Scottish Labour: beyond the Referendum

After a relatively quiet year in political terms in 2013 – no national elections, not many by-elections - we have three major political challenges over the next 3 years.

The Independence Referendum in September 2014, a UK General Election in May 2015 and the next Scottish Parliament elections in May 2016.

The big challenge, of course, is to win a resounding vote against separation this year.

The 2015 and 2016 elections will be very different if the YES campaign is successful.  It’s tempting to ignore them for now for that reason.  I’ll argue here that  its exactly by being clear about what Labour will set out to achieve if elected in 2015 and 216 that we give ourselves the best chance of a resounding NO vote in September.

To listen to the pundits and read the polls, you'd think it was a done deal.  The case against independence seems compelling.  Confusion about the pound, doubts about EU membership, risks to jobs and pensions.  And that’s just the headlines.

But I don’t think it’s that simple.

In fact, I think we risk the political equivalent of sleep-walking into independence.

Because there are 10s of thousands of people who I don’t think will vote with their heads on 18th September but with their hearts.  Who have heard all the arguments - probably even agree with them - but may still pause in the polling booth, pencil over the two boxes, and just wonder.... what if?

Because there are an awful lot of people out there who are fed up with how government works - or doesn’t work - for them.  People who are fed up with politics and politicians of all parties.  People who don’t even vote.  People who may be persuaded, just once, to vote for a change, regardless of the risks. 

That’s who the SNP will mobilise and spend their election money-chest to target this year.

People who will vote with their hearts. 

People who want a better, different, Scotland than is on offer from the main parties right now.

We need to win those hearts.

We need to win those hearts not just for one vote, but to vote Labour again in 2015 and 2016.

So what is the Independence Referendum really about?

The SNP seem to be making it about what form of government can best deliver what the people of Scotland need.   Their argument, simply put, is that an independent Scotland can run its own affairs in the best interests of Scots than a Westminster government with a different agenda.

And while we endure the baleful effects on living standards of a Tory/LibDem Coalition driving through its, free market, small government, anti public sector, benefits cutting agenda that’s a powerful argument.

We hear much talk from the YES Campaign about democracy, about delivering a government for Scotland that better reflects the will of the people of Scotland than now.

But it’s not a joined up UK that is holding Scotland back. 

It’s the SNP who want to put it all at risk by a leap of faith into the unknown.

Everything will be fine in an independent Scotland because the SNP will make it so.

Europe will fast-track our EU membership because it’s the will of the Scottish people.

The rest of the UK will agree to a sterling zone because it’s in THEIR interests, whilst Scotland competes for jobs and investments with an Irish-style low tax policy for big corporates.

The SNP know this.  But in pursuit of their own ideology they are ready to plunge Scotland into years of economic uncertainty. 

In pursuit of their own interest they will not take some of the actions they could take now to mitigate some of the worst effects of the Tory/LibDem coalition.

They talk about project fear and project hope. 

But it’s what they are proposing that risks plunging Scotland into a generation of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

But I don’t think it’s good enough just to challenge the SNP to be more honest.

We need to challenge the SNP, get them off their moral high-horse about democracy and start to explain why they are ready to take such huge risks with all our economic futures.  

As Labour politicians and activists we need to start getting angry with the SNP about the risks they are taking with the economic and social lives of most Scots.

The Better Together campaign of course has to spell out all that is wrong with the Yes campaign’s arguments.  But as a working arrangement of Labour, Tory, LibDem and Independent politicians and activists, it’s limited in its ability to really spell out positive alternatives.

I’ve shared Better Together platforms with Danny Alexander, but my view of a post-referendum Scotland and UK is very different from his and those of his “quad” colleagues.  

Contemplating another Tory/LibDem Coalition after 2015, it’s tempting to flirt with the idea of an independent Scotland.  How different would a Scottish Labour Party be then?  Or would we need a new party?  Independent Labour Party anyone?

But this baleful coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is only there because the Labour party ran out of ideas and popular support. Post Iraq, post the credit crunch, post the banking collapse.

We need a Vision for a post-referendum Labour Scotland

The Labour Party needs to talk a lot more about how things would be different after a NO vote in 2014.

What will our priorities be? What new policies will we promote, what will we actually do if elected into power in 2015 and 2016?

I’ve argued before about the need for a positive Labour vision for a post referendum Scotland.

What does that actually mean?

It should start with a clear statement of what we believe in as a Labour Party.

A fair, equal and socially just society.

A society where there are always decent jobs which pay a living wage for those that need or want to work.   A society which abhors the waste of young people not able to find work or proper training and wants a government determined to tackle it.

A socially just society where the right to a decent standard of living is recognised for all and provided for based on need rather than earning power.

A society which places a high value on its public services, freely available to all when they are needed and is prepared to fund excellence and not just a safety net.

A sustainable society, committed not just to sustainable energy but to maintaining and protecting diverse communities across the country, urban and rural.

A society which values the role of government in delivering economic and social benefits for us all, because the free market, left to itself will not do so.

Scottish Labour need to be talking much more about what kind of society and government it wants to deliver post the referendum and the elections of 2015 and 2016.

We need some big ideas and some new policies that give people a clear view of what a post-Referendum, Labour-governed Scotland could be like.  Big, ambitious ideas.

Here are some ideas from my list:

·        a commitment to a living wage for all public and private sector employees, backed up by changes to public sector procurement practices to ensure that any business bidding for a public sector contract will pay it

·        establishing a network of regional banks – maybe by breaking up RBS whilst we still own it – that can provide lending and services based on the needs of the local economy not global competition.  This works well in Germany.

·        requiring major private sector companies whose decisions impact the lives of thousands to appoint trade union representatives as non-execs on their Boards.  

·        bringing ScotRail under public control in the same way as East Coast, which is running well and generating income for the government (and opposing the sell-off of East Coast as well), then using that power to develop joined up public transport services – especially in rural areas – that reduce the dependency on cars    

·        extending Labour’s proposed control of gas and electricity prices to all fuels – including petrol and diesel at garages – using a public pricing indicator where private firms have to justify rises above this or why they are not reducing prices when it falls

·        not replacing Trident.  A policy which saves us a huge amount of money and gives us the moral high- ground to argue for a non-nuclear weapon world.

Some of these are policies the Scottish Parliament can already pursue if it wanted to.

Others will need co-operation, and argument, with a Labour Government at Westminster.

Creating jobs, building economic security, promoting equal opportunity and funding decent public services are what anyone in this country should expect from a left of centre government, whether run from Westminster or Holyrood.

There is a line in the Internationale which sums this up.

"Freedom is just privilege extended if not enjoyed by one and all". 

Scotland can be one of the best small countries in the world to live and work in. 

A free and equal country, where everyone enjoys the benefits of those values.

We already have a Scottish Parliament with the power to do so much.

We need to win a resounding NO vote in 2014.

And then we need to use that power.

Read more...

LibDems leaders follow the Tory line again on Syria.

I wrote to all the Highland Media this week, calling Danny Alexander to account for his support for the Government motion which would have taken us down to road to a full scale war in Syria.  Events since have shown how wise the House of Commons was to reject the motion, with the real prospect now of a negotiated outcome.  Here is the text of my letter.

Dear Sirs

Danny Alexander’s decision to actively support the government motion on Syria as described in the media this week (Inverness Courier, 3^rd September 2013), shows the full extent of his political transformation since first being elected by the voters of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.

At the 2005 General Election, Mr Alexander owed much of his success in being elected to replace David Stewart, to a campaign based on the Liberal Democrat Party’s opposition to the war in Iraq.

Now Danny Alexander is “disappointed” that he - along with Clegg, Cameron and Osborne - could not persuade the House of Commons to start down the same road again in Syria. 

Readers of your paper will recall the vote in Parliament in March 2003 - opposed by every single Lib Dem MP - which gave approval to go to war in Iraq.  Many of the arguments made then by Tony Blair as are being made again now by David Cameron and echoed by Danny Alexander.  The UK entered into a disastrous and bloody war from which we have only recently emerged.  To this day, there is no clear benefit to the people of the country we were supposed to be trying to help with hundreds of thousands of people killed and injured in the resulting civil war.

In 2010, when I stood against him as the Labour candidate, I was constantly attacked as representing the party which had taken the UK into an illegal war in the middle-east.  This despite my well known public opposition to the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, alongside my then MP, Gavin Strang.

The Government motion defeated at Westminster last week risked embroiling the UK in a complex middle-east conflict in support of an American-led action with no clear aims or out-comes and with dubious legal justification without clear United Nations backing.

How Danny Alexander can justify his support for the Government now, when he opposed just such a decision ten year ago and at both elections since is beyond me.   

Labour’s amendment recognised the atrocity of the use of chemical weapons but would have put in place a process which ensured backing for any action under international law.  The Government chose not to support this and press on with its case for immediate action.  Labour was right to vote against the Coalition motion when the amendment was rejected and I am proud of my party and its principled leader for doing so.

Read more...

LIbDem Sell-off of Royal Mail will damage Highland Communities

Come the 2015 elections, the Highlands will remember it was a LibDem minister who sold off the Royal Mail. 

The Highlands already suffer from poor quality broadband compared to many other parts of the country.  Despite the Coalition’s promises, the programme to deliver high speed broadband to rural communities – a programme reliant on a privatised BT – is well behind schedule.

Now the LibDems will put at threat a basic service that’s served us well for generations.

We are assured that a privatised Royal Mail will be obliged to honour the universal delivery obligation to deliver mail to any household in the UK.  There are no such guarantees about the timeliness and cost of such deliveries.  We have already seen how the privatised energy and train companies can raise tariffs and fares pretty much as they like, maximising profits instead of service standards.  

How long will it be before a privatised Royal Mail cuts the frequency or range of delivery in rural areas?  Pick up your mail from the “local” service point anyone?  And only on Tuesdays and Fridays, of course……..

Despite all the fine words about “freeing up management to seek sources of private capital to invest” this is a policy driven by right wing, free market, political ideology.  To make the sale attractive to its friends in the City, the Coalition has taken on the Royal Mail’s £200m pension debt, clearing the decks for big business to squeeze more cash out of an already profitable operation.  

Nationalise the debt, privatise the profit.

The Highland LibDem MPs had no mandate to support a wholesale privatisation of Royal Mail in their 2010 manifesto.  But it’s a LibDem minister, Vince Cable, who is driving through this legislation, with the enthusiastic support of Inverness MP Danny Alexander at the Treasury.

We can of course look forward to seeing CWU and other trade union members who stand up against this sell-off to protect their jobs and our mail services being lambasted by the media as “left wing luddites”.   They deserve pubic support and I, for one, will be proud to stand alongside them.

Read more...

Better Together Inverness Launch

I was proud to represent Labour at today's very well attended launch of the Better Together campaign in Inverness, speaking alongside Mary Scanlon MSP and Danny Alexander MP.  Here is the text of my speech.

Good afternoon.


Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of Better Together

You will probably be expecting a well-rehearsed list of scare stories about independence.

Fears about access to NHS specialists, giving up the Pound, Bank of England control, can we afford our pensions?

What happens when the oil runs out?

As even John Swinney is now asking in private.

Well I'm not going to do any of that.

I want to talk about my vision for Scotland and why I think we really will be Better Together.

I’d like to start by taking Nicola Sturgeon’s advice.

In her speech in December last year, the Deputy First Minister said this:

“I ask you, as you make up your minds over these next two years, to base your decision not on how Scottish or British you feel, but on what kind of country you want Scotland to be and how best you think that can be achieved.”

Well I believe the kind of country I want Scotland to be is best delivered by progressive politics based on fairness, equal opportunity and social justice.

A Scotland with its own distinct political and economic identity but part of a socially progressive United Kingdom which shares those values.

Because we should not confuse the arguments of nationalism with those for advancing social justice.

The great advances that were struggled for and secured by working people across the UK – the Welfare State, Trades Union Rights, Equal Pay, a National Minimum Wage - were secured by the votes of working people in Cardiff, Liverpool and Newcastle, just as surely as people in Dundee, Inverness or Glasgow.

Better together means social justice is not just an ideal for Scotland but is a statement of solidarity with communities & working people across the UK.

Because socialism doesn’t stop at a border.

We need to work together to create the UK society we want or we will be the poorer for it.

Lets take the example of benefits.

The SNP prefer to blame anyone …. everyone…. rather than use the powers they already have in case it undermines the case for independence

Let’s take the Bedroom Tax as an example.

This isn't the time to talk about its fairness or otherwise

… there will be plenty of time for that between now and 2015

But the SNP have publicly stated their opposition.

They have postured with commitments to no evictions, even though they must know how difficult that is for councils and housing associations to deliver.

The wring their hands, denying their ability to do anything about it until we have independence.

Whilst they have the power NOW to help councils deal with the worst effects if they chose to do so.

But it doesnt suit their case.

So Scots can suffer until we vote the right way.

Some things work better together.

Working people need a pension system that is secure and sustainable. That will ensure a basic standard of living when you retire that won’t depend on the vagaries of the markets.

The UK system won’t make anyone rich, but it will deliver and will stand the test of time.

It works because of the scale of a UK-wide fund paid into by millions of UK workers and backed up by a government which is not dependant on highly variable oil revenues to keep pensions at a decent level.

I think that’s worth keeping.

I run a small business. My company sells its services in Scotland, and all over rhe UK.

Times are tough at home and turbulent internationally.

Businesses want certainty and stability – that’s what the current constitutional settlement allows.

The rest of the UK is Scotland’s largest export market.

We don't need the uncertainty, instability, and barriers to businesses that separation risks creating.

In these tough and turbulent times, the size, stability and opportunity of the UK economy is a huge advantage for Scotland's businesses.

We should be using that strength to invest in jobs, houses and infrastructure to grow ourselves back into economic health.

I am a proud Scot. I am ambitious for Scotland's people and Scotland's possibilities.

My case is not that Scotland could not survive as a separate country – it is that there's a better choice for our future.

A strong Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom gives us the best of both worlds: real decision making power here in Scotland, as well as a key role in a strong and secure UK.

Scotland can prosper as a social, economic and politically devolved country…..

.. making its own choices about what works for us…

…… but able to flex its economic power as part of a joined up UK which shares the same core values.

That’s why we are Better Together.

Thank you.

Read more...

Resolution to #Scotlab13

The Contemporary Resolution submitted by Skye Lochaber and Badenoch CLP has been accepted  by the Conference Arrangements Commitee and will be debated as part of a composite at Conference in Eden Court this afternoon.   John Erskine has been asked to move it.  

This conference believes that the Bedroom Tax is morally wrong, socially unfair and makes no economic sense.


100,000 tenants in Scotland will be hit by the bedroom tax, 40,000 face rent arrears and thousands could be made homeless. It asks the disabled, single parents, carers, the terminally ill and parents with more than one foster child to pay the price for the mistakes of the banking system, whilst millionaires work out how to spend their tax cut.

Figures released in March revealed that 27% of children in Inverness Central are living in poverty. This figure is already a disgrace and the introduction of the welfare reform bill and its Bedroom tax will only see this figure increase. Across the Highlands an estimated £1.5m will be cut from local incomes. Labour supports sensible welfare reform but the bedroom tax is economic madness. In the Highland Council area, there are just 340 single bedroom homes in social ownership, whilst some 3,400 households will be expected to find smaller houses or pay more in rent. All the Bedroom Tax will achieve is making some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society even poorer. The inevitable rent arrears will lead to more pressure on local authority budgets, not less.

In response to this savage and unfair cut to the incomes of so many working people, this conference resolves that the Scottish Labour Party should:

• call on the Scottish government to use its devolved powers to fund the shortfall in housing benefit and rental incomes that will arise from this misplaced policy

• work with Councils and Housing Associations across Scotland to ensure that Scottish tenants are not forced into debt and arrears by this unfair policy

• work with the UK Party to ensure that our manifesto for 2015 proposes a fair benefit system that protects the vulnerable in our society and includes a commitment to repeal the Bedroom Tax legislation

• commit that the 2016 Scottish Labour manifesto will reiterate the Party’s commitment to social justice and will use all devolved powers to create a fairer society that puts the needs of our most vulnerable people to the fore.

Conference notes that the Liberal Democrats are complicit in supporting this awful policy. The SNP wring their hands but will not use their existing powers at Holyrood to make a difference for Scottish people. Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, holds the purse strings and is one of the chief architects. The voters of Inverness and the Highlands won’t forget who helped implement these cuts. Without the Liberal Democrats, none of these welfare reforms could happen.

The Scottish Labour Party needs to make clear whose side it is on.

Read more...

Margaret Thatcher: 7 Things I'll Remember her For.

Anybody's passing, no matter who they are is a time for reflection and thoughts for family and friends.  I wont be doing any celebrating or dancing on any graves.  But since today seems to be the day that the great and good of the political world had their say about their memories of Margaret Thatcher, I felt obliged to get mine off my chest.  This is what I think is her legacy:

1. Economic policies that put neo-con theory before employment, devastating our manufacturing base and creating unemployment that tore the heart out of whole communities.

2. A right to buy but not to build that destroyed social housing capacity and led directly to the high private sector rents that have driven up the housing benefit budget.

3. Using government power, the police, hunger and evictions to break the miners’ strike, driven by an anti union ideology rather than the long term economic interests of our country. Our expensive coal comes from Poland now.

4. Financial services de-regulation that created the structures and culture in banking that led directly to the 2008 crash, bailing out the banks and the need to slash public spending to pay for it.

5. Demonising trade unions, creating an “enemy within” culture that’s meant UK businesses and trade unions struggle to work together productively as they do so successfully in Germany and many other social democracies.

6. Wasting North Sea Oil revenues on benefits for the mass unemployment her economic policies created and in the process planting the roots of the "benefit culture" her own party now attacks.

7. Changing our country's culture for the worse: greed is good whilst community doesn't matter.

We WERE watching you! 

Read more...

Indy Debate with Unison

Full text of my speech to the AGM of Unison Highland Branch this morning, on behalf of Better Together.  With acknowedgements to Douglas Alexander MP for the inspiration!

Good morning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of Better Together

You will probably be expecting a well-rehearsed list of scare stories about independence.

Fears about access to NHS specialists, joining the Euro, Bank of England control, can we afford our pensions?

What happens when the oil runs out?

As even John Swinney is now asking.

Well I'm not going to do any of that.

I'm going to talk about my vision for Scotland and why I think we really will be Better Together.

I'm going to make the case for why staying in the UK will better deal with the big issues that are important to the Labour and Trade Union movement.

I’d like to start by taking Nicola Sturgeon’s advice.

In her speech in December last year, the Deputy First Minister said this:

 “I ask you, as you make up your minds over these next two years, to base your decision not on how Scottish or British you feel, but on what kind of country you want Scotland to be and how best you think that can be achieved.”

Well I believe the kind of country I want Scotland to be is best delivered by progressive politics based on fairness, equal opportunity and social justice.

A Scotland with its own distinct political and economic identity but which is part of a socially progressive United Kingdom which shares those values.

Because we should not confuse the arguments of nationalism with those for advancing social justice.

We live in an unfair society right now as the Tory & LibDem Coalition shrinks the economy, cutting jobs, benefits and services for the poorest whilst protecting their rich friends.

But the great advances that were struggled for and secured by working people across the UK – the Welfare State, Trades Union Rights, Equal Pay, a National Minimum Wage - were secured by the votes of working people in Cardiff, Liverpool and Newcastle, just as surely as people in Dundee, Inverness or Glasgow.

It was the votes of Yorkshire miners and Lancashire mill workers which helped deliver a National Health Service, not Edinburgh consultants, Fife Farmers or Glasgow captains of industry.

Socialism doesn’t stop at a border.

We need to fight together to create the UK society we want.

Better together means social justice is not just an ideal for Scotland but is a statement of solidarity and connectedness with our comrades and fellow workers across the UK.

We must maintain a distinctively Scottish view on public services regardless of who is in power at Westminster.

The NHS has been much safer in the SNP’s hands than the Coalitions.

We need to get away from the neo con view that the private sector is always best, that local government is just an expensive bureaucracy.

That decent public services are a burden on the state rather than a measure of the health of our society.

At the risk of arguing the case for small independent nations, Norway, Denmark and other European countries manage to run social democratic economies with high quality public service, low unemployment and decent workers’ rights. 

Paid for by higher taxes.

So can we, but we need to argue that case.

And we need to win that argument TOGETHER or the banks, the tax avoiders and the big corporates will pick us off just as they have done with the other “arc of prosperity” countries.

And we don’t need to look far to see how badly wrong things can go in a small independent country.

From the early 1990s, the combination of the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and Trade Union engagement in the Social Partnership Agreement worked to drive up real wages in Ireland, especially in the public sector.

By 1999 the country attracted up to one quarter of all US direct investment for the EU with a total of over 1,000 multinationals employing over 100,000 people in electronics, software and pharmaceuticals.

Much of that investment, however, came at a cost of sweet-heart non-union deals to attract the big corporates. 

The IFSC was in effect a “free port” for big capital.

When the crunch came, ordinary working people paid the price.  Unions were undermined and isolated.

Would an independent Scotland have to go down the same route of low taxes and low regulation to attract big business? 

Is that what the business backers behind the SNP are really looking forward to?

Competing with our comrades in the rest of the UK for investment, in a race to the bottom driven by the big corporates?

That’s not the Scotland I want to live in.

I want to live in a Scotland where….

We can share the costs of developing Green energy across the rich UK tax-base not just those in Scotland.

We can ensure a level playing field for jobs and the minimum wage which does not allow workers in one part of the country to be exploited by another.

We can devote much bigger resources to engineering and medical research in centres of excellence right across the country instead of having to fund it ourselves.

It won’t just happen; we will all need to work hard to elect governments in Westminster and Holyrood which share those ideals.

Tory government is not inevitable. 

But a free market UK economy will drag down an independent Scotland.

A rightward drifting Tory party in England needs to be defeated by a Labour government not given its head by Scotland walking away.

We must fight for decent public services and the kind of NHS we all believe in right across the UK and not abandon working people in other parts of the UK to the worst of Tory free market dogma. 

Scotland can prosper as a social, economic and politically devolved country…..

.. making its own choices about what works for us…

…… but able to flex its economic power as part of a joined up UK which shares the same core values. 

That’s why we are Better Together.

Thank you.

Read more...