The Union Is Beginning to Think Through its Future

Eddie Barnes | @eddiebarnes23

In the words of the Scottish academic Colin Kidd, academics and thinkers have tended to view the case for the union of the United Kingdom as an ‘intellectual dead-end’. Either the arguments in favour of the UK have been taken as so self-evident that nobody has felt it necessary to set them out – what Kidd has termed “banal Unionism”. Or it has fallen back on hackneyed cliches around empires built and battles won. With the SNP having forced Scottish nationalism into the political mainstream over the last few years, so the lack of a modern intellectual scaffolding on which to build a firm pro-Union argument has been exposed.  

Is this now changing? One of the more surprising and interesting developments since May’s Holyrood election is the extent to which most of the thinking and questioning about the future of Scotland and the UK is coming largely from the pro-Union side. This brief period of relative calm in Scotland’s relentless electoral calendar is being used to challenge assumptions and scrutinise principles; to kick the pro-UK tyres.

Take some of the evidence being given to committees in the Houses of Parliament in recent weeks by some prominent former civil servants and ministers in the UK administration who have had deep and first hand experience of the last twenty years of devolution. It’s a pity that the Scottish Parliament has so far found itself unable to hold such conversations because the insights that have been offered to the House of Commons and House of Lords in recent weeks have given a more mature assessment of the UK’s constitutional position than anything that has emerged from Holyrood in the last few years. Their evidence has focussed on the general question of how the UK Government faces the Union question and how it manages the newly devolved nation state.  There is too much to distil down into one short article, but some key issues are worth flagging up.

What do we actually mean by the union?

The House of Lords constitution committee is currently looking at the future governance of the UK. Last week it took evidence from two senior figures with immense governing experience, Philip Rycroft, the ex-Permanent Secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union (and a current director of this think tank), and Ciaran Martin, a former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Service (both were also recently interviewed by Reform Scotland).

Martin raised what is a first principles issue. 

“There is an important question for British politicians in power and seeking power at a UK-wide level to think about what sort of union they are trying to preserve? There are two models – a multinational, diverse, multigovermental UK. Or a more assertively singular British states model of unionism.”

The latter, he noted, was a form of “Anglocentric British nationalism”. Both visions of the Union were valid, Martin noted, but in practice they are mutually incompatible. The problem is that, having created the former Union by introducing devolution, the British State largely carried on as if it hadn’t happened. Martin recalled the mood in the civil service in the late 90s after devolution was introduced. The country had just come out of recession, had tamed inflation and had got the public finances back under control. The view from Whitehall about devolution, Martin recalled, was “Whose crazy idea was this and how can we limit the damage?”

“If you contrast the pageantry of the official opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 with Her Majesty the Queen and Donald Dewar and all of that, with the obsession—and I would call it that—with just making sure that these new bodies were under control, the failure to engage with that debate about the emotional re-engineering of the union will not be looked favourably on, I think.”

Together with that institutional resistance, there developed a culture of what has become known as “devolve and forget”. Government departments weren’t incentivised to think creatively about the Union or to consider how sharing power or working with the devolved administrations might work.

Rycroft noted:

“The result of all of that was that devolution tended to be pushed to the periphery of departmental understanding, departmental management and departmental attention; that was both political and official. We made some progress over those seven years but, frankly, with the demands of Brexit and then of Covid, of course this has had to take bit of a back seat.”

Of course Brexit changed the entire dynamic and brought to the surface the conflict between the two definitions of the Union – with the more traditional version winning hands down. It has now left a question hanging in the air, as Rycroft put it.

“Do you seek to go down a road of collaboration and co-operation (with the devolved nations and regions) or do the UK Government seek to impose their view, whatever the thoughts of the devolved Governments?”

It is both easier for Whitehall and more politically palatable for the current UK Government to do the latter. Efforts to reform the Union are undermined, concluded Rycroft, by “the weakness of understanding in depth in Whitehall but I would say also in Westminster about devolution and the politics of the devolved parts of the UK, compounded in recent years by an unwillingness, a political failure, to accept the legitimacy of the voices of the other parts of the UK and to give them due accord in the important debates on the issues of the day.”

Martin quoted Robert Saunders of Queen Mary University.

“(He) said that the problem at the moment is that there is a risk that the Government’s approach to the union, their love for the union, if you like, is like the love for a possession, something one owns, rather than the love for a partner.”

Love for a partner, he added, requires you to “choose to act differently for the sake of the partnership”. 

What's needed is statecraft, not just structures

These parliamentary sessions come as Whitehall prepares to unveil a new agreement on intergovernmental relations with the devolved administrations. A 15-page draft has already been drawn up, codifying how the UK Government and the devolved administrations will relate to one another. The hope is that it will be signed off in the next few weeks. Everyone agrees this is clearly necessary and welcome but to assume that a guidebook on setting out the rules of engagement will provide the underpinning for the Union is a superficial reading of events. It is not just the lack of a document, but the lack of imagination that has led to the current impasse.

Rycroft told the Lords:

“When the history of this period, and I am talking about the last quarter of a century, is written and all of us around at the time have some responsibility for this, I think the sheer technocracy with which we responded to devolution will be seen as a weakness, a failure to grasp the extent of the cultural, emotional and national identity changes, particularly in Scotland.”

Martin concurred: 

“Something we might come on to—and I share responsibility for this—is the UK state’s approach to devolution since its inception a quarter of a century ago, which has been excessively technocratic and not thinking about the vision of the sort of United Kingdom we want to have.”

Questioning the pair, Lord Hennessy set out the matter too.

“I have always felt that funding formally, devo maxing, refreshing of structures and so on are absolutely critical too, but above all it is what General de Gaulle was alluding to in the first line of his memoirs when he wrote, “I always had a certain idea of France” and unless you have a certain idea of the union, really it is all lost.”

What has been missing, said Martin, is a “thoughtfulness on the Union”.  Contrast the UK Government’s approach to the Union to the way, for example, the peace process was agreed in Northern Ireland by Conservative and Labour administrations in the mid-90s. 

Martin noted:

“If you compare, for example, the statecraft that went into many, many years in extraordinarily difficult circumstances—over both Conservative and Labour Administrations—that led to the settlement in Northern Ireland in 1998, and you look at many of the papers that have been declassified, and you look at the profound thinking given to things like the statements in the Downing Street Declaration and the initial statement authorised by Mrs Thatcher about no selfish or strategic interests in Northern Ireland, that cut-through, that strategic emotionally sharp political statement followed through into action in terms of the agreement with the Irish Government in December 1993, it is hard to see that sort of strategic thinking incentivised in the Whitehall that I left.”

It is the lack of statecraft that “is most deficient” within government when it comes to the Union, he concluded.

It was a theme that was taken up in an earlier meeting of the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee by Andrew Dunlop, the Conservative peer who was the key advisor to David Cameron during the Independence Referendum. More recently, Dunlop has published a Review of Intergovernmental relations examining the relationship between the centre and the devolved nations. His main purpose, as he told the Committee, was to bring about the same culture change at the centre of power. 

“My main approach to intergovernmental relations is to change them from a very defensive activity where everybody puts on their hard hat, grins and bears it and tries to get through, minimising the chance of fallout. I want the whole atmosphere around intergovernmental relations to change, to make a much more proactive agenda that looks at where there are issues of common interest—and there are many—where the powers of the UK Government and the devolved Governments intersect, and it makes sense to work together, whether it comes to the productivity challenge, how to address climate change or tackling drug abuse. Those are all areas that would benefit from a common approach and working together.

“We can talk about structures, but my whole approach is that at the heart of this is how you change culture. There is no magic silver bullet for changing the culture in an organisation; it requires a whole series of things. My report was a series of interlocking measures to create the right package of incentives to change that culture. If you are to achieve that culture change, you need to look at it and take it forward as a package.”

So, what should be done?

There may be no magic bullets, but what are the ways to bring about this culture change? 

Dunlop’s Review set out a series of recommendations – a new UK Intergovernmental Council to improve relations between the various UK Governments; a joint fund to promote UK wide projects and collaborative working; a new great office of state, a First Secretary of State for Intergovernmental affairs; and reform of the civil service so promotion is dependent on knowledge of devolution. Some are being adopted by the UK Government, others – such as a new Cabinet Minister – are not.

In their evidence, Rycroft and Martin threw up some more reforms. The new package of measures on intergovernmental relations introduced by the UK Government might be put on a statutory footing, argued Rycroft. And there is the wider question of whether “muddling through” has run its course and the UK finally needs to write down its constitutional foundations.

Rycroft noted:

“There is a question as to whether the UK would ever be prepared to move into the space of a formal written constitution in the way that pretty much every other democracy in the world, as we know—bar New Zealand and Israel, to memory—has. We have never had that sort of foundational moment where that has been required. You could argue that muddling through—going back to the 1832 Reform Act and all major subsequent reforms since then—has sort of worked for the UK. I do wonder, however, whether we have reached the moment—with all the things we have been discussing today and also with the way in which the conventions that have hitherto propped up our constitutional arrangements have frayed or been seen to fray—to step back and to say, if not a full-blown written constitution, “There is more of this stuff that needs to be written down”.

He also raised the consent – what should happen when, in a devolved or an area of shared responsibility, a devolved government refuses to back a proposed reform (the obvious example being the implementation of Brexit)? Rycroft asked:

“Should there be a requirement, for example, if the UK Government wish to act in the teeth of opposition from the devolved Governments, for a second look, for a delay? 

“Short of an absolute veto on the part of any one Government, as in the Carwyn Jones proposal from the Welsh Government, should the UK Government need at least one other devolved Government on side to take a proposal through?

And, then, there is the question of England. Rycroft floated the idea of a Minister for England. 

“I think there is an argument to say about departments where self-evidently 99% of their business is English business, why not make those explicitly English departments? People may say, “Won’t that detract from the union as a whole?” I think clarifying where power lies and where responsibility lies will help people to understand the nature of the union as we have it now, post devolution. Whether there is a place for England in the structures of intergovernmental relations has been mentioned already. At the moment the UK Government wear both the UK hat and the English hat. That militates against coming to conclusions in that context where the UK Government can be seen to be operating for the whole of the UK.”

The value of deeper thinking

These are – as already discussed – largely technocratic answers to the debate around the future of the United Kingdom. But they are far from irrelevant. These dry debates about the nature of intergovernmental relations, joint ministerial committees, and dispute resolution mechanisms are better seen as the bureaucratic tip of the deep social and cultural questions that face this complex messy nation, and our own interest in its continued good health. Questions like – is this a nation which is prepared to expend energy, time and thinking power on the question of its continued existence? Or questions like – faced with the possibility of divorce, is this a country that wants to work at keeping together? For many the best answer – as with the West Lothian question – is not to ask such questions: after all, the Union works just about; don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good; be careful about opening a pandora’s box. But – post devolution, Brexit and Covid – this model of muddling-through-Unionism is being stretched to breaking point. And here is the rub. The case for Scottish independence isn’t rooted in the supposed practical benefits of secession – after more than a decade in office, neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon has found a convincing sales pitch which convinces a majority of Scots. Rather the case for independence is growing from a sense, repeated incessantly by the Nationalists, that the country is inevitably drifting apart and that there’s nobody, least of all Whitehall and Westminster, who is really given much thought to stopping it. It’s a model which sees independence happening by way of indifference.  

This is why the thinking on the Union emerging just now is so welcome and necessary. It is having an impact in the corridors of power. It also shows that, far from being an intellectual dead-ed, there are people across the UK engaged and focussed on the fundamental questions: why bother with a Union? What is it for? How can we make it better? Most of the intellectual heavy-lifting in the debate around the future of the UK is currently coming from those who would like it to have one. This is a cause for optimism. 

“Scotland in a Zoom” Project Published

Our Scottish Future has today published the findings of a ground-breaking new project that brought together scores of Yes and No voters from across Scotland.

“Scotland in a Zoom” encouraged voters on both sides of the constitutional debate to actively listen and positively engage with each other, before seeing where they could find consensus on a path forward for the country.

More than 80 voters from across Scotland took part in the virtual project in February and March this year, in groups of twelve over Zoom.

While participants disagreed on the big question of independence, the conversation events revealed widespread agreement across the constitutional divide.

As part of the session, Yes and No voters were grouped together to set out their priorities over the coming years. The sessions found: 

  • The vast majority of Yes and No supporters agreed investment in the economy, NHS and education were the top priorities for Scotland.
  • Investment in the NHS as it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic was the top priority overall, agreed by two thirds of the groups.
  • Tackling climate change was also frequently cited, with a third of groups agreeing it should be a priority. 

In the events, equal numbers of Yes and No voters were placed into groups and asked to seek agreement on a constitutional path for Scotland.  

Though a majority did not want a second referendum under the timescale set by the SNP Government, there was widespread agreement that the constitution needed to be discussed over the coming 5 years, and that more opportunities to engage with each other would be beneficial. 

Our Scottish Future has set out a series of recommendations on the back of the report.

We are calling for politicians on all sides to find ways to allow the public to keep talking about the constitution – through Citizens Assemblies.

But key issues such as fixing the NHS, tackling climate change, giving young people hope for the future, and providing better quality housing cannot be put on hold, given people’s shared belief in action now.

It follows the call by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week for both the UK and Scottish Governments to do more to cooperate with one another on the key challenges Scotland faces, and on the constitution. 

Our Scottish Future project manager Eddie Barnes said: “Despite the apparent 50-50 division in political debate in Scotland, the project showed that voters from either side of the constitutional divide share many of the same values and hopes for the future – and, crucially, want those values and hopes to be better reflected in our politics.” 

“Participants appreciated the chance to hold a respectful conversation with people they disagree with on independence and the union. We believe the lesson for political leaders is to find more ways to bring people together to talk and listen to one another about these key issues.”

Scotland in a Zoom co-author Andrew Liddle said: “This report found a clear consensus among both Yes and No voters that Scotland must seek to avoid repeating the mistakes of Brexit when addressing its own constitutional future.”

“That means politicians better engaging with voters, but also being patient and not rushing into decisions that risk unnecessarily dividing Scotland.”

A copy of the full report can be found here.

It was compiled by Andrew Liddle, Eddie Barnes, Henry Stannard and Laurence Shorter.

Please see case studies of two participants who took part in the event. 

NO – Chelsea Rocks, 24, from West Dunbartonshire

I am not one of those people who goes around saying how much they love Britain. I just don’t think there is enough evidence that Scotland would be better off independent, and my view is – why would we do something that leaves us worse off? That said, I don’t blame Yes supporters for wanting change – especially when you see the deprivation and inequality around us. If you’ve only got £10 left, then you might well feel it’s worth the gamble – what have you got to lose?

The event provided us with a forum to talk. To begin with, some of the Yes people in the room had quite a lot of misconceptions about the No voters – I think they saw us as Unionist flag wavers. But once we battled past that, we were able to have a back-and-forth conversation and it turned out that there was a lot of agreement. When it comes to the economy, to the heath service, to education, the truth is that we all want the same things,  we just disagree about how we get there.

The format of the event really helped. Even when you’re talking to family members or you’re in the pub, if the subject of the constitution comes up, it can just descend into – well you’re wrong, and I’m right. Spending time looking at what we agree on opens you up to the idea that you might both be right and that leads to a much more mature conversation. It was also an opportunity to us to find out why people think independence is a good idea. You don’t get that in social media or in Holyrood or Westminster where all you get is politicians going back and forth at one another. We need more spend more time focussing on the things we agree on and then look at how we go from there.

YES – Gary Reilly, 38, from Edinburgh

For me, it comes down fundamentally to how we take the country forward. What we’re being offered by Westminster is a politics that’s sliding further to the right at every election. I would argue that this isn’t what Scotland actually votes for, it’s also not what Unionists in Scotland support either.

I thought the 2014 vote would have been enough of a scare for Westminster for them to equip the Scottish Parliament with genuine power but instead we got a bit of tax and tinkering with social security. I just don’t think Westminster is able to offer the kind of change people in Scotland want. 

Scottish politics can be a bit of an echo chamber so it was really nice to have a forum where you could speak to people of a different point of view. There’s also a lot of common ground – when somebody is talking about the NHS and the importance of healthcare, you don’t know whether they are Yes or No. I was paired with a lady who had real concerns about the impact of independence on the economy; she had a valid point. I don’t think it will be easy and there will be tough decisions to take.

One of the things I come away with as someone with a Yes perspective is that you have to stick to the basics. People want to know how they are going to pay for their weekly shopping, for their kids’ schooling and for their families. The basics really matter. Things like the currency arrangement – we need to have a common-sense position that people can understand.

On the referendum, a lot of the concern people had was on the timing of it. We should wait until we are through the worst of Covid. I do feel that we won’t be equipped fully for that until we are independent and have the full scope of powers that independence would bring.

Tactical Voting and the Scottish Green Party

Last week, we released the results of our ‘Morning After Poll’, detailing our view of what Scotland voted for and why.  We tried pretty hard to be neutral in our tone, and give each party and side of the constitutional debate a bit of food for thought before making any big claims about what people voted for.

One interesting fact that caught us when we looked through the detailed poll findings was that after all of the pre-election conversation of Alex Salmond’s gambit for SNP List votes, the party that had the most benefitted from SNP switching was the Scottish Greens, who won over 6x the number of SNP constituency votes on the list as the Alba party, with half of their voters saying ‘I voted to elect as many pro-Independence MSPs as possible’ (not ‘I voted for the party I most wanted to win seats’)

Whilst interesting, this was not particularly surprising. We have no particular knowledge of SNP or Green campaign strategy, but it seemed fairly clear during the debates that Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie were enjoying at least some sort of unspoken mutual non-aggression pact that led to the near-absurd end-point of Nicola Sturgeon’s kindergarten teacher-style ‘interrogation’ of Patrick Harvie  in the STV debate (‘so what you’re saying Patrick is that there is no way to build the Scotland you want without Independence?).  

Indeed, perhaps the most surprised person in Scotland about these findings is Patrick Harvie, whose intemperate pool quote on the issue ended ‘it makes no sense at all to highlight some SNP voters who aren’t convinced about independence, but then pretend without a shred of evidence that every Green voter is voting tactically on the constitution alone’. Leaving aside the logical and evidential flaw in his argument (it’s half of his vote, not all of them),  we thought it worth showing some more shreds of evidence beyond the report we published, in case he is interested in learning about why people vote for his party in Scotland.

Before we go into detail we should be clear – with only 80 Green voters in our poll (c.50 on a weighted basis), some of the cross-cuts we refer to here are low n, but hopefully show enough evidence volume of evidence for those declaiming the political purity of their vote to at least countenance that the Greens benefitted from some SNP/Pro-Indy voters lending them a hand up the D’Hondt ladder.

The Background: The Greens are a party with very little ‘core’ support

As was published in our report on Thursday, we asked voters the day after the election the question ‘In this election which party did you want to win the most seats’.  We thought this would be the best way of working out what the ‘true desire’ of Scottish voters was, excluding tactical voting or use of the list as a ‘second preference.  The results aligned fairly well against the actual regional vote share of all the parties, other than the Greens.

The implication of this is fairly clear – whilst the Greens clearly have a good brand and people who like them there are very few people in Scotland who wake up in the morning defining themselves as a ‘Scottish Green’ politically. 

The Evidence for Tactical Voting

In our analysis we stated that around 50% of the Scottish Greens’ vote was tactical in order to maximize Yes MSPs.  This was a result of the response to the question Which of the following was most important in your voting decision at this election for your peach regional list vote?, where around half indicated that they just wanted to elect as many Pro-Indy MSPs as possible (a number that grows for SNP to Green switchers) 

Uncovering the true intentions behind people’s voting patterns is notoriously difficult to do, not least because of how people post-rationalise their behaviour.  However, we have a number of triangulating points that imply that a substantial proportion of the Green vote on the list was from SNP supporters who are strongly in favour of Independence 

  • 73% of Scottish Green list votes came from voters who voted for the SNP with their first vote (and 10% from Labour voters), making them the only one of the five largest parties to rely predominantly on one other party’s votes for a majority of their regional vote
  • 68% of the Scottish Green regional vote wanted the SNP to win the most seats – again this is highly unusual vs all other parties.  90% of SNP regional voters wanted the SNP to win the most seats, a number that is 77% for Labour, 85% for the Tories
  • The Scottish Green regional vote was substantially more nationalist than their constituency vote – with 65% of their list voters being either 9 or 10/10 in favour of independence (slightly more than SNP voters…) vs 46% of their constituency voters.
  • Scottish Green list voters prioritise having a second referendum more than SNP list voters (with 31% having preparing for a 2nd referendum as a top 3 priority for the Scottish government vs 26% of SNP voters)
  • Although a low n so to be taken with a pinch of salt, we also see a huge amount of switching from voters who voted Greens in the constituency to the SNP on the list (c.78% of Green voters)

The Implications of Tactical Voting

With the assumption that c.50% of Scottish Green votes were tactical votes lent by SNP voters, a Scottish Green vote of 4% (vs the 8%) and an SNP vote of 44% (vs 40%) would have had the following implications for the Scottish Greens at a regional list level, losing 6 of their 8 seats, giving 2 seats (and a majority) to the SNP, 3 seats to Labour and a seat to the Tories

  • Losing their final list seat in Central Scotland to Labour
  • Retaining their seat in Glasgow (slipping from 4th to 7th)
  • Losing one of their two Lothian seats to the SNP
  • Losing their Highlands & Islands Seat to the Labour party
  • Losing their Mid Scotland & Fife Seat to the Labour party
  • Losing their North East Scotland Seat to the Tories
  • Losing their West of Scotland seat to the SNP

For the leadership team of Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, there is a happy coincidence between their position on independence and their own self-interest as politicians seeking election. The Green cake was baked with pro-independence ingredients – and the party cannot protest when people wish to point out that they are eating it. The question it leaves hanging is who in Scotland is best able to represent environmentalists who do not view Scotland’s constitutional question as among the most pressing issues around climate change.

Full data tables for our ‘Morning After Poll’ are available at: https://www.stackdatastrategy.com/data

Our Scottish Future’s “Morning After Poll” Reveals “Middle” Scotland

Our Scottish Future is today releasing the full findings of our exclusive “morning after poll” taken as Scotland voted in the election ten days ago.

The poll asked 1,000 Scots to set out why they voted as they did, what views they held on independence and another referendum, and what they want from the Scottish and UK Governments over the coming 5 years.

Key findings include:

  • A half of “Middle Scotland”, the voters who are open-minded about independence and the Union, backed the SNP – but they did so because they felt the party provided the best vision and leadership, not to get a referendum
  • In total, only 54% of SNP voters agreed we should start preparing for a referendum immediately, and one in five were either against independence or unsure.
  • Tactical voting for the Greens on the list by pro-independence supporters may have deprived the SNP of an overall majority. Had SNP constituency voters instead stuck with the SNP on the list, Nicola Sturgeon could have gained three more list seats.
  • Scotland is divided 50-50 on whether to have a referendum in this parliament, and support among many is conditional on whether the economy has recovered, and whether the options on both sides are clear.
  • Voters do not want the SNP to be “referee and captain” of the process, and they want the SNP to provide more facts about independence.
  • A majority of Scots think the best way for the pro-Union side to make its case is through cooperation, not confrontation with the Scottish Government.

The poll was carried out by Stack Data Strategy. 1,000 Scots were polled between the 7th and 8th of May 2021. Responses were weighted to census figures on age, gender, education level, and recorded 2021 vote in the Scottish Parliamentary elections’

Analysis of the poll is available here.

Writing in its introduction, authors Henry Stannard and Evie Robertson conclude:  

“There a third ‘Middle’ Scotland that neither conforms to a binary Pro-Union or Pro-Independence view of the world, but that is greater in size than either of the extremes in the constitutional debate. Citizens in this Middle Scotland are both primarily Scottish and meaningfully British.  They vote in their droves for the SNP not because they want a referendum, but because the SNP appear to offer good leadership and government within a devolved state.  They do not oppose a referendum in principle, but have deep concerns over its practicality that must be resolved.”

“We hope that politicians from both sides can start listening to them.”

Next week, Our Scottish Future will publish the results of a major consultation exercise carried out this winter and spring with Yes and No voters.

Entitled “Scotland in a Zoom”, it brought together Scots with different views on the constitution and sought to find out what they had in common and how they might agree on the next steps for Scotland and the constitution.

Our Scottish Future is a new campaign set up to advance the patriotic, progressive and positive case for Scotland as part of our wider family of UK nations. The campaign intends to speak up for “middle Scotland” – people who voted Yes, No, Leave and Remain – and who are now looking for something better than a binary choice between hardline nationalism and no-change Unionism.

Full data tables are available at: https://www.stackdatastrategy.com/data

Scotland Does Not Have The Facts on Independence, Poll Reveals

SNP Must “Open the Books”, Says Brown

A clear majority of Scots do not believe the SNP has given them enough facts about independence in order to make a fully informed choice on whether to leave the Union, a new poll by Our Scottish Future reveals today.  

Nearly 60% said they did not have enough information at their disposal on independence, the poll shows. 

And when asked about the key issues that will be affected by Scotland’s departure from the United Kingdom such as the English border, Scotland’s security arrangements, tax, currency, EU membership, and UK negotiations, fewer than a third of Scots say they feel confident about knowing what would likely happen.  

Today, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown declares that the SNP must “open the books” and warns that the SNP Government cannot be both judge and jury when setting out the case for an independent nation.  

Instead, he argues that the SNP should be prepared to open its case up to public scrutiny through parliamentary hearings.  

Today’s poll – taken over the same weekend that people voted on May 6th – also assessed people’s priorities in the wake of the election.  

Delivering a second referendum on independence was ranked 5th for SNP voters – below NHS catch up, reducing COVID, protecting and generating jobs and eliminating poverty.  

Among “middle Scotland” – the 40% of voters identified by Our Scottish Future who are open minded on the question of independence and the Union – preparing for a second referendum was bottom on the list of priorities.  

On the facts of independence, the poll asked people: “Do you believe that campaigners for independence have given enough information about what Scotland would be like if it became independent (eg: on currency, taxation, legal rights, EU membership, the border) for you to make a fully informed choice at a future referendum?  

A total of 58% said No. Only 30% said Yes. The remaining 12% said they did not know. Among those strongly in favour of independence, 66% said they had enough facts, but 24% said they did not. But of “middle Scotland” voters, 60% said they did not feel they had enough information.  

Mr Brown says today that the SNP should commit to public hearings in both the Westminster and Holyrood parliaments, so that MSPs and MPs are able to call experts on currency, finance, borders, and the EU, to get the facts on the table.  

“Middle Scotland’s support for the SNP and for independence is conditional – and they are now asking the SNP for honesty, for openness and for getting the facts on the table. It is time for the SNP to open the books.”  

“When even a quarter of committed independence supporters agree we don’t know enough to make an informed choice on independence, surely the onus is on the SNP to come clean?”  

“I believe that it is time for the SNP to agree to hold public hearings on what independence means for everything from the pound to the pension.”  

“Whether they are Yes, No, or undecided, people deserve to know the truth – from maintaining the Union, to reforming and renewing it, to leaving it altogether.”  

The poll also asked voters to set out their top three priorities going forward. “NHS catch up” was the most popular, followed by “reduce COVID/vaccines”, “protect and generate jobs”, “education catch up” and “reopen economy”. 

“Prepare for a second independence referendum” was 8th on the list. Among middle Scotland, it was bottom, and even among SNP voters, it came in fifth.  

1,000 Scots were polled by Stack Data Strategy between the 7th and 8th of May 2021. Responses were weighted to census figures on age, gender, education level, and recorded 2021 vote in the Scottish Parliamentary elections .

See three graphics showing: 
 
The full data tables are available here.

Scots Back Cooperation Not Conflict

An in-depth poll conducted by Our Scottish Future over the election weekend has revealed that Scots back more cooperation between the UK and Scottish Governments – and do not want them to prioritize preparations for another referendum. 

The poll – conducted as 48% of Scots voted SNP – found that a far higher number – 73 % – wanted better cooperation between Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

Given 11 key priorities for action, such as the vaccination programme, NHS spending, and an education plan for young people, Scots ranked “preparing for a second referendum” in 8th place. 

The most popular choice was “ensuring that NHS Scotland catches up with appointments and procedures that they were unable to do during COVID.” 

The poll also showed that two-thirds of Scots agree that the best way to make the case for the Union is “to encourage better cooperation with Scottish institutions and be more inclusive of Scottish views.” 

Trying to show how the UK Government was better than the Scottish Government was backed by fewer than a half, by contrast. 

The findings come as former Prime Minister Gordon Brown today announces he is to lead a fresh campaign over the coming months to promote a “patriotic, progressive and principled case for Scotland’s future within the United Kingdom.” 

New ‘Cooperation Commissions’ on health, the economy, child poverty, and the environment will be set up to examine how best the Union can provide ‘added value’ to the key challenges the country faces over the coming years. 

Mr Brown also set out a fresh call for the UK Government to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the Union to examine the reforms needed to the UK to provide a better alternative to both the status quo and independence. 

Mr Brown says today that Our Scottish Future will become a new campaign with the aim of putting “the patriotic, progressive and principled case for Scotland’s future within the UK.” 

Writing in today’s Scotsman he says: “Today our think tank Scottish Future will transform itself into a campaigning movement and invite people to join us in putting the positive, progressive, and patriotic case for Scotland in Britain. Instead of focusing on powers the Parliament does not have we will focus on how we use the powers the Parliament does have to tackle poverty, unemployment, health inequalities, and climate change. Our Commissions on the economy, healthcare, climate change, and poverty will look at how cooperation can work to Scotland’s benefit by using all the resources of the UK.  And we will argue for a reformed UK with a more inclusive centre, a forum that brings the leaders of the nations and regions together and for them to be local focal points of economic initiative.” 

He adds: “And if the Prime Minister really is to be “minister for the union” rather than ‘minister for Unionists’ then he needs to do more than call a meeting with the leaders of Wales and Scotland. He can do so by making two big policy changes. He should order a constitutional review – Sir Keir Starmer has already done – of the whole future of the United Kingdom, specifically asking it to investigate alternatives to nationalism and the status quo. And he should concentrate on furthering cooperation in those areas where all the resources of the UK can be mobilized in support of the NHS, the fight for jobs, and the war on poverty and on climate change. He must now realise he has to change if the United Kingdom is to stay in being.”

Polling questions as follows:  

To what extent do you agree with the following statements on the relationship between the UK and Scottish Governments? 

The Scottish and UK Governments cooperate well today: Disagree 54%. Agree 23% 

I want the UK and Scottish Governments to cooperate better in areas that affect my life: Disagree 7%. Agree 73% 

A more productive and collaborative relationship between the Scottish and UK Governments would be good for Scotland: Disagree 9%. Agree 68% 

There needs to be greater alignment of policy and messaging on key issues such as COVID between the two governments: Disagree 11%. Agree 66% 

The best way for the UK Government to make a case for the Union would be to encourage better cooperation with Scottish institutions and be more inclusive of Scottish views: Disagree 11%. Agree 64% 

The best way for the UK Government to make a case for the Union would be to demonstrate how it is better than the Scottish Government: Disagree 26%. Agree 46% 

The poll also reveals overwhelming support for more cooperation between the UK and Scottish Governments on the economic recovery, the NHS, climate change, the drugs crisis, education, poverty, transport, and crime. Full details can be found here.

Gordon Brown: “Time to Open The Books on Options For Scotland”

Scots want the facts. The status quo, a reformed UK, and independence should all be exposed to expert, parliamentary, and public scrutiny

Speak to Scots these days about the big constitutional questions facing our country, and there is one big thing all of us do agree on: we don’t have the facts. 

Whether people are No, Yes, or Undecided on independence and the Union, almost everybody says they need more information. They are burnt by the experience of the 2014 referendum and the Brexit vote. Wild promises on the side of a bus, false claims on lurid posters and fake news on the internet have made them more sceptical than ever.  

With our economics of our world now so different from pre-Covid certainties, that demand for facts and evidence is now more pressing than ever. It would be a travesty of democracy if the most important question – the very existence of the United Kingdom – is to be subject to such minimal scrutiny before any irreversible decision is made. 

Yet despite everything we have gone through over the last few years, and despite entire forests having been levelled to report on the complex politics of Scotland, scrutiny of the economic and social consequences of the constitutional options we have on offer is scant.

When it comes to the costs or benefits of independence, the detail is missing entirely. Instead, there is a huge information gap. In the exact same way that the Vote Leave campaign deliberately decided not to set out any detail on the reality of post-Brexit Britain, so there is now an eerie nationalist silence on what independence really means. Key questions lie unanswered: what is the plan for our currency if and when we dump the UK pound?  Given our deficit is now the largest in Europe, far higher than set out in the SNP’s now out- of- date Wilson report, how can they deliver on their promises on pension health and welfare ? What happens to our border with England and to our trade? The SNP says leaving the EU, which accounts for 15% of our exports, was a disaster: if that is the case, what is the loss of jobs if we leave the UK which accounts for nearly 60 per cent ?  

But it isn’t just the nationalists: we also need deep dive scrutiny of the status quo too and into what Boris Johnson’s’ so- called ‘muscular unionism’means for a post-Brexit, post-Covid Scotland. This should include the implications  of his Internal Market  Bill, his Shared Prosperity Fund  and his view that devolution is  a ‘disaster’.

We also need to examine the merits of change within the UK that is now the subject of investigation by a Labour Party Commission on the Constitution and which I am happy to see put to the test.

In the post Covid world we must expose all these options to the sunlight of scrutiny, and I suggest three key platforms for doing so. 

We need a trial of the evidence with independent think tanks, research organisations and academic institutions encouraged to assess the claims made by all parties and subject them to close examination.  

This is not just a demand to ‘open the books’: it is a call to subject all the arguments and claims about the future government of Scotland to an open process of investigation.

Secondly, and crucially, I believe we should also agree a trial by parliamentary scrutiny. We should ask our parliamentary democracy to step up to its task of ensuring proper transparency and accountability , and to hold to account those who govern us. All the options open to us -independence, the status quo and reform within the UK-  should be subject to parliamentary hearings, looking at all the evidence.  

The Scottish Parliament and the two Houses of Parliament in the UK- the House of Commons and the House of Lords- should each set up investigative committees made up of senior MSPs and MPs from all sides. These select committees should call and interrogate witnesses on the impact of all options on the currency, economics, the EU, pensions, welfare,  climate change and defence and security and then report on  their analysis of the facts.

Parliamentary hearings can pave the way for the third test: an open examination by the public – with new Citizens Assemblies convened and given the chance to test, stretch and dissect the evidence in front of them. Here we can learn lessons not only from the recent experience of a Citizens Assemblies in Scotland but from Ireland where a Citizens Assembly helped the country negotiate potentially its most divisive debates ever -on legalising abortion- without the bitterness many predicted.  A representative group of 100 – half initially pro-abortion, half against – came together and talked the issues through, exploring differences, asking questions of experts and interacting with each other on their fears and hopes. Remarkably, but encouragingly, people of devout faith and resolute feminists found common ground. I’d support a series of such assemblies right around the country, and if we can free ourselves from the rancor of past debates, a similar outcome might be possible in Scotland. 

Quite simply, Scots deserve the facts, not fiction scrawled on a bus, or slogans that twist the facts.

And in that spirit, I am happy for any ideas I have to be put to the test, and interrogated, challenged, and subjected to the grilling of politicians and the public. Let us now see if both no-change Conservatives and no-compromise Nationalists are as happy to see their own proposals scrutinised in the same detail and put to the sword.

So let us put forward our ideas. Let us put them to the test in our parliaments.  Let us expose them to the light of public scrutiny and see whether they blossom in the open air, or wilt under the sun.

This article originally appeared in The Times under the title “We Must Fill the Independence Information Gap”.

UK Wide Cooperation Ensures “Best Is Yet To Come” In North Sea

The future of the Scotland’s vital North Sea industry can be supported by the UK’s “collective strength and resource”, a new report by a leading energy expert concludes today.  

Written by Nick Butler, the founding chair of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, the report – entitled “Co-Op 26: how cooperation can spur Scotland’s green revolution” – argues that “the best is yet to come” for Scotland’s energy sector if it can seize huge new opportunities and transition from oil and gas to renewables.  

It argues that Scotland’s prospects are best achieved by remaining an active and influential player within the UK. “As part of the UK Scotland has a voice. Alone, that voice would carry no weight,” he says.

He concludes: “The necessary transformation in the energy market in UK and across the world will be rich in jobs. For Scotland there is the opportunity of playing a major role in creating the technical and industrial base which will support that transformation. If that opportunity can be grasped, however good the last half century has been, the best is yet to come.” 

A leading energy expert, who has advised both Norway’s state energy company and the UK Government, Mr Butler is a regular contributor to the Financial Times on energy issues, having spent nearly three decades working for BP.

The paper focusses on several of the key areas for potential growth in the new “green market” economy. 

In the report, Mr Butler says there is “no reason” why Scotland and the UK cannot become a global leader in decommissioning work, as rigs are dismantled over the coming years. He argues that with development to the UK grid, Scotland could export more renewable electricity to the wider UK market, and to Europe via a new North Sea grid.  The report also concludes that Scotland is “well placed” to take advantage of the development of hydrogen and carbon capture into the 2030s. 

The report concludes that all these measures are best achieved by being part of a wider pan-UK plan. On the potential impact of independence, he adds: “At a time when public policy is understandably focused on maximising employment an unhappy divorce is likely to encourage any Government in London to focus its own spending and investment on its own citizens. The trade in electricity for instance from Scotland to England and the rest of the UK could easily be substituted by other sources.” 

On the forthcoming COP 26 conference in Glasgow, he adds: “For Scotland, COP26 offer the chance not just to provide hotel rooms and hospitality but also long-term leadership. Such steps of course can only be taken if Scotland is part of the United Kingdom with full access to Britain’s collective strengths and resources. To those who say the UK Government’s policies are too vague and inadequate the answer to lead the process of developing them, providing answers and ideas.”

Professor Jim Gallagher, chairman of Our Scottish Future said: “Nick Butler is an acknowledged energy expert and, in this paper, he shows how Scotland can leverage its membership of the UK to accelerate the essential transition to green energy and create jobs when doing so.  A new kind of North Sea revolution.” 

 

 

Nick Butler is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and the founding Chairman of the Kings Policy Institute. He chairs Promus Associates, The Sure Chill Company and Ridgeway Information Ltd. From 2007 to 2009 he was Chairman of the Cambridge Centre for Energy Studies. He was a special adviser to the former British prime minister Gordon Brown from 2009 to 2010. He served as a non executive Director of Cambridge Econometrics from 2010 to 2018. He was appointed in 2018 to the expert panel of advisers for The Faraday Institution, which works on the development of batteries and energy storage. Having served as a Member of the Strategic Advisory Council of the Norwegian state company Equinor (formerly Statoil) he is currently editor of the Energy Agenda for the Norwegian based energy organisation ONS. 

Why Boris Johnson needs to learn from the EU’s mistakes to bring the UK back together

Eddie Barnes | @eddiebarnes23

Not a vote has yet been cast in the Scottish Parliament elections, scheduled for May 5th. So confident that a nationalist majority is already in the bag, however, the pro-independence campaign is already planning life after victory. An 11-point plan has been published on how to take forward a referendum. We are told that the as yet un-won majority the SNP expects to win will be evidence of Scotland’s desire to leave the United Kingdom. It shows – or will do, once it happens – that Scots want another referendum immediately. The SNP contend will be a democratic outrage if a British Prime Minister refuses to agree to one.

The polls suggest the SNP is not wrong to be confident; a pro-independence majority is what impartial observers currently expect too based on current polls. But is the pre-emptive reading of the outcome correct? In this uncertain world, the truth is that the picture in Scotland is less clear-cut than the SNP tries to claim. Of course many pro-independence Scots believe a 2nd referendum cannot come soon enough. They see the Union is a dead marriage. They therefore want a vote to confirm divorce immediately. Yet other, less certain independence voters are not so gung-ho. Some feel that the SNP should stick by its promise that the 2014 was once in a generation. Others, like former SNP MP Jim Sillars, do not think it’s a good idea to have a referendum any time soon, not when there’s a pandemic on. Many worry about the economic uncertainty and the social division that independence would bring with it, in addition to everything else. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the sense that many are open to waiting a little, to let the dust settled, and see if something else might turn up. As one lady said in November: “I think we need time to heal. I think we should wait to see if there is changes to Westminster. We gave our word (on once in a generation) and said we will wait. Although I’m a Yes voter, if there are changes in Westminster surely that’s good for us.”

So as we head towards the elections, the question turns to how the UK Government should speak to these wary, sceptical voters. The Prime Minister has already made it clear he does not intend to support a 2nd referendum. If the SNP does indeed win a majority in the elections with a pledge to hold a referendum it will, as sure as night follows day, make political hay with that. So what should Ministers do to reach out to those voters in Scotland who are hoping for some kind of middle way?

A good cautionary tale from the recent past here might be the process that eventually led to Britain’s departure from the EU. Our decision to leave the EU was never pre-ordained; it was the result of a series of mis-steps by Remain-supporting politicians, and the European Union, which both failed to respond to the growing desire for real and radical change. The most obvious example came in 2015 when David Cameron undertook to seek a better deal for Britain and then put that to the referendum. As we all know, that renegotiation with the EU fell short of what was required. It failed the “smell test” back at home, convincing Boris Johnson and others to campaign for Leave. Mr Cameron’s offer looked phoney. Millions of British voters agreed, and the Brexit result followed.

This cautionary tale should be heeded with regard to Scotland too. Over the last two decades, Scots voters have been offered several renegotiated deals within the UK, from the delivery of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 to the extra powers provided in two more Scotland Acts since. These have been sold as a way to “kill nationalism” for good. But just as Mr Cameron’s tweaks to the UK’s relationship with the EU failed to convince people to remain in the EU, so the deals in Scotland haven’t stopped the appeal of departure from the UK too.

There are plenty of good reasons for pushing more power out of Westminster to the more outlying part of the UK beyond the M25  and, in my view, it’s a process that should continue.  But the clear evidence of the last two decades is that stopping the appeal of Scottish independence is not one of them. Just as with the Britain’s relations with the EU, the reform that’s required is deeper. Scots (and many others across the UK) are looking for evidence of real and genuine change from the institution that lies at the heart of the problem: not the distant and unresponsive European Union in this case, but the distant and unresponsive Westminster machine, and a political culture which – despite devolution – still centralises power, seizes too much control for itself, and dodges accountability, making many people in Scotland (and elsewhere in the UK) feel powerless, disrespected and ignored.

Unionists may not want to admit it, but this deal currently fails the same “smell test” to many Scots (as well as many people across the UK too) as Mr Cameron’s EU deal did six years ago. Little wonder their response to it, to coin a phrase, is “No, No, No”. It follows that if all the UK Government does in response is to shout ever louder about the benefits of the United Kingdom and warn Scots about the costs of leaving the British single market, then they risk repeating the exact same errors made by the UK establishment who fought for Remain. And if all they do is diminish “Leave” voters in Scotland, then they should not be surprised when such people dig in their heels and stick up two fingers. There’s a great irony in all of this. In this battle, it’s Boris Johnson’s misfortune to be playing the role of the pro-Remain establishment. He is cast by the SNP as Jean-Claude Junker, or Jacque Delors. He, more than anyone else alive in British politics, should be aware of the perils of being cast in such a part when there are skilful political campaigners on the opposite side waiting to take merciless advantage.

None of this is say that the UK Government should not set out the risks of Scotland leaving the UK; of course, it should. It should also, of course, seek to demonstrate the very real benefits of the Union to Scotland – benefits which have been so vividly demonstrated in recent weeks by the government’s vaccination programme. Only that more is required than a reheat of Remain style tactics from 2016. To continue the EU analogy, Mr Johnson needs to learn from Mr Cameron five years ago. As former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set out in detail, we need to be prepared on behalf of the entire nation to reflect and look again at how we “do” Britain. We need to see a sign that the UK political establishment “gets it” – that it understands peoples’ sense of alienation from the UK and wants to remedy that. That’s unlikely to be through a formal federal system which, given the UK’s uniquely complex nature, won’t work, but by creating better inter-governmental structures, reforming outdated institutions, and switching Whitehall on to life outside SW1.

Many Scots, in my experience, would welcome a more nuanced conversation about Scotland and the United Kingdom than the Black and White, Yes v No framing of the debate as engineered by the SNP. They saw Manchester mayor Andy Burnham protesting about the centre of power last year and noticed he expressed many of their own frustrations. They accept therefore that this is a more complex picture than the SNP would like to suggest. The UK Government should “lean in” to the SNP’s diagnosis of the United Kingdom. It should commit to going out to listen to voters in Scotland – and elsewhere in the UK – about what they want. In this regard, as well as learning lessons from Mr Cameron’s failed attempts five years ago, Mr Johnson might want to borrow ideas from the SNP as well. Back in 2007, when it was still trying to turn the fringe notion of independence into a mainstream concept, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon began what they described as a “National Conversation” – an attempt to consult people across Scotland prior to the publication of a white paper on a proposed referendum. Perhaps it’s time to take a leaf out of their book, with a new UK wide National Conversation to be held this year. It would acknowledge how the last few years have caused upheaval and uncertainty for many communities and created division across the United Kingdom. It would seek to involve all political parties, including the SNP, in setting it up – indeed Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Brown are already pressing ahead. As with Citizens Assemblies in Ireland, it might try to gain an understanding of that division and to discover the kind of change they want in the years ahead. In order to acknowledge the depth of the problem, it should accept that nothing is off the table, including – in time – the possibility of another Scottish referendum.

Such a UK wide conversation would send a clear message that the UK Government is responding to what is a UK wide problem, felt most deeply perhaps in Scotland, but certainly not exclusively. It would ask how, and whether, Britain can go forward, together. Many of us across the UK are looking to see whether our country is prepared to change. We’re looking to see whether Britain is a still a country that can hold such a conversation.

As we begin 2021, Scotland is a nation questioning whether it needs to become a state. The answer may lie in whether the UK state can show it’s still a nation. That starts not with phoney change, but by accepting the need for real and lasting reform. When Eurosceptics began their campaign for a new relationship with the EU, they settled on a slogan: “Change or Go”. Their point was clear and principled: either we had proper reform of the EU, or it was time to accept that Britain had to leave. The change offered was piecemeal, so we decided to go. The same message applies now to Scotland and the UK. We need to change our own Union, or else Scotland may decide it’s time to go too. No matter what happens in the Holyrood elections this year, that’s the choice on offer.

This article appeared originally as part of Policy Exchange’s new series on the Future of the Union.

An offer of false promises isn’t good enough for Scotland’s future

Early on the morning of May 6, 2011, David Cameron lit the touchpaper that has led to nearly a decade of constitutional upheaval for Scotland. He signalled acceptance on the part of the coalition government that the majority won by the SNP in the Scottish parliamentary elections held the day before was effectively a mandate for a referendum on independence for Scotland.

He, like many others, believed that a decisive outcome to that referendum would settle the question for a generation. Little did he anticipate that his other ill-starred referendum venture would re-ignite the constitutional question and ten years later leave Scotland still staring into an uncertain future.

That uncertainty is not going to disappear any time soon. The SNP might so succumb to internecine conflict that the party loses its chance of a majority in this May’s elections. The UK government might come up with such a compelling offer to the people of Scotland as to reconcile a fair majority to a continued future within the United Kingdom. One outcome is perhaps more probable than the other, but neither can be relied upon.

This leaves all who crave some sort of stability in an unsatisfactory place, not least the world of business as it grapples with the fallout of the pandemic and seeks to get to grips with the additional burdens that come with the UK’s new trading relationship with the EU.

Many will be tempted to wish a plague on all political houses in the hope that uncertainty will go away. It won’t. The times are uncertain because too many of us, not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK and much further afield, are out of temper with the world as we find it. Politics is a mirror in which we see our own discontents.

Politicians will of course play hard to their own advantage, even if that means equivocating on the consequences of the position they advocate. We saw that in spades on Brexit and we have seen it constantly in the debate on independence. We are asked to buy not only the ideological belief but faith too that in its realisation will come all sorts of improbable benefits.

Is it too much to expect of politicians that they have the honesty to build on the value of their core proposition, be it leaving the EU or independence for Scotland, without larding it with false promises? Almost certainly it is, which leaves it to the rest of us to be sceptical of their promises and plan as best we can for an uncertain future.

Philip Rycroft was the lead civil servant in Whitehall responsible for constitutional and devolution issues between 2012 and 2019.