One of the few points that did seem new was Salmond’s position on an independent Scotland’s monetary policy.  He said Scotland would intend to keep the pound sterling and remain part of the ‘sterling area’, through a currency union if possible, through simply adopting the pound sterling if not.  (I briefly canvassed the currency options for Scotland in a short piece for the Scotsman here.)  Salmond pointed out that the Scottish economy resembles that of the UK so closely that this would cause none of the problems of different economic structures or cycles that have underpinned the Euro’s difficulties.  (He’s quite right about this.  Ironically, in most respects, Scotland is the part of the UK that is closest to the UK statistical average.  Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England diverge more from the UK mean more than Scotland in almost every respect, other than health.)  George Osborne has said that an independent Scotland wouldn’t be ‘allowed’ to use the pound, though Salmond is right to point out that the UK Government can’t actually do that if Scotland chose to adopt the currency of what would be another state, other than by draconian measures that might backfire economically as well as politically and diplomatically.

If there’s a rump UK-Scotland currency union, clearly Salmond’s preferred scenario (he pushed it again at FMQs on Thursday, claiming a rump-UK Chancellor would ‘bite Scotland’s hand off’ for it to keep sterling), it’s open to agree the terms of how that works between the two parties.  Of course there’s no reason why the UK would wish to do that before a referendum, and a soon-to-be-rump-UK Government might well be less inclined to be helpful to a seceding Scotland on this issue than the First Minister thinks it would.  If a currency union could be agreed, that would probably be quite effective from a Scottish point of view.  However, given the disparity in the size of the rump-UK and Scottish economies, it’s hard to see how Scotland would in fact get much of a say in monetary policy decisions driven by English concerns.  Lest anyone think these are purely technical in nature, remember extensive debates through the 1990s and 2000s about how interest rate policies were designed much more to address the working of the housing market in southern England rather than supporting manufacturing industry elsewhere.  (For a different view of how well such a British monetary union would work, there’s a letter in Tuesday’s FT from Drew Scott and Andrew Hughes-Hallett, available here.)

However, there are many reasons why Scotland ‘borrowing’ the pound sterling would be a bad idea.  It means foregoing control over a raft of the powers of a ‘normal’, independent state.  It’s also at odds with what the Scottish Government said about independence in its November 2009 white paper Your Scotland Your Voice, where they emphasised that independence would apply to monetary policy.  It means not just being subject to a predominately English monetary policy, also a sequence of related decisions – most notably, about whether and when to join the Euro.  Adopting sterling as the Scottish currency would hand these decisions back to the UK Government and the Bank of England (both part of what would be a separate state), whether they are done co-operatively through a monetary union or through its unilateral adoption by Scotland.  I raised this issue in the Question and answer session (as did Lord Myners).  Salmond’s response to this on Tuesday was to say that the key issue for Scotland was control of fiscal, not monetary policy.  In other words, the key point of independence is to secure full fiscal autonomy – not the full range of powers that have previously been canvassed as the point of independence.

A fiscally autonomous Scotland would be able to set taxes in order to spur economic growth (possibly at the expense of its southern neighbour) or pay for a different approach to public services, but wouldn’t necessarily be able to make its own decisions about matters relating to other aspects of macro-economic policy such as currency or interest rates.  While these might be appropriate choices for an independent Scotland to make, given its place in the wider world, this is not the image of independence that has discussed before now.  There’s also a question whether the means (becoming independent) match the end (fiscal autonomy).  Indeed, this version of independence increasingly looks like ‘Devo Max’ (or full devolution, as the 2009 white paper called it) – not statehood as it was understood even 20 or 30 years ago.

Whether this is a real shift in SNP policy, or just an off-the-cuff response to a tricky issue, will also become clearer in the coming months.  There will be a good deal more of this sort of thing over the next 2½ years, as the SNP become clearer about what they consider an independent Scotland would look like and do.  For all the arguments about ‘the tide of history’ supporting independence, there’s also a lot of unresolved detail about how independence might actually work.  The Scottish people (and those in the rest of the UK) need clear answers about them before the referendum happens.

The UK Government’s consultation paper on a referendum, proposing a section 30 order (and already discussed HERE) can be found here.

The Advocate General for Scotland, Lord (Jim) Wallace of Tankerness (the UK Government’s law officer for Scotland) gave a speech at Glasgow University on Friday regarding questions of legal competence to hold a referendum.  His speech highlights a number of legal problems already highlighted on this blog.  The speech can be downloaded from here.

His earlier statement about the legal competence of a referendum, widely quoted in the press, can be found here.  There’s news coverage of that from the Scotsman, with an interview, here, and from BBC News here.

Also on Friday, Iain Jamieson (formerly a Scottish Office and Scottish Executive lawyer, heavily involved in framing the Scotland Act 1998) had an article in the Scotsman on the legal problems a referendum would face.  That’s available here.

A piece in Wednesday’s Telegraph by Sir Tom Hunter about the need for ‘pragmatism’ in the constitutional debate is here.

The coming week is due to see publication of the Scottish Government’s consultation paper regarding a referendum, and I’ll add a link to that when it’s available.  That can now (25 January) be downloaded from here.

For light relief, there’s a video explainer about independence issues from the Taiwanese TV company that specialises in animating complex world news stories.  It features ‘Braveheart’ painted faces, men in kilts, caber-tossing, bottles of Buckfast, a calendar with Maggie Thatcher in a bikini, a guy in a Star Trek red shirt, a version of the USS Enterprise powered by cans of Irn-Bru, and a guy nutting a TV set saying ‘I’ll see you Jimmie’ (so no clichés there then).  Curiously, Alex Salmond’s name turns into ‘Saruman’ when it’s transliterated into Mandarin.  That can be found from Youtube here, and is highly recommended for a laugh.

This absence is important.  Legislative consent needs to be affirmative; it can’t be presumed by its absence.  In the absence of an LCM, Holyrood can’t even vote to reject the bill – and its progress to the statute book is as stymied as if there were a clear motion opposing the bill.  (I’ve argued earlier, HERE, that respecting the Parliament’s power to block the bill is constitutionally fundamental.)

There is plenty of scope for negotiation about the bill, despite the long list of changes identified in the Scotland Bill Committee’s report.  Many of the changes named there – the demand for full fiscal autonomy, for example – are there to be negotiated away.  Given the recent comments of Linda Fabiani, the committee’s convenor, asking for the Secretary of State to propose changes, it seems that the SNP remains keen to see the bill pass, with appropriate changes.  It equally appears that Michael Moore is unwilling to enter that sort of debate – though, given the terms on which it’s now being held, it has become something of a dutch auction.  Moore’s self-imposed deadline of ‘the end of this parliamentary session’ (meaning May, or thereabouts) for passage of the bill adds to the pressure.  The pressure is, however, mostly on him.

As an aside, it’s worth noting the rather unusual intervention of the Lord President of the Court of Session in the debate about the bill’s provisions concerning criminal appeals to the UK Supreme Court.  There’s a press statement here, from which Lord Hamilton’s ‘written representations’ can be downloaded, and a news report here.  The Lord President emphasises his statutory authority (under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005) to make those.  The substance of his representations is to side with the review group chaired by Lord McCluskey set up by the Scottish Government, that the Court of Session should be able to certify cases which go to the UK Supreme Court on human rights grounds.  (See also news coverage here.)  The alternative to this is Advocate General’s position, reflected in the Scotland bill, that such cases should continue to go automatically to the UK Supreme Court as they are ‘devolution issues’.  Such an intervention adds further weight to the calls (from many in the law in Scotland, though not the Law Society of Scotland) to amend those provisions of the Scotland bill.

The question of whether the bill still serves any purpose is a valid one.  Regardless of how far the constitutional debates have moved since the bill was first introduced into Parliament (only 14 months ago), it still serves two purposes.  The first is as valid for anyone who wants to see ‘devolution max’ happen.  What the bill proposes in terms of fiscal devolution remains revolutionary in administrative terms.  Getting HM Customs & Excise to grapple with arrangements for collecting different rates of income tax is necessary not just to make the bill’s arrangements work, but as part of creating the machinery for any further fiscal devolution in future.   It’s a vital step along the path toward a fiscally decentralised UK.

Second, it’s clear that the people of Scotland want something more than devolution as enacted in 1998, and indeed more than the bill provides.  Heading into a referendum, the worst position for unionists to be in would be to argue that devolution can only mean what was enacted in 1998 and cannot change or develop.  If the bill fails to reach the statute book, that’s exactly the message that will sent to Scottish voters.  In that context, a defeat for the bill does not send the message ‘SNP oppose further powers for Scotland’, but ‘independence only meaningful alternative to status quo’.  That message will work electorally to the SNP’s benefit in the referendum, not the unionist parties’ – and of course the SNP will have no objection to letting the unionist parties score an own-goal if they wish.

UPDATE, 26 January: The list of marshalled amendments to the bill for Friday’s start of Lords committee stage as of 24 January is available here (though check here to see if this is the latest one).  There’s quite a range of amendments.  Lord Forsyth and Lord Foulkes both want  (different) referendums on the tax powers. Lord Foulkes also objects to them entirely, while Lord Forsyth is willing to devolve some smaller taxes including excise duty and air passenger duty, but on their existing basis.  (That would mean Holyrood could change the rates of tax but not what it’s charged on – so it’s a transfer of a source of revenue, but not a way of using tax as a lever to encourage or discourage particular sorts of behaviour.  And to devolve excise duty as Forsyth proposes would in fact mean establishing an internal trade barrier to the movement of alcoholic drinks, as you’d need to charge duty on the movement of alcoholic drinks across the England/Scotland border.)  Foulkes also proposes amendments to ensure the Scottish Government’s name is ‘the devolved Scottish Government’.  The Earl of Caithness wants  a referendum in Orkney and Shetland to allow them cease to be part of Scotland if there is a referendum on independence.  There’s also an independence referendum amendment, proposed by Lord Forsyth, Lord Lang and the Earl of Caithness.

Less dramatic but more practical are amendments by the Duke of Montrose to delete the clause preventing Holyrood legislating in relation to Antarctica.

Most interesting in practical terms are the amendments relating to legal provisions and the courts.  There are also some detailed amendments relating to the legal system from Lords Boyd of Duncansby and Lord Browne of Ladyton (more familiar as Colin Boyd QC, former Lord Advocate , and Des Browne, former Secretary of State for Scotland).  Theirs include deleting clause 7, allowing referral of particular clauses of bills to the UK Supreme Court (a good amendment to address a bad clause).  There are amendments from both Lord Wallace and Lord McCluskey to give effect to their different position about human rights-based appeals to the Supreme Court, and the question of certification.

Lords Committee stage (and report stage) are going to be messy, protracted affairs.  This just reinforces the point I made above – that time pressure to complete it progress through WEstminster, as well to secure Holyrood’s legislative consent, means that this bill is in fact very likely just to die.  The only way to save it will be for the Scotland Office to remove Michael Moore’s self-imposed block on carrying it over to the next session.

FURTHER UPDATE, 27 January: Some further supplementary amendments can be found here.  The most notable is Lord Foulkes’s probing amendment concerning fiscal autonomy.

There’s been quite strong media interest in the Commission: I’ve been quoted in stories for the Guardian, here, and the Western Mail, here.  I’ve also recorded an interview for this week’s BBC Wales programme Dragon’s Eye about it.

I have been advocating a Section 30 order for some time, so am glad to see that this has now been adopted.  It has, of course, been under discussion for a while, though within each government rather than between them.  It is the best way to put the power to hold a referendum in the hands of the Parliament with a mandate to hold one.  It addresses a fundamental problem about a referendum – that the Parliament with a mandate to hold one doesn’t, in fact, have the powers to do.  The Scottish Parliament simply can’t, lawfully, call the referendum the SNP (and many in UK Government, including David Cameron) want.

A Section 30 order needs approval from both Houses of the UK Parliament as well as the Scottish Parliament, but like all secondary legislation can’t be amended once it is tabled.  It must simply be approved, or not.  Because it needs Holyrood’s consent, an unfair attempt to ‘interfere’ in a Scottish referendum is simply impossible.  If the Scottish Parliament wishes to reject such an interference, it can do so – though the SNP will then have to deal with the consequences of that rejection for the referendum they have committed to hold.

It would be possible to frame a Section 30 order so that it would materially affect how the Scottish Government proceeds.  It’s hard to see how what’s now proposed does so.  It would give Holyrood clear powers to hold a single-option, single-question referendum, held by a date to be stipulated but not yet decided, regulated by the Electoral Commission, and using the ordinary electoral roll for Holyrood elections.   This does not accord with what the Scottish Government has suggested, but one has to ask how fundamental the differences are.  Does the SNP think that it’s fundamental to such a referendum that it alone be able to frame the question, or that 16- and 17-year olds be able to vote?   The issue of date has been a major point of friction, but Alex Salmond’s announcement on Tuesday that it would be in the autumn of 2014 is at least a step toward resolves that issue.  Similarly, the Scottish Government has now agreed on their being only one question, not two. As important as the date itself is knowing the date – that way, the campaign starts to have a shape, and it becomes clear when the ‘uncertainty’ caused by a looming referendum will end.  This whole palaver would probably not have arisen, and certainly would have had much less steam, if the Scottish Government had made the statements about date and a single question sooner.

The discussions about a referendum date, the number of options or questions, or who would be eligible to vote have all served to keep debate running, but could have been disposed of much more easily had the Scottish Government wished.

The story of how this situation developed deserves to be written up more fully.  The whole thing first emerged in public on Sunday evening in a rather confusing and garbled report from Patrick Wintour of the Guardian (now in a less garbled form here).  The story of subsequent events is partly told in Guardian articles by Nicholas Watt (here) and Severin Carrell (here); my information is that this is only part of the story.  There appears to have been a deliberate attempt by David Mundell, Scotland Office junior minister, to set up the aggressive use of a Section 30 order to control the terms of a referendum. This involved direct engagement with a number of Labour MPs as well as Conservatives, but by-passing his Coalition colleagues.  George Osborne’s role has emerged later, but he has been expressing concern about the effect of ‘constitutional uncertainty’ on the Scottish economy for some time.  The Lib Dems were largely marginalised in this process – and the Labour front bench was blindsided.  The idea of an 18-month ‘sunset’ clause (more accurately, window during which the referendum could be held) appears to have been a Conservative idea not supported by the Lib Dems, hence its being kicked out during the finalising of the consultation paper.  It’s one of several points in which the order could have been used to set out terms of the referendum that few in Scotland would think fair.

The difficult point for the UK Government has always been that a section 30 order needs to be attractive enough to ensure it has SNP support at Holyrood, but nonetheless does not simply let the SNP shape the whole referendum to suit itself.  The Lib Dems seem to have understood that an order needed to be essentially fair to secure that approval – the Conservatives (and some in Labour) to have believed it could be used as a nat-bashing exercise. In reality, the latter approach would not only ensure that the order did not pass, but also would give the SNP the opportunity to blame the UK Government for its failure.  The only way for an order to get through would be by enabling the SNP to have more or less the referendum it wants.  This round of the game can be won – and can only be won – by playing it straight.

Press suggestions that the SNP may now refuse to endorse the Section 30 order are intriguing.  The problem the SNP have to grapple with is the limited powers of the Scottish Parliament.  The UK Government’s legal advice is that Holyrood has no power to legislate for a referendum touching on independence.  I don’t agree with that view (I think a referendum authorising the Scottish Government to enter into independence negotiations would be within Holyrood’s competence – but not one purporting to give a mandate for independence).  Legal opinions, of course, vary; some, such as Adam Tomkins, think there’s no power at all.  The Scottish Government’s view appears to be that the Parliament’s powers in relation to itself are such that it could have a referendum about extending those powers – that’s why it framed the question it proposed in February 2010 in the way it did.  They’ve also used a good deal of bullying rhetoric to claim powers that few lawyers (even ones of nationalist inclination) outside the Scottish Government believe they have. Even then, the best the Scottish Government could do resulted in a convoluted question which was hard to understand, and which would be unlikely to survive scrutiny by the Electoral Commission. (That’s why the paper also proposed using an ad hoc commission, not the Electoral Commission, to regulate it.)  All this would at best be right at the margin of devolved powers.  It would almost inevitably be subject to challenge in the courts (by a private party if not the UK Government), and would very probably be held ultra vires.

That would not, politically, be entirely a disaster for the SNP.  They would be able to say they had delivered on their manifesto commitment, which was to introduce a referendum bill – not to get it passed, or actually to hold a referendum.  They would also be able to blame the UK Government and the UK Supreme Court for this failure; they’d emphasise both Scottish difference from the UK, and the refusal of the UK to allow something for which there was a clear public mandate.  It’s doubtful whether that would satisfy their members, or convince the wider electorate that the SNP kept their promises, though.

If the SNP actually want a referendum as a means to secure independence, though, the considerations are rather different.  In that case, the need is to have a referendum, and that means passing a legally competent referendum bill. The Scottish Government know how strong (and how weak) their legal position is.  Even Alex Salmond acknowledges this; on BBC Radio 4′s ‘Today’ programme on Wednesday morning, he said there was ‘no problem’ about a Section 30 order.  A Section 30 order, with some strings, offers them as legally certain a route to a referendum as there can be.  Trying to block the order really means taking a punt either on winning a political battle as they lose a legal one, or counting on the Parliament’s existing legal powers as adequate for a referendum bill.  This is, in a way, a Clint Eastwood moment.  The lawyers advising the Scottish Government know just how empty their legal armoury is, so just how lucky does the SNP feel?

The political dilemma the SNP face would be greater if the UK Government had handled the issue of a Section 30 order with greater competence.  As it is, the initial reports and presentation have left a clear impression that this is an exercise designed to undermine Scottish control of a referendum.  That impression may not be justified, but the failure to understand how difficult the politics of this were in Scotland is a major failing by the UK Government.  The Liberal Democrats seem to have done as good a job as possible in recovering the situation, but the best that can be said is that they’ve turned a disaster into a mere cock-up.  (Politics being the rough game it is, an achievement like that seldom gets much notice let alone reward.)  On top of that, there is also the huge gap that clearly now exists between the three unionist parties.  A cross-party effort will needed to run a pro-union referendum campaign, but this doesn’t augur well for assembling that sort of coalition.  Labour’s apparent determination to avoid talking about forms of enhanced devolution, while forcing a choice between ‘separation’ and the Union’, makes that all the harder.  (I’ll return to this issue in due course.)

On balance, this is both a necessary and a fair step in the constitutional debates.  A Section 30 order is the right way to put the powers to hold a referendum in the place where they should be.  Salmond has said that he wants a referendum ‘built in Scotland, which is made in Scotland and goes through the Scottish parliament’.   The order is a means of achieving that – and probably the only way of doing so lawfully.  It may not be quite what the SNP would choose in an ideal world, but it’s very largely what they want, in a workable way.  The key difference is over date, and that looks like a difference of nine months – a pretty paltry issue over which to have a first-rank crisis, especially as the UK now has a proposed referendum date from the Scottish Government.  Beyond that, there’s a difference about ‘authority’ to call a referendum, but that’s largely bluster.  The legal position is reasonably clear; the moral position is much clearer.  The idea that the Scottish Parliament has the power to cal the sort of referendum the  SNP want can be no more than a mirage.   Privately, the Scottish Government appear to realise how limited their legal powers are.  The UK Government (and the Labour Party) have now conceded Holyrood’s moral or political authority to call a poll.  The differences are really rather slight.  Rejecting the order would be a very risky step indeed for the SNP, and it’s hard to see how they really gain from prolonging an argument over something that’s very close to what they want.

The likelihood has to be that after a modest amount of pushing and shoving the Section 30 order will be made.  Either the ‘constitutional crisis’ is bluster, or the SNP are more interested in prolonging a constitutional debate (or a debate about the debate), rather than holding the referendum they have said they want.  But the UK Government’s collective approach to constitutional politics has done their position a serious disservice, for which they may pay a high price.

My earlier piece about a section 30 order can be found HERE, and there’s a discussion about Canadian parallels of the ‘clarity’ issue HERE.

Further details about the seminar are available here, and those interested in attending should contact Guy Lodge at g.lodge@ippr.org to book a place.

UPDATE: I understand that John Denham MP and David Davis MP have also been invited to speak.

FURTHER UPDATE, 23 January: Those looking for the IPPR report on attitudes in England can download it from here.

To recap (and there’s more detail in earlier posts HERE and HERE), the Labour UK Government redefined the nature of spending on the London Olympics during the 2007 Spending Review, so as to exclude the spending on regeneration of the wider Olympic area as for the benefit of the UK as a whole rather than for England.  If it were ‘English’ spending, as all other regeneration funding is, it would have triggered such consequentials.  This decision was made by Andy Burnham when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to avoid a potential over-run on the costs of the Olympics.  The result was to deprive the devolved governments of several hundred million pounds of funding, which became a long-standing source of grievance for them.  The new protocol on dispute avoidance and resolution agreed in April 2010 was framed in response, and the issue of the Olympics consequentials was the first one referred to the new ‘disputes resolution panel’ of the Joint Ministerial Committee, which met in October 2010 under Francis Maude’s chairmanship to consider it.  All three devolved administrations took part in that complaint, and in order to agree a common position adopted £330 million as the value of the missing consequentials.  (I’m told that this involved a substantially lower figure for Wales than the Welsh Government thought it should receive.)  The JMC disputes panel failed to reach a resolution of the issue, as it’s a process of mediation rather than arbitration and HM Treasury simply refused to concede that the devolved governments had any valid claim for consequentials.  The claim was left on the table at this June’s plenary JMC meeting, which resolved that there should be ‘further consideration’ of the issues.  That further consideration has now ended.

The deal unveiled on Thursday 22 December is a pretty miserly settlement of the devolved administrations’ claims.  The communiqué announcing it can be found on the Cabinet Office website here, and the Scottish Government’s here.  There’s a less ample press release from the Welsh Government here.  It seems that the Scottish Government will receive £16 million, the Welsh Government £8.9 million and the Northern Ireland Executive £5.4 million as a result. This means the devolved governments have compromised a claim of at least £330 million for about £30 million, less than a tenth of the sum which they thought they should get. (In fact, the amount lost by the devolved governments is more than that – if the amount allocated in the SR 2007 period had been allocated at the proper time, it would have been added to the baseline of the block grant and so resulted in further increases in subsequent years.)  Effectively, they have forgiven UK Government for their claims for the way the Labour government handled the matter, and limited the claim to changes made to Olympics funding since the UK Coalition took office.

The reason given for this is that ‘there have been significant changes in public finances since this dispute first arose … [the four governments] should therefore not revisit decisions on the Olympics budget first made by the previous UK Government’.  This sounds very like making the best of a bad job, facing Treasury intransigence.  What the devolved governments  have got instead are assurances – applying to all governments in form, but actually aimed at Whitehall – reaffirming the importance of communication, co-operation and mutual respect, ‘learning lessons from all disputes’ to avoid a repetition and so on.  Again, this sounds like making the best of a bad job.  It doesn’t avoid the fact that UK Government, having behaved badly in this episode, has managed to avoid most of the financial implications of it.  Assurances about future conduct would be more valuable if the UK Government had suffered a financial consequence – it would be more likely to do what it said it would if failure to do so were accompanied by having to pay a price.  Words alone may not be an effective guarantee for the future.

On this basis, it would be reasonable to infer that Treasury have in fact won this round.  They rewrote the rules of the block grant to suit them, unilaterally, kicked the issue into touch for four years and avoided paying a cash price for doing so.  They also were able to use a change of government as a reason for wiping the slate clean – even though that has worked the other way when it comes to End Year Flexibility.

That assumption of a straightforward Treasury win would be wrong, though.  The price of this particular win is to compromise the whole system of the block grant – the assumptions that Treasury will act properly and fairly, that financial matters will be dealt with according to the principles set out in the Statement of Funding Policy and the Memorandum of Understanding, and that funding will be allocated equitably.  Treasury’s conduct in 2007, and intransigence since then, hugely undermine the idea that the financing of devolved governments should be managed from the centre.  In fact, this is a case where Treasury has lost a wider struggle by winning one particular battle.  From a Scottish point of view, this is all grist to the SNP’s mill for a referendum campaign.

The other big loser from this – not just in a financial sense – is Wales.  Here was a case where the devolved governments had got together in common cause, with a very strong case.  They were still unable to persuade Treasury to change its position, or to get other parts of UK Government to twist Treasury’s arm to do so.  In the strongest possible ‘bilateral’ debate with UK Government on a financial matter, the devolved governments still lost.  Yet the Welsh Government has placed its hopes of securing ‘fair finance’ and borrowing powers in a purely bilateral, Welsh Government–UK Government, process.  How can it reasonably expect to win in such a difficult negotiation, when the devolved governments collectively failed?  What looked pretty unlikely a few weeks ago has become much more so now.

• David Marquand argued in a column in Monday’s Guardian that England’s hostility toward the EU and support for it in Scotland and Wales create a risk of break-up of the UK.  I’ve taken this view for many years, though I think Marquand over-states the short-term likelihood of this.  That piece is here.  Timothy Garton Ash follows in similar vein in today’s issue, here.

• Jim Sillars was interviewed in the Scotsman on Tuesday.  Sillars, still very influential among SNP members and other Scottish nationalists, expresses a good deal of scepticism about the impact of the European Union on an independent Scotland, particularly over currency and the Euro.  He supports the idea of a separate Scottish currency, underpinned by the country’s putative oil reserves.  (That, of course, would strengthen the ‘Scots dollar’ he advocates – good for tourists going abroad, less so for tourists coming to Scotland or Scottish exporters.)  That interview is available here.

• Adam Price, the former Plaid Cymru MP now at Harvard but seemingly back for the break, wrote in WalesHome last week that Plaid’s was a long-term project, and that Plaid could not expect to return to government before 2021.  He clearly thinks Plaid’s rivalry with Labour has become more important than the common ground that exists between the parties, and doesn’t think that any restoration of the ‘One Wales’ coalition between them is likely in this Assembly or the next.  That can be found here.  (Another piece of Adam’s about Wales’s poor economic performance over the last 20 years can be found here.)

• And Gus O’Donnell, the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, has written a valedictory piece for the Daily Telegraph about the challenges government faces.  That’s here. He highlights a range of internal challenges, as well as the world economy and other global problems.  One is the habit of using regulation and legislation to shape policy, because that is the low-risk option, but also uncreative.  Others include ‘whether to keep our kingdom united and how to make the EU operate in the best interests of its citizens’.  O’Donnell has been increasingly seized of the problems of maintaining the Union, though that has probably led more to restraining UK Government from doing stupid things than ensuring it does sensible ones.  Note that O’Donnell talks not of ‘how’ to maintain the Union (as he does with the EU), but of ‘whether’ to.  He would seem to be clear that there is a real choice to be made here.  The line about ‘maintaining the Union’ has been widely picked up by the press: see the Guardian here, the Telegraph’s own news story here, the BBC here, or the Mail here.

My own Christmas reading will feature Norman Davies’s Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, about how a number of once-powerful European states vanished, first as political entities, then from our historical memory.  There are details from Penguin’s website here, and reviews by Timothy Snyder in the Guardian here and Dominic Lieven in the FT here.

One area where Lamont does seem to have a position is the constitutional debate.  Here, her position is somewhat confusing.  On the one hand, she favours wider devolved powers, going beyond the Scotland bill proposals.  On the other, she also appears to favour an early referendum on the straightforward issue of ‘devolution v. independence’, without an extended form of devolution being on offer first.  She’s quoted in the Telegraph (here) as saying, ‘Separation and devolution are two completely different concepts which cannot be mixed together.  One is not a stop on the way to the other.’  This aggressive approach is at best a high-risk strategy for a unionist party or politician.

For one thing, as I explained back in June HERE, the constitutional position offered by the unionist parties remains more distant from the views of the median Scottish voter than the SNP are.  While that’s the case it will be very hard, for structural reasons, for the unionist side to win a referendum.  All the agency factors in the world – a good campaign, possible flaws in the case for independence and so on won’t alter that.  If there’s a well-organised and resourced SNP campaign, as seems likely, the challenge is all the greater.  Any unionist party will be ill-advised to hasten a referendum campaign unless or until they can minimise that structural disadvantage.  That means having an alternative to offer that is closer to the electorate’s views than the SNP’s position.

Second, while Lamont may be right in drawing a clear distinction between independence and devolution in abstract sense, that’s not how many see it.  Academics would point to the blurred, fudged nature of these issues in the modern world.  Scottish voters equally don’t see matters in that way either – they seem much clearer about there being a continuum of degrees of self-government.  A forced-choice, two-option referendum in such circumstances may have its political attractions, but these are superficial ones.  It implies yet more of the hard-edged approach to constitutional politics that we’ve seen since 2007 and which has done few favours to either a coherent debate, or the unionist position. The choices involved may be polarised, but the debate concerning them shouldn’t be.

Third, Lamont’s position disregards one of the biggest obstacles to securing enhanced devolution: the reluctance of the UK state at the centre to change.  Even the limited provisions of the Scotland bill were only obtained after great political pressure was put on HM Treasury, because of the threat posed by the SNP.  A ‘referendum, then enhanced devolution’ strategy may be mistrusted by Scottish voters because it essentially means jam tomorrow, but nothing today (or in the foreseeable future).  But it also relieves that source of pressure on institutions like the Treasury.  Letting the Treasury off the hook is a good way of making sure enhanced devolution never actually happens.

Lamont’s big task when it comes to these matters is to get Labour to the point where it has a workable plan for enhanced devolution, before moving to a referendum about Scotland’s constitutional future.  We will see how energetically and effectively she takes on that job.