Brexit, Scotland and Labour

The Scottish Labour party are holding their annual conference in Perth this weekend. The party is clearly trying to find coherent ground from which to address the Scottish Independence question from which it can point out the difference between itself, the Conservatives and UKIP. Standing on the same platform as the Conservatives in the last referendum was a disaster. It accelerated the process of reorganising Scottish politics around a Tory-SNP axis and started a cascade that will very likely end in Labour losing Glasgow city council in the May elections, the last significant element of institutional power the party now controls.

The ground they are staking out is Federalism, which makes sense as Unionism and Separatism are both taken. The party inherits some serious intellectual capital from Gordon Brown on this issue. There are proposals for a Constitutional Convention and a new Act of Union that would reconstitute the UK. This opens up a vision that extends beyond Scotland and sows the seeds for a distinct Labour post-Brexit vision for Britain. By directing attention to the nations and regions of the UK it allows Blue Labour thinking on community to find some purchase in policy.

If you a democrat of any colour and have been waiting for Labour to begin to put together the plan for a post-Brexit opposition this has to be good news.  One can put aside the reasonable objection that the English regions have shown no appetite whatsoever for any kind of thoroughgoing federalism with the observation that you can't reframe a debate if you accept the current configuration of forces as given. That is obviously the parameter that Labour would have to change to make the rest of the post-Brexit revival of social democracy credible, though they might want to dust off their notes on "Home Rule all Around".

So it is depressing that it seems impossible to elaborate this vision coherently. If Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, cannot deliver a post-Nationalist message about identity and solidarity, without implying (very likely inadvertently) that separatists are racists, then it is difficult to see who can communicate the vision. Corbyn, with his usual deftness of touch, just falls back into UK majoritarianism. Dugdale, displaying lightning footwork, totally misses the point and manages to define the new idea completely in terms of opposition to the SNP, when the goal, from Labour's point of view, has to be to make the SNP irrelevant.

It may be that Labour is burdened with a more than usually ham-fisted group of leaders who lack the intellectual heft to see through a substantial reframing of political debate. Or it may be that they are trying to do the impossible. Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK have revived big-state nationalism. Teresa May, by quickly occupying UKIP's ground and holding her own has exported the post-Brexit crisis of identity to Labour (just as I suspect the Democratic alliance in the US will be put under huge strain by the Trump phenomenon). But you can't contest for nationalist votes with a vision of a complex politically and constitutionally differentiated country. That is clearly what integral nationalism rejects. So in Scotland Labour sounds like UKIP-lite, because of its majoritarian unionism, while in England it sounds confused about the fundamental issue of the make-up of the polity. It may be that even though the federalist option is internally coherent, there is simply no reasonable way to adapt it to the UK as we currently find it.

Moreover, in Scotland, the argument for complexity and differentiation of forms of power and identity is the separatist argument. Britain was articulated by Scots in the eighteenth century as an alternative project to English nationalism. The ideas about commercial society developed in the Scottish Enlightenment created categories (like "society") that reinterpreted the development of the unitary English state as the emergence of a complex Britain and so created the conditions for a union state rather than a nation state. English radicals, like Wilkes, disliked Scottish thinkers precisely because they muddied ideas about inclusion in the English political nation. Post-Brexit, the SNP, in terms of its ideas about solidarity and complexity, is the closest thing we have to an old-fashioned Scottish and British party.

Three Days Later: The Looming Conservative Reaction

I want to cast some speculations about Brexit into the air. Having listened to and read as much as I could for the past three days I have become convinced that the Johnson/Gove wing of the Brexit alliance not only did not expect to win, they did not wish to win. Again, this is speculation, but I think their view was that a high turnout for Brexit would create a situation where their real goal, access to the Single Market without any of the social and other protections offered by the Union, would be attainable.

Listening to Francis Maude this morning it seemed that was the game he was playing. He seemed to think that exit doesn't have to mean exit. Is George Osborne moving between Paris and Berlin trying to get a diplomatic deal done that pulls that off at the eleventh hour? If so he could ask the Parliament to put the referendum aside (on the grounds of real and material change in conditions), and the political class could tough out the reaction. In that scenario the 3 million or so who have petitioned for a re-run of the referendum end up being the useful idiots for a rightward swing for Britain as the only Union that would be available would be the version adapted to the needs of the business wing of the Conservative Party. From their point of view that would be a triumph, and I think it is possible because Gove and Johnson want it too. Liam Fox this morning argued that the process would have to wait until the Conservative had chosen a new leader, making the 150k membership of the Tory party the constitutional hinge of Europe. I think that kind of chutzpah is unlikely to succeed, but Cameron resigning has bought time for Westminster to work out what to do. If he was still there it would be hard to slow up the exit process, and for the other strategy to work that process has to be avoided.

Again this is speculation, but how to assess its likelihood? Britain as European Singapore is not the project of UKIP or of the millions who vote for Brexit, so could the system downface the population and get away with it? Would the Labour right go along with the Lib Dems and the relevant Tories to get some deal of this sort through the Commons? Those questions assume the robustness of the institutions and their capacity to manage the political moment, but is that still true? There is a vacuum, not of power, but of leadership in British politics, but that can be filled in. Is there a legitimacy crisis? Is there a figure with the kind of Pittean cunning necessary to pull this off available? Nicola Sturgeon plays for the opposition, so that is not a possibility.

Finally have the consequences of Brexit simply overwhelmed this kind of thinking? Right now it is impossible to assess the consequences across Europe, but I can't see anyone there colluding with a project of this sort. At what point is it better for Europe to have England walk? Doing a deal with Scotland would soften the blow, and how long could England last alone, especially if financial services are not given easy access to European markets. And now that English Nationalism is a force in British politics it is hard to see it being bottled up.

The Early Days of a Worse Future... and some possible exits

Obviously the Brexit vote is a disaster in any way you cut it, and there is no clever "cunning of history" way to recuperate that vote. The future that the UK is in the act of choosing is unpredictable, but none of the possible futures this move open up are creative. The alliance that made this vote possible is just terrifying.

When we do stop rending our garments, then what? There is a temptation to leap to a second Scottish independence referendum as an exit, but I think that may not be the best option. There is a UDI option of course, but that is really risky, but if Scotland doesn't do that we will be in trench warfare with Westminster just to get another referendum approved, and who knows what the outcome of an ugly row with revived English nationalism would be?

The more creative move is for Edinburgh, Dublin and Belfast to take the high road. Those administrations represent people who today are European citizens and have expressed the wish to remain so (obviously the same is true of London). As governments and devolved administrations with recognized international standing they have an interest, and in my view a right, to voice in any negotiations for an English exit. England may leave the EU, Ireland isn't even thinking of doing so, Northern Ireland and Scotland have a right to represent their citizens.

Moreover this would be as British a move as cricket. There is a near millennium long British jurisprudence and political theory on complex and hybrid political entities, confederations, empires and partitions. There are already entities like the Isle of Man that are attached to the Crown of England, not part of the United Kingdom and so not part of the EU. Scotland and Northern Ireland could remain attached to the crown, leave the UK, but remain part of the EU. Scotland and the two Irelands could form a new confederation on the Swiss model. There are all sorts of politically practical, constitutionally responsible models that allow the English vote to be respected, without the rest of us having to be dragged into the disastrous romance of identity that they have embraced. We could even work out a settlement in Britain akin to the Irish settlement, where anyone born anywhere on the British Isles could claim either the English or European passport (in its Scots and Irish forms), and then the Londoners could stay European too. There are resources in our shared histories that can help us avoid the worst.

For any of this to work the Republic has to be flexible and accommodating. I think that the Irish population, North and South, are constitutionally sophisticated and the Scots are obviously politically mobilized and creative. We are all European citizens this morning and have a right to retain that citizenship. It is up to our politicians to defend our acquired citizens' rights.

The UK left and the EU Referendum

There is no coherent left argument for exit, it just looks like there might be. There has been a notable lack of real enthusiasm among the UK left for the EU, and that has opened up all opportunities for the exit campaign. My suspicion is that the treatment handed out to Greece during the financial crisis is a real problem for a lot of people. The hope that the social democratic model could be saved by Europe hasn't work out. Moreover I cannot think of anyone who thinks the current shape of the confederation (and that is what it is, not a union) is optimal.

But we are not being asked what kind of European Union we want to be part of, though if it is to survive that is clearly going to have to happen and won't be at all easy. The question being asked of the electorate in the UK is in or out, and the answer has to be in.

The European Union was created because the European states system, based on the balance of power, did not work. More specifically, the three major imperial states (four if you include Russia, but that gets complicated), could not reconcile their sovereignty doctrines, and claims to act independently, with limited forms of democratization, without in turn destroying international peace. The point of the EU is to depower toxic large-state nationalism and to articulate some kind of cosmopolitanism that doesn't replace more local loyalties, but tempers them.

We should not underestimate how close to the surface the old loyalties lie. In my own view, the recent historical work on the commemoration of the First World War has gone dangerously close to celebrating the passions and commitments that drove Europeans to slaughter one another. I'm constantly perturbed by how unaware some of my colleagues seem to be of the nostalgia for uncomplicated identity that infuses their writing.

Obviously the exit of the UK will not cause a European war, but UK exit from the EU would injure, possibly fatally, the project of creating a reasonable, livable Europe. Even if we could go back to a past of independent sovereign nations and uncomplicated identities, who would want to? And the question that is really pressing is not would we want to like in that kind of Europe, but would we want to live in that kind of UK? The real nightmare is a revived agressive British nationalism that would threaten the complex, plural political experiment that, almost unnoticed, has been going on across the whole British Isles for the last thirty years.

The Demotic Virtues and Islamism: Some thoughts provoked by the Paris attacks

Like all my friends and colleagues I am appalled at the events in Paris and thankful that everyone I know there seems to be safe. It is in moments like these that it is most important to keep thinking and to find creative ways to respond to events that are designed to overwhelm our capacity for rational action, to reduce us to fear. In that spirit I'd like to explain my view that the entire strategy of Islamist groups is based on a false premise and offer some suggestions about why they may have come to their conclusions.

Islamists are trying to start a war because they think they can't lose. The point of events like last night is to polarize, to divide global society and escalate tensions and problems into hostility and conflict. The Islamists share the pessimistic analysis of modern late capitalist society put forward by many commentators on the left and the right. In their view there are no moral or normative commitments grounding our shared life in politics and society in the countries across the Western world. Countries in Europe and the Americas may enjoy tremendous political, economic and military power, but there is no cause or ideal that could sustain those countries through a struggle that was costly and difficult. We believe nothing, so when we come under pressure we will crumble. Negative liberty generates tolerance and pluralism but also narcissism, disengagement, and isolation.

In my view this analysis completely misunderstands the relationship between capitalism and democracy and how that relationship has developed since the Enlightenment. The most astounding feature of that period is the global democratic transformation. By this I mean two really specific things. The almost complete triumph of egalitarian norms and the near complete mobilization of humans into self-organizing societies. One of the great gifts given to us by global history has been to explain that risk societies emerged everywhere, and did not disseminate out of Europe. New forms of collective action and co-ordination, based on the willingness of families at first, and then individuals, to take on new kinds of risk. emerged everywhere. Self-organizing societies are the base of democratic transformation.

The rise of "society" is hardly news, but the relationship between society (in this sense) and political values has not been fully explored. It is a commonplace among historically-minded political theorists to remark that the only new political virtue to be enunciated since Aristotle is egalitarianism and much discussion in political theory turns on whether or not that is real political virtue or rather an anti-political notion. A capacious idea of citizenship can easily comprise egalitarianism because it so clearly underpins so much of the actual public and civil experience of modern societies. Moreover egalitarianism spawns most of the ethics that are recognized not as heroic or aristocratic, but demotic, of the people: kindness, mercy, fairness, justice. I'm not proposing a silly and romantic view of the people, rather observing that there are a set of demotic virtues and we, in the sense of modern late capitalist societies do believe in them. The view that our societies are morally hollow is unfounded.

It would take a lot more than a blog post to argue persuasively that capitalism does not produce "society" but is parasitic on it, and that the cultural misunderstanding that informs Islamism (and much modern conservative thought) is to collapse one into the other. What I do want to end with is a reminder that lots of groups have had success attacking liberal states and even disrupting capitalist economies. However, mobilized democratic peoples are astonishingly successful at warfare. Islamists are like slave-holders or other kinds of late-nineteenth-century elites, clinging to a culturally pessimistic vision of modern life in order to persuade themselves they can create a future. Everything they do is futile and cannot succeed.

From September 2014 to May 2015: Does the SNP become the Irish Home Rule Party?

The referendum campaign in Scotland was one of the most interesting political processes I have ever been involved with, but it is over. I had assumed that once it had finished there would be a fairly speedy return to some sort of political normality, crisis-ridden adaptation to an increasingly unstable world, but that seems to be normality these days. Instead David Cameron's speech at the very moment the "no" victory was announced has moved the constitutional question up to the level of the UK. There is is a lot to be said about this, much of it derived from the debates on the nature of governance in the modern world thrown up in the independence debate itself. Alex Bell's thoughts and Gordon Brown's book aren't bad places to start thinking about these issues and Peter Arnott's analysis of the politics of the moment  is petty sharp.

I want to think about something much more specific and practical: the election next May. That is the next point at which the elements that will have to address the constitution of Britain (in its broadest sense, cultural and social as well as political) will be resorted. Given the current state of polls Labour may win an absolute majority, but I would be surprised if they did. The key indicator (in the polls) of economic competence is against them and that indicates that there will be a swing to the Tories as the date approaches. However there seems to be next to no possibility of a Tory majority, beset as they are by UKIP and by an electoral map tilted against them.

Another factor that has not, as yet, been recognized, is the possibility of the SNP winning a lot of seats in the coming election. They currently hold six but if, and this is a big if, the "Yes" vote on Clydeside translates into an increased turn-out and a change in the pattern of voting SNP in Holyrood elections and Labour in Westminster elections, they could end up holding the balance of power in the UK come next summer.

This would actually be a terrible outcome for the SNP as they would be under extreme pressure either to support a minority Labour Government or to go into coalition with it. They would become implicated in managing the slow decline of the British social democratic compromise and in whatever constitutional settlement that Labour will favor. Their capacity to represent the forces looking for a democratic renewal across the whole of Britain and NI, not just Scotland, would be eliminated and they would become a regional party speaking to a special interest, the semi-detached wing of the Scottish Labour Party.

This was exactly the crux that the old Irish Home Rule party found itself in and it never satisfactorily solved it. Their tactical alliance with the Liberals made sense, and allowed the party to be part of a coalition interested in reform of the state, but the relationship with the Liberals caused such tension in the party that after the fall of Parnell the party lost most of its efficacy and its capacity to lead the country politically.

My suggestion, given that this is not an unlikely outcome, is that the SNP should state in their manifesto that they will not enter any coalition, support a minority government, or take UK wide office. There is no need to go to the extreme of boycotting parliament or refusing to vote on a case by case basis. Members have to represent their constituents. They have to insist that Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats solve the problem of democratic reform of the UK. The SNP's proposed solution is disaggregation of the Union, their analysis is that it cannot be reformed. They have to act like they mean what they say, and not be tempted to use a tactical advantage, even to secure concessions to Scotland.

And someone should put a copy of Paul Bew's biography of Parnell in Nicola Sturgeon's hands.

Federalism, Scotland and Gordon Brown

There are now two pro-union campaigns being conducted in Scotland and they seem to be hostile to one another. The thrust of the main "Better Together" campaign for the closing stretch is emerging. The best hope they have is to maintain the sizable gender gap in favor of the union. The analysis seems to be that women in Scotland are more averse to the risk involved in independence and dislike the conflict involved in the debate. To that end there will continue to be a series of stories about nationalists as thugs, the assertion that everyone who is pro-independence is a nationalist, with the intimation, never stated, that nationalists are Nazis. This line is calculated to disenchant female voters from voting for independence. As it seems, though evidence on this is mixed, that the don't knows are breaking pro I'd expect to see efforts made to keep as much confusion in play as possible and a fairly sizable voter suppression effort. This is incredibly risky as it doubles down on the negative strategy and, more importantly, risks winning the vote without winning the argument. A slim pro-union vote on this basis would be a disaster for all sorts of obvious reasons.

The other campaign is Gordon Brown. Brown is trying to turn the independence debate into a wider conversation about governance in the British Isles, he is actually trying to win the argument. He has a book out next week, but the central contention has already been trailed in various  newspaper pieces. His argument is that the union has been the context for managing the risk involved in modern society and for solidarity in the face of financial disaster and poverty. It is the best version of the unionist argument, that the union offers a kind of universalism that transcends particular identities. This is not a defence of the political status quo and he is effectively in favor of completing Gladstone's project of home rule all around; federalizing the union. So this is a serious response to the dynamics that are the condition of the independence issue, not an attempt to win 51% of the vote.

I admire Gordon Brown and I've long thought that if he, rather than Blair, had been guiding the New Labour project then it would have been what was needed, a social democratic response to the changes  brought by Thatcherism, rather than a capitulation to them. But I fear that Brown is going to find himself a in a similar place on the independence issue. As Colin Kidd pointed out in his Guardian piece Brown has been trying to get reform of the union and democratization of the state taken seriously for the last twenty years, but without success. If his thinking about the complex relationships within the British Isles had real purchase on unionism then it would be flourishing. However the majority of the people who think like Gordon Brown on these issues are now in the pro-independence camp. They, we, think that the kind of progressive cosmopolitanism he endorses is best pursued through and by an independent Scotland. We have been here before. The Gladstonian project for reform of the union failed too.