The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Reality check on 'the new reality'

 

Reality check on the ‘new reality’: Scottish politics after the referendum

 

The reaction by Yes campaigners to the defeat we experienced in the referendum has genuinely taken me by surprise. There is an old saying that ‘victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan’. I woke up that awful Friday morning on the 19^th definitely feeling like an orphan. Before discussing the result with anyone I had taken down the window poster, removed the car sticker and started to think of a life beyond the yes campaign.  

I had anticipated that others would experience a similar reaction to this historic defeat and would be planning their gradual retreat from political hyperactivity into a period of quiet cynicism and eventual disengagement. However, for the time being, the opposite is occurring. It seems that the Yessers are not quite ready to give up. The SNP’s membership has doubled to quite spectacular figures. The Greens and the SSP are also reporting thousands of new recruits into their ranks. Social media is buzzing with articles, papers, strategies, boycotts, meetings and planned gatherings.  In addition to this, local yes groups, so I am told, continue to meet. The Common Weal project has produced an entire raft of interesting ideas. RIC is in a flurry of excitement – reporting high attendance at branch meetings and a November conference which is apparently so big that it might be impossible to find a suitable venue to house everyone.  

Some are arguing that we can have another referendum in six years’ time. Robin McAlpine has already provided a detailed strategy on how we arrive at another date with destiny. Only this time, we win. Meanwhile, a proposal is underway for a Yes Alliance in 2015 to ‘wipe out’ the ‘unionists’ once and for all – no easy task mind you, given that the ‘unionists’ are over 2 million strong and won a majority of support in 28 out of 32 local authorities.

It seems the movement is on high alert, what military commanders call ‘war footing’. How close this is to reality I don’t know - even as I write this, I’m aware that too much time spent on Blogs distorts one’s view of reality.

My own view is that we need to stand still for a moment. Scotland is fast emerging into a new political reality with the sands constantly shifting. We know that the yes campaign, without doubt the most progressive campaign in living Scottish memory, has changed the political face of modern Scotland. Yet, it’s too early to judge the lasting extent of these changes, and any conclusions based alone on what yes campaigners say should be treated with caution.

I am also concerned that the hyperbole of the past few weeks cannot, indeed, will not be sustained and that despite the current buzz, the political, social, economic and psychological effects of this defeat could last a generation. Barely a week after ‘winning’ the British establishment is embroiled in another war in Iraq, in the same week that those on benefits are told that their benefits are to be frozen for two years. Meanwhile, devolution max remains as uncertain and messy as ever. The ‘vow’ looks likely to be a broken one, but then again reaching a quick solution on such a complex array of issues was always problematic. And now that Cameron has opened up the question of English votes on English laws, Britain could be discussing constitutional processes for a very long time.

The nature of yes is also problematic. Hitherto, I have described it as a campaign as opposed to a movement. A movement certainly exists within yes, but its size is probably smaller than many make out. The movement is not the 45% of Scots who voted yes. The Scots faced a binary choice, and one that a majority didn’t want to make – we know that ‘devo max’ or ‘fiscal autonomy’ is the preferred option of the Scottish people. The 85% turnout is more than impressive, especially from those alienated from traditional politics. But again,  a note of caution. This was a referendum of historical proportions, and there is no guarantee that people will continue to stay involved in the political process. In fact, defeat could make some even more cynical.

The biggest component part of yes is the SNP, who delivered this historic moment which has transformed our political landscape. For this we owe them a great deal of gratitude. Yet, despite delivering the referendum there was always a number of problems with the SNP. The first one is obvious, namely that the SNP won power which enabled them to deliver a referendum but a vote for the SNP was a protest vote and not a vote for independence per se. The SNP is used by conservative (small C voters) in rural areas to punish the Tories and Lib Dems, and in the central belt they are seen by many as the best way to punish Labour. The SNP has played this game of political chess well, but in so doing they lost sight of the scale of the pre-figurative work that is necessary to win the masses to independence. This counter-hegemonic project, to use a Gramscian term, is unlikely to succeed in a two year campaign, although we came pretty close.

The lack of pre-figurative work, was demonstrated by the fact that certain SNP policies were never popular, even amongst campaigners, most notably the currency union which was a constant headache. If there is one policy that cost us votes it was this one. Jim Sillars, ‘nonsense of stilts’ – perhaps the most memorable one-liner of the campaign, and one that helped our opponents and for that reason was probably best kept private, nonetheless summed up the mess. Too be fair it was the best of a bad option. I firmly believe and did so throughout the campaign that a country that is not confident enough to have its own currency is a country not ready for, or wanting independence.  

Other policies were also problematic, for example, their insistence on cutting corporation tax, their lack of clarity on the future of local government and their refusal to engage critically with the nature of Scotland’s relationship to the EU, which looked at times as if they wanted to substitute one democratic deficit for another. I’m not saying that Scotland should leave the EU, but perhaps a list of alternative options could have been provided. Moreover, the constant desire for ‘positivity’ a term I dislike, a tactic inspired from the SNPs 2011 General Election campaign, might with hindsight have been a mistake. I would have liked to have seen more substance mixed in with a more bellicose style – one of the leaflets I handed out actually looked like a travel brochure, whilst their newspapers were an exercise in banality. In the final analysis fear won over hope and perhaps we should have had our own project fear. This is a serious point. It was only towards the end of the campaign, when we played our own fear cards, the biggest being NHS privatisation, that we started to shift the polls in our direction.

The post referendum SNP is going to be an interesting beast to observe and it is this beast which is going to determine the direction of the independence movement in the years ahead. The cynic in me thinks that those 70,000 or so who have joined in recent weeks and are expecting to turn the SNP into a social movement or a quick vehicle to deliver another referendum will soon be disappointed. I suspect that they will discover that the SNP is a top down machine with a professional bureaucracy that has to reach out to broader constituency for its own survival. Nicola Sturgeon has already stated that she will be First Minister for all of Scotland and not just the 45%. This strategy is not about winning the 55% to independence but reassuring them that for the time being, and it could be a long time that the SNP parks the national question. Senior figures in the party are already arguing that it would be ‘crazy’ to go into the 2016 election promising another referendum.

In this context, the idea of a Scottish wide Yes Alliance in 2015 is highly unlikely. For starters, those outside the beast, despite the hype, are not in a strong enough position to demand it. Furthermore, my guess is that any hint of anything involving the word ‘yes’ will undermine the SNP’s strategy of ‘reaching out’ (Sturgeon’s words) to the 55%.  

In addition to this, a ‘Yes Alliance’ is fraught with difficulties because the SNP runs the Scottish Government, which in turn controls local government. This means that the SNP will inevitably become embroiled in the messy business of managing austerity which in time will allow their left critics to characterise them as ‘neo-liberal’. Too be fair to the SNP they are in a difficult position. As we said repeatedly throughout the campaign, they are in office not in power and the democracy (or lack of!) argument was the beating heart of the campaign. But there is no easy way out of the trap. The idea of demanding that local authorities set ‘needs budgets’, in effect illegal budgets, is misplaced adventurism; easy slogans to make when standing on the side-lines but simply put, it is not going to happen; besides there is no real demand from communities for such a strategy – witness the poor council election results for those anti-cuts campaigners who advocated such a position.

The SNP could ‘educate’ their constituents on the nature of the democratic deficit and link this to independence. In this scenario, every single councillor could issue a statement saying that they are voting through cuts under duress. But again this is an unlikely scenario. Instead what we are likely to get is a managerial response from SNP politicians about ‘competent governance’ and ‘tough decisions’. I already know of some SNP councils who are discussing ‘buildings rationalisation programmes’, e.g. someone somewhere in a council bureaucracy near you has a list which includes on it the potential closure of your library, your community centre, your leisure centre or any other public building that could be axed.  

How we take forward radical politics in a practical way in the new reality is going to be a challenge.

The yes campaign constructed a narrative that the British state was incapable of reform. In this simplistic narrative, everything we disliked could be blamed on Westminster. Now in the post referendum reality, there is a real danger that this narrative could lead us down a blind path to the fatalistic conclusion that no progress can be made without independence. This is a nationalist dead end.

The reason, I believe, why the yes vote was impressive was not because of any set of specific policies - in fact, the policies as previously noted were problematic. The reason why almost half of the Scotland voted yes was that the campaign sparked, especially amongst the poor, a radical imagination, that ‘another Scotland is possible’, even a marginally better one.

Yet, even had we won the extent to which a small country like Scotland could reverse three decades of neo-liberalism, whilst continuing to swim in a neo-liberal sea, was always a difficult proposition to make. The Nordic examples we looked too for inspiration all started from a strong social democratic base which is being constantly challenged by neo-liberalism. The idea that we could start from a neo-liberal base and work our way towards some form of social democracy, never mind socialism, always looked like a mountain that was too big to climb. In reality, what the SNP was offering was a different version of neo-liberalism from that served up by Westminster. I have heard this described in the book ‘The SNP From Protest to Power’ as ‘neo-liberalism with a heart’. It was a variation on a theme or in the words of Ralph Miliband describing another context, a ‘tactical difference within a strategic consensus’. It is in this context that we need to frame the SNPs position on the currency union, their insistence that the Scottish economy would be dominated by the Bank of England, the position on the EU, NATO and the reduction of corporation tax. I still think it was the more progressive option, principally because it opened the door to other possibilities, but we need to remember that on the fundamental issues of the day we were arguing about more about emphasis than we were substance.  

I want to end with some thoughts on the future of the left outside of the SNP. This referendum has been good for the radical left, which appears to have finally turned a corner. Where it goes next will be interesting. We also know who the real enemy is in Scotland; Labour. As I have written before the Scottish Labour Party is a vehicle for keeping the poor, and the poorly educated sections of the working class in line. A cursory glance at the yes vote reveals that it was those with the least stakes in the neo-liberal system who voted yes. But the left needs to talk to a broader constituency than just the poor. And it needs to talk that talk in a new language which acknowledges the diversity of modern Scotland.

What form this takes I’m not sure. Common Weal sounds interesting, although slightly manic, but I do like the idea of a ‘think and do tank’ and reading between the lines the narrative has shifted beyond the stale binary socialist versus capitalist narrative, and the obsession with the word ‘class’ that has dominated radical left politics for too long.

RIC may also hold the key to a new left. But if, as I believe, that the independence moment is parked, then RIC will require not just a re-branding but equally a rethinking about its core purpose. I have heard some in the RIC movement say that we need to ‘reach out’ to the poorest communities who voted yes. Okay, ‘reach out’, but what exactly are you offering them? If it’s a wish list of radical left fantasies then I pretty much guarantee you now that this will lead to nowhere.

For me, the real task is to try and increase the number of lefts in the Scottish Parliament in 2016 and this requires serious thought about organisational issues. There are a number of possibilities out there – a Podemos model sounds interesting; but we need to avoid getting too carried away with the politics of what has been described as movementism. This is a politics big on opposition but lacking in influence and all too easily it descends into a life style politics that is exclusive to people who cannot devote their entire lives to politics i.e. most ‘normal’ people. Furthermore, it is quite often based on simplistic analyses and lazy slogans and quickly fizzles out leaving the activists only talking to one another. Despite its claims to be democratic the politics of movementism also contains within its own narrative what Gerry Hassan has referred to as a ‘soft vanguardism’ a point that should be carefully thought over, especially as some will inevitably position themselves for a political career. Nothing wrong in that, but they need to be accountable. I don’t see the point of creating a new party either and I don’t think the existing parties will want that either. If you are a socialist, or consider yourself too left for the SNP, then you ought to join the SSP or the Greens, although an electoral alliance or electoral pact might be worth exploring.

In conclusion, I’m still not sure if we are at the end of something or the beginning of something. I hope it’s the latter. Describing the fall of Communism, the philosopher Claus Offe in a clever, and very post-modern comment, remarked that we had entered a ‘tunnel at the end of the light’. If the light was socialism then we are still crawling around in that tunnel and who knows it might be an endless one, certainly endless in terms of our own life spans. I can live with that. The age of big bang ideological politics is over. This does not mean that change cannot happen only that radical change will need to be thought out in realistic terms. I apologies for ending with an acronym from the lexicon of managerialism but we need change that is SMART, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and targeted. The referendum contained each of these ingredients and significant sections of our country men and women demanded change.

We need to respond; if we can find the right vehicles, adopt the correct strategies, and develop real policies that can be fought for in the here and now then we can keep the Scottish radical imagination alive.

 

Gary Fraser