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Scotland votes NO… and now for the rest of us Scotland votes NO fairly decisively. Oh well, I was looking forward to adding a new separate blog category for Scotland, but somehow I will weather the disappointment. And so former Maoist Alex Salmond warms Cameron to make good on the pledge for more devolution.
I agree.
Indeed I think Scotland needs to be given full control over the share of the national budget, institutions and taxation powers within Scotland equal to their population, minus defence. And then they need to get not-a-penny from any other part of the UK. And the West Lothian Question must be answered properly this time: Scottish MPs (et al) need to have as much say in the affairs of England, other than in matters of collective defence, as MPs elected in Indonesia or Peru.
And whilst we are at it, we need London to devolve a great deal more political power to the rest of the UK so that they can screw up their own affairs themselves. But what we do not need is a new second tier of troughers looking to justify their existence in an English assembly.
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Interesting – an Imperial Federation (local devolution – but defence remaining unified).
Pitt the Elder suggested this (in relation to the American Colonies) and Joe Chamberlain suggested it in relation to the Empire generally.
The followers of Gladstone suggested it (Federation) within the United Kingdom itself (although Unionists responded that it would mean persecution for Unionists in Ireland).
I am not saying they were all right – but the idea is interesting.
Of course (as Perry knows) now we must have a vote on the European Union – coming out of it.
England should secede from the Union, i.e keep it simple “Fook off Celts”
Quite how can the Government stop an elected MP from voting on particular division?
Even if we sort out the West Lothian question, the problem of the PM and Cabinet remains. Scottish MPs may be prevented from voting on “England only” issues, but if 40-odd Scottish Labour MPs contribute to the majority that forms the Government, the legislative agenda is still going to be stacked.
By making better use of the Grand Committee system.
They can stick with the Houses of Parliament, specifically the House of Commons.
The English MP’s can meet there once a week to do whatever business is needed for England – it shouldn’t take more than that, since all the important stuff’s been outsourced to Brussels anyway. There’s your English Parliament, right there; addition costs, none.
The whole lot of them can meet in the same place once a month to deal with Federal UK business, again it’s almost all been surrendered to the EU so one day a month should be plenty.
Sorted.
Next?
Centrist and Left now assured to run UK for a long time.
JG3,
Run it into the ground.
We should devolve a lot of national admin and things like royalty, the BBC, museums and art galleries etc out of London. London hogs much more than its fair share of taxpayer funded national work and institutions.
On the BBC alone, London pays a small fraction of the licence fee revenue but gets a large majority of the work. While nobody would question the BBC’s news HQ being in the capital does Eastenders and other rubbish really need to be made in the most expensive part of the country?
And why not move Parliament to Birmingham or Leeds?
Surely Londoners would cope with the loss of all this national level work and simply switch to wealth creating which is allegedly their forte.
One thing which has puzzled me – the SNP heartlands were among those regions with the largest ‘No’ vote. They elect MPs and MSPs from a party whose raison d’être is Independence, then vote against it.
The idea of de facto independence with respect to local affairs and union with respect to national defense and similar matters is the basic concept upon which the United States was founded (we called it “federalism”). We’ve screwed it up pretty badly; I hope you lot have better luck than we did.
The idea of national governments being concerned solely with national defense, appeals to me. I would add another, though: the fight against organized crime. Petty crime can be left to local police forces, or to private adjudication and law enforcement, anarcho-capitalist style; but i doubt that the same can be done with organized crime. (Especially since private law enforcement can turn into organized crime.)
A system such as this would be taking the Swiss model almost to its extreme consequences.
In the specific case of England, i suggest that both Scottish AND English (and Welsh, and North.Irish) MPs should vote only on matters concerning national defense and organized crime. (Meeting once a week should be enough.)
That would make a separate English parliament a necessity, unless several regional parliaments are set up.
I say let the Scottish, Welsh, Ulster, and all English parliaments vote separately on EU legislation: that should give more headaches to Brussels, and what’s wrong with that?
Ideally, all regional PMs would sit at European Council meetings, but i doubt that they’d be allowed to do so.
@Anonymoous Coward:
Maybe. Most likely, in the short term. But if we really do go down this road properly (rather than just a few minimal adjustments Cameron can throw to appease his own party), it may be more than that in the longer run. Consider how the P.M. gets elected: the P.M. isn’t precisely the MP leading the largest party; in the final analysis, he’s the MP who can form a government that can survive a Confidence Motion (being the MP leading the largest party just gets you first dibs on trying to form a government).
In the future, we potentially have two different kinds of Confidence Motion: one in Her Majesty’s Government, and one in Her Majesty’s Government’s English policy. You say “But the second kind of vote would never be allowed, or if allowed would not be followed”?
I’m not so sure. A formal Confidence Motion is just a cosmetic proxy for the real power, and the iron law of English political history is that the power that really matters is the power to tax. Defeat for the UK government on the English budget would, I suggest, amount to a vote of no confidence. A government that loses a Confidence Motion doesn’t have to resign because that’s right and proper, it has to resign because it has lost the power to carry its measures. Similarly, a future government that lost the power to raise revenues would, according to the same iron law that so pained Charles I, have no choice but to go.
From there, it’s but a short step to a new constitutional convention that you can only be PM if you can command Confidence of the English MPs.
I think Mary Contrary has it right. We could be headed for interesting times.
Decentralization of power to the local level seems the most sensible first step to me (and it must happen within Scotland, too). Richard North’s plan of a federation of sovereign counties has never looked more relevant. But ultimately it shows the inherent sense of libertarianism: the lowest level you can devolve power to is the individual.
Rob: Look at the turnout. Averaging over 80%, and even 90% in some places. The Yes campaign are taking credit for this, but it was in the areas where it was lowest hat they won. My impression is that in the areas where they’re traditionally strong, they’ve had a very motivated group of supporters for a long time, regularly turning out to vote while the silent unionist majority just let them get on with it (nationalists tend to be very good constituency MPs). But this mattered, and in those places with long experience of nationalists the unionist majority turned out in force to stop them.
In other words, as I’ve said all along, I don’t think many people were persuaded one way or the other. It was a battle of the get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Snorri, while I certainly agree with the thrust of your comment, I have to ask about organized crime: does it have any reason to exist absent “organized prohibitions”, such as those on drugs, prostitution and other such?
(I hope that this is not too OT too early in the thread…)
That is undeniable now I think. I did not expect the NO vote to win so convincingly and clearly the YES’ers are gobsmacked.
>One thing which has puzzled me – the SNP heartlands were among those regions with the largest ‘No’ vote. They elect MPs and MSPs from a party whose raison d’être is Independence, then vote against it.
Possibly explained by the fact that the turnout in the Scottish elections was the usual low amount (Richard North mentioned today that it was 50%), whereas the turnout in this referendum was unusually high.
SC,
Possibly explained by the fact that the turnout in the Scottish elections was the usual low amount (Richard North mentioned today that it was 50%), whereas the turnout in this referendum was unusually high.
I’d guess that’s it.
I’d just like to focus one section of people disengaged from politics other than the poor and unemployed that the Yes campaign attempted to target.
In the 2010 UK general election the vote in Scotland for the Tories, the Lib Dems and the SNP was in all four cases in the range 400k – 500k. So the Scottish Tories can get a comparable vote to the SNP in a first past the post election in a place where it is almost a certainty that their vote will be wasted.
That suggests there are a lot more soft or hidden Conservatives out there, who show up in a situation like a referendum where their votes won’t be wasted. Then the Yes campaign ensured that pretty much any Scot who thought of themselves as Conservative would be 100% sure to vote No by continually conflating Independence with “keeping the Tories out of Scotland”.
Correction: “in all four cases” should read “in all three cases”.
Sir Humphrey: “Yes Prime Minister”
Prime Minister: “Right Sir Humphrey, we’re going ahead with this DevoMax thing for England as well as everywhere else. You know, devolved powers to Northumbria and Mercia and Wessex and the rest.”
SH: “Great news Prime Minister. Of course we’ll need a Minister for the Regions.”
PM: “I thought we already had a Minister for the Regions?”
SH: “Oh we do Prime Minister, and he’ll have to be promoted to full cabinet rank and his department expanded. No, Sir, I meant a Minister for each region. And a full department of course. You could always give East Anglia to Gove. Sort him out.”
PM: “But Humphrey! The point is to move the bulk of the decision making to the individual regions, not to add yet another layer of pointless government bureaucracy!”
SH: “Oh quite Prime Minister. But they will need looking after. I mean suppose Essex decide not to have an inclusivity department, or Sussex fail to meet their multi-culutral targets or Kent don’t have the requisite number of outreach co-ordinators. Think what our friends at the BBC and Guardian will make of that. Nevermind the twitterstorm. No, they’ll have to be properly supervised and a ministerial department is the only way to go.”
PM: Sigh
Is it too late for England to vote to kick Scotland out of the Union?
Alisa, organised crime has more to it than just taking advantages of whatever substance has been declared off limits. The rise of the MAFIA was not really conditional on shipping drugs or alcohol, though supplying these commodities certainly helped its expansion. Instead at the heart of criminality is the instinctive desire of some to gain economic advantage and power without toiling for it. While doubtless you sense this, I have to agree, reluctantly, very reluctantly, that perhaps we are making it worse using the current approach.
“That suggests there are a lot more soft or hidden Conservatives out there, who show up in a situation like a referendum where their votes won’t be wasted.”
I’m absolutely sure of that. The Scottish Left has come to believe its own propaganda of a “Tory-free-zone”. Yet in May, the combined Tory-UKIP vote here was 27.5%. Not great by UK standards, but hardly complete obliteration. Especially when you consider that the high-water mark of the hard-left parties behind the Radical Independence Campaign was a combined 7.5% at Holyrood in 2003. Boundary reorganization should give the Tories three more MPs next May without even trying (it has crossed my mind that this might have been a consideration in the timing of the referendum). And don’t discount tactical voting by “natural” conservatives in elections that was meaningless in a contest like this.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the Yes campaign believed too much of its own hype. And I’m very pleased that my fellow Scots seem to have seen through YesScotland’s Alinsky-esque tactics (something I witnessed first-hand) and vapid Obama-style feel-good-ism.
Hope you are right Sam, this is the kind of thing I love to be wrong about and would happily repent my YES support if it works out like that
Basically i agree with Barry, but let me expand.
Alisa asked if organized crime has “any reason to exist absent “organized prohibitions”, such as those on drugs, prostitution and other such.”
But other “organized prohibitions” include murder, theft, and sexual slavery. (Back to Rotherham!) There is a market for these trades, but they would remain illegal even in a (functional) private-law society, and rightly so.
I would expect this tension between illegality and demand to have the same effects that it has in the markets for drugs + consensual prostitution, ie lead to the substitution of small time operators by organized crime.
The problem with a federal system for the UK is that there are no traditional divisions of England. The U.S. began with 13 autonomous districts, none larger than 19% of the population. We soon added three more, and kept going from there.
The borders of these districts are not always convenient or even rational. Some states are very large; other states are very small. There is considerable overhead in having 50 different sets of criminal laws, civil codes, and administrative bodies.
But overall keeping a layer of government functions at the regional level has worked for the U.S.
It’s worked in Germany, because there are traditional divisions of the country there. (Though the set of Lands inherited from the German Confederation was very messy, and had to be redone after WW II.) Italy has some of the same advantages. So does Switzerland. France, OTOH, is and was a unitary state.
Canada and Australia, like the U.S., were assembled from pre-existing bodies, and the territory could be carved up with without regard to previous borders (there were none).
England was a unitary state; there’s no good way to carve it up. And any “federal” system in which one member outweighs all the others combined will be fatally unbalanced.
Pete, Eastenders is filmed in Hertfordshire and much of the “other rubbish” is filmed elsewhere also (quite often in Bristol)
Not being that familiar with Scottish politics, does anyone have an opinion on how much of the “left-winginess” up there is due to being tied to the independence issue? Or is it just a case of a weak economy making people look for handouts?
Kevin B: thanks for a “Yes, Minister” reference. It’s where I learned the meaning of “Quango” and “Quangocrats”. One of the few benefits of American PBS is the occasional Brit-Com.
Richard Thomas, Eastenders is made within the M25.
Why?
It could be probably be made in India for much less money and with the same actors. If India is a bit far to go there’s no reason it couldn’t be made on Merseyside or Humberside.
Our capital city of London is a vital and important part of the UK’s national life and economy but the state ensures that a lot of work is done there which needn’t be.
The benefits of the ultimate (Swiss-style) devolution: http://www.devilsdictionaries.com/blog/the-benefits-of-the-ultimate-devolution
Rich – what about the counties? Some (most?) have quite a strong sense of identity. The fact that they are of different sizes (e.g. Rutland vs Yorkshire) is only a problem to those looking for a neat bureaucratic solution. The MPs in those counties could double up as leaders within the counties. Individual counties could choose to co-operate on different isses (e.g. transport etc).
I’d be quite pleased to see these smaller units need to be fiscally responsible.
Well in 1945 some Scottish Communists wanted Free Poles deported to Soviet-occupied Poland on the basis that they were reactionaries. This might have co-incided with Protestant hostility to Poles as Catholics, not really a 20th Century view in England.
Everybody hates the nation state. What happens when you force cultures which are totally incompatible to co-exist? They become resentful.
Its very clear to everyone in the UK, that Westminster serves Londonistan, which is now a largely foreign-owned Saudi caliphate. The North of England is famous for making things, London is famous for shuffling money around and being the heartland of the UK’s pretentious ponces and it’s “art scene”, ironic given the English, like the Germans, have no visual or aesthetic sense, often reveling in dullness. I suspect a fair few people in the North of England look at the Rotherham scandal and see results of London multi-culti nonsense, for it was London which dealt it, and the rest of the country is having to smell it,, when it never asked for it.
London is not a vital part of the national life of the UK, it is largely disconnected separate and culturally alien to the rest of England. It lives in its own bubble, is largely foreign, and thus has no real value to the English identity.
Striking during the Scottish referendum it certainly was, that most of the journalists from the BBC, Sky, the assorted national newspapers of all hues, had clearly no knowledge of anything in the UK outside London. ITV, once the composite of strong regional identities, with Manchester-based Granada the undisputed king, has become Londonized; thus bland and without any cultural identity.
Ah Pardone, you are like a gouty old colonel sometimes.
Snorri and Barry, the organized part in ‘organized crime’ mostly means large-scale, mainly in the geographical sense. Of course there will always be murder, theft and illegal imprisonment (with the latter being the real issue in Rotherham and in similar cases). But these, in and of themselves, are local as far as actual enforcement is concerned. Conversely, when we say ‘organized crime’, we usually mean illegal transfers of substances, people or funds over large distances, usually crossing state borders. Nearly, if not all of these* seem to be the result of laws resulting in victimless crimes, said laws being enforced globally.
*That said, there may be one exception to the above that I can see, namely what I’d call ‘purely financial crimes’ – such as Nigerian e-mail scams, credit-card identity theft, and similar.
Back OT though.
Pete, that’s a fair point in general. Cities have their place but New York and London are definitely largely the result of government distorting the playing field (and more specifically, financial industries being close to the people (the government) who ensure that a good chunk of the economy is siphoned into their coffers)
Actually that is really not true. Indeed if it was, the US financial centre would be in Washington DC, which it ain’t, New York and Chicago are the financial service centres. As in London, financial services such as insurance etc tend to cluster to each other, rather than to government per se.
Alisa: maybe it’s partly a matter of definition.
My view of organized crime is based largely on what the main character says in Goodfellas: “the organization” offers protection for people who can’t go to the cops; they’re the police department for criminals.
Of course you’re quite right that prohibition of drugs+prostitution creates more of a market for “the organization”. Note however that both in Goodfellas and in The Godfather, drugs+prostitution were not part of the business at the beginning (as far as i remember).
Incidentally, what made me realize the danger of organized crime was speculating about what would happen to Italy if law enforcement were to be decentralized.
Alisa, I understand what organised crime has become, I ought to, so I feel your corrective is unnecessary, if corrective it was. The point is that all of these organisations have roots in the same base motivations, the desire to gain wealth and with it power without indulging in productive toil, the methods, activities and scope is immaterial. As you are well capable of comprehending there is no point in trying to come to terms with any human activity without defining first what drives it. Agreed?
Barry, please keep in mind that my original comment to which you replied was made in the context of this comment by Snorri:
Oh boy…Once again, properly formatted:
Barry, please keep in mind that my original comment to which you replied was made in the context of this comment by Snorri:
You then wrote:
Of course I understand the reasons at the heart of criminality. My original comment was specific to organized crime as could be understood from the point Snorri was making.
Snorri, I can’t comment on Italy (and would be interested to hear more), but with regard to the US history of organized crime (even the fictional Scorsese versions of it), my understanding is that it was always about victimless crimes – be it booze, drugs, gambling, or prostitution. You can also add to that a bit of weapons and diamonds smuggling, plus human trafficking (not all of which is related to prostitution, IIUC). Am I incorrect?
Alisa, US organized crime also included loan sharking (obviously this should also be characterized as a “victimless crime”) and “protection” rackets (which is not, although it is trespassing on the government’s turf!). But basically I agree with you: all crime, even the “organized” variety, is primarily a local matter; it only becomes a larger issue when the government intervenes (with alcohol and drug prohibitions, etc.). In the libertopia where the national government deals solely with national defense I see no need to give its inevitable “mission creep” a head start by including something as nebulous as “organized crime”.
Laird, thanks for reminding me of loan sharking and protection rackets. Yes, these were organized in the sense that they were run by national crime syndicates – who often took over smaller local operations by making various offers the small-time local guys could not possibly refuse. But this brings us back to the original point that those nation-wide crime organizations would not have likely come into being to begin with, without various nation-wide prohibitions enforced by the Federal Government. Or would they?
I think you’re right. There was a mafia before prohibition, but it wasn’t a nation-wide enterprise requiring federal involvement. Prohibition changed everything. And today’s drug prohibition has made it immeasurably worse.
OK, most if not all crime is local, but the issue is: can local government deal with it? and my point is: not in Palermo, not in Rotherham, and not in Chicago.
Even in Amsterdam, it is not Dutch prohibition that drives the drugs rackets: it is prohibition in other countries; and legalizing prostitution did not prevent sexual slavery, though i am skeptical of claims that it actually increased it.
… and since a libertopia in which national government deals only with national defense is only a remote possibility, there is little danger of mission creep.
Alisa, organized crime has always gone far beyond the illegitimate businesses. In the US they are notorious for they’re divvying up the waste management business between various crime families, to the exclusion of anyone else. In Russia it is the supply of fruit and vegetables into Moscow markets. In Thailand (at least in Phuket) it is the running of taxis, until the army showed up in their recent coup and kicked them into prison or out of business. Gangs of amoral thugs will always be seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of others, and although they are most famous for filling the supply holes the government has made by prohibition, they have no compunction about applying the same violent coercion to legitimate areas as well. I learned this well in Russia: the local crime syndicates run mainly legal businesses (the FSB shut down the illegal ones) but refuse to let any competition or new entrants threaten their monopolies.
And yes, these networks are never simply local: like any business, the activities reach far beyond the actual face-to-face transactions and into supply lines, cash transfers, recruitment, mutual cooperation, money laundering, etc. A purely local law enforcement would be overwhelmed.
Tim, I wager that all these legitimate markets you mention in which criminals are running things in the various countries you mention, are significantly regulated by their respective governments (either central or local, doesn’t really matter I think). Which pretty much amounts to a form of prohibition. Am I wrong?
Snorri, that should also address your point about Palermo, Rotherham, etc.: these are far from being examples of minarchist communities – which is to say that as in Tim’s examples, all these forms of organized crime can be traced to government involvement in people’s lives in a very non-minarchist manner. That is my guess – I could be wrong about Palermo, for example, but I’m pretty sure that this is the case with regard to Rotherham.
What I’m driving at is that there will always be people who will murder, steal and rape. But where prostitution and drugs are legal, where the government does not decide which diamonds are blood-tainted and which are kosher, where one does not need a license to turn one’s car into a taxi, where there are no produce suppliers and retailers favored by the government to the exclusion of others (which I’m willing to bet is the case in Moscow markets), etc, etc. – there is simply no incentive for criminals to get involved in these businesses in any criminal way.
Tim, I wager that all these legitimate markets you mention in which criminals are running things in the various countries you mention, are significantly regulated by their respective governments (either central or local, doesn’t really matter I think). Which pretty much amounts to a form of prohibition. Am I wrong?
Maybe. I’m not sure the fruit and vegetable supply in Russia in the early 90s was regulated in any meaningful sense, but the Chechens and pals wrapped it up pretty quickly. And although American waste disposal and Phuket taxis are regulated to some extent, I don’t see the mechanism whereby the regulation leads to organized crime takeover. I’m confident should the regulations (whatever they are) on Phuket taxis be removed the same cartel would remain. It took the army to finally break them up.
Maybe. Again, I need to remind everyone that my original point was made in the context of an imaginary minarchist/ancap state, as per Snorri’s original comment.
Tim is correct that in certain parts of the US (New York, for example) criminal mobs controlled (still do? I’m not sure) some businesses such as waste removal, cement distribution and other parts of the construction trades, etc. And he’s also correct that local government in places like Chicago is clearly incompetent to control local crime. But that doesn’t support his (or Snorri’s) case that a strong federal government is necessary to fight organized crime. We have such a federal government now, with all sorts of laws against racketeering (i.e., the RICO statute) and federal jurisdiction over numerous crimes as well as powerful federal policing agencies, and yet Chicago is still a crime-infested sewer. So the federal government is just as incompetent to fight crime as is Rahm Emmanuel’s. Enlarging its mandate to cover an ill-defined problem over which it has already demonstrated incompetence doesn’t work for me.
That’s not an argument I’m making. At most, I’m saying some aspects of law enforcement should be nationwide.
Tim, if you don’t consider that to be an “argument”, fine, whatever. But I still disagree with what you’re saying. No aspects of law enforcement, other than treason (and other crimes against the nation per se, if anyone can convince me that there actually are any such) should be nationwide.