Support is growing for the Common Weal

It’s an economic model for which Scotland’s centre-left is becoming increasingly excited. The Common Weal, brain-child of the Jimmy Reid Foundation, already had a formidable array of political figures behind it – but now it has also picked up Jim Mather, a former SNP minister and current millionaire, whose sympathies have always been seen as big business ones. The model is turning heads and minds.

In its premise, it’s inherently likeable: it proposes that Scotland distances itself from the continental European and Anglo-Saxon models of welfare and social security and instead emulates the Nordic countries’, using high rates of individual taxation to foster a strong quality of life for all. It sees social security not only as a convenience for individuals, but also as a means to enable occupational mobility, often seen as essential to high productivity.

It seems the ideological battle will be fought over the detail. How high must taxes be? All involved in politics know that an increase in tax is hard to sell to the masses. It’s likely this aspect that is slowing the SNP’s embrace of the proposal; the party, though social democratic, is often accused of promoting “Nordic levels of welfare with American levels of taxation”. Despite this, the Common Weal is set to be debated at a fringe event at the SNP’s conference this year, and it looks increasingly likely that debate may extend to the main hall.

If the SNP chooses to back the proposals, the campaign for Scottish independence will be given a decisively egalitarian twist. The Jimmy Reid Foundation’s initial documents on the Common Weal have made explicitly clear that this is not something which can be implemented by today’s partly-empowered Scottish Parliament. Even the Liberal Democrats’ proposed federal UK would not lead to a transfer of Westminster power over welfare and pensions to the Scottish Parliament. The message will be: the first step to the Common Weal is a Yes vote in the coming referendum.

But even without the SNP’s blessing, the debate over the Common Weal has reinforced the political divergence between Scotland and the rest of the UK. The fact that the most prominent political force in the Scottish Parliament is even considering the model stands in stark contrast to the rest of the UK; the Labour Party, which is expected to squeeze into at least a coalition government from 2015, has withdrawn opposition to some scheduled Conservative cuts. The centre-left has been rendered extinct on the UK level, but is fighting for rejuvenation on the Scottish level.

That presents a slightly different and more powerful message to the people of Scotland: the first step away from the right is a Yes vote in the coming referendum. With any luck, the Jimmy Reid Foundation’s contribution to the independence debate will only be the start.