards. And so the problems don't get fixed. And so the whole British project becomes more creaky, more inefficient, more decrepit, more disfunctional. And we all suffer, including those bloody elites.

Flodden Field, revisited

Nicola Sturgeon

Scotland has history of meddling in English affairs in the interests of continental friends. It doesn't end well.

In 1513, James IV, quite possibly the best governor Scotland has ever had, tried by diplomacy to persuade England's Henry VIII to make peace with France; and failed. So he sent his navy to France in support of the French, and invaded the north of Northumberland, taking three castles but not much land.

On 4th September, at a council of war with the much larger English army closing and a field of battle agreed, the Earl of Angus - yet another Archibald Douglas - argued that Scotland had done enough for France, it wasn't our fight, and the army should come home. James, annoyed, sent Archie home, with quite a portion of the army. But he then, sensibly, moved the remainder of his army to a very strong position on Flodden Edge, from where the powerful and modern Scottish artillery would have devastating fire over the battlefield.

On the 7th of September the English general, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote to James saying this wisnae fair - in the words of his letter, the Scots position was a fortress. His message was 'come down and fight on the flat, like decent chaps', while carefully preventing the Scots from getting sight of the size of his own army.

So what did James do? He moved his whole army, including those precious guns, to a much weaker position on Branxton Hill; and on Friday the 9th, the English closed. As they did so they brought their own artillery and much of their army in over the Twizell Bridge, within range of the Scottish guns. The Scots did not open fire; chroniclers say that this was because James ordered them not to.

Twizell Bridge, photo By Kirsty Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0

And if you look at the site and it just screams at you. The bridge is still there. It's a single span bridge, extremely vulnerable to heavy artillery, which the Scots army had in position. If the bridge had been destroyed with the English army half across, it would have made a huge difference to the outcome. The Scots would probably have won.

They did not open fire.

Instead, James marched his army down from their position on the hill to meet the English in a marsh; and in that marsh the Scots were butchered.

There were so few Scots survivors from that battle that we do not have good accounts from the Scottish side. James himself, of course, was killed. But we know from the instructions sent to the Scots ambassador in Denmark that the surviving government in Edinburgh saw James' inexperience and folly, rather than any great generalship on the part of the English, as the cause of the disaster, and from what records we have, it's hard to disagree.

But that's not what I came to talk about. I came to talk about the People's Vote.

In March 2017, Nicola Sturgeon, certainly the best governor Scotland has had in modern times, tried by diplomacy to persuade England's Theresa May not to drag Scotland out of the EU against Scotland's will. Like James Stewart before her, she was rebuffed. She had a strong position; Scotland had voted overwhelmingly to remain, she held 56 of the 59 Scottish Westminster seats, she had a clear mandate for an independence referendum.

But Theresa May, like Thomas Howard before her, said it wisnae fair. "Now," she said, "is not the time." And instead she held a general election. The SNP's powerful and modern electoral machine was in a strong position; by standing on an 'Independence Now' manifesto it would have won a majority of Scottish seats and achieved independence while Scotland was still entirely within the EU Aquis Communautaire, making our accession to full membership a formailty.

She did not write that manifesto.

Instead, Nicola marched down off the heights and engaged the Conservatives on their own ground, seeking to keep the entire United Kingdom within the Single Market. As Archibald Douglas said, Scotland had already done our part, by voting remain. England's position in the Single Market or out of it is not our fight.

All Under One Banner, Edinburgh, 6th October.

Of course, she still won a majority of Scottish Westminster seats, but from the position of strength she started from she was bound to; the subsequent eighteen months have shown us how little that majority is worth, without decisive leadership from the top.

Nevertheless, there was still time for an independence referendum before Brexit. Of coourse we couldn't expect a Section 30 letter from Westminster, but that is a technicallity which we could have dealt with in the campaign. The Yes movement was all pepped up and ready to go, the SNP membership was at an all time high.

But no. No, you may not open fire on that exposed bridge, while the English are engaged in complex manouvres. No, we shall meet the English on their own chosen ground, by campaigning on a people's vote.

What is this nonsense? It isn't Scotland's fight! Scotland has voted. It has voted to remain in the EU, and it has voted three solid times in three years to give Nicola Sturgeon the mandate to call a referendum on independence.

Say there's a people's vote. Say Remain wins. How does that help us win independence? It does the opposite. It gives the No campaign the chance to argue once again that the quickest way to lose European citizenship is to vote Yes. So winning this 'people's vote' does not help us.

But that if, as is virtually certain to happen, Scotland again votes Remain, and England again votes Leave? Why, then, we get a reinvigorated right wing government in London ready to repeat the mantra "now is not the time" ad nauseam, and we are at their mercy as they do trade deals with America which will devastate our agriculture, our food and drink industry, our environmental standards and our health service.

Those who will not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Just as James Stewart marched down off the hill to the total destruction of his army, his hopes, his nation, over a fight that was never Scotland's to fight, so Nicola Sturgeon is doing once again. The first time is tragedy, agreed, but the second time is too dark to truly be considered farce.

Scotland needs to be better than this. Scotland needs to grow up. Scotland needs to acknowledge that England is different from us, has different needs and priorities to us. Scotland has to learn that we cannot - and should not try to - impose our ways on our bigger neighbour. We have to fight our own battles for our own national interests. And that means, being independent in Europe.

Yet another bid to centralise power

A bunch of unbelievable dunderheids calling themselves the 'Constitutional Reform Group' are proposing a new Act of Union. You can read it here. The group are remarkably coy about their membership, but rumour has it that they are, at least primarily, members of the House of Lords - which comes as no surprise to me (indeed, I'd hazard I could correctly guess the names of several members).

Long time readers of my blog will recall that I've written on the UK constitution, rather often:

1. The West Lothian question, take two
2. Parliamentary Questions
3. Submission to the Smith Commission
4. Scottish devolution, and socialism in one nation
5. A breakfast any self-respecting dog would reject

Fortunately the committee have provided a feedback form through which you can give your opinion of their turgid bucket of foetid dingoes' kidneys, here. I strongly commend the idea you do so. For inspiration, my own contribution is below; do not copy it, as that is bad form, but feel free to riff melodically on some of these points.

I have very rarely read a more foolish or more incendiary document - this ranks surely alongside Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal for offensiveness, but lacks the wit.

It is not possible to have a federal state in which one confederate can always outvote all others. If the United Kingdom is to become a federal state, then either England must be split into at least five separate units (Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Mercia, Northumbria, perhaps) or Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, put together, must be able to outvote England. Otherwise it isn't a confederation, it's an empire (which, under your committee's proposal, of course, it is).

It is not possible to have a democracy with appointed legislators. Not any appointed legislators at all. The United Kingdom, of course, never has been a democracy, but it is about time it became one.

It is not tolerable that a broad range of taxes be retained by the federal administration. The centre can have few functions and therefore has little expenditure; the overwhelming majority of revenue must be generated where it is needed - in the nations. It would be better to put all taxation powers with the nations and fund the federal government with subventions from them.

It is not possible to have a UK wide court system, because there is not a UK wide system of law. Nor is it desirable that there should be, unless, of course, England wishes to submit to the jurisdiction of Scots law. No? Didn't thinks so. Similarly, a UK wide civil service makes no sense.

If you want to cause civil war in these islands, I commend your proposed bill as a most excellent way to proceed. Otherwise, I suggest you bury it in the deepest cesspit you can find, and pray it never resurfaces.