(Thursday 18 June 2009)
Scottish battle lines are drawn
The Scottish political battle lines for the next two years have been drawn with this week's publication of the report from the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution.
The UK general election in Scotland due within the year and the Scottish Parliament election in May 2011 will both be fought between the SNP's independence prospectus and the Calman agenda of the pro-devolution parties, Labour, Lib Dems and Tories, against the backdrop of the ongoing recession.
Calman proposes a dose of fiscal autonomy for Scotland through a radical enhancement of Holyrood's existing but so far unused income tax power - and importantly would also for the first time give the Scottish Parliament the right to borrow for funding capital expenditure.
The headline proposal to give Holyrood the power to vary tax in Scotland by as much as 10p was a more radical step than many had expected.
In short, Westminster would levy 10p less on Scottish taxpayers in all bands and cut the annual Holyrood block grant pro rata.
Then Scotland would be free to make up as much, or more, of the difference as it chose, by levying its own flat rate.
So for a status quo outcome, the Scottish Parliament would have to set its new income tax rate at 10p, but it would be also free to increase or decrease the rate.
It would be obliged to actively set a rate each year at budget time. The political consequences of such fiscal liberation from Westminster strictures could be great.
One downside of this Calman proposal is that the Scottish Parliament could not alter the relationship between the higher and lower rates or alter bands, which means that it would be not be possible to increase tax on the higher bands only.
But it affords the prospect of increasing public funding for Scottish priorities rather than living within Westminster's limits.
The vital new borrowing powers would mean that the Scottish Parliament could look elsewhere than the hugely expensive PFI schemes favoured by both SNP and Labour-led administrations to fund public works.
The report proposes a number of extra powers for the Scottish Parliament - control over the running of its own elections and over airguns, drink driving and road speed limits.
There was support especially among trade unions for greater devolution of numerous other powers, for example on broadcasting, health and safety, migration and asylum and the housing benefit and council tax benefit systems.
Calman has made some proposals for limited joint working rather than transfer of power to Holyrood in these areas.
Calman makes recommendations on joining up government between Westminster and Holyrood in a way which has never happened before. Currently the two parliaments and especially the two governments often appear to exist in separate silos - sometimes lobbing missiles at each other.
Recommendations include better joint committees and consultative processes and ministerial appearances at committees of each parliament by ministers of the other - with annual appearances before committee at Westminster by the Scottish First Minister and at Holyrood by the Scottish Secretary.
More structured grown-up co-operation would be welcome and could be very productive.
No-one can accuse Calman of a failure to consult or to consider. Indeed, the breadth and depth of the Calman report completely blows the SNP government's thin National Conversation out of the water.
I don't know if Sir Kenneth Calman smokes, but he clearly doesn't have any use for a fag packet. The full Calman Commission report runs to several hundred pages across four documents - and that's after two sets of interim reports of similar size which were published last year.
And it is serious stuff.
In some respects, the Calman Commission has performed the role which the Scottish Constitutional Convention did in the 1990s.
The convention put in a good deal of detailed work then, just as Calman has now, to found the Scottish Parliament on a solid basis. Calman has engaged with the organs of "civic society" whereas the convention was actually led by the civic bodies themselves, notably the STUC under then general secretary Campbell Christie.
But both convention and commission managed to cajole and corral the warring political parties into some essential horse-trading and consensus-building.
Of course Alex Salmond's SNP removed itself from the convention process then, just as it has from Calman today, in the hope of gaining a pro-independence advantage.
The political trick of getting Labour, Tories and Lib Dems all on side without producing a banal report has been something of a coup for Calman.
His commission was a joint venture between the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster government. Its recommendations are unanimous.
Given that the political parties involved have a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament, and that in one permutation or another they will be in power at Westminster, it is reasonable to suppose that Calman's recommendations have every chance of being enacted in full.
Some of the recommendations can be put into place by the Scottish Parliament itself. Others will require legislation by Westminster.
For Labour, Ian Gray, the Scottish leader at Holyrood and Jim Murphy the Westminster Scottish Secretary have both welcomed the Calman report.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is quoted as saying: "It sets out the way forward for Scottish devolution."
It is entirely possible that Labour at Westminster will not be fully on board with everything proposed by Calman, even if the Prime Minister is.
There is a powerful cohort of Scottish MPs who are still not keen on or even reconciled to the Scottish Parliament. And English Labour MPs in general probably still do not quite get Scotland, in the way that the population as a whole south of the border often seems not to either.
To that extent there may be some jibbing and some delay over implementation. If that meant the Calman proposals were not enacted by Labour before the next election, Labour itself would almost certainly be the loser.
In that situation, an incoming Tory government may legislate for devolution plus as recommended by Calman. This bizarre scenario might cause consternation in the SNP bunker. Until now the SNP has been desperate for the Tories to win at Westminster.
That, and not the vacuous National Conversation, has been Alex Salmond's whole game plan for a referendum, on the basis that a Tory government would so alienate Scots that we would vote for independence to be rid of them again.
But for now, the political scene is weird enough. A cross-party group led by Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy and featuring Tory frontbenchers will meet imminently to consider how to bring the Calman recommendations forward. And Murphy has said that there could be legislation within months.
Enshrining Calman's recommendations in an updated Scotland Act would certainly sharpen up the independence versus devolution fight in the coming general election - long before any possible referendum.
Bring it on, as they say.
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