Quantcast
Channel: For Argyll » improper
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

First Minister shadow boxes in the ring

0
0

The SNP conference speeches were familiarly heavy on emotive rhetoric, none more so than the First Minister’s final address.

One ought always to feel uncomfortable in the presence of a clear drive to affect one’s emotions, to cause them to carry reason away to be beached somewhere on a hopefully falling tide.

Any sound case advances reason, rather then seeks to sweep it away with emotion.

The cage-fighter challenge – again

The intended barnstormer of Mr Salmond’s final address was not new. It was a repetition, word for word, of the cage-fighter’s earlier challenge to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, worded as a ‘step outside’ invitation, ‘just you and me’.

The old stag knows no game other than locking horns and wants the sweat and the spotlights one last time.

‘WE’LL PUBLISH THE WHITE PAPER THEN YOU AND I MUST DEBATE. FIRST MINISTER TO PRIME MINISTER.

‘THE CHOICE IS YOURS. STEP UP TO THE PLATE – OR STEP OUT OF THIS DEBATE!

‘After that I will take on whichever of your substitutes you care to put up.’

This is exactly how the text of the First Minister’s speech was given – and delivered.

The ‘debate’ – such as it has been, would actually benefit from proscribing the distraction of the ritual television debates but politicians do love to strut their stuff, so this is not going to happen.

But what Mr Salmond is proposing, for the nth time, would simply be improper.

The UK Prime Minster has absolutely no place and no part to play in a debate internal to those who live in Scotland and who are solely those eligible to vote.

This is an issue for Scotland, to be decided within Scotland.

Where is the logic in a Scottish First Minister – who constantly parrots the imperative of decisions for Scotland being taken in Scotland – insisting on the opportunity to climb into the ring with the UK Prime Minister?

Mr Cameron must simply stay out of it and leave Mr Salmond to bawl on the fringes as he will.

If the Prime Minister engages in this he will leave himself and his government open to the allegation of improper interference in the affairs of Scotland, whether or not he has  – bizarrely – been invited to do so by Scotland’s own First Minister.

Mr Salmond simply wants to achieve a status his current role does not merit. The First Minister of a devolved part of the UK is not the equal of the Prime Minister of the entire United Kingdom.

If  Scotland votes for independence, then Mr Salmond and other future leaders would naturally, in terms of protocol, be the equal of any other national leader.

For the moment, for lack of a combatant, the First Minister produced a few wraiths of his own to try his moves against.

Scotland should ‘embrace the powers of a national economy’

The First Minister declaimed that Scotland should ‘embrace the powers of a national economy’.

He said this with a straight face, regardless of the fact that such an embrace is impossible in the context of using the pound sterling with permission, as he intends to do – and with the Bank of England as lender of last resort.

The First Minister keeps trying the sleight of hand he used again this morning with Andrew Marr, saying that he considers fiscal policy  – on taxation and spending – ‘superior’ to the monetary policy which the Bank of England would continue to control if Scotland was in the sterling zone.

In testing the validity of this claim of the superiority of fiscal policy, note that ‘monetary policy’ controls the supply of money and the rates of interest applied to promote economic growth and stability.

What you can do with taxing and spending is absolutely subordinate to the control of the money supply and of interest rates.

‘Westminster’s privatisation obsession’

In attacking the privatisation  of the Royal Mail and in restating the commitment of an independent Scotland to take the Scottish element of that service into national ownership, the First Minsiter referred to ‘Westminster’s privatisation obsession’.

So how does he square the fact that his own Scottish government couldn’t wait to take the Northern Isles ferry services out of national ownership and control and hand them over to the privateer Serco – which is also effectively ‘on a promise’ to get the giant contract for the west coast’s Clyde and Hebridean ferry services when they go to tender.

‘Scottish Water remains in public hands’

On the matter of privatisation, Mr Salmond said that: ‘Despite privatisation elsewhere in the UK, Scottish Water remains in public hands and now Scotland has the lowest average household water bills in these Islands.’

The reality is that, post 2007,  the SNP Scottish Government seriously considered selling off Scottish Water and recoiled when they realised the potential weight of the electoral response.

‘We are paying a heavy price for Westminster decisions’

At Friday’s conference session, Fiance Secretary, John Swinney, in his address and referring to the UK’s deficit, said: ‘As part of the UK, every person in Scotland is paying the bill for Westminster’s mismanagement’.

The following day, this was repeated with slender variation by the First Minister in his keynote address, saying: ”We are paying a heavy price for Westminster decisions’.

The ritual threnody of complaint about the impact on Scotland of Westminster decisions dishonestly ignores the impact on the entire UK [and its grossly swollen national debt] and well beyond the UK, of decisions made in Scotland, by a more powerful  agent of this country than its government – the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The RBS was the most outrageous risk taker of the casino banks that collapsed in 2008 and it was the major UK casualty.

This bank did not just take its identity from Scotland, its HQ was and is here in Edinburgh.

Its CEO for the period in question, Sir Fred Goodwin, was Scottish as was its Chair, Sir Tom McKillop.

Gordon Brown, a Scot, was, as Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, responsible for the ‘regulation with a light touch’ that seduced the financial institutions into playing blind man’s buff with our money – and our future.

The catastrophically risky RBS policy, strategies and takeovers were hatched in Scotland and led by Scots – with the pain of the consequences generously distributed.

The United Kingdom came good in that crisis. It protected savers’ money, It bailed out the banks – we all pay for that.

No one ever said ‘It’s Scotland’s fault’ – as the First Minister is now bawling about the reprehensible but small scale ‘bedroom tax’ being ‘a symbol of why independence is necessary.

The UK’s uncomplaining acceptance of shared responsibility alongside shared success is what any union is all about – except that the SNP’s petty whingeing taints the rest of us.

Scotland arguably inflicted more harm on the UK than it has equally arguably done to us.

Yet on Friday Mr Swinney said, with no sense of irony – or of national responsibility:

‘So when our opposition say Scotland can’t afford to be independent because we might have to pay off some debts – let’s remember who built up the debt [Ed: our emphasis], let’s remember how much of our oil wealth they squandered running up that debt, let’s remember how much they are borrowing to pay off their debt [Ed: our emphasis] and let’s remember that if Scotland votes No we will be saddled with UK debt [Ed: our emphasis] for many, many years to come.’

What planet?


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 3

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images