POOLING and sharing. It’s all about “pooling and sharing”. That was why we had to vote No. Apparently.
Of course, many of us knew at the time that the only pools most Tory politicians were interested in were of the “heated” variety, on some sun-kissed tax-haven as far away from our reality as possible. But the audacity of the Conservative Government is extraordinary, and the mistake of Labour in following them into the Valley of Better Together clearer than ever.
Much has been written already about how the plan for English Votes for English Laws is the “last orders” bell for the Union. There’s some truth to that: many Scots won’t take kindly to our MPs being treated as second class parliamentarians. But if anything, it’s the dismantling of the social security system which is accelerating us towards the end of Westminster rule.
To understand why, it’s important to think back. Scotland and England came together in 1707 in the wake of the Darien disaster so the elites of the countries could work together to build the biggest empire in human history. Until the Second World War, that was largely the deal. The plunder from across the world ensured that this endeavour was profitable for enough people to keep our countries together.
Between 1939 and 1945, things changed. Britain went into war as an empire and emerged as a country. As David Edgerton points out in Britain’s War Machine, you can see this shift in the rhetoric of Churchill’s speeches.
In 1940, his “we” was imperial. By 1945, it was national.
With the loss of the empire, the original purpose of the Union went too. But one thing delayed the centrifugal force of history for more than half a century. The Beveridge Report ensured that the new country which emerged from the war was a different one from the empire which had gone in. Softened by the heat of violence, the British ruling class agreed to some basic social security for all, and people across the UK started to have more of a reason to buy into the British state: after all, that’s where your giro came from when you lost your job; that’s who founded the NHS, that’s who was ensuring employment.
Most people in each of the nations of the UK – beyond the ruling class and immigrants to England – continued to identify as from that ‘home nation’: English, Scottish, Welsh (Northern Ireland and Cornwall are more complex stories). But for many, the welfare state demonstrated a continued advantage to staying together.
That feeling remains for some. But what the cuts to tax credits shows is that this is but a memory. There will always be love and solidarity between the peoples of these islands. But George Osborne’s axe is cutting the ties of statehood one by one, and the pace has only increased since the referendum.
This sticks in the craw because what is happening to us after the No vote is exactly what they threatened us with if we voted Yes.
Tax credit cuts aren’t the only example. The list of things we were told would happen to us if we voted Yes but which have happened anyway would be a joke if it weren’t so serious. We were told our pensions were at risk from independence. New changes to the state pension will leave us up to £3,000 a year worse off. We were told we benefit from Westminster’s renewables subsidies because we have a high portion of Britain’s wind and waves. If we voted Yes, they said we’d lose this funding. A year later this investment is slashed. We were told supermarket workers would lose their jobs. A year later, hundreds have been laid off. We were told we might lose access to chunks of the BBC, yet now the Tories are threatening to ransack the BBC anyway. I could go on.
For many families, though, the cuts to tax credits will be the thing they feel most harshly and most quickly. People were told they would be £1,400 worse off if they voted yes. Many voted No in part because of this worry. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, some of the poorest families will in fact be losing £1,400 in tax credits as a result of Westminster’s cuts.
We in the Scottish Greens have argued a second independence referendum should happen when the people demand one.
The cuts to tax credits going through Westminster at the moment will surely bring that day much closer, and I for one can’t wait.
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