Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): "At some stage — perhaps very soon — the English Question will explode into British politics, and will decisively change the political landscape," Frank Field argues in a Telegraph piece today.
The front page of the Sunday Times suggests that Field is not alone among Labour MPs.
The anti-Scots backlash has been prompted in part by the humiliation of the Crewe by-election where Labour’s campaign was run by a Scot, Steve McCabe, a government whip. He has been criticised for running a negative campaign caricaturing the Conservatives as “toffs” that backfired among English voters.
The paper quotes Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, calling for Jack Straw to be installed as an English Deputy Prime Minister, and MPs Keith Hoyle and Steven Ladyman demanding more English voices in the cabinet.
There are four Scots in the cabinet, including Brown and Darling. Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary from Renfrewshire, and Kilwinning’s Des Browne, the defence secretary, are both highly rated by the prime minister, but some English MPs question their ability to communicate with voters south of the border.
It will not be easy for Brown to respond to these demands within the current Westminster structure. There are no longer any Scottish Cabinet Ministers with obviously 'English' briefs like Health or Transport. The SNP would seize on any move that was seen to be excluding Scots from key UK-wide areas like the Treasury or Defence.
The opportunities for Scottish politicians at Westminster have already narrowed significantly since the heady days of 1997, and they look set to narrow further. Neither this nor Brown's own predicament will be lost on the rising generation of Scottish political leaders, a classic formula for nationalism.
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Brown pushed his Britishness desperately in order to try and suppress his own Scottish nationality and to fit in with the English British establishment. He's not alone. Despite the moaning about their accents he and Alistair Darling have significantly altered their accents towards English pronounciation. For Scots like me they both now sound half English. Brown knew in his heart that only the English are effortlessly British. Everyone else has to work at it to join the club.
So in a nutshell, despite the Scottish Labour MP's attempts to change their national identities to regional identities and their adoption of Britishness as their default identity the English in their party still see them as outsider Sweaty Socks and not fit for senior posts in the Party and Government.
In the immortal words of Nelson Muntz, Ha! Ha!
Dougthedug, what "moaning about their accents" would that be then?
If Alexander and Brown sound more English, surely that's because they've been living in England for a good part of their lives.
The reason Scottish over-representation in the Cabinet is such an issue is because of the inequities of the current devolution framework. Why try and turn it into a case of anti-Scottish racism?
“We need to have English voices speaking and giving messages that make sense in English communities.”
And here's the racism:
If the Times article is a true account of the sentiments of the Labour party then they want Scots MP's out of high profile positions simply because they are Scots. That's racism to me.
I think the really new and important point in Tom's post is the one about how young ambitious Scots will feel who see themselves as progressive and on the left. One of the pull factors of the Union for them was that they could get top British jobs: secretary to the cabinet, prime minister, chancellor. Indeed it was a striking aspect of the Union that it was open to the smaller nations and in this sense that there was a single multi-national elite open to talent and guile. Now if being Scottish is seen as becoming a liability and a disqualification from promotion in British wide politics, then won't young Labour politicians start to think that independence is the better option. After all, if there is independence there will have to be an opposition to the SNP and eventually people will want to throw them out. The natural party to replace should be Labour... once an element of the Labour machine starts to swing independence moves from being 50/50 to likely.
Gordon Brown has changed his accent to try and disguise his Scottishness.
Hasn't worked, he's still Scottish. It's no more racist to point this out than it is for northerners to complain about toffs, or Scots to complain about English-accented Tory Secretaries of State for Scotland.
Regarding Anthony's point: Under English votes on English Laws it would not be unconstitutional to have Scottish secretaries of state - with either devolved or reserved portfolios - but it would be highly illogical for Scots to hold office in areas where the concomitant matters were devolved to Scotland. Simply because they would be unable to vote on matters pertaining to their own department - potentially their own bills.
On reserved matters it is less clear cut, but a Scottish PM would be unable to vote on over half of the legislation put forward by his own government. It's a point that I made in my submission to the Democracy Task Force and, in person, to Sir George Young at the Conservative Party Conference. They disagreed, of course, but they would because they are idiots.
Tom,
The divorce is proceeding apace.
I am quite amused that English Labour MPs who have really sold out to triangulation politics - to the extent that it is now nigh on impossible for ordinary folk to see the difference between Tweedledum Cameron and Tweedledee Brown in policy terms - think that Scottishness is the issue. That, to me at least, is them grasping at straws.
It is the sycophancy of this Government to interests other than those of the people that elected them that are bringing them to their knees. Not the accent, and not the nationality either.
One of the major complaints of the right, which is now more nuanced than it used to be, is that Scotland, whilst not swinging elections, gave Labour a solid base to work on. Which was undoubtedly true.
That is likely to vanish like snow off a dyke.
I'd seriously expect the SNP to show big opinion poll gains on the back of this story.
If Labour tell us that Scots are not wanted in the highest echelons of government, as John Junor might have said, how will that play out in the streets of Auchtermuchty? I'd think it a kick in the teeth for the Union from a surprising source....
dougthedug,
I'm not terribly sure that that is true. The UDP has compromised on cross border relations to a quite remarkable degree, short of reunification, granted. I'd expect Labour to be just as malleable in the opposite direction.
If, and it's still a sizeable if, it becomes inevitable that Scotland and the UK will seperate, politicians - including labour and tory politicians - will have no option but to adapt to the new consensus. How well they do that is up to them, and to that extent, hell mend them.
Though why you think everyone is going to tick tock into the SNP, instead of Libertarian or Green or Scottish Socialist identities post independence is beyond me. What I am saying is that the SNP may well become the natural home for left of centre politics, which it currently seems to occupy with some élan. Socialism is damn near imprinted into our DNA and I doubt that that will die. So, in a future independent state, you could realistically see the SNP as the inheritors of the Labour mantle - if not, as I'd suspect you would argue with some justification, that they are not already there - and the rest of the country will do what it always did, providing an opposition.
Sometimes, oppositions win elections. You should prepare yourself for that, and perhaps rejoice in it.
The best tactic to employ with all socialist parties is to leave them alone and they'll fall apart due to personality clashes and factional infighting as happened with the SSP and Respect.
There are no libertarian parties currently in the UK and I don't see one appearing in Scottish politics anytime soon.
After Scottish indpendence the biggest difference between the parties will be in their ability to operate independently. The SNP has been doing this from day one but the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems are very much branch parties and would have to start to think on their own though both the Conservatives and the Lib-Dems have their own Scottish Branch organisations which they could re-consitute as independent Scottish parties. The Labour party in Scotland is in a much worse situation. They've always obeyed orders from Westminster and there is no Scottish Branch Party organisation to fall back on to reconstitute as a Scottish Labour Party. They would have to institute a party from the ground up.
As I said before, they would all be handicapped by any direct links to the orginal parties because they were all dead against having a Scottish State in the first place. Vote for us to run the country we didn't want.
After independence the only party which would be intact, used to thinking and making decisions on its own and the only party that wanted a Scottish State in the first place would be the SNP.
There's something sinister about nationalists complaining about people having tainted accents. What else is on the list? Dress sense? Head shape?
Dougthedug,
Yes, it is pretty obvious that the first administration post independence would be SNP. Maybe even the second. But it is also pretty obvious that there would be a need for an opposition - and I don't mean a re-unification party. Both Conservatives and Liberals would be in a position, as you rightly say through local organisation, to provide that.
Normal politics should be resumed as soon as possible after independence. I have already conceeded that I'd expect the SNP to replace Labour as the Party of the left, and from what I can see they are making a damn good job of it too. But the overarching consensus that independence is a good thing does mean that folk that are not of the centre left are also willing to vote for them. I'd include myself in that category.
You'd realistically have to expect some supporters, having met their main objective of independence, to then move on to consider just quite sort of a country they wished to live in. And that will result in a loss of members.
A healthy Scottish democracy post independence would seem to me to be almost as important as independence itself.
There are a lot of issues that will need to be addressed, including - for instance - the likely withdrawal of BAe from warshipbuilding on the Clyde, the fate of Scottish Regiments and their size and the ratio of public sector to private sector employment. We are unlikely to all agree on the correct solutions. That's politics.
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