On Her Majesty's Scottish Social Democratic Opposition

[danieldwilliam]

Whilst considering the political landscape of Scotland post-Independence I have been assuming that there was only room for one Social Democratic party in Scotland. Consequently, either the Scottish Nationalist Party or the Labour Party would cease to exist, either as a recognisably social democratic party or utterly. A helpful comment in a pub recently suggests that there might well be room for two social democratic parties in Scotland, one in government and one in opposition. What will they disagree about?

Scotland appears to have a settled political consensus around Social Democracy with a goodly amount of Democratic Socialism. By this I mean that it is broadly agreed that the state should be an economic actor, providing goods and services to its citizens, that there should be high levels of taxation and that the provision of public services by the state should be broad and of good quality.  Some areas of the economy are to be reserved for state action. In many more areas a commitment to state provided, tax funded universality of service is made. Some suggestions are made that the collective should directly own whole industries.  The state is seen as vehicle for effecting a meritocracy where the practical equality of opportunity brought about by universal public services allows people to rise and fall on their own efforts rather than the lot they were born into.

These are essentially arguments about the utility of state action in the economy as an agent of the community and individuals.

What then are the dimensions of opposition? Even within the confines of a debate between two social democratic parties the differences of opinion go further and deeper than differences over the correct technical policy or questions of whether specific fringe activities should fall wholly, partly or not at all within the parameters of the state.  Three that spring to mind as examples of how Government and Opposition in an Independent Scotland might be defined in the early 21^st Century are Centralisation, Authoritarianism and Diversity.

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community, yet disagree about the size and shape of the state and where the part of the state that interacts with an individual citizen is located.   Is the state to be highly centralised?  Are tax revenues to flow into the coffers of the central government and then be disbursed, with conditions and performance targets attached, to local administrators? Should those local bodies have responsibility for local policy and should they be directly accountable to the citizenry in their area? Are local bodies to be geographical or comprised of overlapping areas of endeavour.

Some examples.  Should all important decisions about policing and health care be made in Holyrood and Victoria Quay with local bodies merely the executives who deliver central government policy?  If policing and health and other policies are devolved to local bodies should there be one elected body with policy and strategic oversight, a local council and corporation or should the powers and responsibilities for policing be devolved to an elected police board and those for health to an elected health board? Where are the taxes to pay for nurses and polices to be raised and decided upon?

One question that captures the essence of the centralisation question for me “Is the Holyrood general election going to be the only election worth voting in?”

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community but for one to think that the state should not interfere overly much in the life of the citizen.

Is the state to be able and willing to intervene in the private lives of the citizenry?  These considerations are not restricted to issues of morality and the boundaries between the public purse and private health which are touched on in questions such as: How far should the state be able to go in regulating the sexual mores of the public or its eating and drinking habits? Is it the business of the state to encourage us to take exercise or to compel us?  

There are issues of civil liberties and public security that range from our response to terrorism to crowd control at football matches to thought crimes. Should we be subject to invasive screening and intrusive surveillance to protect us from malevolence?  Should disapproval of sexual behaviour or religion be a criminal offence?

It is possible for two people to agree that the state should involve itself in the life of the community, yet disagree about how that community should develop and what role the state should play in that development.  Is post-Independence Scotland to be mono-cultural or many cultured?  Is that the for the state to influence?  There are issues here of strict secularism in schooling.  Issues of state support for families howsoever defined (and distinct from financial support for those raising children). Do we promote various and varying sexual orientations as a positive choice people can make and a welcome addition to the gaiety of the nation or are non-straight, non-cis monogamists to be seen as the state sponsored norm with Others a tolerated by abnormal fringe?  When considering our immigration policy do we welcome people from social democratic Tanzania as more or less like us than people from Libertarian Texas and does it matter? 

For me the nub of these of Centralisation, Authortarianism and Diversity is how much control do we place in the hands of how few individuals?  If we are agreed in Scotland that we are all in this together and that the group has wide ranging obligations to its members and vice versa these questions seem all the more important.

I can see a Scotland emerging where the primary question of how much of a role the state has in the lives of our community is a settled one. The answer: a lot. What remains are discussions about how centralised that state is to be, where the boundary between public and private activity lies and when the state can step over that boundary and what role the state has in promoting or restricting diversity.

These remain ideological issues and they turn on whether you believe other people can trusted with their own happiness and a share in our communal happiness. 

Taken to extremes on the one hand we could have a social democratic party that sees the state as a diverse and devolved facilitator of the betterment of the community and the individual and on the other hand a party that sees the State and by extension the Party as the sole arbiter in disputes and the sole solution to an individual’s problems.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

They aren't just ideological issues. They're also practical ones. There are real system dynamics problems about how far you can centralise anything, or indeed devolve it.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yeah – I see the practical considerations.

And the layers of locality have practical (and ideological) considerations of their own. Local planning powers and the laws around them have been used a number of times as proxy tools in fight about different versions of environmentalism and the future of Scotland’s energy and tourism industries during the Beuly-Denny transmission line upgrade dispute. This always struck as a strange way to run a serious conversation about individual rights and national priorities.

In emphasising the ideological nature of the issues I wanted to avoid some hand-waving about them being just technical or practical matters to be decided on a case by case (which would strike me as the first move of a cunning centraliser.)

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I think you need to be a bit careful because you are dealing with both deontologists and consequentialists here, on both sides of the divide.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

And heaven help those who find themselves caught between deontologists and consequentialists on an issue of devolution and subsidiarity.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

*mutters* Can't be having with these new-fangled philosophies. Utilitarianism was good enough for us, when I were a lad...

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Utilitarianism has its use, for sure.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Hmm. My comment went missing. How strange.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I'm having trouble applying this eminently reasonable line of thought to the realm of party politics. I'd think it's likely that parties will continue to peddle their brand, above all else. So the Scottish Labour Party, freed of the need to pander to the imagined desires of the English middle and working classes, can talk about nationalisation, higher taxation, and universal access to education.
The SNP will talk about what's best for Scotland - including such things as encouraging immigration and the dash for green energy.
Independents will grow stronger at the local level - this is already the pattern in the North and the Islands, and will spread to the Central Belt, as local issues become more easily dealt with at a local level.
Fringe parties (like the LDs and the Tories) will work to develop their own brands, and will continue to be represented, and probably to hold a balance of power.
I think we're heading for interesting times.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

There is certainly a risk that we end up with some form of Fianna Foil and Fianna Gael arrangement in Scotland, with two similar sets of ideologies grouped around two similar sets of mediocre politicians. In order to prevent this I think we should both stand for election.

The fringe parties holding the balance of power might make all the difference. What makes the Lib Dems pick one of the two social democratic parties? I imagine they would pick the one that had a more palatable agenda on localism, civil liberties and diversity.

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, they picked the one that was willing to do business with them.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Are you talking about the current UK Lib Dem coalition with the Conservatives?

If so, I think that’s a slightly different situation to the one I’m expecting for Scotland.

50% of our governments are coalitions and most of our councils. So, doing business with the Lib Dems (or others) is a repeat game and something that will have been anticipated by all the potential counter-parties. So long as we retain our exiting electoral systems post-Independence I’d expect us to continue to have a very high proportion of coalition or minority governments and for coalitions at council level to be so much the norm that a majority position on a council is remarkable.

If we shift to STV for Holyrood elections then the hunt for the all-important lower preferences makes the need to reach out to supporters of other parties more pressing.

I get the feeling that the situation that lead to the current UK coalition was a bit of a surprise (and I wonder if it will be a surprise again when it happens again in 2020).

Also, and as well, too, the willingness to do business is an interesting part of evolution of opposed social democratic parties. The Lib Dems will be more willing to do business with the one that favours the Lib Dem agenda and, in turn, that party will find it easier to do business with the Lib Dems as they already have some cross bench sympathy.

And a longer list of policies and practises they agree on.

It’s also easier to switch parties if you disagree with the choice of coalition partner. If you’re a Labour MSP and you’re sick of being in coalition with the Lib Dems it’s an easy step to make to join the other social democratic party. Over the course of 3 or 4 iterations I think you see an emergence of some coherent and persistent differences of ideology, brought about, in part, by the influence of potential coalition partners

I think we’re into extended phenotype territory here.