I’ve been away for the past few months doing
research and trying to help with a family crisis. The crisis consists in people
losing their jobs or having their salaries drastically cut. It consists in
prices rising and food being too expensive to buy. There are no food-banks here, but nobody starves. There’s
a tradition in Russia of friends and family rallying round in times of trouble.
Anyway we’ve been through much worse and we’ll come through this too. No doubt
some people in Britain think this is all richly deserved. But ordinary people
have little say in what their governments do and it’s ordinary people who
suffer not those in government. I tell people here in Russia sometimes about
the election campaign in Britain. I tell them about the complaints that some
people in Scotland have about the UK. It’s all met with utter bemusement. But
what’s wrong with Britain they say? What indeed?
There are few countries in the world doing as well
as Britain. There’s a simple reason for this. In order for a country to be successful
you need three things: Democracy, free markets and the rule of law. Look around
the world at countries which are doing poorly in nearly every case you will
find that one or more of these things is lacking. Of course there are some rich
tyrannies which happen to have been lucky enough to be sitting on an expensive
resource, but without the resource they would soon be reduced to poverty. The
solution to poverty around the world is to introduce the three things that they
lack. If every poor country in the world could introduce democracy, free
markets and the rule of law they would rapidly cease to be poor. But that’s
easy. Why don’t we do it tomorrow?
Have you any idea how few full democracies there are
in the world? There are 24.
The trouble is that it’s not easy setting up a
democracy. Most people think that it’s about achieving power. It isn’t. It’s
about being defeated and accepting that defeat without a murmur. In most
countries democracy is rigged so that only one person or party really has a
chance. It took Britain hundreds of years to develop democracy. It is a very
fragile thing that can easily be lost, but it is a very difficult thing to
create. Many countries in the past 50 years have tried to create a democracy
from tyranny, nearly all have failed. By the way in every country there are
parts that habitually vote differently to the whole. That is not flaw in a
democracy, it’s a feature. It therefore matters no more that Scotland sometimes votes
differently to the UK as a whole than that Aberdeenshire sometimes votes
differently to Scotland as a whole. There is no democratic deficit in Scotland. In each case the majority rules. That’s
democracy.
Some people in Britain complain about the undemocratic
House of Lords. I’m not a great fan either, but it actually does work as an
effective check on the UK government. I’m far more concerned that the Scottish
government has no check on what it can do at all as it has a committee system
that works like the Supreme Soviet doing its master’s bidding. But anyway the
answer if you are concerned about the House of Lords is to seek to replace it
with some form of elected upper chamber. That too might be useful in Scotland.
The UK economy is one of the most successful in the
world. The average standard of living here is very high compared to the vast
majority of countries in the world. Even compared to Europe, Britain is doing
extraordinarily well. How do we know this? One way we know that the UK is doing
well is that people in their hundreds of thousands want to come to live and
work here. This is in part because we have the lucky advantage of speaking a
language that they too can speak, but also because on the whole we are
welcoming. People are voting with their feet to come to Britain. We should
thank each of them who compliments us by doing this. We should also reflect on
the peculiarity of some contrarians who want to leave.
If you travel around Europe at the moment you will
find economies in crisis. If you go further afield you will find a situation
that is still worse. In every case the solution is to introduce freer
markets. North and South Korea started
from the same point when they were tragically divided. One is now poor the
other is wealthy. The difference is quite simple. In North Korea there are not
free markets, in South Korea there are. This
experiment has been tested to destruction. There are only two models of economy
that work. You can have free markets with social democracy or you can have free
markets which are a little bit freer tending towards laissez faire capitalism.
There is a degree of political choice here. In the end it’s a decision about
public spending. Do you want the Government to spend around 30% of GDP or do
you want them to spend between 40 and 50% of GDP. There’s a balance. The less the state
spends the more the economy will grow, but lots of the things we want in
society depend on government spending. There
is a balance also between growing the economy and trying to make a pleasant
inclusive society where everyone has a chance and no-one is left behind. In
Britain there is actually very little substantial difference between the economic
views of the main parties. This is
because any other view would demonstrably make us all poorer. Unfortunately
some people on the fringes have yet to realise this.
Social democracy can work, there are lots of
countries which have a social democratic model. But socialism does not work. It
will make you poorer. It is therefore senseless when people in Scotland
complain that Labour isn’t left wing enough. Labour reacted to events in the
modern economy by adapting its ideas so that they could work. People who
complain about Labour not being left wing enough are really trying to go back
to a model that would make the economy worse and people poorer. I frequently
come across SNP supporters who say they want Labour to go back to how it used
to be. I get the impression sometimes that this means going back to Michael Foot. But it is precisely because Labour moved with the times that they have
remained a party with a plan to run the UK economy that could work. I’m not
making a political point here. There is a legitimate debate about Labour and
Conservative economic policies. But each has a credible plan that involves us
living within our means. Not living within our means leads to poverty. It’s
only the SNP that lacks a credible economic plan, partly because they would do
or say anything to break up Britain, partly because breaking up Britain is in
itself economically incoherent. Why break up one of the few countries that is
actually recovering from the 2008 economic crisis?
There is inequality in the UK. But perfect equality
is neither possible nor desirable economically. In every successful economy
there are rich people and poor people. How much you even this out is a matter
of political choice. But poor people in Britain are doing hugely better than
poor people in nearly every country in the world. It is because we have a
successful economy that we can afford healthcare, benefits, pensions and all
the other things we want. The best way to help poor people is to create an
economy where there are jobs and which can afford to pay ever higher wages.
Britain is creating jobs. This is why people from all over Europe and indeed
the world are coming here.
Like democracy, the rule of law is something that
takes centuries to develop. The enemy of the rule of law is corruption. Many
SNP supporters complain about Britain being corrupt. There are in fact very few
countries in the world that are less corrupt that the UK. I wouldn’t try to bribe a policeman in Britain for I
know that it will only get me into still more trouble. I don’t have to pay a
doctor a back hander in order to get treatment. Students don't have to bribe academics to so that they don't fail their courses. Some people think that our
politicians are corrupt. In fact we have some of the most honest politicians in
the world. The whole parliamentary expenses scandal was in fact a lot of nonsense. How much
did these expenses cost the government? At most a few million. In an economy
the size of the UK, this is a quite trivial sum. The whole problem stems from
the fact that MPs are grossly underpaid. Someone involved in running a country
should be paid a competitive amount, yet they don’t even earn what a GP earns.
This is silly. Pay MPs an index linked sum that is the equivalent of a director
of a small company and then say they must have no expenses whatsoever. Problem
solved.
Some SNP supporters complain about paedophilia in
Westminster. I find it morally degenerate to try to use child abuse for
political purposes. Child abuse exists everywhere in every country including in
Scotland. There have been cover ups in Britain. People have been protected who
ought not to have been protected. But the fact that we know about these things,
the fact that the police are investigating is a demonstration of how little we
are corrupt. In a country that is really corrupt you never hear about
corruption and no-one dares mention it anyway.
By any normal standard of judgment Britain is a
great country. We have problems like everyone else, but the solution is to face
them together rather than splitting up and trying to face them apart.
Nationalists assume that everything that’s great
about Britain would continue even if there were no Britain. But it is the fact
that we have worked together for centuries that has given us free markets,
democracy and the rule of law. Everything I love about Scotland except the mountains came into existence during and because of the union. None of these things existed in a proper way
prior to the formation of our country.
The glue that holds us together is that we are
British. Many SNP supporters hate the word British. They reject it. I wonder if
they know what they are rejecting. British is the identity of choice of most people who
have come to the UK from overseas. Many people who were not born in the UK or whose
parents do not come from the UK feel unable to describe themselves as English,
Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish. Those identities tend to be available most
to those who can trace their ancestry back centuries. I wish that this were not
so. But it is so. British is the far more inclusive identity that is shared by
all of us equally. I don’t care where your parents come from, if you are a
citizen you are as British as I am.
Too many British citizens at the moment are
focussing on what divides us rather than what unites us. It is making Britain a
very unpleasant place to live. We should all recognise how lucky we are to be
here. There are countries that do things better than us perhaps, but there are
far, far more that do things worse. What we have, what we share would not
necessarily survive divorce. The danger of turning against each other is that
we turn against anyone who does not share one of our identities. This
frequently is where nationalism leads. I have seen levels of hatred in Scotland
that shock me. Simply for putting forward a political view using reasoned
argument I have been shouted down and abused in the most despicable way. This
is not civic nationalism, it is not even civil nationalism it is hatred against
those who think differently. Nationalism is dividing Scotland in a deeply
unpleasant way. It is not founded on reason, for it is an attack on Britain
and the British which looks faintly ludicrous from a perspective of overseas.
Everyone I know in Russia thinks Britain is a great country. One of the best.
Everyone I meet admires British history and culture. They find the hatred of
Britain and the British by the British simply incomprehensible. I do too. It’s
a form of self-hatred and it’s poisoning our country.
If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the
Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow
the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.
