The coalition against intervention in Syria appears to have all the arguments on its side. It is, by any measure, a terrible idea, and on current standings the Prime Minister would struggle to secure necessary support in the Commons. But Mr Cameron says he wants to save Britain from international relegation. In which case, membership of the league of front rank nations comes with a price that is sometimes quite awful. Going in could have consequences that, after Iraq and Afghanistan, we are all too familiar with. But we should acknowledge, as he evidently does, that sitting this one out carries a price as well. The global race is not just about economics. It is about the willingness of the few countries with the capacity to intervene to stand up and be counted when the need arises. Mr Cameron knows that the burden is always ours.

Is that it? Intervention is a terrible idea but we need to do it because otherwise other people will think Britain’s penis has shrivelled. Good god.

But when it comes to problems such as Syria Britain may have a voice but it does not, not really, have a foreign policy. We gave that up long ago. Indeed, Brogan’s argument is quite clear on this front:

As his predecessors have done, [Cameron] has understood quickly the price of our reliance on the US. The advantages that derive from that unique strategic relationship are not just special, they are vital. From intelligence sharing to cooperation on our nuclear deterrent, all the under-appreciated contributions that keep us in what Mr Cameron calls the global race stem from our ability to be able to call on American support that exceeds what we can offer them in material terms. A historic commonality of interests is expressed in a basic trade-off: in exchange for our moral and political support on the international stage, we secure privileged access to the vast resources of the world’s hyperpower.

It is a deal that all prime ministers have understood. It informs, no doubt, the Tory belief in a like-for-like replacement for Trident. Even when he refused to follow the US into Vietnam, Harold Wilson strained every sinew to offer the Johnson administration vocal political support. Margaret Thatcher set aside the embarrassment of the Grenada invasion in favour of the importance of the long-term partnership. Mr Blair stayed alongside Mr Bush on Iraq because he understood that whatever the cost, Britain had to be seen at all times to stand shoulder to shoulder with its principal ally. Gordon Brown understood the centrality of the relationship, to a point that was embarrassingly needy.

In other words, we cannot afford to upset the Americans, “whatever the cost”. If they want to do something then we need to do that something too, even if we might think it unwise, if we doubt our capacity to actually do that something or if we consider it contrary to our own national interest. The only thing that counts  - the consideration that trumps all others – is remaining close to the Americans.

As it happens, we do gain a good deal from the Atlantic alliance but there remains something unseemly, something almost pathetic, about this kind of clinging neediness. And if we sacrifice our own independent judgement then how can we reasonably still claim to be in the Top League of Leading Nations?

It is a curious way of thinking. But, as Brogan has the honesty to admit, it is a view that governs other features of British policy too. The strongest argument for a like-for-like replacement for Trident rests upon the feeling that if Britain gives up, or reduces the potency of, its nuclear deterrent it signals to the rest of the world that we are no longer a Top Nation. The bomb is not a real weapon that might ever actually be used; it is instead a mid-life crisis status symbol that’s designed to impress the beholder but that, like a new sports car or a younger, trophy wife, signals something close to the opposite of what is intended.

If we’re going to become more heavily involved in Syria then fine, but let’s at least do so for the right reasons not because of some imagined historical responsibility or because Syria is a six-point fixture the losing of which will result in Britain being relegated from the top league. There may be worse arguments for doing something than this but it is hard, this morning, to think of any.

The post The Worst Argument Yet for Intervening in Syria: If We Don’t, Other Countries Will Snigger At Britain appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan is appalled by the Obama administration’s decision to offer a modest quantity of modest weaponry to the Syrian opposition. This isn’t just unwise; it’s close to insane, he suggests. Don’t be fooled into thinking this will shorten the conflict or save lives, he argues.

But what if it’s not supposed to shorten the conflict or save lives? What if American policy has the opposite aim in mind? I  can’t help but think Dan Drezner’s analysis seems plausible:

[T]his is simply the next iteration of the unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that’s been going on for the past two years.  To recap, the goal of that policy is to ensnare Iran and Hezbollah into a protracted, resource-draining civil war, with as minimal costs as possible.  This is exactly what the last two years have accomplished…. at an appalling toll in lives lost.

This policy doesn’t require any course correction… so long as rebels are holding their own or winning. A faltering Assad simply forces Iran et al into doubling down and committing even more resources.  A faltering rebel movement, on the other hand, does require some external support, lest the Iranians actually win the conflict.  In a related matter, arming the rebels also prevents relations with U.S. allies in the region from fraying any further.

So is this the first step towards another U.S.-led war in the region?  No. [...] Everything this administration has said and done for the past two years, screams deep reluctance over intervention.  Arming the rebels is not the same thing as a no-fly zone or any kind of ground intervention.  This is simply the United States engaging in its own form of asymmetric warfare.  For the low, low price of aiding and arming the rebels, the U.S. preoccupies all of its adversaries in the Middle East.

The moment that U.S. armed forces would be required to sustain the balance, the costs of this policy go up dramatically, far outweighing the benefits.  So I suspect the Obama administration will continue to pursue all measures short of committing U.S. forces in any way in order to sustain the rebels.

I think that’s right. The Obama administration is not, despite the recent promotions handed to Susan Rice and Samantha Power, in the business of rehabilitating liberal interventionism. On the contrary, this is a remarkably cold-blooded administration.

Washington doesn’t much care about Syrian lives (and it bets, with good reason, that public opinion in other western countries doesn’t really care about them either). Humanitarian appeals for intervention leave the Obama administration unmoved. The whole Syrian agony isn’t worth the bones of a single US Navy pilot.

If peace in Syria is neither imminent nor useful to American interests, the chilly logic of realpolitik dictates that the west help keep the Syrian opposition fighting but that any assistance be limited for fear that the rebels might actually win. Since we’ve no idea what any replacement Syrian regime would look like – though we have a pretty good idea it would be a pretty rancid regime – the status quo of an ungoverned Syria is, for the time being anyway, preferable to at least some, and perhaps all, of the alternatives.

As Professor Drezner says, calling this a “morally questionable” approach might under-estimate its frosty “realism”. And, of course, like every other possible Syrian policy it comes with risks of its own. There are no good options in Syria. There aren’t really even any acceptable ones.

But if we’ve learnt anything about Obama these past few years it is that he’s less emotional than the average American president. Bill Clinton may argue that you need to intervene in Syria because otherwise you look like “a wuss” but I fancy Obama finds that logic contemptible and juvenile. There’s a ruthless streak to Obama’s style that has been apparent, really, ever since he first went hunting for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Now little of this is the kind of stirring, inspirational stuff of the Obama legend. But all the lofty rhetoric camouflaged an administration that is, in the main, strikingly non-ideological. As a general rule, and especially in foreign policy, it prefers hard pragmatism to the comforts of grand theory. That is, of course, a reaction against its predecessor but it is more than just that.

Since this is a war between rival versions of Islam and a battle, in the end, for regional supremacy, one of the challenges is to prevent it from leaking into other countries. That in turn means the Syrian war must drag on for some time yet and that, for now, it may not be in the American or western interest for either side to prevail. Settling the Syrian question will not end the matter and may, from a western point of view, make matters even more dangerous and complicated than they currently are.

This may not be a very noble view of the world or a satisfying foreign policy that allows anyone to hitch their wagon to Team Good Guys. But there you have it. It is almost as though Henry Kissinger still stalks the White House.

The post Just Give War A Chance: Obama’s Realpolitik Approach to the Syrian Civil War. appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

King James IV was the last British monarch killed in battle. As many as 10,000 of his compatriots fell with him that bleak September day in Northumberland. Among them were a handful bishops and many sons of the aristocracy. Scarcely a family in the country was untouched by grief. And few places, so the legends have it, suffered more grievously than the Royal and Ancient Burgh of Selkirk. At least 50 and perhaps as many as 80 men from Selkirk and the Ettrick Forest rallied to King James’s call.

Only one, a man named Fletcher, returned alive. He bore with him an English standard, picked up amidst the tumult, that, upon returning to Selkirk, he waved – or ‘cast’ – around his head before lowering it to the ground in silent, mournful tribute to the fallen and to the catastrophe that had swamped Scotland and Selkirk.

Or so the story goes. That moment – Fletcher’s return – is commemorated and re-enacted on the second Friday after the first Monday in June each year. The “Casting of the Colours” is an elaborate and always poignant moment. Standing upon a stage constructed in the burgh market-place beneath a statute of Sir Walter Scott (for many years Sheriff of Selkirkshire),  the town’s Standard Bearer – a young man, single and of good repute – casts the town flag as the town Silver Band plays the town song, “The Souters of Selkirk”. He is followed by representatives of the still-extant medieval guilds: the Weavers, the Fleshers, the Hammermen and then the Merchant Company and the Colonial Society (comprised of Selkirk Exiles) and, last, the Ex-Soldier’s Association.

This final casting is followed by a two minute silence interrupted only by the strains of The Flowers of the Forest. This lament, familiar from more than a hundred thousand funerals around the world, is an ancient air associated with Selkirk and Flodden since time immemorial. In 1756 Jean Elliot wrote the words, commemorating Flodden-spawned grief:

I’ve heard the lilting, at the yowe-milking,

Lassies a-lilting before dawn o’ day;

But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning;

“The Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away”.

[ ...]Dool and wae for the order sent oor lads tae the Border!

The English for ance, by guile wan the day,

The Flooers o’ the Forest, that fought aye the foremost,

The pride o’ oor land lie cauld in the clay.

Though Flodden, especially this year, is always present the Common Riding predates the battle by several centuries. For seven hundred years or more Selkirk folk have ridden the marches of the town’s common land to inspect the boundaries and make sure neighbouring landowners have not encroached upon the burgh’s prerogatives. Every town in the Borderland celebrates a festival week but only Selkirk, Hawick, Lauder and Langholm still ride the ancient marches (see this useful BBC guide for more). It is believed that these are the largest mounted cavalcades in europe. If they are not quite so dramatic as the Border Reiving days when, it is said, an Armstrong or Scott could put more than a 1,000 men into the saddle at next to no notice they remain quite something. They are some of the things that knit this part of the world together and, though visitors are welcome, they are no kind of tourist event. They are a show, for sure, but not a show put on to impress outsiders.

Selkirk, of course, is not the only town to commemorate its past. Your own doubtless does too. I mention Selkirk because I know it and because these events have an importance beyond mere pageant or tradition. They are part of the ties that bind us to our pasts. This year’s Standard Bearer, Martin Rodgerson, 28, was at least the third-generation of Rodgerson men to bear the burgh banner, returning it to the Provost in the same condition he accepted it this morning: “Unsullied and untarnished”.

A century ago, on the 400th anniversary of Flodden, Selkirk raised funds for a “fitting memorial” to the battle. The subscription was so successful that a surplus was recorded, leading the burgh’s officers to find ways to spend it. They decided to invite Lord Rosebery to unveil the monument and, as a bribe, offered him the carrot of being granted the Freedom of Selkirk. He accepted.

I must say that this is an indication of how times have changed. On this, the 500th anniversary of Flodden, I do not believe it occurred to anyone to think to invite a recently departed Prime Minister such as John Major or Tony Blair to come to Selkirk. Nor, had they been so invited, can one imagine them accepting the honour bestowed upon them. And had they been invited and had they accepted I doubt they would have said, as Rosebery said in 1913, that:

[T]oday, Mr Provost, our business is with the battle of Flodden. We have to throw ourselves back four centuries and try and place ourselves in the position of the men of Selkirk that day. I do not think it is necessary for me today to go in detail into the history of the battle. It is in reality familiar to every man, woman and child. It is the disaster that has sunk deepest into the Scottish heart, and has caused the longest and most open wound.

Despite that, Rosebery delivered a long and learned speech plainly built upon his own reading of a breadth and depth and sensitivity it is impossible to imagine being matched by any of our present ministers. As for Fletcher? Rosebery put it well:

And now, gentlemen, there is that other legend to which I must briefly allude – but dancing with extreme delicacy among controversial eggshells – (laughter) – the legend of your one solitary survivor. What is the use of analysing a tradition of which we are all proud? (Cheers)

Indeed. But given what we know came soon after  it is sobering to read of Rosebery declaring  in 1913:

 Nations have but little control over the wars they wage. At this moment all over europe you see nations armed to the teeth, which at a moment’s notice, at a flash across the telegraph wire, might find themselves involved in battles compared to which even the battle of Flodden was child’s play, wars carried on on earth and under the earth, on the sea, over the sea, and under the sea, and even in the blessed firmament of Heaven; wars that would involve not merely the death of your nobles and leaders and of great masses of your countrymen, but the very existence of the State itself. Let us at least then in this sober twentieth century, when we’re perhaps not so fond of fighting for its own sake as in the days of the Border men, 400 years ago, when we can better reason on the chances and the liabilities and the catastrophe of war, let us at least take this lesson to heart, to be vigilant as to the wars in which we may engage, and hold our statesmen responsible for their share in them.

Rosebery, of course, was a Unionist to his bootstraps and so, naturally, was his audience. The great revivals of interest in Wallace – anointed Guardian of Scotland in Selkirk – and Bruce were still-recent things but few folk thought there any contradiction between Scottishness and Britishness. So Rosebery concluded his remarks (the first of three speeches he gave that day) thus:

And so, like the Scottish knights in 1513, we still rally round James IV at Flodden, and while we deplore the slaughter, we pray that Scotland may remain worthy of their high example, and that she may bear in her proud bosom sons and heroes worthy of that glorious and tragic tradition. (Loud cheers)

At the conclusion of Lord Rosebery’s remarks the record tells us that “The audience, upstanding, then joined in the singing of the ‘Flowers o’ the Forest’.”

So, yes, all this was of another age. But there are things we can learn from our ancestors. Those were the days of muscular municipal confidence. There was no need for Prime Ministers to talk about woolly concepts such as the “Big Society” for such a thing was taken for granted. That scarcely means everything – or everyone – bloomed in days of yore but looking back now it is hard to avoid envying the swagger our small towns exhibited a century ago. These were places that, whatever their shortcomings, at least possessed a keen sense of their own worth.

Perhaps they wanted for much but they made their own fortune too. Today these towns – and countless others like them across the United Kingdom – are diminished creatures. Their common lands have been usurped, their Common Good funds thieved by local authorities, their Town Councils stripped of all or any authority. And to what end? Precious little.

Once upon a time David Cameron talked about the importance of his “localism” agenda. That was in the sunlit days of opposition, of course, and that sun set long ago. Nevertheless, local platoons and small affiliations remain more powerful than their larger brethren. It remains a considerable shame that Cameron has done little to devolve power and responsibility to the people themselves.

Not every town is blessed with a history as rich as Selkirk’s but many places in Britain have much of which to be proud. Many too retain the ‘social capital’ to do much more for themselves – much more and much better to boot – than is presently permitted. Sometimes, you see, listening to history can set you soaring. The people are bigger and better than officialdom allows or believes them to be.

The post Unsullied and Untarnished: Lessons in Localism from Selkirk’s Past appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

A few months ago I suggested that all the talk of Tory “unity” on the European question was so much hogwash. The best that could be said was that all these clever ploys and stratagems for renegotiating Britain’s membership of the EU had bought Cameron a little time.  But only a little. The relief could only be temporary, however, not least because a large part of Cameron’s party want the Prime Minister’s preferred policy to fail.

Cameron thinks it is in Britain’s interest to remain a member of the EU. He does not consider the present terms of British membership intolerable. If he did he’d simply opt to leave now. Britain’s relationship with the EU may, in Cameron’s view, often be less than ideal; it is rarely, if ever, impossible.

So Cameron has put himself in the foolish position of – supposing he is still Prime Minister at the time – having to scuttle around Europe demanding better terms knowing that if he fails to “win” these terms he will, logically, find himself in a position of having to argue that terms of membership he found reasonable in 2013 have by some alchemy become utterly unacceptable in 2015 or whenever. Nothing of substance will have changed but Cameron will, presumably, have to campaign for Britain to leave the EU because Britain’s relationship with Europe was much the same as it was in 2013 when Cameron thought it was in Britain’s interest to remain a member of the EU. This is madness.

Moreover, it is quite evident that a large part of the Tory party has set Cameron up to fail. Consider this passage from James Forsyth’s latest (and characteristically excellent) column:

‘If he’s going to lead the “in” campaign,’ one senior Tory MP remarked to me, ‘I don’t think he can lead the party too.’ At least one loyalist fears that, if Cameron comes back from a Brussels renegotiation saying he’ll campaign to stay in, the chairman of the 1922 Committee will immediately receive enough letters to trigger a vote of no confidence.

In other words: Cameron has been set up to fail. 40 per cent of the Tory party  - roughly speaking – wants out. That proportion can only, I suspect, increase, in the next few years. So it boils down to this: half the party believes that Cameron’s definition of “success” is actually evidence of failure. Because renegotiation is just a milestone on the road to withdrawal. It’s not meant to actually achieve anything. On the contrary, it’s a ploy that is built to fail and many of those pushing it have no interest in seeing it actually produce anything.

Again, all the talk about Tory unity “holding” to 2015 or so is balderdash. The party is already split down the middle and it is a breach that cannot be mended since the growing Better Off Out caucus cannot possibly be reconciled to any plausible alternative relationship with Europe. For them, Cameron’s success is failure and his failure is success.

The only way the Prime Minister can survive the coming storm is to make a chump of himself by leaping to the Better Off Out side. The alternative – and perhaps more plausible – road to survival requires him to lose the next election. But that will be the end of him too. And so, there we have it: one way or another we’re approaching the endgame of David Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative party.

The post Europe will end David Cameron’s political career appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Yet I was also struck by something the estimable Tim Shipman reports today:

Mr Hammond was recently present when backbenchers suggested that the Tory leadership could do with ‘a small war’ to distract attention from party discontent over Europe and gay marriage. ‘It had better be a very small war,’ the Defence Secretary said.

Needless to say, this is a very silly way of talking. Even in jest. Banish too the unworthy thought that the Defence Secretary can appreciate how an intervention in Syria would burnish his case for resisting further cuts to the already squeezed  defence budget.

Mr Shipman reports that the cabinet is divided  - but as we shall see, not evenly – on the wisdom of supplying arms to the Syrian opposition. Those in favour of doing something include the Prime Minister, George Osborne, William Hague, Michael Gove and Philip Hammond. In the wait-and-see camp you find Nick Clegg, Sayeeda Warsi, Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening and Chris Grayling. With all necessary respect to Ken this is a clash between heavyweights and welterweights. It’s not difficult to forecast how it ends.

Despite that, those ministers advocating caution at least have the advantage of knowing what they do not know; those pressing for action cannot plausibly make the same claim.

We may, in fact, have passed the point at which western intervention seemed feasible. The argument for action is much the same as it was six months ago; the costs and potential risks of intervention have only increased since then. Escalating a war seems a queer way of ending it.

But if the argument for intervention failed six months ago (and fail it did) it is difficult to see why it should prevail now. The only things to have changed are that we know rather more about the opposition groups than once we did and many more Syrians are dead. The first of these developments should make us cautious; the second implies that there is a mysterious figure of “permissable” deaths beyond which a policy of icy inaction becomes untenable.

Perhaps so, but it behoves those in favour of intervention to explain precisely why this is the case. They have not yet done so. I fancy the Prime Minister believes there is now some moral imperative justifying action and, contra Peter Oborne, I don’t think that makes him mad. But if this is what Cameron believes he should make his pitch in a forthright fashion. Again, he has not yet done so. Perhaps because he knows this argument is unpopular and because, again, he cannot be sure his own instincts are correct in this instance. If Syria was not a problem solvable by western intervention last year, what has changed to make it so now?

And so we drift towards intervention without knowing exactly what we can do, why we are doing it, what we hope to achieve from it or what might constitute a successful, or rather, acceptable outcome. None of this is encouraging.

The next Spectator Debate on 24 June will be debating the motion ‘Assad is a war criminal. The West must intervene in Syria’ with Malcolm Rifkind, Andrew Green, Douglas Murray and more. Click here to book tickets.

The post Syria: What has changed to make western intervention a necessary or realistic policy? appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

That process began last night as STV broadcast the first episode of a three part documentary titled Road to Referendum (viewers in England can watch it here). It offered a potted political and social history of Scotland from 1945 to 1974. (The next episode will focus on the Thatcher Dragon and the final part, one supposes, upon Holyrood’s short history.)

There was nothing in last night’s programme to disappoint the SNP or the wider nationalist movement. On the contrary Road to Referendum, written and presented by Iain Macwhirter, could easily be seen – at least in this first episode – as an endorsement of the nationalist view of Scottish post-war history.

If stories matter in politics – and I think they do – then one of the largest problems facing Unionists is their lack of a narrative. What future are Unionists selling? By contrast – and as last night’s programme demonstrated –  the nationalists have it easy.

The story is a simple one. It goes a little like this: In 1945, Britain celebrated its greatest victory. The country was united and the idea the Union might one day be threatened was unthinkable. As prosperity returned in the 1950s, many of the working classes had never had it so good. Scotland was still a conservative country. Make that a Conservative country, albeit one that relied, in part, upon the votes of bigoted working-class protestants. Things would get better. The 1960s arrived (though not until the second half of the decade). Modernity! Revolution! Pop music! And with it came the first stirrings of a national reawakening. Looking back, the Suez crisis marked the end of one song and the first hearing of a new one. Britain was in decline. Scotland – a new, more radical Scotland – was different. UCS. Billy Connolly. 7:84. And oil. Oil above all else. Scotland’s Oil. Scotland’s destiny. A national assembly? Aye. But why not a proper parliament? The SNP spooked a divided, duplicitous Labour party. Home Rule, dormant since the first years of the century, was back on the agenda. Even the Tories kinda, sorta, sometimes supported it. Scotland was stirring: political devolution – as opposed to mere administrative devolution – was the least a resurgent nation deserved. And all this before the Iron Lady strode upon the scene! Destiny calling. A growing up. A journey….

Now that’s a partial presentation but not by any means an unreasonable one. The ties that bind are weaker now than once they were. Road to Referendum was an artfully constructed programme selling a very particular version of Scottish post-war history. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? It was good television too.

But its effect was to agree with and reinforce an important part of the SNP story. Namely that Scotland has been on a fifty year journey whose logical, even, perhaps, inevitable,  destination is independence (of one sort or another).  Moreover, even if you don’t want to stay on board all the way you will agree we left Status Quo Central long ago and the question is only how far down the line you wish to travel. There’s no turning back, you know. It’s a happy, cheery story.

Macwhirter’s documentary, which relied on some splendid archive footage and talking heid interviews with many of the usual suspects, was artfully constructed. For instance, images of the civil rights movement in the United States and the assassination of Martin Luther King were juxtaposed with Winnie Ewing’s stunning by-election triumph in Hamilton. True, these events happened at much the same time and Macwhirter was not quite so crude as to suggest they were of comparable international significance. The times they were a-changin’ that’s all. But you get the point anyway. A nation on the march and with the better guys in the ascendancy.

There was a dig at the BBC too for its decision to film an adaptation of Douglas Hurd’s thriller Scotch on the Rocks featuring Tartan terrorists and all that jazz. Scaremongering, you understand. More significant than just a fictional flight of fancy. Never, ever, underestimate the high deviousness and low cunning of the British state. You know what I’m talking about. No, there’s no need to say so in so many words.

And it’s Scotland’s oil, remember. There’s Malcolm Rifkind popping up to say it’s kind of selfish to want to hog it all for ourselves. Selfish? Here’s Margo McDonald challenging anyone to spend five minutes in her Govan constituency (“an awful place” in her words) and then try and persuade her it’s “selfish” to want to keep the oil revenues north of the Tweed. Point made. Next, please.

These are stories rarely heard in London. But this view of Scottish post-war history is powerful stuff. Even if you disagree with some of the particulars, you’re likely to concede that a good deal of Macwhirter’s thesis has some merit. And it’s the kind of story, the type of narrative, that can be tricky to counter in ways that don’t seem to diminish Scotland or make it sound like a basket-case country populated by dolts and assorted other types of glaikit zoomers.

Which is why I don’t think the present opinion polls matter very much. The campaign is only now shifting to prime time. As I say, (at least so far) nationalists should be delighted with Road to Referendum (there’s an accompanying book too) and Unionists should be troubled that they’ve not got a counter-narrative to sell themselves. Or, rather, they’ve nothing that’s quite as attractive or powerful as the idea of a great national  journey. Details? Those can wait laddie. Never mind the detail, feel the great sweep of history.

And that leaves this question for Unionists: where’s the Union taking us? Perhaps David Cameron can answer that on Friday when he makes a rare foray north of the border.

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You need no diploma in cynicism to perceive that this is aimed at protecting stupid and greedy politicians rather more than it is a serious attempt at “regulating” lobbying or access to politicians. It’s a means of helping MPs avoid embarrassment. Now they can check to see if the people paying them are real lobbyists! Result!

Which is fine (and the coalition gains bonus Urquhart points for using the measure to stiff the Trades Unions too). But let’s not pretend that it’s actually about “cleaning up politics”.

Again, I don’t think anyone with any experience of Washington DC  - where a register of lobbyists already exists – really thinks it has made any great difference to the industry.

But what it might do is protect MPs from journalists posing as lobbyists. Then again, if MPs and peers are stupid enough to fall for an organisation boasting a website so bad it might have been created by contestants from The Apprentice then more fool them. The (fake) Alistair Andrews website is shockingly amateurish. By contrast, this is what a real lobby shop’s website looks like.

The post A register of lobbyists has nothing to do with “clean” politics; it’s about protecting stupid MPs appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Neither idea is without merit. Even so, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that neither measure would have quite the transformative impact Messrs Carswell and Hannan suggest.

They argue, for instance, that open primaries would put an end to safe seats. And they insist that introducing the power of recall would reduce the likelihood of parliamentary corruption. Neither of these assertions, however, is supported by any serious evidence. Again, that does not invalidate the ideas themselves but it does suggest the impact of their introduction is liable to be more limited than is sometimes claimed.

As always, the “read across” from the American experience to the United Kingdom should be be treated with some caution. Nevertheless, no-one who has any experience or knowledge of the US House of Representatives can credibly argue that open primaries (or recall) have produced the results Carswell and Hannan suggest would be experienced in the United Kingdom.

Indeed, the incumbency advantage in the US is, if anything, even more pronounced than it is in this country. Moreover and even allowing for the corrosive effect of gerrymandered Congressional districts, most of the time the impact of open primaries do is to make the real contest the primary, not the general election. Facilitating primary challenges to sitting MPs might make some members nervous and possibly imperil their careers; most of the time it would have little impact on the strength of party representation at Westminster. Kensington or South Shields will remain safe seats, no matter what mechanism is used to select candidates.

And since turn-out in primary elections – even open, rather than closed primaries – is bound to be lower than in a general election, it seems probable that primaries might often be captured by candidates backed by muscular special interests capable of out-organising the competition. In other words, primaries could easily produce MPs further from the “mainstream” than is presently the case.

Perhaps that would not be a bad development but it is not necessarily obvious that this would produce a better class of parliamentarian either.

Similarly, the power of recall already, in effect, exists. It’s called a general election. If voters really are disgusted by their representative they already have the means for registering that disgust. They need only show some patience and wait a while.

There is, I think, little evidence that American states that allow for recall elections are better governed than those that do not.

California, of course, is the most prominent example of these states. But the evidence from the Golden State also suggests that recall is a power of limited use. Since 1913 only nine recall efforts have mustered sufficient signatures to trigger an actual recall election and of these only five have sacked the incumbent. (It may be telling, however, that six of the nine have come since 1994).

Then again, in the past 100 years there have been no fewer than 47 attempts to force  a recall election for the state’s governor. Many of these, doubtless, were trivial or vexatious or partisan efforts that led nowhere.

Even so, it is hard to avoid the thought that Carswell and Hannan’s plan to permit recall elections when just 10% of a constituencies’ electorate demand it is a plan open to serial and partisan abuse. In the British system this would permit recall elections if just 8,000 voters wanted a second-crack at the seat. Even if most of these efforts were defeated at the subsequent recall election one can easily imagine dozens of MPs facing largely-frivolous recall elections each parliament.

I suspect that fear is why the government seems oddly-minded to suggest MPs be given the right to sack one another. As Carswell says, this is a terrible idea further concentrating power at Westminster rather than, as he would like to see, diffusing it.   As so often our parliamentarians are adept at taking an idea of questionable value and transforming it into one of no merit whatsoever.

In any case, if the American example indicates anything (despite the application of all the usual and necessary caveats) it is that neither recall nor primaries guard against corruption, indolence or any other brand of nefarious behaviour.

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But it is the sort of thing that will appeal to some. Especially those with a mania for betrayal. Only the strong and the vigilant and the this-is-how-it-is-chum brigade are tough enough to see the pathetic and craven weaklings currently staffing the government, the legal profession and the civil service for what they really are: the next worst thing to traitors.

It is a myth and a bullshit one at that. Like most such myths it is also self-serving, a kind of muscular preening that is as ridiculous as it is revolting. As a general rule, these are people who set fire to a tiny straw man and think they’ve knocked-out Sonny Liston.

You see – and must remember – there is always one person who understands the true nature of the threat. One person who gets it. One person who could make a difference if only he (or sometimes she) was not being let down, indeed betrayed, by everyone else. In this instance that One Saviour is Teresa May. The Home Secretary knows what needs to be done but is frustrated at every turn. The stench of weakness and betrayal is all around.

Because neither May’s colleagues in government, nor the civil servants who work for her, nor the courts can be trusted. You might think this an exaggeration. Douglas Murray is here to tell you it ain’t. You see:

At every turn, those who want not only to keep the people of this country safe, but to defeat this enemy, find people who are working against not just them, but all of us.

Really? And what is the evidence mustered to support this claim? Baroness Warsi spoke at a conference organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. A civil servant criticised a speech given by the Prime Minister. And Abu Qatada has not yet been deported. That’s it. That’s the sum total of the evidence corralled to support the claim that large parts of the government, civil service and legal profession are “working against” those who want “to keep the people of this country safe”.

A reasonable person might think that one successful Islamist attack in eight years points towards the conclusion that the country is already and actually quite safe. Perhaps that reflects a run of good luck (and terrorist incompetence) that must run out at some point. That is certainly possible. But it also, surely, demonstrates that the threat, while real, is also containable. Or, at least, has been contained in recent years.

Douglas Murray asks if last week’s horrific murder in Woolwich will “change things”. Unsurprisingly, he concludes that it will not. Sure:

Some more members of the public will recognise the serious and malignant threat that Islamic fundamentalism poses. But among our politicians, there will be no change. Not only because across government and across all parties there are people who believe there is no problem — but because there are so many people and powers in place to stop this country doing what it needs to do.

But who are these people who believe “there is no problem”? We are not told, perhaps because identifying them is harder than you might think given how many of them there are supposed to be. That’s for the rather good reason that there are very few people in any position of influence who really do think there is “no problem“. There is a real threat and it is often severe. This being so it seems sensible to adopt policies that do not encourage or incubate that threat.

But what is Douglas Murray’s prescription? Only this:

It is not hard. Deport illegals, lock up radicals, tell the sympathisers the game is up, and fight not for a draw but for victory against this enemy. There are those who would like to do this. But they have been magnificently trussed up. The people dancing around them are the same people dancing mockingly around all of us.

Actually, it is hard. We remain, happily, a nation of laws. It is breezily easy to call for the deportation of illegals, the locking up of radicals and telling sympathisers that “the game is up”. But translating that into policy is rather different. Upon what grounds, for instance, are “radicals” to be locked up? (And for how long?) What abridgements of speech, assembly and other once-considered-significant rights are we prepared to tolerate?

People will disagree on each of these matters. That’s fine. But there is something childish about pretending these are simple issues that can be settled if only ministers, judges, the press and everyone else demonstrates sufficient willpower to get it done.

And would it get it done? I have my doubts. We have some experience of internment in this country and our most recent such experience was not a happy one. That does not mean the failures of Irish internment would be repeated if the policy was reintroduced today. Of course Douglas Murray does not go so far as to call for internment himself but the logic of his argument – all the locking up, the firm reminder that the “game is up” – points towards such a conclusion.

And that, I think, would be folly. If this is to remain a free country – and despite some questionable security decisions these past ten years  it does remain a free country – then we need to retain some sense of proportion. Jailing people because we find their views objectionable is one way of losing that sense of proportion.

Moreover, it risks exacerbating the very problems everyone would like to see minimised. It is easy to scoff at all these silly politicians talking about Islam as a “religion of peace” because, sure, the actions of the jihadists rather refute that notion. Nevertheless, when did it become sensible to judge the merits of an entire religion by the monstrous excesses of a relative handful of its adherents?

The jihadist movement – which, again, does exist – desires few things more keenly than the chance to divide Britain into muslim and non-muslim camps. That being so, it seems foolish and dangerous to help them do that. The reason politicians talk about a “perversion of Islam” is precisely to avoid sending a message to young and impressionable muslim men that, actually, the jihadist critique just might have some truth to it. If we build a cold house for British muslims, we make it more likely some of them will wish to destroy it.

This is neither weakness nor appeasement. It is good sense. All jihadists may be muslim; it is grotesque to suppose all muslims are potential jihadists. But treating them as though they may be is one way to increase sympathy for the real jihadists. Denigrating someone’s sense of identity is one sure way of ensuring they will have less time for your point of view.

Finally, Douglas Murray – and those who think like him – seems alarmingly happy to be ruled by a government that thinks the rule of law a trivial and out-dated concern to be ignored or swept aside whenever it’s deemed inconvenient to actually obey the law. And once that process of tree-felling begins, where will it end?

The British government’s anti-terrorism policies and attitudes may often be muddled or confused or more dependent upon good fortune than we might like. Nevertheless it is hard to make a coherent case that these policies have failed in recent years. One low-tech murder, no matter how horrific it was, does not demonstrate failure, far less a pressing need to start locking people up chiefly because we do not like or approve of the opinions they hold or, from time to time, dare to express.

I think the United Kingdom is a bigger – and better – place than that and I only wish other people could muster more confidence in the rule of law and the strengths and virtues of a liberal, open society.

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Dear old Peter Oborne pops up in today’s Telegraph to confirm the good sense of these suspicions. Chilcot, you see, is most unlikely to satisfy Tony Blair’s critics, far less provide the “smoking gun” proving that the Iraq War was a stitched-up, born-again conspiracy promoted by George W Bush and eagerly, even slavishly, supported by Anthony Charles Lynton Blair.

This is not an argument about truth. If Chilcot fails to deliver a report confirming the existence of this kind of plot then this will be taken as proof that plot really existed. Nothing will persuade the Blair-is-a-war-criminal crowd otherwise. If Chilcot produces a report damning Blair then that’s a Good Thing and an obvious statement of obvious truths; should he fail to do so then that’s evidence the conspiracy remains so vast and so heinous that the truth must still be suppressed, no matter the cost.

Which is why, as I say, the Chilcot Inquiry cannot satisfy the Blair-haters any more than the three previous inquiries into the war did so. Each of these, naturally, failed to reach the proper conclusions and, therefore, were useless.

The essence of Peter’s complaint (building upon Lord Owen’s observations at the weekend) is this:

The central allegation against Mr Blair is that he gave a private assurance in early 2002 to President Bush that Britain would join the United States in an invasion of Iraq. Thereafter, it is said, all was decided. Even though Mr Blair later highlighted Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, and misrepresented what he was being told by the intelligence services to the House of Commons, it was of little significance to him, because the die had been cast anyhow.

Hence the central importance of access to those conversations. They are likely to cast much-needed light on whether or not the allegations that the prime minister struck a private deal with the president are true. Yet, amazingly, the Chilcot Inquiry’s website states that it has “not yet” even “begun its dialogue” with government over the treatment of these Blair/Bush conversations.

Really? Is that it? Blair promised Bush that Britain would support the United States and thereafter cheerfully misled parliament (and the rest of the world) because the truth – or what Blair believed to be the truth – didn’t matter nearly as much as getting into Iraq. Everything – all that diplomacy, all those sessions at the United Nations – was a sham, a smokescreen laid to confuse the war’s opponents. Bush and Blair never believed any of it, of course, but they were cunning enough to know they needed to do something to gin up enthusiasm for the war.  Or something like that.

It is a preposterous notion that, incidentally, gives Bush and Blair too much credit. A list of the people and organisations that needed to be – and were – successfully gulled includes, but is scarcely limited to, Colin Powell, Hillary and Bill Clinton, multiple foreign intelligence services, the United States Congress, the House of Commons, the United Nations Security Council and so on and so on.

Even if Blair did give Bush this kind of assurance, so what? If Blair’s critics are correct to suppose Blair “committed” Britain to the war in early 2002, the Prime Minister is chiefly “guilty” of making a promise he could not guarantee keeping. In that sense the promise, if it existed at all, was in large part a meaningless commitment.

Moreover, the idea that Blair (and Bush) concocted a case for war that they knew was false or, at best, based upon a tendentious interpretation of the available evidence, requires so many other people to have been in on it that, again, it stretches credulity beyond breaking point.

The war may have proved a grievous blunder and those who opposed it look more prescient (in some ways) than those who backed it. But later mistakes – including, of course, the failure to find WMD – do not actually mean the argument for “dealing” with Saddam Hussein was based upon arguments that were known to be untrue at the time they were being made.

And so, what is the point of “revealing” these conversations? What, indeed, is the point of the Chilcot Inquiry? Who can it satisfy or whose mind can it possibly change? Some people will not be persuaded because they cannot be persuaded.

If there’s an irony here it is that there were people a decade ago who took any suggestion Saddam might not have active WMD programmes as evidence of Saddam’s utter deviousness. It was proof he could not be trusted and therefore, perversely, evidence he was up to no good. Ten years later we see the same thing: the absence of evidence against Blair is proof of the former Prime Minister’s cunning. He must have been up to something, otherwise why the need for secrecy? And so down the rabbit hole we merrily go.

The post The Chilcot Inquiry is a pointless endeavour. Tony Blair’s critics will never be satisfied. appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Scotland, he suggests, is held back by the fact that UK economic policy is dictated by the needs of the City of London and the south-east of England. I fancy there are plenty of folk in the north of England, Wales and Northern Ireland who might agree with that diagnosis.

Independence is actually, I think, McColl’s second-choice preference. But in the absence of a middle-way option – that is, fiscal autonomy or Real Home Rule – he prefers independence to the status quo.

It is a useful intervention, if only because it reminds us (though we should not require reminding) that independence would be the start of something, not its conclusion. The type of Scotland that might emerge could surprise us all, not least the left-wingers who are currently minded to support independence.

McColl suggests that he’d like to see an independent Scotland lower corporation tax (this is still SNP policy, despite George Osborne’s own cuts), offer tax relief to pension funds and abolish capital gains tax entirely.

I consider some of this stuff in my Think Scotland column today. To wit:

[McColl's] latest remarks are an indication that at least some large businesses are quite confident they would not be inconvenienced by independence for so long as, one assumes, Alex Salmond remains a major figure in Scottish life.

Mr Salmond has never quite said that he is, pace Peter Mandelson*, “intensely relaxed” about people becoming “filthy rich” but there’s ample evidence supporting the view that the First Minister is cheerily chummy with rich businessmen. He was hardly alone in supporting Fred Goodwin and RBS during their years of rocketing expansion. If that looks a mistake now all one can say is that few people thought so – or at least said so – publicly at the time. The First Minister’s bromance with Donald Trump – back when the ludicrous Donald proclaimed Salmond a man with whom anyone could do business – was rather more embarrassing but, even there, it can’t be claimed that Trump’s development in Aberdeenshire lacked other local supporters.

Be that as it may, there are good reasons for Jim McColl to suppose that his businesses might be treated with some indulgence in the event of a Yes vote. This is nothing so crude or vulgar as a reward for his supporting independence. Rather it is a recognition that large international companies will be in a powerful position should Scots vote for independence.

Small countries may sometimes have the ability to move more nimbly than their larger brethren, tailoring policy to take advantage of their particular strengths or needs. But if this is so, it is also the case that they are more likely to be prone to being captured by special interests. Scotland does not have so many successful, large international companies that we can afford to lose a few and scarcely notice their absence.

We might wish it otherwise but I find it hard to believe that an independent Scottish parliament will really pass legislation or create tax laws that seriously inconvenience major corporate interests. On the contrary, I suspect the likes of RBS, Diageo, Clyde Blowers and the electricity generating companies will likely find the Scottish government desperately keen to keep them sweet. And that’s to say nothing of the oil companies. Can one really imagine a Scottish government raising taxes on oil exploration and production to the point at which the oil companies decide their money is better spent elsewhere?

None of that is necessarily a reason to vote against independence. And of course an independent Scotland could decide to “stand up” to large and powerful corporate interests. I merely suggest that if you expect that to actually happen you are liable to be disappointed. Money has a way of talking that tends to prove pretty persuasive.

If Jim McColl is prepared to hint – however improbably – that he could easily move his business away from Scotland if the country remains within the Union then, quite obviously, he can do so just as easily after independence too. Perhaps some “patriotic imperative” would root him – and other major enterprises – in Scotland but even patriotic goodwill is not always enough. The bottom line can be eloquent too.

Still, Mr McColl deserves some praise for reminding us how much would remain up for grabs after independence. He might be disappointed by our parliamentarians and it is certainly true that abolishing capital gains tax is not the sort of policy you often hear mentioned at Holyrood. Nevertheless I don’t think you need be over-endowed with cynicism to suppose that big business might exert an influence in Scotland even greater than it currently does in the United Kingdom. Small countries, after all, are even more prone to corporatism and cronyism than their larger neighbours.

That does not necessarily amount to a conspiracy against the public interest but nothing I have heard Alex Salmond say leads me to suppose that big business interests have anything to fear from any administration of which he is a part. I would not go so far as to suggest that, under and SNP government or any plausible alternative, major corporate interests would be able to write their own tax code but they would, I fancy, have a considerable presence at the table. No, it doesn’t “have” to be like that but that’s still the way I suspect it would be.

Whole thing here.

*I should have added, but forgot to, that Mandelson did qualify this now notorious statement by adding that all this was fine so long as companies and wealthy individuals played by the rules.

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This murder in Woolwich was an uncommon act of barbarity; the product too of a kind of mental illness. That does not excuse the act, far from it, and there’s no need to be sparing in our condemnation. But, appalled as we may be, it seems important to recognise and remember just how unusual these acts remain.

There will, quite properly, be consideration of whether the security service could have done more. Nevertheless it is foolish to suppose that MI5 and the police can predict, counter or foil every would-be assassin. Occasionally the bomber – or in this instance the machete-wielder, gets through. Nevertheless, this was the first successful jihadist murder in London since 2005. The 1970s and 1980s were much more dangerous times.

That is not meant as a way of minimising or downplaying yesterday’s horrors, merely as a reminder that they should be put in some kind of context and considered in some kind of perspective.

The Prime Minister’s remarks this morning were well-judged. So too Paul Goodman’s article at ConservativeHome. By contrast there is an unpleasant undercurrent of I told you so nonsense coming from sections of both right and left. Ken Livingston and George Galloway, surely to no-one’s surprise, have lived down to already low expectations. As a general rule, anyone whose reaction to this kind of event is to use it as a supporting pillar for their own longstanding prejudices should probably not be trusted.

Far from being in denial, most sensible people – that is, most people who have ever considered the issue – have known that something like this could happen and, indeed, probably would occur at some point. But it seems sensible, surely, to contemplate these risks in a sober and restrained manner. Hysteria is counter-productive, not least since it grants lunatics what they want. There is no need to meet their declaration of “war” with one of our own.

That doesn’t mean ignoring them or the threat they pose. Of course not. But there is nothing to be gained from judging all muslims (or all muslim converts) by the actions of a deranged and unrepresentative minority. There is no such thing as collective guilt in circumstances such as these. It is utterly depressing, therefore, that, quite sensibly, comments have to be closed on posts such as this.

But, in general, the response to yesterday’s savagery has, I think, been impressively restrained. Ingrid Loyau-Kennett spoke for the country as a whole when she warned the killers: You’re going to lose. It is only you against many. As long as we remember that, we will prevail.

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Today they were dismissed by Sussex for 76. At Horsham. Granted, Compton and Kieswetter were absent but, even so, this was a dismal showing.  Somerset, damn it, won the toss and chose (rightly!) to bat. At the time of typing Sussex are 241/7.

The best that may be said of it is that this year the Wurzels are not teasing their supporters. A season that began with hopes that – at last! – the Cider Men might become Champions of All England is already doomed. Staving off relegation now seems a more urgent task than chasing that endlessly-elusive first County Championship title. Under-appreciated and refreshingly glitz-free the Championship may be a Maiden Aunt but who really prefers the IPL’s slutfest to the Championship’s venerable decorum? No-one of sense. It remains the pinnacle and the best supported first-class competition in the world.

It is depressing, but hardly unprecedented, that Somerset’s championship ambitions have been dashed before June. It used to be said of Irish rugby that though its predicament was often hopeless it was never serious. In contrast to some other counties – Kent springs to mind – you could say something similar about Somerset. Kent might be the Garden of England and the county of Woolley and Cowdrey but its loveliness should not be mistaken for a lack of passion or ambition or, above all, expectation. Somerset is also lovely; also different.

It is odd how counties assume an identity in your mind. Surrey, correct and imperial; Middlesex the home of cricket but also, somehow, possessing a north London raffishness quite different from their neighbours across the Thames. Leicester and Worcester each, in their own way, the home of the quiet people of England whose voice is rarely heard. Derbyshire, three-jumpered and perpetually eclipsed by all its neighbours; Notts a kind of junior Yorkshire. You get the idea.

The bugger of it is that Somerset have given us hope in recent years. This, not the rosy-remembered era of Botham, Richards and Garner, has been a Golden Era for the county. It was that trio – and Botham especially – who persuaded me to hitch my colours to the Taunton mast  (in 1980) but despite regular appearances (and triumphs) at Lords for one-day-finals this trio never threatened to bring the greatest prize of all back to Taunton. The county could perform splendidly on one-off and big occasions but lacked the bottom to sail swiftly through championship waters. More recently, Somerset have specialised in being bridesmaids, even in slap-and-tickle cricket.

I once suggested that Somerset cricket was, in the mind’s eye at least, associated with “carefree late-summer afternoons as some beefy-shouldered local lad entertains a crowd of red-faced rustics with the last lusty hitting of the year”. This is the county of Arthur Wellard and Harold Gimblett as well as Botham and Marcus Trescothick. But there are other strands too. The low cunning of “Farmer” Jack White. The Aussie gumption of Bill Alley, Jamie Cox and Justin Langer. The revolution inspired by Brian Close who swapped Yorkshire for Somerset and proved he could thrive in conditions as different (in every way) as those pertaining in Antarctic and the Sahara.

Then, in my first years following the county, there were figures such as Colin Dredge and the bespectacled Brian Rose who seemed, certainly unfairly, like a housemaster from a minor public school whose summer holidays were spent pottering around the cricket field. Dredge, so lugubrious he could have been a Lancastrian, was one of those stalwarts who so merit the nickname “Unsung” that there is a danger their talents become over-sung. The late Alan Gibson loved Dredge, invariably referring to him as the “Demon of Frome”. Somerset cricket has often, for fear of crying, preferred to chuckle.

As a Man of Letters once wrote it can be better to travel than to arrive. This, I console myself, is true of Somerset cricket too. As a long-distance supporter it is, I concede, easier for me to say this than it might be for the denizens of Weston-Super-Mare. Be that as it may, the Quest can be more deliciously satisfying than the consummation; the agonies of what-might-have-been more enduring than the celebration of final triumph. (And even long-distance supporters can be daft: I once named an entire litter of springer spaniel puppies after Somerset players.)

A large part of the point of being a Somerset supporter is wrapped up in the decades-long thirst for a first Championship title. Actually winning the bloody thing would be as sweet as anything in cricket save an England Ashes triumph but it would inevitably, undoubtedly, irrevocably alter the manner in which we follow the Men of Taunton.

At the end of “The Candidate” Robert Redford, the fresh-faced, long-shot, victorious candidate for a seat in the United States Senate turns to his advisors and asks “What do we do now?” A Somerset triumph in the County Championship would prompt the same question. We might find ourselves in some strange fallow period; buoyed by the memories of recent triumphs and better prepared to meet fresh disappointment but also feeling that something vital was missing from the annual tilt at immortality.

Future disappointments would not cut us to the quick. Not in the same way. We would still enjoy the memory of that historic first title. What would there be to aim for? A second title, though necessary to  confirm the first was no fluke, could not possibly prove as sweet. A retreat to mediocrity could only dissipate our enthusiasm for the county.

There is, this is to say, something sweet about rising from no-hoper status to that of perennial-contender-who-always-just-falls-short. It is the sweet sorrow of what could or might have been. There is a measure of melancholy there but the consolations of being a perennial bridesmaid should not be dismissed lightly. What, after their successes this century, do Sussex supporters have to say for themselves?

None of this is unique to cricket. One need only look at Chelsea or Manchester City to see how some triumphs are counterfeited by the manner of their achievement. Sudden and essentially unearned success can compromise the nature of your club and your relationship with it. This is, I think, one of the paradoxes of sport: we thirst for victory but victory can sometimes destroy what made us – or our club – useful or distinct or worthwhile in the first place.

And so Somerset’s failure this year is vexing and much to be regretted. It annoys me. But it is not useless either. Such, perhaps, are the consolations of being inured to failure. We will still have “next year” and there are few things in sport so delicious as next year. Especially when next year never quite arrives.

Even so, there is no need to take this to extremes. Relegation would be a Very Bad Idea. I still want Somerset to win the Championship; I still don’t know how I would feel about it actually happening.

This post was prompted, at least in part, because I failed to be OUTRAGED by anything happening in politics today. [UPDATE: this was written before I knew about the Woolwich horrors.]

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But since we all – or most of us, anyway – agree with that one wonders why so many nationalists continue to argue as though anyone who disagrees with them (on just about any matter) is automatically guilty of “talking Scotland down” or believing that Scotland really is “too poor, too wee, too stupid” to make its ain way in the world. I concede that raising certain practical difficulties can sometimes seem like “scaremongering” (another favourite nationalist theme) but sometimes these are also just questions to which it would be useful if the Yes campaign had more persuasive answers. Jim Sillars, for whatever it may be worth, seems to agree with this view.

In actual fact most of what Salmond and Sturgeon proposed today could largely be achieved without leaving the Union at all. Some form of “devo-max” or “full fiscal autonomy” or “Real Home Rule” or whatever else you want to call it would see control of many of the sainted “levers” lodged in Edinburgh.

Be that as it may, today’s paper also revealed the independence case’s dependency upon North Sea Oil. If the oil were to dry up there’d be, I think, no chance of independence carrying the day. Of course, there is still some hefty quantity of oil in the North Sea and, yes, it is much better to have that resource than not to have it.

But consider the figures. Scottish offshore revenues generated from a geographical share of hydrocarbon resources amounted to £10.6bn in 2011-12. By comparison, Scottish income tax receipts totalled £10.8bn. Oil revenues amounted to 16% of all Scottish tax revenue.

And thank heavens for that. Estimated public spending, as identified by the Scottish government, amounted to £64.5bn in 2011-12. Total tax revenue in that year was £56.9bn. Strip out offshore revenues and Scotland’s tax take amounted to £46.3bn.

An oil-financed deficit of this size, in the present economic conditions, is hardly a calamitous problem (at least not for the time being) and of course the SNP claim that, relative to the UK’s current position, an independent Scotland would enjoy lower deficits.

But even if this is so the country’s future is plainly dependent upon oil revenues. These are, of course, volatile. It is not impossible to envisage a tax regime after independence that encourages further investment and higher production (though for how long?). Still, revenues may well increase. They might have to.

Especially since, on the figures produced today, it doesn’t seem obvious (at least to me) where the money will come from to build the sovereign wealth fund that is such an important – and seemingly attractive – part of the SNP’s long-term vision for Scotland.

Increased or, rather, hypothetical, economic growth is part of the answer to that but this, of course, is hardly something that can be guaranteed. The SNP are fond of stressing that $1.5 trillion of oil remains to be extracted from Scottish waters. But unless the industry is nationalised (in whole or part) then those profits will not be spent in Scotland. Nor, unless I am missing something (always possible!) will they contribute to a Scottish sovereign wealth fund.

And since the SNP also wish to increase public spending while cutting tax (or at least leaving the overall tax burden much as it is at present) it is hard to see how everything can be squared.

That’s not to say that Scotland could not thrive and, again, since the oil is there it is silly to make calculations as though it weren’t, but it does remind us that the country’s fiscal well-being is more dependent upon oil than might be considered ideal. Moreover, the ability to invest in an oil fund is surely more limited than commonly imagined (to the extent it is commonly imagined at all).

Comparisons with Norway are not as helpful as they may seem at first blush. Not least because Norway produces much more oil than Britain. Perhaps Scotland could, as I say, increase production but even allowing for the discovery of new fields hydrocarbons are a finite resource. Recognising that was the point of establishing an oil fund that would act as a kind of national rainy day fund. But where will the money come from unless (onshore and offshore) tax receipts rise considerably, public spending is reduced or there is some combination of the two plus, hopefully, robust economic growth?

None of this is to say that it can’t be done, merely that based on the Scottish government’s own figures it will be a close run affair. That’s fine but let’s not be hearing any more of the foolish (and discredited) claim that an independent Scotland will be the sixth wealthiest nation on earth.  The people, not being fools, simply don’t believe it.  They also know, I think, that Scotland is wealthy enough to do fine but that independence cannot bring about an immediate and magical transformation of the national fortune. It’s good and necessary to have the oil but it’s not necessarily good enough on its own.

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He may be right! British politics has been extraordinarily stable since the Labour party supplanted the Liberals. Nothing, really, has changed. At least, nothing of real importance and at least not in England. That can’t continue forever. So one day predictions of a Great Realignment will be vindicated by events. Perhaps this is that time though the odds, perhaps, are against it being so.

That’s something I consider in today’s Think Scotland column. But there’s another dimension to all this, acting as a reminder that politics is always subject to the laws of unintended consequences. And irony. Nigel Farage, you see, could be the man who ditches David Cameron and Alex Salmond. Here’s the argument:

But what of Scotland? Alex Salmond is Nigel Farage’s keenest admirer. Not because the First Minister likes Mr Farage’s politics (he does not) but because the better UKIP does in England the happier Scottish nationalists will be. UKIP is a largely English phenomenon. Though Scots are almost as eurosceptic as English voters the european issue is a lower-order priority north of the border. UKIP’s value, then, lies in illustrating the nationalist theme that Scotland and England have distinct political cultures.

And not just distinct cultures but cultures that are growing further and further apart. The SNP line – which is not wholly mistaken – is that Scotland and England are drifting apart anyway and, since this is the case, independence is merely the logical conclusion to this process of estrangement. A UKIP on the march in England but bereft of followers in Scotland is a useful way of illustrating this point.

There is something to this. But only something. Salmond and the SNP should be careful. If UKIP stick around they will complicate another SNP meme. For months now, the SNP and the wider Yes campaign have been arguing that only independence can save Scotland from the horrors of future Tory governments at Westminster. It’s independence or five more years of David Cameron. Given the relentlessness with which the nationalists have pursued this line, one has to conclude that they think it is effective.

But it only works if it looks as though the Tories might win the next Westminster election. If, on the other hand, Ed Miliband seems likely to prevail then the game changes and some Labour supporters contemplating voting for independence may drift back into the No camp. In other words, Salmond needs Cameron to remain viable even as he also hopes Nigel Farage can change English politics for good. Almost all of this, of course, is beyond the SNP’s control and a reminder that luck will play a larger role in the independence debate than is sometimes assumed.

Despite all this Scotland and England are more alike than they sometimes seem to be or than you would believe if you based your analysis only upon voting patterns. Still, the nationalists’ sweet spot is a small one: a strong Farage but not so strong that Cameron is weakened fatally.

Anyway, the whole thing is here.

The post Will Nigel Farage and UKIP help ditch Alex Salmond? appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Not, as you might suspect, the most recent UKIP manifesto but, rather, the sentiments expressed by Pierre Poujade during the run-in to the 1954 elections to the French National Assembly. Poujade’s party, the Union to Defend Shopkeepers and Artisans,  shocked France’s political elite by winning 2.5 million votes and sending 55 deputies to Paris.

Charles de Gaulle sniffed that “In my day, grocers voted for solicitors; now solicitors vote for grocers”, a sentiment with which David Cameron might this week have some sympathy. Nevertheless, as the General (then in self-imposed exile at Colombey) admitted,  Poujade’s success was “simply one of the signs of endemic revolt generated by the… incapacity of the regime”. The Fourth Republic endured a series of feeble governments; the time was ripe for a populist revolt.

Poujade’s party proved short-lived (though it is also, in some respects, the spiritual ancestor of today’s Front National) but Poujadism remains part of the political lexicon. Poujade’s populism was anti-tax, anti-big business, anti-intellectual, proudly provincial and overwhelmingly suspicious of elites of any kind.

Again, the parallels with UKIP are striking. Poujade even made sure he was photographed drinking wine, in contrast to the milk-swilling Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France.

UKIP pose Labour and the Conservatives – but especially the latter – a problem that is not liable to be solved by policy manoeuvres.  There is nothing the Tory leadership can do that will outflank UKIP on europe (or immigration). Not without splitting the Conservative party, at any rate. Worse still, the more the party panders to UKIP voters the more it loses sight of the fact that, even now, there remain many more voters in the muddled, middle-ground of British (and especially English) politics than there are on the extreme of either flank.

UKIP’s appeal lies less in policy – Farage is quite happy to admit that a good deal of the party’s platform was written on the back of a fag-packet – than in sentiment. It is a sympathy or, if you prefer, a persuasion. A mentality, not a programme for government. A cry of disgruntled pessimism, not a series of solutions. Accordingly, it can’t be pacified by policy shifts. It is a question of style not of substance. Like Boris Johnson, Farage is an entertainer. This ensures he is judged by different standards.

Which is bad news for David Cameron. The Prime Minister cannot possibly moderate his style to appeal to UKIP voters. They – and in their number we may include a good proportion of UKIP-sympathising Tory backbenchers – already suspect he views them with contempt and they are probably not wrong to think that. Indeed, the more UKIP are vilified the happier they are. Theirs is a politics of the laager or the last redoubt and telling them how foolish they are merely earns the response So what? And who are you anyway?

I fancy UKIP voters suspect Cameron is a privileged but empty suit. They are not wholly wrong about this either. It is certainly easy to rail against a government stuffed with politicians from comfortable backgrounds. If Cameron were a stronger (or at least a more positively defined) leader this might not matter. Nor would it be a problem if the economy were in finer shape. Instead, living standards are being squeezed and there is a sense that even though the government is not hopelessly indifferent to the problems of the lower middle-classes it has no real idea how to assist them.

In such conditions the surprise may be that it took UKIP so long to win even a few dozen council seats in the English shires. For all the government’s good intentions few people would claim that it has enjoyed firm leadership. And in the end a good part of the electorate, however disgruntled they may be, will put up with policies they do not favour if these are at least pursued with vigour by a government strong enough to give the impression it knows what it believes and believes how it can put those beliefs into practice.

Is David Cameron the man to lead that kind of government? Not at the moment he ain’t. Is David Cameron “on your side”? Does he “care about people like you?” Up to a point. Cameron lacks the vocabulary – perhaps, even, the bottom – to talk to “our kind of people”. Or at least it seems as if this is the case.

UKIP are flavour of the month. They will do well at the next european parliament elections too. But publicity and its attendant scrutiny will be the death of them. Nigel Farage may entertain television producers but there comes a point at which the joke begins to wear thin. A protest vote for a political entertainer is fine for council (or european) elections but not quite so appealing at a general election. You might enjoy a night out with Farage but you wouldn’t trust him to drive you home.

Even so UKIP will remain an irritant but, as I say, something like this has been brewing for a while. 2010′s brief bout of Cleggmania was another demonstration of the way in which politics now operates rather as the stock-market did at the height of the dot-com boom. “Traditional” stocks  - that is, political parties – are boring and under-valued; the thirst for the next new thing ensures that said fresh face is immediately over-valued. Everyone, at some level, “knows” this but worries that, just perhaps, they might miss the new thing that really is the next big thing. And so everyone piles in, just to be on the safe side. For now.

And yet even if under-valued, the traditional political parties are still in trouble. This is hardly a British phenomenon. From Ireland to Israel via Italy we have seen the rise of political outsiders who earn some measure of trust – at least for a while – precisely because they are not tainted by any association with the established political system. The brief flickering of the Tea Party in the United States was another example testifying to the frustrations of politics-as-usual and the Republican party’s multiple failures.

Nearly five years on from the financial crash, mainstream parties – of either left or right, though those labels matter less these days – are still looking for answers. Like Iain Martin, I’m surprised Theodore Roosevelt is not mentioned more often these days.

It is astonishing, really, that the financial (and political) elites have not suffered more. Torch and Pitchfork Inc have not prospered quite as much as you might have expected. Doubtless that reflects an appreciation that even political outsiders don’t have the answers either but I suspect it also reveals a certain depressed fatalism that is both disconcerting and problematic for the longer-term health of democratic politics.

The post UKIP, Pierre Poujade and a political class that’s seen to be “out-of-touch”. appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Adrian Hilton wrote a good piece at ConservativeHome last year detailing his experiences with falling Tory membership in Beaconsfield. But what is the point of being a member of the Conservative party when, in general, you are offered responsibility without power? As Hilton put it:

 [T]here was a time when being a member of the Conservative Party was an active democratic pursuit – we could freely select parliamentary candidates, propose motions for conference and even participate in debates from the floor. It was a festival of genuine political participation: we didn’t all agree, and neither did we have to pretend to: democracy is messy. The “broad church” was open to many shades of opinion, and some of those “shrill” nonconformists even managed to be selected for parliamentary seats. One even became Party Leader and Prime Minister.

Sadly, all of these processes are now controlled by the centralised oligarchy, and members are left with the façade of engagement. Candidates are imposed, selections are rigged, and the annual conference is no longer a vibrant celebration of democracy with halls packed to standing: it is a technocratic rally to demagoguery, and a poorly-attended one at that (at least by Party members). No contentious “big issues” are discussed or debated and no corporate wisdom is gleaned from the membership: their function is simply to applaud when prompted and cheer when instructed. It is little more than window-dressing and sophistry for mass media consumption.

Of course we understand why the leadership likes it this way. It causes less trouble. But it’s a very good way of killing a movement. Treat people like fools and incompetents and soon incompetents and fools will be the only people left to join your party. Engage with them and you have a chance of reversing that decline. Better still, you might consider trusting them, even if only occasionally. Instead the Tory party prefers a top-down, centralising philosophy that is, in many respects, the kind of structure that Conservatives exist to oppose. Trusting people means tolerating their capacity for making mistakes sometimes (and learning from those errors). But since Central Office is hardly a blunder-free zone how much worse would it really be if local associations – the little platoons! – had more influence on their party?

As Paul Goodman asks, if the party is dying whose fault is that? It does not have to be that way. Some associations have seen their membership rise. Meanwhile, north of the border the SNP now claim 25,000 members. That’s comparable (if accurate!) to a UK-wide party having a membership of something close to 300,000 members. Or roughly twice what the Tories currently claim.

Now the SNP membership make mistakes too (they chucked my friend Andrew Wilson out of parliament, for instance) but they are also given some opportunity to influence party policy. The SNP’s conversion to supporting NATO membership was backed by the party conference after a spirited and close-fought debate (granted the leadership prevailed largely on grounds of expediency). The point is not the result, in this instance, but the process. The members were (for once) involved. There was something old-fashioned and decent about this.

Of course it helps that the SNP is also a movement with a clearly defined cause. Nevertheless it also demonstrates that it remains possible to recruit members and activists. But you have to use them as something more than stuffing-envelopes and door-knocking fodder.

Be that as it may and no matter how ill-chosen his words, Cameron’s chum is not necessarily wrong about how constituency associations are pushing MPs to the right. James Kirkup quotes one MP:

Some party insiders fear that a shrinking membership is putting MPs under increased pressure to reject some Government policies. One Conservative MP privately confirmed that he would vote against gay marriage under pressure from local members. He said: “I don’t have a problem with gay marriage because the state has no business in our private lives. But I’ll vote against it because if I don’t I’ll lose half my association.”

He’s not alone. Gay marriage has cost the party members in (I think) every constituency in Britain. That does not make it a bad policy but it demonstrates, again, that it is better to win the argument than to impose something of this sort upon the party and expect everyone to fall into line because the thought of Prime Minister Miliband is enough to trump all other concerns. There comes a point at which people simply say Sod it, I’ve had enough.

The bigger problem still, however, is that the Tory party increasingly does not look very much like Britain or, especially, England. Worse still, it frequently – and despite all the talk of modernisation – does not seem comfortable with modern England. This is, for sure, in part a feature of the conservative temperament but it does make it harder for the party to recruit new members and harder for it to retain existing members. It is caught in a cleft stick.

This is the worst of all possibilities. Old members are dying or leaving and there are no new members. On the politics of gay marriage the party membership appears to be on the wrong side of history. Cameron has made a fine conservative case for gay marriage but he’s neither convinced his party nor persuaded the public that he’s in favour of gay marriage for the right reasons. Too many people think it’s just a stunt to demonstrate that the party is pretending to change without really doing so. Again, the worst of all outcomes: the people who dislike the policy will never forgive Cameron and the people who support it are unlikely to give him much credit for it. This is the pity of Cameron’s predicament.

There are times when running against your own base makes sense. It rarely hurt Tony Blair (though it probably did hurt the Labour party) but it’s not a good idea to reinforce, even in private, the electorate’s suspicion that your party is, on the whole, populated by rum coves at best and maniacs at worst.

The post The swivel-eyed loons in the Conservative party are revolting. And they are right to revolt. appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Not just because forcing Nigel Farage to “flee” and take “sanctuary” in a pub is the kind of hardship up with which the UKIP leader can fondly put, but rather because the sight of Mr Farage being jostled and shouted down by left-wing “radicals” is one of the few things liable to provoke some measure of sympathy for UKIP north of the border.

UKIP thrives on farce and chaos. The goons from something calling itself the “Campaign for Radical Independence” ensured that a visit that would otherwise passed almost un-noticed received plenty of coverage. Heckuva job, lads. But what else is to be expected from folk who swank around the place shouting “You’re a racist, go home to England” ? You’d almost think this stunt was planned by the boys from The Daily Mash.

All this was tedious and typical student juvenilia. More interesting was the reaction to this mini-brouhaha. Across Twitter and Facebook nationalists and lefties chirped their satisfaction. No platform for Farage in Scotland! Whae’s like us?! We are, you see, “genetically allergic to windbags (and xenophobes)“.

As it happens I have little time for UKIP’s politics but this is scarcely the point. No-one is quite as unbearably smug as a Scotsman convinced of his moral superiority. Not even an Englishman. The unco guid were out in force yesterday and proved as revolting a sight as always. It is not enough to disagree with Mr Farage’s politics, you see, it is important that he be denied the opportunity to even make his point. It is, yet again, a question of standing.

The hounding of Farage is a reminder that Scotland  - or at least Scottish politics – is not quite as generous, open-minded and tolerant* a place as it likes to fancy itself. There is, it seems, a narrow spectrum of views deemed acceptable or legitimate. Anyone who falls outside that range can be ignored or, better still, suppressed.

Now the SNP and UKIP are certainly different beasts but it seems obvious that one reason UKIP has failed to win support in Scotland is that Scotland already has a well-established and well-organised nationalist party. If SNP MSPs pretty much run the gamut from Tartan Tories to Tartan Trots via Republicans and orthodox Social Democrats, their voters are more diverse still. The SNP is no longer just a party of protest but a good dollop of its support remains predicated upon dissatisfaction with the Tories and Labour alike.

Equally, many SNP votes are cast as a declaration of cultural affinity or as an expression of national difference. In this limited respect too they (or some of them anyway) are closer to UKIP votes than the party leadership (or large parts of the Tartan commentariat) would like you to believe. It is not so much a question of policy as of mentality.

As David Torrance wrote last week, the parties:

[A]re similar in terms of impetus, rhetoric and leadership, not their respective policy agendas. Compare and contrast the following: ‘We believe in the right of the people of the UK to govern ourselves, rather than be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.’ (N. Farage) It is ‘fundamentally better for us all, if decisions about Scotland’s future are taken by the people who care most about Scotland, that is, by the people of Scotland.’ (Independence Declaration)

For some reason pointing this out annoys Scottish nationalists. Ironies abound. For instance, UKIP’s definitional policy – leaving the EU – would scarcely be considered controversial in Norway, a land the SNP frequently cite as an example of what an independent Scotland could and should aspire to be. Yet, in a Scottish or British context, this is considered the stuff of lunatic extremism.

The evidence available at this juncture suggests leaving the EU is a less popular notion in Scotland than it is in England. Nevertheless polls report that roughly one in three Scottish voters would opt to leave the EU. Observant psephologists will note that this is not wildly different to the proportion who favour withdrawing from the United Kingdom. It is not obvious that one of these ideas is a priori absurd and the other plainly common sense.

And so we now see Alex Salmond arguing, with a straight face, that the best way for Scotland to ensure it remains within the EU is to vote to leave the UK.  Well, maybe. It is certainly true that the Conservative’s european policy is a shambles (a subject to which we shall return later) but, then again, you could say something similar about the SNP’s outline of exactly how an independent Scotland would mesh with the rump UK (to say nothing of Brussels).

Anyway, the hounding of Nigel Farage will have done UKIP no harm. But it was still a depressing reminder that Scotland is sometimes a smaller place than we like to think it. And if nothing else, labelling Farage and his party “fascist scum” leaves you with no vocabulary with which to describe actual fascists. It debases the coinage, if you will, and running folk out of town is a queer way of demonstrating your “progressive” credentials.

*Tolerance means putting up with things you find disagreeable, not with views you actually like.

The post Nigel Farage Comes to the Brave New Scotland appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

Time passes agreeably slowly on the Hebrides and it scarcely seems only a week since we last spoke here. Time stretches without newspapers, television or the internet. Given the state of the world this may be no bad thing. Anyway, back now and normal service will resume from today.  What larks.

The post Hitched appeared first on Spectator Blogs.

I leave you with my latest  Think Scotland column in which I consider some of the topics raised by Douglas Alexander in the Judith Hart Memorial Lecture he delivered last week.

Douglas Alexander, probably the most thoughtful Scottish Labour MP (though I accept you may consider that only a minor accomplishment), delivered a typically interesting lecture last week. In it he suggested Scotland needs “a politics of opponents. Not enemies. We need a discourse of political difference, not a politics that descends into personal destruction.”

Indeed. Given the Labour party’s feelings towards the SNP – eagerly reciprocated, it might be said – this seems akin to wishing for the moon. Nevertheless, there is something to be said for Alexander’s call.

More interestingly, indeed more significantly, Alexander quoted the Candian intellectual Michael Ignatieff. According to Ignatieff, “In a court of law, standing determines whether you are allowed to participate in a legal action. In politics, standing also determines your right to be heard and accepted as a legitimate voice in the debate”.

The relevance of Ignattief’s argument to Scotland is not, I think, hard to see. The SNP’s boast of being “Scotland’s party” has always annoyed non-nationalists. There is a presumption to it that grates. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the SNP’s election victories have, in large part, been predicated upon a widely-believed view that the party can be trusted to “stand up for Scotland” (whatever that means). By implication, of course, all other parties do not “stand up for Scotland” and, therefore, are stuffed with questionable types, motivated by dubious goals and generally not to be trusted.

Labour, needless to say, is piqued by this. After all, Labour used to think that winning 40% (or so) of the vote in Scotland gave it the right to speak for the whole country. In this respect Labour supporters are merely receiving the kind of treatment they once meted out themselves. It is hard to feel too much sympathy for Labour.

Even so, Alexander was on to something. I was struck by something the nationalist blogger Kate Higgins wrote recently. Attending an event at Stirling University she described how she listened “to a number of young people… who felt they had to explain, regularly, that despite an English accent and itinerant childhoods, they considered themselves to be Scottish, having lived here for most of their lives. The fact that they felt the need to lay out their antecedents to justify their involvement and entitlement in this debate shocked me.”

I am glad Ms Higgins was shocked by this. But I doubt she should have been surprised. Many people whose backgrounds (often, it may be said, reasonably privileged) or accents are not “typically” Scots believe they must justify themselves in the fashion Ms Higgins found so shocking. They are only too aware that many of their notional, indeed real, compatriots are not at all convinced they actually are their compatriots.

Nor is this a matter of accent or background alone. The 400,000 or more Scots (or inhabitants of Scotland, if you will) who still vote Conservative have grown used to being traduced by many of their compatriots. If the Conservatives are declared an “anti-Scottish” party (rather than a party that merely has a different idea of Scotland’s best interests) then it takes no great leap of fancy or logic to deem their supporters “anti-Scottish” too. And if you are badged “anti-Scottish” then not only is there no need to listen to what you may have to say; you cannot expect to be treated as a full member of the community. Again, this is not a criticism of the nationalists alone; Labour have also long been guilty of this kind of talk.

It is a state of mind that punctures the view, so cherished by our blethering classes, that Scotland is an unusually open-hearted, generous, broad-minded place. Instead we are revealed as a narrow-minded, chippy, complacent kind of country still dominated by the unco guid.

But, perhaps especially in a small country, the struggle for political legitimacy is key. It determines who is “allowed” (by some process of mysterious alchemy) to “speak”. There are practical reasons for limiting the referendum franchise to those people living in Scotland. But the debate – and contributors to it – ranges rather more widely than our native moors. The peoples of England, Wales and Northern Ireland have reason to hope their voices may be heard (though not prove decisive) and so, of course, do Scots living in the rest of the United Kingdom or further afield. Many of them, after all, will have claim to a Scottish passport in the event of independence. This is their country too.

Click here for the whole thing. I would add this too: it is quite something when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is denied “standing” to speak in a debate about the future of the United Kingdom. Quite something too, when he seems to accept this denial and, even, perhaps, considers it proper.

Anyway, see you next week by which time all will be changed, changed utterly and all that.

The post Who is allowed to speak for, and to, Scotland? appeared first on Spectator Blogs.