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Scottish Social Attitudes survey shows substantial majority for keeping the UK link

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The 2013 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey – they call it ‘the half-time score’ -  interviewed a probability sample of 1,497 adults, face to face, between 25th June and 23rd October 2013.

An immediate difficulty with this – using the correct but currently rather  sensitive word – is it’s currency.

Sampling concluded in October 2013 seems  – and is – already like pre-history.

At that time, the sample participants were asked which of the following scenarios best described their preferences:

  • The Scottish Parliament should make all the decisions for Scotland.
  • The UK government should make decisions about defence and foreign affairs; the Scottish  Parliament should decide everything else.
  • The UK government should make decisions about taxes, benefits and defence and foreign affairs; the Scottish Parliament should decide the rest.
  • The UK government should make all decisions for Scotland.

The thinking in this survey was to try to avoid autopilot responses by not using words like ‘independence’ or devolution’ but to invite people to consider what range of responsibilities they thought the Scottish Parliament should have.

What it found way back in October 2013 was 31% for full-on independence [the first option above].

Beyond this, there was fairly widespread interest in greater local delivery of elements of governance. This is very much in line with the view of the country in 2011, when it gave the SNP the majority government the voting system was designed to make unachievable.

A marginally greater percentage – at 32% – favoured option two, where the United Kingdom would be responsible for Scotland’s defence and foreign affairs, with the Scottish Parliament responsible for pretty well everything else.

Interestingly, given the openness of the question, this 32% could be interpreted as favouring the obvious devo max – or might be persuaded to support a scenario like that of the Isle of Man – becoming a Crown Dependency, which also fits this option.

With option 3 not much behind either of these two preferences, 25% of those surveyed opted for what was expressed as a marginally greater level of dependence than the current devolved position: where the UK would look after defence, foreign affairs, taxation and benefits, with the Scottish Parliament responsible for everything else.

The difference between this option and the current arrangement is that at the moment, whether it uses all of them or not, the Scottish Government does have some powers in shaping its tax regime and its borrowing.

8% opted for putting the UK back in full charge of Scotland and 3% didn’t know what they wanted.

The overall finding is that, by a margin of 65% to 31%, the sample wished to retain a link with the United Kingdom.

But that was up to 23rd October 2013. When was that?.

The currency of this survey is a real issue in what is an increasingly fast moving situation.

Last week Indy stopped being a game and became a suddenly hard reality.

Cards on the table

The preface for the shock was the earlier visit to Scotland of the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.

Until then, we had become accustomed to the inflationary language of Alex Salmond, where everything about Scotland now and in the future is ‘world class’ – whatever that means; and of Alistair Darling, where every setback to the pro independence campaign is ‘damning’ or ‘devastating’.

Mark Carney rocked up to Edinburgh with an intellect and a mode of expression as sleek and uncluttered as his slim cut overcoat. In utterly uninflammatory and unemotive language and style and with compressed economy, he simply laid out the difficulties and the costs involved for both sides of a currency union. His coolly technocratic perspective was a wake up call, giving no offence and accepted without challenge, making it clear that the Bank of England, as a state institution, would implement whatever it was instructed to do.

Last Wednesday, 12th February, UK Chancellor George Osborne, supported by his political competitors, Labour’s Ed Balls and the Liberal Democrat’s Danny Alexander, brought this picture into focus. They explained why the currency union would not work and was against the major interest of the UK and of Scotland.They went on to make it clear that this therefore could not and would not be an option offered by the UK, should Scotland choose independence, regardless of which political party or parties were in power during negotiations.

This was immediately greeted by a dog whistle charge of ‘bullying, bluster and bluff’, serially parrotted that night by Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, in London to make a speech and scooped up into tours of the television stations.

The First Minister immediately went to ground but when he emerged he took this line too and developed it rather shrilly yesterday, 17th February, in a televised speech to businesses supporting independence. Mr Salmond made the mistake of ramping up the occasion by reverting to his bullish earlier assertion that Scotland would accept no debt if it could not have a share of ‘the assets’.

The FM seems to be wilfully deaf to the clarifications of international lawyers who have differentiated between the dispositions of institutions of state, assets and liabilities, in the event of the secession of part of a nation state.

The institutions of state stay with the continuator state, in this case the United Kingdom. The Bank of England is an institution of state, serving those who are currently members of that state. It is not an asset to be shared or divided.

The actual assets and liabilities are divided up between the continuator state and the new state. Some distributions are pragmatic, with many assets – like buildings and perhaps defence establishments if not their equipment, going to the state where they are located. Other assets, as appropriate [like the North Sea, with its oil and gas reserves], might be divided on geographic principles; with liabilities shared out fairly on a population percentage basis.

By ignoring the distinction between intrinsic institutions of state and state assets and liabilities, Mr Salmond looks like an ostrich. By aggressively threatening to accept none of the national debt if he doesn’t get the pound, he not only seems astray of the issue but looks petulant and irresponsible. This juvenilises Scotland.

When Ireland became independent it kept the pound and pegged the Irish pound, or punt, to sterling, which Scotland is free to do with a Scottish pound without let or hindrance from anyone. This situation was a major advantage to Ireland for many years and if anything, a minor advantage to the UK, because the pound sterling was acceptable anywhere in the British Isles; while the Irish punt was not accepted on the British mainland.

Research has shown that when, in 1979, Ireland took the Irish punt out of parity with sterling and let it float, it made little difference to its trading position and performance.

In those more innocent days, though, before the collapse of the financial institutions in 2008, there was little reason for today’s awareness of the reassurance to investors and depositors in having a lender of last resort.

The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey and the endgame

With these events of the past few weeks having made people more widely aware of the realities, it is likely that the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey questions administered now would return a different picture – and will continue to do so. The direction of those  changes will fluctuate but is likely to stabilise in a couple of months.

As Ms Sturgeon and Mr Salmond assert – and are manifestly encouraging by their rhetoric of victim Scotland – there may be an initial backlash against uncomfortable clarifications, with some opting in reaction for an independence they had not previously decided to back.

However, if and when that happens, it is likely to be a temporary phenomenon.

The immediate urge to entrench comes from the shock of clarity, of the first unequivocal laying out of positions and of the first mercilessly objective scrutiny of the proposals in the SNP’s independence prospectus.

With the referendum now only months away, this is endgame – for real.

We can expect that the other key arguments and positions of the SNP prospectus will, from now on, be subject to the same level of expert interrogation as the currency union notion has just received.

For Argyll has continually pointed to the multiple inabilities of this prospectus and in some instances – such as its serial giveaways on spending plans alongside its failure to show how this increased spending would be paid for – to what can be described either as its incompetence or its deceptions.

Independence is permanent and for all seasons, not a romp in the park on a summer day before coming home as winter sets in. Therefore the most serious scrutiny must be brought to bear on the Indy propositions – and many of them will inevitably be shown to be unable.

Those who may be driven to the bunkers today are likely to have a series of coolly rational reality checks to contemplate. The probability is that an increasing realisation of the volume of what is unthought, of what is unsound, and of what is impossible in the prospectus – with a growing awareness of the impact such propositions would have on the business of living and working becoming clearer by the day – will see any immediate backlash returning to a more evidentially based position.

This does not mean that the current positions may change radically. The likelihood is that they will finally settle back into the sort of picture this survey presents.

This also does not mean that every claimed deficiency in the position of an independent Scotland should automatically be accepted as valid. It means that individuals will need to work to understand the issues independently and to make up their own minds; to listen to and consider what anyone says but to accept nothing without putting it to stern tests.

One example of a dodgy scenario came yesterday, 17th February.

The Energy Secretary, Ed Davey – a self-regarding under performer with a dangerously slack intellect, has just seen fit to call those who question the actuality of climate change ‘diabolical’, effectively casting intelligent argument and the application of evidence as the work of the devil.

This space cadet yesterday announced that an independent Scotland would need the UK ‘to keep the lights on’.

While his point is correct that the Scottish Government’s plan to have Scotland supply 100% of it energy needs from renewable sources is unable – because virtually all of such sources are intermittent, leaving no reliable delivery of baseload requirements, he was in no position to wag a finger.

Had this present winter been remarkably cold instead of remarkably wet and windy, it was known and admitted that the UK would have suffered ‘brownouts’ – power cuts through power supply failure or power supply rationing in situation’s where demand cannot be met.

That winter will come; and will come before the UK energy supply is in a position to respond to such energy needs, and indeed to needs of a lesser degree than those in such an extreme case.

The Scottish Government may have been naive or over-political in evangelising for its energy strategy; but the UK has been guilty of a failure to plan ahead, to commission new nuclear power stations in good time, as the only currently available source of energy capable of delivering baseload.

The less we hear from the implausible side-shows like Ed Davey the better. Frankly, too, the less we hear from the empty rhetoricians like Salmond/Sturgeon and Darling, the better the discourse we have a chance of having in getting groundedly to the gravest decision of our lifetimes.

Note: Here is the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey report to date.


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