Pages tagged with "Featured"

English students face extortionate interest rates of 12% on their loans

Students in Scotland do not pay fees to attend university. They can borrow money for living expenses if they live away from home, but are charged much lower interest rates for repayment. Most Scottish students currently pay 1.5% interest on their loans. English-based students borrow both fees and living costs. Repayment of their much-higher debts are charged at 3 percent plus inflation, and interest rates are likely to hit 12% for many this summer. English students say they are “being punished” for studying. 

Scottish universities are, however, undergoing a funding squeeze. The UK Government has not increased Scotland’s budget allowance in line with inflation - and Scotland’s Finance Secretary Kate Forbes’s spending review offers a flat rate settlement for the next four years, which amounts to a real-terms cut. Brexit is set to suck a billion Euros from the sector. 

Scottish Unis to lose 1 billion Euros from Brexit fall-out 

Scotland’s universities are also facing the loss of EU funding  - they won three-quarters of a billion Euros in the last six-year-round of the world’s biggest science research fund,  Horizon. That included almost 20% of the “Excellent Science” funding stream, more than any other country in Europe. The coming round is significantly bigger and Scotland could have expected at least a billion Euros. 

But Scottish unis are debarred from applying - they had hoped they would still be eligible as "associate members" and when Scotland is independent they will get that status immediately.

Currently, along with the rest of the UK, in the first retaliation for the UK Government’s posturing over the Northern Ireland protocol and Brexit, they are barred.  

University of the Highlands and Islands a massive loser from Brexit

The University of the Highlands and Islands will be particularly hard hit by Brexit - it received more than £250 million from the EU in the last 25 years, because of its “peripherality” - its situation far from markets, serving fragile rural communities. There is very little replacement funding in view from the UK government.  

Below, we examine some of these issues in more depth. 

The UK Government’s student loan ‘reforms’ hit low-income graduates hardest

Earlier this year, the UK Government put in place major 'reforms' - the effect will be that lower-income graduates will pay more than they currently do - while higher earners pay less. A cap will come in on interest rates next year - but they will still sit around 7%.   England’s Institute for Fiscal Studies said: 

"There is no good economic reason for this. Interest rates on student loans should be low and stable, reflecting the government's own cost of borrowing."

An unfair tax that affects lower-income graduates worst

While those from the wealthiest backgrounds can pay fees and living expenses upfront, many graduates in England are already struggling.  The Observer quoted Emma Rhymer, 29, an early-years practitioner at a day nursery in London, who said that her £50,000 debt was increasing faster than she could pay it back. 

“Although I apply my degree in early childhood studies every day to my work, I find myself questioning whether it was worth it. It feels like the repayments are going to come out of my wages every month forever.  I’m very lucky to be doing a job I love, a job I trained and qualified for. But it’s like I’m being punished for going to university. I’m worried I will never be able to afford to buy a house and have the financial security I will need to start a family. It’s affecting my ability to have a future.”

Scottish students are not burdened with debt and high-interest rates

Scottish students taking vocational qualifications such as teaching or childhood studies will face a very different future. If they continue to live at home, they have a real possibility of graduating with no debt at all. Those who take out the full living-expenses loan for four years will owe in the region of £20,000. They face much lower interest rates and currently their debt will be written off after 30 years, compared to 40 in England. 

Remaining in the UK presents a real threat to the prestige of Scotland's great universities

Scotland pays University fees through general taxation. The downside of this is that universities are funded at a lower level. Despite this, they have managed to maintain a high ranking internationally. Edinburgh is consistently in the world top 20 in the QS ranking system. Glasgow and St Andrews are also in the world top 100 and several other Scottish Universities feature in the top 500. The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is fifth in the world, according to this widely-respected ranking. 

The UK Government is now creating additional challenges for Scottish universities with its hard Brexit. In the past, they have been able to attract funding from the EU -  but now they look set to lose millions and many prestigious research opportunities through Brexit. 

The UK Government keeps the windfall tax - and fails to increase Scotland’s allowance in line with inflation

The UK Is also creating challenges because although inflation is running at 9%, the allowance they pay to the Scottish Government is only increasing by 2%. So Scotland faces a huge real term cut. That’s despite the fact that the taxes paid by the energy sector, 90% of which comes from Scotland, will amount to £17 billion this year, including the windfall tax. The UK Government will keep almost all of that money. An independent Scotland would have the levers to run the country in line with the priorities of its elected Government - rather than waiting for Barnett consequentials of Conservative policies designed for the south of England. 

Brexit damage - loss of structural funds

Scottish universities received about £3 million a year through EU structural funds. About a third of all of this went to the University of Highlands and Islands (UHI).  Over the past 25 years, UHI has received more than £250 million in various EU funding streams. The outcomes of this funding include more people staying in the Highlands as well as development of the research capacity, skills and the labour market in the region, by working closely with industry and employers in the region.

EU structural funds recognise the principle of peripherality - areas at the fringe of the EU, are considered to be disadvantaged due to their distance from markets. Rural areas also attract extra support. The UK Government does not recognise peripherality and tends to measure support in per head amounts. That disadvantages rural Scotland. 

The replacement Shared Prosperity Fund is far short of the EU’s main structural funds, and it does not even attempt to replace the other EU funding streams that contributed to UHI.

UK Government posturing over the Northern Ireland protocol will cost Scotland dear

The EU is now blocking British scientists from joining the €95bn Horizon Europe research programme — the world’s biggest — because of the row over post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland. 

Horizon Europe is the EU’s flagship funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion. It tackles climate change, helps to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boosts the EU’s competitiveness and growth.

Scotland won around €755 million in the €80bn Horizon 2020 round over 2014-2020.  This made Scotland the most successful nation per head. Scotland received 19.9% of funding delivered through the ‘excellent science’ pillar.  

At the same time, it has become difficult and expensive to bring faculty members to the UK - they need to pay a health supplement.  It is also no longer possible to exchange students and teachers through Erasmus. 

The UK Government is out of step with most European countries

The UK Government is pursuing its own ideological priorities down south, burdening graduates in lower income professions with a greater load of debt. Scotland is in tune with most EU countries, which fund university education through general taxation and do not throw the burden on individuals. 

In an independent Scotland, the elected government would be able to manage the university sector in a more stable and financially responsible way, without the hiccups due to waiting on Barnett consequentials of policies deigned in another country with different priorities. It could immediately access EU funding which rewards excellence in research, and also offers support for rural areas such as the Highlands and Islands.

The New Statesman is as Unionist as any publication in Britain despite its left-wing image. That stance is evident in articles about both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A recent issue saw the nightmarish prospect of nuclear attack by Russia in terms of the UK”s constitutional question. It argued that Scots would not wish to become independent if it meant getting rid of Trident.  Andrew Marr, now able to take a more explicitly Unionist stance having left the BBC, wrote:

“Putin didn’t start a war to damage the SNP, but that’s what he’s doing.” 

Marr did not consider whether Putin’s current nuclear threats actually do the opposite - by suggesting that the doctrine of MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - may not be as reliable a way of averting nuclear war as had been hoped. That makes the “nuclear umbrella’ an outdated concept. 

Marr claimed the Ukraine war means the Scottish independence movement risks:

“subsiding into a normal, social-democratic managerial machine in decline, just like the Parti Québécois after it lost its independence referendums.”

Marr didn’t mention the many differences between Quebec and Scotland.  Quebec’s independence movement is based on a particular ethnic identity and language. Canada’s response was also unlike the UK”s. Quebec has the right to call an independence referendum if it ever wishes to do so; it controls immigration, social security and administers more of the public spending budget than the central Government does. Quebec’s Parliament is consulted over international trade deals. Canada also has more claim to be a democracy than the UK. An increasingly sore point for Scotland is the 800-seat member House of Lords where Evgeny Lebedev and Malcolm Offord have more right to rule over Scotland than anybody elected in Scotland. Canada in contrast has a Senate with just 105 seats,  appointed on a geographical basis - Quebec has 24 Senators. 

On Labour’s performance in the council elections, in the current issue, Chris Deerin comments:

“Scottish democracy would undoubtedly benefit from a better and stronger challenge to the dominant, overweening nationalist machine, and closer political competition.”

Those who vote for Scottish independence-supporting parties don’t see it that way. In fact, since Brexit, a series of acts such as the internal Markets Act, the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Electoral Reform Act have been pushed through without Holyrood’s consent. These all threaten Scotland’s devolution settlement - which was supported by 75% of the electorate in 1997. Independence is the only way to confirm the rights of Scotland’s elected Parliament. 

Northern Ireland gets the same treatment. In a profile piece on Michelle O’Neill, the New Statesman writer Martin Fletcher quoted the Daily Mail which dubbed her:

“the beauty from a family drenched in blood,”

referring to Republican sympathisers in her family.  The piece was a cuttings job without insight. Most of it seemed lifted from a piece in the Sunday Times that attracted criticism for its focus on O’Neill’s teenage pregnancy with the sexist headline “from pregnant schoolgirl to Northern Ireland’s next leader”. (The headline has been changed on line but still appears in the URL)

In the April 27 issue, Fletcher introduces a piece entitled ‘Is a United Ireland now inevitable’  by remarking “It is a far cry from the last time I was here. That was in July 1998,”- therefore perhaps, he is not well qualified to opine on the province’s future?  

The New Statesman looks at Northern Ireland through an anglocentric, Unionist lens, much as it does Scotland. Fletcher concludes his piece with a string of wizened chestnuts:

“I have a great affection for Northern Ireland and its people. My family and I spent two happy years in the province in the late 1990s. But, as I return to London, I recall Reginald Maudling’s famous comment as the home secretary flew back from his first visit in 1970: “For God’s sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country.” Or Winston Churchill’s after the First World War: “The whole map of Europe has been changed… but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.” 

Fletcher uncritically reports the DUP’s analysis that: ”The UK is the world’s fifth-largest economy. It gives Northern Ireland up to £15bn a year, access to the NHS and a welfare state.” All of that is disputed - many argue that Northern Ireland’s potential has been wasted and its economy ill-served by British rule.

Fletcher does not consider the fact that unification would be likely to trigger large-scale investment in Northern Ireland from both the EU and the USA. The EU invested heavily in supporting Germany’s unification process. The USA’s Irish diaspora would be keen to see new Ireland make it. This investment could help unleash Northern Ireland’s huge productivity and development potential. 

For many who support independence, there is much to celebrate in the prospect of a new future for the islands of the British archipelago where independence for Scotland and Wales and possible unification in Ireland will bring democracy. 

There is no dedicated TV show to focus on Scotland’s detailed election results they come out today. Scotland’s council voting is on the Single Transferable Vote which is more complicated to count. That is one reason why the decision was taken to do it in day-time rather than through the night. 

Watching votes being counted, seeing the results announced live, hearing them analysed by people who have insight into the process builds trust in democracy. It is a vital role for a national broadcaster. 

Yet, the BBC’s national results show on BBC Two finishes just when the Scottish results start coming out.

On Radio Four’s supposedly UK-wide news show Today, the new political editor Chris Mason was urged to get some sleep before Any Questions this evening - no mention was made of the importance of recording and discussing the results from the devolved nations as they emerge this afternoon. 

Some people took to social media to voice their disgust. Former Labour voter and SNP supporter William Irvine tweeted his disappointment with the BBC’s efforts: “On BBC One Scotland now they are showing the same crap programmes. On BBC Alba-  nothing. BBC Scotland - nothing. Three channels and not one has a Scottish council election special on them, everything going through BBC England.”

Channel Four,  Sky cover Scotland like a foreign country - STV shows load of old cobblers

Channel Four will be showing Countdown, as usual. Despite its claim to be less Londoncentric than other UK broadcasters, it spends 4% of its budget in Scotland, and has one news correspondent. It employs more staff in Vietnam than Scotland.

STV is showing an antiques show and two quizzes this afternoon. Sky has a rolling news channel and will no doubt scroll Scottish results across the bottom of the screen - but they have one Scottish correspondent and cover Scotland like a foreign country. Everything will be filtered through London - where many commentators are unfamiliar with the Scottish scene and do not appear to understand proportional representation. 

There may be some newspapers who offer a bit of coverage on YouTube - but, unlike the English, Scots won’t have the privilege of seeing their democratic results taken seriously, discussed and analysed by experienced commentators who can grasp underlying trends and put the results in historical context.  

Refugees voted - and canvassers joined in a successful protest to stop a deportation

There are unique features of the Scottish election - for instance, refugees were able to vote many for the first time. In an extraordinary protest in Edinburgh yesterday, many people involved in local elections stopped their canvassing to participate in an intervention where a crowd formed to prevent Home Office officials deporting someone from a local restaurant. 

Chief Exec of Scotland’s refugee council Sabir Zazai tweeted: “Tonight I am even prouder of a big decision I made 5 years ago today to move to #Scotland. Today #refugees voted in #LocalElections for the 1st time and a Home Office enforcement van was sent empty, thanks to #NicolsonSquare protest. Couldn't have wished for a better anniversary.”

The London Bureau Chief of German TV station ARD Annette Dittert commented: “They did it again. Scotland is quite something,” with video footage of the crowd. The demonstration was not covered on the evening TV news in the UK.

Other unique features of the Scottish election are that 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote, as they are in Wales. 

Another feature of the STV system that Scotland uses in local elections is that it is more likely to lead to coalition councils, because it is a proportional representation system which tries to reflect the preferences of the electorate in a fairer way.

Boris Johnson will carry on regardless - Scotland doesn't count

Scotland is likely to elect a large majority of independence supporting councillors. And when the results are assessed on a national basis, Boris Johnson’s party is likely to slide into third place north of the border. But these results will have no effect. Senior Conservatives have already proclaimed that Boris Johnson will survive as leader, after the party performed better than expected in England. 

The UK’s London-centric politicians and media groups have united to disparage Scottish independence supporters, proclaiming that the war in Ukraine makes a referendum impossible. They do not want to know about the growing anger in Scotland and so prefer to ignore it. Scotland’s results will be given an item on the evening news, and then dismissed. 

Scotland’s sense of engagement and interest in the results of its democratic election could be damped by the feeling that it is being relegated to an afterthought.  A strong democracy should be accessible, transparent and accountable to the public. The lack of coverage and analysis on mainstream TV on our democratic systems contributes to Scotland's democratic deficit.

There are many Scots who distrust the robust voting system we have, but that trust could be renewed by being able to see more of the process. Mainstream TV coverage is a vital access point.

Another experience of having to accept this treatment from anglocentric broadcasting organisations that don’t understand Scotland’s needs will likely feed into a desire for independence. The sooner broadcasting is regulated by Scotland's democratically elected Parliament the better. 

The House of Lords contains more peers that are than it does peers who support Scottish independence. It is an out-dated antidemocratic institution packed with cronies of the UK's ruling elite.

Some peers - led by Scottish Labour's Baron Foulkes - are now putting forward a new law which would make it illegal for the Scottish Government to hold an independence referendum - here we answer questions about what this move means and the possible consequences.

Q What has been proposed?

The proposal is for the UK Government to pass a law making it illegal for the Scottish Government to spend money on anything outside a tightly-defined remit. 

Q What other effects would it have?

The primary purpose would be to stop a new referendum. But this law would mean that Westminster would very much dictate what the Scottish Government is allowed to do, on a wide range of issues. 

The bill would make it illegal for civil servants to work on post-independence planning, or for Scottish Government representatives to travel abroad to meet their counterparts in other countries, It would no longer be permissible for anyone employed by the Scottish Government to spend time on issues like defence, the post-independence Constitution or mitigating the effects of Brexit in international trade. 

But the law could go further than this. Under the Internal Markets Act any measure which create a different trading environment north of the border are out of order. So even Scottish Government officials planning to put a 10p deposit on a bottle of Irn-Bru could be ruled illegal.

Q Who is behind this?

This proposal comes from members of the House of Lords. The main proposer is Labour Peer George Foulkes. Foulkes is drafting a Private Member’s Bill which he will put forward to the Conservative government after the Queen’s Speech on May 10, hoping that Boris Johnson will pick it up and decide to make it law. 

Foulkes has reportedly won the support of Conservative Scottish peers Michael Forsyth and Liam Fox. The Daily Express called them a “Dad’s Army” of veteran politicians, referring to the Second World War TV show. 

Q Do the rest of the Labour group in the Lords support this? 

The Scottish Labour group in the House of Lords has 27 members. It is not clear how many of the rest of the group support this plan, but so far none of them has disassociated themselves from it. 

There are 167 Labour Lords. Few of these understand much about Scotland - but they could be instructed to support this Bill if it passes to the next stages. 

Q How many Scottish members of the House of Lords are there? How many support independence? 

The current membership of the House of Lords is around 800. There are no geographical criteria for membership, unlike Canada which has an appointed upper house of just 105 members selected from each territory of the federation. 

Around 87 members of the current House of Lords could be regarded as Scottish Peers, according to research by MP Tommy Sheppard in 2020. They are largely privately-educated males over 65. A quarter of this number, 22, are hereditary peers. The rest include Tory donor Malcolm Offord who was ennobled and appointed to the Scottish Office after failing to win an election in Scotland. 

The bill for Scottish peers services has been calculated as around £3 million a year. Not one single Scottish peer is apparently in favour of Scottish independence. 

Q How many members of the House of Lords support Scottish independence?

There are more people in the House of Lords bankrolled by Russian oligarchs than there are supporters of Scottish independence. Evegeny Lebedev is funded by his father Alexander, a former KGB agent who acquired a large stake in Gazprom. There are no peers at all among the 800 strong membership of this exclusive club who have voiced support for Scottish independence. 

Q What could the Scottish Parliament do to prevent a Bill like this becoming law? 

Very little. The House of Lords has the power to debate and amend legislation which affects Scotland - but Holyrood does not.

Despite being fully elected, by the Scottish people under a fairer proportional representation system, the Scottish Parliament gets no say at all over controversial laws that affect Scotland. In the post-Brexit settlement, the UK Government decided to remove powers from Holyrood under the Internal Markets Act. Holyrood refused consent for this as it has for other draconian new laws such as the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Elections Bill, which may disenfranchise 100,000 Scots.

But Westminster repeatedly ignores the wishes of Scotland's elected Parliament. The UK Supreme Court recently ruled that “Westminster has merely lent powers to the three devolved territories, which can be reclaimed at any times.”

Critics of this position argue that because the devolved Parliaments - especially Scotland’s where 75% of voters said Yes in 1997 - were established by a referendum with strong popular support, they should be recognised as sharing sovereignty with Westminster. However, there is no suggestion that Westminster ever would share sovereignty with Scotland’s elected Parliament. 

Q Will this become law?

At the moment, there is no clear path for the proposed bill to become law. It may be that Foulkes has been persuaded to float the idea in order for the UK Government to test the strength of opposition to it. Or the UK Government may feel they can use existing powers to dictate to Holyrood. 

The House of Commons would also have to vote to pass this law.  But if it were to make it that far, there would be little Scots could do to stop it. The majority of MPs elected in Scotland since 2011 have supported independence - but they are regularly outvoted on matters that affect Scotland, such as the Internal Markets Act. 

Conclusion

This latest attack on the democratically elected Scottish Government is another sign that the House of Lords is out of touch with the country it seeks to govern. It is unacceptable that Labour peers like Lord Foulkes feel entitled to lay down the law when they can't claim to represent the people of Scotland in any way. 

Only in an independent Scotland would be free of the shadowy hand of this unelected body.

Between 1990 and 2005, about 50% of people in Quebec said they wanted independence from Canada. But since then, that has fallen to a third. 

During the rise of the Quebec independence movement, there were two referendums. The first was in 1980 when the proposal for more sovereignty was rejected by a 59.56 percent to 40.44 percent margin. The second was in 1995 and extremely close. “No” won by a whisker - less than one percent. It secured 50.58% of the vote, on an exceptionally high turnout of 93.52%.

But now, almost two decades later, the issue of independence is no longer at the forefront of political debate. Only about a third of Quebecois still support independence, although another third supports greater autonomy for Quebec. 

So what changed? Why did two-thirds of the people of Quebec reject the dream of independence?  Here are three reasons why Quebec independence support fell away and why those circumstances differ from the Scottish independence movement. 

1 Quebec’s independence movement is primarily associated with a white ethnic identity.

In his 1995 concession speech, the Parti Quebecois premier, Jacques Parizeau, blamed “money and some ethnic votes” for the loss. 

Although there were progressive elements in the mix, Quebec’s movement towards independence was based around the Francophone community and cultural identity.  Canada is a huge country - it has a larger landmass than the USA. Quebec is three times as big as France although the population is only 8.5 million. Different areas developed quite differently. Quebec was once part of the French empire, and was settled by 10,000 French immigrants - around half of the population today are descended from them. The movement for Quebec independence centred around protecting the French language and the cultural identity they developed as Quebecois. 

In general, the French settlers had better relations with native people than other colonists. But the independence movement was not successful in bringing along the indigenous people of the area, who were embarking on their own drive for more self-determination, human rights and control of natural resources. Some First People did vote ‘Yes” in the referendum of 1980, when the question was a vaguer one about developing a new relationship between Canada and Quebec. But that changed by 1995. 

The most populous First Nation of Canada, the Nehiyawak or Cree People, traditionally moved freely across a wide swathe of the country. They were particularly vocal in resistance. On October 24, 1995, the Cree organised their own referendum, asking the question: "Do you consent, as a people, that the Government of Quebec separate the James Bay Crees and Cree traditional territory from Canada in the event of a Yes vote in the Quebec referendum?" 96% of the 77% of Crees who cast ballots voted to stay in Canada. The Inuit of Nunavik held a similar local vote, with 96% voting No. The vast majority of non-French speakers, including immigrants to Quebec also voted overwhelmingly No in 1995. The multicultural city of Montreal also voted heavily No. 

Nowadays, supporters of independence are most likely to be over 55, white and native French speakers. (This is the opposite demographic in Scotland, with the only age group not supporting independence currently being the over-65s). Within social attitudes surveys, Quebec records significantly less support for multiculturalism. In 2017, Quebec passed a law banning women from wearing the hijab in public, even on the bus. 

2 Canada responded effectively to Quebec’s desire for more autonomy - eventually

Canada’s federal system is the most decentralised in the world. It has acknowledged and responded to Quebec’s desire for more autonomy. 

It wasn’t all plain sailing - in between the two Quebec referendums, there was an attempt at reform which would have officially recognised Quebec as a nation within a nation. When that failed, support for independence surged. 

But since 2006, Quebec’s status has been officially recognised. It has the right to call an independence referendum if it ever wishes to do so; it controls immigration, social security and administers more of the public spending budget than the central Government does. Quebec’s Parliament is consulted over Canada's international trade deals. 

Canada is a constitutional monarchy like the UK, but the King’s role is more clearly defined as ceremonial. It has a two-chamber Parliament similar to the UK. But in place of the increasingly corrupt and swollen UK House of Lords, Canada has a Senate with just 105 seats. These are appointed on a geographical basis and Quebec has 24 Senators. 

The House of Commons has 338 seats, allocated to the different regions. Quebec has 78. The main independence-supporting party, the Bloc Quebecois fell back to as few as three seats in 2018 when the ten-seat grouping split into two factions. But it has subsequently recovered and now has 32 seats. 

Quebec’s National Assembly has 125 seats. Support for the nationalist Parti Quebecois collapsed at the 2022 provincial election and it lost most of its seats, retaining just 3. The main party, the Coalition Avenir Quebec, has 90. CAQ is not an independence-supporting party - it is a federalist group, which works closely with the Canadian Government at national level.  

3 A focus on the past

If the movement for Quebec independence were ever to revive, it would have to be on the basis that most of the people in the country saw it as offering something for them. In its current incarnation, it does not.

Quebec was colonised by French speakers in the 16th and 17th centuries when it was called “New France”. But these French colonists were in similar position to those caught up in the plantation of Ulster. They were arriving in a country that was already inhabited and had language and culture and traditions already. 

Those indigenous people didn’t see that there was any benefit for them in the plan to create what would be essentially an alternative monocultural state with one official language. That view was shared by most immigrants, both English speakers from the rest of Canada and the US, and non-English speaking immigrants. 

A law to protect the status of the French language called Bill 96 which was passed in 2022 is still causing controversy - not leat with the USA which is resisting product labelling requirements.

The battle to keep Montreal as a French-speaking city is also proving controversial. Combatting the drift to English from a young, international population won't be easy. Even many young people of Francophone heritage are not in tune with the aims of Quebec’s independence movement.

Conclusion

Quebec’s independence movement is focused around maintaining a language and culture which are associated with a particular ethnic group and its history in Quebec. That is going to be a hard sell to the roughly 50% of the population who don’t share that background, and even for many of the young people within it.

It is different from the Scottish independence movement, which is not based around ethnic nationalism. The Scottish independence movement is a coalition of people who feel that independence is the first step to real progress on issues like social justice and climate action. It is based on a recognition that there has been long-term political divergence between Scotland and England. Despite not voting for a Conservative Government since 1955, for most of that time, Scotland has been ruled by one. Since the last referendum, Scotland has started to experience the negative economic and social consequences of a Brexit that it didn't vote for -  a material change in circumstances since 2014.

Another difference is that the UK Government has rejected multiple chances to devolve more powers to Scotland. Instead, it has taken every opportunity to sideline Holyrood and undermine the devolution settlement, such as with the Internal Market Act. 

But the lesson to learn from Quebec's story is the importance of reaching out to all communities. The main source of immigration to Scotland is England - indeed the Scottish Government's economic plan involves trying to attract more people from south of the border. it is important that the message of the independence movement continues to be one that offers hope to new Scots of all backgrounds.

Further reading

History of Quebec - Britannica

History of Canada - Quebec separatism - Britannica

The Future of Quebec Separatism - OU podcast

The Nehiyawak/ Cree people - Canadian Encylopedia

How did Quebec’s Nationalist Movement Become so White? - Guardian, 2018

Language Bill Deepens Culture Clash in Quebec - the New York Times, 2021

"No Great Mischief" - novel by Alistair Macleod, about Gaels emigrating to Canada

It is easy to express outrage at the UK Government's plan to illegally rendition asylum seekers 6,000 miles to a country with a poor human rights record and a recent record of mass genocide.

However, you must not discount the possibility that you are supposed to be outraged. It is a possibility that this is all a ruse to distract both you and the headlines, in order to make you think that the fines for breaking lockdown rules and partying whilst people died are somehow yesterday's news and a minor transgression in comparison. That of course would mean that the Rwandan rendition will never happen as you can't be forced to resign for something that never happened.

Either way, the Rwandan move signals that the UK state is broken and led by an incompetent, compulsively dishonest, criminal, racist, British nationalist government. A government that does not share the values and common decency of the people of Scotland or the political parties that they choose to represent them in both Westminster and Holyrood.

Within hours of Priti Patel, smirking inappropriately as she announced what amounts to illegal rendition with their plan to send tens of thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda, the Home Secretary was being lampooned online in pictures with her caricature leaning on a folder marked “Migrant Death Warrants”.

Offshoring migrants has been on the cards since the PM vowed to “take back control” of Britain’s borders following the Brexit vote, a promise that so far has led to nothing but deep falls in exports, 20 mile lorry tailbacks and rapid inflation, but their new rendition plans have been slated as “inhumane”, “unspeakably cruel” and “state sanctioned violence in practice”.

Under the plan, to which Johnson said the UK Government would contribute £120m, migrants will be housed temporarily in mainly hostels or hotels in the Rwandan capital Kigali while their asylum claims are processed. The UN refugee agency has stated that the plans are illegal and that attempting to "shift responsibility" for claims of refugee status was "unacceptable".

The scheme will be challenged in the courts but criticism and disgust has come from refugee charities, lawyers and the UN refugee agency UNHCR, whose Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs, said: “People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be traded like commodities and transferred abroad for processing.”

Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said Rwanda did not respect some of the most basic human rights: “Refugees have been abused in Rwanda and the government has, at times, kidnapped Rwandan refugees outside the country to bring them home to face trial and ill-treatment.”

Johnson said Rwanda was “one of the safest countries in the world”, despite the fact that in 1994 Hutu extremists killed more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus – genocide that shocked the world. He added that the risk of ending up in Rwanda would prove “a considerable deterrent” over time.

However, his own government, in January last year, delivered a statement on Rwanda at the 37th Session of Universal Periodic Review (UPR), urging Rwanda to model Commonwealth values of democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights.

Glasgow immigration lawyer Usman Aslam said from breaking their own rules and refusing to resign, we are now faced with a Tory Government who are misleading the public about the realities of the Rwanda scheme, which people deserved to know.

“When Priti Patel said this is a ‘Global first’, it is not at all. Australia were sending asylum seekers offshore to be ‘processed’ for years and even they stopped,” he said. “The UN Special Rapporteur even said the Australian model (that the Tories are obsessed with) was an abusive offshore detention system that ‘cannot be salvaged’ … unjustifiably punitive and unlawful amounting to ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment’.”

Manus in Papua New Guinea and Nauru – 690 and 1800 miles respectively off Cape York – were first used by Australia for offshore immigration detention centres in in 2001, but were blighted by shocking living conditions and a lack of water. Six years later they were mothballed after a farce that saw the overwhelming majority of those detained allowed to be resettled in Australia as genuine refugees.

They were reopened in 2012 to prevent asylum seekers arriving by boat gaining access to Australia, and over 4,000 were processed at the sites between 2012 and 2019. Last December, there were still 105 people on Manus and 112 on Nauru.

Denmark may have been the first country to join the UN Refugee Convention in 1951, but it has been open about its goal of “zero” refugees in the country.

It passed legislation last year to allow it to move asylum seekers to third countries outside the EU while their cases were processed, a move that drew questions about its legality from the European Commission and human rights groups.

In 2015 Israel moved to halt a flood of refugees, mainly from Sudan and Eritrea, by striking deals with “third country safe havens” – identified by media sources as Uganda and Rwanda. By 2018, Israel said around a third of 65,000 people who had arrived in the country illegally had left under its various schemes.

Aslam said it was no surprise the Patel-Johnson briefing was “sketchy when it came to specifics”, because he thought the “horrendous” Nationality and Borders Bill, if passed, would go against their plans. Patel had not addressed Section 77 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states that no asylum seeker can be removed from the UK while their asylum application is pending.

“In the Borders Bill, whilst it states that they can be removed to a safe country, it defines safe country as a place where a person’s life and liberty are not threatened by reason of the person’s race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” said Aslam.

“Rwanda is a place that people run from for these exact reasons, so the law would not allow them to be sent there anyway.”

WE have all become accustomed to Boris Johnson’s false “bumbling” manner in public appearances and interviews as he tries not to cement his place in history as the PM who made Britain the laughing stock of the world after “getting Brexit done”. However, his and the Chancellor’s woefully inadequate handling of the economy, which has been battered by the pandemic, catastrophic events in Ukraine and spiralling energy prices, are in danger of leaving the UK stuck with the tag, “the poor man of Europe”.

Inflation in the UK is currently as 6.1 per cent, with the Bank of England expecting it to top 8 per cent and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasting an 8.7 per cent rise in the third quarter of this year, a 40-year high.

But how much of the cost of living crisis has been caused by corporate greed, and could that unflattering soubriquet have been avoided had the Tories acted with some humility instead of keeping their big money backers onside?

Price hikes on basics are not confined to the UK. Worldwide oil and gas prices have been rising since the economy began to recover from its first bout of Covid in late 2020 – when the collapse in demand drove prices down. However, when Russia invaded Ukraine, prices shot up to unprecedented levels hitting the whole of Western Europe.

In the UK – which imports only 8% of its fuel products from Russia – around 22 million homes were facing energy prices rises of £700 per year from the beginning of this month, when the energy price cap rocketed by 54 per cent.

Rishi Sunak did announce a temporary 5p per litre reduction in the duty on petrol and diesel, down from 57.95 per litre; and a cut in income tax in two years’ time, prompting widespread criticism, including from the Resolution Foundation, which said only one in eight workers would see their tax bill fall.

The impending financial crisis has promoted hundreds of thousands of words of comment and many guides on how people can cope, so how are the governments of our European neighbours helping their populations?

France

In France, the government cut the cost of fuel by 15 cents a litre and gave six million households a €100 (£83.50) energy voucher to cope with soaring costs. Compare that to the £200 loan being given to UK households, which will be paid back in instalments on future bills

Germany

All taxpayers in Germany are being given a €300 (£250) payment to help with their cost of living rises, with a further €100 (£83.50) for each child and a similar amount for anyone on state benefits. A three-month public transport ticket has been slashed to €9 (£7.50) to encourage people to use low-carbon travel.

Ireland

The Irish government is giving every household a €200 (£167) energy rebate and public transport fares have been cut by a fifth until the end of the year to help people with rising travel costs.

In Northern Ireland, public transport fares have been frozen, while in the UK, rail fares rose by 3.8 per cent at the beginning of last month.

Spain

Spain has seen inflation rise to almost 10 per cent, but the government has still tried to ease the burden on its citizens. It is subsidising fuel by 20 cents until the end of June and pledging to tax excess profits. It has also capped rent rises at 2 per cent.

The UK

Sunak’s spring statement came nowhere close to helping lower income households, and the Institute for Public Policy Research said they still faced an average cash shortfall of £320 this year. The IPPR said his statement was biased towards higher earners – who, it estimated, received four times the support that lower-income households did.

Oil giants have reaped huge benefits from the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis – Shell’s and BP’s combined profits last year totalled $32bn (£24.5bn), triggering calls for a windfall tax to be levied.

Following the privatisation of our utility and transport companies, started by Maggie Thatcher, we have seen them make billions in profits as they push up the prices of energy, water and other commodities. The National Grid, for instance, pays out more than £1bn a year to its shareholders.

Pharma giant GSK, with sites at Irvine and Montrose, has been embroiled in a dispute with the Unite union over a pay offer of 2.75 per cent, while its chief executive Emma Walmsley, received a 17 per cent rise last year, taking her remuneration to over £8 million – prompting claims of “cast-iron corporate greed”.

If an entrepreneur becomes a millionaire, that's great, they took the risks, founded a business and created jobs. Large corporate salaries involve no real risk, as the economy has been restructured to ensure their success and often that they don’t even have to pay taxes.

There’s no getting away from such examples of apparent avarice and, despite the fact that similar claims are much more prevalent in the US, they deserve to be addressed in public on these shores.

But Johnson and Sunak etc are unwilling to do anything to upset their super-rich friends, family members and supporters. This leaves us with two key questions firstly, when exactly does the UK qualify as an oligarchy? And secondly, if Scotland can produce 100% of its energy requirements from renewables in 2022, which is the cheapest form of energy, when will people realise that the cost of living crisis is not only a cost of greed crisis but a cost of remaining in the UK crisis.

The UK Government announced a new energy strategy this week. This concentrates investment in nuclear power. Scots householders will have to pay for that - but Scotland doesn’t need it. The country has more than enough renewables for all its electricity needs and more. 

Instead, Scotland urgently needs a transformation of the UK's electricity transmission system which does not serve Scotland's needs.  It also needs more investment in energy efficiency and demand reduction

Here are the three key reasons Westminsters energy strategy doesn't work for Scotland.

1 The UK’s privatised national grid system does not serve Scotland well

Many people assume that the UK’s energy grid is a publicly-owned asset, managed by the UK Government. It is not. It was privatised in 1980, under Margaret Thatcher. 

National Grid Transco PLC is a London-based company that operates in the UK and US. It is enormously profitable. It employees 12,000 people worldwide and made £15 billion in revenue last year. It recently sold a majority stake in the UK's gas transmission and metering business for £2 billion to a consortium led by Macquarie Group. National Grid said this move was part of its transition to low-carbon and that it would: 

"Enable National Grid to maintain a strong balance sheet with its strong investment grade credit rating, supporting its sustainable dividend policy".

Last week, the UK Government announced plans to buy back the part of National Grid Transco PLC that oversees the UK’s electricity systems which it also builds and operates. The Government is not disclosing how much it is paying for this partial renationalisation, which attracted little news coverage. 

National Grid Transco PLC owns and manages the grid infrastructure in England and Wales. It also manages the transmission system in Scotland - although the ownership lies with Scottish Power and SSE, a situation which appears to make investment in the Scottish grid less attractive. Scottish energy companies are charged ten times what English companies have to pay to connect to the grid. 

Shortly after the Scottish Government licensed a huge amount of offshore wind earlier this year, National Grid said it had no plans to connect most of this to the grid for at least a decade. 

SEC’s energy briefing reported: 

“The recent ScotWind auction of 25GW of Scottish offshore wind potential - enough wind energy to power the equivalent of 23 million homes per year - demonstrates the risk (from the grid). Within weeks of the auction being announced, National Grid/ESO declared it did not plan to connect more than 10GW of the successful projects. This left billions of pounds of investment and clean energy potential hanging in the wind.”

National Grid also makes profit from building and managing connectors that link the UK network to Europe. The way the UK mitigates against demand surges or supply shortfalls is to buy electricity at the spot price on the open market.

SSE commissioned independent research which found storing renewable energy in hydro facilities for when it is needed, could save UK bill-payers £690 million a year by 2050. But, like the other facilities that have been granted planning permission by the Scottish Government, it is unlikely to be built because of the lack of a market framework. SSE stated: 

“The study, by Imperial’s researchers, found that 75% of the savings to the energy system from projects like Coire Glas would be from the avoided capital expenditure in higher cost electricity generation technologies that would otherwise be needed to meet the UK’s target of carbon neutrality by 2050 whilst meeting security of supply. “Importantly, the report highlighted that despite all of the benefits which new pumped hydro storage projects would bring, the current policy and market framework is unlikely to bring forward investment in many new projects because the long duration and low carbon capability of pumped hydro storage is not sufficiently valued.”

2 The strategy pours billions into nuclear power - while making unrealistic claims about what that will achieve. 

The money that is invested in nuclear will come from energy consumers. It is predicted that consumers across the UK including Scotland will have to shell out £80 a year through their bills for this. The strategy document says the UK has: “committed to provide up to £1.7 billion of direct government funding to enable one nuclear project to FID (final investment decision) this Parliament.” It proposes up to 8 new nuclear reactors -  which will cost a total of £13 billion.

Unlike renewables, the cost of nuclear power is rising. When completed, Hinkley Point C will be one of the most expensive power stations in the world. The fuel it generates will cost £90 per MWh. The UK’s existing nuclear power costs £45 per MWh. 

Writing in Advanced Science News recently, global expert Professor MV Ramanda wrote:  “Although often blamed on public opposition, especially resulting from the devastating accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the main cause for the drop in nuclear power’s importance has been the steadily rising cost of nuclear reactors and the almost invariable tendency for project construction costs and time to escalate dramatically.”

The UK Government also plans to invest £120 million on smaller reactors.  Professor Ramana wrote:

“Private industry is not going to take the risk of paying for production lines and buying large numbers of reactors that could well prove uneconomic. So, it will be public money, as it nearly always has been the case with nuclear power, that will be risked.”

The UK Gov strategy, however, ignores current science and harks back to a 1950s vision of nuclear power. However, It does not mention that in 1957, a fire at Windscale nuclear plant spread radioactive material throughout Europe. The UK Government still spends £3 billion a year keeping this site, now known as Sellafield, safe.

3 There is no well-funded commitment to improving energy efficiency and insulating homes in the strategy

A large-scale energy efficiently drive would benefit consumers struggling with energy and cost of living crises. But instead of new measures, the strategy repackages existing schemes. It also relies on householders borrowing money to insulate their homes. 

The strategy voices the UK Government's faith in the free market:

“This is not being imposed on people and is a gradual transition following the grain of behaviour. The British people are no-nonsense pragmatists who can make decisions based on the information.”

The SEC Energy Strategy Briefing concluded:

“The UK’s net-zero 2050 target as already looking under pressure. Without more incentives to consumers and business to reduce demand for energy…that target looks further away than ever.”

Like the UK, Scotland has some of the least energy-efficient homes in Europe. Much of rural Scotland doesn’t have access to the gas network - and electricity is priced in a way that makes their bills far higher than the average. They also have to pay higher standing charges than most of England. 

Scotland does not share the UK Government’s nuclear vision. But Scots will still have to pay for it - and the Scottish Government is deprived of the decision-making power to invest in the energy priorities that the Scottish people choose. In short, energy bills will be cheaper in an independent Scotland and the energy sector far more environmentally friendly. 

Murdo Fraser accuses the Scottish Government of being a Potemkin Government but the increasingly Scotiaphobic Tory northern branch has nothing to offer Scotland. Scottish voters know it and Murdo knows it, which is why he was silent about his own party’s record in government. 

Just three months ago the Conservative northern branch leader Douglas Ross won some plaudits calling for Johnson’s resignation for attending boozy parties while the rest of the country was in lockdown and in February Tory MSP Russell Findlay was too busy painting his bathroom to meet the PM on his furtive foray into Fife. A recent poll shows that even Labour’s moribound northern branch has overtaken the Tories.

Now with the war in Ukraine muting rebelliousness in northern branch ranks, Murdo is hanging his party's meagre hopes on a depressed local election turnout in May, which underscores its vacuousness.

After 12 years of a UK Conservative government, the wreckage is pervasive. Public services have been starved of funding, poverty and inequality have risen, and the English NHS is being privatised by stealth, with Scotland’s next in line. The UK’s Covid death rate is among the highest in Europe, government corruption is rife and ministers routinely flout the law.

Then there’s Brexit, a disastrous own goal that will depress GDP by 4%, inflicting twice the damage done by Covid. UK economic growth lags behind Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Between 2019 and 2022, trade with Germany crashed 18%, and Germany’s exports to the UK are down nearly a quarter. The UK’s investment attractiveness took a 17% hit in 2020/21. Foreign investment in strategic growth sectors like software fell by a third while advanced engineering, the environment, infrastructure and transport plunged 25%.

Scotland’s export driven economy has lost billions. The Australia and New Zealand trade deals negotiated by the UK Government give beef and lamb exporters with lower costs and animal welfare standards unfettered access to the UK market, undercutting Scottish farmers, crofters and food producers. Exports of Scottish whisky and salmon are significantly down since 2019. For the first time since 1997, the UK now spends more on importing goods from the rest of the world than it does from the EU.

Inflation is at a 30-year high, interest rates and regressive taxes are up, National Insurance rates have risen punishing the working and not the wealthy and Sunak’s spring statement did nothing to alleviate the suffering of millions. Safe from a windfall tax, private energy companies profiteer while Scottish renewables producers’ pay ten times in grid connection charges than their southern counterparts and Scottish consumers pay among the highest electricity standing charges in the UK, an absurdity given Scotland’s status as a net energy exporter.

What Murdo Fraser fails to understand is that an independent Scotland won’t be dominated by a single political party, there will even probably be a true Scottish Conservative party to replace the London led unionist tory party and there will be several other parties to better reflect the nation’s political diversity. The difference is they will represent Scotland’s interests, not those of another country but that probably does mean there will be no room for politicians such as Fraser.