A few days ago Cameron, Clegg and Miliband made a ‘vow’ to Scottish voters – if they rejected separation, far more powers would be transferred to the Edinburgh parliament. Gordon Brown was sent to flesh this offer out, apparently with the backing of all three party leaders. With the ‘no’ vote now in the bag, this ‘vow’ and the timetable (it’d be done by Burns Night, said Brown) looks shaky: I’m told that Cameron has no intention of transferring any powers before the election and that he says Brown was freelancing. (He didn’t make this point before the referendum). Some Tory MPs, in turn, say that Cameron did not have their authority and were freelancing – there is talk of rebellion. Cameron seems to have now inserted a condition for honouring his vow: that Labour agrees to the longstanding Tory manifesto idea of English votes for English laws.
As Matt d’Ancona puts it:-
The consequence of such a reform, after all, would be to make it all but impossible for a Scottish MP to be prime minister or, indeed, hold any senior Cabinet post, and – at a stroke – to present insurmountable obstacles to a future Labour government, which could quite conceivably have a majority in Britain, but not in England. According to one senior source: “Cameron exploded a massive bomb in enemy territory.” Better together, eh?
So there may be a standoff. In other words, it looks like the English might welsh on the Scots. Alex Salmond is limbering up:-
No10 is boasting that it has cleverly outwitted Labour (
as Adam Boulton describes today) and is congratulating itself for engineering a ‘lose-lose’ situation for Ed Miliband. As he puts it:-
‘Team Cameron is confident the difficult questions will be for the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, as he tries to reignite public interest in Labour’s annual conference in Manchester. The Tory electoral strategist Lynton Crosby left Downing Street in the small hours of Friday feeling jubilant. The election-winning trap was set at lose/lose for Labour. If Miliband gives up the votes of his Scottish and Welsh MPs, Labour will never be able to govern England effectively. If he doesn’t, England will never elect him.’
So after a day of pretending to listen deeply to the concerns of Scots, it’s straight back to Westminster one-upmanship. I doubt that Crosby was feeling jubilant: the result was a relief, but 45 per cent of Scots voted to leave this country. Political poison has entered the veins, and when I was in Inverness last week I was appalled to hear so much anti-English sentiment that was pretty much unheard-of when I was living up there. These wounds will take a long time to heal. What is there to be jubilant about?
It was foolish for Cameron to let Brown speak on his behalf, and promise so urgent a timetable. But he must now follow it up. If he does not, then nationalist agitation will be back. Cameron needs to move quickly: he has the chance of closing down the wearying secession debate as the Canadians did after Quebec’s 1995 referendum. Can he be bothered? If not, why did he stand to be PM of the United Kingdom?
If Cameron does allow Gordon Brown to be his government’s representative to the Scotland then he will have abrogated his responsibility as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Mind you, he has been Tory leader for nine years, and has slowly given up on Scotland. This cordial disregard has been noticed by the Scottish electorate – and reciprocated. I suspect Cameron looks at a map of Scotland and thinks: ‘one seat! We forked out a million quid for one seat! Would have been better spent on the Midlands’. He should think: ‘That place is hurting; I’m their Prime Minister. I need to do what I can to help Scotland heal.’ A tactician would give up on Scotland, as of now. A leader would spend time trying to make things better.
Today we had was Brown, not Cameron, quoting Ecclesiastes and talking about a time to fight and heal. Cameron cannot outsource cleaning up this mess – especially not to the guy he defeated. Scots deserve better than Brown.
PS: Steve Richards and I discussed Brown’s comeback on R4′s Broadcasting House this morning. Here’s our discussion:
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