"A natural right of any group of people"

I've just come across a very interesting statement from the US Defense Secretary, James Mattis, who was in Erbil yesterday for talks with Masoud Barzani.

Discussing the planned independence referendum for 25th September, Barzani reiterated that the plan is “a solution and not an obstacle”.

“He then briefed Secretary Mattis on the old and modern issues that the people of Kurdistan have had with Baghdad and that no real partnership has ever been accepted by the latter. The President then reassured Secretary Mattis and the accompanying delegation that the referendum would not create any problems for the operations against the terrorists of the Islamic State and that the courage of the Peshmerga forces shall remain unwavering against this brutal common enemy which poses a threat to all of humankind and not only to Iraq and Kurdistan,” reads the press release.

Secretary Mattis stated that he understands the grievances of the people of the Kurdistan Region and also added that such step is a natural right of any group of people.

However, he said the announcement of independence vote last June was unexpected for the government of United States, especially due to the military operations against the terrorists of the Islamic State."

Basnews - 22 August 2017

With the proviso that this is taken from a press release by President Barzani's office, this is a remarkable statement with far-reaching consequences.

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Those of us who believe that President Trump is an embarrassment to the world probably have good reason to wonder how seriously we should take any statement from the current American administration; but not every aspect of their foreign policy is bad.

One of the positive changes after Trump came to power, an improvement on Obama's position, was a marked increase in military support—both in terms of equipment and troops—for Kurds in both Iraq and Syria, despite these two groups having very different political ideologies. In simple terms, I think the American administration believed that the Kurds offered the best hope of defeating ISIS, and that this mattered more to them than anything else. They probably didn't think much about the political solutions that would need to be developed after ISIS are defeated. Perhaps it wouldn't be too cynical to point out that the Americans have always been more eager to take military action than work out what to do afterwards.

That explains why Mattis said that the US was taken by surprise by Barzani's announcement in June this year. But the Trump administration have now had a good couple of months to think about it, and I think they have to be commended for standing behind the principle of democracy and self-determination. That's exactly what the world has a right to expect from America.

The big question is whether the US will be consistent. To say that holding a democratic referendum on whether you want to remain part of an existing state is "a natural right of any group of people" means that the US Administration must also respect the result of the Catalan referendum a week later. We should remember that both the Kurdish and Catalan referendums are unilateral referendums which are being held without the consent of the governments of their respective currently-recognized states, Iraq and Spain.

Also, if the US are consistent towards both the Kurds and the Catalans, then it is quite likely that the UK Government will feel obliged to follow suite, as it usually does. The critical thing in the formation of a new state is not the declaration of independence, but whether other countries then recognize you as an independent state. Having the US on your side is a tremendous advantage because of the considerable influence they have over so many other countries.

Will Catalunya vote for independence?

In my opinion the two most significant political events this year are going to be the independence referendums in southern Kurdistan on 25 September and Catalunya on 1 October.

The reason I'm writing this post is because what I've seen in the media about Catalunya is only a part of the truth, and isn't providing us with an accurate picture of the way Catalans are likely to vote. For example, this is what was reported by the BBC yesterday:

How strong is the appetite for secession?

"It is hard to say," says the political scientist [Professor Arias-Maldonado] from Málaga University. "According to polls, secessionists are now around 41% of Catalans - numbers have been going down for some time. Around 49% are against it.

"These data come from the Catalan public polling body. How will the terrorist attack affect this situation? Who knows? But my bet is - not very much and if it does, it will reinforce the unionist side."

BBC - 20 August 2017

To get a more accurate picture, I think it's worth showing a few graphics from the CEO poll itself, which can be downloaded from here:

     

The first graphic does indeed show 41.1% support independence and 49.4% don't. The graph at the bottom shows that the figures were just about equal a year ago, but in fact the figures haven't really changed all that much in the last three years, fluctuating in the range between 40 and 50%.

     

The second graphic shows the breakdown by party. Junts pel Sí and CUP supporters almost entirely in favour; the PSC, PP and Cs supporters almost entirely against; and CSQP supporters split (their preferred option is a federal Spain, but that isn't on offer, which explains why they are more evenly divided).

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But, as we should all know, even though people will express an opinion in an opinion poll, this doesn't always translate into actual votes at the ballot box. Even with the unusually high turnout in the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014, only 84.6% of the electorate actually voted. So it would have been possible to win that vote if only 42.4% of the total electorate had voted Yes.

According to the CEO poll, the turnout in the Catalan referendum would be a still-respectable 67.5% (roughly equivalent to recent Westminster general elections: 65.1% in 2010, 66.4% in 2015 and 68.8% in 2017) and that Yes would win a very substantial victory by a margin of nearly 25%, as shown in the graphic below:

     

I should perhaps explain that a "blank vote" is a valid vote for "none of the above" (a number of countries have long had this option, and in my opinion it should be available here too) and a "null vote" is the equivalent of a spoilt ballot paper here.

The reason for the apparent discrepancy is that those who want independence are very much more determined to get out and vote for it that those who don't. Of the supporters of the two parties in favour of independence, only a tiny percentage will abstain (3.1% and 1.9%) but the abstention figures for supporters of the three unionist parties are 39%, 28.8% and 28.3%, as shown in this final graphic:

     

Now of course, opinions could change between now and the referendum. But it's now less than six weeks away, and I don't think things will change much.

This means that after the referendum things will get very messy, with different people claiming different things. We can be sure that the leaders of the Catalan Government will point to the substantial margin of victory as justification for declaring independence.

We can be equally sure that the Spanish Government will say (as they have said all along) that the vote is illegal and unconstitutional. But I have no doubt that they will also claim that the reason Yes won was because those who abstained did so not because of the level of political apathy common to almost all western democracies, but because of a principled refusal to take part in an illegal and unconstitutional vote. That will be true, but only to a small extent, and we need to understand why that argument is a fallacy.

True, the unionist parties may not recognize the legitimacy of the vote; but the insurmountable problem they face is that a majority of their supporters clearly do recognize the legitimacy of the vote. As things stand at present, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. If a majority of their supporters were to boycott the election, they might well be able to claim that Yes only won because of the low turnout. But if 64.2% of PSC supporters, 55.9% of Cuitadens supporters and 66.1% of PP supporters defy their party leaders and go out to vote in the referendum (even if most of them vote No) then Mariano Rajoy—Prime minister of Spain and leader of the PP—is going to look pretty silly if he claims that the result is not democratic ... two-thirds of his own party supporters in Catalunya will not have agreed with him.

I've no doubt that he'll try it anyway, because the official referendum results won't be broken down by party allegiance. So he'll think that he'll be able to get away with it because people won't understand the underlying maths, and he'll hope that influential world leaders will commit themselves to rejecting the result on the basis of a specious argument before their research assistants get round to doing that maths.

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Forewarned is forearmed. Those of us who want to see Catalunya become independent need to make the case that democracy, the will of the people expressed at the ballot box, is more important than the niceties of the Spanish constitution or any political inconvenience that a vote for independence might cause for other countries.

Squabbling over scraps

So the Tories eventually managed to negotiate a confidence and supply deal with the DUP to keep Theresa May in power. The headline is that it will result in £1bn of additional spending over two years in the Six Counties. People in Wales have been kicking up a fuss about it.

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It doesn't surprise me at all that Carwyn Jones should do so. As Welsh Labour see things, the whole point of being in this political union is that, through it, Wales can be subsidized by countries that are richer than we are. Therefore the size of the handout we get, and how it compares to the handouts that other parts of the UK get, is important ... in fact it's probably the most important thing on their agenda.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't worry too much about it. There is almost certain to be legal challenge from the Welsh and Scottish governments, which might well result in Wales, Scotland and perhaps even England getting more public spending. But even if some legal process eventually determines that a few billion pounds more has be made available to be spent elsewhere, it is only small change in comparison with total UK public expenditure of more than £750bn a year. From the Tories' point of view, it's a very cheap way of giving them a comfort zone in terms of votes in the House of Commons. And even if there is some legal challenge, it will take years, so the Tories will have bought themselves time ... which in itself is a very precious commodity.

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What concerns me more is that many of those who want independence for Wales have been complaining in exactly the same way, and that some—for example in this post have said that if only we were a little more unruly, then we in Wales could get bigger handouts from Westminster. I find this disturbing, because the whole point of independence for us to stand on our own two feet as a nation, not relying on handouts from others at all, and certainly not arguing about whether we should now get £1.7bn more to spend in Wales just because the Six Counties are in line to get £1bn.

If we do this, we are missing the point entirely. Our mentality is completely wrong. I do not want a Wales on its knees squabbling over a few billion pounds, I want a Wales on its feet, producing that few billion—and much more—by our own efforts.

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Let's look more closely at Ireland. Before independence Ireland was poor. Since independence (and particularly since joining the EU) the Republic has become much, much richer. This wealth might be concentrated in the south east (just as it is in both Wales and England) but even the poorer Border, Midlands and Western region of Ireland is considerably more wealthy than the Six Counties.

Southern and Eastern Ireland ... €39,900 (£28,950) per head
Border, Midlands and Western Ireland ... €23,700 (£17,200) per head
Six Counties ... €21,000 (£15,200) per head

Source

Let's now put this additional £1bn into perspective. It equates to £500m per year, or £280 (€390) per head, since the Six Counties have a population of about 1.8m. At best, all this additional spending only scratches the surface of the underlying inequality of wealth between the Six and Twenty-six Counties. And in fact the current inequality is much bigger now than these figures show, because the pound has fallen so much in value since the Brexit vote.

Of course, nobody can say for certain that if the whole of Ireland had become independent, without partition, the Six Counties would now be as rich as the Twenty-Six. But I would be astounded if they weren't.

To slightly modify the proverb: is it better to give someone an extra £280 of fish a year, or allow them to catch fish for themselves and become a few thousand pounds richer each year as a result?

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I have no doubt that the DUP will spin this deal as a victory, and will say at the next election, "Vote for us, because only we are able to deliver all this extra fish pork."

Fish-barrel politics is as grubby as pork-barrel politics, it's a reflection of our obsession with the small picture at the expense of the big picture. We need to be asking why Wales, Scotland or the Six Counties should live as beggars, squabbling with each other over how many billion pounds the UK government will give us on the rare occasions when one of our political parties is in a position to twist their arm. With independence, we can each arrange our economies to suit our own strengths and in time, like Ireland, become much richer than we will ever be as part of the UK.

Bad reporting from the Guardian

Yes, from the headline, I guess most of you will have thought that I was referring to this article yesterday on Ysgol Llangennech and Welsh-medium education generally.

However what I had in mind was this report on a poll commissioned by Chatham House on what position the EU should take in Brexit negotiations. The Guardian's headline reads:

Two-thirds of Europeans believe EU should take hard line on Brexit – poll

But look more closely at this graphic from the article:

   

Yes, it is technically true that two-thirds of those outside the UK said that the EU should not compromise its core principles ... but what about the additional 20% who said that the EU should not compromise at all?

Do the maths. The truth is that more than 80% of those questioned think that the EU should not compromise over its core principles. In fact, even a majority in the UK think that the EU should not compromise its core principles. If we needed proof that the UK government is not going to get the outcome it says it wants, this survey should add to it. Twenty-seven democratically elected governments are not going to ignore such overwhelming strength of opinion in their respective countries.

So what are we to make of such reporting? Is it sloppiness? Maybe. Or is it that the Guardian, like every other media outlet, is inclined to write stories that support its own agenda, or (being more charitable) has an inbuilt, unconscious bias that it simply isn't aware of?

I don't share the general anger that I can see in many of the pro-Welsh-language comments on the Guardian's Llangennech article. I think it would be better to accept that every news outlet operates this way, and to filter what any article says accordingly. I'm glad the Guardian wrote what it did, simply because exposing such bias (whether intended or unconscious) is the best way of dealing with it.

Eleven points

As so much of what is currently happening to shape the new UK government is in flux, I thought I would make a list of the points I see as important.
 

1. The Tories will not call another election anytime soon

This is because they'd lose it. Their previous pitch was that Corbyn was unelectable, he clearly isn't. Labour have the momentum. They'll comfortably win any election held in the next couple of years.
 

2. The DUP don't want another election either

They will do everything they can to make the Tory/PUP agreement last as long as possible. All their wishes have come true. Every day is Christmas for them from now until the next election.
 

3. Theresa May will not lead the Tories into another election

She simply isn't cut out for elections, and every Tory now knows it.
 

4. But the Tories won't get rid of her yet

The very earliest she would go is at the party conference this autumn. But I doubt she will go that quickly for two reasons: First, the electorate won't tolerate a second unelected leader. Whoever becomes leader will have to face a general election within a year or so. Second, the Brexit negotiations are going to be a humiliation for the UK, so no ambitious Tory is going to want to be leader until the negotiations are over. The next Tory leader will let May take all the humiliation, then emerge as a fresh new face who has learnt from her mistakes.
 

5. Labour want an early election

They will do everything possible to destabilize the Tory/DUP agreement ... but that will just make them more determined to hold on. Labour will only get in by attrition, if the number of by-elections in the next few years is higher than usual.
 

6. The UK will end up with a soft Brexit

The UK will be part of the EU single market and customs union, and the will continue to pay a fair price for it. Maintaining an even playing field costs money. However the payments will be disguised in all sorts of ways to save Tory blushes.
 

7. Immigration will not be a big issue

It never was. Having "control" of immigration sounds fine, but was never going to equate to having less immigration. Despite promising they would, the Tories didn't do anything to curb immigration from outside the EU even though it alone accounted for more than the limit the Tories said they were aiming for. They realize that the UK economy relies on immigration. For example, it's cheaper to hire a doctor who has been trained at someone else's expense in another country than to train a doctor here.

The Tory media will not make an issue out of immigration, because criticizing the government for conceding on the principle of free movement to the point of destabilizing it will only bring about an election that will bring Labour into power ... something they're much more afraid of than immigration. Hardline Tory MPs will not make an issue of it for the same reason ... they cannot afford to cause trouble because their seats will be at stake. And any criticism from UKIP will be ineffective because this election killed them off as a political force.
 

8. The Tories are still a right wing party

Irrespective of what happens in negotiations with the EU, domestic economic policy is decided by each member state individually. A Tory government propped up by the DUP might be a little gentler than a Tory majority government (triple lock pensions, winter fuel allowance, etc) but the overall thrust of their economic policy will still be to give tax cuts to the rich and restrict spending on public services. Teresa May will try to implement as many parts of her manifesto as she can, regardless of having fewer Tory MPs. In fact she'll probably be more doggedly determined to do it because she won't be around as leader to answer for the consequences at the next election.
 

9. Scottish independence

The SNP won the general election in Scotland handsomely, winning 34 of the 58 seats. That's a much higher percentage of seats than the Tories gained in Britain. The SNP already had a mandate for a second independence referendum following the 2016 Scottish election and the SNP/Green vote in the Scottish Parliament. So they didn't need another mandate from this election, but they got it anyway.

However EU membership is not, in itself, going to hold all that much sway in deciding the outcome of the vote for independence. What will make a difference is that Scotland is a left-leaning country in which most of the economic levers of power are held by a right wing UK government. This has always been and will always be the main reason why the Scots will eventually vote for independence. Incidentally, this is true for Wales too.

The problem the SNP have is that they must hold this referendum while pro-independence parties command a majority at Holyrood. There's no guarantee that this will still be the case after 2021. But they need a to justify a second referendum, and the EU is a far more black-and-white reason (it was specifically mentioned in the 2016 manifesto) than the differing political make-up of Holyrood and Westminster, which is no different now from what it was in 2014. It's a tricky balancing act because if, as I now expect, the UK as a whole ends up with a soft Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon will have got what she said she wanted following the EU referendum.
 

10. Irish reunification

The only way that a soft border could be achieved in Ireland is if the Six and Twenty-six Counties were both in the EU single market and customs union. If the Tories still held majority at Westminster, they would have ensured Britain was out of both, but would probably have made an exception for the Six Counties, because it wouldn't matter very much to voters in Britain. This would effectively have moved the economic border between the UK and EU to the Irish Sea.

     (Actually, that's not strictly true. The other alternative would have
     been for the border to be at ports and airports in the Republic, and for
     Ireland to operate the UK's border policies ... but this would effectively
     put Ireland outside the EU in economic terms and make it part of the UK,
     and there's no way the Irish would accept that. However that didn't stop
     some Tories floating the idea, and I wouldn't be surprised if
     they try it again.)

If the border had been at the Irish Sea, it would have been a huge step towards the economic integration of the Six and Twenty-six Counties, and brought formal reunification closer. But with the Tories now reliant on the DUP to stay in power in Westminster this won't happen.

Much has been made of the idea that the UK government cannot act as an "impartial intermediary" to implement the Good Friday Agreement if it depends on the support of the DUP. That's a fair comment, but the other side of the equation is that it's quite likely that Sinn Féin will be in government in the Republic some time soon - perhaps after the next Irish general election in coalition with Fianna Fáil. If that happened, then the Irish government wouldn't be an "impartial intermediary" either. In truth, the UK government has always favoured the Unionists and the only difference is that the pretence of impartiality can no longer be maintained.

As I see it, the most significant result of the agreement between the Tories and the DUP will be that the both parties will find out just how little they have in common ... which I think will come as a bigger shock to the DUP than to the Tories. Much has been made of how socially conservative the DUP are in terms of issues like abortion and equal marriage, and the DUP are painted as dinosaurs from a bygone age. While I don't support the DUP, I would say in their defence that they represent the views of a large part of the population of the Six Counties. It isn't so much that the DUP are out of step with mainstream social views—if they were, they wouldn't have won 10 out of 18 seats—it's that there's a significant gulf between Irish social attitudes and British social attitudes. To their horror, the DUP will realize that when the Tories talk of "the United Kingdom" what they mean by it is very different from what the DUP want it to be. It hardly needs to be said that religion plays a bigger part in society in the Six Counties than in Britain. Britain is a much more secular society. I think the Protestant community in the Six Counties will come to realize that they have more in common with the social and religious conservatism of the Twenty-six Counties than they do with the liberal secularism of Britain. A generation or two ago, when more people held Christian views than they do now, which version of Christianity you adhered to was important, so much so that Protestants like Ian Paisley—who founded the DUP—saw Catholics as their polar opposites. But in a Europe which has become much more secular than it was, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland are finding that they have much more in common with each other as Christians in the face of a growing secularization that threatens to make practising Christians of all denominations a minority. In short, I think Protestants in the Six Counties will gradually come to see the reunification of Ireland as a more attractive option for helping to maintain their way of life than remaining part of the UK.

Make no mistake, public opinion in Britain might have been tolerant of the socially conservative views of the DUP while it was safely kept on the other side of the Irish Sea, but it will not be tolerant of people holding those views having a direct influence over UK government policy. The Unionist community as a whole will be made to feel, both through mainstream and social media, even less part of Britain than they think they are now. It will be a rude awakening.

I'd also mention two other factors. The first is just how far the Unionist vote has fallen, as shown in this post. It is now less than 50% for the first time. The second is the ground-breaking statement from the EU that there will be no obstacle to the Six Counties becoming part of a united Ireland in the EU.

If anything, I am more confident of a united Ireland happening in the next decade than an independent Scotland. The event that will trigger it is the death of Elizabeth Windsor.
 

11. Wales

We in Wales will be bystanders in most of this. However I think we will gain a few crumbs from the deal to form a new UK government. Apart from the DUP's constitutional red lines, they will of course extract a hefty amount of extra "pork" for the Six Counties. But it will be difficult to give one devolved (even if suspended) administration more money without the other devolved administrations getting more too. The Six Counties have greater public spending per head, and getting significantly more again would have to be justified on the principle of need. So we might finally see the Barnett Formula (even with a floor) replaced by a needs-based formula. This would benefit Wales, as our needs are greater than the UK average too.

The DUP save our bacon

The result of yesterday's election wasn't too far away from what I expected. I had put the Tories on 310 and Labour on 275. So I'm disappointed to some extent, but I can see a bright side.

In the Six Counties, two things coincided to produce a perfect storm. The first was that the DUP did well in the Unionist community, gaining two seats, but the second was that Sinn Féin did even better in the Republican community, gaining three seats and wiping out the SDLP. Because Sinn Féin do not take their seats in Westminster, the result is a solid block of MPs who are prepared to support the Tories, and who have just come to a deal to keep Theresa May in a weak and wobbly position of power. The SDLP would, of course, have opposed the Tories.

There is only one thing that the DUP really want from this deal, which is that the Six Counties are not treated in any way differently from the rest of the UK. If the DUP were not in such a pivotal position, I would have put money on the eventual solution to the problem of the border between the Six Counties and the Twenty-six being that the effective border between the EU and UK post-Brexit would be the Irish Sea, and that customs and immigration checks would have been carried out at the ports and airports rather than at the land border. Logistically, that is by far the best way of handling things because the tickets of any people or goods would have to be checked anyway when they boarded the ferries or planes to cross the Irish Sea, so discretely checking their customs/immigration documents at the same time as their tickets would result in no additional inconvenience.

However this arrangement is the one thing that the DUP will absolutely oppose, because in the event of a hard Brexit it will make the Six Counties—in practice if not in name—part of the EU single market and customs union and therefore economically, as opposed to politically, part of a united Ireland.

The only alternative to this is for the UK as a whole to remain part of the EU single market and customs union. And for me this now looks to be the most likely outcome. Essentially, the UK will have a similar relationship with the EU as Norway, and the border between the Six and Twenty-six counties will become as irrelevant for day-to-day purposes as the border between Norway and Sweden. Such an arrangement will also solve the problem of the border between Gibraltar and Spain, allowing Gibraltar to remain British without taking a massive financial hit from the loss of thousands of workers who make the daily commute from Spain.

Those who wanted a hard Brexit (UKIP and the Tory hardliners) were well and truly defeated in yesterday's election, so the UK having a Norway-style relationship with the EU can now be politically justified. And the Tories, if they have any sense, will grasp the fig leaf of spinning this compromise as the only practical way of ensuring that their precious UK stays together and that Gibraltar remains British.

The huge benefit for people in the UK is that we will remain part of the EU for economic purposes, and will only have opted out politically. It means that when Wales and Scotland become independent, we only need make the political decision whether we want to be part of the EU, because there will be hardly any economic consequences either way.

If I'm right in this analysis, the DUP have saved our bacon.

Now for those of you who will argue that this means that the UK will have to continue paying money to the EU, my answer is that we would always have had to do this if we wanted seamless access to the EU single market. We were fooling ourselves if we thought the EU27 would allow us any other deal.

Two upcoming independence referendums

I want to briefly highlight two pieces of political news which will have a very significant influence on independence for Wales and Scotland, because they'll almost certainly be drowned-out by current political events on these islands.

The first is the announcement on Wednesday that there will be a referendum on independence in south Kurdistan on 25 September this year. By south, I mean that part of Kurdistan which is currently part of Iraq, to distinguish it from the western part of Kurdistan currently in Syria, north Kurdistan in Turkey and east Kurdistan in Iran. They will vote Yes.

The second is today's announcement that 1 October this year has been set as the date for the independence referendum in Catalunya. As a parallel, I suppose I could say that by Catalunya I mean the current Spanish Autonomous Community, sometimes called the Principality, as distinguished from the other Catalan countries of Valencia and the Balearic islands which are also in Spain and North Catalunya in France.

The Catalan election in particular will be enormously important as the EU's reaction to the inevitable Yes vote in Catalunya will set a precedent for how the EU will react to similar situations in Europe such as Scotland.