Devolution of tax powers won’t shut down the Scottish independence debate
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Version 0 of 1. First, some chronology. On 22 November some 3,000 people attended the Radical Independence Conference in the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow. That same day, in the adjoining Hydro Arena, more than 10,000 came to hear the new first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, talk about her agenda for Scotland. Her warm-up act was outgoing first minister Alex Salmond and a succession of rock bands. On 25 November Jim Murphy MP, frontrunner in the Scottish Labour leadership contest, provoked by Johann Lamont’s sudden resignation, unveiled his agenda in the Mitchell Library in the same city. His audience was 60 Labour activists. In the course of his address he confirmed that Scottish Labour had dropped its opposition to the devolution of income tax to the Holyrood parliament. By then he knew that on 27 November these powers would be publicly confirmed by Lord Smith of Kelvin, chair of the all-party commission, set up by the UK government the day after the Scottish independence referendum. Now, some numbers. On referendum day, 18 September, polls in Scotland suggested that Labour had a four-point lead over the SNP. By 18 November three polls variously put the SNP’s support at 43%, 45%, and, in the startling case of Ipsos Mori, 52%. Labour was variously at 26 to 28. Time for Scottish Labour to be afraid. Very afraid. Time, too, for Ed Miliband to reflect that were they polling such numbers at the time of the general election next May that his 40-strong army of Scottish Labour MPs could be reduced to a single-figure rump. This could, in fact, decide the outcome of the poll. Gordon Brown, whose 11th-hour intervention in the referendum campaign was said to be a game changer and who orchestrated the famous eve-of-poll “vow” of increased devolution signed by the three main UK party leaders, remains a vehement opponent of devolving tax powers. But now he is almost certainly leaving Westminster, his influence has waned. David Cameron, some of whose referendum rhetoric was penned by Brown, did not bother to advise his predecessor that he would be calling for English votes for English laws on D-day plus one. Then again, he didn’t tell Miliband or Nick Clegg either. It will take time for the ultimate winners and losers from the Smith commission to emerge. Scottish Labour and the Lib Dem Scottish secretary are hailing the commission’s work as a hugely significant improvement on the 1998 settlement. The Greens are not unhappy. But already the SNP is claiming that too many tax and welfare powers remain in Westminster hands, and not enough has been made available in terms of job-creation opportunities. Two things are fairly certain. The proponents of English votes for English laws will be further energised by the suspicion that all of Smith, plus the retention of the Barnett formula, disproportionately favours Scotland, and a rebalancing must take place. And the yes voters, 73% of whom are apparently in the market for a second referendum within five years, might well reflect that all the commissions thus far – from the constitutional convention which delivered devolution through Labour’s Calman commission updating the Scotland Act, to the latest Smith proposals, share one arresting component: all appear to have a built-in obsolescence – as the independence debate stubbornly refuses to shut down. |