Monday 24 March 2014

2 types of YES; 3 types of NO

Some thoughts on types of YESes and types of NOs.

The YESes:-

Nationalists: people who believe in the rights of nations, believe Scotland is one (lots of varieties of perspectives on how and why), and believe in national self-determination for places which are nations and that.

Nationalists often talk about civic nationalism, meaning no ethnic essentialist basis to this perspective.  There are variations on the theme.  Ultras believe in independence as the main thing, be all and end all - starting point of politics; some of the Nationalists would argue if a NO vote was a better deal that was Scotland's self-interest and we should vote NO.  But it depends.  The point is people who are of this sort are all voting YES, because a NO vote is not in the Scottish national interest, and that's about 25% or so of Scotland (although typically not a ruling class perspective, and more common in poorer Scotland - for a variety of historical reasons that are not worth going into a length here; as one nationalist put it in Scots: "Scotland for the minkers!").  Because Scotland does not have state power there are few if any ruling class voices for the Scottish national interest.  Those that exist tend in the main to be exporting industrialists whose interests are at variance with London's spivland (£65billion of UK tax receipts come from the City of London: it is practically impossible for a Westminster Government to democratically win a mandate for a war economy which would allow for a restructuring of British capital which would be in those exporting and manufacturing industrialists interests).

The left: from middle of the road Herald reading social democrats to hard left Trotskyists, people who aren't social conservatives and are left of centre are increasingly voting YES because it's clear that the UK cannot provide a better social deal, or even stand still with some national consensus armistice line in the battle between classes.  For many Scots the Britain they believed in started in 1945, and begun to be dismantled following the pauchlin of the 79 referendum and the defeat of the unions.  Osborne is simply finishing the job, as would Balls (who pledges to stick to Osborne's plans).

Unionist attempts to create a left NO position appear to only have any resonance with the mere 5000 people who make up the ailing Scottish Labour Party.  Even the likes of Ian Davidson, the 'Chair Tube' of social media opprobrium for his Westminster crusade against independence admit that the referendum is happening because the last Labour government was a crap red Tory government and that the right wing crapness is an unbroken pattern since 1979.  They don't even believe their ain haivers on the left NO standpoint Lamont is pretending they have adopted.


The NOs.

Identity: "A'm British."  Flags, nations, borders, glory, empire, the protestant ascendancy.  Take your pick.  100 varieties of flag worship as the paramount perspective under a Butchers apron.  This perspective of fealty is similar to the phenomenon of working class Republicans in the USA, or UKIP voters in England.  It's not necessarily implicit that said persons are right of centre, but reason is not the cause of affiliation here.  The census showed quite spectacularly how irrelevant this viewpoint is.  In no part of Scotland does it clock in at more than 15% of the locals.

Big Britainism: the kind of view that identity, where you come from, is important, tells you something about yourself, but while Scotland is a nice place to live, with a colourful history, Britain is best.  Again this is a fringe view, but from the various appeals from the right wing of the commentariat for the NO campaign to talk about Britain more we can fairly assume that it's a popular view in Morningside.  It's certainly been speculated as a reason for some of the upper middle class' attachment to the Union (of job prospects, cheap Edinburgh to London flights, and interesting career ladders).  But that's your NO voting Scottish and British right there.  Your "I'm a proud Scot," sort of sophist.

Cannae-dae-its: the 90 minute nationalist is why Scottish civic nationalism is hegemonic in Scotland, but support for a YES is not.  So many people you canvass will tell you how poor Scotland is (Scotland which has 60% of Europe's oil and gas, a potential of 200 gigawatts of renewables generation, an agrisurplus of between 1/5 and 1/4 per annum despite turning over 1/3 of the country into desert, a Scotland that has the world's 3rd largest fishery and comparable coastline to world powers like China).  Cannae-dae-its see the ocean of poverty around them, and if they work they fear tax rises, and if they don't they fear middle class reaction against their perceived subsidies ending the high life of the JSA gravy train.  Language is a factor. As is mass unemployment in Glasgow and West Central Scotland.  Inferiorisation sets in with the bairn's first contact with the state, and continues for many as a lifelong passion (I have been told by a Labour activist and bedroom tax victim that the very tedious bairn's reading group book written in Scots, "Jordan's New Jaiket" is a bid to warp the minds of the young and make nationalists of them with the use of subversive "slang" - that dastardly Salmond and his banal reversal of the policy of actively crushing Scotland's native languages!).  Britain's hectoring hegemony is Unionist gloom and Westminster threats 24/7 on every channel and in every publication in Scotland.  But this is the chunk that could win a NO vote.  The actual Britishers in Scotland number less than 30% even in assimilado Embra.  The cannae-dae-its are usually want-tae-dae-its but hinna-been-convinced-we-cans.

Labour's tax chimera: totemic pish and scunner-extremism

The Labour Party and the 50p tax chimera.

Redistribution means squeeze the rich until the pips squeak right?  So per se bringing back the 50p tax rate (which affects those earning over £150,000: less than a fraction of 1% of Scotland's workforce) to spend on bringing the poor up seems like a left wing policy, eh no?  Only when the Labour Party shouts it from the rooftops, it isnae.
Johann Lamont, showing off her stage props after having a pop
at FM Salmond and his wife's lack of bairns: the loving mother.

Labour mean to bring back Brown's hated 10p tax.  Ed Balls has said he will.  In order to not show up the Lamont fudge at the weekend Labour had to hastily rework Devo-Nano to allow a future Scottish Government to bring in the tax rate (which because Labour is devolving 15p of income tax would actually *RAID* the Scottish budget to plug the 5p gap) affecting the lowest earners.  That's just under about 1/3 of Scots to be badly affected (the mode average wage is 14k; many many more earn much less).  So easily up to a poorest third or so, in Scotland's low wage, "retail regeneration" central belt 'economy.'  If someone can tell me the projected tax take from that measure I'd be much obliged, but it's likely to be a lot lot more clawed from the meagre earnings of the very poor than the £10million won back from the rich.

The Tories abolished Brown's 10p tax, and brought the threshold for paying tax to 10 grand, after the liberals lobbied for it.  Labour want to bring the 10p rate back; it remains to be seen just what the threshold will be.  Miliband has only haivered equivocally about it.  Under Brown people were liable for a 10% rate of income tax on earnings after a stupidly low income (just over £5000).  If you earned as little as £8000 a year you would be liable to pay tax on much of that.  Imagine what that means.  Being poor is really really expensive.  By contrast George Osborne's move to lift a whole section of the very poor out of tax altogether (admittedly a liberal policy, but the Tories aren't bidding to be the 'party of the workers' without at least a figleaf) paints him in crimson red against a hammer and siccle background in comparison to Balls' vicious plans (which Devo-Nano was hastily rewritten to accomodate).

If somebody can point out how Labour's 10p tax plans are part of some bold left wingness I'd very much like to hear about it.  What I see is a totemic policy (the 50p rate) which will affect next to naffall people, generate just £10million in Scotland, as a figleaf for the policy of bringing in the 10p tax which will plunge hundreds of thousands of working poor Scots, ironically made richer under a Tory Chancellor (some former Labour Government, eh?), into deeper poverty out of some 'national unity' BritNat 'One Nationism' where all must make sacrifices (but especially those least able).

As for the super rich - the Tony Blairs and Gordon Browns of this world and their mates in the City of London: people earning megabucks - they can choose whether to pay tax or not.  We're forever told Gordon Brown gives all his tidy earnings to charity.  Indeed he does: his own.  This exempts him from tax, but as Tory blogger Guido Fox uncovered, Brown's 'expenses' for running his office and jetting about the world lecturing and hectoring, are of the order of £10,000 a day.  How it works for the super-rich is like this: corporation Brown or corporation Blair takes a fee as a contractor.  The company or charitable trust or shell company is paid for their 'services', then the money passes thru various opaque charities or shell companies in dribs and drabs, sometimes in kind, or in capital, and said millionaire gets an expense account from one of their many firms, indemnified from tax by their army of accountants and PR men, with almost no limit on how much they can spend without paying a single penny to HMRC.  This is entirely legal in the UK at the moment.  For instance in one year Tony Blair plc (or whatever egotistical name he calls it) earned £7million, and paid £0 and 0p to HMRC.  A working mum in Shettleston, Craigmillar or the Hilltoun cannot afford an army of accountants to turn her into a corporation, so the pittance she earns will be liable to be taxed but that's OK because the super rich (who only ever pay tax on their earnings for PR purposes anyway) are now going to be hit with a 50p tax rate which most will never pay, because they don't have to.

This isn't redistribution.  It's a dastardly scheme to present scunner-extremism of a right wing variety, which even George Osborne disdains, as progressive.  Yet again the Labour party wants to make the pips squeak, in housing schemes and pokey tenement flats across Scotland.