Purdah LOLs aplenty #indyref

5 min read

Like most of the fun bits of the way UK is governed, the idea of "purdah" is a convention not a requirement, and is not statutory.

"Purdah" (though the term is deprecated) is what prevents the government of the day spending the period before the election making government decisions (usually, but not always) related to spending that might affect the way that people voted. To give a stupid example, if tomorrow George Osborne promised to buy the entire population of Dundee a beer with treasury funds, this would be seen as a breach of the convention of purdah

It gets complicated because a government minister (though not a government employee - they have purdah too and are restricted from personal political activity at certain times, which it is no fun, I can tell you) will also be a member of a political party or interest groups campaigning in any election or referendum.

As Wragge, Lawrence and Graham note, drawing on previously published Westminster purdah guidance:

"It is customary for Ministers to observe discretion in initiating any new action of a continuing or long-term character. Decisions on matters of policy and other issues such as large and/or contentious procurement contracts on which a new Government might be expected to want the opportunity to take a different view from the present Government should be postponed until after the Election, provided that postponement would not be detrimental to the national interest or wasteful of public money."

So George Osborne could promise that, in the event of a no-vote, a conservative-led government would buy the entire population a beer with treasury funds - and that would be OK.

Confused yet?

The Independence Referendum purdah is slightly more complicated as it is in fact two purdahs in one. The Scottish Government (i.e. the one having a referendum) is in purdah and is not meeting during this period (apart from the first three days, for some unexplored reason), but under the terms of para 29 of the Edinburgh Agreement (which sets out how the referendum works) the UK (Westminster) Government is in purdah even though it is still meeting.

In November last year, SNP Westminster MP Pete Wishart asked David Cameron when he was going to grow a pair and have a debate with Alex Salmond (I paraphrase). Cameron answered correctly (and most likely with one eye on the purdah he would likely be under during the time immediately before the referendum) that it was not a matter for the leader of the UK Government to debate this with the Scottish First Minister. 

[As an aside - this may also be why Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are heading up to Scotland tomorrow. PMQs would surely be a farce if it didn't discuss this #indyref thing that everyone is talking about, and Cameron knows that wily pro-independence questioners could make things very difficult for him due to purdah being observed]

So when the three Westminster parties wanted to say more about the powers Scotland would have within the UK, it was a good choice (in terms of the need to observe purdah, at least) to have someone from the Labour back-benches do so. This looks less like a "government" statement, and more like a "party" statement. Labour are (or were) strong in Scotland and could be seen as the main opposition to the SNP in the Scottish Parliament.

What was odd was having George Osborne pre-announce it. Now George isn't especially popular in Scotland (or anywhere else, other than possibly his bathroom) for a number of reasons, so there was no goodwill reason for him to make the announcement. But he is Chancellor of the Exchequer, which does lend a certain "governmentyness" to an announcement about proposed government legislation and spending that directly effects the area currently having a referendum.

This was a spectacular own goal, as such a statement is very likely to be in breach of the convention of purdah. It could leave the whole referendum (but especially if a "no" is the majority) subject to judicial review or (worse) a direct legal challenge.

The quote from the panicky treasury press officer (sorry, Government Spokesman) does not clarify things at all.

"The purdah is in place to prevent taxpayers' money being spent on referendum campaign material.

"This timetable for new powers would not break purdah as the offer will come from the pro-Union parties, and not the UK government."

The first line is incorrect, purdah refers to anything that could effect the outcome of the referendum, not just spending taxpayers money on campaign material.

The second line is dubious - it is a timetable for government work, not a campaign promise. After any result, the Scottish Parliament and Westminster would speak - formally - about any redivision of powers or responsibilities. The timetable sets out ways in which this would happen, offering specific plans for what needs to be a negotiation between two governments. Those internet bampots at the magnificent Wings over Scotland have already noted that the "news" is not in the the powers offered (these are all from an earlier effort in March) but in the existence of a delivery plan.

And delivery is the business of government, not political parties.

A wee note on nationalism.

2 min read

Brief twitter exchange with that Paul Kingsnorth (who as well as being a good person to follow on twitter and being half of Dark Mountain, has been nominated for some literary award or other...)

His thinking on the rise of Celtic nationalism is that the likely endpoint is a federal structure, with 4 countries, each with their own parliament, under a stripped-down "federal UK" government. Having loads of independent countries under a federal government sounds a bit like the European Union to me, and I think it is interesting that one of the (many) arguments around Scottish Independence is whether or not they would be members of the European Union. 

There's no earthy reason to assume not (despite some very unearthly fearmongering from the Westminster political parties), but it is possible to take this further (and some have done so) and say that an independent Scotland would be more secure in Europe than a UK that has Messrs Cameron, Johnson and Farage in it. Basically, you could be pretty confident that Scotland would be in the EU in 2017 (say), but not as confident that the UK would be.

So a vote for independence is actually - if you think like this - a vote for closer European integration than would otherwise exist.

Amongst my political foibles, I am pretty strongly pro-Europe because I think that the difficulties humankind face are global and needs people working together in as large a number as possible. Stuff like a global minimum wage, or copyright reform, for instance, can't be done nation by nation. But because people tend not to want to be engaged on a level outside of their own country (and because, despite the web, most political press is *very* national in outlook) the transnational bodies that actually exist tend to be a bit rubbish, at best.

If no one is engaged, nothing happens.

So yeah, no idea where I am going with this, but this is my starting point.

Key conference themes so far - #altc 2014

1 min read

Space and permission for staff to reflect and experiment.

Trust and authenticity.

Disconnect between academic university and corporate university.

Any more?

#altc

Packing for #altc

1 min read

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon."

(as is traditionally posted in response to the numerous "look at all the things I'm taking to this conference" blogs that happen round about this time)

Where's the data on that "Future of England" survey? #indyref

2 min read

The survey was conducted by YouGov and the University of Cardiff on behalf of the ESRC "Future of the UK and Scotland" research programme led by the University of Edinburgh.

The research centre press release is here. (pdf)
The full survey data from YouGov is here. (pdf)

(a note on YouGov - they are actually really good at publishing survey results in their archive, but searching the archive is harder. Basically you need to know the approximate date that the results were published, and look around there. If a survey has just hit the headlines, it's liable to have just been published so it will be at the front, but looking for older survey results can be a pain. And of course, when you do get them they are pdf, so you have to copy them into a spreadsheet manually in order to play with them :-( It's usually abot 2 weeks after the field work that YouTube publish, but for some reason this one was held up till now despite the field work being in April [hmmmm....])

There's no real gold hidden in the data this time, unless you need further evidence that English Conservative and UKIP voters are narrow-minded, vindictive sods. But as a general principle of connected journalism, if you write about a survey you should link to the full data from that survey.

Image: Jabernal at Open Clip Art (no license shown, assumed CC-BY)