Andrew McFadyen: We in-betweeners denied our real choice

THERE is big support for more Scottish powers, but this will not be an option in the referendum vote, writes Andrew McFadyen

Scotland’s future has become an international news story. When I came to work for Al Jazeera, in Doha, I knew that it would give me a ringside seat on the Arab Spring.

I did not expect to be answering questions from my colleagues about what is happening in Edinburgh. There is a huge amount of curiosity about the referendum and whether Scots really want independence.

The experience has pushed me to look hard at my own attitude towards change.

The latest Bond film, Skyfall, contains a great one-liner. Bond announces: “We’re going back in time” before climbing into his iconic Aston Martin DB5 and driving to Scotland.

Qatar was a British dependency until 1971. None of those sitting beside me in Doha’s City Centre cinema would be willing to turn back the clock and allow decisions about their country to be made in London.

Scotland may be different because we have three centuries of shared history and close family ties with the rest of the UK. Polls show that most Scots don’t want to tear up those relationships.

Even the SNP now wants to keep the Queen as head of state and the pound in their pocket. But polls do show that most Scots want more decisions taken as close to home as possible.

According to the Social Attitudes survey, three-fifths to two-thirds of Scots would like Holyrood to take on responsibility for taxes and welfare benefits.

A recent Ipsos-MORI poll reported that as many as 68 per cent would vote in favour of “devo-max” should they be given the opportunity.

Instead of a hard “in or out” choice on independence, many of us are looking for something in between. But it isn’t on the ballot paper.

The Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore, could have used his position in the Cabinet to push for a second question on more powers. Instead, he has taken credit for a deal that leaves a large part of the electorate without an option.

It is worth noting just how far he has travelled from the Liberal Democrat’s home rule roots.

In 1970, David Steel, who went on to become the Scottish Parliament’s first presiding officer, wrote in an essay on federalism that: “The logic of our case is that ideally Scotland should be a federal state not in a Great Britain federation but in a European federation, and that still remains our long term objective.”

The SNP will spend the next two years trying to persuade those, like him, who want some version of change that their best way of getting it is to vote “Yes”.

Despite last week’s terrible headlines for Alex Salmond, those who support the Union should not be complacent. It is a reasonable argument that Scotland will lose its leverage with London once the threat of independence is removed.

If Scottish Labour’s Johann Lamont wants a genuine game changer she needs to offer something positive. Labour created the Scottish Parliament, but doesn’t yet have a vision for its future. It could start by looking to its own history.

The party’s early pioneers saw no contradiction between constitutional change and progressive politics. They believed that they could achieve more with a government in Edinburgh than one in London.

Labour’s first MP, Keir Hardie, was also a founding vice-president of the Scottish Home Rule League.

The famous Red Clydesider and wartime Scottish secretary, Tom Johnston, said he intended “to persuade Scots and English alike that we should be allowed to work out our own problems in our own way.”

Donald Dewar consciously echoed this statement when he spoke of “Scottish solutions to Scottish problems”.

Nobody has yet found a better way of articulating the case for self-government.

As a member of Labour’s press team it frustrated me that some Westminster MPs looked disparagingly at their Holyrood colleagues as amateurs who could not be trusted on their own. Johann Lamont needs to face them down.

We’ve been here before. During the Thatcher years, many of Labour’s most senior MPs hated the idea of a cross-party Scottish constitutional convention. One told me that the Liberal Democrats were “balloons” and he didn’t want to sit down with them. Neil Kinnock created headline news at the March 1988 Scottish Labour Conference when he told BBC Scotland that a constitutional convention would not get much support at all from the party.

When the Scottish parliamentary Labour group discussed the idea at Westminster a few months later, John Reid MP, said, “A Labour government is more important than any amount of conventions or an assembly”.

Dewar put his own credibility on the line to drive the policy through. He told them Labour should respond positively to the proposal for a cross-party convention, “though with a cool and steady gaze”.

He announced his decision in an important but now largely forgotten speech at Stirling University, three weeks before the SNP’s famous victory in the Glasgow Govan by-election.

Working with a broad coalition including the churches, local authorities and trade unions gave devolution the appearance of being a national project and enabled Labour to position itself as the best representative of Scotland’s national interest.

The lesson for Johann Lamont is that Labour is at its best when it leads debates, rather than follows them.

The Devolution Commission, which she has set up, could help her to take the initiative. If its report contained specific pledges to devolve most taxes and benefits, including control over oil revenues, Labour could use the referendum to seek its own mandate for a reformed UK.

Ed Miliband could underline this by promising a manifesto commitment to bring in a new Scotland Act in the first year of a Labour government without any further test of public opinion.

It would change the whole dynamic of the “No” campaign, effectively turning it into a positive vote for more powers.

Now, that would get people talking.

• Dr Andrew McFadyen is a former Scottish Labour adviser. You can follow him on Twitter @apmcfadyen