Faced with two options, Labour should look for a third

A great debate is getting under way inside the Labour Party, over what went wrong in the British General Election. It is boldly, unflinchingly and resolutely facing up to entirely the wrong question.

Which path to the light?
The high road? The low road? Left? Right?
Or should Labour turn around and look for something else entirely?

That question is posed in terms of whether Labour needs to go back to its winning ways under Tony Blair, as New Labour, or take a more Left-wing stance, as favoured, some suggest, by his successor Gordon Brown. The Blairite view is that Labour turned its back on people with aspirations, focusing exclusively on the poor and vulnerable.

Staunch Blairite Peter Mandelson, popularly nicknamed “the Prince of Darkness”, has bemoaned the fact that under the doomed leadership of Ed Miliband, the party was instructed to get out there with the message that “we are for the poor, we hate the rich – ignoring completely the vast swathes of the population who exist in between…”

Expressing essentially the same objection, he said that “we were sent out and told to wave our fists angrily at the nasty Tories and wait for the public to realise how much they had missed us. They weren’t missing us. They didn’t miss us.”

Mandelson isn’t entirely wrong: those fundamentally negative messages would damage Labour. But as someone who also went door to door a little for Labour, I can assure you no one told me to present that view. There will come a time when Ed Miliband, gallant loser and therefore a figure much loved by the English, will start to see the sympathy flow back towards him and I’m sure, when that happens, no one will pretend he was against aspiration.

Equally, I’m convinced that neither he nor Ed Balls who, as Shadow Chancellor (Finance spokesman), was with Miliband the main architect of Labour’s defeat and even lost his parliamentary seat as a result, were opposed to wealth creation. They wouldn’t deny the entrepreneurs responsible for it the right to become rich in the process. On the contrary, I think they saw themselves as committed to wealth creation, as the only way out of the difficulties the nation faces, and merely felt that there had to be some better regulation of just what was permitted in its name – and that the rewards people took should reflect real contribution. Huge bonuses for bankers operating their institutions at a loss ought, for instance, to be curtailed.

The Blairites are at least nominally committed to the same thing. At most, there’s probably a difference in degree between the two sides: should the top rate of tax be at 45%, 50% or 55%? Nobody’s proposing the rate of the sixties, 97.5%.

Sadly, however, the debate is going to be about backing “modernisers” (read Blairites) or “old Labour” (read those closer to Miliband). Whereas it should, in fact, be about entirely other matters.

It’s true that Tory economic policy is inequitable: the richest have doubled their wealth over the the last ten years, despite the crash, while those least able to bear it are suffering devastating hardship. But the real issue is that it doesn’t even work. Growth is stuttering. The debt is up, not down. The pain of constant cuts in government spending isn’t being rewarded by gain in economic recovery.

The answer isn’t simply to call the Tories nasty or hate the rich. It’s to offer an alternative to the constant cuts. We’ve known since Keynes that austerity doesn’t work. And yet Labour’s answer has been simply to offer the same with some mitigation of its worst effects.

We should be arguing for an alternative to austerity. We need to communicate the message that there’s no better time to borrow that when interest rates are just about zero. If the funds go into stimulating the economy, more people will find real jobs. They’ll pay more taxes, and they’ll buy more goods. A virtuous cycle will be kicked off, where the economy starts to fix itself, and the need for further government borrowing goes down as tax revenues go up. Without soaking the rich – simply by the sheer organic effect of relaunching the economy.

But what that means is denying the premisses of the Tory argument. It means saying “the problem isn’t about how much austerity we should have, or where it should be targeted, it’s about dropping the policy altogether.”

Sadly, it’s the SNP in Scotland, the true victors of the General Election, who pursued that line, and not Labour, who lost.

If you haven’t already seen the election night exchange between famously aggressive presenter Jeremy Paxman, and the former SNP leader Alex Salmond, then you should watch it now. It’s a master class in refusing to accept the premises of a hostile argument. Without being evasive, you just answer “no” and keep saying it as long as you need to. Which makes the clip also a great illustration of how to deal with hostile media, about which Labour also constantly complains – though with a predominantly right-wing press, Labour ought to be used to it by now, and have learned to see it off as Salmond did.

When Salmond ran rings round Paxman
A master class in handling hostile media and fighting the right battle

Paxman asked what lay behind the SNP success and, when Salmond answered that it was Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, tried to needle him.

“You’re a very modest man, aren’t you?” 

Salmond, unfazed, replied “modesty becomes me, yeah.”

Later, Paxman tried to get Salmond to deny the SNP’s earlier refusal ever to work with the Tories.

“Is there any possibility of any sort of deal between you and David Cameron if the Tories are just a little bit short of an overall majority?” he asked.

“No.” 

“None whatsoever?”

“Correct.” 

“If David Cameron offered you full fiscal autonomy, in other words control over taxes in Scotland, you’d still say no?”

“He won’t.”

“You’re guessing.”

“No, I’m not.”

Perhaps the most telling exchange came in the middle of the interview.

“I suppose you could take some of the credit for the Tory triumph in England, couldn’t you?” asked Paxman.

The reference was to the campaign whipped up by the Tories and their friends in the press about the possible election of a minority Labour government, dependent on SNP support. The SNP was presented as a bogey man, and Miliband only contributed to the damage by constantly denying he’d ever work with the SNP – in other words, he played into the lie that the SNP was dangerous.

Salmond stayed calm and told Paxman:

“No, I think Ed Miliband should take the credit for the Tory triumph in England. I think he should have fought a totally different sort of campaign. If he’d fought the sort of campaign that Nicola Sturgeon fought in Scotland, then he’d be in a much better position this morning.”

Now there’s the key issue for Labour. Not should we be more like Blair, or more like Brown. Instead, can we find a leader who doesn’t fall into the other side’s trap but fights the campaign we need and gets us elected?

In other words, can we find our own Nicola Sturgeon?

A very British spaghetti Western: the good, the sly and the downright inept

I spent the first couple of hours after the BBC exit poll for the UK General Election was announced at 10:00 last night doubting its accuracy. I wasn’t alone: former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown publicly swore to eat his hat on live TV if it were proved right. Fortunately for him the exit poll did indeed prove wrong. Unfortunately, things turned out to be even worse than it suggested.

What? What? The Tories on 316 seats?
I couldn't believe the scale of the victory

The next hour or so I spent trying to adjust my mindset to a completely different outcome from anything I’d been expecting. For weeks – months even – we’d all been forecasting a hung parliament (no party with an overall majority) and weeks of negotiations to put a coalition together to govern the country. That’s what the polls were telling us, after all.

Incidentally, I don’t believe the polls were wrong. What seems to happen is that a small but crucial number of people tell pollsters that they plan to vote Labour. They may not even be lying. That may be their intention when they say it. But then they go into the polling station and vote Tory.

In my mind, these so-called “shy Tories” are people who feel they really ought to vote Labour, perhaps because they know it represents their interests. So that’s what they tell the polling organisations.

But the Labour leaders are not unlike the Tories: educated at similar schools and universities, less wealthy perhaps but still far wealthier than anyone on the median wage or less. In the loneliness of the polling booth they think about these two sets of people, both representatives of what they may perceive as a kind of master class. If they are to choose one such person, why not make it the one born and bred to be a master – in other words, a Tory?

The final batch of polls had the following standings for the main parties on the eve of the election:

• Lord Ashcroft: Conservative 33%, Labour 33%
• Ipsos MORI: Conservative 36%, Labour 35%
• Populus: Conservative 33%, Labour 33%
• ICM: Conservative 34%, Labour 35%

All tight. And all of them adding up to a total, for the two main parties, of 66-71%.

The actual result was Conservative 38%, Labour 31%. A total of 69%, but a substantial lead to the Tories. All it takes, however, to get there from what the polls were showing is a switch by about 3-4% of the electorate. That’s probably about the extent of the “shy Tories” out there, and they determined the outcome last night.

It’s against that background that I set my British Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Sly, the Inept.

First, the good. That has to be the Scottish National Party, the SNP, and its leader Nicola Sturgeon who had an excellent campaign – rewarded by a near clean sweep of Scotland. There was a time that we in the Labour Party would laugh at the Tories for having only one Scottish seat. Now the laugh’s against us: as well as the Tories, we too, as well as the Liberal Democrats, only have a single Scottish seat.

The other 56 have been won by the SNP. It has even managed to win the election of the youngest MP for 350 years, Mhairi Black, a twenty-year old student who has to fit in finishing her degree in the next few weeks, around taking up her newly-won position at Westminster. She unseated Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesman, Douglas Alexander, in Paisley and Renfrewshire South.

Next, the Sly. This is the only prediction I got remotely right. The Tories are like the Sandman: get too close and you’re likely to fall asleep. Back in 2010, when they didn’t have enough seats to form a government, they approached the Liberal Democrats who then had 57 seats, to join them in coalition. The Lib Dems said yes, much to the amazement of many of us who had regarded them as a party of the centre-left, much more naturally allied to Labour than to the Conservatives.

We predicted that the electorate would take a terrible vengeance on them, reducing their numbers to a level from which it would be impossible to recoer for a generation. Even so, again guided by polls, most of us felt that they might hang on to 20-30 seats. In fact, they now have just eight. Some of the party’s biggest hitters have gone, including David Laws, one of the main architects of the coalition. The leader Nick Clegg clung on, but he’s leader no more, having resigned this morning.

And finally, the Inept. My own party. Our arcane constitution allowed the Trade Unions to foist on us a leader, Ed Miliband, who is I’m sure immensely likeable, principled, honest, decent and lots of other great things. But a no leader. He appointed as his Finance spokesman Ed Balls, and together they crafted a message to the effect that they, like the Tories, would impose a policy of austerity, but they’d do it more nicely.

Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP pointed out that this stance presented the British electorate with the choice between Tory austerity, and Labour austerity-lite. Not exactly inspiring.

Working to get out the vote around Luton, I had someone tell me that she had voted Labour, but against her instincts – she felt little confidence in the party. One even said that she might not vote at all, because Labour hadn’t cleansed itself of the Blairite tendency that took us into war in Iraq.

As Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon’s predecessor as leader of the SNP, last night told TV presenter Jeremy Paxman in a master class on how to handle aggressive questioning, if Ed Miliband had “fought the sort of campaign that Nicola Sturgeon fought in Scotland, then he’d be in a much better position this morning.” Indeed. Though he might also have had to learn to handle the media the way Salmond and Sturgeon do.

Well, that’s all in the past now. Ed Miliband has also stepped down. And Ed Balls was defeated for re-election in his parliamentary seat.

Crafted the economic policy that contributed to Labour defeat
And paid by being beaten himself

They always say businesses should hire slow and fire fast. Labour elected Miliband to the leadership rather quickly. It became clear soon after that he wasn’t going to inspire enough of the electors he needed to reach. But we fired him slow. It took four years for him to go, and the price for the generosity which let him have a go at becoming Prime Minister is going to be paid by a lot of other people, during five years of continued Tory rule.

Italian spaghetti Westerns leave you feeling entertained. This British one, on the other hand, leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth. I suppose it’s like the contrast in weather between the two countries.

The United Kingdom saved but not preserved

So in the end it wasn’t even close.

Yes to Scottish Independence
But this time at least it was No to ending the Union

Scotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom by a wide margin – 55.3% to 44.7%. A substantial difference. Nothing like as wide as the 20-point leads the ‘No’ campaign was notching up in polls two years ago, but still decisive, and nothing like the close result the polls predicted last week. Why, a couple of polls even put ‘Yes’ ahead.

Had the ‘No’ campaign failed, David Cameron might have found his position untenable. As it happens, Alex Salmond, after a long and highly successful career as Scotland’s First Minister, has decided to resign. Odd. It was a bad defeat but it was only one defeat, and no-one has been a more outspoken champion of Scotland. Surely his commitment would have been just what was needed for the next round of the debate.

For a next round there’s certainly going to be. David Cameron wasted the two years of the campaign, when he could have prepared proposals for increased Scottish autonomy. There might have been a Constitutional Convention, involving all parties. That would have put Alex Salmond on the back foot. He could have taken part, and looked as though he was hedging his bets on independence, or stayed out, and looked petty.

Such a Constitutional Convention would have prepared proposals to lay before the Scottish electorate as an alternative to independence. But it would have required effort from David Cameron, who’s shown himself no great friend of hard work. Instead, he waited until a poll showed the ‘Yes’ campaign ahead two weeks ago and then rushed around, stitching ideas together in a panic.

Suddenly, out of the shadows, stepped a figure from the past. Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister, emerged as the only champion of the United Kingdom to produce coherent, well-argued proposals for transferring more power to Scotland, his home country. He was a transformed character. My wife, watching him speaking passionately to a campaign meeting, said “why couldn’t he be like that when he was in Downing Street?” I was amused to notice next morning’s Guardian asking the same question.

Brown brought together the leaders of the three main UK parties, David Cameron for the Conservatives, his Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, and Ed Miliband for the Opposition Labour Party. They published a ‘Vow’ to hand over powers to Scotland in the event of a ‘No’ vote, while maintaining the current net transfer of public funds to Scotland.

On the front page of the Daily Record
The vow all three party leaders now have to honour

Now that vow has to be kept. Partly because to break it would be to lose all credibility. Even more because we remember the lesson of the two independence referendums in Quebec: the 1980 vote saw independence rejected by nearly 20 percent; a triumphalist response in Ontario and no concessions to the nationalists, meant a new referendum in 1995 where secession was defeated by only just over a single percentage point. 

To avoid that fate, the UK has to grant substantially more autonomy to Scotland. But that’s not without its own difficulties. Voices are being raised in Wales about whether the other nations of the UK can expect the same enhanced powers as Scotland. And in England an old question is being asked again: should Scots MPs in Westminster vote on English issues, since English MPs have no say on the same issues in Scotland, now handled by the Edinburgh Parliament?

Equally, voices are being raised to ask just why the rest of the UK should continue to fund significantly higher public spending per head in Scotland than anywhere else.

The worst problem is that we don’t all, in England, give the same answers. Should some issues in the Westminster Parliament be regarded as purely English with only English MPs entitled to vote on them? Or should there be a specifically English Parliament just as there is a Scottish parliament, a Welsh Assembly and a Northern Ireland Assembly? Or is it tolerable to leave Scots with a say over English education, social security and healthcare, while the English have no say over theirs?

Personally, I like the idea of an English Parliament in principle, but not at all in practice: it would have an entrenched Conservative majority for a long time to come.

As for the extra public spending in Scotland, is it reasonable since the whole of the UK has benefited from the North Sea oil found off the Scottish coast? Or is it money taken from England, Wales and Northern Ireland and handed, without justification, to the Scots?

Tough questions with no easy answers. And we have only a few months to find a response. We’ve just emerged from a tough campaign, only to go into some tough negotiations.

I was asked this morning whether I was celebrating last night’s results. The answer is ‘no’. What I feel is relief that the Scots aren’t leaving us. But celebration can only start once we’ve solved the difficult questions we’re facing, and come up with a new constitutional settlement that meets the aspirations of all four nations in this newly reunited Kingdom.

No hope, by the way, of stopping it being a Kingdom any time soon.

Has this Salmond been caught on his own hook?

It seems that opinion in Scotland is running against independence by a margin of 18% in one recent poll, by 25% in another.

Thumbs up for Alex Salmond? Not if the polls are to be believed

Personally, I find that gratifying. Flattering, really. After all, I can fully understand that a Scot might want England off his or her back (and let’s not kid ourselves: the ‘rest of the UK’ is basically England: 53 million out of 59): after all, if nothing else, with England out of the way, no Scot would ever have to live under a Tory government again. And the so-called United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, is nowhere to be seen up there.

Why, I’d be seriously tempted to vote for independence myself if I lived in Scotland. But I don’t. I live in England, and I’m English. And the idea of losing the Scots fills me with dread. If only because we’d probably be stuck with Tory governments for the foreseeable future, and one in five of my countrymen is apparently unable to tell the difference between principled politics and the brand practised by UKIP.

Which is like a Ukrainian taking Vladimir Putin for a friend.

So given the obvious advantages to the Scots of independence, I have to take some encouragement by their pretty solid opposition to it. It feels like they actually like us enough to want to stick around and help us out of the predicament we’ve made for ourselves. Very kind of them.

On the other hand, the reason may be somewhat less flattering to us Sassenachs, as they charmingly call us. It may not be so much their fondness for us, as the fact that they actually don’t particularly like the brand of independence on offer. 

Which, strangely enough, has more than a few disturbing aspects in common with the kind of independence Putin would like Ukraine to enjoy.

First of all, the idea is that the Scots would keep the Royal Family. Well, I appreciate the family’s a bit of an irrelevance these days, but why would anyone want to hang on to it when they’ve got the opportunity to wave goodbye? Hang on to Prince Philip? Prince Andrew? Prince Harry? And this is supposed to help win support for the idea?

Secondly, and far more significant, they want to hang on to the pound.

Now, one of the reasons Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister, gives for wanting independence is to get control over taxation. But the biggest factor determining the value of a currency is the fiscal policy pursued by the government that controls it.

So Salmond wants a ‘independent’ Scotland to use a currency whose value is determined by the taxation policies of the very country from which he wants to get away? 

Where on Earth’s the mileage in that?

The odd thing is that Salmond’s always truck me as a particularly astute politician. When his party emerged as the biggest single group in the Scottish parliament, but without an overall majority, he stepped up and formed a minority administration, negotiating with the other parties to put together a majority on each measure in turn. That was more than David Cameron had the guts to do in London in 2010, preferring instead to talk the Liberal Democrats into the pact with the devil that the ConDem coalition has turned into.

Salmond did such a good job as head of a minority government that he went on to win a healthy majority at the next election.

Pretty smart, one has to say. So where did he dream up the idea of a referendum to give Scotland independence on everything but its money?

Has Salmond turned out to be less of a smart Alex than I used to think?

After the Olympics: why break up Britain?

Took a trip yesterday which might, in a couple of years, involve a border crossing. Possibly. Though probably not. 

We took a northbound train as far as the fine historic town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. There was a time that Berwick was jointly run by the English and the Scots but that involved an element of trust which, as most Scots would ruefully admit, ends up with regret on their side and prosperity on the other. For a while, the Scots guarded the north gate, the English the southern, but then visitors started noticing English soldiers on the north gate too and before long the town was English. All that’s left of the Scots heritage now is the fact that Berwick plays its football in the Scottlish leagues.

Beyond Berwick, we drove into Scotland proper. Though I use the word ‘proper’ in a loose sense. To give you an idea, we’re just twenty miles from Edinburgh and the town’s called ‘East Linton’, with that give-away ‘ton’ ending that says ‘Anglo Saxon’ in a deafening roar. Not that the word ‘East’ is especially Gaelic either.

Just to rub the message home, the village next door’s called Preston. There’s a bigger one of them in England (and quite a few smaller ones too). 

Ah, the Lothians, that glorious English bit of Scotland

Yes, this is the fine old English-speaking kingdom of Lothian, with its capital in that great Anglo-Saxon city, Edinburgh. All of which rather relativises that business about Scots independence. Independence from whom, exactly? The English? They’re right here, guys; take a look at the place names around you.

Still, that being said, I was never against the notion of Scottish independence per se, or not until recently at least. English nationalism isn’t an attractive force and, as the history of Berwick proves, it’s never been marked by generosity towards any nation that England can bully. It struck me that if the Scots wanted to go their way, well, what the heck, why not? I mean, no-one’s proposing an impermeable frontier between us, are they? They’d keep the same currency. They’ve already got a parliament. Independence wouldn’t be so much a quantum leap as a bit of incremental drift.

Now there’s nothing really inspiring about incremental drifting. Which may explain why no-one’s unduly inspired by it, even in Scotland. The great vote is due in the autumn of 2014, to coincide with the seven-hundredth anniversary the great Scots victory over the English at Bannockburn (I say ‘greatest’ as though there had been others. There have, haven’t there?). 

If the polls are to be believed, the Scottish electorate won’t be voting for independence.

But Scotland’s run by the smartest political operator in Britain, Alex Salmond. You want evidence of his smartness? Look at the mess David Cameron’s making of trying to lead a Coalition government in England. He’s heading rapidly for the dustbin of history. Salmond didn’t even try to form a coalition, he just ran a minority government so successfully that it became the springboard to give him a majority administration of his own. Don’t rule out his being given a statue on Princes Street in the fulness of time.

Well, that smart an operator isn’t going to lose a referendum. How will he square the circle? He’ll get a second question on the ballot paper, a question for ‘devo max’, much extended devolved power for the Scottish parliament. Cameron says no but, hey, who even listens to him these days?

It’s devo max that’ll pass, and devo max that the Scots will get.

To be honest, I’m quite relieved. As I said, I wasn’t that worried about the breakup of the Union if it came to that. I feel much more English than I feel British, and the Welsh and Scots are even more tightly linked to their nations. In fact, the only true Brits are those who get the nationality by naturalisation, because they don’t opt for any of the constituent nations

But my attitude changed during the Olympics. The Team GB performance shone a different light on things. There were the Scots and the Welsh winning medals alongside the English under GB colours. There were some from Northern Ireland too, and that’s not even part of Britain at all.

Within a week of that triumph, England, on the other hand, was being thrashed on the cricket field by South Africa and, in the process, losing its hard-won and briefly-held status as world number 1 in that noble game.

Lamentable English failure after signal British success. Perhaps there’s something to be said for the Union after all.

So I’m delighted to be back in Scotland, delighted to be visiting my granddaughter’s family and our friends, delighted to be seeing this beautiful country again.

And not a little relieved that there still isn’t an international border between us.

Bannockburn, Murrayfield, Scottish glory and the stirring call for Devo Max

Relations between the English and the Scots are going to provide plentiful entertainment for at least the next two years. 

That's how long it's going to take to get to the proposed referendum on whether Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom or leave it. Or something in between. Because there is an intermediate choice,or ‘Devo Max’ as it is catchily called. 

It offers maximum devolution of control over its own affairs to Scotland, leaving only foreign affairs and the military in the hands of the United Kingdom. My view is that this is the option that Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, is really seeking. There just isn’t enough support for full independence in Scotland, and Salmond is much too canny not to know it. 

As a result, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the threatened United Kingdom, has completely ruled out including Devo Max in the referendum. This uncompromising stance by Cameron almost certainly means that the option will be on the ballot paper. Cameron has a glowing track record for taking strong positions in public and then backing down from them in private: he made a lot of noise telling our European partners they couldn’t use the Union’s institutions to tackle the Eurozone’s problems, but is now much more quietly letting them get on with it.

Similarly, because it is Salmond who wants to hold the referendum in 2014, Cameron has again issued a firm and resolute ‘no’ to that timing. That more or less guarantees that the referendum will take place to Salmond’s schedule. 

Salmond is keen on 2014 because it will be the 700th anniversary of the great Scots victory over the English at Bannockburn. Not, of course, that the referendum is in any way anglophobe.

Personally, I don’t begrudge him celebrating a Scots victory over the English. It's not as though there have been that many of them. In fact, on Saturday I watched them failing to achieve another. On the opening day of the Six Nations rugby championship, Scotland lined up to take on England, on their own iconic turf at Murrayfield, outside Edinburgh. England have a lamentable record of defeats at Murrayfield, particularly in the rain, so I was a little relieved to see that the weather was fine. 

What then followed, however, was an English performance of such stultifying mediocrity as to reduce even me, committed supporter that I am, to despair. I watched the other matches over the weekend and saw some fine games played by France, Ireland and Wales — the last two in the best match of them all, swinging from one side to the other right up to the last whistle. It was clear to me that had England faced any of those teams and played as they did against Scotland, they would have been, to use the technical term, stuffed.

So how come they didn’t lose to Scotland? Because Scotland showed an unerring capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They had much more of the ball, they made some excellent opportunities, they played with great skill — or at least they played with great skill until they got within a few seconds of actually scoring points, when they would inevitably collapse and let England off the hook. Again.

Great run. Going nowhere

What a contrast to the independence campaign! Salmond exudes complete confidence, sure of the rightness of his cause and of his own ability to deliver its goals. He sidesteps and weaves round the sluggish, uninspired and untalented Cameron, always a step ahead, turning to his own advantage every ploy the Englishman launches.

It’s as though Scotland had wisely reserved all its ineptitude for the rugby field. All the skill and competence that would have been necessary to beat the English on Saturday has been sucked out of the rugby team and recycled to the nation’s statesmen. It’s the only way I can explain the cack-handedness of the team and the sure-footedness of the politicians.

So I suspect the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn will be marked by another victory of agile, quick-witted Scots over sluggish and dull-witted English opposition.

Paris is worth a mass, claimed the future King Henry IV of France. And Devo Max must be worth a lost rugby match.

Even if ‘Devo Max’ itself sounds like nothing other than some kind of toilet cleaner.

The wonders of private healthcare and of Scottish government

In Britain, a very small proportion of healthcare is delivered by private hospital


These are organisations that provide healthcare for profit, or at least try to (anyone can run a business badly). As a result, they only do what is referred to in the trade as ‘cold surgery’ - in other words operations carried out on a planned basis rather than in response to an emergency. 


These can be relatively low-key operations such as a hernia repair, or something more substantial, like a hip replacement. But what they all have in common is that they are carried out on patients who are, broadly speaking, in good health: they obviously have the condition for which the surgery is needed but otherwise they’re well - they don’t have anything likely to turn into a nasty heart attack, or a major neurological problem such as a seizure or, even worse, a stroke. 


It will come as no surprise that this is the kind of case that is most likely to generate a profit. 


Partisans of private hospitals argue that by handling this kind of work, they relieve the NHS of having to do it. What that argument leaves out of account is that what’s left is the more difficult cases that are likely to be the most expensive. What it leaves even more out of account is what happens if things unexpectedly go wrong, as they have a tedious way of doing in healthcare. 


What if, against all the available indicators, a patient has a heart attack while in the private hospital? 


I came across exactly such a case some years ago, though I won’t mention the private hospital involved, because why should one embarrass the guilty? What happened was that reception staff called for an ambulance. When it arrived, NHS paramedics took the patient into their charge at being shot of all further responsibility for him. 


Because that’s what the private sector does. It cherry picks the easiest cases. And it avoids any of the huge infrastructure costs associated with building centres capable of dealing with the serious problems, with the life-threatening conditions. No wonder the private sector can aim at profitability. 


Why is this important today? 


Because the latest reorganisation of the NHS aims to make it possible for ‘any willing provider’ to deliver healthcare. That form of words led to a bit of a storm of controversy so now the government is saying, ‘well, yes, of course the provider as well as being willing also has to be suitable, properly qualified, and shown to be capable of delivering quality.’ If only they’d said that from the outset I’d have less trouble believing them. But suitable or not, these hospitals are still going to be creaming off the most lucrative cases while avoiding the burden of the difficult ones - for which they’ll have to turn to the public sector for support. 


Anyone in Britain questioning that suggestion need only look at what’s happening in connection with the latest healthcare scandal: breast implants provided by a (now-bankrupt) French company, PIP, using industrial-grade silicone. That’s a bit like putting a load of diesel oil in your body and being told, ‘don’t worry - there won’t be a problem unless the pack leaks.’ Inspires confidence, doesn't it?


And guess who did 95% of the operations? Private hospitals, of course. And who picks up the tab if things go wrong? Oh, yes, you guessed it: the public sector. The private cosmetic surgery companies reckon that they just can’t afford to do the work of removing the implants themselves - it would cost too much. Why, it might wipe out their profits. So they expect the rest of us to cover them for them. 

Leaking industrial grade silicone - just what every woman wants inside her
The private sector can fit them. To take them out, just turn to the NHS

Oh brave new world that has such people in it! 


What a wonderful, liberating experience it’s going to be having all those ‘willing providers’ helping out the NHS. 




Postscript: they order these things better north of Hadrian’s Wall 


This week David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, decided to confront Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, a major part of that same United Kingdom. 


Salmond wants to hold a referendum on independence for Scotland. But because he’s a wily old fox and he know time’s on his side, he wants to hold it in 2014. And, because he knows he might lose the referendum, he wants it to include an alternative possibiliy - maximum devolution, with Scotland running all its own government except for foreign affairs and defence (often the same thing these days) which would be left to the residual UK. 


Now Cameron is calling him out. The referendum must be held in 2013. And, he maintains, it can’t contain the maximum devolution question. 


So Cameron is taking on Salmond head on. Cameron. Self-confident to the point of brashness, indolent when it comes to preparing his ground, convinced that success is his due. Against Salmond. The smartest operator in the UK today. 


I’m looking forward to watching the contest. Cameron might best him. But I won’t be putting any money on that.

Cameron, left, looking for an idea. Salmond looking as though butter wouldn't melt
I know who I'd put my money on