Normal Times Include the Future? Who would have thought?

We want to be taken care of. We want to be included. See all that “cradle to the grave” stuff that Tories so despise that we got from the the Labour Government in 1945-51? Can't get enough of it. That government was (at least in popular memory) the high water mark of Britishness in its short lived meaning of “everybody” - and a good part of the appeal of the SNP is as re-creators of that sense of “social security” that the British State has been abandoning by painful increments ever since their introduction.

(45 seems to be our magic number – just a thought.)

The SNP's baby boxes are a precise, welcome (and let me say quite brilliant) symbol of the emotional underpinning of Scottish political life as well as a bloody good borrowing from Scandinavia of which, I hope, there many more to come. They have sewn up this latest election to Holyrood even if it wasn't sewn up already. The SNP manifesto is much more ambitious than expected in terms especially of policy towards the young through education as well as childcare. (With the interesting and provocative proviso that the extra spending on tackling the social divide in education is to be entirely in the gift direct to schools of the Executive and bypassing district councils). Its headlines on a reform of the social security system, on land ownership and social ownership of climate change technology are all well votable for by the “coalition” of progressives who came together for the referendum campaign.

So who needs to even consider doing anything other than giving whole hearted electoral support to anyone else on the left? The Green Manifesto doesn't pretend to a programme for government...it's a direction of travel document. Rise seem to be failing to make any cultural mark that translates into electoral success. The rump of the Labour Party in Scotland will have to wait until this busy series of elections is over before they can even catch a breath. They may even decide to wake up and smell the coffee. 

Meanwhile the centre, where all political power resides, of Scottish politics as well as everywhere else's politics, is well and truly captured. And the centre, the consensus points and principles, of that politics, reflects in a more secure and believable way than it has in years, what remain the expressed priorities of the electorate. The Labour Party, who dominated our electoral decisions so very recently, have been replaced by an altogether shinier, more hopeful and as complete a hegemony.

Perhaps the same thing in us that demands “security” of our politicians also pre-disposes us, culturally, to the dominance of a protector. A protector in Westminster, to shield us from the Tories. And a protector in Holyrood  to...well...protect us from the Tories. Our politicians are our home and away shield bearers...and we've decided, in both cases, that the SNP are a better bet. And I think we're right about that. That was certainly why I voted for them in 2015, and why I'll be voting for them in my constituency in Glasgow. (Not that I think my MSP, Nicola Sturgeon, is sitting on a knife edge or anything.)

So why, if everything in the garden is lovely, (and I hesitate a little to go over this again) am I voting Green in the List vote?

Because for the first time, I think, it feels to me like a third area of interest has been added to the defensive mindset of Scottish politics. I'm talking about the future. About the direction of travel. I'm talking about aspiration.

If all Scottish politics has been dominated up until last year by a territorial dispute between the Labour and SNP about who best to save us from the Tories in the two areas of Holyrood and Westminster (and the less conspicuous but equally bitter heartland of local government) then “the future” is the new territory that has been under dispute online.

The future? Jings! How un-Scottish is that? How un-British is that?

Nonetheless, the direction of travel is now a legitimate sphere of dispute. (I think, by the way, that the online pages of Bella Caledonia are the ideal forum for that dispute.) I believe that the Greens having a significant presence in the parliament will sustain that optimistic exploration of possibility. I think you need only take a glance at the SNP manifesto to see that it already has.

We are no longer in referendum mode, no matter how nostalgic we all are from our different pools of experience. The referendum is off the cards (and out of the SNP manifesto) unless the British vote for Brexit, and the demand for Indyref2 is so palpable and general (which it isn't, sorry) that it is both unavoidable and a slam dunk 60% Yes.  Nicola and Co. are far too canny and competent (and, it seems, ambitious for getting on with the job in the here and now) to deliver that particular hostage to fortune just because their core vote want it from them so much. They know that competent, progressive management is the core of their support outwith the contant 25-30% of the electorate who prioritise Independence above everything else.

For everyone who was involved in that binary politics of the Yes/No campaign, we are now back in the analog world.  Baby boxes and all. This is the new normal. And it could be a hell of a lot worse.

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Peter Arnott

Dead Sharks

The Herald this morning ran with a partisan story about the yes movement being best advised to split it's vote...keep the SNP strong on the constituency vote while voting elsewhere (Greens, logically) on the List vote. To which Wings has responded in full conspiracy mode.

The gloves are coming off today, I think. Rather as the Southside of Glasgow is preparing itself psychologically for a resumption of normal fucking service this afternoon (under our changed circumstances) so a "New Normal" is defining itself in Scottish politics.

I joked earlier today that whereas I used to write a fairly large essay most weeks in 2014 to attempt to cope with/describe what was going on in Scottish politics but that nowadays a single tweet pretty much does it.

Here it is: "The New Normal. Labour have been replaced in the centre. Scraps available on the left and right. Vote Green on list"

So, you see that the Herald's story was a partisan story with which I agreed. I'm voting for Nicola Sturgeon as my constituency MSP (one still votes for an individual with that vote) and Green on the Glasgow regional list. I happen to know, because I'm a bit of a nerd, that this is a vote, in practice, to keep Patrick Harvey as an MSP and, I hope, to have him joined from Glasgow by Zara Kitson.

It hasn't honestly occurred to me that I am therefore part of a unionist/federalist plot to undermine the new found (and evidently thrilling, if largely imaginary) POWER of the SNP. But so, I fear, I am.

(A power which, it seems to this consumer of some quite brilliant campaign videos, like that of New Labour, that is consolidating itself by an entirely ruthless and unacknowledged...but demographically and electorally unimpeachable...rush to the centre ground. New Labour have well and truly been "replaced")

Now, I'm only a small player in this nascent stooshie. But I am an SNP member (albeit not an active one) who is splitting my vote. I was sanguine in the non receipt (mostly) of shit about this online. (If I send this to Bella, and the indefatigable Mike Small "prints" it, that will likely change).

Also, I've resisted adding to the whole bogus "cybernat" furore which was such a feature of the multiply despicable Better Together campaign (whose moral taint, going well beyond the mere fact of "campaigning with the Tories" has made Labour toxic in Scotland).

But if the story of the last election to Westminster in 2015 was the maintenance of the Yes Movement into the "smart" politics of an SNP landslide that kept the momentum and ideas of the Yes campaign going, the story of this election looks like being that of the whole thing finally going smash, of the split that was already symbolised by the rival events on the banks of the Clyde one Saturday in November 2014 (attached) reaching electoral crisis.

For us or against us. For Nicola without qualification or an agent of Yoonyunist Darkness. Nuance lies scattered on the roadside like a an unfortunate liberal bunny rabbit.

This is not unfamiliar emotional territory from a lifetime on the fringes of left politics here or anywhere. It's normal, in fact. it's how people everywhere are. But I had hoped we'd keep the broader "movement" together.

Because what is happening now is precisely a question of "movement" against consolidation. And entirely predictably and even properly, what the SNP are doing now ( whether in public or not) is consolidating their control (partial though it is) of the commanding heights of our political economy,. They recognise (again, not publically) that devolution mark two is now in for the long haul and are using their electoral base - now much more extensive and deep - to cement the new normal, the new equilibrium of our political culture.

There is no room for "movement" in equilibrium. So, dear friends, the territory for those of us in the Yes camp who enjoy movement for the sake of the exercise has been circumscribed. Behind the scenes, there has already been acrimony among the former comrades...the surface has been cracking...in some ways Loki's recent work has also been symptomatic (as well as pointing at a much bigger and dirtier truth about class and nation.)

But what it comes down to is this: in relation to Westminster, to where the power really lies (and lies) in the UK, it is absolutely essential that the SNP represent us. No one else can do it. They have that mandate.

In Scotland, their mandate is again unchallenged. but should not go unquestioned. The movement that built to 45% of the vote cannot and will not simply be absorbed into a hegemony. Movement, as such, matters. Without it, the shark dies.

Which means the smart vote, I think...is a split one.

http://peter-arnott.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/what-happened-whats-happening-where-are.html