Lesley Riddoch: The question of max importance

DO Scots want to raise all our own taxes? Are we ready to stop taking a share of the tax collected across the UK and rely instead on what we raise solely from our own economic activity? Do we want to reverse the flow of power and pay the UK for “shared services” from our own cash instead of waiting for the annual Westminster handout? Are we ready to assert all rights over North Sea oil and gas in the Scottish sector and pay London for use of the National Grid and an agreed sum for its initial investment? Is the Scottish tail sufficiently active, willing and well-developed to wag the Westminster dog?

These are not just tough questions for Scottish independence – they also apply to the increasingly discussed “third option” of devo plus, devo max and independence lite. Devo max as a middle-ground option has been proposed as a second question for the referendum ballot paper – and for many it will seem cuddlier, safer and easier than “full-blown” independence. Option B always does. But any change to the status quo that’s worth the candle must tackle the central problem of devolution identified by supporters and critics alike – the lack of control and lack of responsibility inherent in the current passive funding arrangements.

Continuing to bite the hand that feeds may be possible but it isn’t viable or desirable – and in this respect alone, the hammer of the Scots, Kelvin McKenzie, is quite right. Scots can’t continue to have our cake and eat it. The Holyrood election result and the referendum stooshie mean the Scottish Government has left the station and embarked on a journey away from the passive “pocket money” model of funding – it’s a bit late now for the Scottish public to decide it wants to get off. Not without a massive loss of self respect and momentum.

So it’s time to start “unpacking” devo max. And if the two political parties who ought to provide leadership continue to resist that challenge, civic society will have to conduct, fund and arrange the process ourselves.

The idea we can discuss Scotland’s future for two and a half years without seriously considering any constitutional arrangements bar the two “extremes” – independence and the status quo – is ludicrous. The very difficulty of finding a suitable form of words for devo max demonstrates exactly why it must appear as a referendum question. Without the forensic scrutiny that inclusion on the ballot paper brings, devo max will remain a tempting but fuzzy alternative and will prompt an epidemic of proxy voting in the “clarity-providing” single question referendum.

Some folk will vote no to independence in the belief a fallback position will be along soon – there’s no evidence it will. Others will vote yes on the basis devo max has evidently not been embraced by any other political party and thus (whilst being their preferred option) has no chance of enactment in their lifetimes. Such an outcome may deliver statistical “clarity”. The collective will of the Scottish people will remain as clear as mud.

Once parked, the debate about Scotland’s future will disappear from the Westminster political scene as completely as AV after referendum failure. Those political parties who haven’t the energy to define their own policy now won’t be racing to tackle it later.

With some political courage it could so easily be otherwise. The core platform of modern Liberalism is the establishment of a federal Britain, a written constitution, Bill of Rights and abolition of the House of Lords. Those objectives come closer for the rest of the UK with Scottish independence or devo max – why then do we hear no consideration of possible benefits from British Lib Dems? Naturally every political party prefers to prosecute their own strategy – but events, dear boy, events. Any political party worth its salt can adapt to changing circumstance to get its policies adopted. Will the UK have to become completely immobilised by the old-fashioned, top-down, London-centric, community-phobic status quo before Lib Dems spell out their vision of a modern, European, fully devolved British state?

Labour’s failure to grasp the thistle is also shameful. They are the architects of devolution. Elsewhere in Europe, Social Democrats have also been the architects of independence. I say that not to suggest Scottish Labour should blindly copy anyone, but simply to suggest that taking the lead in forming federal, independent or highly devolved political structures should not be regarded as beyond Labour’s ken.

There are of course reasons why it’s hard for any party but the SNP to inhabit the political no-man’s land that lies just beyond the current devolution settlement – and not just because they’ve planted a huge Saltire centre stage.

Britain has been such a heavily centralised, top down society for so long that it’s almost unthinkable to turn the funding stream around.

Local government gets the lion’s share of its cash from Holyrood in just such a “there you go, wee man” way as Holyrood is funded by Westminster. Since the Scottish Parliament was partly devised as a large parish council that’s no surprise.

It’s not the norm. Independent, federal or highly devolved neighbours tend also to have extremely powerful and very local government quite unlike the remote, bureaucratic and politically emasculated councils we have had in Britain. In Sweden, for example, no citizen pays any tax to central government unless they earn more than £35k. Their tax is paid exclusively to the local council (average size 12,500 against 165,000 in Scotland) which then pays “upwards” for any central government services. Higher rate tax payers and corporation tax finance central government.

Grassroots or “bottom up” funding from the local to the national level is normal across Europe. But it’s new for us.

That’s precisely why the “local” level functions so badly in British society and precisely why constitutional change for Scotland could offer radical possibilities beyond the single option of independence for Scotland… and Britain.

The big step change for Scots now is to raise and spend from our own tax-base. Do we want to do that? Do we want do that within the UK? Do we want to do that solo? These are the real options facing us. Can we have a referendum that frames up the lot of them, please?