Wendy Wind Blows

So, as Labour welcomes its fourth Holyrood leader, we bid farewell to Jack and extend a warm welcome to Wendy. There's no doubt that she will present a different set of challenges to the SNP than did her predecessor. However, with the SNP now setting the agenda from the Holyrood Ministerial Tower, it's also the case that she and her MSP colleagues have some new and awkward terrain of their own to negotiate.

This is the first time Labour has been in opposition to anyone other than the Conservatives in Scotland. There's a new dynamic of a Scottish government at work, which doesn't take its lead from London. Consequently, the old Labour trick of playing the Scottish card just isn't going to work any more – after all, as the advert asks, why have cotton when you can have silk?

A psychological rubicon has been crossed. The SNP is in power, and as has been remarked before, no-one has sold their first born son into slavery, the plagues of boils and locusts have yet to arrive, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem curiously absent from the horizon. Even the SNP's sternest doubters have been forced to admit that in government, the party has shown a maturity and sure-footedness with which few would have credited it previously.

In her post-coronation pronouncements, Alexander was quick to spell out to anyone who might have missed it that the SNP had won the election, not by some fluke, but by embracing an agenda of hope and aspiration. To that end, she set out 4 broad headings where she wanted Labour to change: developing Scottish solutions for Scottish aspirations; empowering people and communities rather than institutions; having consumer not producer-focused public services; and delivering a competitive yet compassionate economy.

In our post-ideological age there's probably not much there from which anyone would demur. Labour can lay claim to all the intellectual conceits it wishes, but for many Scots, if there was a stifling political 'consensus', Labour and its patronage networks were the problem. Labour became a byword for a proprietorial, top-down, boring, managerial and oft-times not even particularly competent style of government. As such, the ability of the party to overcome its own hard-wired producer interest is at best highly dubious.

Nevertheless, it’s a patronage network to which Alexander owes much herself. Hers was a gilded path, with her links to Donald Dewar and Gordon Brown predestining her for a place amongst the elect. All good for her, but it does mean that she missed out on developing some of the more fundamental skills needed by a politician. After all, why waste energy on anything so vulgar as winning people over with persuasion and skill in debate, when you can bludgeon them instead with repeated assertion before letting the party machine do the rest?

As part of the Labour ascendancy, she has formidable support amongst the Scottish chattering classes. Marriage and motherhood have mellowed her, they tell us. Well, perhaps, but the memory lingers of her undermining Henry McLeish, bringing government to a shuddering halt in protest at his attempts to hand her responsibility for Scottish Water as part of her ministerial brief. And who could forget her ludicrous 'Hungry Caterpillar' speech, as John Swinney took on a similar sized portfolio without breaking so much as a bead of perspiration?

It's a series of similar vignettes that have built up the perception of her being somewhat other worldly and near-impossible to work with. This perception is itself put down to her apparently 'formidable' intellect and the inherent misogyny of Scottish society. Again, perhaps. It still doesn't explain how Susan Deacon, who wears her postgraduate learning rather more lightly than does Alexander, managed to be infinitely more effective in office yet never attracted either the same opprobrium or gushing praise.

And that in the end is her biggest problem. If she is seen solely as an abrasive mouthpiece for someone else, will she be able to take her Labour colleagues to where she says she wants to go? How can she rebuild a parliamentary group still suffering from its Stalinist purges of the candidate list back in 1998? And will she be able to engage in the 'more powers' debate without reverting to her default pre-election demonisation of independence and the negativity which turned so many voters away from her party?

Alexander really is Labour's last chance to prevent the SNP from establishing itself as a long-term party of government in Scotland. If she fails, and Labour lose power at Westminster, who seriously expects Scotland to hang around in the union? That's how high the stakes are, and that's why we're going to have it rammed down our throats by Labour supporters in the press and civic society, whether its true or not, that Wendy is the best thing to happen to Scotland since, well, the SNP government.

Unionism might appear to be in disarray right now, but as any hunter knows, the beast is at its most dangerous when wounded and cornered. We've no reason to not be confident at the way matters are progressing, but we should never forget that Alexander has some very powerful allies and is likely to work much more closely with her colleagues in London than did Jack McConnell. For that reason, the SNP would be wise to watch her and hers very carefully as Labour begins to pick itself up from the canvass.

Well Oiled

The ‘Offshore Europe’ conference hit Aberdeen the week before last, bringing together oil industry executives from around the world to talk turkey and doubtless rack up the restaurant and bar bills on their corporate expense cards. Rather than the discussions about the buoyant prospects for the industry, however, the headlines were grabbed by Junior Scotland Office Minister of State, David Cairns, who decided to launch a pre-emptive strike on the SNP's plans to open up discussions on the transfer of North Sea Oil to the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament.

"The interests of both Scotland and the UK are best served through continued economic union and the benefits which accompany a UK-wide approach", said Cairns. "Our [the Westminster government’s] thinking on this issue is therefore unequivocal - introducing needless uncertainty into an £11bn industry which supports half a million jobs is not an option for the UK Government."

That's us telt, then. Well, except it's not. Stability appears to be at a premium in an industry which seems to have a new minister appointed every year, and which is the first to be raided for supplementary taxes every time the Chancellor’s budget forecasts fall short. And as a spokesperson for the First Minister put it in the Press and Journal, he's "not going to be put off by the knee-jerk negativity of the junior minister from the Scotland Office", who has "nothing new" to say about Government policy for which he has no responsibility.

8... 9... 10... ding ding! In fairness to David Cairns, though, putting up a former priest against a former oil economist on the subject of, er, oil economics, was always going to make for a mismatched contest. But with his maladroit intervention, Cairns has perhaps unwittingly blown the gaff on at least one aspect of Wendy Alexander's mission to 'reconnect' with voters.

As part of her bid to dispel Labour's image of rampant negativity, Ms Alexander has said she wants to "strengthen the financial accountability" of politicians, indicating in the process that she supports the transfer of new financial powers to the Scottish Parliament. So far, so good. But given the large role played by North Sea Revenues in Scotland's economy (£11bn this year alone), how exactly can you have any kind of meaningful fiscal autonomy, unless you also repatriate the revenues and relevant tax powers to Edinburgh?

So, who's got the upper hand in Labour on this one? Wendy, or Westminster? Or is it all just a big scam by Wendy, who after an appropriate period of time will announce that after some suitably weighty consideration, fiscal autonomy is just a distraction from the 'real issues' that those much fabled 'people on the doorstep' will have been telling her all about?

Maybe I've got it all wrong, and she is genuine about this. Somehow I doubt it, but if so, perhaps she just needs to stand, not so much on a doorstep as on a few well connected feet, if she's to stand a chance of getting her Westminster colleagues to pay attention.

No Time To Buy A New Atlas

I have to admit that if I were ever to appear on ‘Mastermind’, I’d be unlikely to choose the politics of Belgium as my specialist subject. That said, the continuing failure to form a government there is beginning to cause some ripples of interest, not least because of what it might mean for the integrity of the Belgian state. Even The Economist, that bastion of unionism (at least when their Scotland correspondent is let loose on a word processor), is getting in on the act, penning this rather facetious but none the less prescient leader last week:

A RECENT glance at the Low Countries revealed that, nearly three months after its latest general election, Belgium was still without a new government. It may have acquired one by now. But, if so, will anyone notice? And, if not, will anyone mind? Even the Belgians appear indifferent. And what they think of the government they may well think of the country. If Belgium did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it?

Such questions could be asked of many countries. Belgium's problem, if such it is, is that they are being asked by the inhabitants themselves. True, in opinion polls most Belgians say they want to keep the show on the road. But when they vote, as they did on June 10th, they do so along linguistic lines, the French-speaking Walloons in the south for French-speaking parties, the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north for Dutch-speaking parties. The two groups do not get on—hence the inability to form a government. They lead parallel lives, largely in ignorance of each other. They do, however, think they know themselves: when a French-language television programme was interrupted last December with a spoof news flash announcing that the Flemish parliament had declared independence, the king had fled and Belgium had dissolved, it was widely believed.

No wonder. The prime minister designate thinks Belgians have nothing in common except “the king, the football team, some beers”, and he describes their country as an “accident of history”. In truth, it isn't. When it was created in 1831, it served more than one purpose. It relieved its people of various discriminatory practices imposed on them by their Dutch rulers. And it suited Britain and France to have a new, neutral state rather than a source of instability that might, so soon after the Napoleonic wars, set off more turbulence in Europe.

The upshot was neither an unmitigated success nor an unmitigated failure. Belgium industrialised fast; grabbed a large part of Africa and ruled it particularly rapaciously; was itself invaded and occupied by Germany, not once but twice; and then cleverly secured the headquarters of what is now the European Union. Along the way it produced Magritte, Simenon, Tintin, the saxophone and a lot of chocolate. Also frites. No doubt more good things can come out of the swathe of territory once occupied by a tribe known to the Romans as the Belgae. For that, though, they do not need Belgium: they can emerge just as readily from two or three new mini-states, or perhaps from an enlarged France and Netherlands.

Brussels can devote itself to becoming the bureaucratic capital of Europe. It no longer enjoys the heady atmosphere of liberty that swirled outside its opera house in 1830, intoxicating the demonstrators whose protests set the Belgians on the road to independence. The air today is more fetid. With freedom now taken for granted, the old animosities are ill suppressed. Rancour is ever-present and the country has become a freak of nature, a state in which power is so devolved that government is an abhorred vacuum. In short, Belgium has served its purpose. A praline divorce is in order.

Belgians need not feel too sad. Countries come and go. And perhaps a way can be found to keep the king, if he is still wanted. Since he has never had a country—he has always just been king of the Belgians—he will not miss Belgium. Maybe he can rule a new-old country called Gaul. But king of the Gauloises doesn't sound quite right, does it?

So, to recap: If [it] did not already exist, would anyone nowadays take the trouble to invent it... The upshot was neither an unmitigated success nor an unmitigated failure... It has served its purpose... Countries come and go...

Indeed they do. Sound like anywhere a wee bit closer to home?