Gordon Brown: union man
|
Version 0 of 1. It is a measure of the downbeat tone of Scotland's Better Together campaign that the language of the "social union" has come to be associated with Alex Salmond almost as much as anyone else. The first minister talks about walking away from political union, while leaving the societal ties of the UK – along with its crown and its pound – entirely undisturbed. If a social union means continuing to swap Christmas cards with old friends in Berwick, that's fine; but those who believe that there should be more bite to the cross-border common weal must challenge the idea that politics and society can be so neatly separated. On Tuesday, Gordon Brown struck out of a quiet retirement to do just that, emphasising the question of pensions. Long before he spoke, the Scottish Nationalists moved to savage the man, as opposed to his argument. Here, deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon said, was the chancellor who had launched a £100bn raid on pension funds. What could he possibly have to tell his compatriots about funding their retirement? And here, the wider attack implied, was the prime minister who had presided over the crisis – who was he to lecture the rest of us on public finances? Not even Mr Brown's enemies can contend that he lacks a track record of concern with economics in general, and the economy of Scotland in particular – a record stretching back to The Red Paper on Scotland in 1975. Nor would anyone without a claymore to grind belittle a decade in the Treasury as a qualification for being at least listened to on fiscal policy; while it is true that these were years that saw the withering of company pensions, they were years that witnessed unprecedented progress on pensioner poverty. Before closing its ears to Mr Brown, Scotland needs to consider the record in the round. In purely political terms, this blunderbuss assault might have played well in England, where Mr Brown is still unpopular. It ought not to be assumed that it will work in Scotland, however, where the Brown record at the ballot box is not at all bad. In 2010, which is the last time that Scots voted for the parliament whose future they are now debating, rather more of them voted for Mr Brown's Labour party than had backed that of Tony Blair in 2005. There was a strong swing towards Mr Brown in his own seat, and across Scotland more than twice as many backed his party as backed Mr Salmond's. Even by the SNP's audacious standards, therefore, to ask the "who are you to speak for Scotland" question of Mr Brown suggests particular chutzpah. After Westminster's blundering threats over the currency, however, the polls really do appear to have narrowed, and the yes campaign is in a particularly swaggering mood. Maybe, just maybe, pensions could help shift the momentum. The oldest Scottish voters have paid into the UK-wide national insurance fund since the Beveridge settlement, and it is the British state that they have always expected would honour their pension promises. On top of that emotional tug, there is a real intellectual case. It might make sense to devolve payments such as housing benefit, where demand might respond to other Edinburgh-specific initiatives, but the pensions bill reflects demographics, which are as challenging for Scotland as they are uncontrollable, just as the bill for unemployment reflects the great swing of the economic cycle. Even big states cannot control that, but as a recent book, Scotland's Choices, underlines, in a world where slumps hammer some places more than others, it is better to pool risks across as wide an area as is practicable. The early gush of North Sea oil might, perhaps, have provided the means for Scotland to lubricate its way through such difficulties. But however much oil there is now, no nationalist can pretend that there is not a lot less than there used to be. Scots do indeed need to confront the question of what sort of old age they would be able to afford, and a prime minister stepping out of retirement could be just the man to help them face it. |