Electoral Reform? Where this Parliament (and Government) comes from...
There is a common misconception that Scotland ‘has more MPs’ for its size than England. This is simply not true: in both nations, there are 14.4 MPs for every million potential voters. (Wales and Northern Ireland, at 17.5 and 21 per million, do have more per head.) There is an equally common fallacy that there is such a thing as ‘main parties’ in ‘the UK’. In reality 99.7% of all current Labour and Tory MPs come from England & Wales.
The current constitutional crisis is UK-wide, and arises because England’s new representation at Westminster is as shown left, the rest of the UK’s is as shown right. David Cameron can talk about ‘one nation’: but that nation is England. Across the rest of the UK (including Wales, where the Tory Party do have some claim to be more than fringe) his Government rests on just 10% of MPs.
The problem for voters in England is that having representatives of the rest of the UK sit at Westminster obscures how the current voting system favours the ‘main parties’ almost regardless of how people vote. It also allows those parties to play on ‘nationalist’ divisions, and pretend that semi-foreign people in the north and west of the UK are ‘stealing England’s representation’ so that e.g. UKIP can gain just 1 MP from 4 million votes.
Scotland and Northern Ireland’s Votes and Representatives
The electoral system may distort the results of Tory/Labour votes in England and Wales, but the extent to which there even is a unified political system in the UK is currently in serious question. Traditionally, pundits have preferred to ignore the ‘main parties’ being unelectable in Northern Ireland, and it seems likely they would prefer to extend this to Scotland. Doing so, however, excludes 2 of 4 nations, and almost half UK territory: it is equally accurate to instead speak of Labour and Tory Parties as parties of England & Wales. The charts below show the same information (as for England and Wales) in the rest of the UK.
In Scotland, again, the electoral system can only (as it is designed to do) vastly magnify the seat-representation for the majority votes. Unlike any other part of the UK, however, one ‘other’ party in Scotland just received the absolute majority of votes cast, and an actual majority of all potential votes. More people voted SNP than voted for *all* other parties combined, and more voted SNP than did not vote at all. The way the system works means that (as with the Tories in England) these votes can dominate the election of MPs, just as previously, Scotland’s MPs were disproportionately Labour. In Northern Ireland, similar rejection of the ‘main parties’ led not to electoral reform, but to the creation of separate parties.
In Wales, the voting system has a different effect on the ‘main’ parties. Here, the largest group of voters (though only by 100,000) voted Labour. Other parties were chosen by almost as many, and by significantly more than voted Tory. Nevertheless...
... the MPs elected are just as distorted as in England. Labour’s tiny majority of votes is magnified into a vast majority of seats. ‘Other’ parties do slightly better than in England, partly because there are significantly more MPs per million of the electorate in Wales (17.5) than in England or Scotland (14.4). But even in Wales, the Tories do better in seats than votes, at almost 3 in 10 seats from less than 1 in 5 votes.
Instead, that apparent reflection of England’s votes is created in the other nations. The chart below shows the percentage of votes in England (left), the percentage of England’s MPs these votes elected, and the Parliament overall.
The 27% of people who voted Tory in England managed to elect Tories as more than 60% of England’s MPs (cannot really call them ‘representatives’!) The 15% of people who voted for other parties (over half as many as voted Tory) managed to elect only 2% of MPs. Those voters are particularly disenfranchised in this Parliament - but they would be more so if that Parliament was England-only. Clearly, Westminster does not represent England’s voters.
It is clear that a majority Tory government is not the preference of either the majority of the UK electorate overall, or the majority of people who voted on Thursday. But perhaps our system reflects the local preferences of the constituent nations? Here they are...
It is true that 4% more people voted Tory in England than voted Labour, but this was still only 27% of people in England. England was the only nation where even 1 in 5 people voted Tory. In Wales, a tiny majority voted Labour over the ‘other’ parties combined, with the Tories less popular than either. In Scotland, most people voted for ‘other’ parties (more than didn’t vote, or than voted Labour + Tory). In Northern Ireland, all votes were for for ‘other’ parties.
It is clear that the composition of the new Parliament most closely follows the voting pattern of England. However, this effect is not created by votes in England, or the MPs they elected.
Electoral Reform? The current situation MPs vs Votes.
There are a lot of assumptions flying about right now, about the ‘mood of the country’ and swings to the right. All this is just whistling in the wind because few people can quite believe how broken the UK electoral system is. Here are the facts. The pie chart on the left is the Parliament elected by Thursday’s votes (chart on the right).
Most voters (by far) endorsed none of the policies or representatives on offer. Had Labour appealed to just 1 in 7 of those people (instead of to the less-than-1-in-4 who voted Tory) they could have won a clear majority. To call this ‘apathy’ is to miss the point: the process of democracy is that parties propose policies for which people want to vote. Not that people should vote for policies they do not want (ensuring the country is governed against their preferences and ideals). Regardless, however, our voting system means that a majority government of either stripe can be chosen against the wishes of 76% of the people. To be clear, ignoring non-voters, people who voted for the opposition(s) out-number those who voted for the government almost 2 to 1 (42% vs 24%).
Current Constitutional Opinion: Funding Arrangements
The current media narrative seems to be badly misrepresenting how people think. While the UK parties focus on re-fighting the last campaign (because they nominally won, without -apparently - appreciating the Parliamentary impact, or the need to deliver on that promise of not-no-change) Scotland as a whole has moved on. While the No-*parties* prefer to imagine that the No-vote endorsed the entirety of their campaign narrative, there is very good evidence (beyond current political polls) that this couldn't be further from the case. There's equally good evidence that the heavily promoted 'division' in Scottish society (and, indeed, politics) simply doesn't exist. There's certainly no evidence that 55% 'of Scots' endorse the current situation.
Take, for example, the subsidised-Scotland myth (and SLAB's beloved Barnett) that plays so well elsewhere. Don't 'most Scots' believe Scotland gets at least a fair deal from the Union? Nope.
There is no age or political demographic in which that appears to be true. The remaining LibDems come closest: 47% of those who still feel 'close to' that party believe the division of spending is fair. Only among ConDems and over-45s do even 40% of people think this, but there's no straight Yes/No division. Among Labour supporters, the rate is average at just over 1 in 3. For every other demographic, it's around 25%. Overall, 2 in 3 people in Scotland, regardless of age or politics, think the current funding arrangements are unfair.
But don't all No voters think that Scotland benefits from UK generosity? Nope. In only one group - Tories - is that the majority view. Again - but even more clearly - there's a three-way split: ConDems are convinced, 5 or 4 to 1, that Scotland 'gets more (not less) than a fair share' of the UK budget. No one else is: in all other age/political demographics (even the over-65s) this is very much a minority view, held by about 20% of people (including older adults and Labour voters). A third group (under 45s, SNP and Green voters) are obviously even less likely to be convinced. Given the recent Budget's generosity to (some) older folks - not to mention their memories of pre-Thatcher years of actual social security - the age breakdown is logical.
Older people do still get more public services and benefits than younger people, and they certainly had more when they were younger. Older people also remember a time when public spending went to whole UK institutions, serving the whole UK relatively equally - not, as now, to private companies - and they are more reliant on mass media which almost universally promotes the fantasies that ‘nothing has really changed’ (and that any spending outside London is a gift from London, not the partial return of taxes).
All that is increasingly irrelevant, though. This research shows that over-65s are the only demographic anything approaching split on this issue. (It’s a shame the researchers do not seem to have recorded country of birth.) It’s the very even-ness of the progression (4-3-2-1 to 1 less vs more) that suggests this is historic, not political. That Scotland gets less back than it contributes to the UK is already the majority perception in working-age tax-paying Scotland. Continuing to ‘campaign’ on the basis that we have it good (and wouldn’t want to ‘risk’ that by being assertive at Westminster) is flogging a dead horse.
In line with this, people in Scotland - regardless of age or politics - are by a large majority (2 to 1) happy for the devolution of powers to depend on each nation’s ability to self-finance. This isn’t about Yes/No, although it is possible that the third of people who disagree *are* those who justify a No vote by doubt of Scotland’s viability. People in Scotland, of all persuasions, are united in thinking that ability to finance spending is a valid test - but only a few think it’s one that would limit the powers devolved.
Not to put too fine a point on it, only among Tories do significant proportions of voters think that current funding arrangements 'give’ Scotland ‘extra’ spending. And even then, it’s an even split. Significant majorities in all other demographics understand that current spending levels are a fair or reduced reflection of Scotland’s contribution to the UK, and would therefore not be threatened by devolved powers being financed from that contribution. This is not a chart showing the UK winning the economic argument about Scotland’s contribution or lack of it.
The polling breakdown that most closely mimics how people will default come out to vote is likely voters for local candidate. This particular chart is a 'worst case scenario' for the SNP - because it only shows people who did vote *and* voted for the main parties in 2010 *and* say they are already determined to vote this time. (Nevertheless, even among these people alone, the SNP lead is 4%.) These, then, are regular, traditional, mostly older voters, also taking into account the 'incumbency effect' and tactical voting.
This time, the columns do show relative sizes of vote in 2010. In terms of people who firmly intend to vote, almost as many Tories intend to vote LibDem as Tory. About half of Labour voters say they will 'stick', as will 56% of LibDems, with most of the rest going to the SNP in both cases. And that's what builds an SNP majority, even among this kind of voter.
There's always another way to look at it, so the chart below shows the 2-horse race only (among these voters only) and how each vote has been 'built' by these folk switching party, or not.
The LibDem appeal, outside their own party (and within their own party!) is limited. The vast majority of (these) people still intending to vote for Kennedy have habitually voted for Kennedy, but without the support of former Labour and Tory voters, Kennedy would be trailing the SNP by 11% - even among traditional, older voters - not 4%. This is because (despite hanging on to almost all of their 2010 vote) the majority intending to vote SNP in May are new SNP voters who've abandoned Labour and the LibDems.
It looks very much like, in other words, that the second largest group of core Kennedy voters in May will be former Tory voters. Indeed, the reason the seat still looks in play in this poll isn't 'loyalty' to Kennedy - it is tactical voting by those who used to vote Labour/Tory here. Meanwhile, the second largest group of core Blackford voters will be former LibDems. Any more former Kennedy voters that can be convinced to vote SNP this May - instead of with Labour and the Tories - will directly reduce his vote, and add to the existing SNP lead.
That's one way to build a majority, but core voters - traditional, older - are often set in their ways. The rest of the Ashcroft numbers suggest a variety of other ways to increase SNP preference. Which is, remember, 15% higher than the LibDems among all voters on a party basis.
Polling Ross, Skye and Lochaber: Switching Parties
There's a lot of media repetition of a 5% lead (which is what people in RSL said plus Lord A's adjustment) but the data tables themselves are more interesting in terms of campaigning. One of the more obvious breakdowns is answers on parties vs candidates, and how people have already 'switched' their votes since 2010.
This chart shows the actual voting pattern in 2010, the projected voting pattern (among all voters) on party, and the same (also all voters) when asked about local candidate. The latter is particularly important here, as the sitting MP has had an exceptional personal vote for many decades.
On a party basis, the LibDem vote has halved since 2010 (but even now is monumentally higher than elsewhere.) In 2010, 80% of RSL voters chose a main UK party: right now, just 48% would. To put it another way, the combined vote for UK parties right now looks considerably smaller than the Liberal vote alone in 2010. By party, the SNP lead over the LibDems among all likely voters is 18%.
However, people do not just vote by party, and it's worth considering this here. The first thing to note is the SNP vote in the Candidate column is not lower: personal 'loyalty' motivates no-one to switch back from SNP to LibDem (even former LibDem voters). The 10% extra intending to vote for Kennedy - not the LibDems - comes entirely from the other parties. So, this leaves the combined vote for UK main parties just 2% up (from Greens/UKIP) at 50%, and the SNP lead at 7%.
Part of the problem for Kennedy is that people willing to vote for him (with the LibDems in opposition, but elected across the Highlands) were not necessarily committed Liberals (particularly post-coalition with the Tories, which has already wiped out their traditional majority at Holyrood across Highland constituencies). Those people *were* LibDems in 2010 and show up in polls as such: some of them still are - the personal vote largely explains why LibDems poll 24%, not 5%, here. But based on 2010 recall, the 10% extra looks to be 2% Labour voters, 6% Tory voters, and 1% each Greens and UKIP. This is a pattern borne out by how folk have otherwise switched their vote (remembering that most, but *not all* respondents voted *here* in 2010). Former LibDems are more likely to come out to vote for the candidate, not the party, but this has not preventede massive switches.
This chart shows how people who voted for each main party in 2010 (the columns) intends to vote now (the slices). It doesn't take account of the real numbers of people in each group from 2010, but that makes it clearer where the intended LibDem vote is coming from. In Scotland generally, Tory votes - being so low, i.e. only hardcore voters - tend to stay very stable. That's certainly not the case here: only 2 in 3 people who voted Tory last time will do so again. 10% will vote for their partners-in-government the LibDems, 5% for Labour (a 'Murphy bounce'?) and 7% will switch to UKIP. 11% intend to vote SNP. That a high percentage remain unsure also suggests tactical voting among Tories.
For Labour, just over half their 2010 voters are 'sticking' but they have lost a third to the SNP. Other changes are not so surprising, given that Labour's been a tactical (challenge LibDems, oppose SNP) choice here in the past. Remarkably, in this constituency, the LibDems have retained almost as large a percentage of their former voters as Labour have, although again a third have already switched to SNP. Remarkable as that is in the national picture, this can hardly obscure the fact that almost 1 in 10 of Kennedy's former voters intend to vote Tory, with the same number going to the Greens, UKIP (Greens 6% - the highest switch from any allegiance in 2010 - to 2% UKIP) or an independent.
The most obvious thing, though, from the chart above is that the SNP are splitting the vote of other parties, but the SNP vote is not 'split'.
Cat Boyd yesterday spoke movingly about Greece rejecting their own Project Fear - not least because, for most Greeks, 'economic catastrophe' has already happened! - and building a consensus among all ages and classes about the need for rational, not-yet-failed, economic policies. Syriza's victory in the recent election shows that it is possible to vote for change; but they emphasize (and rightly) that achieving change in practice will require popular support across Europe. That support is building. But it is massively resisted.
People in Scotland - and across the UK - have the opportunity to be part of this necessary, economically crucial, process, by voting for anti-austerity parties in May. But we also have a sobering opportunity to learn from the response to Greece's democratic choice. And if we want to overcome our own Project Fear (while within the UK, or in the next campaign) we urgently need to do so.
Part of this is simply recognising that the so-called 'economic arguments' are not even tailored. The bogeymen we are invited to 'sensibly' fear are not to do with Scotland's 'weaknesses' (or the actual effects of independence) just as they are not to do with Greece's 'weaknesses' (already independent, still a debt-colony). We can tell, because the two economies are very, very different and in very, very different situations, and yet the only 'arguments' are the same.
And these 'weaknesses' do not really only come into play 'if' we vote for x or y: in fact, these threats are with us all, already and constantly. They are just the risks of living in a globalised economy under politicians that pander to the exceptionally short-term interests of badly-managed banks. They are just the consequences of not reversing the socialisation of risk that has massively increased all of our personal and social liabilities (but not our potential to profit - all profit goes to the financiers) since 2008.
So, no: voting for no change will not protect your mortgage, because in the current situation, national governments have agreed to set interest rates to disguise systemic failures in the global economy - regardless of what this does to savers and borrowers among their citizens. That means interest rates will go up when it suits banks to have them up, regardless of what that does to you. Voting for no change will not protect your wage - making Greece the whipping boy with massive imposed wage cuts has been used to disguise the large real terms fall in wages elsewhere, including the UK. It will not protect your customer base, if you're a small, medium or large business, because falling consumption from falling real wages is *bad* for your business. Yes, it is scary to think that the slightest challenge will topple the economy! But is sitting down in case the boat rocks - rather than taking *any* steps to improve its stability - really the sensible course? No.
Another lesson is seeing how far from reality all reporting of democratic choice has become. Syriza are a new government; they did *not* promise to do everything in the first month (they are not Tories, to promise whatever they think will play, with no intention of - no plan for - delivering). One of the things we need to agree on, and expect, if we are to get beyond 'Project Fear'? Is that real governments - competent governments - negotiate. They don't (and again the Tories in Europe are a useful comparison!) just make pointlessly impractical demands, and stomp their little feet when no-one listens.
Syriza have bought time to get organised in government, and decide what to do next. This is the responsible thing to do: for Europe, and for Greek citizens, whose wellbeing - not their own ideology - they were elected to represent. Reporting this as though they have chosen not to wave the magic socialist wand of utopia? Is just nonsense.
What Syriza have done - and it is a victory - is comprehensively demonstrate that current EU governance is profoundly anti-democratic. That is desperately worrying for all member states, because accepting the principle that nations' democratic decisions are irrelevant to the imposition of policy by the ECB (and that future governments are committed forever to the policies of their predecessors) is not a price that any system would *choose* to set its members. If it was capable of displaying the adaptability required to survive in the global economy. The EU just admitted massive system failure, and incapacity for self-reform. If it maintains this position, it will be a rump within the decade (regardless of what Greece chooses to do). Not reporting this, as the urgent and massive issue it is? Is just nonsense.
The antidotes to fear are kind of counter-intuitive, but really necessary. We need to talk about risk. We need to talk (especially while still in the UK) about the risks of *current policies* - and about the tools that are and are not available to us to deal with them, as citizens. We need to talk about adaptability, and how it is - really! - scarier and more impoverishing to be dictated to in the interests of others, than to act in our own interests. We need to talk about the fantasy of trickle-down, and ask ourselves and each other whether its comforts are worth its proven damage. We need to talk about whether citizens do - and should - have the right to democratically set economic policy: we need to challenge those who claim we shouldn't to apply that *to themselves*.
We need to reject the bogeyman of the 'magic socialist wand of utopia' (from both sides: it is not to be feared or desired, because it doesn't *exist*). We need to recognise that voting isn't magic either: that parties, and governments, are not all-powerful, and that the health of our societies is as much, or more, to do with our choices in daily life as the spoutings of career politicians. Most of all, perhaps, we need to recognise the lie that 'it couldn't happen here' - it could, and our elites would just leave. They can, they will, they're forever threatening to: if (when) they mess up irredeemably (as happened in Greece) the people 'responsible' will run to their offshore money, and we will carry the can. That's no risk: it's a certainty.
Voting for Syriza was the *beginning* of change, for Greece. The pyrrhic victory of Project Fear, here, needs to be the beginning of change for Scotland and the UK. Austerity was supposed to 'fix' Greece - voters believed it, voters tried it, at immense personal and social cost! - but the figures show otherwise, and people just aren't as ignorant and self-deluding as politicians. Voting No for the austerity-obsessed UK was supposed to get Scotland economic security and 'more powers, sooner' - voters believed it, voters tried it - but the figures show otherwise, and people just aren't as ignorant and self-deluding as politicians. We need, above all, to be less ignorant, less self-deluding (but as self-interested) than our moribund political 'establishments'.
See on Scoop.it - Politics ScotlandGeorge Osborne has a secret veto over large and potentially politically sensitive fraud investigations, The Independent has learnt. Under a government agreement the...
All petrol stations could either generate hydrogen locally (for example in rural locations with little traffic) or deliver hydrogen through a pipe or from a tanker from a generating plant as would likely be necessary for motorway stations. Unlike electric cars, refuelling takes the same time as refuelling petrol vehicles. Hydrogen cars are being produced now, but it is likely these will only become widespread in around twelve years and the infrastructure needs to be put in place first. From an industrial point of view, installing refuelling points is the first goal for developing a hydrogen transport industry in Scotland. However, key components of vehicles such as several battery types could result in major manufacturing in Scotland as Scottish universities are among world leaders in this research. Other vehicle components could also be manufactured locally. Mass hydrogen storage will be necessary anyway and would boost Scotland's construction sector. Several smaller Scottish electrolysis companies are world leaders and producing products and selling internationally, therefore the potential for hydrogen vehicles is evident.”
There is particular potential here to develop both road and sea hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, and local generation is obviously attractive in rural areas to reduce our high import costs for fuel (this is already being explored in Shetland http://move.shetland.org/renewable-energy).
“Improving and expanding public transportation so that it is both affordable and accessible to everybody is fundamental to the idea of Common Weal. People and goods have to travel large distances in similar directions on a regular basis – why would we devise a system to meet this need which is anything other than the most efficient possible? And since transport organised on a public-collective basis (buses, trains and ships) is much more efficient and environmentally sustainable than transport organised on a private-individual basis (cars), how can it make sense not to invest in collective public transport? There are few other areas of life where the overwhelming efficiency of public-collective over private-individual is so clear.”
“Me-First politics mocks public transport, mostly viewing it as a second-rate option for those who can't afford a car. To prove its point, Me-First politics runs public transport for commercial profit with the minimum investment and in doing so creates a very poor-quality but extremely expensive system (one of the most expensive in Europe) which really is a second-rate option. So yet again Me-First politics seeks to show that All-Of-Us-First politics doesn't work by drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat, watching it sink and saying 'see – told you so'.”
Again, that attitude is very suburban – in much of rural Scotland, particularly the west, the car is both very expensive and actually fourth-rate, but there are no longer any alternatives. This is yet another approach to policy which assumes that if something is possible in one place, everywhere it’s less possible is defective as a place (rather than being poorly served by policy). Only in the UK would a nation with a longer coastline than Greece (and a massive tourist industry, and an unusual drive-side) see travel by boat as something to be avoided wherever possible!
“We cannot convince people to get out of the car and into public transport unless we make it easy and cheap for them to do so. The first step to doing so must be to re-nationalise ScotRail [and CalMac]. The 'natural monopoly' of the… service means that there is little incentive for private companies to reduce prices as they face little competition. Prices have grown well above wages, whilst company executives have received six-figure bumper salary increases. Bringing ScotRail back into public ownership does not even require the compensation that usually comes with re-nationalisation. The Scottish Government simply has to wait until the current contract on the franchise… expires [in 2020]... Not one penny has to be spent to buy the franchise back from shareholders as it has operated on a lease system… This new system cannot just be top-down led, it must include government, worker and passenger representation to ensure the needs of the public as a whole are the first priority. It may also be necessary to have regular input from rural community leaders, environmentalists, green energy experts and business - transport cuts across all these groups and therefore we must balance the economy, the environment and the urban and rural population in our strategic outlook.”
These points apply equally to anything radical we might do with collective sea-transport. Greece shows that it is possible (even in a nation not often imagined as ‘advanced’, Nordic-efficient, or whatever) to have a system which reaches from every island and major coastal community to international destinations, allowing people and goods to travel fairly rapidly, very energy-efficiently, and mostly without personal vehicles (at a wide variety of prices/levels of comfort).
The crucial consideration for Scotland is a bit of innovation, and the understanding that current levels of car use will continue to become even more expensive and unsustainable, in terms of fuel and wear-and-tear on roads. Sailing cars around, however, is expensive (and deeply unimaginative, when there are already moves afoot to provide common car-facilities in urban areas) and requires a lot of new infrastructure in piers, large ferries, and so on. (Sailing lorries around is even worse!) So, what’s the alternative?
Well, why not passenger/freight ferries plus local car rental and haulage (both of which provide new jobs and income)? Every major – and most minor – coastal/island communities already have passenger-suitable piers or jetties. So it is madness that hundreds of thousands of visitors annually debark planes, rent cars, and drive north to them, on an unfamiliar side of the road, clogging up major and minor roads throughout rural Scotland and having horribly expensive accidents. And as so often, the rental income stays south, while the road maintenance, medical, and quality of life costs go north. We don’t lack the infrastructure to change this, just the services: if you’re going to the Outer Isles, or touring western/northern Scotland, why can’t you take the train to Mallaig and a boat to the Outer Hebrides, then rent a car? Or a train to Kyle, then a boat to Gairloch or Portree, then rent a car?
Why should we, on Skye, have to drive six hours and 250 miles to hospital and back, when there’s one 50 miles away in Stornoway? Why can’t one get off a plane at Prestwick, and on a boat to Campbeltown, then on to Barra, and on up the chain? Prestwick to Campbeltown is about 30 miles by boat – and 171 by road. (Campbeltown to Larne is 80 miles by boat, but 254 by road and ferry.) Barra’s no further from Islay than it is from Oban, and Islay to Prestwick is only 60 miles by sea.
These trips sound fantastical at the moment, but why should they be? Overnight travel on a ferry (even in the ‘airline’ seats, lowest price category) is easier and more comfortable, and can be much cheaper, than a sleeper (or a hotel/B&B!) If you’re going to the city – for business or pleasure – how often do you really need it to be your own car you use there (if you have one). And most folk travelling the other way come from places where they use public transport, or would be renting a car anyway.
If carless-ferry travel was normalised for longer journeys, it would also be easier and more normal to run local boats, as presently in Knoydart. RIBs are less energy-efficient, but incredibly fast (and fun). Many of the places we live, and visitors want to see, are coastal. And while roads are somewhat less weather-dependent, our increasingly extreme - in wind, wet and coastal surf - weather is already making road travel problematic in adverse conditions. As for freight, much of it arrives in the UK in shipping containers anyway – you don’t actually need to ship the lorry too, if there’s a system at the endpoint. Just like local car rental, such a system would automatically benefit local firms (and reduce ferry fuel costs and fares).
“Prices needed to be significantly reduced to entice more people onto the rails, which will have to coincide with a major increase in manufacturing, maintenance and development of infrastructure to increase capacity. A sustainable national mutual company building rail infrastructure could create new jobs in manufacturing in Scotland. This new industry could be further boosted by an increasing use of freight on the railways, to reduce truck movement on the roads and increase efficiency. The shift from road to rail freight would in itself be a significant infrastructure challenge that would create jobs.” Again, all this also applies to boat-building…
“Expansion of the rail line [and shipping lines] to rural communities and the re-opening of derelict stations [and piers] can, in combination with an effective rural industrial policy, be a key component in re-populating rural parts of Scotland and expanding business development beyond the central belt. Making more parts of Scotland's landscape cheap to get to and easily accessible would also be a big boost to Scotland's tourism industry, helping to realise Scotland's untapped potential in domestic tourism.” Imagine if people could take an overnight boat north from Glasgow after work on Friday (and home on Sunday evening) instead of driving for 12-16 hours and needing 2-3 nights stay? How much more accessible would the north and west become, in terms of price and time – and vice-versa?
“In inter-city rail links, upgrading including electrification and expansion is required… public-public partnerships (PUPs) should be used for contracting rather than outsourcing. PUPs draw on relevant expertise from public sector practices in other countries and have been used extensively in water and electricity sectors in Latin America. They have been shown to be more efficient and of higher quality than PFI. Any model of investment which moves away from the UK system will help. Like so much of Me-First politics the UK system only works to protect corporate profits by passing costs on to passengers with no proper planning. It is incredibly inefficient and has created that perfect storm of poor quality and high prices. A properly-structured transport system will make much better use of investment.
Transport currently accounts for 23.7 per cent of Scotland's carbon emissions... For some rural areas rail expansion is not cost effective. Therefore community-owned bus and mini-bus services could be utilised, potentially with Government support or support from local community banks to get them started. For Scotland's islands, there is the potential for much greater investment in ferry services. Norway's publicly-owned ferry service, with its rugged coastal line comparative to Scotland's, could provide a model going forward.”
The point is not to try and make one form of transport replace the car: the point is to recognise that – particularly in remote areas – the one-size-fits-all focus on road transport is ineffective and inefficient, and any mix would be better. Roads/cars have been a massive boon, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only solution to every travel requirement. The Postbus system had great synergy (and the current courier system, with 3 vans in each small area daily, is daft and slow). Recombining postal deliveries, accepting parcels from couriers, and reinstating small passenger service in the same public-funded vehicle could radically increase public transport coverage and reduce emissions. We need to do something to keep universal postal services - so why not do something effective with multiple benefits?
To “increase rates of investment and… reduce costs to the passenger. A good chunk… will be raised by making public and collective transport a non-profit sector which means existing operators (all of which run at a profit) will not be extracting corporate profits. Long-term borrowing linked to the National Investment Bank will also significantly reduce the cost of investment – at the moment the cost of investing in infrastructure in Britain is just about the most expensive in the world because of the way it is paid for (generous amounts are added onto passenger fares on the basis of a faulty regulatory framework)… It will take time for the financial models needed for a high-quality transport system at affordable fares to work. But it is essential we make it work.”
It is also important that investment in infrastructure (and particularly in transport) has immediate real-economy benefits: it creates jobs, but it also radically reduces fuel, (taxpayer-funded) repair and time costs in local economies. Which means folk have more time (to work, volunteer and play, instead of drive or wait for buses) and more money (to spend on local goods, services and activities, instead of pouring it into oil company profits at the pump). More efficient transport is also good for prices, both in our rural shops, and for our rural companies. Meanwhile, taking the pressure off roads simply makes them faster and longer-lasting, without upgrading costs.
More than that, Scotland’s coasts and islands (and sea life) are a world-class draw, which we currently insist visitors shuffle around beside on slow and shoddy roads, instead of offering them unique and flexible voyages at a variety of scales. That’s expensive, inefficient, unappealing madness!
I often want to get from Portree to Gairloch: it’s 20 miles as the crow flies, they’re both good harbours. But it’s 101 miles by road. And that’s so often how transport-life is here: time spent looking at somewhere you want to go, close enough to see just over there, but too-far-in-the-car! It’s a problem of assumptions – e.g. everything has to be ‘on demand’, which ain’t necessarily so, if it’s a choice between impossible vs. easy-at-some-times – not of practicality. (Or is it that some folk like swanning around in their yachts and cruise-ships more when the rest of us are land-bound? Who knows!)
But boats can be great for people with limited mobility, and for the elderly, and for folk with kids – and what you might lose in whenever-you-want-trips, you certainly gain in being able to spend the travel time as you please, not stuck in traffic behind the wheel! In the same way, the only ones who really profit from tourists spending their holidays mainly driving in rural Scotland are oil companies, the UK government, and national car rental outfits. While they’re driving, tourists cannot visit attractions, go to shops or cafes, take in the scenery, or do anything unique to our area (except get confused by sheep) and they cannot even get far.
More varied and appropriate collective transport, then, could transform Scotland’s sustainable tourism, heal our urban-rural divide, radically reduce our emissions (and ongoing public spending) and reduce transport/distance deprivation, fuel poverty, and the costs of doing business. What’s stopping us? Just the for-profit assumptions outlined in the quotes above – and probably that London-based policymakers like that ‘run down Hebridean feel’.
Home and croft owners probably account for around 2% of all land (or 8,000 acres total, including around 2,000 acres of owned crofts in Glendale). In other words 99.75% of residents either own no land at all, or share 2% of Skye & Lochalsh. Meanwhile on Skye, 0.25% of residents own 19% of private land, and the equivalent of 0.25% of the population (but non-resident) own the other 79%.
As the chart shows, on Skye 12 owners have under 1000 acres (total 8756 acres, 4% of non-public land, 58% resident, 3 common grazings). 16 have 1000-2000 acres (total 24,500, 11%, 69% resident, mostly farms, one common grazings). 12 have more than 2,000-5,000 acres (total 36,855, 17%, 58% resident). 4 estates are 6,000-12,000 acres (total 37,104, 17% – one a commonage of 100+ owners). 4 estates are between 13,000 and 40,070 acres (total 113,458 acres, 51% of all non-public land on Skye, no resident owners).
In Lochalsh, 3 owners have under 1000 acres (total 2166 acres, 1% of all land, 1 resident). 2 owners have 1000-2000 acres (total 3418, 2%, none resident). 4 have more than 2,000- 5,000 acres (total 14,528, 7%, none resident). 2 estates are 6,000-12,000 acres (total 15,091, 8%). 5 estates are larger than 13,000 acres (total 159,274 acres, 82% of land, no resident owners).
Who owns Skye & Lochalsh? The Scottish Government is the single largest landowner, with about 180,000 acres on Skye. 39% of the remaining Skye estate land is owned by titled familes – one German, 2 clan chiefs, one UK. One national charity owns one estate, 14% of all non-public land. 5% of land (4 estates) is owned by commercial companies, one based in Inverness, the rest in Liechtenstein, Isle of Man and the USA. 9% of land (6 estates) is owned in common. The remaining third of non-public land in estates is owned by 32 individuals (21 resident, 7 living in the rest of the UK, 4 overseas).
In Lochalsh, 29% of estate land is owned by titled families. One charity owns two estates, a total of 12% of area. 39% of land is owned by companies, one locally based, one of unclear location, 2 in UK and one registered in Channel Islands. The remaining 20% of land is owned by 5 individuals, all based in the SE of England.
Land per person: Another way to look at this is acres per owner (bearing in mind 6 Skye estates are owned in common by townships, counted as one owner as numbers unknown). On Skye, 92% of landowners own just 49% of the privately owned land, while 8% own 51%. In Lochalsh, 69% of landowners own just 18% of the privately owned land, while 31% own 82%. Of course, in both places, people who own multiple acres are a tiny number – less than 1% (0.5% on Skye, 0.7% in Lochalsh because there are so few residents on the estates).
Overall average estate size in each area is 4,597 and 12,155 acres. In both places, the top 4 or 5 landowners own 10x as many acres each as all the other landowners (44 estates average 2437 acres on Skye, vs. 4 with average 28,364 acres each; 11 estates average 3200 acres in Lochalsh, vs. 5 with average 31,855 acres each). Again, this is only talking about landowners! This means that breaking up just the largest estates (over 13,000 acres) would almost double the number of landowners for Skye, and triple it in Lochalsh.
Land tax and land reform: It’s worth noting that – for Scotland! – Skye has relatively equal landownership, compared to other areas. Land reform in Europe – to combat this sort of inequality – has generally been gradual, and maintained by non-perverse incentives, such as land taxes. These make it unprofitable for anyone to own or manage more land than they can actively work with. This sort of land reform is not about dispossessing anyone, but only about encouraging people to make choices about their landownership.
For example, taxing land but offering a rate of tax relief on tenanted land, encourages landowners to make as much as possible of their land available for new entrants to farming and crofting. In the same way, offering relief on sites for affordable housing or small business development can make it more likely that historic farm buildings etc. will be brought back into use and local housing provided. With such taxes, the very wealthy are still able to own vast tracts of land if they want and are prepared to pay towards local services (which, after all, save them money, add value to their property, and make it usable at all).
A local land tax in Skye & Lochalsh would be a monopoly tax, rather than strictly speaking a wealth tax, and could even easily be inapplicable to almost all resident owners (and all farms and common grazings) by kicking in around 10,000 acres (which is 81 times the average European holding), as long as provision was made to prevent evasion by artificially 'dividing' estates between notionally separate companies. (There are already incentives against this, as sale triggers more complete and map-based ownership registration, and invites the possibility of community purchase.) Initially, it would probably be more about establishing the principle - that landownership is currently exclusively serviced (and 'public goods' provided) by local and national taxpayers, while landowners only reap the profits - than taking in vast sums. Long term, however, such tax would inevitably encourage owners to invest more in smaller estates, in order to generate profits to offset taxes - and this could only benefit local jobs and economies...
[1] For which details are known, not including those in public ownership. Details from whoownsscotland.org, which has good but not universal coverage of our area, making figures somewhat approximate. Lochalsh estates taken as those including part of the residential areas (many extend further in- and up-land than the ward boundary).
Employment, Diversification, Community Businesses…
The UK tax system is based on activity (wages tax = income tax/NI, spending tax = VAT, running businesses = rates/corporation tax/NI, investing money tax = capital gains, not being homeless tax = Council Tax, social housing tax = bedroom tax) not profit or wealth. Although taxes exist for greater-than-maintenance profits and income, they’re widely avoided. There is no general land tax or progressive property tax, there’s tax on income from money saved, and ways to remove most significant wealth from any taxation.
Leaving aside the political issues of whether this works (and its effects) on a really basic level, this system simply cannot work as well in Scotland purely because our population density is lower. Four times lower across most of Scotland (close to EU average) but 17 times lower in the Highlands and Islands!
In the high-population UK, it makes some sense to focus all policy on a) efficiencies of scale in delivering services to urban populations, and b) encouraging and supporting large businesses, or businesses to become large. Where there are lots of people in a small area, the only limits to business growth are voluntary demand and competence in meeting it – but where there are few people across large areas, demand is always lower regardless of how good the business, product or service; most businesses have to be smaller. The same is pretty much true of public services. These situations just do demand different approaches, but the UK can (sort of) afford to ignore that, or at least, does ignore it.
Even in parts of Scotland closer to the UK average, and less disadvantaged by this, it still has an impact (these areas are involved in delivering goods and services to rural Scotland, funding rural Scotland, and drawing on rural Scotland as a client base with very different costs than the places around urban areas in the rest of the UK).
The crucial point is that in terms of taxable activity, rural Scotland can only be ‘poorer’ than other areas, and therefore ‘dependent’ on ‘subsidy’ from them. But! This is only because the UK chooses not to tax (or measure) those aspects of the economy in which rural Scotland is rich. (Not least because people elsewhere profit from these, although our tax base does not!) And this, not some problem with rural Scotland itself, is why there’s never enough money to develop local economies to create a comparable activity-tax base: it’s a vicious cycle.
The radically different approach to local government in most of Europe isn’t altruism: it is a way to balance these differences between different types of area, by allowing each area to tax the resources they have rather than relying on central policies and subsidies (as in the UK). Therefore, reforming local government would have been high on the agenda of an independent Scotland – luckily, it still can be, if we have the will to press for it.
How is this relevant to the key issues of:
structural support for employment that pays the living wage (or more);
structural support for whole year employment;
support for diversification of economy away from tourism;
support for community business and ownership;
support for community business to enter the competitive marketplace?
It’s relevant because national policies and revenues of income/corporation tax, business support, and so on (denied for now by the No vote) are not anyway the best way to raise or spend money in areas that are different from the national norm (whether UK or Scottish). And while the ability to circulate goods, services and wages mainly in Scotland’s national economy depends for consuming (urban/suburban) areas on a border, this isn’t true in producing areas like ours (where with the right investment we could easily use more local goods, benefiting our whole local economy).
Rural-local economies in other European nations prosper largely because they have the powers they need to play to their strengths, rather than trying to pretend they are ‘like everywhere else’. That is, they are able to raise money for investment and public services from the resources they have most of, while also exempting things they want to encourage. By doing so, they can encourage and benefit from greater circulation of local goods and services in their local economy.
To put it another way, the questions regarding these key forms of support have always been: ‘where will the money come from?’ and ‘how will we persuade government to give it to us, instead of areas with more voters?’ And the answers have been a) there isn’t enough money and b) even when there is, it does not come here. This would have changed with independence – because we would have been proportionally more voters, proportionally more important to the tax base, and because (to prosper) Scotland would have needed to make better use of all its resources.
However, it is also possible to answer the ‘where would the money come from?’ question in a completely different way, because local governments raising money locally need there to be whole-year living-wage employment, so that people can afford local goods and services from diverse and resilient local businesses (owned locally, trading locally, and also drawing income in from the wider competitive marketplace). Therefore, for local governments, it is worth taxing their immovable resources (like land, luxury property purchases, holiday home incomes, recreational use of public goods) to grow their local economies. (People want to come here – they already pay to come here, but mostly they do not pay here, to come here.)
National governments don’t need this sort of economy here – the amounts they give us or get from us are so small, relatively (and our representatives so few) that it’s barely worth their time thinking about us.
Part of the problem with thinking about local taxation is we all know what tax most of us pay – and we know we cannot afford to pay ‘extra’. The thing is – because government and media focus on income tax – we are not used to thinking about who pays the majority of existing local taxes, and how this affects us differently here. We are also not used to thinking about what some people get in and from our area that is never taxed at all – and how the taxes we all pay make money for them.
Their proposal is for a universal system - replacing Council Tax and including currently untaxed land and property - which separates the value of a building from the value of its location (location, location). This is already how buildings are insured.
A persuasive reason for doing this is that it allows capital gains (in property value) from public investment in infrastructure to be captured by the tax system, so that some of the increase in value goes back into investing in and maintaining the infrastructure. (At the moment, there is no direct link between these things, which is less of a problem in cities, but a massive problem in rural areas, see more here.)
Another reason is that this kind of system encourages housing provision (because the value of the site, not the building, is taxed - therefore, it is better for the owner to make use of the site, otherwise they are paying out for no income).
A final reason is that separately taxing the land on which a property is built recognises a reality of how house value works. Houses cost much the same to build, per square metre, all across the country - but that cost is actually only a fraction of their final worth, depending on where they are. The investment value of a house, then, is tied up in relative location, not practical value as somewhere for people to live. And yet people need places to live - and the social and wider economic value of that is much greater.
In the UK these things are totally out of step. Separating the two aspects (the site as an investment, the house as a needed residence) by taxing the land/house site (land tax) instead of the people who live in the house (Council Tax) limits speculation and the price impact of fads/busts/prices elsewhere. It also makes it more economical and beneficial for people to invest in the fabric of their homes, rather than trade-up.
A large part of the report's argument is that it would be possible to raise as much or more money with land tax while keeping what most people pay at or below what they currently pay in Council Tax and business rates.
These are all good things. However, they do not seem to me to be things that are possible without independence, while we are still fully tied to the UK property market. So, what I've been focusing on is how taxing other sorts of land works, and could work here. Again, this is not something - because of vested interests! - likely to be applied soon at a national level in Scotland-in-the-UK.
However, it seems much more possible at a local level, as part of a reform of local government/finance. It would be easier to tailor and experiment with at this level, and could be tried where the case is clearest, because landownership is most unequal. And working out the pitfalls locally would be a significant step towards making more use of this kind of tax, because it is easier for people to understand in practice than in the abstract?
The first thing is looking at what our landownership tax base is...
Currently, in Eilean Siar, more than 70% of Council Tax is paid by people living in below-average housing with just 0.55% paid by people in well above average housing. In contrast, Stirling’s housing stock means people in average or just above average housing pay most of the Council Tax (and Band G are the highest paying band overall).
Inability to vary (the multiple of Band D) paid by each band in different Local Authorities makes Council Tax an extremely regressive tax in many parts of Scotland – and increases the amount of public spending required to pay Council Tax Benefit, which becomes essentially tax relief for average and above average earners. This is why COSLA’s Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy recommends “That local government… has autonomy over… assessing property values. Successive governments have not undertaken a revaluation of the council tax base… set in 1993. That local government has autonomy to set the tax rate and tax bands, where major equity issues exist with the current system” as its first two conditions for continuing to fund local government from residential taxes (2014:21).
An immediate objection would be that making such changes would ‘put people off investing in the area’. The obvious rebuttal is that people in above average homes in Eilean Siar are clearly not currently investing in the area, as they expect all local services and infrastructure (giving value to their homes) to be paid for by others. How this isn’t the definition of ‘benefit tourism’ has never been adequately explained!
The less principled rebuttal is just to look at the figures. The blue line below is the current average payment of Council Tax by home value (bearing in mind that people renting – who tend to be in bands A-D – have no wealth from their home, while people owning high-value homes have a great deal of growing wealth from theirs). There are at the moment, no differences in the tax paid at and above around £0.5 million. The red line is the rate of payments required to create the Stirling situation for residents of the housing actually available in Eilean Siar. The green line is rough rates of income tax at equivalent pay grades.
The red line looks extreme, until compared with Income Tax. By this comparison, the blue line (existing CT payments) is extreme! Part of the point of this graph is to show one of the things local taxes are supposed to achieve; locally desirable ends.
People with lots of free income – needed to have a £0.5+ million home in the Outer Hebrides – are also in a position to materially affect the local housing stock, and thus reduce their own future CT payments. If CT was responsive in this way, it would be a big incentive for residents of expensive homes to make the effort to invest in other local property, because they would benefit not only from rents/sales, but also from reductions in their payments as the median tax bands expanded.
Obviously, this example is an extreme – to improve on the current situation requires only some, not total, compensation for existing housing inequality. It is interesting to note that significant changes could be achieved with relatively minimal adjustments to most people.
A less radical change would be the fourth column in the first chart (40%/50%/10%) - for taxpayers in A-C to pay 1.8x less, bands D-F 1.7x more, and bands G-H (and above) 18x more. This is shown by the purple line on the chart above. The point is that there are multiple ways to adjust the Council Tax system to make it more progressive, more democratic, more likely to improve housing stock/tax base and less like tax relief for the wealthy.
Such policies might not work in other areas – where there is competition between mostly similar places – but there is only one Eilean Siar, and you either want a luxury house there or you don’t. It is difficult to see any reason why people who do want one should be subsidised by all taxpayers through government public spending, and by local taxpayers (often on low-incomes in substandard housing) rather than paying their own way.
While the situation in Skye and Lochalsh is (probably, no area figures exist) less extreme, numbers of high-value homes here are significantly lower than the national average (and those which exist are significantly more likely to be second-homes on a 10% discount or purpose-built holiday homes on a 50% discount than they are elsewhere).
This kind of reform of Council Tax could have three immediate effects. It would reduce the amount of Scotland’s public spending which currently goes on Council Tax Benefit, freeing this money for other use. It would automatically increase the disposable incomes of many low-income households currently affected by regressive Council Tax payments, to the immediate benefit of local economies. Finally, it would allow areas – e.g. those significantly affected by second-home ownership, holiday-home development and high demand for housing – to adopt and test incentives/penalties to address these issues, and do so flexibly over time in response to wider economic conditions.
That said, Council Tax is not the last word in property taxation (as payable by tenants, it is not strictly speaking a property tax at all, but a residential one). There are persuasive arguments for its total replacement, for example by a Land Value Tax (more later). But for the moment, reforming Council Tax is relatively easy and achievable with local government reform.
