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Date: 30/08/14
Doon Tae The Wire - Part II: The 'No' Future
The last paragraph of the first part of this screed, by a commodius vicus of recirculation, brings me back to the Labour Party in Scotland. Its problem is that it is precisely what that description implies: it is a branch office of The Labour Party plc (London - Tel Aviv - Tuscany) and, as such, must do as it is jolly well told. There could be no other reason why the Party in Scotland should have embarked on so reckless a course of action as to campaign alongside the ne'er-do-wells of the Right against what all sense would indicate was the interests of the people they claim to have close to their (albeit terminally arteriosclerotic) hearts.
For consider what will happen to the Labour Party in Scotland if there is a 'No' vote in the Referendum (which is where we started with all this several volumes ago, remember?), particularly if the result is a close one. Given that the influence of the Labour Party and its reach to deep within the media establishment would have played a key - possibly the key - part in that result, what will be going through the minds of the many tens of thousands of people who usually vote Labour when faced with the sight of a vaunting, taunting Party nomenklatura congratulating themselves on having 'smashed the Nats' by pissing on their own supporters? Especially bearing in mind that there are elections to Westminster in May 2015 and elections to Holyrood a year later. Will those one-time Labour voters who went for independence see their interests being best served by supporting a party which thwarted their wishes, and for the basest of reasons? Or are they more likely to consider that their best protection (as far as could be achieved in the circumstances) against the actions of the three-stroke Wanker engine made up of Westminster, Whitehall and The City would come from a party which would undeniably put Scotland at the forefront of their concerns? Similarly, when the next Scottish election turned up - assuming that any significant clout was left to the Parliament chosen through it, as one of the first acts of a gleefully malicious Westminster would certainly be to start removing powers from it - would those same people, people who may have voted Labour all their lives, be willing to trust what defence could be mustered against London's malign mischief to the primary architects of that state of affairs having been perpetuated indefinitely? I foresee the ending of Labour in Scotland as an effective national political force for a generation; certainly the hammering they took in 2011 is nothing set against what 2016 is likely to bring.
As with the Labour Party in Scotland, so too with its arts and entertainment wing, the BBC. Its conduct during the campaign will have opened the eyes of more than just those who already long suspected that the Corporation was rather less upright than its promoters constantly claim. And, like with Labour, in the event of a 'No' vote by a narrow or narrow-ish margin, the BBC's refusal to countenance even the semblance of even-handedness in its coverage may well be seen as having been crucial. In which case, where does that leave the near-half of the population who voted 'Yes'? Will not many of them see being forced to pay close on £150 per year for the privilege of being deliberately misled and malinformed nothing short of a bloody impertinence? I think many of them will, and I fully expect there to be a campaign of non-compliance with the licence fee which may number into the tens of thousands. This would not perhaps affect the Scottish branch of the organisation financially (ways would be found of maintaining something close to the existing funding level by moving dosh around between its 'business streams'), but it would have a potentially devastating effect on what is left of the BBC's credibility, with it having visibly lost the support of a substantial proportion of its 'customer base'.
Both of the organisations I have talked about here seem to be under the impression that, in the event of a 'No' vote next month, everything will carry on much as before, and nothing need be changed, or at least nothing need be improved.
Not that such assumptions are entirely absent from the politicians and pundits involved on the pro-Union side. There seems to be an underlying tone to every pronouncement from every one of them that - once the 'Nats' have been thoroughly sliced and diced - things will carry on much as they have done since time immemorial (or '1922', to give it its factual label). The even tenor of the Great British State will continue to be uninterrupted by such piddling affectations as 'change'; the spinster daughters of bishops will continue driving their so-British (designed by a Greek) Morris Minors at 15 mph down the middle of the road on their way to tutting at their 'trendy' vicar at Evensong, the smack of willow on leather will still be heard as sadistic private-schoolmasters take out their pederastic inclinations on the rears of the sons of Captains Of Industry, and there will still be honey for tea in all the best deregulated tea shoppes.
But there will be - can be - no 'business as usual' after a 'No' vote, neither for Scotland nor for the rest of us who will have to continue to endure a régime which has increasingly come to resemble the last days of the Romanovs (when it isn't imitating The Fall Of The House Of Usher).
For a start, the nature of the campaign in Scotland has been such as to create a level of political engagement amongst the general population which is not likely to die down, even if many of those people who have - often for the first time - been introduced to the sort of political campaigning which was par for the course in the early days of mass democracy may retire to lick their wounds for a wee while. Once a society gets a taste for participation in a genuine grass-roots movement, there is little short of a fully-armed police force and secret courts (which, Freedom Central as we are, we already have at least in embryo) that could re-bottle that particular brand of djinn. Even those who had not been active in the struggle are likely to have had their consciousnesses raised to such a degree that they will no longer give those who set themselves to rule over them from a safe distance the slightest benefit of the doubt anymore.
Mainly though, we already have a pretty good idea of what the consequences of a 'No' vote would be for Scotland, because the Unionists and their cheerleaders have to all intents and purposes told us. There will be a further five years (minimum) of so-called 'austerity' policies, irrespective of which buttocks sit on the Pews of Power in the Holy Whited Sepulchre of The Union, with all those policies' attendant consequences for the poor, the young, the disabled, the unemployed, the under-employed and anyone who dares stand between the shareholder-gods and the enjoyment of their unearned profits. Those saying (and there are otherwise serious people who have gone on record as saying it) that they're voting 'No' because they want to see a Labour government should therefore be careful what they wish for. It has long since become nothing more than an hereditary priesthood, one whose theology is as debased, as deluded and as dangerous as that of Joseph Smith (himself a fraudster long before he 'discovered' his mystical metal plates).
Beyond even that, we know that there will be a groundswell of support for Scotland itself to be shat on six ways from the axis by the cutting of the already tiny amount of pocket money it is given back as a reward for having subsidised London for the last two generations. The Barnett Formula will go, and in its place will come a deliberately inchoate beast called a 'needs-based' formula. This appears to mean - in as much as it could be said to mean anything - that the Scottish Parliament will get what Westminster and Whitehall think it needs and no' a bawbie mair. This act would serve two allied purposes: it would enable Westminster to keep an even larger share of Scotland's wealth for its own vanity projects of white elephants and permanent war; and it would effectively reduce a national parliament to the sort of cheese-paring which is normally associated with local councils, thus undermining that parliament's credibility in the public mind.
Look also (if you can bear to) at the various 'promises' made by the Unionist parties of 'more powers' for the Scottish Parliament in the sewage-laden wake of a 'No' vote: the LibDems - who are likely to be left with little more than its Scottish highlands and northern isles MPs in a few months time - still prattle on about some sort of federal system which anyone with an ounce of nous would recognise as a non-starter as it would need, in order to make it remotely viable, the fragmenting of England into about seven different units (sort of like 'cost centres', and with the same obfuscatory purpose), which simply isn't going to happen; the Tories are promising what they claim are 'more powers', but which are mostly just 'more responsibilities without the ability to finance them'; and Labour's offer is even more nebulous, in that they would make the Scottish Parliament responsible for raising all of its funding, but without any possibility of support from redistribution of public expenditure between the constituent parts of the UK, creating an expensive duplicated bureaucracy without providing the additional means to support it.
Even if you think for one happily-innocent moment that any of the above are to be trusted, it does not provide an attractive prospect. Indeed, it produces the real possibility of the funding of public services in Scotland being squeezed even further than envisaged by either the current Tory austerians or a Labour Party which has proclaimed well in advance of the next Westminster charade that they will keep to almost exactly the same extreme policies. Who they think they might convince by their respective positions is a point upon which one may meditate for days without gaining the slightest enlightenment; unless it comes down to concluding that the Unionists think that the people of Scotland are a bunch of tame daffies who can be fooled by any old pish.
Bear in mind too that the Parliament of Scotland exists - and can only continue to exist - by the grace and favour of the London élite. Even if not even the clodhoppers and vengeful hypertots of Westminster would be so dense as to seek to remove it altogether with the stroke of a ministerial key (although the power exists for them to do precisely that should they so choose), they can instead cause it to suffer terminal diminution by means of the budget cuts I've already mentioned, or by simply removing Holyrood's powers and competences one by one. Indeed, this is the path upon which they have already set themselves: at the start of this year, the power to decide on planning applications relating to fracking in Scotland was removed from Edinburgh by that grand exemplar of British Democracy™, the House of Lords. Further erosion of Scotland's powers would be inevitable after a 'No' vote, if only because Westminster would feel - not without reason - that they could safely ignore any reaction from a defeated Scottish populace. Let the Sweats (*) rage, they will reason; they are now powerless. And, for good measure, one of the first things London is likely to do is to make jolly damn sure that no Scottish Parliament could plan a referendum on any matter which London considered to be solely within its own purview ever again.
And indeed powerless they would be, for they would have voted permanently to cede power to London over all bar the most trivial aspects of policy; for what point would there be in retaining the power to regulate in areas where you couldn't actually enact any policy because you have had either the power or the wherewithal to use it removed or withheld from you?
In short, next month could see perhaps the first occasion in history in which a nation votes to become a mere province. North Britain is all that would be left of Scotland, not only in the eyes of London but of the world. Why should the world and his wife (of either gender) take seriously the pretensions to nationhood of a land whose population had just decided that they didn't actually want the powers and responsibilties which inevitably go with such a status, and much preferred the position of being the supposed adult living in his aunt and uncle's spare room and existing on handouts from them? The people of Scotland would be voting not for permanent subjugation but for something much worse; permanent irrelevance.
Beyond Scotland, what of the effect of a 'No' vote to the rest of us on this island?
I state clearly here that I believe that a 'Yes' vote in Scotland's referendum is the last chance of there being significant and positive change in the addled, raddled Westminster system by means other than outright insurrection and blood on the streets. A seismic jolt of the sort which independence would deliver to that system would have at least some possibilty of forcing the custodians of our very own ancien régime to take something akin to a fresh look at their derelict property. Beyond that, it would demonstrate to people in England (and perhaps even in Wales!) that they, the people, have more power to bring about change than they have allowed themselves to believe.
A 'No' vote would, on the other hand, lead to no change of any substance for the better; not only for Scotland, but for the rest of us as well. For, despite what I said earlier about there being no going back to 'business as usual' as understood up to now, a refusal of independence by the people of Scotland would only further embolden those who see the actually-existing Potemkin-village democracy of Westminster as their own private duchy, wherein power may further be consolidated, patronage may further be deepened, and heirs may further be groomed to take over whenever a conveniently safe seat may manifest itself. Although there might be a period of apparent soft-pedalling before the further entrenchment of near-Bourbon privilege and ideological orthodoxy, this would be entirely for show; the barons of our times would know that there was nothing which could now stand in the way of their zealous projection of their quasi-religious ideological obsessions and the equally assiduous protection of their own privilege.
Any other possible way of doing things would - with the ever-willing assistance of what, with increasing degrees of absurdity, calls itself 'the free press' - be so discredited in the minds of the public (or at least in what passes for the minds of what passes for the public who still get their confirmation biases retail from newspapers and an increasingly discredited broadcasting system) that those alternatives would be easily and readily dismissable as emanating from cranks, 'extremists' and, the plus grands canards de nos jours, 'terrorists'. Untrammelled power would be in, and in for beyond the foreseeable future. Arrogance and hubris would be as one combined, in an imperious imperium which would know that no challenge to it need be feared; even if turning the cops into a regiment of street warriors would be a teensy bit too obvious, further encouraging the attitude of impunity already apparent on their part combined with a firm PR strategy which paints all those who are determined to be awkward as Enemies Of Prosperity would seal a victory so deep, so permanent, that it would take an invasion and occupation to change anything for the better ever again.
The Westminster system has proven to be totally unreformable from within, and only an existential battering by forces beyond its control could ever effect any meaningful change in it.
It wouldn't just be Scotland, Wales and Northern-Ireland-Is-A-Special-Case-Here-As-In-Everything-Else who would be on the shitty end of that particular stick. It has been obvious enough for long enough that The Boys In The Bubble regard any part of England which is, a) more than sixty miles from London, b) not in a marginal constituency, c) inhabited largely by poor people, or d) any combination of the foregoing, as being beneath their notice unless those living there can be made into, a) scapegoats, b) cannon fodder, c) cheap labour, or d) perm any two from three. It is damn nigh obvious that the non-photogenic parts of the North of England, along with the West Midlands and Cornwall, have been written off as being good for nothing and no-one other than property speculators. That tendency will deepen in its intensity, there being no viable countervailing force to confront it. Apathy and disillusionment may safely be allowed to run rampant, as apathetic and disillusioned people do not vote, especially in those areas where the constituency last changed parties in the time of the Plantagenets. And won't those metropolitan faux-socialists be delighted at what they would have helped to bring about? You would be able to power a small city with the heat generated by the wringing of their hands (I, for one, hereby volunteer to operate the wringer; purely out of a sense of 'solidarity', you understand).
The prospect would be not so much gloomy, nor even bleak, but Stygian. The self-perpetuating, semi-dynastic cardinals in their palace would be all but unassailable, especially as they have long since learned the crucial trick of knowing how to buy off just enough of the population in the right way, and exactly how and when to massage their prejudice glands to secure their patrimony for evermore.
For them, a 'No' vote would be a fairy-tale ending; for the rest of us, it would merely be Grimm.
(Part III - Who DAREs, Wins follows tomorrow) 
* Rhyming slang: 'Sweats' = 'Sweaty socks' = 'Jocks'
