CONSERVATIVES FOR INDEPENDENCE
by CLIVE C. SCHmulian
ENGLAND’S LOSS ……SCOTLAND’S GAIN
by Ian Hamilton
IS AYR PRESBYTERY COMMITTING A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY?
by Ian Hamilton
STREETS OF GOLD
by Mike MacKenzie
CREDO
by Ian Hamilton
THE PANDA PRINCIPLE
by Dougie Lockhart
LESLEY RIDDOCH IS AT IT AGAIN
A NEW WEB SITE
by Clive C Schmulian
THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLES THE BLOG HAS YET PUBLISHED. THE NEED FOR A SCOTTISH PARTY OF THE CONSERVATIVE RIGHT IS CLAMANT. THE SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVE AND UNIONIST PARTY IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES! CLIVE C SCHMULIAN SAYS HOW.
In about five weeks time a life long Conservative supporter will be voting SNP for the first time in the Scottish Parliament elections. To be more specific, I’ll be voting for independence rather than the SNP. I do not support most of the SNP’s policies and remain a supporter of conservative values, however I will be casting my vote on the single issue of independence. I’ll still be voting for my local Conservative council candidate and in fact would gladly rejoin the Conservative party. I’d prefer to argue my case within the Conservative Party, although given its official title “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party†I am not sure whether my membership application would be welcome. Given that my support for the SNP is restricted to independence, I have no intention of joining the Nationalists and doubt whether they would appreciate my support.
What has brought a former unionist to vote for the SNP and to launch Conservatives for Independence? The key issues to understand are that:
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We supported the Union and opposed devolution. Historically, Scotland achieved much as part of the Union, throughout ties with the British Empire, commercially and militarily and we are not apologizing for our previous position. Devolution has changed our view.
The Unionist stance that Scotland does financially well out of the Union because of increased government spending in Scotland (block grant / Barnett formula), crucially goes against a principle conservative belief in governments spending less. For years the Conservatives have been supporting higher levels of spending in Scotland and hence an enlarged size of government. This is hardly a foundation on which to support cutting taxes and limiting the size of the state.
Politically, the Union allowed Scotland to have a Conservative government as part of the United Kingdom. Whilst, thanks to PR, the Conservatives have a presence in the Scottish Parliament, there is no conceivable way that the Conservatives could form a government in Scotland. Their only hope of influence is to support a minority Labour administration to defend the Union. Annabel Goldie’s “Vote Blue, Support Red†may be designed to save the Unionist Labour Party, but it is politically inept for both parties.
There is nowhere for the Conservatives to go in Scotland. They are stuck in a dead end and are politically almost irrelevant in Scotland. Even with modest gains in the forthcoming Scottish elections and additional representation in local government, the Scottish Conservatives will still be stuck in a cul-de-sac with no policies, no talent and no future.
The Union currently delivers 57 non-Conservative Scottish MPs to Westminster. Even with a slight David Cameron induced electoral recovery the Conservatives could only win a handful of additional Scottish MPs. A Conservative government at Holyrood is impossible and the Conservatives chance of forming a government in England is hampered by the Union. The Conservatives can sing “Rule Britanniaâ€, wave Union flags and be all sentimental about the good old days, but the Union is doing the cause no good in any part of these islands.
Pro-Union Scottish Conservatives and Labour argue that taxes will have to go up in an independent Scotland to support current levels of public spending. That’s fine, if Scottish voters want to spend 20% more on public services than in England, no problem – puts taxes up. If this means that Scots have to pay far higher levels of tax, so be it. Scotland’s politicians will then be accountable to Scottish voters for levels of taxation and spending.
But how can conservatives support higher taxes? We don’t and we don’t think that voters will either at which point they will start to take a political party that supports lower taxation seriously.
This sounds very similar to the argument made for fiscal autonomy by some Scottish Tories. This would keep Scotland within the UK but give the Scottish parliament control over tax raised in Scotland. Why not support this position? We do support it certainly as an improvement on the status quo. To make fiscal autonomy work, as well as setting levels of personal taxation, the Scottish parliament would need to have control over levels of corporate taxation, indirect taxes etc ie not just income tax. To have this level of financial power and control over spending on most day to day matters, leaves very little left for Westminster to legislate for Scotland. Other than maintaining the emotional link to the Union, it’s better to have a clean break.
The Unionists claim that business will desert Scotland – that’s what David Murray is saying. The same threats were made about devolution and they never happened. As long as the economic policies of an independent Scotland are sensible, business will be unaffected. The potential to cut levels of taxation in an independent Scotland could in fact attract business and create jobs and wealth.
The political benefit for the centre right in Scotland will not just be related to making Scottish politicians more accountable as detailed above. Post independence, the SNP will have achieved their (one) goal and their pro-independence coalition could split up across the political spectrum. Whilst the SNP tries to maintain a centre / centre left position on many issues, much of its support is from areas not so long ago held by the Conservatives.
Post independence, Scottish politics will re-align and we believe that this will be in the favour of the centre right in Scotland. We repeatedly use the term centre-right, rather than Scottish Conservative, because post independence the centre right will need to form a new political party. The Conservative brand is so damaged in Scotland that a new organization will need to be formed with a Scottish identity that attracts former Conservatives, former centre right nationalists and new blood.
We don’t pretend that there will be a centre right government overnight following independence, but we are confident that within a very short time the centre right in Scotland can take over 30% of votes and be in a position to form a government in Scotland. This is currently impossible. Independence is the answer for the centre right in Scotland. Why do you think that Labour support the Union?
More information from:- info@conservativesforindeperndence.org
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by Ian Hamilton
Some weeks ago I wrote that Wendy Alexander should be ashamed of crying down our beloved country. No matter how much she and Margaret Curran rave and shout, this coming election is about more than bread and butter. Eight years of Labour Government should have seen no child go hungry. They still do and the cause is not poverty of means but poverty of spirit.
The spirit of Scotland has been so low for eighty years that even the cries of hungry children go unheard. Eighty years has been my lifetime. Now I see a glimmer of hope, and it comes not from economics but from the slow process of regaining our self confidence as a nation. The economy is important, but self confidence is more important. That is why when you cry down our country, Wendy, you damage the self confidence of us all.
Given the will the figures will take care of themselves. This is not a poor country: only a badly run one. Great change has occurred, and further great change is upon us. I respect Wendy’s abilities but I would respect her as a person if she would apply her mind to the real argument against independence which is nowhere clearly stated. I can see it for myself, and although I believe it is invalid it should be given an airing. Give Mr Blair his due he has voiced it. So have several English politicians and journalists, although much of the argument is tinged with malice, as though independence were a sin.
Put shortly this is the argument. We have been together so long we should not even have had devolution. This is a Tory sort of argument and none the worse for that. However not even the Tories advance it. It is a startling fact that while a great many people have nothing good to say about devolution not one Party advocates return to Westminster. Indeed the only Party to advocate persistence in unchanged devolution is the Liblab Party. They do so not on principle but because they say we are poor. If we are so poor why does England want us?
England wants us for many different reasons. It is not just that they will lose the oil, nor the base for the Trident submarines which will have to be moved dangerously close to London. It is not that they will have to pay us our share of the Union assets, such as a percentage of the value of our foreign embassies and the Union’s buildings in London, from 10 Downing Street to Pugin’s Palace of Westminster. These are corporeal things and England will pay. It is not that they will lose a team of able ministers coming from Scots constituencies. England may even lose her membership of the European Union because on Scotland’s secession two new states will be created and there may be room for only one. That will be us. We have the oil and the French will back us to annoy England. All that is nothing.
The great loss to England will be her sense of self identity. I have often pleaded for England not to be treated as ‘the auld enemy’ but as an old friend. Together we formed a sort of quaint Britishness, more real to them than to us. That is gone. The British Empire is gone. Britain is gone. Like the Russian Empire Britain has broken into its constituent parts. First Ireland went. Now us. We have long been in bed with a great beast. As we prepare to rise and depart, the beast is twitching and grunting. When it wakens it will be a lonely beast, wondering who it is.
As a housewife Wendy counts her bawbees, and rightly so. But self confidence is more important than gold, and a wise woman more precious than rubies. Look about you and tell us why England wants to keep us if we cost so much. Perhaps she needs us as a neighbour against whom she can define herself. She will be a one-dimensional country when we are gone, but go we must. There is no self respect in having our footsteps directed by another. As our ways diverge let us never forget that England is our oldest friend.
by Ian Hamilton
‘SCOTTISH AIRPORTS TO FACE PRESSURE ON RENDITION’……………….Official.
To the Reverend Arthur A Christie
Monkton & Prestwick North Parish Church,
Convenor of Ayr Presbytery’s Community and World Concerns Committee.
There is no place to hide, Mr Christie. From the current issue of Holyrood Magazine, the organ of the Scottish Parliament, I take the following two quotations.
‘Derry City Council looks set to put pressure on airport authorities across Europe next week, when it signs up to an Amnesty International policy on CIA extraordinary rendition flights.’
The second quotation reads:-
‘Legal advisers to the human rights body The Council of Europe have stated that European states must inspect aircraft landing in their jurisdictions if there are “serious reasons†to believe that prisoners bound for torture or secret detention are aboard.’
I turn to you, Mr Christie, and to your responsibilities as a Christian and as a citizen of this country. It is surprising that Ayr Presbytery, through you, have made no statement on Rendition Flights although you know that there are serious reasons to believe that they have taken place in your own Parish and may still be doing so. I hold in my hand your own letter which indicates your concern. It states:- ‘…we have discussed the horrors of Rendition Flights, the local issues and the international effects. We continue to engage with employees at Prestwick Airport and aeroplane buffs who give us their views and information.’
I would not willingly call you a liar, Mr Christie, and must therefore accuse you of suppressing the information that you hold.
Have you told anyone? Have you conveyed this ‘information’ to your presbytery? Have you complained to the police? It was a lonely Scottish MP who started the cash for Honours enquiry by complaining to the police. A lonely Minister, or indeed Ayr Presbytery itself, ever noted for its pursuit of moral rectitude, wields enormous power. A public complaint to the police from you or your presbytery could not be ignored. If you had the simple Christian courage to make the complaint it would lead to a police enquiry like the Cash for Honours Enquiry.
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It is better to go to the police now, Mr Christie, than to wait for them to come to you. Suppression of information on such a crime as torture is itself a crime against humanity. Look into your own conscience, Mr Christie. Are you guilty of that crime? Or was it easier to lie to an old man about having information when you were sitting in your manse doing nothing and had no information at all?
Wash your hands, Mr Christie, and your feet too. You got yourself dirty when you passed by on the other side.
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by Mike MacKenzie
Work took me to London for the first time in 2001. As a new kid on the block I stepped cautiously at first with ‘When in Rome’ in mind but this did not work well. Some old fashioned Scottish assertiveness did the trick and then it was, ‘Yes Guv, No Guv’. They do let you know when you have arrived in London.
Having arrived though, I was then straining to get away again with every sinew. We broke our backs to finish our work, desperate to get back to Scotland, each day of our six months a gaol sentence.
Like many before me I discovered the streets are paved with gold. Lavish, magnificent buildings proliferate. Tower cranes perch as numerous as starlings on the skyline as everywhere money is poured into fabulous new construction. A thousand years of wealth has been invested and reinvested in a few acres.
I had never seen capitalism in action before, full blooded capitalism with money pumping through bulging arteries. With money to hand you can cut a swathe in London. You can do business. You can make things happen. It is, ‘Yes Guv, Yes Guv, will tomorrow be too late Guv!’ In a very few years I could have become wealthy but London’s crowded streets are not for me.
It has its own pleasant micro climate this most foreign of cities. A smir of rain gives outrage. A millimetre of snow brings it grinding to a halt. A train halts for a second and there are a thousand complaints and as many apologies. There are twelve million voters in the metropolis and they must be kept happy. This is where elections are won.
It is five hundred miles from Easdale to London. It is a million miles from London to Easdale and almost as many to Scotland. You can rule at a distance but you cannot govern. Government needs insight and understanding. Those who govern for better or worse must swim or sink and suffer with the people.
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by Ian Hamilton
This blog was started in October 2006 for no very serious purpose. The first issue permitted me to be playfully rude to Alan Cochrane of the Daily Telegraph. I admire him for his journalistic abilities, but not for his opinions. Yet I see in him what I see in so many Scots. I see an inability to retreat into Westminster domination, and a distaste for the half measure we have in devolution. I will make a nationalist of him yet.
I hope he will read my leading piece by a Scottish Conservative. It is a plea for a Party which supports both independence and Conservative values. This is no contradiction. As Clive C Schmulian points out we can have a Conservative Scotland as we once had a Conservative United Kingdom. He is a realist and sees the way ahead. Will Alan Cochrane?
I should stop teasing Alan. Despite my resistance, the blog has taken on a life of its own. First of all it has grown. The figures I now give are the monthly totals of the unique separate visits to the web site. Whatever the figures may mean they are facts from the web server.
   OCTOBER         659
   NOVEMBER       771
   DECEMBER*    1405
   JANUARY         2465
   FEBRUARY       3567
   MARCH            4881
*In December we went over to fortnightly issues and ever since we have increased our circulation by more than a thousand visits per month, something every newspaper in the land will envy.
As the months go by it has been less fun and more work. Over the Reichenbach Falls went Professor Sparelock Jones and his two young ladies. Perhaps he will survive. They won’t. I have been taken over.
I have been taken over by events, not by someone else. I am still me. People must like or hate what the blog is saying. They would not come in such numbers if they didn’t. We have not advertised. All has been done by word of mouth or by email to email. It is the voice of dissent. It is the voice of all that love Scotland. The blog is our mistress’s voice
It has discovered an ancient truth. The two nations of Scotland and England have still something in common. We each dislike being ruled by the other. Read the comments from England if you doubt this. The boiler will burst when Alex Salmond as First Minister of Scotland meets Gordon Brown as the Queen’s First Minister. Be assured I will continue to stoke the boiler fire. At my age I thought my chance had gone.
I assert the truths which drive me on. All of us are born free and should have equal rights and responsibilities. Our differences make us unique and conformity is a crime. As I am so is my country so is the world.
This may sound like hopeless nonsense yet my generation went to war for these principles. A belief in them has raised our readership from a few hundred to a few thousand. Whatever! I shall go into the darkness raging in their support.
By Dougie Lockhart
THE SAME LEAVES OVER AND OVER AGAIN (Robert Frost, In Hardwood Groves)
I loved hitchhiking when I was young. It was quite nice to set out for somewhere, and end up somewhere else. Destinations became tentative things, a good preparation for life – for mine anyway. I’ve had some good times in places I’d never meant to visit. I’ve also had some bad times in places I’d never heard of before inadvertently arriving; so maybe a little planning does no harm either.
Although I’ve learned to accept uncertainty about hitchhiking journeys, I usually set out with a destination in mind, prepared to patch and mend as reality begins to leak in. But I would never have thought that my destination was just the lift itself. It strikes me that many separatists (take it easy – I like this word, so I’m trying to liberate it from the Unionists) have no destination in mind at all – they’ll settle for a lift, and like Eliot’s senescent explorers, here or there does not matter. Try this question on your friendly neighbourhood separatist MSP or prospective candidate: if the Good Political Fairy guaranteed that you could present a bill to the Scottish Parliament and it would pass into law without opposition or amendment, what would that bill be? Wait until you see them begin to form the word ‘independence’ and then add sadistically ‘…and you can’t say independence.’ The silence which often follows suggests to me that we have a few hitchhikers who want a lift, but don’t know where.
Pandas would be poor hitchhikers. The panda thumb is very small – barely adequate for its main task, which is allowing the panda hand to grasp and pluck bamboo shoots and hold them up for chewing. Evolutionary biologists wondered why the panda thumb was such a poor affair – surely its importance to the panda should have resulted in the evolution of a more impressive digit? An answer was supplied by biologist Stephen Jay Gould. The panda’s thumb is good enough, he said, so the panda is simply under no pressure to develop anything better. This became the standard explanation for such sub-optimisation – it’s called the Panda Principle. It leaves me wondering about super-optimisation - where do concert pianists come from, and why are we so good at mathematics? But then I always had a few problems with Gould’s ideas. Anyway, another way of putting it is like this: if Gould is right, the only way to change the panda’s thumb is to change the forest where it lives.
Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University has suggested that the present swell of support for independence is more from disgust with New Labour than love for the SNP - he has an irritating habit of sayings things I don’t like but which I also think are true. This doesn’t mean that the extremism of the present administration in London creates a window of opportunity for Scotland which will soon close, given a corrective general election or two. The steady centralisation, corporatisation and rightward drift of English government has been a growing pressure for Scottish secession for decades, and it will continue. The further from London the greater the sense of alienation. Some of the harshest reactions to London rule I heard when I worked in England – some asked that if Scotland obtained independence, could we please move the border down a bit.
Before Scotland leaves the Union it would make sense to understand the springs of that unhappiness in order to avoid the same dissatisfaction in independence. This is the task tackled by Mike Russell and Dennis MacLeod in ‘Grasping the Thistle’. It is a response to the ‘dim hitchhiker’ syndrome – the authors ask questions and propose answers on what we should be trying to establish in Scotland beyond independence. You don’t need to agree with all of the Russell/MacLeod prescriptions (and you’re not likely to) to see that the debate is overdue.Â
Part of their concern is with voter apathy and disaffection with politics, and they take the refreshing step of accepting that the voters are right to be fed up. However there are many strands to disillusionment with government, and one that the book doesn’t deal with is the Career Politician, that unappealing creature largely responsible for the disappearance of public respect for politics. The career politician is a panda’s thumb, a glaring case of sub-optimisation. It isn’t difficult to imagine something better, yet it continues to occupy its niche in our political ecology and nothing can arise to displace it. The forest must change – if we want a panda with a better thumb, we must make the bamboo harder to pick.Â
What corrupts isn’t power but the personal impunity that power confers. As a politician I can declare war because I don’t have to take part in the fighting. I can reduce the security of employment because my job is secure. I can remove pension rights because I retain my own. I am safe from any unpleasantness I impose on others: I regulate a world to which I do not belong.
Someone said that democracy is a system for the removal of unpopular leaders by some means short of assassination.  If so, I’m not sure that we have it. So I know what my Good Fairy Bill would be: no-one may stand more than twice for election to the Scottish Parliament. I might add that the salary will be 150% of the national median wage; the pension accrued will be the State entitlement only and the severance payment at the end of service will be the minimum allowed by law – thus giving them a useful incentive to improve these indicators. Would anyone want the job under these circumstances? Certainly not those whose only motive is personal gain. Â
Any other suggestions for a Good Fairy Bill?
“Given the choice between devolution and independence – I’d choose the latterâ€
Not as you might think the position of a fundamentalist Scottish Nationalist, but the position taken by former Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth, and other prominent Scottish Conservatives prior to the 1997 General Election.
Despite such political posturing, following the creation a devolved assembly the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives gave up their opposition to devolution and accepted the “will of the Scottish people.â€Â Against a background of policy failure by the Scottish Executive, the Scottish Conservatives have failed to provide any new policies to meet Scotland needs. The only firm commitment seems to be to bail out a minority Labour government, hardly a traditional Conservative message.
Outwith its leadership, a number of Scottish Conservatives have embraced the concept of “fiscal autonomyâ€; that the Scottish Parliament should have full tax raising powers, making MSPs more accountable to the electorate. Other figures on the Scottish right have been prepared to go one step further and embrace an independent Scotland. The Union may historically have served Scotland well, but devolution has weakened the Union and delivered an unstable constitutional arrangement. An independent Scotland could thrive as a low tax, limited government, an enterprise-based economy, creating increased wealth and prosperity for the Scottish people.
Whilst the SNP maintains a “left of centre†position, the party has always been a broad nationalist coalition. The party has many conservative-minded members, who have perhaps not had the opportunity to promote market-orientated policies. It is not difficult to see the similarities between self-rule and self-reliance, patriotism and nationalism, individual freedom and independence.
Conservatives for Independence seeks to be an online discussion forum for centre right activists in Scottish politics. Aiming to bring together supporters of the free market in Scotland, we will challenge the Unionist status quo of the Scottish Tories and the left of centre consensus of the SNP. The group has no intention of standing candidates in Scottish elections and will not campaign for or against either of these two political parties.
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