There is plenty to criticise in the fuzzier aspects of Labour policies two months from a crucial general election. But Ed Miliband’s refusal to rule in or out any kind of deal with the SNP at this stage of the campaign isn’t one of them.
Why should he dance to the dog-whistling tune of an unelected Australian temporary worker called Lynton Crosby whom hardly anyone has heard of on either side of Hadrian’s Wall? Or indeed at the behest of on-message Fleet St proprietors at the Times, Mail, Telegraph etc who are all baiting him and whose own tax arrangements are mostly offshore?
You might easily have missed it if you depend on London media, but the Labour leader and allies were in Edinburgh to address their party’s one-day conference on Saturday. You can read accounts online – here’s the Guardian’s and here the BBC’s. Simon Hattenstone’s weekend interview with the great man is here.
Miliband’s purpose was to attack David Cameron’s as a sleazy prime minister and to warn that voting SNP will help keep the Tories in power. He left it to ex-cabinet colleague Jim Murphy, Labour’s new leader in Scotland, to make what fans call “the first social democratic offer to Scotland since Donald Dewar’s day”. Here’s a sample – “clear tartan water” between Labour and the SNP at last, say loyalists.
That’s tantamount to an admission that Labour in Scotland has been poorly led for years and allowed the SNP to advance first into government, then into the utter dominance it enjoys in most polls that predict it will all but wipe out Labour in Scotland on 7 May – and then be able to manipulate a minority Labour government in Westminster.
That’s what the Tory papers are excited about, echoing the message crafty Lynton (“dog whistle”) Crosby – Cameron’s Aussie campaigns strategist – has crafted for the PM and reinforced with a new made-for-TV poster being launched on Monday. It shows a tiny Miliband in a huge Alex Salmond’s pocket. He’s nothing if not subtle, is Lynton.
Apart from the election debates issue – has Cameron made a bad mistake, Matthew D’Ancona asks here – what got Scottish media excited, as well as the Tory press in London, was Miliband’s refusal (echoed by four shadow cabinet colleagues) to say whether a minority Labour government would do any sort of survival deal with the SNP whose Westminster group will be led by Salmond.
On Friday, Salmond said the SNP might “call the tune” after 7 May – though that maths applies also to the Tory minority government that may emerge. We’ll see when we get the numbers on the night. Meanwhile Cameron is using a dilemma which threatens the fragile cohesion of the UK’s union for tactical party advantage – in England – much as he sometimes does Britain’s in/out relationship with the EU. He’s made a poor hand of handling both so far and I wish he’d stop.
But the issue here is Miliband’s response to the electoral maths. Labour in Scotland is divided: some MPs and activists say they must rule out a deal with the hated Nats whose more vituperative elements have been spectacularly abusive of Labour for a long time now. Others fear Miliband will eventually be forced to say “no deal” by pressure of events.
Against that, loyalists can say “if he does say no, he’ll be pressed on a deal with the Lib Dems or even DUP and Plaid”. Why risk alienating floating voters needlessly? Surely the same questions should be asked of Cameron, many of whose own MPs are hostile to another Clegg coalition. Again, we’ll see much more clearly how dealigned our politics have become – from Ukip to the Greens – on 8 May. But some Tories are arguing that Dave shouldn’t rule out an understanding with the SNP either, in return for devo-max powers.
Tricky, isn’t it? But Miliband’s advisers are also saying he can call the SNP’s bluff. If Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, says she’d be happy to support Labour on a case-by-case basis – even accepting Trident nuclear renewal in a Guardian interview – she also says she won’t have anything to do with propping up Cameron and those hated English Tories. That’s one weapon voluntarily disarmed.
So what exactly is her leverage over a Miliband government, they wonder. If SNP MPs don’t support Labour in a vote – no reason why they should – does the SNP contingent (it could be 50-strong if we believe the polls) abstain? That might be enough to save Ed’s day. Or does it vote with the Tories, English devils to many Scots? That would be a handy platform for Murphy’s Labour to campaign on in the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2016.
All of which may be wishful thinking by Labour – or indeed its rivals. But minority governments don’t all involve threats in one direction only. Minor parties can shoot themselves in the foot, too.
It is sensitive territory. After the 1979 devolution referendum failed to meet the threshold imposed by a Labour/Tory revolt, the SNP voted with Margaret Thatcher to bring down the minority Callaghan government and unleash 18 years of divisive Tory rule. They don’t like being reminded of it.
Salmond is a brilliant and wily campaigner, but he is also a tremendous chancer, as you might expect from a devotee of the racecourse. He had some close shaves on financial (oil price anyone?) and constitutional matters (he even claimed that England and Scotland would both be successor applicants to rejoin the EU) during the 2014 referendum. Will his luck soon run out?
Probably not, but the Holyrood government faces a tricky week. On Wednesday, Scotland’s government expenditure and revenue (GERS) data is due to be published for 2013-14. Given the fall in the global price of oil – which feeds its way back into oil production cutbacks and layoffs in the ageing North Sea fields – it is likely to show an equally dramatic fall in oil tax revenue, perhaps down from a £6bn peak to below £1bn.
Currently at $50 a barrel , oil won’t stay so low for ever, probably. But Opec has an interest in keeping prices down – and pumping more crude – to see off rivals, Iran and Russia for example ( low prices hurt both), not to mention to puncture the fracking boom in the US which is easing American dependence on Saudi oil. Then there’s the global economic slowdown to cut demand further.
Salmond and Sturgeon are far from daft and get all this stuff, though they have always made light of it in front of the voters. Polls show most Scots realise there is an oil problem, but that the yes camp/SNP side see it as a challenge that independent Scotland would bravely overcome.
Maybe, but Salmond has been saying that his price for supporting Miliband in Westminster would be “full fiscal autonomy” for Scotland. Does that mean abandoning the Barnett formula which gives Scotland an extra £4bn a year of public spending (the bit that annoys Ukip) in return for getting all “Scotland’s oil” revenue? I think it does.
That doesn’t sound a promising formula in the wider geopolitical world picture. As I say, it’s tricky. But it’s worth remembering that the threats and dilemmas aren’t just Miliband’s.
