The trouble with the Unionist cause is that it’s so disunited. Douglas Alexander’s speech in Scotland today may appear to bring Labour in line with the Tories and Lib Dems by hinting at greater powers for Scotland in future, but the truth is that it’s just another piece of string in an increasingly tangled mess. And so we have Alexander saying that ‘we must be open minded on how we can improve devolution’s powers, including fiscal powers,’ while, we’re told, he’s also ‘cautious… about fiscal measures that undermine the stability of the block grant system used to fund the three devolved governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.’ We have the Scottish Labour leader, Johann Lamont, demanding a devolution settlement that sees resources ‘redistributed from the south-east of England to Scotland’. We have Ed Miliband talking about redistribution going in the other direction. We have a Devo Plus campaign in Scotland which ‘has been vigorously resisted by the Tories and Danny Alexander’. We have … oh, I could go on and on, but you get the point. Everyone’s trying to offer more power, short of independence, to Scotland — but they’re confusing the issue as they do so.
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything else from a broader cause which spans various parties and personalities. But Alex Salmond will still thrive on the current situation. He is already making much out of the fact that the Unionists are big on promises, short on specifics. So long as they also remain divided on just what those promises are, then the SNP leader will be able to play up the uncertainty of their offer.
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