Grangemouth could help shape the Scottish referendum

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/grangemouth-scottish-referendum-snp-economy

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Only one UK voter in 11 lives in Scotland. So if you are one of the large majority of British people who do not have a vote next year on whether Scotland should be an independent country, you may be tempted to think that the Scottish referendum does not, in the end, affect you. Such detachment may be particularly tempting for a media class who think nothing important ever happens outside London. On either count, it is very wrong.

There are two principal reasons why the Scottish referendum matters for everyone in the present UK. The first can be dubbed the constitutional argument. If the Scots vote yes to independence on 18 September 2014, everyone else is affected willy-nilly, not just the Scots themselves. The rest of the UK will have to adjust and change. New rules of all kinds will be needed on both sides of the border. The international position of the rest of the UK (rUK) will change too.

So far so obvious. Rather less attention has been given, though, to the way the constitutional argument may evolve after a no vote. Rejection of independence will not kill the constitutional debate stone dead. It will merely change the context in which it resumes. Depending on whether the majority is large or small, it may not even kill off the independence issue for long. Either way, a whole range of issues about devolution, local government and the workings of UK institutions will have to be addressed after 2014. These arguments won't be ended by the no vote that too many complacently expect. Better to address them now, as Adam Price argued in the Guardian on Tuesday.

But there is a second principal reason why the whole of Britain should take the Scottish referendum more seriously. This one can be dubbed the societal argument about independence. It is about the kind of economy and society that the Scots want an independent Scotland to embody and nurture.

Listen to the debate now taking place in Scotland, and it is clear that this societal argument for independence is at least as important as the constitutional one. Yet this should not be a private conversation for Scots alone. With very little alteration Scotland's societal argument is one which applies in the rUK too – England in particular – and across much of the European Union.

Certainly, no one who listened to the debates at last weekend's Scottish National party conference in Perth could have been in much doubt that the SNP is now putting a societal critique of the UK's embrace of inadequately regulated market capitalism at the heart of its independence argument. Naturally, the constitutional argument remains crucial – independence as an expression of nationhood. But the SNP is increasingly making a louder argument based on societal objectives.

That's one reason why the Grangemouth petrochemical plant closure yesterday matters so much. The SNP has cast itself as the defender of the Scottish economy and Scottish society from the icy winds of global markets. But what could be icier than the abrupt shutdown and now the closure on the Forth. Grangemouth is therefore a crucial test of the Scottish government's credibility in promoting a different set of societal values. There is a lot of political capital at stake here. It could help shape the referendum campaign.

After six years in power at Holyrood there were already many totemic policies in the SNP's societal locker. These include the free prescriptions, free personal care for the elderly, no tuition fees and a freeze of the council tax which have been the mainstay of the SNP's popularity with the voters. Put it all together and it sometimes looks as though the SNP is making a last-ditch stand in defence of the postwar UK welfare state which the rUK is deemed by many to have abandoned.

Yes, the SNP is lucky that devolution gives the Scottish government the chance to make popular spending decisions without having to make many unpopular revenue-raising decisions to pay for them. But there is a larger and explicit appeal here too. Alex Salmond summed this up at Perth as the SNP's choice of "a path that reflects Scotland's social democratic consensus, our shared progressive values – our priorities as a society".

Whether this distinctly Scottish social democratic consensus really exists is debatable. The polling guru John Curtice is very sceptical, pointing out that Scottish and English attitudes are more similar than they are markedly divergent. But it is difficult to challenge the fact that a lot of Scots believe their political culture is very different. The SNP's embrace last week of the Common Weal approach to Scotland's future drafted by the Jimmy Reid Foundation on the basis of Nordic socialist models reflects that. And with the SNP also beginning to make overtures towards Labour as fellow progressives, there is undoubtedly something afoot in Scottish politics.

Scotland's progressive societal moment may all end in tears at the polls next September. But the Common Weal proposal has an ambition and a set of rooted priorities which should nevertheless be taken seriously. There is nothing that is very distinctively Scottish about it, however. Its interest in economic balance, social solidarity, mutualist models, co-determination of companies, sustainable growth, a marginally higher tax-to-GDP ratio and limits to inequality is based on continental roots.

Such an agenda needs serious work not just in Scotland but in England, Wales and elsewhere in Europe. The issues it raises go to the heart of the future of the centre-left generally. The only reason it can be presented as distinctly Scottish is because the referendum has provided an opportunity to tie the SNP's desire for independence and the Scottish left's wish to defend the postwar settlement more closely.

At a time when centre-left parties are struggling all across Europe, with the German social democrats reduced to a mere 26% of the vote and Norway's social democratic government pushed into opposition less than two months ago (in spite of a massive oil-based sovereign wealth fund that has Scottish nationalists drooling with envy), Scotland's progressive societal argument based on Nordic and continental models may seem too fanciful for comfort.

But this search for alternatives is not a debate taking place on another planet. It's about here and now and the Europe we all inhabit – and it matters just as much in England and Wales as it does in Scotland.

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