ScotPol

How Common is your manifesto?

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“Every election is determined by the people who show up.” – Larry J. Sabato

This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly magazine. Sign up to our Daily Briefing and Weekly Magazine newsletters here.

If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.

The elections are now just hours away and pretty soon we’ll all be scrambling into action to hold the parties in Parliament (particularly those who end up in Government) to get them to fulfil the promises they’ve made to you.

In this, my last post before the vote, I want to have a very brief look through some of the main manifestos to pull out the most and least ‘Common Weal’ policy in each them. Parties – even those constantly at loggerheads over the slightest ideological deviation and even those who appear to have almost no ideological overlap at all often agree with each other on a surprising number of policies (even if they get to them from wildly different positions and motivations – for example, a party might want a Universal Basic Income because it would allow them to eradicate poverty while another might want it because it would allow them to privatise public services and hand out vouchers for you to spend to buy those services instead).

None of this should be in any way construed as an endorsement of any of the parties mentioned though. Common Weal is party neutral and we lobby all parties to adopt our ideals (obviously this is an easier task with some than with others though).

I also can’t cover every party standing in this election. I’m sticking to the largest ones which, according to current polling, have a reasonable chance of winning seats after the election. I have a library of many of the manifestos for this election which includes some of the smaller parties, though even this is non-exhaustive. Apologies if the party you personally support isn’t covered here due to those caveats (though if your party’s manifesto isn’t yet in my library, please let me know and I’ll get it added!).

As a final caveat, do please go and read Nick Kempe’s article looking at mentions of care and care reform in the manifestos as this is also an area that Common Weal are heavily involved in. To avoid doubling our work, I’m steering a little away from care here and looking at Common Weal policies in other areas instead.

SNP

The SNP are almost certainly going to be the largest party in Parliament after next week and will have a good chance of being returned as the principle party of Government. The question in this election really seems to be more whether they’ll have an outright majority, will form another minority government and try to pass budgets etc with ad hoc alliances (likely with the Lib Dems and/or Greens) or whether they’ll form a more formal coalition or cooperation agreement with one or more other parties.

The difference from a lobbying standpoint for us is that minority governments may need to negotiate with other partners to get votes passed and therefore are more open to compromise or outside ideas whereas majority governments can just whip things through on party loyalty.

Most Common Policy

It’s only a single half-sentence in the manifesto but the announcement of a National Housing Agency isn’t just in alignment with Common Weal ideals but is an idea that comes directly from us. We’ve been campaigning for a decade now for such an agency to coordinate housebuilding in Scotland, strategically plan it, ensure adequate building standards and to help to train builders in the latest techniques (something that will be essential if we want to build houses to PassivHaus equivalent standards). None of that is in the half-sentence of course but we have been in contact with the Government and one of our projects for this year is to design the Agency that we think Scotland deserves.

Least Common Policy

The least Common Weal idea in the SNP manifesto as far as I can see is the continuation, and in fact doubling down, of adherence to conventional economic orthodoxy around the only measure of economic “success” being GDP growth and the only means by which Scotland could and should achieve that growth is by “foreign direct investment”. Gone from this manifesto compared to 2021 is any mention of Circular Economy, 15 minute neighbourhoods, Repair hubs (other than a fund for repairing bicycles) or other policies that promote sustainability through deconsumerism.

Reform UK

It goes without saying that Reform are almost entirely ideologically unaligned with Common Weal. Our very mantra “All of Us First” runs directly against their core belief that only some people matter and some matter more than others.

Most Common Policy

Reform are fighting this election based on flipping over the table of governance and pulling power away from the nationalists in Edinburgh and one of the results of that is that they are surprisingly supportive of plans for local government that wouldn’t look too far out of place coming from us with a demand to devolve more power to local authorities. They don’t end up in quite the same place though, as they also support merging Scotland’s already too-large Local Authorities and concentrating power into the hands of “city mayors”.

Least Common Policy

Pretty much everything they have to say about immigration, immigrants and people reliant on social security.

Labour

Labour are the pro-union party that Common Weal has the closest relationship with. We find a lot of common ground on many issues even where we quite happily and openly disagree on others. In the previous Parliament, for example, we collaborated constructively on substantial aspects of care reform (again, see Nick’s article) as well as Members’ Bills on Freedom of Information, Land Reform, what became the PassivHaus Bill and others.

Most Common Policy

Labour are the only party in this list to explicitly mention the National Care Service as an endeavour that they want to bring back in the next Parliament and have explicitly adopted our phrasing that the NCS must be an institution “worthy of the name”. There aren’t a lot of details about what they want to do or what they’ll be able to do if they aren’t in Government, but this is an area that is high on our priority list for the next Parliament and so one that we will be pushing on for more information.

Least Common Policy

Labour’s energy policy doesn’t mention public ownership of energy (at community, Local Authority or Scotland level) beyond a bare mention of the existence of UK controlled GB Energy – which still doesn’t appear to have a clearly defined purpose or stated ambition of how much of Scotland’s energy it would bring into public ownership.

Scottish Greens

The Greens are another party that we’ve worked closely with over the course of the previous Parliament (My own political inclination leans environmentalist, and I was a member of the party for several years though I think my skills and services are much better applied in a cross-party sense these days) and they are in an interesting position in the upcoming election. A potential substantial increase in votes and seats beckons, though the shadow of the uncomfortable coalition with the SNP and its acrimonious collapse looms overhead too which may well limit their influence more than their number of seats suggests.

Most Common Policy

The Scottish Greens have campaigned for a replacement to Council Tax for almost as long as they’ve existed as a party so this isn’t exactly a policy they’ve taken from us in general, but the details of how to implement a proportional Property Tax are now pretty well defined as a result of our work and their policy here closely aligns with our own vision including in terms of its allocation of discounts and surcharges (particularly on ensuring that landlords can’t keep profiting from rent hikes).

Least Common Policy

While the Greens have included a carbon emission tax on land in their manifesto, they have dropped mention of an outright property tax on land. This is an error. Taxing the pollution created by the use of land is important but so is taxing the concept of ownership of excessive land ownership in principle – even managed appropriately, the accumulation of wealth via land ownership must have its limits. This said, the Greens have formally adopted the former Labour position (now missing from the latter’s manifesto) to place a cap on the maximum amount of Scotland that any person can own.

Conservatives

Like Reform, there is little cross-over between Conservative policy and Common Weal’s, though it has happened. We’ve worked constructively particularly at a local level on local democracy reform and it was Conservative voices that proved critical to campaigns we’ve supported in areas like rent controls and Covid policies. With that party looking like it’ll be largely devoured by Reform though, their influence in the next Parliament may be limited. On the other hand, that may force a reevaluation of their political positions and possibly lead to hands reaching out to unlikely allies.

Most Common Policy

If anything, there’s even less in the Conservative manifesto for Common Weal fans than in Reform’s. One of the few policies I’ve found where we’d be pointing in the same direction is in our opposition to the Building Safety Levy but we do so on very different grounds. We oppose it because it has effectively dumped the cost of cleaning up the mess of companies installing unsafe cladding onto house buyers where we believe that more should be done to recover the costs from the companies and their former owners if those companies have been wound up to avoid paying compensation, whereas the Conservatives merely want to make houses a fraction cheaper (they also want to scrap the PassivHaus legislation on up front cost grounds despite the fact that passive houses are cheaper to run and would eliminate fuel poverty).

Least Common Policy

Tax cuts. The Conservatives are quite simply mathematically wrong on their assertions that every devolved tax is on the far side of the peak of the Laffer Curve and that everything will get better if we just cut taxes in ways that benefit the already rich more than those too poor to pay tax as it is. If 40 years of trickle-down economics was going to work, we would have seen it by now.

Liberal Democrats

Along with the Greens, the Lib Dems may be the ones to watch in this election as they will also be vying to become Kingmakers if the SNP don’t win a majority. Indeed, wariness of the former from the SNP after the coalition collapsed along with a less environment and more business leaning FM Swinney may mean they’d prefer a partner wearing orange rather than green. For their own part, the Lib Dems have ruled out any formal coalition but would consider voting for SNP budgets – as they have done the last two times – if the price is right.

Most Common Policy

Although the Lib Dems are still ideologically against independence, they have quite a lot to say about other aspects of constitutional reform that Common Weal has advocated for. They are one of the few parties in Scotland still advocating for a fully Federal United Kingdom (though we caution that this must be framed as true democratic reform, not merely an alternative to independence or a barrier against it) and they have adopted our policies that Citizens Assemblies should be embedded at all levels of government from local to national and that Freedom of Information should apply to private companies that provide government services.

Least Common Policy

Energy policy again. While the Lib Dems are anti-fracking, they are solidly pro-nuclear (despite it being the most expensive form of low-carbon energy generation) and they are pro-carbon capture (despite the inconvenient fact that it doesn’t work). This said, while the Lib Dems aren’t generally the first choice party when it comes to supporting public ownership of things like energy, their manifesto this year does discuss the government taking equity stakes, reforming ScotWind (adopting our own recommendations) and given Local Authorities the power to bring energy into public ownership if they choose.

Conclusion

As I say, none of this is an endorsement of any party nor are we going to state which part is the most Common Weal of them all – all of them have taken on policies that we could support but all of them have also made promises that we’re going to have to fight against. This is fine. It gives us plenty of scope to stay busy in the next Parliament. We’re certainly going to be stuck right in there to try and get as much as we can done and we’ll work with alliances where we can make and join them. If you’d like to support us as we try to pull all of the parties in a more Common Weal direction then please do so here. And I’ll be back on the topic in the next couple of weeks to break down what the results mean once we see what they actually are.

Marking my ten years at Common Weal

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

“Everything in politics seems impossible until the moment it becomes inevitable” – Craig Dalȝell

This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly magazine. Sign up to our Daily Briefing and Weekly Magazine newsletters here.

If you’d like to support my work for Common Weal or support me and this blog directly, see my donation policy page here.


(I think this is the first photo of me at a Common Weal event – IdeaSpace, October 2016)

Time certainly does fly. Last week marked ten years since I published my first policy paper through Common Weal. By 2016, I had gone through a bit of a journey from my political radicalisation during the independence referendum, to losing my job and, as it turned out, my career as a laser engineer at the tail end of 2015.

In that intervening time I had kept up my political writing through my personal blog and it was an article there about GERS that caught the eye of Robin (who already knew me via previous campaigning together) and led him to asking me if I could help on a project about Fracking.

At that time, the political winds (including within the Scottish Government) were pushing very much in favour of fracking the hell out of Scotland and while the anti-fracking campaign had (and still has) a very strong case in terms of climate change, local environmental impact and in terms of long term energy security, the pro-fracking side were talking mostly about economics and when it comes to a campaign based on environmental principles vs a campaign based on making the GDP line go up, politicians are often much more easily swayed by the latter than by the former.

Hence the need for something different. I was asked to investigate the Economics of Shale Gas Extraction with a critical eye to see just how they actually held up. The result: They didn’t. Fracking does well to boost the profits of the owner of the well but the industry would create few jobs (especially in comparison to renewables or even the legacy oil industry), would produce even fewer local jobs and would do absolutely nothing in terms of energy security or the price of energy bills.

Even the profits made would only be made if gas prices are pushed anomalously high (thus, as we’ve most recently seen, the industry is sensitive to geopolitics) and if the companies involved are allowed to not pay the costs created by the pollution of the extraction and the burning of the gas.

I’m proud to say that that paper had a significant impact. It was widely read and adopted throughout the anti-fracking campaign in Scotland and that campaign would go on to win a moratorium against extraction that persists to this day (although there are still those seeking power who would reverse that ban).

Not bad for a first attempt at a policy paper!

Ten years later, I’ve published probably more than twenty more, plus co-authored half a dozen books, produced hundreds of hours of audio and video interviews and more. And don’t worry, this isn’t a retirement message quite yet – I still have at least a few more in me (you’ll very much want to keep an eye on the one I’m just finishing up at the moment!).

I’m always a bit embarrassed to self-promote but this seems like a moment that I shouldn’t pass up. I’d like to present the five policy papers written by myself that I look back on most fondly, either because of their sheer impact in the political scene or because they meant a lot to me in terms of subject matter.

Beyond GERS – 2016

If my fracking paper was the one that kicked off my time at Common Weal, Beyond GERS was the one that made my mark on the Scottish political scene. Beyond GERS sought to recontextualise the way we, as a nation, talked about the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report as it was increasingly being used as a stick to beat the independence movement when it was, in fact, showing something rather different – that Scotland’s accounts were being grossly distorted by the fact that we were not independent in ways that made it very difficult to even talk about the finances of what lay beyond that horizon.

For example, just the fact of independence would cause a lot of civil servant jobs in London who are doing work ‘for’ Scotland to move to Scotland – along with the economic impact they would have when they live their lives in and around Edinburgh instead of in London.

The negotiations around debt and asset splits would cause significant changes which could very well lead to Scotland paying much less in debt interest each year (and almost certainly not more in interest even in a ‘worst case’ scenario). And then actual policy changes like choices to be made over how and where military budgets are spent or where and how large Scotland’s embassies would be could have significant impacts on our annual budgets.

The actual numbers in that paper are now out of date as is much of the methodology that went into calculating them. This was because, in additional to changes to devolution in 2017, one of the impacts this paper had was to change (and in my view improve) how GERS itself was presented. Other impacts were an increased focus on GERS in the context of independence which led to similar papers being produced looking at Wales and at Northern Ireland, which both reached similar conclusions to my own paper. It also led to multiple Scottish Government Ministers promising to produce their own version of a set of “post-indy accounts” for Scotland, though none have actually materialised yet.

Social Security for All of Us – 2017

It was Common Weal’s paper in 2013, In Place of Anxiety that was a major early developer of my political viewpoints, particularly its case for a Universal Basic Income. The concept had been around before then, of course, but that was my own introduction to it. In 2017, I had the opportunity to revisit the topic as part of a broader work on how an independent Scotland could redesign its welfare state.

As part of this I produced one of Scotland’s first fully costed Universal Basic Income schemes. It is meagre by today’s standards (equivalent to Universal Credit, but truly Universal) and I would now advocate for a UBI that meets some kind of adequacy standard of being able to actually prevent poverty rather than merely allow someone to live in poverty.

This paper had multiple impacts on the Scottish political world – not least, it played a role in pushing the major parties to make pledges around the idea of a UBI in the 2021 Scottish elections. The SNP, Greens and Lib Dems all came out in favour of a UBI and Scottish Labour presented a counter-plan around a Minimum Income Guarantee.

Sadly, none came to pass. The UBI pilot scheme proposed by the Scottish Government was blocked by the UK Government and their report into Minimum Income was all-but buried by the Government who had by then changed First Minister twice and were evidently no longer interested.

Ambitions for the next Parliament have also been scaled back with Labour and the Lib Dems dropping their pledges entirely, the SNP promising only pilot study of a Minimum Income study for artists and the Greens proposing a similar pilot for a UBI for care leavers. Both pilots are welcome, of course, but it’s still a step back from the loftier promises of 2021.

However, that journey from 2017 to now has been a remarkable one. Back then UBI was still a radically utopian idea in Scotland, fit only for academics and weird policy wonks. By 2021, Scotland had a Parliamentary majority in favour of UBI even if it lacked the power to implement one and that majority went across the constitutional divide – a rare thing these days.

It also led me to being picked up this year by Basic Income Network Scotland and joining them as a Trustee, so you can believe that I’ll be keeping the issue live as we go into the next Parliament to make sure those pilot schemes happen and then we eventually get a Basic Income rolled out to All of Us.

A Silver Chain – 2018

The Sustainable Growth Commission was the first major push by the SNP to produce a body of work on Scottish independence since the publication of its Scotland’s Future White Paper in 2014. It was widely anticipated but at Common Weal we had heard whispers and rumours that we weren’t going to like what was in it. Sure enough, when it was published we were, quite frankly, appalled. I received an ‘advance’ copy of the report just two hours before its midnight embargo and stayed up till 3am reading it – I was then on the radio at 8am the following morning being interviewed about it which made the late night rather worth it.

Over the course of that publication day, I hammered out this policy paper which was published a few days later. The biggest difficulty we had with the report was the ‘six tests’ it laid out that were put in place to block the launch of an independent Scottish currency in the event of independence. Tests that we still maintain would have been impossible to meet and that the act of adhering to the tests would have made it harder, not easier, to launch a new currency.

This wasn’t the only objection we had but it was the one that gained the most traction. The party had to put substantial effort into railroading an adoption motion through their conference that year – the rebellion amongst members was almost as great as the one they saw during the debate to become a pro-NATO party. It also led to the formation of what would become the Scottish Currency Group who have taken our work on an independent Scottish currency and have pushed on far beyond it. Keep an eye out for their next sets of work in the coming months.

Good Houses For All – 2020

There is no logical reason that I can fathom for building houses that leak unnecessary amounts of heat when the technology to build them better doesn’t just exist but now costs virtually the same as building them badly. At the same time, incentives to improve existing houses don’t exist because why should landlords bother to properly retrofit when it’s the tenant who pays less on their bills and instead you could just jack up their rent because they have nowhere better to go.

This paper sought to solve both problems. It laid out the finances of building passive energy efficiency grade houses (though not necessarily the PassivHaus standard as there are other ways to achieve similar levels of efficiency) for social rented stock. I found that doing this could deliver houses cheaper than the private sector would while still being profitable for Local Authorities. This would mean Councils could build essentially unlimited social houses and outcompete the private sector in both price and in quality.

In 2022, I was asked at a fairly high profile public event if I could win just one policy in my political career, which would it be? I chose this one. It has the potential to not just reduce but to eliminate fuel poverty in Scotland and would leave a legacy lasting potentially centuries.

So imagine my shock and surprise that just a few weeks later, MSP Alex Rowley got in touch and took us up on that challenge, introducing a Members Bill to make passive energy efficiency the minimum standard for new homes in Scotland. The Government, facing a massive defeat if they opposed the Bill, did the smart thing instead by simply adopting it as Government policy. There’s still a long road to go in making it all happen but there’s an excellent chance that it will. I hope that I don’t only win one Government policy in my entire career, but if I do I’ll be happy if I only win this one.

ScotWind: Privatising Scotland’s Future Again – 2022

In January 2022, the Scottish Government announced that the Crown Estate Scotland (an arms-length org, but one owned by and accountable to Scottish Ministers since 2017) had completed its auction of options to develop what was then the world’s largest offshore wind project – ScotWind.

Basically, companies bid to buy the right to come up with a plan to develop a particular patch of seas and then they can choose to either return the right to the Estate or “exercise their option” and start the process of developing it. The Government PR machine went into overdrive to talk up the benefits of selling these options. Headlines touted the hundreds of millions of pounds that would flow into the Scottish Treasury and what could be done with it as well as promises around the ‘supply chain’ that would bring hundreds of jobs to Scotland.

But I was looking at the actual reports and things didn’t seem right. As it turned out, the auction was badly flawed. Rather than a traditional option where the highest bid wins or one where a lowest reserve price was set, this one had a maximum bid ceiling set on it. Every winning bid won their option at exactly the bid ceiling (suggesting they might have paid more). Other problems became evident, such as absolutely minimal protections that in many cases would make it cheaper to break those supply chain promises and to pay the fines than to actually fulfil them.

I very quickly put together a report of these findings and we published just a few days after the initial announcement. Instantly, the news coverage flipped from repeating the party line of the success of the auction to taking a more critical eye. The newspaper article covering my report ended up being the most read article in the Herald’s history of publishing online. My follow up report a year later revealed that Scotland has potentially lost out on billions or maybe even tens of billions of pounds by botching the auction the way it did and an investigation into what happened is now underway.

The Next Ten(?) Years

Obviously, my actual job at Common Weal has changed substantially over the decade. I spend more time now managing our Working Groups and the various other people working on policies than I do writing myself. I also keep up with contributions to our Daily Briefing and weekly Magazine (you are subscribed to both, aren’t you?) and I do a lot of outreach, networking and public engagements (want me to speak at your local campaign group about any of my work? Get in touch!). But, I’m still heavily involved in developing my own policies too and, as I say, I think you’re going to like the one I’ve got coming up next.

And so, where for the next ten years? Honestly, the unemployed laser engineer I was ten years ago couldn’t have predicted where I’d be today so who knows? I do know that I couldn’t have done it without you. It’s folk who support Common Weal with their £10/month that have let me do everything I’ve done and can support me and the rest of the team to keep doing it. So, as proud as I am to have done it all, I’m so grateful to have been allowed to do so. Thank you.

And here’s to the next decade, where ever it takes us.