Cost of Living: We Need to Fight the Scottish Government
Ahead of protests this Saturday, Conter editor David Jamieson says blaming Westminster is no longer enough: we need to hold our governing class accountable
The threats facing workers across much of the world – falling economic growth, retreating or stagnant wages and spiralling prices – present Scots with a distinctive problem. Households across the country will have to meet an additional £700 in energy costs, and 7 percent inflation.
From one major viewpoint in Scotland, our own parliament and government is not a legitimate site of protest. The nature of devolution, with budgets set and powers retained in London, means that all enmity must be directed south.
I say this problem is ‘distinct’, but of course we have been here before. For over a decade in the 2010s, cuts budgets were passed from Westminster to Holyrood, and from there to local authorities and other institutions around the country. We have grown accustomed to the buck-passing that inevitably results. Councils cannot pay workers or finance services because the money ‘doesn’t exist’ having been cut by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government cannot finance the local authorities because of cuts in London.
Nor does the buck stop there. For most of the 2010s the Conservatives had their own get-outs. They had to cut to protect Britain’s credit rating. Across Europe the pattern was the same – governments had to cut to meet EU directives, pay debts to foreign banks, and on it went.
Of course, once all this passing is done, the buck does finally come to a stop – with us. The austerity decade saw a significant transferral of wealth between the majority population and the richest parts of society. So have the last two years, a time of enormous disruption for millions of people, when official rhetoric continually emphasised a mood of public solidarity. Once again, massive wealth has accrued to the owners of the big monopoly firms that dominate the global economy. Shell and BP (recent proprietors of the rights to develop Scottish seabeds) have posted record profits. Millionaires and billionaires increased their share of global wealth in the pandemic. They refuse to pay for the new privations, arguing taxation would dissuade investment.
In the end, this is about class power. Those who say that the Scottish Government is not to blame for the current situation must reckon with this reality.
The only appropriate response is to say that the buck stops anywhere but with us. Every and each level of government has a greater capacity to bear hardship than ordinary households.
There’s still plenty of give in the Scottish Government. They say they’ll introduce a rent cap in 2025 – why not now? Whatever happened to the reform of Council Tax to relieve the burden on lower income households? A promised National Care Service would be able to alleviate care costs if it weren’t a fiction. There is, in short, much the Scottish Government can do but won’t do because of its reluctance to challenge elite interests.
The ‘team Scotland’ attitude must end. By forming a common front with a Scottish Government unwilling to take any serious measures to protect the public, we are killing any prospect of an effective fight where we live.
It is not just that we are letting the Scottish Government and its corporate backers off the hook. The deeper problem is that the UK Government can afford to disregard the protests of Scots so long as they are trapped in the framework of devolution. If we won’t fight the British state as it exists in Scotland – including the institutions of devolution – then all we have is Ian Blackford’s droning in the House of Commons, and empty promises of future referendums.
It’s time to abandon any remaining attitude that ‘devolution is our friend’. This myth unites all sections of the post-1997 establishment in Scotland. Labour say it was their splendid innovation; SNP leaders say independence is simply the perfection of devolution; Tories won’t dare denounce it.
But after a decade of austerity with only symbolic resistance, millions of Scots now face an onslaught on living standards.
This perspective does not require abandoning support for independence. But it does mean dissociating that stance from a defence of the SNP and its version of liberal nationalism. The SNP leadership’s approach to the constitutional question has already resulted in a permanent deadlock which they, far from trying to break, are happy to wallow in. There is, quite simply, no coherent relationship between defending the Scottish Government and supporting independence.
The years ahead are likely to be troubled for this country. Scots cannot go into this era with a mood of political quietism, shackled to the zombies in Bute House.
Online Meeting: All Welcome
Nation, Class and Marxism: Understanding Neil Davidson’s Engagement with Nationalism
16.02.2022 18:00 UK Time online
Neil Davidson, one of the great Marxist intellectuals of modern Scotland, tragically passed away in 2020. This lecture will explore his writing on the topic of nationalism, a topic that engaged him throughout his life. Neil’s thinking about nationalism was both nuanced and provocative, and it advanced scholarly debates about the nation in both the academic and activist communities.
The lecture will be given by Neil’s colleague, friend and protege, Jamie Allinson. Jamie is a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, where he is programme director for the MSc in International Relations of the Middle East with Arabic. He is a founding editor of Salvage, and has worked as an external consultant with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His first book, The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances in the Middle East was co-winner of the 2016 Political Economy Project book prize.
Events
Protest: Cost of Living Crisis: We Can’t Pay
The Scottish Government and the official opposition have indicated nothing of the urgency of the situation facing millions of households. It falls to us to demand that those who have profited throughout the pandemic, now shoulder the fallout of the new economic situation.
We urge readers, as a first step, to attend the People’s Assembly protests wherever they are. In addition to protests across Britain, there are two protests currently scheduled in Scotland.
Saturday 12 Feb, 1pm
George Square
Saturday 12 Feb, 1pm
UK Government HQ in Edinburgh, Queen Elizabeth House,
1 Sibbald Walk, Edinburgh EH8
On Patreon
The SNP's Dangerous Love Affair with Nato
Chris Bambery talks to David Jamieson about decades of Nato's eastward expansion, the threat of conflict, and the SNP's dangerous love affair with the military alliance.
ConterIdeology: Revolutionary Traditions Series Episode 1: Leninism
As the first part of a new series on revolutionary traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, and what we can learn from them today, James Foley and David Jamieson discuss Lenin, the attempts by intellectuals to revive Leninism in the 2010s, and his relations to modern dilemmas of the left.
Free on Conter
Falling Growth and Rising Costs
We republish Michael Kidron’s overview of the long-term tendency to falling growth in global capitalism.