Tom Griffin (London, OK): Could victory in the Glenrothes by-election set the seal on Gordon Brown's political comeback? Labour pollsters have told the Prime Minister that they will win on the back of his handling of the banking crisis, according to the BBC.
As the Sunday Times noted at the weekend, the credit crunch has prompted a reassessment of the viability of Scottish independence. Brown himself has not been afraid to make the argument, citing the UK bailout of HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland:
"We were able to act decisively with £37bn. That would not have been possible for a Scottish administration.
"We've seen the problems in Iceland, we've seen the problems in Ireland, we were able to put the whole strength of the United Kingdom's resources behind these two banks and I think it's important because I value the Scottish banking tradition, I think that everybody does."
Whether it is Brown's interests to preserve the Scottish banking tradition is open to question. Many now believe that the Downing Street-arranged merger of HBOS with Lloyds-TSB is unnecessary. The deal will inevitably weaken Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, and thereby, incidentally, the case for Scottish independence. One cannot help but wonder whether this was a factor in Brown's pursuit of this option.
The perception that there was no alternative to a merger was one reason why Alex Salmond initially appeared discomfited by the credit crisis, silenced by the need to negotiate with the merged entity on the future of Scottish jobs.
However, as the case for the deal has begun to unravel, the First Minister appears to have found his voice:
First Minister Alex Salmond told the SNP conference on Sunday that the £37 billion capital injection for three of Britain's biggest banks had thrown up the question of whether this funding was available to Lloyds TSB and HBOS separately.
"Before they put our money into this bail-out, we want to be sure that it is in the public interest and in the interests of jobs and decision-making in Scotland," he said.
Against the backdrop of the battle over HBOS, the Glenrothes by-election now looks finely poised. This is a fateful moment for Scotland's economy as well as it's politics.
Comments
Bought and sold for English gold. It has Darien written all over it. With the Scottish Raj at Westminster and Scottish bankers taking the role of a "parcel of rogues".
If Scotland is to become independent surely we need a bit more cultural heritage to bring to the blogosphere that one suddenly trendy attempt at colonialism and Burns. 'Sham bards of a sham nation' indeed.
Guaranteed whatever happens the English taxpayer will suffer and English jobs will be lost.
So taking the country to the brink of financial meltdown, the biggest economic collapse since the 30s and the slump of the housing market, failing to control hedge funds and destroying the status of the countrys two oldest banking institutions is the best advert for the Union Gordon Brown can come up with?
Have I missed something?
I know the English press and the Labour Party are spinning this with all their might but on the streets of Glenrothes I doubt this will wash.
"As the Sunday Times noted at the weekend, the credit crunch has prompted a reassessment of the viability of Scottish independence..."
By who? The Murdoch Press? London Labour?
Regardless of the outcome of Glenrothes or the fate of the banks the British State as was is broke, and, although he thinks otherwise, nothing Gordon Brown can do will put it back together again. There is nothing to suggest that the British State has metamorphosed into a modern European state with a strong sense of national unity around a concept of popular sovereignty that could have helped it cope with the centrifugal forces unleashed by membership of the EU and Globalisation generally.
Labour are so obviously wanting Scottish voters to be scared back into the unionist fold that it is embarrassing, and there is a greater swathe of Scottish opinion now seeing through this than there was previously. Labour’s approach has always been a combination of bribery and scare mongering.
Labour want to drag things out in the hope that Salmond will sooner or later have to step down and oil reserves will dwindle further. But Scottish politics remains volatile as does Brown's reputation.
Those who say Scottish independence is dead assume that the status quo is stable and can continue. But in both Scotland and England, for different reasons, there is dissatisfaction with the status quo, and more tinkering with the British constitution is more likely to weaken Britishness rather than strengthen it.
I don't know why everyone keeps banging on about these so-called "Scottish" banks. They are not Scottish banks, they are British! Let's get that straight. And I don't believe they have any particular loyalty or love for Scotland. Believe you me, for the right price and incentives, RBS and HBOS would turn tail and move to Bermuda, Switzerland, or any low-tax haven.
HBOS and RBS are highly leverage, very large, and very international multinational corporations. Both are no different from HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, or Citi Group. Heck, they barely advertised their "Scottishness", choosing to re-brand themselves and use acronyms.
I only feel sorry for job losses and for the loss of shareholder value (ie, pension funds, retirement vehicles, etc).
Who cares if the banks are based in Edinburgh or London. RBS and HBOS are not in the business of promoting Scottishness nor bolstering Scotland for the SNP's wet dream of partition. Nor should it be the government's place to guarantee the Scottishness of these banks or any corporation for that matter.
Their is no news here the correspondent is in London and he is reporting news other people have written or broadcast.
Lazy journalism. Why not get up here and actually report from the ground? You may find your view is not widely held.
The argument that the over-leverage of banks based in Scotland undermines the case for Scottish Independence is really rather disingeneous: on the one hand, the banks were operating in a UK context, and therefore took risks based on that context, on the other hand, had Scotland been independent, it would have a central bank and would be able to "print money", that is sell debt (bonds) so long as the markets would buy them, in order to help the HBOS and the RBS. Had they been operating in the context of an independent Scotland, they would also have probably assessed their risks differently. (See comments in the FT about the difficulties which Belgium and Finland among other small states currently have in selling their public debt). There is no reason to suppose that Scotland based on its resources would not be able to raise public finance if needed in similar circumstances. This development has not made the case for Scottish independence any weaker. It simply makes the establishment of new independent Scottish-based banks following Independence more likely.
Comparisons with Iceland, or for that matter, Switzerland, or various island tax havens off-shore of England, are no more pertinent to resource-rich Scotland, than to show that it has potential as a financial centre.
As to whether Brown decided to, metaphorically, pocket Scotland's contemporary crown jewels ... the temptation was (apparently) irresistable.
It is really cynical to think that the only reason Brown is supposedly forcing the merger of HBOS and Lloyds and bailing out RBS is to thwart the partition of the UK. If he wanted to prevent partition, he would just let them collapse and then say "See Scotland, you can't survive on your own!"
The real reason for the bailout is to prevent a national and international catastrophe. HBOS is the largest mortgage broker in the UK and I believe RBS is the second-largest bank after HSBC.
Had Brown and Darling sat on their hands and did nothing would have been irresponsible. Sometimes there are companies that are just to big to fail. In this case, RBS and HBOS.
It was the right thing to do. I know Brown isn't very popular, but lets have some respect and give the man credit.
It is really cynical to think that the only reason Brown is supposedly forcing the merger of HBOS and Lloyds and bailing out RBS is to thwart the partition of the UK. If he wanted to prevent partition, he would just let them collapse and then say "See Scotland, you can't survive on your own!"
The real reason for the bailout is to prevent a national and international catastrophe.
Of course the only responsible course was to provide support. The initial response was also to minimise state involvement, in line with government thinking, by getting Lloyds shareholders to carry the can.
Nonetheless, at the point at which the government gave its blessing to the takeover of HBOS, Brown did not apparently feel able to offer national support alone to a Scottish-based bank. When an offer was made to RBS he had already been overtaken by events. In neither case would he have felt it politically opportune to "make a special case" to support Scottish institutions, given the apparent tide of English opinion. One can surmise that this development has not been to his disadvantage, although not of his own making. That is not cynical, just a judgement of the current political situation and politicians.
London pollsters? Have they actually done a poll in Glenrothes? I don't think so.
I campaign in Glenrothes every weekend and have done for the past month, there is no Labour bounce from Brown's credit crunch leadership there! People are even coming round to realising that this is was his own creation (due to poor UK regulation of financial services, and using our tax money to nationalise banks).
Voters in Glenrothes are reeling from high fuel and food prices more than who owns the Bank!
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