Before the fiddlers have fled …
In my last post I said that I would not write anything about the General Election in the run up to it. This post is really some initial reflection after it, although it is a work in progress. There is, of course, a great deal of commentary and analysis going on out there. Some of it might be right, a lot of it is almost certainly wrong, but most of it is noise rather than signal. Much of it is also a rehashing of old opinions and prejudices that, on the surface at least, tell you more about the archaeology of past struggles than the situation of the present.
Like many, many others, I was surprised by the result, at least in terms of its scale: the notion that the Tories would win a working majority hadn’t been in my expectations at all. I suppose that this was partly because I assumed the opinion polls suggesting a dead heat were broadly true, but also because I couldn’t bring myself to believe that, as an electorate, we would see what they have done in the past five years and vote them in again. I rather think that they were surprised too.
Still, these are early days; things will become clearer once we have a Queen’s Speech and start to see the way the land lies from the responses to it, and once some of the post-election froth has blown away. Be that as it may, it is obvious that there are major fault-lines emerging within the electorate. Whether they are old faults that are becoming more active or new ones is a moot point. I think the noises of these fault lines shifting and grinding are amplified in the echo chamber of social media (though the causes lie elsewhere).
In Scotland, of course, there is the substantial aspirational fervour of many for something other than the grimness of modern mainstream politics. Some of this is in the hearts and breasts of nationalists, some of it in the attitudes of those who are not nationalists but nevertheless want to kick against the pricks and voted SNP.
Where it will now get “interesting” in Scotland is when some of that comes up against reality–for example just about the last thing Nicola Sturgeon will want is for David Cameron to offer her Full Fiscal Autonomy and an end to Barnett, because she knows the popular myth that “Scotland puts in more than it gets out” is simply wrong, or at least has only been true in three of the past fifteen years, and those were years of peak oil receipts. And yet there is clearly a substantial number in the electorate who don’t know that, or do know it and don’t care, or dismiss it out of hand as lies and scaremongering. Yada yada yada; so it goes.
I have no idea how this will play out, but turbulent skies are ahead of us, I think.
ADDED
Lest you think my comments on the SNP not wanting FFA are just the ramblings of a jaded unionist, it seems that George Kerevan of the SNP agrees and has executed a classic reverse ferret. He has written:
For Scotland to accept fiscal autonomy without inbuilt UK-wide fiscal balancing would be tantamount to economic suicide. However, all federal systems have mechanisms for cross subsidising regions in economic need by regions in surplus. To deny that to Scotland suggests a disingenuous Mr Cameron is hoping to derail any move to Scottish Hole (sic) Rule within the UK
Even the most cunning of writers would struggle to call that ‘full fiscal autonomy’. My translation is “If Cameron gives us what we asked for he’ll be denying us what we want.” It also occurs to me that a mechanism for cross-subsidising regions in economic need is precisely what Barnett is.
He might almost be saying that we’re better together.
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