Reflecting on the Liberal Democrat conference and the referendum

Yes I watched this on telly (the conference). No, I didn’t see all of it – not all was on telly (including I’m told a ‘Scottish’ component on the first day which seems to have gone rather well but was private not public) and not all that was on telly was at times when I could watch.  But I’m pulled in several directions by the pieces that I did see.

First, the Liberal Democrats are NICE. They had strongly voiced and strongly voted-on things that do matter to people, often desperately. These weren’t necessarily, though, strongly worded – they were nicely worded, sometimes almost denying the passion that was voiced by some of the speakers. But at the end of the day, are these what people remember?

Second, the Liberal Democrats claim to have taken over the old Liberal policies of Home Rule – some Liberals (or Lib-Dems) articulated, again with passion, the need for a proper and fair distribution of ‘powers’ (whatever that means) to the four quarters of the universe – sorry, of the UK. And some, a few, made a strong case that the ‘powers’ for Scotland should not be conditional on those for other places which have not just undergone what we did. Indeed, today’s ‘emergency resolution’ made this plain – but again, few of the speakers really took this up, although those who did, did so very strongly. They were Scottish.

Third: I didn’t only vote ‘Yes’ but I campaigned for ‘Yes’. I did so for several reasons, both practical and emotional, but in particular that a strong Yes vote and indeed a Yes victory would give a lead into a CONFEDERAL system. What we had at stake, as one leading journalist’s opinion suggested, was ‘Indy Lite’. We didn’t get it (more senses than one here). What we have now is a system with ‘some powers’ devolved and a promise of ‘some more’ in the pipeline. Maybe.

I would like to have something along the lines suggested by Michael Moore, for the issue to be what ‘powers’ – let us say, sensibly, ‘areas’ - need to be ‘reserved’ – all others to be vested in the national*, or let's say regional or local areas as appropriate. And this gives me pause. What party or what people do express this idea? Not the SNP – though I support them in many ways – because there is need for powers to be local and not centralised: The centralisation which we are currently seeing in Scotland is not my vision.

(*Just for clarification, 'national' here means Scottish, or Welsh, or even English.)

And so, I continue to be conflicted, between Scotland as an independent state – which Scotland well could be – and Scotland as part of a United Kingdom which is compassionate, moderate and has more pulling power as a world power. But let’s revise that – UK as compassionate? I don’t currently see that, not at least to its own citizens. Similarly with moderation – how do we moderate between the new poor, the old poor, and the state which makes rules, drawing lines on a conceptual or economic map, that today seem to deny citizenship where it is most needed. I am thinking here to the numbers who registered for the referendum, who had previously not registered to vote, because they may not have considered that their vote mattered or that they were even counted as people, as humans, as political, social and hence voting beings within our land of Scotland.

As for the political world power – I will refrain from comment for now.

One thing does remain. Why, in all this flood of ‘we are doing this’ from the Lib Dems at their Glasgow conference – and yes, the venue is important – has nobody acknowledged that among the ‘45%’ of ‘Yes’ voters were almost 40% of previously-identified Lib-Dem voters?  Are we so unworthy of acknowledgment? Do we not factor into Lib-Dem thinking? If somebody would just say – ‘We know that the Lib Dems as a party campaigned for a ‘stay in the UK’ vote, but we are aware that many, many of our members and supporters voted ‘Yes’ for a number of reasons – including that they might think this as the only way to gain a sensible and sane Federal system’ – this would mean very much to me, and I think many others too.

But in an era of agonistic expression, is this just too ‘nice’ or even just too ‘Liberal’ to state?