I refuse to downsize. I
intend to spread myself
into the garden instead
The Cafe
Neil Craig on SEPA
In the land
of the
broken butterfly
John Milne
The economics of independence
Gus Skinner
The riots are gone and autumn settles peacefully on the land. We live yet in a remarkable age when truth will out – of abuse, priestly or general, of deceit by security services and politicians, of humour and love catching us by surprise.
Ten years ago the Americans caught up with the rest of the world for whom terror had been constancy. And, as the Texan Reagan had vowed, spread democracy across the world. Will we have a new Reagan in Perry? Will it matter? A bit. Yet love, as Reagan knew, will matter more.
The Americans never got Adam Smith. They had him translated through the German refusal to understand ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’ resolving their perception of a contradiction between economic exchanges and social exchanges (Adam Smith saw no such contradiction). The German misunder-standing influenced the Chicago school and its adherence to money. Love was lost.
Okay scholars, come argue with me. Does it matter? Not in academic discourse. But surely yes in life.
There was and is more to 9/11 than sorrow, remorse and anger. This brutish act was born of ideas. Scotland was once a hot-bed of ideas and insightful thought – it has become a cesspit of vested interests, regurgitated views, and failing views of the future. Ideas matter – they create our future.
They mattered to the mercantilist Smith as he viewed Kirkcaldy. Jimmy Reid, led in part by 1968, saw futures, worked with ideas – never violence or mayhem.
How can Scotland regain that attention to thought? The love of ideas – and their practice. Or will we?
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Today’s banner
New Lanark
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
For Scottish unionists,
federalism looks appealing.
What’s in it for the English?
Dennis Smith
Was the state which emerged after 1707 a radically new United Kingdom
of Great Britain or Greater England continuing?
No mainstream politician currently advocates reducing the powers of the Scottish Parliament: there is plenty of evidence that most Scottish voters want the opposite – more powers, not fewer. Equally, no mainstream politician advocates Scottish-style powers for (say) East Anglia. There is no escaping the fact that Scotland has a range of distinctively national institutions which could not be replicated in English regions.
So regional federalism seems to imply different levels of competence for different states – another recipe for dissent. It’s not fair – he has a bigger teddy bear than me. There might also be complaints of anti-English discrimination: an England fragmented into regions would be denied its own national identity and parliamentary sovereignty.
Some of these problems could be avoided by combining features of national and regional federalism, giving England a national parliament as well as regional assemblies. But such complexity blurs the clarity that federalism was meant to bring and would surely provoke complaints about over-government.
This highlights the elephant in the federalist room. Federalism has an obvious appeal for struggling Scottish unionists, but what’s in it for the English? Federalism might enable the UK to retain its place at the top table among nations (though this is hardly guaranteed). But the transition costs would be high. The English would remain tied to the Scots (the whingeing subsidy-junkie Jocks of popular mythology), but in a way that obliged them to confront submerged issues about their own dual English/British identity. To date English interest seems less than overwhelming.
The Treaty of Union was a masterpiece of ambiguity, enabling the English and Scots to hold very different ideas about what union actually meant. Was the state which emerged after 1707 a radically new United Kingdom of Great Britain or Greater England continuing? The rise of nationalism makes this kind of fudge unsustainable. Unionists – in England and Scotland alike – now have to decide for the first time what union really means.
Federalism offers no easy escape from this challenge, but no other panacea is available. It is not even obvious that the unionist parties should be looking for a shared solution. The current Calman consensus on devolution-slightly-plus is very recent and may prove temporary. The Lib Dems historically preferred federalism. Till recently most Conservatives supported the indivisible sovereignty of Westminster: their position is clearly changing fast.
Some creative tension in the unionist ranks might not be a bad thing. A bit more fluttering in the doocot might be a sign of life.
Dennis Smith was formerly curator of modern Scottish collections at the National Library of Scotland
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