An Inspector Calls

Bullseye. With each new development in the emerging 'Cash for Honours' scandal, it seems more and more likely that thanks to Angus Brendan MacNeil and his complaint to the Metropolitan Police, the SNP's David might just have cast the stone to bring down the Blair Golliath.

Many people, nationalists included, thought that detectives would simply go through the motions of an investigation before shelving the matter quietly. Clearly that was mistaken, given the apparent police resolve to pursue matters to their fullest conclusion. It just goes to show that even in what seems the worst of systems, a handful of principled individuals doing what they believe to be right can still make a difference.

With the arrest of chief Labour fundraiser Lord Levy, it is hard to believe that the scandal won't lead eventually to the door of 10 Downing Street. It beggars belief that someone as close to the Blair inner circle as Levy could have been acting without the Prime Minister's knowledge and it is now surely just a matter of time before ‘Knacker of the Yard’ returns to question Blair himself. His personal ‘Hand of History’ may yet be attached to the long arm of the law.

The circumstantial evidence is damning. An astonishing eighty pence in every pound donated to Labour, including every donation of one million pounds or more, has come from someone either enobled or honoured by Tony Blair. While there might be wriggle room over whether loans to Labour should have been declared publicly, the law regarding honours could not be clearer. If a court decides that loans and donations can be linked to favours received, those involved will have been caught bang to rights. A potential two year prison sentence and/or an unlimited fine will surely follow as night follows day.

Yet one potential obstacle remains to ensuring that justice might be done. The police have already had to plead with the Commons Public Administration committee to delay their own investigations into the affair, lest they undermine the ongoing police inquiry. It would be inexcusable if the committee were to do anything which might later prevent the authorities from pursuing anyone whom they believed had a case to answer. It must not be allowed to happen.

Democracy, even the Westminster variety, is too precious to be flogged off to the highest bidder. The police must be allowed to finish their investigation unimpeded, and the authorities free to act without fear or favour to bring any prosecutions that they deem to be justified. Anything less would just confirm for all time that something is rotten at the heart of the Westminster village.

But to return to the man of the moment, it really is hard to think of an MP anywhere who has made such an impact in so short a period of time in office. By pursuing this matter so diligently, Mr MacNeil has shown a healthy Scottish lack of respect for both position and authority. The people of Na h-Eileanan an Iar should be proud to have a man possessed of such integrity and initiative as their MP.
 

Scotland’s Quiet Revolution

I had one of those significant birthdays last month. I'd always felt I could regard myself as being young for so long as I was eligible to join the YSI. When they thoughtfully raised their age limit from 26 to 30, it almost felt like my youth had been magically extended, at least for a little while longer.

Alas, these days passed forever last month as I entered my fourth decade. To mark the occasion, some friends and I held an afternoon barbecue down on Portobello beach where we all got suitably anaesthetised on the Wellpark Brewery's finest. Watching the sun set somewhere over Clackmannanshire at around 10pm as we drained our glasses really did mark the perfect end to the day.

It's inevitable that you become a little bit more reflective than normal in the lead-up to such occasions. I’ve written before about how having been born in the mid-1970’s makes me amongst the first of Scotland’s ‘Oil Babies' - the first generation to grow up in a Scotland which then seemed on the verge of becoming oil rich and, at least to some degree, self-governing.

As we know, that opportunity was missed and Scotland paid a heavy price. Labour's failure to control their own backbenchers ushered the Tories back into power, led by a culturally limited and parochial grocer's daughter who preferred to substitute debate for asserting her simplistic certainties through clenched teeth. But for all that she became a hate figure in Scotland, will history come to judge Margaret Thatcher as the greatest political asset the nationalist movement ever had?

The 1980's were not kind to large areas of Scotland. Corporate headquarters were lost and the carnage caused by the high inflation, high interest rate economy demanded by the South East of England saw the
creation of mass unemployment which in some parts of Scotland is now into its third generation. The costs of this have been appalling, with levels of incapacity benefit and crime representing only the tip of the social exclusion iceberg.

But as Sandy Stranger remarks towards the end of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, influences are important, even if they provide something to react against. And react against Thatcherism Scotland certainly did, the watershed for many in middle Scotland coming with the infamous 'sermon on the mound' which proclaimed that society didn’t exist. After all, what nationalist now needed to assert cultural difference when it could be etched so starkly by a Prime Ministerial speech as imperious and ignorant as it was impertinent?

Its hard not to argue that Scotland emerged from the Thatcherite kiln with a far stronger sense of herself as a political and cultural entity. Even though in many ways my generation has a cultural outlook more similar than our forebears to that of our English counterparts, paradoxically we also seem more secure in our Scottishness. While happy to go along with devolution, Independence ultimately holds no fears for a cohort which has in its own lifetime seen countries smaller than Scotland regain their sovereignty, finding in the process prosperity and a renewed sense of collective purpose.

Perhaps that's why Jack McConnell made what was a significant departure for Labour last month when he conceded that Scottish Independence was entirely viable, its success or otherwise depending entirely on the policies of those whom the Scots then elected to govern. Instead of independence being intrinsically a bad thing, it was claimed McConnell the process of achieving it which would cause all the difficulties.

For all their past nonsensical claims that an Independent Scotland would  become like Albania, sufficient people were still prepared to believe enough of Labour's fears and smears for them to be effective. Perhaps the McCrone papers have moved matters on, but McConnell's concession has helped shift the debate to where it should always have been – not whether Scotland could be independent, but instead whether she should become independent.

This is a high-risk strategy for Labour. Thanks again to Mrs Thatcher and her mania for deregulation, we live in a society where change is constant. People are now used to changing their bank accounts, their energy suppliers, moving house, even changing their line of work several times over their lives. More importantly, they do this fully aware that whatever short term inconvenience might result, it will likely be worth it in the end. With these sorts of experiences now part and parcel of our daily existance, might we not decide to change our country as well if we judge that the prospects for ourselves and our families would be better under independence?

Many were surprised at the strength of the 'yes' vote in the 1997 referendum. Perhaps we shouldn't have been. Just because people express their political desires quietly, peaceably and reasonably, it doesn't mean those beliefs are held any less sincerely or strongly. For all that Labour might yet try and throw the kitchen sink at us in the months ahead, might the post-election horse trading be about to herald a quiet revolution in Scotland even more powerful than that of 1997?

But hear me, Sir, deil as ye are,
Look something to your credit;
A coof like him wad stain your name,
If it were kent ye did it.

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