Quintin Jardine's blog

Three months to go and I have had enough.

I have never been a fan of fixed term parliaments. I liked the old system under which the incumbent Prime Minister could choose the moment to ask the electorate for a renewal of his mandate, or be forced to do so by the loss of a confidence vote in the Commons. Change, however, was forced upon us as a by-product of the rose garden agreement, the cobbled together coalition which has seen us through the last five years.

Has that administration worked? In some ways it has. Unfettered Toryism has been reigned in, the NHS and education, for all you hear to the contrary, are actually no worse than before, still doing a marvellous job in the face of interminable tinkering, our troops are no longer dying in Afghanistan, and the economy has made slow but steady progress. But now we’re at the sharp end, heading for a polling day that has been known for the last five years.

And we are saddled with an election campaign that began the moment that Ed Miliband judged that the voters had forgotten the destruction wrought by the last Labour Government, and might be prepared to allow his crew another chance, given the lack of a strong alternative, and the surge in Europhobia under Nigel Farage, every man’s idea of the archetypal pub bore.

Many weeks after the sparring began, we have just gone through the hundred day barrier. Three more almost interminable months stretch out before us; God help us all.

In common with nine out of every ten people that the pollsters will stop in the street, I know already how I’m going to vote. Nothing that I read, that I am told, or that I am shown in Party Propaganda Broadcasts is going to change that. With a view to securing the best possible future governance of Scotland, I will vote SNP, even at the risk if seeing a minority Labour government in Westminster. Whatever their individual allegiances, the great majority of people on our islands feel the same way, of that I have no doubt.

So please, can we cut the rest of the crap and vote tomorrow?

The BBC (Health warning; it’s Nick Robinson) is reporting that David Cameron is refusing to participate in TV debates during the General Election unless the Green Party is given a place also.

I have two comments to make about that.

One, Cameron is trying to sabotage the debates because it has finally dawned on the simpleton that he has  absolutely nothing to gain from them and everything to lose.

Two, the Green Parties in England and Wales and in Scotland are separate entities, under separate leadership. Since you can bet that DC does not envisage both Natalie Bennett and Patrick Harvie (especially not Patrick Harvie) taking part, his reported stance undermines completely the cosy consensus that has been cobbled together by the Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems to exclude Nicola Sturgeon from the TV line-up.

There are few certainties about May 7, but one is that the SNP will wind up with many more seats than the Greens. In all probability it will form a larger parliamentary bloc than UKIP. Even my fair-minded friends on the No side of the independence question might agree with me that something stinks about the whole proposition.

If the journalist Philip Webster’s sources are correct, there is an undeclared war going on within the Tory Party between Dave Cameron and Theresa May.

139 days before the General Election I’ll come out and say that unless there is a political earthquake that leaves Alex Salmond as Prime Minister (an offer he would decline, almost certainly) my choice for Number Ten would be Cameron, but only on the basis that he is the least of several evils.

Who is the greatest? Mrs May comes very near the top of my list, shaded only by Mr and Mrs Balls. (Take your pick.) I never saw anything to like about our only woman Prime Minister, but there was a hell of a lot to admire. But Mrs May, or Thatcher Lite as I will call her from now on, she doesn’t score a point  in either column.

For a classic afternoon read, try this:

Click to access CIAs_June2013_Response_to_the_SSCI_Study_on_the_Former_Detention_and_Interrogation_Program.pdf

It seems that there is a debate under way on the efficacy of torture. What would Will MacAvoy say, I wonder?

David Cameron is ‘delighted’ with the report of the Smith Commission, and is quoted as saying ‘We are keeping our promise to the Scottish people.’

That is all we need to know about the proposals that have been published today. Anything that gives such pleasure to the Prime Minister, and to the Westminster parties, who  fought so hard, so viciously and so unscrupulously to keep their hands round the throats of the Scottish people, is by definition against our interests.

The ‘sweeping new powers’ we were promised turn out to be the right to set our own income tax rates and bands. The single most contentious area in the fiscal management of any nation; that’s what we’ll be given.

• The level of personal allowances will be reserved for Westminster.
• Taxes on savings will be reserved for Westminster.
• Corporation tax will be reserved for Westminster.
• Indirect taxation and excise duty rates will be reserved for Westminster.
• More than 80% of the welfare budget will be reserved for and controlled by Westminster.
• All job creating powers will be reserved for and controlled by Westminster.

My friends on the ‘No’ side will rush to reminded me that Scotland rejected independence. They are correct; we did.

We did so on the basis of a cross-party promise of ‘sweeping new powers’ for Holyrood. In fact the Smith Commission recommends  hardly any new powers for Scotland, only a series of responsibilities, and even then the main one, devolved income tax, will be hamstrung by the retention of key elements by London.

The Blessed Baroness Bella Goldie gave the game away, when she said that Holyrood politicians will now have will now have ‘to look taxpayers in the eye.’ We are being handed a stick with which we can beat ourselves senseless, but the whole bag of bloody carrots is being retained by Westminster.

What sops are we being given?

• The vote will be extended to sixteen and seventeen year-olds.
• Air Passenger Duty will be devolved.
• Licensing of oil and gas extraction will be devolved.

Thus, we may prepare for a future of barely literate electors emerging from our underfunded schools in the hope of a job with Ryanair, or in a fracking operation whose revenue will continue to fill the London coffers.

Lord Smith, whose commission delivered this fudge, refuses to answer questions on what it all means, insisting that he is only the referee. If that is so, he has given a red card to the aspirations of the 45% who voted Yes, and to the significant percentage who voted No, in the expectation that the notorious Daily Record ‘Vow’ could be kept, and not shown up for the sham it undoubtedly was.

Okay, it may have been unofficial, and the turn-out was lower than it might have been, but Catalunya voted 80% for nationhood yesterday.

Will it make any difference? In the short term, probably not, but Spain is headed for constitutional change, sooner or later. It  must be so; Madrid is even less popular than Westminster is in Britain, or Brussels in Europe.

Please someone, anyone, tell me what is going on within the Labour Party?

Yes, I know Ed’s a tube.  I know he carries the mark of Cain. But they chose him, and six months before a general election is no time to be contemplating change.

This is a great day in the lives of my Catalan friends. Today they vote, to express their wishes for the future of their nation. Thanks to the obduracy of the right wing government in Madrid they can’t call it a referendum, but that is what it is.

Three results are possible, the status quo, a federal solution, or independence. They face the same pressures as we Scots did, but I anticipate a different outcome. No, the result won’t be binding, but if Catalunya votes decisively for change nothing will ever be the same again.

Quote of the day by Labour grandee David Blunkett, commenting on the internecine plotting within his party:

“When you are standing on the edge of a cliff it is unwise to believe that by jumping you will suddenly learn to fly.”

I learned long ago to avoid commenting on US politics on this blog. However I would like to know my good friend Pat Wright’s view on the new situation and on the fact that regardless of that outcome, every on-line bookmaker listed on Oddschecker still had Hillary Clinton as a very short-priced favourite to win the next Presidential election.

I’m interested, Pat, that’s all.

My good friend Jackson is going to love this one.

I’ve just opened a letter in today’s mail. it’s from the Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Ms Ruth Davidson, inviting me to a drinks reception in Edinburgh on Tuesday, November 11, so that she can thank me in person for my support during the Referendum campaign.

I’ve suspected in the past that Ruth might be from another planet. Now I know for sure.

Thank you, my dear, but I won’t be attending.

If the bookies are right, and as we all know they usually are in a  two-horse race, the Scottish Labour Party is about to choose a leader who is not a member of the Scottish Parliament.

We are being told also that Gordon Brown, who styled himself as the saviour of the Union towards the end of the referendum campaign, doesn’t want the job. Both offer clear evidence of Labour’s ambivalence towards Holyrood and its lack of commitment to the notorious ‘Vow’, to which its UK leader was a signatory.

I’ve been reading the headlines about Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, being careless in his use of words about immigration, and being compelled by Downing Street to back-track.

I have some knowledge of Mr Fallon, albeit from 30 years ago, when I spent quite a lot of time with him. He is a very smart guy, and unless he has changed he is a man who knows exactly what he is saying, and is aware of its effects. He knew he would generate headlines, and in the process, raise his own profile with the right of his party, the people who will choose its next leader, possibly within the next twelve months.

As for Downing Street ‘slapping him down’, that was a sham. A few million Tory voters are on Fallon’s side, and Dave knows it.

There is a poll out this weekend putting UKIP at 25%, a level that would give them 128 seats in Westminster next time around, putting themselves almost certainly in a coalition situation that would marginalise Scotland still further.

To those among the 55% who find that a scary proposition, all I can say is, you voted for it.