Martin Kelly writes:
"This morning, if I were a customer or shareholder in Lloyds TSB I would be feeling quite happy. The bank's directors have shown that in a time of crisis, they are capable of retaining their sense of proportion.
Alex Salmond is travelling to London to meet them; they are not travelling to Edinburgh to meet him.
In their eyes, he is obviously not sufficiently important enough to bother travelling to meet; an assessment with which one can only agree. They haven't bought into his personality cult, nor are they swayed by his shtick. Here boy! Good dog!"
That, plus the central government stake in HBOS, and its controlling interest in RBS (where Salmond learned everything he knows...).
Devolution is, as we all know, "a process, not an event". But the only logical end of that process can never now happen.
So, will anyone even bother to contest the next elections to the Scottish Parliament? Never mind the ones after that.
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ReplyDeleteYou obviously did not hear about the latest opinion poll in Scotland. Published this past weekend from survey conducted 22-24/10/08
The SNP are still ahead in the Scottish Parliamentary vote
Constituency:
SNP 39% (-3% on last month)
Labour 31% (+5%)
Cons 14% (+1%)
Lib Dems 12% (-3%)
Regional
SNP 32% (-3%)
Labour 29% (+4%)
Con 16% (+2%)
Lib Dems 11 (-3%)
Hardly a collapse (although decrease) in SNP support.
Labour did pull ahead (surprise, surprise) for the Westminster vote
(where Labour has traditionally until recently equalled or bested the SNP anyway till about this time last year)
Labour 38% (+6%)
SNP 29% (-9%)
Conservatives 20% (+3%)
Liberal Democrats 11% (-2%)
You will notice a bit of inconsistency in the voting patterns. This happens in Scotland.
On the independence question:
Independence 31% (-3%)
Union 53% (+3%)
Whether banking crisis would make you more pro union/independence:
More unionist 28%
More likely to support independence 17%
Would not change presnt stance - 55%
Best person to handle the crisis
Brown - 42%
Salmond - 23%
Cameron - 8%
Best person for FM
Salmond - 38%
Gray - 13%
Goldie - 10%
Scott - 6%
Generally it is agreed that whilst Brown's performance has raised Labour support and SNP has suffered, it has not actually changed in any great shape or form the attitude towards the constitutional issue.
Why the continued bitterness against Holyrood?
Who cares?
ReplyDeleteIf Salmond had been the Leader or the Chief Executive of a major local authority (such as Edinburgh or Glasgow), then they would have been straight on a train or a plane to pay court to him. Not the other way round.
If the Leaders or Chief Executives of several more minor local authorities (all those in the former Grampian region, say) had been in a similar position, then then they would have been straight on a train or a plane to pay court to them. Not the other way round.
But as it is, the mere "First Minister of Scotland" (as if! - tell that to the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and saviour of Scotland's beloved banks) is expected to make his way to London. To pay court to them. Not the other way round.
Who, being a potential MP or municipal player, would want a job like that? And who, if no potential MP or municipal player were ever up for it, would want such a job to exist at all?
Under devolution Salmond has no power over banking. So of course they do not care.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand Brown does. Not that they do what they are told by him either. Hence the banks got away with it when they told him, Mandy (!) and Darling to get stuffed last week when they told them to increase lending to last year's levels after being given the cash.
If Salmond is humiliated by his political impotency, then Brown etc must be enraged that in theory they can do something but cannot - because they are scared of the banks which are supposed to be owned/scared of them!
Lanchester Parish Council has no power over banking, either. But if we demanded to see our bank manager then he would come. And he certainly wouldn't expect us to go to him.
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine the Leader or the Chief Executive of Aberdeen City Council being told that he would just have to make his way to London?
TSB has deep Scottish roots. And as far as it and everybody else outside the parallel universe of Scottish nationalism (in all parties) is now concerned, the First Minister of Scotland is Gordon Brown and the Scottish Finance Minister is Alistair Darling.
I still think support for Scottish independence (in reality, heavily funded by the EU, as the new England would be heavily funded by the US) would increase very strongly if Cameron wins.
ReplyDelete"as the new England would be heavily funded by the US"
ReplyDeleteDream on! America has been in favour of a United Europe since the Forties, and has no interest in any part of this island apart from that project.
America holds not one but two annual mass popular expressions of hatred for England, and has an enormous lobby which thinks that the Potato Famine is still going on.
"if Cameron wins"
He has no hope of an overall majority, and would doubtless simply extend to Westminster the current cosy deal with the SNP at Holyrood.
The price for this would not be powers for Holyrood. Who in Scotland really cares about that, at the end of the day? The price would be cash. Vast, lavish sums of cash, far in excess of those already being spent there.
Which, like the takeover of much of HBOS and most of RBS, could not better serve to strengthen the Union.
Cameron himself, of course, is a classic posh Scot: English public school, Oxbridge, Home Counties seat, club in St James's, house on the Isle of Jura. A return to the days of Macmillan, Macleod and Douglas-Home.
But the banker of the Scottish government is the Treasury and the Bank of England - not Lloyds TSB, HBOS or RBS.
ReplyDeleteI was not aware Salmond was going down there looking for business?
Whatever the reason for his trip to see them, he is making the trip. They are not making a trip to see him.
ReplyDeleteAnd what will he even talk about when he gets there? He'll suggest this or that and it'll be "Oh, don't worry, we've already squared that with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer".
Or, of course, "We'd never get that past the Prime Minister and the Chanlcellor the Exchequer".
Not to mention "Didn't you used to be Chief Economist at RBS?"
Everything about Scottish Nationalism has always been a product of Scotland's strange and historically aberrant descent into insularity, exacerbated by devolution: that the oil would last for ever, that people would always want to buy it, that Scotland subsidised England, that any independence treaty would just hand over the oil revenue to an independent Scotland, that an independent Scotland would be a "successor state" rather than simply a secession, that it might ever be let into the EU, that it might be allowed to remain on things like the National Grid, that Perthshire was normal (rural, pretty, affluent, some distance from all the English in the oil industry, a long way from places in Scotland with their supermarkets, cinemas, hospitals and main employers in England), and on, and on, and on.
But now, it is time to wake up. Forty per cent of the Bank of Scotland and fully sixty per cent of the Royal Bank of Scotland are now in public ownership. At UK level. Where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are both Scots sitting for Scottish constituencies.
David,
ReplyDeleteI fear you've incurred the wrath of 'The Aberdonian'; who if it's the same 'The Aberdonian' who infest the comment threads after Alan Cochrane's columns in the 'Telegraph' will soon start referring to me as a character from a Czech novel.
A bit weird, but of it keeps them happy...
Yes yes yes, David, but how many Scottish constituencies do the Tories currently hold, and how many do you think they will win next time?
ReplyDeleteAnd do you *honestly* think that there is any genuine, grand-scale hatred for England in the US today, or that the pro-Irish lobby is *that* extreme? The UK doesn't really matter much there expect as a strategic tool - the only real hatred for England among the ruling elite in the US arises on the very rare occasions that the political state it dominates threatens to be anything other than their poodle.
I agree that the US wants a united Europe that is its own lickspittle and has a strategic interest in the UK as its agent therein, to fight against the French view of a united Europe as a power under its own steam. But I think 51st Statism could yet go even further than it already has. As things stand, the Celts' independence of spirit is the main barrier to such an eventuality.
Rant, rant, rant
ReplyDeleteSalmond was not RBS's chief economist. He their chief oil economist.
"how many Scottish constituencies do the Tories currently hold"?
ReplyDeleteOne, right on the border.
"how many do you think they will win next time?"
Not very many.
"And do you *honestly* think that there is any genuine, grand-scale hatred for England in the US today, or that the pro-Irish lobby is *that* extreme?"
No on the first point, but yes on the second. And it is very influential.
"But I think 51st Statism could yet go even further than it already has. As things stand, the Celts' independence of spirit is the main barrier to such an eventuality."
All the more reason to keep them in the Union.
"Salmond was not RBS's chief economist. He their chief oil economist."
ReplyDeleteThat makes all the difference.
I actually agree that the Celts' independence of spirit makes the UK more bearable to me, an alienated Englishman, that England alone would be. I just don't think they'll want to stick around if Cameron wins decisively.
ReplyDelete