I've written a column for the Guardian's Comment is Free on whether the advance of the SNP, and the political agenda of Scottish independence, has a rich enough policy culture to support it. Anyone who's interested in the intellectual debate around the 'Scottish question' is invited to explore the many hotlinks embedded below. And anyone who knows of active Scottish bloggers or ideas networks that could be added to my own list, please don't hesitate to post them in the comments page.
Think Your Way to a New Scotland
Pat Kane for Comment Is Free, 29 April 2007
For those of us who've faced this particular political moment more than
once in our life, the old queasiness won't go away. Even given the SNP's consistent lead in opinion surveys over the
last few months, the question remains: will the snow stay on the dyke?
Translation: will majority polls for the Scottish Nationalists translate into
majority votes, or will it melt away under the combination of stick-brandishing
and carrot-dangling from the Labour Party in Scotland?
By Friday morning, we'll all know. (And if it's anything like the eerie
calmness that accompanied the 1999 referendum on a Scottish Parliament, we
might not even know when it does happen.) But even in advance of all that, I've
been pondering on one significant deficit in the SNP's advance so far. One
which – if not remedied soon – will dent whatever nation-state
ambitions the party might have, when/if it takes power in Scotland.
In short: how strong is the serious policy culture that might support
and sustain the project of Scottish independence? It's not that we're short of
a marketplace of ideas in Scotland. There is a stream of 800-to-1200 word
pieces that fill the indigenous Scottish press, and the Tartanised UK papers,
not to mention the consequent raging debates in letters pages.
These are written by the usual range of suspects that comprise a small
nation's intelligentsia – academics, fiction-writers, columnists, civic
activists, politicians, even (God forbid) working musicians. And in the
spectrum of constitutional options aired in Scottish op-ed space,
independence-minded thinkers, doers and wonks do get their fair share.
Like all self-determination movements, it's the historians who lay the
essential groundwork. At the beginning of 2007, Scotland's foremost historian
Tom Devine slid off the fence and granted that we could "do the business" with independence. (CiF
readers are graced with Christopher Harvie's equally authoritative
historical perspectives on independence).
Since then, there's been thundering columns on a more socio-economic
terrain. Economist Andrew Hughes-Hallet made a robust intervention in March to argue that
small nations had a better record of economic management in Europe. He proposed
Scotland should follow their lead, and defended that in the letters pages with
Scottish Labour leader-in-waiting Wendy Alexander.
Elsewhere, the Labour-oriented public finance expert Arthur Midwinter examined the SNP's manifesto budget plans
(along with the other parties') and declared them "unfit to govern".
This brought responses from two equally esteemed economists, who accused
Midwinter of undue pessimism and even "nihilism" about Scottish
economic performance.
Reading these often forbiddingly statistical pieces, as they sprawl over
the pages of our national newspapers, forcefully reminds you that Scotland was
one of the birthplaces of political economy. The battle of the bankers and moguls that's been
conducted over the last few months in Scotland – with ex-heads of
Scottish Enterprise and the Royal Bank of Scotland supporting the SNP, and the
chairman of Tesco and Dragon's Den Duncan Bannantyne supporting 'the Union' (if
not the Labour Party), among scores of esteemed worthies on each side –
is at least a battle, this time round, rather than a one-way establishment
onslaught against the SNP.
Yet beneath the noisy bombardments of scholarly (and not-so-scholarly)
statistics on fiscal deficit, oil prices and business creation, there is a
strata of thinking about the future of Scotland which has been out of balance
for years, and needs to be rectified.
For the last thirty to forty years, on the independence (or at least
constitutionally-progressive) side, it's always seemed easier to start up a
magazine than sustain a think-tank. There's a reasonable list of publications
that would openly entertain Scottish independence as an option – from
Scottish International and Cencrastus in the seventies, to Radical
Scotland and Edinburgh Review in the eighties, to Scottish
Affairs, Scotlands and the Scottish
Left Review in the nineties and oughties.
One can list a slew of think-tanks and institutes that occupy a
putatively 'objective' centre-ground – the Fraser
of Allender Institute, the Scottish Council for Economic Development
and its successor the Scottish Council Foundation, academic
endeavours like Edinburgh University's Institute
of Governance, or quirkier outfits like the International
Futures Forum.
But (unless I've missed it) I cannot think of a solidly founded
think-tank that has worked consistently to substantiate, but also to imagineer,
Scotland's future as a nation-state. For all the abuse heaped by Nationalists
on New Labour at the moment, they could do well to reflect on the way that
thinktanks like Demos,
IPPR, The
Fabian Society and Comedia generated a fertile environment of
policy and ideas for an incoming Labour government.
This ferment wasn't always tidy, it was more than occasionally
speculative, and sometimes it was just wacky. But at least the ferment was
there, throwing out of the surf some genuinely interesting and energetic policy
thinkers like Geoff Mulgan, Patricia Hewitt, Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens.
If nothing else, all this intellection was intended to enrich the menu of
policy options available to a political party, seriously aiming to take the
helm of a ship of state.
As Micheal Keating says in an important recent
paper, "academic analyses of the Scottish economy still tend to rely on
comparative statics and the use of conventional tools of management. The
political parties either assume that after independence all will be well with
low taxes and high services, or predict absolute disaster. None of this has
helped serious thinking about the issue."
Like Hughes-Hallet, Keating suggests that an independent Scotland could
be viable and successful, but only with profound structural change. This would
involve separating nationality from nationalism, similar to the underlying
theme of cooperation that informs the notion of 'Catalanismo' or 'Quebecois' -
allowing for dissent between major forces in society, but all in the aim of
national progress. And it would involve what Keating calls 'social
concertation' – where " business, trades unions and social actors
join with government to discuss development requirements", similar to
Ireland, Finland, Denmark, and many other small European nations with a
non-neoliberal leaning.
It is possible, concludes Keating, that Scottish independence
"might be the catalyst for the construction of a new development
coalition", for a change in the range of inputs and interests feeding into
Scottish government, and for "a reform of policy-making capacity." But,
he warns, "it will not happen by necessity".
Very true. And forcing that necessity would be the role of a vigorous
independence-minded policy and ideas community in Scotland: aiming to build,
enrich and inform the networks of communication between the significant players
in Scottish life.
One mogul who's interestingly stayed non-aligned in the current
political fray in Scotland is Tom Hunter, the centi-millionaire venture
capitalist. He hosted exactly the kind of 'social concertation' Keating talks about, at
his 'New Enlightenment' event in Glasgow earlier
this year. Although one could debate the exact tenor of Hunter's five
priorities for Scottish development – which is exactly the point –
he should be applauded, at least, for his policy enterprise. Who else will step
up to the plate in the coming 'national establishment' of Scotland, and put
money to strategy in this way?
Of course, if the SNP snow melts off the Unionist dyke on Thursday
night, all of this might well be moot, or at least in cold storage for the next
inevitable surge. But if it doesn't, there could be exciting times ahead for
ideas-driven Scots – or indeed, anyone with good ideas (hello, CiF'ers!)
- who have always wanted to apply their talents to the progress of a small
nation. Step right up.
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