Kenneth Roy
Paxman now reserves
the right to address a guest
as ‘Mr Idiot’
The Cafe
Bone and Black
Eileen Reid
A radical cure for
the partisan blight
on Scotland
John Cameron
Why so few volunteers?
David Torrance
The second question
in the referendum
is the vital one
The Cafe
A remedy for our lack of sunshine
Barbara Millar
The woman with three
months to live was told
to move to the corridor
Rear Window
A rebellious teacher
Islay McLeod
Memories
of summer:
a photo-essay
Friends of SR
We need your help
06.10.11
No. 461
The Cafe 2
One problem which has been highlighted by Murdo Fraser’s opponents in the campaign for Conservative leader is that even if he won it would take a two-thirds majority to wind up the party and that might not be forthcoming.
However I believe the Conservative’s opponents have long ago answered that. The Co-operative Party is both part of the Labour movement and a legally separate organisation but the distinction on the ground effectively non-existent. This may seem an historical anachronism though occasionally they have threatened to make use of it, in a less than ethical way, by renaming Labour regional list candidates.
Indeed, at least in the short term, it would be then be easier to attract groups such as UKIP to form a ‘big tent’ organisation of people who think market freedom is more effective than windmillery and the ‘socialism’ Labour, the SNP and Greens are officially committed to (the LibDems being merely committed to the weird doctrine that economic liberalism is officially ‘illiberal’).
With five elected parties in Scotland there must be a niche for one that understands Adam Smith.
Sir John Cowperthwaite, as governor, understood enough to bring Hong Kong from poorer than Gaza to richer than Britain and I do not believe that tradition is entirely gone or suitable only for export.
Neil Craig
Judith Jaafar (
5 October)
If so, radically improved national health is within our grasp, for everyone can substitute UVB tubes in their fluorescent fittings.
Better still, let’s manufacture attractive ‘nutritional lighting’ here in Scotland to address this malaise in style. So many problems today seem intractable and we’ve no control over the weather, but if sitting under a reptile lamp keeps me healthy, I’m all for it!
Chris Attkins
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Ponies on Islay
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The second question
in the referendum
is the vital one
David Torrance
I thought it might be fun to apply Marxist analysis to the Scottish Conservative leadership contest (please bear with me). ‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,’ wrote Karl Marx in his critique of Napoleon III. He continued:
‘And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.’
Thus we have Murdo Fraser referencing the once mighty ‘Scottish Unionist Party’ in defence of his plans to reconstitute the present Scottish Conservative Party and start anew; similarly, Lord Forsyth claimed Ruth Davidson had, like Margaret Thatcher, ‘the balls to take on one of the hardest tasks in public life’. Jackson Carlaw, meanwhile, paraphrased the Iron Lady to attack Murdo’s plan for a new party: ‘You disband if you want to, the party’s not for disbanding’.
So just how do the two men and two women in this refreshingly gender-balanced contest propose to combat the onward march of nationalism and reverse an historical decline in Scottish Tory fortunes?
Murdo Fraser has been the most honest in his leadership pitch, telling Scottish Tory members they have to ‘get real’ about their electoral situation if they are to stand any chance of a recovery. In fact, a weakness of his campaign might be that this message is a bit too realistic and a bit too blunt. Instead of accentuating the positive and delineating the negative, Fraser has dwelled on a gloomy analysis of the status quo.
The trouble is your average Scottish Tory – as in 1997 – simply doesn’t want to hear this sort of defeatist talk. He or she is proud to be a Conservative, and perversely becomes prouder the worse the party performs. It’s almost a siege mentality, and talk to the contrary doesn’t go down at all well. I remember watching Francis Maude being similarly honest at the 2005 UK Conservative conference in Liverpool and he was greeted with lukewarm applause.
Still, at least Fraser has offered an analysis, negative or otherwise. Ruth Davidson’s pitch basically boils down to being a ‘fresh face’ and trying a bit harder at the next election; Jackson Carlaw’s campaign slogan simply asserts that he is ‘experienced, assured, unionist’; while late entrant Margaret Mitchell cries ‘no surrender’ as if oblivious to fundamental shifts in Scottish political terrain.
It seems clear that by the end of this parliament Scotland will either have voted ‘yes’ to independence or ‘yes’ to fiscal autonomy, or fiscal responsibility – call it what you will.
Which brings me neatly onto the constitutional question. For good or ill, Scotland’s future relationship with the rest of the UK will be the defining issue over the next four or five years. Again, Fraser has something to say on this, hinting at full(er) financial devolution and a more federal relationship with the other three home nations of the United Kingdom. This, presumably, would free up his new centre-right party to back some form of fiscal autonomy should it be offered in a second question in the forthcoming referendum.
Yet on this fundamental point, the other three candidates are, well, conservative. Carlaw proposes an as yet unexplained UK act of constitutional settlement to handle future devolution of power (he at least concedes that might happen); Davidson says the current Scotland Bill ought to be a ‘line in the sand’; and Mitchell balks at even that, believing (not unreasonably, to be fair) that Holyrood ought to make full use of the powers it already has before asking for more.
Now, Davidson, Carlaw and Mitchell might be making a sensible pitch as far as winning over the party faithful is concerned, but in terms of repositioning the party ahead of the constitutional curve (it was last pointing in the right direction in 1975) all bar Fraser’s suggestion are non-starters.
As Shakespeare nearly wrote in Hamlet, ‘more relative than this, the second question’s the thing’. Therein lies the secret of how to catch the conscience of king Salmond and, indeed, the SNP. It seems clear that by the end of this parliament Scotland will either have voted ‘yes’ to independence or ‘yes’ to fiscal autonomy or fiscal responsibility – call it what you will. Given that, any sensible Conservative ought to embrace fiscal autonomy, develop a positive case for it (indeed, a Conservative case) and go into that referendum in 2015 or even 2016 actually arguing for something rather than against two propositions.
I would go further than that: every ‘unionist’ party ought to do the same, and put real pressure on the first minister to ensure they have some role in drafting that second question. Not only is it right in practice – what possible argument is there against Scotland raising most, if not all, the money it spends? – but tactically it might make life difficult for the SNP. If there’s a groundswell behind the ‘middle way’, so to speak, and consequently the ‘independence’ option is roundly defeated, I wouldn’t envy Alex Salmond having to explain to his party why he’d thrown away the best chance in a generation to win full sovereignty for Scotland.
The point is this. Back in 1997 the Conservatives went into the devolution referendum advocating a double ‘no’ vote. History, if three out of four candidates for the Tory leadership have their way, will repeat itself in four or five years’ time, and once again in clear defiance of majority public opinion. Back in 1997 the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people was for a Scottish Parliament with tax-raising powers; today it is for a Scottish Parliament with as much autonomy as possible within the United Kingdom.
In politics, after all, it’s winning that counts; doing the right thing will always come a close – but ideally closely related – second. Someone once remarked, I think it might have been Arthur Balfour, that history doesn’t repeat itself, historians merely repeat one another. On 4 November we’ll find out whose analysis, Balfour’s or Marx’s, was closest to the mark.
David Torrance is a writer, broadcaster and political historian. He is the author of biographies of George Younger and Alex Salmond
in the referendum
is the vital one
The Cafe
A remedy for our lack of sunshine
Barbara Millar
The woman with three
months to live was told
to move to the corridor
Rear Window
A rebellious teacher
Islay McLeod
Memories
of summer:
a photo-essay
Friends of SR
We need your help
06.10.11
No. 461
The Cafe 2
One problem which has been highlighted by Murdo Fraser’s opponents in the campaign for Conservative leader is that even if he won it would take a two-thirds majority to wind up the party and that might not be forthcoming.
However I believe the Conservative’s opponents have long ago answered that. The Co-operative Party is both part of the Labour movement and a legally separate organisation but the distinction on the ground effectively non-existent. This may seem an historical anachronism though occasionally they have threatened to make use of it, in a less than ethical way, by renaming Labour regional list candidates.
Indeed, at least in the short term, it would be then be easier to attract groups such as UKIP to form a ‘big tent’ organisation of people who think market freedom is more effective than windmillery and the ‘socialism’ Labour, the SNP and Greens are officially committed to (the LibDems being merely committed to the weird doctrine that economic liberalism is officially ‘illiberal’).
With five elected parties in Scotland there must be a niche for one that understands Adam Smith.
Sir John Cowperthwaite, as governor, understood enough to bring Hong Kong from poorer than Gaza to richer than Britain and I do not believe that tradition is entirely gone or suitable only for export.
Neil Craig
Judith Jaafar (
5 October)
If so, radically improved national health is within our grasp, for everyone can substitute UVB tubes in their fluorescent fittings.
Better still, let’s manufacture attractive ‘nutritional lighting’ here in Scotland to address this malaise in style. So many problems today seem intractable and we’ve no control over the weather, but if sitting under a reptile lamp keeps me healthy, I’m all for it!
Chris Attkins
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Ponies on Islay
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The second question
in the referendum
is the vital one
David Torrance
I thought it might be fun to apply Marxist analysis to the Scottish Conservative leadership contest (please bear with me). ‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,’ wrote Karl Marx in his critique of Napoleon III. He continued:
‘And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.’
Thus we have Murdo Fraser referencing the once mighty ‘Scottish Unionist Party’ in defence of his plans to reconstitute the present Scottish Conservative Party and start anew; similarly, Lord Forsyth claimed Ruth Davidson had, like Margaret Thatcher, ‘the balls to take on one of the hardest tasks in public life’. Jackson Carlaw, meanwhile, paraphrased the Iron Lady to attack Murdo’s plan for a new party: ‘You disband if you want to, the party’s not for disbanding’.
So just how do the two men and two women in this refreshingly gender-balanced contest propose to combat the onward march of nationalism and reverse an historical decline in Scottish Tory fortunes?
Murdo Fraser has been the most honest in his leadership pitch, telling Scottish Tory members they have to ‘get real’ about their electoral situation if they are to stand any chance of a recovery. In fact, a weakness of his campaign might be that this message is a bit too realistic and a bit too blunt. Instead of accentuating the positive and delineating the negative, Fraser has dwelled on a gloomy analysis of the status quo.
The trouble is your average Scottish Tory – as in 1997 – simply doesn’t want to hear this sort of defeatist talk. He or she is proud to be a Conservative, and perversely becomes prouder the worse the party performs. It’s almost a siege mentality, and talk to the contrary doesn’t go down at all well. I remember watching Francis Maude being similarly honest at the 2005 UK Conservative conference in Liverpool and he was greeted with lukewarm applause.
Still, at least Fraser has offered an analysis, negative or otherwise. Ruth Davidson’s pitch basically boils down to being a ‘fresh face’ and trying a bit harder at the next election; Jackson Carlaw’s campaign slogan simply asserts that he is ‘experienced, assured, unionist’; while late entrant Margaret Mitchell cries ‘no surrender’ as if oblivious to fundamental shifts in Scottish political terrain.
It seems clear that by the end of this parliament Scotland will either have voted ‘yes’ to independence or ‘yes’ to fiscal autonomy, or fiscal responsibility – call it what you will.
Which brings me neatly onto the constitutional question. For good or ill, Scotland’s future relationship with the rest of the UK will be the defining issue over the next four or five years. Again, Fraser has something to say on this, hinting at full(er) financial devolution and a more federal relationship with the other three home nations of the United Kingdom. This, presumably, would free up his new centre-right party to back some form of fiscal autonomy should it be offered in a second question in the forthcoming referendum.
Yet on this fundamental point, the other three candidates are, well, conservative. Carlaw proposes an as yet unexplained UK act of constitutional settlement to handle future devolution of power (he at least concedes that might happen); Davidson says the current Scotland Bill ought to be a ‘line in the sand’; and Mitchell balks at even that, believing (not unreasonably, to be fair) that Holyrood ought to make full use of the powers it already has before asking for more.
Now, Davidson, Carlaw and Mitchell might be making a sensible pitch as far as winning over the party faithful is concerned, but in terms of repositioning the party ahead of the constitutional curve (it was last pointing in the right direction in 1975) all bar Fraser’s suggestion are non-starters.
As Shakespeare nearly wrote in Hamlet, ‘more relative than this, the second question’s the thing’. Therein lies the secret of how to catch the conscience of king Salmond and, indeed, the SNP. It seems clear that by the end of this parliament Scotland will either have voted ‘yes’ to independence or ‘yes’ to fiscal autonomy or fiscal responsibility – call it what you will. Given that, any sensible Conservative ought to embrace fiscal autonomy, develop a positive case for it (indeed, a Conservative case) and go into that referendum in 2015 or even 2016 actually arguing for something rather than against two propositions.
I would go further than that: every ‘unionist’ party ought to do the same, and put real pressure on the first minister to ensure they have some role in drafting that second question. Not only is it right in practice – what possible argument is there against Scotland raising most, if not all, the money it spends? – but tactically it might make life difficult for the SNP. If there’s a groundswell behind the ‘middle way’, so to speak, and consequently the ‘independence’ option is roundly defeated, I wouldn’t envy Alex Salmond having to explain to his party why he’d thrown away the best chance in a generation to win full sovereignty for Scotland.
The point is this. Back in 1997 the Conservatives went into the devolution referendum advocating a double ‘no’ vote. History, if three out of four candidates for the Tory leadership have their way, will repeat itself in four or five years’ time, and once again in clear defiance of majority public opinion. Back in 1997 the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people was for a Scottish Parliament with tax-raising powers; today it is for a Scottish Parliament with as much autonomy as possible within the United Kingdom.
In politics, after all, it’s winning that counts; doing the right thing will always come a close – but ideally closely related – second. Someone once remarked, I think it might have been Arthur Balfour, that history doesn’t repeat itself, historians merely repeat one another. On 4 November we’ll find out whose analysis, Balfour’s or Marx’s, was closest to the mark.
David Torrance is a writer, broadcaster and political historian. He is the author of biographies of George Younger and Alex Salmond
06.10.11
No. 461
The Cafe 2However I believe the Conservative’s opponents have long ago answered that. The Co-operative Party is both part of the Labour movement and a legally separate organisation but the distinction on the ground effectively non-existent. This may seem an historical anachronism though occasionally they have threatened to make use of it, in a less than ethical way, by renaming Labour regional list candidates.
Indeed, at least in the short term, it would be then be easier to attract groups such as UKIP to form a ‘big tent’ organisation of people who think market freedom is more effective than windmillery and the ‘socialism’ Labour, the SNP and Greens are officially committed to (the LibDems being merely committed to the weird doctrine that economic liberalism is officially ‘illiberal’).
With five elected parties in Scotland there must be a niche for one that understands Adam Smith.
Sir John Cowperthwaite, as governor, understood enough to bring Hong Kong from poorer than Gaza to richer than Britain and I do not believe that tradition is entirely gone or suitable only for export.
5 October)
If so, radically improved national health is within our grasp, for everyone can substitute UVB tubes in their fluorescent fittings.
Better still, let’s manufacture attractive ‘nutritional lighting’ here in Scotland to address this malaise in style. So many problems today seem intractable and we’ve no control over the weather, but if sitting under a reptile lamp keeps me healthy, I’m all for it!
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
David Torrance
‘And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionising themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.’
Thus we have Murdo Fraser referencing the once mighty ‘Scottish Unionist Party’ in defence of his plans to reconstitute the present Scottish Conservative Party and start anew; similarly, Lord Forsyth claimed Ruth Davidson had, like Margaret Thatcher, ‘the balls to take on one of the hardest tasks in public life’. Jackson Carlaw, meanwhile, paraphrased the Iron Lady to attack Murdo’s plan for a new party: ‘You disband if you want to, the party’s not for disbanding’.
So just how do the two men and two women in this refreshingly gender-balanced contest propose to combat the onward march of nationalism and reverse an historical decline in Scottish Tory fortunes?
Murdo Fraser has been the most honest in his leadership pitch, telling Scottish Tory members they have to ‘get real’ about their electoral situation if they are to stand any chance of a recovery. In fact, a weakness of his campaign might be that this message is a bit too realistic and a bit too blunt. Instead of accentuating the positive and delineating the negative, Fraser has dwelled on a gloomy analysis of the status quo.
The trouble is your average Scottish Tory – as in 1997 – simply doesn’t want to hear this sort of defeatist talk. He or she is proud to be a Conservative, and perversely becomes prouder the worse the party performs. It’s almost a siege mentality, and talk to the contrary doesn’t go down at all well. I remember watching Francis Maude being similarly honest at the 2005 UK Conservative conference in Liverpool and he was greeted with lukewarm applause.
Still, at least Fraser has offered an analysis, negative or otherwise. Ruth Davidson’s pitch basically boils down to being a ‘fresh face’ and trying a bit harder at the next election; Jackson Carlaw’s campaign slogan simply asserts that he is ‘experienced, assured, unionist’; while late entrant Margaret Mitchell cries ‘no surrender’ as if oblivious to fundamental shifts in Scottish political terrain.
Yet on this fundamental point, the other three candidates are, well, conservative. Carlaw proposes an as yet unexplained UK act of constitutional settlement to handle future devolution of power (he at least concedes that might happen); Davidson says the current Scotland Bill ought to be a ‘line in the sand’; and Mitchell balks at even that, believing (not unreasonably, to be fair) that Holyrood ought to make full use of the powers it already has before asking for more.
Now, Davidson, Carlaw and Mitchell might be making a sensible pitch as far as winning over the party faithful is concerned, but in terms of repositioning the party ahead of the constitutional curve (it was last pointing in the right direction in 1975) all bar Fraser’s suggestion are non-starters.
As Shakespeare nearly wrote in Hamlet, ‘more relative than this, the second question’s the thing’. Therein lies the secret of how to catch the conscience of king Salmond and, indeed, the SNP. It seems clear that by the end of this parliament Scotland will either have voted ‘yes’ to independence or ‘yes’ to fiscal autonomy or fiscal responsibility – call it what you will. Given that, any sensible Conservative ought to embrace fiscal autonomy, develop a positive case for it (indeed, a Conservative case) and go into that referendum in 2015 or even 2016 actually arguing for something rather than against two propositions.
I would go further than that: every ‘unionist’ party ought to do the same, and put real pressure on the first minister to ensure they have some role in drafting that second question. Not only is it right in practice – what possible argument is there against Scotland raising most, if not all, the money it spends? – but tactically it might make life difficult for the SNP. If there’s a groundswell behind the ‘middle way’, so to speak, and consequently the ‘independence’ option is roundly defeated, I wouldn’t envy Alex Salmond having to explain to his party why he’d thrown away the best chance in a generation to win full sovereignty for Scotland.
The point is this. Back in 1997 the Conservatives went into the devolution referendum advocating a double ‘no’ vote. History, if three out of four candidates for the Tory leadership have their way, will repeat itself in four or five years’ time, and once again in clear defiance of majority public opinion. Back in 1997 the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people was for a Scottish Parliament with tax-raising powers; today it is for a Scottish Parliament with as much autonomy as possible within the United Kingdom.
In politics, after all, it’s winning that counts; doing the right thing will always come a close – but ideally closely related – second. Someone once remarked, I think it might have been Arthur Balfour, that history doesn’t repeat itself, historians merely repeat one another. On 4 November we’ll find out whose analysis, Balfour’s or Marx’s, was closest to the mark.
