Kenneth Roy
How I succeeded
in annoying
Shami Chakrabarti
Letter from the Editor
SR Friends
Eileen Reid
The universal duty
to question everything
we believe
The Cafe
The genteel hell of St Andrews
Robert Calder
A man of integrity
has been destroyed
by lynch lust
The Cafe 2
More on Jack McLean
Alan Fisher
Such enthusiasm
for a parliament
without power
John Cameron
What climate change?
Katie Grant
If my poor pun needs an
exclamation mark, please
add it yourself
Thom Cross
A letter to David Torrance
24.11.11
No. 484
SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth
Here are examples of our journalism:
* SR played a leading role in the successful campaign to save St Margaret of Scotland Hospice
* An SR investigation into Scotland’s care homes revealed the truth about Southern Cross a full year before the company collapsed. We put the facts in the public domain. They were ignored until it was too late
* SR campaigned for greater transparency in Scottish public life and won a landmark judgement from the Scottish information commissioner which has led to a transformation in the information available about executive salaries and pensions in public bodies
* Having discovered elderly people still living in a near-derelict block of flats in Glasgow, sometimes without a water supply, SR campaigned to have them decently re-housed. With the help of Scotland’s housing minister, Alex Neil, we succeeded
* SR continues to campaign – so far without success – to broaden the range of appointments to national organisations beyond a self-perpetuating elite
Since SR does not accept advertising or sponsorship of any kind, and since the support it receives from its publisher (the Institute of Contemporary Scotland) is limited, SR depends on the generosity of individual supporters through the Friends of the Scottish Review
Click here
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
The UK deal is non-
symmetric. Or a
complete mess
Dennis Smith
In recent years George Robertson has found a prominent place in the roll of false prophets. His prediction in 1995 that devolution would kill Scottish nationalism stone dead has been widely quoted and widely ridiculed. On the substantive point I don’t disagree with received opinion.
There are good reasons to think that the current UK constitutional settlement, commonly described as asymmetric devolution, is more likely than not to end in Scottish independence.
The interesting question is: what role does asymmetry play here? Does it necessarily imply instability? What does this tell about the possibility of political prophecy? Are there any crystal balls available? William Blake famously wrote about the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the tiger and his words reflect a widespread ambivalence about the place of perfection in a fallen world.
The charge against George Robertson is that devolution is inherently unstable because of its asymmetry: it cannot last and is most likely to end in the break-up of the UK. At present Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each has a devolved parliament/assembly and government/executive, each with different powers and electoral arrangements. England has no devolved government (unless one counts the London assembly). The whole system is riddled with asymmetries, idiosyncrasies and anomalies.
Anomalies as such are not necessarily a problem in politics. On the contrary, they have often been a source of pleasure and pride. For the British, they emphasise our exceptionalism as opposed (eg) to the levelling Jacobin rationalism of the French. They show us who we are and mark us off from Johnny foreigner. As prime minister, John Major mounted his soapbox to denounce devolution in Scotland and Wales, while actively promoting it in Northern Ireland. He saw no contradiction in this: he was just recognising hard realities. From this perspective the peculiar status of Scotland traditionally added a dash of local colour without posing any existential threat to the unity of the UK or the self-identity of the English.
This delight in haecceity (another Scottish invention, this one thanks to Duns Scotus) is not conservative in any straightforward sense. Blake, for example, saw a world in a grain of sand and insisted that ‘art and science cannot exist but in minutely organised particulars’. His hymn ‘Jerusalem’ may have given the English an alternative national anthem but he himself was one of the least conservative men who ever lived. His dislike of reductive Newtonian science and Enlightenment rationality in general was matched by a radical hatred for despotic rulers and the God whom he christened Nobodaddy.
In the right circumstances, therefore, anomalies can flourish in politics. But how do they fit in our current conditions? In its time George Robertson’s claim had a point. Devolution was designed in the 1980s and 1990s to address a particular set of anomalies and perceived injustices – the ‘democratic deficit’ that allowed Conservative governments in London to impose policies clearly rejected by the Scots and also permitted a powerful devolved Scottish Office to operate without effective parliamentary scrutiny.
In relation to these problems devolution can be counted a success. But it succeeded only at the cost of creating anomalies of a new kind. It changed the UK political landscape by institutionalising national differences and making them politically significant. It turned picturesque anomalies into asymmetries, inequities and iniquities. From an English perspective, features like the Barnett formula and the West Lothian question have become scandals against democracy. No one who scans blog postings or the correspondence columns of the press can doubt that there is a section of English opinion seriously aggrieved about devolution. These critics may be in a minority but they have a high profile.
One of the most cherished idiosyncrasies of the UK constitution has traditionally been its mixed character, part monarchy and part democracy. This combination is not exactly self-contradictory but avoiding cognitive dissonance requires either strenuous mental gymnastics or the placid disdain for theory for which the British were traditionally famed. The mix is intriguingly asymmetric. Monarchy requires an intrinsically asymmetric relationship between ruler and subject. Democracy on the other hand is built on symmetry, if not outright equality. Every citizen has a dual role as ruler and ruled and is thus entitled to vote. There is a strong presumption that all votes should have equal value.
In short, there are a lot of potentially destabilising asymmetries around. Does this matter? Does political change really have neat (symmetric)
causes, leaving aside the role of contingency?
Across the developed world there has been a slow, uneven but apparently inexorable shift over the past three or four centuries from monarchy to democracy. The peculiar trajectory of the British state in this respect is clearly linked to the role of the monarchy at the apex of empire – a symbolism seen in full flower at the queen’s coronation in 1953. The empire was a hierarchical structure with the monarch as its keystone, never envisaged in democratic terms (apart, sometimes, from the white settler dominions). Over time the growth of democratic values clearly contributed to the empire’s demise. Post-empire it became both possible and necessary for the UK to rethink itself in explicitly democratic terms. This is one reason why the role of the monarchy has changed so rapidly in recent decades. Devolution can in some ways be seen as part of the same process.
Issues like the West Lothian Question and the Barnett Formula belong to the mundane world of political bargaining and horse-trading. They are anomalies that can be fixed, even if it means creating new anomalies elsewhere. But Scottish nationalism (like all nationalisms) is not just about political and economic issues (though it certainly includes them). It is also about cultural identity and collective political agency (‘giving Scotland its own voice’).
Here devolution may be less useful.
Questions of national identity can (all too easily) become matters of life and death transcending mere economics. Some English voters see asymmetric devolution as unfair precisely because it denies them the national recognition given to Scotland. Hence calls for an English parliament or for ‘devolution all round’. This is easier said than done. As I have argued previously (7 September
There are also asymmetries at the level of national identity. For three centuries the Scots have – on the whole successfully – juggled dual or multiple identities, an experience summed up in the title of Kenneth Simpson’s book ‘The protean Scot’. Most Scots are aware of having two distinct ‘national’ identities, Scottish and British, even though they may disagree about their meaning and relative importance. The English, on the other hand, tend to use ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ interchangeably (hence occasional bafflement about the place of Scottish MPs in the ‘English’ parliament).
Without a willingness to develop a new dual English/British identity, symmetric with what the Scots already have, it is difficult to see how a redefined British union could work.
In short, there are a lot of potentially destabilising asymmetries around. Does this matter? Does political change really have neat (symmetric) causes, leaving aside the role of contingency? (Events, dear boy, events, as Harold Macmillan once said.) Is political prophecy a mug’s game?
One problem is that the discussion so far has skated over a distinction drummed into first-year logic students. In the logic of relations they are taught to distinguish between symmetry, asymmetry and non-symmetry. A relation between two objects is symmetric if it must hold in both directions: if X is a sibling of Y then Y must be a sibling of X. A relation between two objects is asymmetric if it cannot hold in both directions: if X is the parent of Y then Y cannot be the parent of X. But some relations are non-symmetric – neither symmetric nor asymmetric. If X loves Y, this tells us nothing at all about Y’s feelings for X. Love, as we all know, can be a source of deep and lasting happiness; but unrequited love can be a source of grief, jealousy and endless suffering. Love, in short, is non-symmetric and potentially chaotic.
Once we recognise the existence of non-symmetry it becomes obvious that asymmetry (in the technical sense) is really quite symmetric (in the everyday sense). It also becomes obvious that the current UK constitutional settlement is not asymmetric but non-symmetric. In less technical language Professor Anthony King, author of The British constitution, has called it ‘incoherent’ and ‘a complete mess’. So long as we restrict the discussion to relations between England and Scotland it is possible to detect glimpses of symmetry and asymmetry. When we add in Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own unique features – not to mention the European Union – the sum of possible relationships goes off the scale.
Perversely enough, the recognition of non-symmetry may suggest an answer of a sort. It is tempting to draw an analogy with the models used in physics. Symmetric or asymmetric systems may be assimilated into the deterministic world of Newtonian mechanics where precise prediction is possible. Non-symmetry on the other hand belongs in the probabilistic world of chaos theory. Where the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings may (or may not) portend disaster forecasters must tread carefully. We may be able to calculate probabilities to a given level of accuracy but certainty is never on the cards. Political prophecy involves whole flocks of butterflies. A reincarnated Blake might find poetic justice in the fact that chaos theory has undermined the aspirations to world domination of his bête-noire Newton.
Dennis Smith was formerly curator of modern Scottish collections at the National Library of Scotland
has been destroyed
by lynch lust
The Cafe 2
More on Jack McLean
Alan Fisher
Such enthusiasm
for a parliament
without power
John Cameron
What climate change?
Katie Grant
If my poor pun needs an
exclamation mark, please
add it yourself
Thom Cross
A letter to David Torrance
24.11.11
No. 484
24.11.11No. 484
SR’s remarkable growth as an independent magazine is based largely on word of mouth
Here are examples of our journalism:
* SR played a leading role in the successful campaign to save St Margaret of Scotland Hospice
* An SR investigation into Scotland’s care homes revealed the truth about Southern Cross a full year before the company collapsed. We put the facts in the public domain. They were ignored until it was too late
* SR campaigned for greater transparency in Scottish public life and won a landmark judgement from the Scottish information commissioner which has led to a transformation in the information available about executive salaries and pensions in public bodies
* Having discovered elderly people still living in a near-derelict block of flats in Glasgow, sometimes without a water supply, SR campaigned to have them decently re-housed. With the help of Scotland’s housing minister, Alex Neil, we succeeded
* SR continues to campaign – so far without success – to broaden the range of appointments to national organisations beyond a self-perpetuating elite
Since SR does not accept advertising or sponsorship of any kind, and since the support it receives from its publisher (the Institute of Contemporary Scotland) is limited, SR depends on the generosity of individual supporters through the Friends of the Scottish Review
Click here
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
The UK deal is non-
symmetric. Or a
complete mess
Dennis Smith
In recent years George Robertson has found a prominent place in the roll of false prophets. His prediction in 1995 that devolution would kill Scottish nationalism stone dead has been widely quoted and widely ridiculed. On the substantive point I don’t disagree with received opinion.
There are good reasons to think that the current UK constitutional settlement, commonly described as asymmetric devolution, is more likely than not to end in Scottish independence.
The interesting question is: what role does asymmetry play here? Does it necessarily imply instability? What does this tell about the possibility of political prophecy? Are there any crystal balls available? William Blake famously wrote about the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the tiger and his words reflect a widespread ambivalence about the place of perfection in a fallen world.
The charge against George Robertson is that devolution is inherently unstable because of its asymmetry: it cannot last and is most likely to end in the break-up of the UK. At present Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each has a devolved parliament/assembly and government/executive, each with different powers and electoral arrangements. England has no devolved government (unless one counts the London assembly). The whole system is riddled with asymmetries, idiosyncrasies and anomalies.
Anomalies as such are not necessarily a problem in politics. On the contrary, they have often been a source of pleasure and pride. For the British, they emphasise our exceptionalism as opposed (eg) to the levelling Jacobin rationalism of the French. They show us who we are and mark us off from Johnny foreigner. As prime minister, John Major mounted his soapbox to denounce devolution in Scotland and Wales, while actively promoting it in Northern Ireland. He saw no contradiction in this: he was just recognising hard realities. From this perspective the peculiar status of Scotland traditionally added a dash of local colour without posing any existential threat to the unity of the UK or the self-identity of the English.
This delight in haecceity (another Scottish invention, this one thanks to Duns Scotus) is not conservative in any straightforward sense. Blake, for example, saw a world in a grain of sand and insisted that ‘art and science cannot exist but in minutely organised particulars’. His hymn ‘Jerusalem’ may have given the English an alternative national anthem but he himself was one of the least conservative men who ever lived. His dislike of reductive Newtonian science and Enlightenment rationality in general was matched by a radical hatred for despotic rulers and the God whom he christened Nobodaddy.
In the right circumstances, therefore, anomalies can flourish in politics. But how do they fit in our current conditions? In its time George Robertson’s claim had a point. Devolution was designed in the 1980s and 1990s to address a particular set of anomalies and perceived injustices – the ‘democratic deficit’ that allowed Conservative governments in London to impose policies clearly rejected by the Scots and also permitted a powerful devolved Scottish Office to operate without effective parliamentary scrutiny.
In relation to these problems devolution can be counted a success. But it succeeded only at the cost of creating anomalies of a new kind. It changed the UK political landscape by institutionalising national differences and making them politically significant. It turned picturesque anomalies into asymmetries, inequities and iniquities. From an English perspective, features like the Barnett formula and the West Lothian question have become scandals against democracy. No one who scans blog postings or the correspondence columns of the press can doubt that there is a section of English opinion seriously aggrieved about devolution. These critics may be in a minority but they have a high profile.
One of the most cherished idiosyncrasies of the UK constitution has traditionally been its mixed character, part monarchy and part democracy. This combination is not exactly self-contradictory but avoiding cognitive dissonance requires either strenuous mental gymnastics or the placid disdain for theory for which the British were traditionally famed. The mix is intriguingly asymmetric. Monarchy requires an intrinsically asymmetric relationship between ruler and subject. Democracy on the other hand is built on symmetry, if not outright equality. Every citizen has a dual role as ruler and ruled and is thus entitled to vote. There is a strong presumption that all votes should have equal value.
In short, there are a lot of potentially destabilising asymmetries around. Does this matter? Does political change really have neat (symmetric)
causes, leaving aside the role of contingency?
Across the developed world there has been a slow, uneven but apparently inexorable shift over the past three or four centuries from monarchy to democracy. The peculiar trajectory of the British state in this respect is clearly linked to the role of the monarchy at the apex of empire – a symbolism seen in full flower at the queen’s coronation in 1953. The empire was a hierarchical structure with the monarch as its keystone, never envisaged in democratic terms (apart, sometimes, from the white settler dominions). Over time the growth of democratic values clearly contributed to the empire’s demise. Post-empire it became both possible and necessary for the UK to rethink itself in explicitly democratic terms. This is one reason why the role of the monarchy has changed so rapidly in recent decades. Devolution can in some ways be seen as part of the same process.
Issues like the West Lothian Question and the Barnett Formula belong to the mundane world of political bargaining and horse-trading. They are anomalies that can be fixed, even if it means creating new anomalies elsewhere. But Scottish nationalism (like all nationalisms) is not just about political and economic issues (though it certainly includes them). It is also about cultural identity and collective political agency (‘giving Scotland its own voice’).
Here devolution may be less useful.
Questions of national identity can (all too easily) become matters of life and death transcending mere economics. Some English voters see asymmetric devolution as unfair precisely because it denies them the national recognition given to Scotland. Hence calls for an English parliament or for ‘devolution all round’. This is easier said than done. As I have argued previously (7 September
There are also asymmetries at the level of national identity. For three centuries the Scots have – on the whole successfully – juggled dual or multiple identities, an experience summed up in the title of Kenneth Simpson’s book ‘The protean Scot’. Most Scots are aware of having two distinct ‘national’ identities, Scottish and British, even though they may disagree about their meaning and relative importance. The English, on the other hand, tend to use ‘England’ and ‘Britain’ interchangeably (hence occasional bafflement about the place of Scottish MPs in the ‘English’ parliament).
Without a willingness to develop a new dual English/British identity, symmetric with what the Scots already have, it is difficult to see how a redefined British union could work.
In short, there are a lot of potentially destabilising asymmetries around. Does this matter? Does political change really have neat (symmetric) causes, leaving aside the role of contingency? (Events, dear boy, events, as Harold Macmillan once said.) Is political prophecy a mug’s game?
One problem is that the discussion so far has skated over a distinction drummed into first-year logic students. In the logic of relations they are taught to distinguish between symmetry, asymmetry and non-symmetry. A relation between two objects is symmetric if it must hold in both directions: if X is a sibling of Y then Y must be a sibling of X. A relation between two objects is asymmetric if it cannot hold in both directions: if X is the parent of Y then Y cannot be the parent of X. But some relations are non-symmetric – neither symmetric nor asymmetric. If X loves Y, this tells us nothing at all about Y’s feelings for X. Love, as we all know, can be a source of deep and lasting happiness; but unrequited love can be a source of grief, jealousy and endless suffering. Love, in short, is non-symmetric and potentially chaotic.
Once we recognise the existence of non-symmetry it becomes obvious that asymmetry (in the technical sense) is really quite symmetric (in the everyday sense). It also becomes obvious that the current UK constitutional settlement is not asymmetric but non-symmetric. In less technical language Professor Anthony King, author of The British constitution, has called it ‘incoherent’ and ‘a complete mess’. So long as we restrict the discussion to relations between England and Scotland it is possible to detect glimpses of symmetry and asymmetry. When we add in Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own unique features – not to mention the European Union – the sum of possible relationships goes off the scale.
Perversely enough, the recognition of non-symmetry may suggest an answer of a sort. It is tempting to draw an analogy with the models used in physics. Symmetric or asymmetric systems may be assimilated into the deterministic world of Newtonian mechanics where precise prediction is possible. Non-symmetry on the other hand belongs in the probabilistic world of chaos theory. Where the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings may (or may not) portend disaster forecasters must tread carefully. We may be able to calculate probabilities to a given level of accuracy but certainty is never on the cards. Political prophecy involves whole flocks of butterflies. A reincarnated Blake might find poetic justice in the fact that chaos theory has undermined the aspirations to world domination of his bête-noire Newton.
Dennis Smith was formerly curator of modern Scottish collections at the National Library of Scotland
