WINGS OVER SCOTLAND Rev. Stuart Campbell Being a journalist can occasionally present some tricky ethical dilemmas. Today’s Scotland on Sunday carries a story about Scottish Labour’s strife-riddled devolution plans, which attributes this quote to the Scottish branch manager Johann Lamont: Now, that’s an awkward one for any conscientious reporter. We have to presume that the former English teacher MEANT to say “increase” (or “restore”), rather than “reduce”. But you can’t just casually reverse in print what someone actually said on the assumption that they meant the opposite, so the hapless Andrew Whitaker has to resort to the least-bad option, which is just printing it and hoping nobody notices. It’s the rest of the article that contains the real nonsense, though. Because Lamont’s shambles of a “devolution” plan shatters into a million pieces at the slightest scrutiny. It’s an illogical mess which in reality just amounts to what Labour’s core No argument has been all along – “Please don’t vote to run your own affairs in Scotland, just elect Labour at Westminster and we’ll make everything fine, honest!” You don’t have to take our word for that. It’s right there in the story: “Lamont was speaking before Labour unveils the findings of its Devolution Commission on Tuesday. The commission is expected to recommend giving Holyrood the ability to vary the rate of Scottish income tax in each tax band. Lamont indicated she would follow the approach taken by UK Labour leader Ed Miliband, who has been a fierce critic of George Osborne’s 2012 move to cut the tax rate for those paid more than £150,000 from 50p to 45p. Miliband has promised to restore the 50p rate and has launched a high pay commission aimed at curbing excessive boardroom salaries.” Our emphasis, there. Lamont’s plan for “devolution” is for Scotland to, er, do the same as London does. The Scottish Parliament will have the right and the ability to copy Westminster exactly. Gee, thanks. But it could be no other way. Ponder it for a moment – would a Labour government in England allow a Labour government in Scotland to have different tax policies, when both were in fact still part of the same country? The idea is self-evidently absurd. The entire concept of a No vote is that Scotland is a region of the UK, not a nation in its own right. It’s somewhat fanciful to say the least to imagine Manchester, say, or Yorkshire being allowed to have a different income tax structure to Bristol or Cornwall. Administratively it would be utter chaos. The loopholes that would open up would be uncountable. Yet effectively it’s exactly what Labour wants us to believe. Even an independent Scotland would have to be careful how it implemented different tax rates and structures, lest businesses and individuals simply hopped across the border to take advantage of a more favourable regime. But at least it could do so as part of an overall package of measures. (Purely as a simplistic for-instance, company directors might not like paying a bit more personal income tax, but they’d have to weigh it against the advantages of lower corporation tax for their businesses.) Without full control of Scotland’s economic levers, though, no such balancing and trade-offs would be possible. Just as it does now, Holyrood would have the theoretical ability to alter taxation, but no practical ability to do so. The reasons Holyrood has never used its 3p tax-varying power since 1999 would remain unchanged, even though the power itself might become technically more flexible. All of this, it should go without saying, is predicated on the fact that Labour will win the 2015 UK election – something which gets less likely by the day – and that the view of its Scottish MSPs somehow managed to hold sway after the referendum over not only the party’s Scottish MPs but its English and Welsh ones too, most of whom are bitterly opposed to any more devolution for Scotland no matter how useless it is. (And if you want a REAL laugh, try to picture a Tory government in Westminster granting an SNP or Labour one in Scotland the power to undercut it on tax.) That the media is treating Lamont’s plan seriously indicates at best that they’re engaged in frantic, crude political spinning on behalf of the No campaign, and at worst that our newspapers are staffed by dribbling idiots who shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision lest they injure themselves chasing parked cars.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:01:51 +0000
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