aye, och aye, Scotland’s lucky MPs Cosa Scotia Westminster’s “Scottish mafia” has it good. That will not last Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition ON THURSDAY evenings, after four days of legislating in Westminster, Scottish MPs used to take the night train home. As it rattled through sleeping English towns they would gossip and connive in the bar car, disembarking in Edinburgh or points north as the sun rose. This, other MPs muttered, gave them an unfair opportunity for boozy scheming. The “tartan mafia” looked after its own. Budget airlines have killed caucusing on the Caledonian Sleeper. Yet still there is something of the Cosa Nostra about Scotland’s representatives in Westminster. Devolution to Edinburgh over the past decade and a half has been kind to them. In 2011 the pro-independence Scottish National Party won a majority in the Parliament at Holyrood. As a result, Scots will vote next September on leaving the United Kingdom. The risk that they will decide to push off, which terrifies both Labour (dependent on Scottish seats) and the Conservatives (sentimental about the union), gives Scottish MPs a mighty lever with which to secure pork-barrel goodies for their constituents. Of ten towns chosen for a fuel-duty rebate scheme, seven are in the Scottish Highlands, including two in the constituency of Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury. Mr Alexander has also cut taxes on “small cable-based transport systems”—conveniently, for the ski resorts in his and other mountainous Scottish seats. Ministers rarely challenge the “Barnett Formula”, the convention by which Scotland receives a disproportionate share of public spending: £1,600 ($2,590) more per person than in England and £350 more than in Wales. Devolution also means Scottish MPs have a lighter workload. Education, health and crime are now the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament. Thanks to generous electoral boundaries, the average Scottish constituency has 9,000 fewer voters than the average English one. For the same amount of money and with the same resources, Scottish MPs represent fewer voters on fewer issues. They react in diverse ways. Some idle. Scots are over-represented among the 50 least active parliamentarians, according to the Public Whip, a monthly e-letter that monitors MPs. Others pursue a prominent role in Westminster—though admittedly, this also reflects Scotland’s uncanny ability to spawn political talent. They hold more than their fair share of select committee chairs and are unusually likely to hold front-bench positions too. It will not last. If Scots vote to remain in the union (as polls suggest they will) Westminster will have to make good on promises of further devolution issued during the referendum campaign. Each of the three main unionist parties is drawing up a package of new powers for Edinburgh. These will probably include welfare, EU policy and some taxes. This will have two consequences. First, says the Constitution Society, a think-tank, it will lead to a new push to reduce the number of Scottish seats. Second, it will result in louder calls for English-only votes in Westminster. Many Tories are already furious that Scottish MPs can vote on education bills, which affect only the English. Ending that would reduce them to second-class status, making it much harder to pursue pork-barrel politics or even national careers. It is hard to imagine a senior minister or prominent select-committee chairman whose constituents are unaffected by the political issues in question, or who is unable to vote in big debates. Scottish MPs are a constitutional curiosity. They enjoy both the privileges of Britain’s old, centralised order and the lighter parliamentary responsibilities of its increasingly federal replacement. The gap between the two will eventually become untenable. The days of the tartan mafiosi are numbered.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 18:26:58 +0000
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