Oh Henry
Anas Sarwar should ignore the pro-independence patter of his predecessor Henry McLeish.
The news that Henry McLeish could switch his support to independence in a future referendum poses a puzzler: how would we know?
The forgotten first minister has had an on-again, off-again relationship with separatism to rival Ross and Rachel in Friends but for several years now it’s been evident he and Unionism were on a break.
Speaking on a Glasgow newspaper podcast, McLeish said: ‘What I’m saying, and this is the sting in the tail of my message, is that if the Union doesn’t look like, from Labour or the Conservatives, that it’s going in the way that I’m talking about, then yes, I would support independence.’
It is hard to decide which is less surprising: that McLeish would vote for independence or that he would make the decision either way contingent on yet another constitutional overhaul of the United Kingdom. Men like McLeish favour process because they are bereft of ideas yet there will never be enough process to satisfy them. They take the bucking beast that is politics and lay the dead hand of constitutionalism on the creature.
When McLeish pronounces that, ‘If it’s only economic fears that are binding us within the Union, that’s a pretty poor state of affairs’, he speaks like a man with dreams and a bill he intends for others to pay.
This brand of conditional unionism has no future and amid all the ruminations of the punditocracy on What This Means for Labour, Anas Sarwar should resolve quite simply that it means nothing. He is the leader and it is time for him to lead.
Part of my case for Sarwar to become leader was that health, not education, was Nicola Sturgeon’s weak spot and the Glasgow MSP had previously shown himself capable of exploiting that in a string of Holyrood performances. Since he took over, the May election results were disappointing and he seemed to take some time to find his feet, but as I expected, he has done a creditable job holding the First Minister to account on the pandemic, the A&E crisis and the ambulance scandal. He led his party to oppose vaccine passports, which pleasantly surprised me. However, he has yet to give any more insight into his plans for constitutional policy. At some point, ‘now is not the time’ is going to run out of time.
Sarwar’s fence-sitting is becoming more unsustainable in part thanks to clear signs that Douglas Ross is raising his game. The Scottish Conservative leader is almost unrecognisable from the stiff, awkward automaton he presented during the election. That cyborg may even have been replaced with a human being. This introduces a more difficult Holyrood dynamic for Sarwar: it is no longer enough to best the First Minister, he must also triumph over the chief contender for her job. The two tasks require very different tactics and messages and the gulf between where Sarwar is and where he must reach is only widened by Labour’s neglectful ambiguity on the constitution.
It is not a clever ambiguity and, truth be told, it never has been. It is the same Janus-faced approach Scottish Labour has taken since the SNP emerged as a serious threat in the 1970s: speak pro-UK out of one corner of their mouth and soft-nationalism out the other. In doing so, they have validated and amplified the objectives of the nationalists without receiving anything in return. Whatever one might say about the SNP, at least they believe in their cause and themselves.
I have become a sceptic of devolution, though, contrary to what some nationalists claim, I don’t advocate the closure of the Scottish parliament. It is a profoundly flawed institution and its creation, to say nothing of its capture by the SNP, has done immense violence to the Union. But the people were asked to vote on it and they did, decisively. Constitutionally speaking, Westminster could hang a closed sign over the entrance tomorrow by passing legislation to that effect but, politically speaking, it would probably entail either a referendum reversing the 1997 result or a clear mandate at a general election. Closing Holyrood in the absence of one or the other would be much like the efforts MPs made in the last Parliament to override the EU referendum result: constitutionally and legally proper, but politically (and, perhaps, democratically) insupportable.
Yet Labour’s 1997 manifesto was in no doubt about the effect of devolution: ‘The Union will be strengthened and the threat of separatism removed.’ One grandee even forecast that a Holyrood parliament would ‘kill nationalism stone dead’. If parties and politicians were paid by results, an entire generation of Labour MPs would be in the poor house right now. Far from killing nationalism, devolution gave it the kiss of life. There have been five first ministers since 1999 and four of them have been nationalists. (Although Donald Dewar rejected political nationalism, he did say: ‘I would not deny the charge of being a cultural nationalist.’)
The calculation of every Scottish Labour leader since the 2014 referendum has been that the vote divided the party’s electoral base (which is correct) and that the appropriate path forward is halfway between apologising for winning and avoiding all mention of the constitution (which is incorrect). Scottish Labour led the victorious campaign in the biggest ever electoral exercise in Scotland’s history. It beat not only the all-dominant SNP and its Green hangers-on but an entire devolved government with its financial resources and infantries of civil servants. Labour won not only the ballot but the argument.
Instead of cowering, the party should have spoken with pride in having saved the country from division and rancour and penury. Voters want strength. They reward gumption. Even when they disagree with a policy in its particulars, they are looking for signs of leadership but Labour failed to show them and still does.
There is still an opportunity to learn these lessons and put them into practice but that will never happen if Labour is fretting over the pronouncements of a former leader who is former for good reasons. After the historic role it played in keeping the country together, Labour should not feel a sudden compulsion to lend a hand in tearing it apart.
There are many ways to be for the Union and not all involve flags and photo ops on tanks. But for the Union Labour must be — clearly, proudly and with optimism that solidarity across the four nations is the surest way to achieve its social democratic aims. Anas Sarwar is tasked with building a party for tomorrow and he will not do it by deferring to the dogmas of yesterday’s men.
Fresh data suggests young people are even more likely to be locked out of the housing market in the wake of the pandemic.
With house prices already inflated by the time Covid-19 arrived, the rise of home-working is said to have convinced better-off families in the south of England to move to Scotland.
The average house price north of the Border is now just shy of £210,000 and one estate agent told a Sunday newspaper it had become ‘almost normal’ for properties to go for one-third above their asking price.
The injustice of this situation is manifest. The question is how to solve it. The readiest answer is to expand on advances made in the last decade and initiate a fresh, widespread programme of affordable house-building.
That is likely to hit the usual brick wall of NIMBY objections. The alternatives, however, will be much more painful, ranging from an inheritance tax hike to a crackdown on buy-to-let mortgages.
If you want to understand why the young are so attracted to socialism, this is why.
Casually slouched, hands in pockets, in an open-necked shirt and light tweed, Humza Yousaf’s latest PR snap had the air of an ageing male model back to the catwalk from paternity leave only to find his career downgraded from Prada to Primark. If he doesn’t get a grip on the NHS, it won’t be the only portfolio he loses.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on September 27, 2021.
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