Scottish independence, EU membership, legal advice and negotiations

There’s news that the UK Government has obtained legal advice is that an independent Scotland would not automatically be a member of the EU, but would need to apply for membership.  See The Firm’s report here, and the Telegraph here.  This follows an earlier row in the summer about the (non-) disclosure of the Scottish Government’s advice on the issue.  That the UK has sought advice, or that that is the advice it has received, is not a surprise.  The issue has been debated for a long time (I remember an iteration of it in 1993).  The issue is not whether an independent Scotland would satisfy the EU’s criteria for membership, but whether it could become a member on the first day of independence.  That the UK Government takes the view it doesn’t is important for two reasons.

First, it indicates a major problem for the SNP’s political strategy to secure independence.  The ease of the transition to an independent state depends heavily on the extent to which UK is willing to co-operate with the process.  That co-operation might, in principle, include helping Scotland to secure EU membership.  The harder line from Whitehall is not surprising, and suggests that the UK Government is not prepared to acquiesce in smoothing the SNP’s path. 

Stirrings from Scottish Labour

After a protracted period in which Scottish Labour has been reluctant to concede that there is any need to have a constitutional debate between the Calman commission/Scotland bill proposals, there are now signs that Scottish Labour has realised that it has to re-think its constitutional position as well as its organisational structure.  One is a speech by Douglas Alexander MP and shadow foreign secretary at the University of Stirling, the text of which can be found in the Caledonian Mercury here.  The other is an essay by Malcolm Chisholm MSP (and former MP and Scottish minister) for Labour Hame, available here.

There are many differences between the two pieces.  Alexander is very light on constitutional thinking, or indeed saying in concrete terms what he thinks Labour should do at all. But he recognises that they have relied on negative tactics to deal with the SNP in the past, and that these have not worked.  He emphasises the need for a positive agenda, which ties together explanations of how Scotland benefits from the Union with an account of how to deal with domestic and social problems within Scotland.

Chisholm focuses much more on constitutional issues, and the need for Labour to develop a ‘devolution max’ position to challenge the SNP effectively.  His ‘devolution max’ is evidently rather less far-reaching than the ‘full devolution’ proposed by the SNP (and to be aired further by Alex Salmond in his speech at the SNP conference on Saturday).  While he is vague about details, he advocates at least some devolution of social security as well as much further-reaching fiscal devolution.

Neither of these proposals is a finished piece of constitutional thinking, but given the intellectual deep freeze in which Labour’s thinking has been confined for some considerable time, it’s striking that they are willing to be more politically and intellectually adventurous – and these sorts of work take some considerable time.

The Commons Scottish Affairs Committee’s inquiries on Scottish independence

The Commons Scottish Affairs Committee has launched two inquiries into aspects of Scottish referendum – one relating to issues relating to the holding and conduct of a referendum, and the other relating to substantive issues of separating Scotland from the UK.  Details of the two inquiries are available from the Committee’s website here, and there are news reports from the Scotsman here and the Guardian here.  Written submissions are due by 18 November on the referendum-related issues, and 11 November on the wider issues relating to Scottish independence.

There are good reasons to hold such far-reaching, substantial inquiries.  These are major issues, on which the SNP has made the running since entering government in 2007.  Now is a relatively late stage to have them, though – reflecting the lack of seriousness with which the

The devolution implications of Liam Fox’s resignation

Liam Fox’s resignation as Defence Secretary will have a significant effect on the devolution debates.  Fox may have sat in Parliament for North Somerset, but his interest in Scottish affairs has remained a significant factor since he entered government – making him one of relatively few Scottish voices in Cabinet, and among front-rank Conservative politicians.  He is, of course, a staunch Unionist of an old-fashioned stamp, seemingly very uneasy about devolution let alone any further extension of that.  One telling example of his approach was his over-spun line that weighting defence cuts in such a way as to limit their impact in Scotland would ‘save the Union’ (see the Scotsman’s story here – this was the front-page lead that day).  But I gather his influence goes further than that, and that his has been an important voice in limiting the steps the Conservative Party and UK Coalition Government were willing to take in devolving further powers to Scotland.  (It seems his influence has been much more restrictive than that of the other Anglicised Scot in Cabinet, Michael Gove.)

Fox’s removal from government is therefore likely to alter the balance in further discussions about what should happen.  One significant voice opposing extensions of devolution has gone, as all the appointments made in the mini-reshuffle are of English MPs and none of them have shown much interest in Scottish matters.  If the Liberal Democrats want seriously to open the door to meaningful change in the Scotland bill, the circumstances make it much easier for them to do so.

The Guardian’s ‘Disunited Kingdom’ series

I’m sure most readers have already noticed that this week the Guardian has been running a series of items about the UK’s territorial politics, under the banner  ‘Disunited Kingdom’.  Of particular interest to me have been pieces by John Curtice about public opinion (here), and an interview with Alex Salmond (here). The whole series can be found here.

What’s particularly encouraging about the series is that I’m told by those involved that it marks the start of much more thorough coverage of devolution- and territorial-related issues by the Guardian, and won’t just be a week’s flash in the pan.  I do hope that is true; the issues involved merit more extensive coverage than they have had up to now, particularly in England.

As part of this series, I took part in a discussion recorded on Thursday chaired by Hugh Muir with Joan McAlpine MSP and Michael White from the Guardian.  This was a pretty wide-ranging tour d’horizon of most of the big questions devolution raises, and will be a ‘Guardian Focus’ podcast.  It’s available here.

The ‘ap Calman’, or Silk, Commission announced

The Wales Office has now formally announced the members of the ‘ap Calman’ commission.  The chair is indeed to be Paul Silk, and the political-party nominees are also as leaked earlier (see HERE).  The novelty comes in the two independent nominees.   They are Dyfrig John CBE, chairman of the Principality Building Society, and Professor Noel Lloyd CBE, formerly vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth University.  John was formerly a banker, and was chief executive of HSBC.  As the Principality’s deputy chairman is Eurfyl ap Gwilym, the Plaid Cymru nominee to the Commission, the society appears to be giving a large degree of support to the commission.  Noel Lloyd’s background is as a mathematician as well as university administrator.  While the Commission therefore abounds in financial and quantitative experience, it is much more lacking when it comes to constitutional issues or the interplay between financial and constitutional ones.

The Wales Office news release is here, and there’s news coverage from BBC News here and an analysis by Toby Mason here.

The Commission’s terms of reference (which can be found here) are perhaps more interesting than its composition .  These have been the subject of a huge amount of bargaining between

The territorial dimensions of Ed Miliband’s front bench

The full list of Labour’s front bench is published today (and is available here).  It’s quite interesting in how it handles territorial representation.  The big ‘territorial’ story in this was the replacement of Ann McKechin by Margaret Curran as shadow Scottish Secretary (see coverage from the Scotsman here and BBC News here).  McKechin is now on the back benches.  Curran is of course a former MSP and Minister in the Scottish Executive, though only an MP since 2010.  The interesting question will be whether she takes a different approach to McKechin when it comes to the constitutional debates.

Statistically, the front bench has 100 MPs on it (plus 29 peers), out of a total of 258 Labour MPs.  Forty-one of Labour’s MPs (16 per cent) sit for Scottish seats, and 26 (10 per cent) for Welsh ones.  Of the shadow portfolios given to MPs, 9 have gone to Welsh members and 11

‘Scotsman’ article on Murdo Fraser’s plans for the Scottish Conservatives

I had an article in the Scotsman yesterday, about Murdo Fraser’s plans to establish a separate right-of-centre party if he is elected as Scottish Conservative leader.  I’ve previously discussed these issues HERE and HERE.  The article is available from the Scotsman‘s website here, and the copy I submitted is below – my title is different to the one they chose, of ‘Involved voters like devolved parties’.  (The paper also added a sub-head which I didn’t write, referring to ‘separatist’ systems – which would not be my preferred adjective to describe a multi-national state.)  

Murdo Fraser’s new party: not so much breaking a mould as adapting to reality 

Murdo Fraser’s announcement that, if elected as the new Scottish Conservative leader, he would disband the existing party and create a new centre-right one operating only in Scotland has created a good deal of excitement.  If the aim was to get the Scottish Conservatives back into the news, it has emphatically succeeded.

What Fraser is proposing – two geographically distinct parties occupying much the same political space, and collaborating in state-wide politics but otherwise ploughing their own furrows – is very reminiscent of Germany.  The Christian Social Union in Bavaria is separate from the Christian Democratic Union in the other Länder (states), but they occupy similar political space, don’t campaign in each other’s territory, share a single candidate for Chancellor at federal elections and co-operate in the Bundestag in Berlin.  The CSU dominates

Weekend news

• According to BBC News (reported here), trailing Cheryl Gillan’s speech to the Conservative Party conference, the ‘Ap Calman’ commission is to be announced in Parliament in November.
• Eddie Barnes in Scotland on Sunday (here) has a leak of a number of suggested new names for the reconstituted right-of-centre party in Scotland, if Murdo Fraser is elected leader.  They include ‘Scottish Unionists’, ‘the Scottish Reform party’, the ‘Scottish Progressives’, ‘the Progressive Conservatives’, ‘Scotland First’ and ‘Scotland Forward’.
• The Telegraph reports (here) serious disquiet from unionist politicians about the role Scottish Government officials are playing in supporting the SNP’s constitutional policies.  All three unionist party leaders in Scotland have written to Sir Gus O’Donnell about the role Peter Housden, permanent secretary of the Scottish Government, has taken in the debates.  They seem to believe that officials’ actions in supporting their ministers have gone beyond the requirements of impartiality set out in the 2010 versions of the Civil Service Code.  (There are now separate codes for UK Government and the Scottish Executive, both of which state both the importance of political impartiality and the duty of civil servants to ‘serve the Government, whatever its political persuasion, to the best of your ability’ and ‘act in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of Ministers’. The Scottish code is here, and the UK one is here. )  While it’s clear that civil servants have assumed what might be seen as a more political role in the Scottish constitutional debates than is customary, this has not just been on the Scottish Government’s side.  One might point to the way the Scotland Office’s role has become more politicised since 2007, for example, especially if it is co-ordinating what looks very like preparatory work for an anti-independence referendum campaign, as this Reuters report suggests.  One might also look at the support arrangements for the Calman Commission.  This looks rather like a case of unionist politicians thinking that what’s sauce for the goose isn’t sauce for the gander as well.
• It’s also worth drawing attention to ‘Thinkpiece’ written for the Labour-supporting group Compass by Owen Smith MP, called Towards  a New Union ..?  (available here; there’s also an edited version on WalesHome here ).  Smith acknowledges the incomplete nature of asymmetric devolution and Labour’s failure in office to think through its implications, particularly with regard to England.  He regrets the failure of Labour’s ‘regional’ agenda, though doesn’t seem to acknowledge the dynamic nature of the constitutional debates (he likens David Melding’s ideas for a federal Britain to ‘Alex Salmond’s plan to bifurcate Britain”, for example).  However, his solution – greater localism in England – isn’t one that appears to command much support, either among politicians or the public at large.  (I say that with confidence having had early warning of some very interesting survey data due out shortly from IPPR, about which more in due course.)