Waking up to compromise after the devolution dream

'Labour as a party is both Scottish and British. To be electable in Scotland it needs to meet the aspirations of the Scottish people. To gain power at Westminster it must - and will - subordinate Scottish claims to the wider, British cause. Which is another way of saying that Blair will not allow a little local difficulty in Scotland to stand in the way of his election.' Ian Bell, in The Scotsman, 5th June 1996.

Power will be devolved to Scotland, but not to the Scottish Labour Party. This is democracy in action, writes Ian Bell

From the electronic Scotsman

Briefly it seemed that Scotland was to have a proper, grown-up parliament with real powers after all, that maturity was to descend on her political system after centuries of retarded growth. Like children given the key to the door, we were to be allowed out on our own. Even to sceptics, the potential of the parliament to become something new in British life was obvious. Now all is changed, and changed utterly: a terrible compromise is born.

We know this, in the main, because George Robertson keeps on denying it. We know because the formulae defining the tax-raising powers the parliament will (may?) have grow more convoluted with each month that passes. We know because Blair is vague and his subordinates ever more self-righteous, as though even to doubt that the sailing will be plain is an outrageous attack on their self-evident integrity.

But the compromise is emerging nevertheless, in a fine mist of obfuscation, omissions and pledges. The point for Labour now is not to establish what the parliament will do but to prove - and yield the point to Michael Forsyth - what it will not do. Robertson insists he would never have embraced devolution in the first place if it had seemed to threaten the Union, and thus places his cart a street ahead of the horse. From Westminster comes word of a plan - and will the authors please face the audience? - to ensure that the power to vary taxes will under no circumstances be used in the parliament's first term.

The power will exist, of course, but the "will of the Scottish people", as expressed by a Labour majority under the firm guidance of the London leadership, is a guarantee that it will remain harmlessly symbolic. Power will be devolved to Scotland, but not to the Scottish Labour Party. This is democracy in action.

No doubt we should have known better. Robertson and his colleagues are in a cleft stick; the more they wriggle the more obvious it becomes. Everyone agrees a parliament without tax-raising powers would be nothing more than an elaborate wind machine.

But everyone in a Labour leadership that comes out in hives at the mention of taxes also agrees taxation must never be higher in Scotland than in England. At the very least, this would compel Gordon Brown's Treasury to cut remittances to the Scots, with riots from the Edinburgh legislative mob to follow.

Amidst all this, the West Lothian Question is so sensitive that Labour prefers just to ignore it. Scots simply don't see the argument, so obvious to English observers, that we are over-represented at Westminster, so few are we alongside all those southern MPs. Similarly, the idea that "England" might extract a price for home rule (John Major's threat) tends to rankle: if it is ours it is ours by right, irrespective of all other issues. Add the fact that the majority of seats we might lose would be Labour seats, and you understand why omerta is the party's choice.

The possibility that the parliament might even bring a bit of prosperity is (and this ought to be curious) another idea studiously ignored. Yet hard-pressed Labour MPs in the north of England might begin to grow restless if it seemed the benefits of a Scottish parliament were to be more than merely symbolic.

Equally, if it looked as if a measure of home rule might produce a measure of economic improvement the MSPs might be tempted, like Oliver, to ask for more. Hence the tendency to deny that devolution would do harm, rather than to shout about all the good it might achieve.

An air of half-heartedness hangs over the whole affair, in part because so many people are bored witless by it. Time and again the opinion polls ask the question; time and again we give them a clear answer. Forsyth chips away at the monolith and strikes the odd seam: what about tax, what about the slippery slope to independence? No-one much cares. We have made up our minds and we have no great desire to hear the arguments rehearsed (spare us, oh Lord) yet again.

Nevertheless, when Ewen MacAskill revealed in this newspaper earlier this month that a body of Scottish Labour MPs had begun to feel a chill about the toes, it confirmed what some of us already knew. The party is not united. More than a few of its MPs are opposed to devolution and always have been. Alongside the true believers, such as Donald Dewar, there are gut Unionists, closet federalists, crypto-nationalists, and simple agnostics. Robertson's faintly hysterical rebuttal of the MacAskill piece was proof enough, for the cynics among us, that all was not well.

There are some simple, structural (and by no means dishonourable) reasons why this should be. It was always open to question, given the ramshackle nature of the British constitution, that a devolved parliament could simply be grafted on to the body politic. Friction - and tax is a better symbol than most - was inherent in the scheme. Scotland is a nation and hence has a right to choose its own form of government. The United Kingdom is a state with regions to govern, claims to balance, and economic power to wield. The contradiction is supplied gratis with the kit.

But there is another problem. Labour as a party is both Scottish and British. To be electable in Scotland it needs to meet the aspirations of the Scottish people. To gain power at Westminster it must - and will - subordinate Scottish claims to the wider, British cause. Which is another way of saying that Blair will not allow a little local difficulty in Scotland to stand in the way of his election.

If the Union is to become a British general election issue, as the Tories seem to intend, in other words, Blair will not allow himself to be damaged by it. What Scotland wants is in essence neither here nor there. Put simply, there is no possibility that Labour under a Blair leadership will be depicted as "irresponsible" over tax. And Scotland's Labour vote can be taken for granted no matter what happens, can it not?

The ironies are rich: the policy that the Scottish Labour Party has made its own - the devolution of power from Westminster - is now in serious difficulty because the Scottish Labour Party remains in thrall to its Westminster leadership. The Scottish party that would restore just a little of our autonomy has no autonomy of its own. There's the rub.