Taking the Cure

Despite the best efforts of Irish, Welsh and Scottish nationalists, the process of Breaking Up the Union of Great Britain and Ireland is a job for the English, and always has been ever since the process really got started  in Dublin in 1916. Now, by an irony of history, it turns out that our shared membership of the EU across these islands was not only the essential underpinning of the Good Friday Agreement, it was the last glue that held together the devolved Union within the island of Great Britain as well. One of the battles yet to be properly fought is over the respective roles of the devolved Parliaments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. Meanwhile, it is of totemic importance to the DUP’s ongoing dance of glee and grievance that the Assembly in Stormont is currently shut.  That the Parliament in Holyrood has been effectively sidelined by…well, what shall we call it nowadays…the Imperial Parliament?...in London, is essential to what is laughingly still referred to as a “smooth” Brexit.

The discomfort of calling Westminster either the Imperial Parliament (of the past) or indeed the English Parliament (of the future?) points to the structural dysfunction that Brexit is newly and ruthlessly exposing. The centre, to quote Ireland’s poet of 1916, cannot hold. To misquote England’s great poet, there’s quite a lot in a name. The names we call things are what all this boorach is about.

What is as old as the hills, or as Sherwood Forest, is the insouciant ease with which the words “England” and “Britain” or “English” and “British” are still apparently regarded as comfortably interchangeable, as, unfortunately, they still are in an essay on the English roots of Brexit published last week in the London Review of Books. This lazy identification has never been possible in any of the other constituents of the Union of British Nations. For one thing, we’ve always had our own patron saints and emblematic outlaws over and above St George and Robin Hood, potent though those symbols of Englishness are. My own profoundly loyal North British grandparents were wearily familiar with the phenomenon, and always regarded a hybrid identity as both Scots and British as being intrinsic to who they were – they regarded the Scots as the Best of British - whereas George Orwell, for example, in his justly famous panegyric on Englishness, The Lion and the Unicorn, acknowledged awareness of the uncomfortableness of the identification of the English and the British for his Scottish, Welsh and Irish readers in a rather irritated footnote.

No exploration of the very English roots (and likely destination) of Brexit can even remotely come to terms with any of it actually means if it doesn’t start with the insight that all four nations are going to have to learn how to name things all over again. No matter how irritating it is that the Scots, Irish, Scots-Irish and Welsh have got a head start in adapting to a new world of multiple rather than subsumed identities.

Unionism, for example, cannot be understood unless it is understood that the same word means subtly different things in all four nations that make up that union. And that hybrid rather than merged identity has always been the syntactic rule in three of them. Englishness needs to learn how to speak its name if it is to face the world with confidence. As Antony Barnett has argued in his excellent book “The Lure of Greatness”, it is only as the European English that the English will find a future.

Britishness, like every other national identity, was a series of projects, not an essence. Starting as a Protestant bulwark against dynastic Catholic Europe, it successively evolved into a commercial Empire and a Welfare State. When it ceased to be any of these three things then it ceased being a useful way to think about what it means to live on these islands. It became a distorting mirror in which to see ourselves.

But just as in 2014, the status quo, despite appearances, is not an option on the ballot paper. Just as there was no way “back to normal” in a No vote in the Scottish referendum, the events of the past few years have permanently let the English genie out of the British Bottle.  The Brexit process, like the process of the referendum in Scotland, has shone a ruthless light on tectonic change. There is no way back to the relationship with the EU that the UK used to have, and there is no way back to what Britishness, civic or civilising, used to mean.

Brexit is only the symptom. “Britain” is now the disease that awaits a cure.

The Last Redoubt

Bizarrely, the image that comes to mind for the politics of Brexit for the rest of 2018 comes from the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Maybe it's may age...and seeing "Zulu" on the telly on so many Sunday afternoons. 

The defence of Scotland's place in Europe is a series of redoubts...fortified positions that you have no confidence of being able to hold. But you have to do all you can to hold one position before you are forced to retreat to the next one. he first line of defense is the simplest...and yet, for many Independence activists the most troubling.  Keep the UK in the EU. You have to do everything you can by every means. In every arena. Westminster, Holyrood, the courts, public opinion. At this moment, there even seems to be the glimmer of a chance of a referendum to decide between whatever deal HMG can cobble together...

So, for me, to be logically consistent, and to take all possible allies with you, we have to wholeheartedly try that. Remember, there is no realistic expectation of the first line of defence holding...but if and when you have to retreat to the second line of defence, a vigourous attempt to hold the first defence will have helped enormously in organising allies.

Those aliies will include...and here's the tricky part for many Nationalisits...Unionists.

In the case of Scotland and Brexit, the second "redoubt" is specific to Scotland: defending the existing devolution settlement and a differential Brexit deal for Scotland...as, no matter what Arlene Foster says about blood lines...there will have to be for N Ireland and Gibraltar. Again....and again Devolution supporters who oppose Independence will have to be part of that defence.

Do you see where I'm going with this? That to make every line of defence the strongest it can be, we need everyone with us. What this means is Independence supporters doing everything they can in these first two lines of defence to bring as many allies with them as possible. And THIS means refuting the accusation of "really being interested only in independence" by making sure it is seen not be true. If we can hold the "British Redoubt" and keep all of the UK inside the EU, then that is what we should commit to do. If it is Devolution we can successfully defend then that is what we should wholly commit to do. 

I believe that if we do both of these things, without any other agenda, then when the time comes (as it probably will) to retreat to the third and last redoubt, which is seeking to rejoin the EU or EFTA and thus protecting what we have been trying to protect all along... ...then the means we need to do that, political Independence of the UK State will be self-evident and consensual...and will get support rom a lot of people who don't support it yet. 

But here's the more difficult argument to make when there's an SNP conference at the weekend...for this journey to work for the people who voted No in 2014, the SNP case must genuinely be above suspicion at each redoubt. We must be genuinely commmitted to the successive defences of the whole of the Uk...and then devolution. And if those defences hold, that has to be enough.  That's where we have to stick. This journey cannot start with independence, even if we think it probably ends there. If what we propose is Indeopendence Now...we lose everyone else. And I believe that we lose the EU...and we lose a referendum that Unionists will boycott anyway, a referndum that even if we win...we lose..

Therefore, I believe that right now, when the idea of a "confirming referendum" is current, we have not yet exhausted the "all UK" defence of Scotland's relationship with Europe. #I think the SNP needs to as near as damn it commit to that campaign. And do all we can to hold that line. I think that this means, along with a commitment to a second EU referendum...and here is where we need to take a deep breath... taking a second Independence referendum of the table if a "UK Remains in the EU" defence succeeds. 

Now, before I get shouted at...consider this. There is NO other way to persuade non-Independence supporters of a genuine commitment on our part to the aim of Remaining in Europe. Second, more importantly, the mandate for "Indyref 2" was a "material change" in ther circumstances of the UK...then that will be a material change which we will have PREVENTED from happening. 

As I say, I have no particular expectations as from week to week, the blathering chaos of Brexit gets more and more disorienting. But I want to see my representatives and my government adopt a realistic and clear posture that can hold the line and carry wide support no matter what comes next. 

I think this might be the way to do it.

Finally, whatever the next electoral test is...a general election, a second EU referendum, even the Scottish elections in 2021, the issue of Independence will be on the agenda. For me, to insist on Indyref 2 right now before anything else betrays an unjustified lack of confidence that the logic of the developing situation is entirely on our side. But if and when it comes, what is wrong with Independence being on the bais of consensus?  What is wrong with taking people who voted No in 2014 with us? 

What is wrong with a walk in the park in five years...even if we we need to be confident enough to behave a little strategically now?

A Bespoke Deal for a Scottish Brexit. A tactical argument

I wish I could draw graphs...or flow charts...as I think it might help clarify my argument on a Scottish Brexit Deal being the probable way forward - but I'll try to set it out verbally step by step.

Right now, with everything still up in the air, we still need to oppose the UK leaving the EU by whatever means. A Westminster vote to remain, a UK wide  “People’s Vote” with remaining as an option. IF/WHEN these both fail…

Put forward a specific Scottish Brexit plan…more or less the Norway option…with the aim being to deliver what the Scottish Parliament agreed on…and has NEVER rescinded, Scotland staying in the single market... by itself if necessary.

(It is of no small significance that a bespoke deal for Northern Ireland is well within the bounds of possibility, and if the DUP were less important to the Tories numerically, it would almost certainly have happened by now.)

If the case is made for this by the SNP and the wider Yes movement, it will...or should... get the support of Remainers…it will look rational by contrast with Boris and Co and it will not scare off 2014 NO voters…because Independence will not be on the agenda.

Indpendence will not be the prefix to every argument. It will be the conclusion. And that is the right way round.

In the course of this autumn and winter, we will either get an exit deal on Brexit agreed by the UK government or we won’t. In neither scenario will any attention necessarily get paid to a specifically Scottish demand. This is not a reason not to make that demand. Loudly and repeatedly. And to stick with it.

Why? Because an exit deal for March 2019 is not the end of the story. In March, in theory, we enter into a transition period which ENDS in a new relationship between the EU and UK in 2021. Our argument is that at the END of this transition period that Scotland insists on a deal that keeps us in the single market.

Even now, even after March, it is theoretically possible that the UK will see that kind of sense, but it’s very unlikely. In practice, that would probably need to be a bespoke, specifically Scottish deal. Again, our sticking to the pragmatic outcome would be politically very strong.

Even if the dreaded “No Deal” happens, there would in practice need to be SOME deal. This is what the Rees Moggs and assorted loonies are shooting for. It is absolutely no more unrealistic for Scotland to shoot for a Single Market deal at the same time.

So…this time in 2019, the Scottish electorate would have a continuing mess of screaming that will constitute Full English Brexit…and, by contrast, a calm, pragmatic ambition which the Scottish political parties would find it difficult not to support. Because it wouldn’t have an IndyRef label stuck all over it.

The fact that Independence is almost certainly the only way for Scotland to maintain a healthy relationship with Europe would then be demonstrated rather than merely asserted.
Once again, Independence would be the conclusion not the predicarte. And that makes conversation possible with those who voted No in 2014.

In summary, I think that through any imaginable set of circumstances…and an awful lot that can’t be foreseen yet, a stated position right now that Scotland will only accept a Single Market Deal at the End of Transition, is far and away the strongest card we can play. And keep playing.

A Brexit Deal for Scotland? A Scottish Deal on Brexit.

As we enter a new Parliamentary term both in Holyrood and Westminster, to describe matters as being a wee bit “in flux” is something of an understatement.  It’s like those of us living on this cluster of islands off the coast of Europe are inhabiting different political worlds while remaining on one piece of territory.

While Boris Johnson calls Theresa May a suicide bomber in cahoots with Michel Barnier, that other famous Moslem, blowing a dog whistle to racists out of both ends of his ridiculous body, here in Scotland, we seem to be tearing ourselves to bits out of boredom and impotence, just for something to do. We aren’t having the fight we’d like to be having, it seems. So we’re fighting about something else…the timing of a second indyref, which can’t possibly be decided on… just for wanting something to fight about.

In Northern Ireland, meanwhile, they’ve  got a governng party whose sole interest seems to be on insisting that they don’t want to govern anything. The DUP have opted for Direct Rule from Westminster by default as part of the same bargain which is dragging those islanders whose constituent nations voted against Brexit over the cliff with those who voted for it.

Because next door, we’ve got both an England and, inexplicably, a Wales where, despite recent shifts in opinion polls, exit from the EU remains, or at least is treated, as the “settled will of the people”...without any real thought as to who “the people” might be. The people insist that the politicians “sort it out” and “get on with it” without, apparently, the slightest idea what “it” is. 

It is still possible that opinion will shift yet further…in favour, ultimately, one hopes, of what might at least be a comparatively Sane Brexit, but to be honest, I’m not sure I've got the imaginative energy to spare to give a lot of thought to the UK dimension of what’s going on any more.

I wish the nieghbours well, of course, but much in the same way as if I lived in say, Belgium. I don’t actually wish any harm on them, I respect their decision – just about - however much I regret it. Here in Belgium, I hope you in Scotland (and they) don’t suffer too much from the consequences of their decision…but it’s kind of up to them. There doesn’t seem to be a lot I can do about it.

You’ve tried.  You’ve argued that you think it’s a really bad idea…and, to be fair, they just might sort themselves out…they’ve got a few weeks left to do that, but their political parties seem to be totally paralysed by internal division and personal ambition and choosing Blind Brexit chaos by default.

In Holland and Belgium and the Republic of Ireland stability within the EU 27 seems to be the absolute strategic priority for the remaining members. Brexit will be a shock, but the collective decision seems to be that maintenance of the Union of 27 far outweighs any other consideration at this moment.

So imagine being Belgium for a minute.  Or being Ireland.  Imagine being in a position to ask : if they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do…what are WE gonna do?

Luckily, we in Scotland already have the answer. The Scottish Parliament, in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum, (albeit in a moment of briefly collectivised shock) already voted for what we’re going to do.  Right across the chamber.  Even the Tories.

We’re going to stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union. That’s the Scottish Deal. Whatever else there might or might not be a mandate for in Scotland, there’s a mandate for that. We’re going to stay, by some means, in the same trading arrangement with our Irish and continental nieghbours that we’re in now. Just like Holland or Belgium or the Republic of Ireland, we’re going to continue to respect the four freedoms movement of goods, services, money and people…just as we do now.

Imagine if we could do that!

I’ve got news for you.  We CAN do that.  We SHOULD do that. We MUST do that.

We must say to our nieghbours south of the border that we respect their decision, but it’s THEIR decision, and not ours.  

But it’s too late, everyone says…we’re out of the EU in March next year! That’s what the law says!  That’s what the constitution says! We voted to remain in the UK in 2014!  We’re trapped!  We trapped ourselves!  We failed!

Not quite. As part of the UK, we are indeed leaving the EU in March next year, but only as a matter of form.  What actually HAPPENS in March (unless there is the dreaded NO DEAL…) is that we enter a transition period, nominally until the end of 2020, during which all the changes to the UK relationship to the EU Single Market and Customs Union take effect.

All we do right NOW, as Scotland, on the assumption that by hook or by crook at some point there WILL be a UK deal on leaving the EU,is to insist that at the end of that transition, whenever it really comes and by whatever means we get there, when it comes to defining a NEW trading relationship between these Islands and the EU, Scotland will remain in the Single Market and the Customs Union. Just like the Republic of Ireland.

We insist right now on the same end result no matter what Boris Johnson led chaos there is until there IS a deal…that at the end of the process of leaving, we “implement” or “transition to” a situation where Scotland maintains a status quo ante bellum relationship with the EU as far as trade goes. Come what may, by whatever route it takes, Scotland stays in the Single Market and the Customs Union.

Because even if the worst comes to the worst and Boris is PM by Christmas, even if we do crash out initially, there will still need to be a deal on leaving, because there needs to be a transition period that will end up with a yet to be negotiated new relationship between the EU and the UK. Everyone, even Boris, actually knows that.

In any case. That’s not our problem because we’re not leaving.  Like they do in Belgium, we respect the decision of the Parliament in Westminster In the name of democracy. But we in Scotland demand the reciprocal respect that our decision to maintain our relationship with the EU also be respected. Because that is what our people and our Parliament voted for. If we do that, if we are clear and unequivocal about that, then everything else will follow. 

Whether we get treated with respect, or we don’t, after all the shouting, it all ends the same way. With a rewritten relationship between Scotland and the rest of these islands, including the bit that is already uniquivocally staying in the EU.

There are many, many variations on exactly what happens on the basis of this principle, but here are a couple of things that will happen in the short run.

What will follow first is the following refrain of voices:

“But Scotland staying in the Single Market would mean a hard border between England and Scotland! That will mean an end to Free Trade and movement between England and Scotland!”

Really?  Seriously?  Is that all you’ve got?

If it is the insistence of the British Government that Brexit will mean no such border will exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which are ALREADY two separate States with different currencies…(and it is) ….one inside and the other outside the Single Market and Customs Union…then on the basis of what possible logic can such a border come into existence between a Scotland and England who will still, in 2020/21, be part of the same State?

The Brexiteers are similarly hoist on their own petard with every single argument they’ve got against a distinctly Scottish Deal on Brexit on the gallows of the Irish Border. But never mind the shouting and squealing and the talk of suicide vests… we can be very clear and decided on one thing: that no matter what the UK Parliament comes up with, Scotland is staying in Trading Europe. That is our deal with Europe, that is what is going to come at the end of any “transition” or “implementation”. We’ve already decided that. Just let Ruth Davidson vote against it. Nobody else will.

What the nieghbours do about it is up to them. They might decide to abandon us as carelessly (and without knowledge or thought) as they appoint Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland who don’t have the first clue as to the culture or history or even existence of that Province of the Empire. They might send a gunboat. They might even decide to kick us out of the United Kingdom completely!

I don’t have a crystal ball any more than anyone else does.But if we simply do the right thing right now, if we make the simple assertion of democratic self government that when Brexit comes, whether it’s Blind, Batty or In Name Only, Scotland is staying, by some means yet to be negotiated, in the Single Market and the Customs Union, then it is in the practical discovery of what those means of staying turn out to be - for example, in a new, direct negotiating relationship with the EU and with London, on the basis of our soveriegn trade policy - that we will rewrite the British Constitution. All we need to do is be clear in our own intentions. Through that simple assertion of self government will self government come.

Which is probably why we feel we have the time to get cross with each other about the timing of Indyref 2. For what it's worth, I genuinely think that argument is a distraction, a repositry of frustrated energy. I genuinely think that Brexit is doing all the heavy lifting we need to be effectively an independent 21^st Century European country by the end of the next decade.

No matter what the apparent complexities of the political boorach down South, if we stick to our guns, by some way or other, we’ll get there. I genuinely think that it’s as simple as that.

Whatever It Is, Bring It On!

A Tale of Two Traps or “What the Hell are We Supposed to do Now?”

As the Mother of Parliaments packs its ineptitude for the last summer holiday its members are going to get before they and the rest of us need a Visa to pop over the Channel to the seaside, the sense of futility and uselessness that has afflicted the group of 36 SNP MPs since last year's election, introducing ignored amendment after ignored amendment to protect Scotland from the shrill hysteria of what feels more and more like somebody else’s problem in somebody else’s country, has become universal. 

Desperate futility is written across the pasty features of Honourable Members from every corner of Englandshire also. No wonder they want to run away from it all and attempt to forget it from the bottom of a jug of Sangria somewhere. And the temptation to say “The hell with the lot of them” is particularly strong not just for SNP MPs but for the 62% of Scottish voters who uselessly voted not to have ANYTHING to do with any version of this post imperial bullshit.

English Brexiteers, now loyally supported by a Scottish cohort of vapid nodding wally dugs, are actually winning the race to nowhere that the voters of Scotland decisively rejected at the ballot box not once, not twice, but three times since the election of 2015 bounced David Cameron into preferring a wafer thin Tory Majority to the good of not just our country, but of his.

And 45% of Scottish voters can quite rightly grab a hold of the 55% who voted No in September 2014 and point and say “This is your fucking fault, you dopy bastards!  You handed our future to these maniacs and LOOK what they’re doing with it!”

But Scots, even “Yes” voting Scots who want and feel they deserve NONE of this lunacy, are trapped by arithmetic too. Just like Parliament in London, we are paralysed by our own national division. We feel we need to do SOMETHING, but every avenue of escape seems blocked. There are calls for SNP MPs to boycott the UK Parliament for all the good they are doing there. But this looks like an empty gesture in the face of a Brexit Event Horizon that is fast becoming completely real. Unionist voters would simply not take part in an “unofficial” referendum on Independence.  It would be nothing but a PR stunt…and these things are all very well and have their place under some circumstances, and might even make us feel better, might even let us cry out “Nothing to do with us, gov”…but nothing would really be changed.  Brexit would still come and take us kicking and screaming with it.

I think the SNP need to respond right now to the change in Westminster circumstances right now. And, however reluctantly, I think they need to join in with a Westminster response to the increasing hopelessness that is being felt all across the chamber. I think the SNP has to declare in favour of another UK wide popular vote on the “Brexit Question.” Despite the strong and understandable temptation to say “Nothing to do with us, buddy” to the lot of them " I think something is changing in the political weather in the whole UK. It is not just six weeks of unbroken sunshine that is freaking everybody out.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s still an outside possibility. Up until two weeks ago, both the Tory Brexiteers and Jeremy Corbyn were happily planning to postpone the leadership crisis in the Tory party and the subsequent inevitable General Election, until AFTER March next year, when the UK electorate would be given a choice of who they trusted to pick up whatever pieces of the UK had landed wherever they are going to land when the Europeans finally boot us out, deal or no deal. This was what Theresa May was attempting to cue up with her ludicrous “Chequers Brexit “ Package…it was an entirely symbolic exercise in party Management, not any serious attempt to deal with the Upcoming Omnishambles…but, after a fashion, it seemed to be working for a while, having factored in the even more vapid spectacle of Davis and Bojo biting the dust, and Michael Gove keeping his ambition warm for another day. For the SNP and the wider Scottish electorate, a 2019 General Election would be yet another UK election which would be differentially experienced and interpreted in Scotland, with an inflection of the National Question in that new context of "Oh My God It’s Actually Happening!” Brexit Britain.

This is still most likely to be be roughly how it goes, but at THIS moment the summer fevered chatter in the tea rooms of Westminster by those who belong neither to the Corbyn minority in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Tory MPs who haven’t drunk the Brexit Kool-Ade of their own Brexit extremists, are desperately circling another scenario. And they are doing it together.

Step One is to give up on paralysed parliamentary procedure altogether, and throw the Brexit “problem” back to the electorate with a popular” Yes/No/Forget the whole thing and stay in the EU” referendum sometime in the Autumn. I am sure the thought of Step Two is also occurring to them by now that it might be possible to interpret this vote as a mandate from “the British people” for a particular soft flavour of cuddly Brexit …and to attempt to form a National Unity government in order to deliver it.

The question before the SNP this morning is “How do we respond?” Do we denounce the whole stupid pack of them?  Do we say, “Unite your own Nation, pal…this has nothing to do with our Nation?” Do we boycott the People’s Poll on exactly the same grounds as Scottish Unionists would boycott Indyref 2 (without a Westminster agreement like last time) as “Nothing to do with us.”

Or do the SNP strategically embrace the idea. And call for it. One last throw of the British Electoral dice. One last chance to avoid the cliff jump…with the implicit or explicit proviso, that if England chooses to go cliff diving this summer, we might just have other plans.

Now, there are big problems with this idea, as has been pointed out by Kenny Farquarson among others.  If it has not been feasible up till now to interpret Scotland’s vote against Brexit IN PRINCIPLE as a vote for Independence IN PRINCIPLE, then how would that change if there were a second Brexit vote BEFORE a second independence vote?

To which the answer might be that a) an independence vote isn’t going to happen before either another another UK General Election or said Brexit Vote 2 and b) it wouldn’t be a vote IN PRINCIPLE any more, on either question. No. It would be absolutely specific on both. 

To vote FOR the specific Brexit deal the Union ends up offering would include, in effect, a vote for the Union itself. To vote AGAINST that deal would be to vote against the Union. Because within the Union, we are GOING to get whatever England decides we’re going to get.

We are genuinely trapped by arithmetic into choices we didn’t want to make. All of us. For this morning, if there is to be a call for a People’s Vote, I think the SNP has to support it. If there isn’t, I think the SNP has to call for it.  And to show willing to throw the dice as a British political party one last time. That way, the 2014 result is "respected", and , under new and highly specific circumstances framed in advance of a "new" British vote on a specific Brexit deal that implicitly INCLUDES the continuance of the Union, and is EXPLICITLY framed that way by the SNP...the actual question that is actually put before England and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland is all rolled up together. 

A British Future, which explicitly includes Brexit, or the End of the UK itself. A third choice is only available till March.  So the SNP needs to call for the British people to face that choice and face it now.  Because after March, there are only the other two...The SNP needs to make the call on behalf, ironically, of those who vote against it...because no one else is offering them any choice about ANYTHING.

This summer of stupidity can’t go on.  Something is going to break. The weather is going to get messy.  There is going to be a lot of shouting. But the next vote, whatever it is, is, I think decisive on both questions. Another vote of SOME kind, whether a General Election, a Scottish election, a second Brexit referendum or even an independence referendum, WILL include the national question no matter which comes first.  The attitude of the SNP has to be, to any of these, no matter which comes first, bring it on.

The White Man Coup Versus Humanity

This little essay started with the thought, prompted by the fact that the Trump Organization has directly profited from the Trump Presidency to the tune of $500 million dollars - so far - that we need a new word for "corruption. " Despite protestations, made on both the left and right, that "they" are all the same...they are not all the same.  With Orban and Trump and Brexit, to name but three, we are moving into new territory...or perhaps, revisiting some old territory that we really thought we'd put behind us in 1945.

Then came this, the most blatant support so far given by the new Supreme Court of the United States for racially based voter suppression. 

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/11/supreme-court-ohio-voting-rolls-inactive-electors?CMP=share_btn_tw

In the State of Ohio, anybody who has not voted for three years can be removed from the electoral register.  This, of course, disproportionately affects the poor and the young and the non-white...which is precisely the idea.  The Supreme Court, before even the introduction of Trump's next nominee, has granted legitimacy...and maybe permanence... to what I am calling, from now on, The White Man Coup. 

The White Man Coup is an act of demographic panic. The Obama Presidency alerted White Men that unless they did something radical, America would cease to belong to them. So they looked around and they hired Trump to do the job they needed done. They knew that maintaining White Man Supremacy in the USA would require thuggery, corruption and bigotry. So they hired a thuggish, corrupt bigot to do the job on their behalf. White Men knew exactly what they were doing and why. This is why even Trump's palpable idiocy and borderline mental illness, his bone idleness, his delusions...as well as his naked, brash criminality...matter not a whit to his White Man support base. You don't hire St Francis when what you need is a gangster.

Changes in the racial make up of the United States (and Europe), currently dramatised by the politics of immigration, are a specific set of circumstances that required, for White Men, a specific response...and this is true everywhere in White Man World from the Kremlin to Cincinnati, Ohio.

The White Man Coup, or "Brexit", as we call it here, is impervious to accusations of criminality or of Russian Interference because it is based on Racial Panic rather than what we used to call Patriotism...which would involve some respect for the rule of law. Any and all means of self defense, (as the White Man Coup sees it) is permissible. The struggle is existential. This is why the manipulation of the Brexit vote, for example, is hardly being reported in the news.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/amp/2018/06/the-british-russia-collusion-scandal-is-breaking-wide-open.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t&__twitter_impression=true

(Putin sees himself as the leader of a phallocentric defense of White Christianity, a version of the post Napoleonic War Holy Alliance against emerging democracy, and is acknowledged in his leadership by Banks, Trump and even Victor Orban...which is a hell of a stretch for a Hungarian Nationalist.)

Of course, White Men may find the crudity and corruption of a Trump or a Farage a tad embarrassing (in public), but being crude and corrupt and a little absurd, even, is part of the job description. It certainly was for the dictators in the 1930s. But because The White Man Coup treats all politics now as a zero sum game of political survival vs political extinction (beneath a Muslim, female, Mexican Gay tide), so do the hired guns of the Coup treat political victory as an imperative that justifies all measures, and are fully supported by their electoral bases in any amount of crudity, corruption and absurdity. Cruelty is the accepted price of survival, as is the shared guilt of internment camps for immigrants, for example.

As for the hired guns themselves, they know, as dictators have always known, that the alternative to staying in power forever is prison at best. So just as their supporters will go along with any amount of cruelty for the "survival of the race", so Orban and Trump et al will embrace any legal or extra legal means, any lies, any necessary measures, to stay in power forever. (Or to assure that they are succeeded by people every bit as guilty as they are.) Trump in particular knows that defeat at the ballot box means prison, and White Men fear that defeat of their coup ("Making America Great Again") means extinction, just as the Germans did (or as they told themselves in justification) in the 1930s and 40s. Democracy and the Rule of Law are minor collateral damage. Hence voter suppression, breaking Trade Unions funding (as the Supreme Court also just did) and , crucially the dismantling of International Legal Frameworks from NATO to the EU.

White Man, prompted by the Immigration Crisis, has come to believe that only the jungle is the territory of their survival. This is why the only possible redress against the Coup, the only defense for Humanity (a concept specifically rejected by the Coup, along with any other globalism, including climate change) is the force of numbers. Unless America votes decisively against the White Man Coup in November, unless we find a way of stopping Brexit, unless the EU finds a way to deal with the politics of migration that don't involve Europe (like Trump's America) becoming a xenophobic fortress then we are heading into years of darkness.

The institutions set up after WW2, the UN, the WTO, The EU...were all attempts to guarantee us against jungle warfare. They have lasted for nearly eighty years. They have months left to live unless Humanity defeats the White Man Coup.

ps the term "White Man" is deliberate. The women and members of ethnic and gender minorities who support the agenda of White Man Supremacy, in this rubric, might be called "enablers" who think they know which side of their bread is buttered. pps I am a white man.

Another Day Closer to Brexit.

Labour put down an amendment on Brexit Withdrawal Bill that LOOKS, for a couple of minutes, like it might mean something. That Her Majesty's Opposition, unlike Her Majesty's Government, might have made some sort of decision about some sort of Brexit. 

But no, there they are spinning and briefing against each other as usual. And we are still nowhere. It can't just be because both parties are made up of loonies and feckless bastards, can it? Why does no one ever decide anything? Because they can't. It's the only explanation. 

Brexit CAN'T be done. Not SHOULDN'T be done. Can't. We are on a set of islands off the coast of Europe. Europe is run by the EU. We are going to remain in the EU...just not members of it. It's a lie. A delusion. This is why neither party ever makes any decision as to policy. Any decision the politicians make...ANY decision...is pure fantasy. We decided to leave the EU. That was our LAST decision. That was the last decision the UK is ever going to make. All we've done is abdicated ourselves from any future decision making. The EU will decide the terms on which we leave and redefine the relationship. This was ALWAYS how it was going to be. 

Maybe it's a good thing...for Europe...in the end. The Brits were never comfortable in the real world. Always moaning about their place in the sun, always opting out of everything. Very tiresome. They will be...they already are...glad to get us out of the room.

The EU will decide on Britain's future status. Britain imagining otherwise was an illusion born of the same imperial nostalgia as our "special" status within the EU. We were indulged in that rubbish for forty years. That's done now. The only strategy the UK had was trying to pick off EU member states one by one for "special" deals, as if our leaving would make the EU fall apart. The moment that strategy failed (by about mid day on June 24th 2016)...we had NOTHING else to bring to the table.

This is why the Tories have spent two years fannying about while the Labour party fannied about letting them. This is why we've made no proper preparations for any Brexit realities. Because there's NOTHING we can do. This is why BOTH major parties have already fallen to bits. They can't talk about Brexit seriously, because to talk about Brexit seriously would be to admit that they, like Wyle E Coyote have ALREADY run off the edge of the cliff...but they haven't looked down yet. They KNOW what will happen if they do. The implication of REAL Brexit is that we hit everything with a hammer...smash it all to bits and start again. Now there are some on the far left and some on the far right to whom apocalypse/revelation is a consummation devoutly to be wished. In their imagination, a lean capitalist beast with no foreigners or a socialist paradise with no bankers will ensue next March. Let us be clear. NOTHING like either is going to happen. Tories and Labour have both dropped the Brexit ball and are waiting for the EU to pick it up. Eventually, the EU will be forced, out of self interest, to save the UK. What will then happen is that the EU decide both the terms on which we leave, and the terms that suit them as to how we continue to trade. The truth is that both parties are COUNTING on this happening. Both main political parties and the entire media are meanwhile complicit in a bizarre conspiracy of pretending otherwise, of "agency." But they know that Britain will decide NOTHING. I suspect sensible parliamentarians, and even David Davis and Bojo, KNOW this.

This is why we've handed over ostensible political control to the loonies. It's why Jacob Rees Mogg is never off the telly. It's pure showbiz. I guess we might use WTO Rules for a year or two...then we'll be back at the EU table, BEGGING for them to sort it for us.

But I suspect we've already "chosen" the easy way, the lazy way...deciding nothing at all, so that the grown ups in the EU will decide everything for us in time for next year. Playtime will go on. The delusion will go on. Of course, the Tories will still bitch and whine about the beastly Europeans, and Labour will bitch and whine about the beastly Tories. But British politics will be pure theatre even more than it already is. Things will be a bit harder. Living in Britain will be a bit crappier. London will continue to be a city of huge, dodgy wealth pit with a servant class in deeper poverty. The North of England will continue to rot. The racists will continue to blame everyone brown. 

What do we do next? "We" meaning Scotland this time? We might well choose to do nothing but whine and bitch about the Labour Party while Labour whine and bitch about the Tories while the Tories whine and bitch about the EU. After all, in 2014 we also chose not to choose.

It might be that we are the ghost of a country attached to a ghost of a country. The only difference..maybe...is that Scotland's ghost is MAYBE...maybe... a ghost of the future as a small country in Europe, not of an Empire lost in the past.

So THIS is what they meant by "Taking Back Control!"

"A presumption of acting with consent"...what that means is that if the Scottish Parliament does NOT consent to anything decided by Westminster in the context of Brexit...(which can mean ANYTHING), for the next seven years, politically forever...it will be treated if it did...Thus breaking every principle upon which devolution is founded.

Our elected representatives...our opinions....and our votes...will amount to exactly nothing.

So THIS is what they meant by "Taking Back Control!"

Actually, that's not just a flip remark. "Take Back Control" worked so well as a slogan in the Brexit Referendum because it answered a very specific social and psychological need. For the English people to take back something they felt they'd lost. The globalised economy was felt to have robbed economic life of a sense of identity and purpose. The systematic destruction of the welfare state over the last thirty years had robbed people of a sense of "us"...the people "they" were supposed to look after. Brexit, ever more explicitly , is an English nationalist moment...and Scots should not be entirely surprised by it, or feel unconnected to many of the impulses behind it. After all, many Yes voters also voted to Leave. However, it is now becoming clear that a suppression of the qualified autonomy represented by the Scottish parliament is very much among the things that Brexit is "taking back control" of.  Resentment of noisy jocks is absolutely smack dab at the centre of the agenda. This English national Moment is, in the usual confused way, mixed up with BRITISH hegemony. What the next few days and weeks will tell us is just how explicit the consequences of the English National Moment are for us…and whether this grotesque insult to the principles upon which we thought devolution were built is as accidental and unthinking, or a deliberate act of bureaucratic violence springing from the same poisonous source as the Windrush scandal.

(Surely there can be no one left who thinks that this generation on West Indians were targeted by accident!)

The events of the last few days in Scotland and Westminster, and the provisions of the bill now published, are an absolute vindication of a simple proposition. You can have a unitary Brexit, or you can have effective devolved government. You cannot have both.

Brexit, as I’ve indicated, is an expression of English national feeling...which is hardly something in itself to criticize from a website that supported the Yes campaign in 2014.  But it is taking the twisted form of a nostalgic resentment of 21st Century reality. Part of the Resentment of Empire is the visible…hence annoying…limited autonomy of the "regions." The fact that all that was really "added" to the constitution in the late 1990s was a democratic element to a federalism that already existed...is neither here nor there. The Union settlement itself is a triviality in contemporary British politics. What matters is the irritation. All that matters politically is that the irritation be soothed or removed.

The Labour Party have now removed Wales from any future consideration as a stone in the pathway of a "Smooth Brexit."  And the voters of Wales will reap the harvest of obedience. But Wales at least VOTED for Brexit as well as devolution. Scotland voted decisively against Brexit and for at least a measure of democratic participation in specifically Scottish matters...such as agriculture, fishing and energy policy that were themselves partially devolved to EU coordination. Can those who devised that Parliament now act with the Tories to strip back that measure of democratic self government in the name of a Brexit that the country voted decisively against? On what possible grounds? The devolution settlement of 1997 is now untenable. It cannot survive Brexit. The alternatives are either an absorption into a unitary UK State that has never existed in this form before...(the Barnett Formula, for example, is unlikely to survive)...or fundamental re-negotiationThis may or may not be called "Independence." , itself a very 20th Century term in a very different set of realities in the 21st Century. But be sure that unless Scotland remains as a "problem" for Brexit, Scotland will cease to exist politically in the UK except as a footnote. Any consideration of the needs of the people of Wales in the context of agricultural or regional policy is already fading into irrelevance. Everyone who supports devolution as a meaningful element of Scottish life HAS to stand firm with the Scottish Government, or face oblivion.

Just as a footnote of my own, the influential Tory think tank, The Institute of Fiscal Studies has just reporterd that they see no future for the Barnett Formula after brexit.  Taking control of the portfolios coming back from Brussels is very much the thin end of the wedge. This is the essential context for the "deal" that WM has offered Scotland. If we take the deal, we are handing all control over ScotGov funding to Tory Government discretion. Not just a bit of it. All of it. Is that really okay with everyone except Nicola Sturgeon?

http://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/keeping-barnett-formula-not-appropriate-after-brexit-warns-institute-fiscal-studies#

There are lots of things about Brexit we in Scotland can’t do anything about.  If this point of principle is conceded on the Continuity Bill, there will be nothing we can do about any of it – which is precisely the idea.  What we can and must do right now is defend the devolution settlement itself…and hold accountable the Labour and Liberal MSPs whose predecessors designed it.  Are they really happy to give it away for the slim chance of a Brexit supporting Corbyn government?

No wonder Carwyn Jones resigned as Welsh Labour Leader rather than countenance cancelling devolution till we "sort" Brexit?  A time frame of seven years “while they sort Brexit out” is a political eternity. Brexit is a car crash that can't be sorted. Do we really just amble on with our heads in a light proof rubber sack till the Tories win a General Election in 2022?

What Does Brexit Mean for Independence? What does “ Independence” mean in the context of Brexit?

The period from 2011 to 2016 might be characterised by future commentators as the Independence Moment in Modern Scottish History. 

The experience was a little how I imagine surfing to be…catching a wave of what felt like unexpected then irresistable momentum that carried its passengers towards a golden shore that seemed so close we could touch i Even defeat in the referendum in Sept 2014 scarcely seemed to dent the euphoria for long.  Through the 2015 SNP electoral landslide we went, scarcely even noticing that something beyond our ken was stirring elsewhere in the pond, a corresponding yet very different, diffuse wave of English Nationalism…with Jeremy Corbyn riding one surf board, and Boris Johnson another. 

Then all the waves crashed at once.  Like Wile E Coyote, we looked down and saw that there was nothing holding us up, and we plummetted into the confused, confusing wash of a brand new reality.  Brexit was happening, and Donald Trump was in the White House.  And as we tried to stand up in the surf, spitting out a mouthful of seaweed…with a jelly fish trapped down our Speedos, we had lost all sight of the beach.

There are those among us who claim to still see it.  That all we need to do is get back on the surfboard and another wave will come to lift it home. But most people aren’t so sure. We look around like we don’t know the rules of tides and gravity yet…and we hesitate.

To attempt to escape the metaphor in which I seem to have trapped myself as completely as Scottish Constitutional politics is stymied at the moment, let me suggest that the political hesitation is purely pragmatic. We had an election in 2017 in which the result was multiply equivocal and confused on both sides of the border.  We have a Brexit process that is itself mired in the strange feeling, even now, with a year till we are supposed to be leaving, that it’s not really going to happen. The electorate are nothing if not nervous of change.  At this moment, if anyone came along with a claim that they could make it all go away, they might win a couple of by-elections.

Like the Trump presidency, none of this was supposed to happen. There was a much cleverer and more lucrative scenario where Trump and Farage could shout “Treason” and “Fraud” after they lost...and go on to nice, comfortable careers on Fox News. Even now, nobody leading the Brexit campaign in 2016 or the shambolic sham negotiations over the divorce that have been going on in a pretendy kind of way for the last year or so is acting like any of this is actually real. I think that from the perspective of the helpless and futile periphery (to which status the 2014 vote condemned Scotland as a political entity) of a process that is quite so surreal, “hesitation” is not only natural as a political strategy, it is unavoidable.  In an era of Red Lines being invisibly drawn all over the place, the Red Line that the Scottish Government have drawn around the transfer of powers and the principle of the Single Market make exactly as much symbolic sense as anything else going on.

But here and in Wesminster, a sense of unreality prevails.  The Scottish Government are trying to finesse a rider to a UK Deal with the EU that still doesn’t feel as if it is really going to happen.  In these circumstances, to try to summon back into being some nostalgic reboot of a previous epoch in the shape of “IndyRef2” seems chronologically inept as well as politically dubious. There is no sense in the air that anyone beyond the Faithful are remotely interested in that wish attempting to become real.

“But if we wait till after Brexit happens, it will be too late!” comes the anguished cry.  To which I can only respond, “It IS too late. The vote in 2014 was a vote to put the decision out of our hands.” The helpless rage this makes us feel is quite real.

Because undeneath the layers of unreality with which the Brexit Slippage is encircled, still feeling like an “if” rather than a “when”, something real is nonetheless happening.  The EU are responding to reality rather than the vague and impossible wish list which is still the only available (and quite hopeless) articulation of what Brexit might look like from the UK point of view - the picking of cherries from the cake that the unicorns are baking somewhere in Empire 2.0 – by producing legal documents for the divorce.  “You told us you are leaving, “ they say. “So sign here.” And Westminster howls with outrage that the Eurocrats would dare to introduce anything so vulgar as “consequences” to an entirely imaginary decision - a decision that they simultaneously insist is “sacred” and must be “respected.”

The very use of terms such as “respect” and “democracy” is a dead giveaway, perhaps, that none of this, as with Trump’s Tweets, is meant to be taken literally, that nothing is real. In such a context, there is nothing to be done specifically in Scotland but to defend devolution, which is our local political variant on the theme of “You can have Brexit or reality, but you can’t have both.”

The upshot of all this is that we are condemned, like it or not, to a long game in which we have little practical say.  This was the “Old Normal” of Scottish politics before 2011.  Trying to finesse whatever situation the UK got itself into, for good or ill, for Scotland’s benefit, or at least to minimise harm. Devolution itself started as such a gambit, before the SNP's victory and the blithering response from London made it into something else, maybe...

It was a game played with a mixed record of success and humiliation from Whigs through the Unionists through Labour to the present: a sequence of local hegemonies in constant negotiation with where the power REALLY lay.

Buit these are not those times.  This is not the Old Normal no matter how hard Scottish unionists pretend to believe that it is.  Because one of the things that is REALLY happening with Brexit is the discovery, by the English, of what the limitations of “Independence” are in the 21^st Century.  And our corresponding future discovery, perhaps, that power doesn't really lie where we thought it did.  That the very nature of power is changing.  That the very meanings of "Nation" and "Independence" are in flux.

The crashing disappointment of Brexit both now and in that future, for the English, is something of which those of us who still perversely cling to the expectation of serious constitutional change somewhere in Scotland’s near if not foreseeable future must most carefully attend. The "moment" is going to change again...in a way that is as hard to see into now as it was in say, 2008, to foresee a Scottish Independence referendum getting pretty close to a Yes vote in 2014.

My guess, for what it’s worth, about the NEXT few years, is that there is no avoiding the realities of Brexit, despite the concerted efforts of Corbyn on one side and May on the other to clamp their hands over their eyes as they walk us off the cliff. My second guess is that we will have another UK General Election which will elect one more UK government to try to “make a go of it” no matter what “it” turns out to be.  And that meaningful constitutional change, a decisive transfer of sovereignty from London to Edinburgh, which may or may not be called “Independence” will happen as part of the recovery from this catastrophe, and not, as we hoped, as Nicola Sturgeon hoped, in its anticipation. 

In short, I think that we are going to have to wait for the wave, for the reality, AFTER this one.  And that it is quite impossible to anticipate exactly what that moment will look like.  My hope is that that when that time comes, it will be ALL of the historic nations who are asking themselves questions about what "nationhood" might mean in the future...and that the answer will involve as few torchlit parades and as little broken glass as possible. but which will nonetheless be as near as that 19^th century concept comes to meaning what we think it does in the here and now…

In short, that all this will come, if it does, will not come as part of the UK’s exit from the EU in 2021, but as part of the process of getting back in somewhere around 2028. And it will seem as natural as did the referendum to establish the Parliament in in Edinburgh in 1997 that the UK will be reconfigured.  As natural as rain. There will be people on the fundamentalist wing of Scottish Nationalism who will complain that it’s not the Real Thing.  But as with Brexit, one of the things we have learned in the New Normal is that the “Real Thing” doesn’t exist.

This is a counsel of hope , by the way, not of despair.  The Break Up of Britain is coming closer faster than anyone could have anticipated on September 19^th 2014, let alone after the 2017 election.  But it will not look like the past.  It will not look like yesterday’s dream no matter how fervently some of us might wish. It will look like something wholly new, something that is already happening in Scotland, and Ireland…and London, actually. Reinventing nationhood is one of the real things that is happening to all of us. Brexit is an attempt to use nostalgia and hatred as a template for that change. We can do better.  We already have.  We may be restricted to holding action for the moment…the 2014 vote saw to that…but change is underway. It is up to us to be inventive as we go through it, and to insist on a principle of Scottish Popular Sovereignty as a rock to cling to.

Whatever else the vote in 2014 meant, it established that our future, in the long term is up to us, even as it condemned us to a present tense of helplessness and apparent stasis.  The chance will come again, but it won’t look like any of us think it will.  Prepare for fancy footwork. Reality is bound to make a comeback sooner or later.