A Quick Benediction

Feb 11

Posted by Natalie in Religion | 1 Comment

spacer I started my lunch today planning to write a long and tedious blog about the UK Government release today, and I will get to that tonight perhaps, but I was overtaken by events; namely the shock announcement that Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to resign his position as the head of the world church of Catholics. This news appears to have stunned even those of the inner Vatican circle, especially given the long tradition and expectation of popes dying in office. In fact, we have to look back to 1415 to find a prior example, and that was a decision based on necessity to maintain the ministry. I confess myself to be somewhat flabbergasted, but I welcome the news with all the alacrity of hope for the future of the Church under a more progressive spiritual head.

Pope Benedict XVI has taken an unprecedented and difficult decision to step down to allow someone else with more vigour of health to take on the shackles of the spiritual leadership of a ministry diminishing in many areas of the world. I’d assert that this decision was not made out of self-interest and concern for his own health, and his statement informs this position. He says, “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” He clearly believes that this heady role can be more aptly filled by someone else more ably, if not more passionately.

Much negative opinion has been written and spoken about Pope Benedict XVI, but I hope that this decision will receive a more charitable reception; an acknowledgment that he did the right thing.

Pope John Paul II, for all the discussions and agreements in Vatican II had, in my opinion, a steely hold over the stagnation of the church in relation to suitability for purpose in a more tolerant, progressive world. And yet was beloved. Not only beloved of Catholics, but as an acceptable face of Catholicism the world over. He was fêted by Catholics in his adopted country of Italy; idolised in his native Poland and his message was welcomed with great joy in certain Latin American countries during times of great hostility to Catholic Churches there. He was even welcomed with open arms and benevolence and love by most of Scotland’s Catholics in his visit in 1982.

When John Paul II it died was an opportunity for the conclave of Cardinals in the Catholic Church to take a different approach; to recognise that their ministry was further changing, that the responsibility which they held was not only to uphold the values of the Catholic Church, but to guide the people they served. Whilst Il Papa was alive, they couldn’t make necessary changes, but here was an opportunity and they fell at the first hurdle.

Vatican II was attempt to address the position of the Church in the modern world. There is much argument about the efficacy of the changes which Vatican II made during the period of 1961-1965, but what is clear is that the Catholic Church moves at a much slower pace than society. For most, the values of modern society have progressed quite significantly since 1965 and the Church isn’t so much playing catch up as still to set off; adhering very strictly to unchanging central tenets.

Joseph Ratzinger, as was, took part in the original opening session of Vatican II in 1961, as did the then Karol Wojtyła and two of John Paul II’s predecessors – a fact that is almost inevitable given the import and the size of the opening session, but interesting nonetheless. Given that John Paul II was in failing health for many years prior to his death, and all the challenges this presented and sympathy that he was unable to retire, it was to great surprise that Bishop Ratzinger at age 78 emerged from the smoky conclave as his successor.

Whilst the theologian Ratzinger was seen as a moderniser in the 1960s, it is my opinion that his views were fairly retrograde by the time assumed the papacy in 2005. He has said of Vatican II, “The Council was a time of grace in which the Holy Spirit taught us that the Church, in her journey in history, must always speak to contemporary man, but this can only happen through the strength of those who are profoundly rooted in God, who allow themselves to be guided by Him and live their faith with purity; it does not happen with those who adapt themselves to the passing moment, those who choose the most comfortable way.”

The Church has reacted very bullishly to a number of issues which concern at least a large minority of modern Catholics the world over; female clergy, contraception – especially in areas where the church is strongest and AIDS is most prevalent – and homosexuality. I cannot claim to speak for all Catholics, and I wouldn’t dream of doing so. I know that there will be many Catholics in Scotland and across the world who stick rigidly to biblical doctrine and dogma as interpreted by the Catholic Church and disagree fundamentally with where I think the Catholic Church should be. Not least Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, who I’ll allow is a lovely man in person but with whom I fundamentally disagree on equal marriage, to the extent that he alienates people like me from the Church.

Let us also not eulogise either John Paul II and Benedict XVI without at least mentioning how slow they were to react to disgusting allegations of child abuse in the Catholic Church, or how the Catholic Church, under their direction protected criminal priests and other clergy at the expense of the people it should have been protecting; the children. Or the fact that cover-ups are still in place and that, but for the tenacity of victims and supporters, some of these cover-ups would remain in perpetuity as guilty priests go unexposed.

When Joseph Ratzinger was appointed, I admit to a degree of impatience with the conclave of cardinals. It was apparent they had elected to travel the predictable and safe route of appointing a known quantity. There was nothing to fear from a Ratzinger appointment, and given his health had been less than robust since the 1990s, he was unlikely to pursue change and progress with any degree of vehemence. And somehow he didn’t evoke the same warm response his predecessor John Paul II could take for granted. Perhaps that is because I had only known one pope in my lifetime. Those older than me are probably more pragmatic, having seen the passage of successive popes. Or maybe having travelled the theology route as opposed to the clerical route to the top of the Catholic Church, Joseph Ratzinger was a different type of pope from Karol Wojtyla. Regardless, he was different, and didn’t quite hit the heights of expectation.

I am glad that the Pope has merely decided to retire, because I have realised whilst typing that this isn’t much of an obituary, my being critical of him in so many respects.

However, Pope Benedict XVI has served his appointment to the best of his ability, and with faith and a belief in his ministry. I might not necessarily agree with him unquestioningly, but I cannot deny his long commitment to the Catholic Church. And despite my initial reluctance to his elevation to the papacy I still went along, with many others, to the papal mass in Bellahouston in 2010. So, Papa, thanks for your long service, enjoy your retirement and best wishes for reinvigorated health freed from the weight of your ministry.

And to the conclave of Cardinals, a plea; recognise our impatience with the stagnation of the Church and address our hopes when choosing our next pope for us. Proceed with the intention to embrace a Brave New World and consider, perhaps, when choosing, that the Church is at its strongest and growing in areas of the African and South American continents and contemplate choosing a candidate from their wealth of fantastic representatives.

Coalition lovers, Eastleigh fighters

Feb 11

Posted by Guest Blog in Holyrood | No Comments

spacer Today we have a gratefully-received guest from Dan Phillips. If you cast your minds back Dan last wrote for us on the Edinburgh Council elections last year. Having quit the media and moved back to England but still an electoral obsessive he’s now turned his attentions to Eastleigh. Dan has his own blog on liberalsellout.wordpress.com

I can only imagine the icy stares, the barely concealed hate bubbling under between Conservative and Lib Dem activists in Eastleigh, back in May 2010. As sure as Clegg and Cameron exchanged furtive glances across the Rose Garden a few days later, there were metaphorical daggers thrown in Huhne’s back by Maria Hutchings in an anonymous hall. The Conservatives had lost a ‘naturally Tory’ seat once again.

Eastleigh isn’t famous for much. Benny Hill and the naked rambler are from there, but that’s about all. But up until 1994 when their Tory MP died in, well, unusual circumstances, it was True Blue. The Liberal Democrats, pouncing on an unpopular Major government and using the pluck of the underdog won it and have been there ever since. As you’ll have no doubt heard, it is also the only place in the country where every returned councillor has the yellow birdy pinned proudly to their chest.

But it is by no means a fortress. That majority has see-sawed from over 9,000 in 1994 to a mere 568 in 2005 to the current impressive but not impossible to overturn 3,864. The Lib Dems have to work hard to keep this seat each time, and they had the troops to fight the ground war in 2010. But as Michael Portillo is apt to point out, the Conservative Party hasn’t won an election outright since 1992, the very same time this little pocket of Hampshire last dabbled in Toryism. This battle between the two halves of the Coalition Waltz is a battle of existentialism for both parties.

For the Lib Dems, Eastleigh is the chance to disprove the prevailing theory, and the depressing facts since those halcyon days of the first flush of Coalition love. If the headlines are right the Lib Dems have been sapped of those very activists that keep Eastleigh and many of their Southern seats in their talons as membership has imploded. And there is of course the small matter of the opinion polls that have read more like a roll call of the dead than evidence that there’s about to be an uptick in fortunes. Win this rearguard action and electoral annihilation is no longer the certain outcome the pundits are predicting.

But if they fail you don’t have to look too hard to see the implications for them. That electorally yellow foot of the South West is at risk of a domino collapse. Mid Dorset and North Poole has a mere 269 votes majority. Or how about Wells where Tessa Munt ousted a Tory with just 800 votes spare in 2010. There’s many more where careers hang on a wafer thin majority.

Equally, for the Conservatives, if they can’t recapture the home of Benny Hill how can they ever expect to govern with a majority ever again? Snuff out those helpful liberals in the South West and there’s less work to be done in the Labour-Tory marginal war zones. But here’s the rub for Cameron: what would a Maria Hutchings win say about his leadership?

She’s not exactly on-message. Against gay marriage, wants out the EU and allegedly misquoted as saying Labour’s ‘done more for immigrants, the gays and bloody foxes‘ than disabled children back in 2005 she’s not at the vanguard of the modern Conservativism he claims to espouse. Indeed, in a byelection fight with the Lib Dems I can scarcely think of a Tory less likely to garner votes from that quarter than Hutchings. So if she were to win, what would Cameron gain? Another rebellious backbencher?

Her candidacy, albeit in place in since 2010, is probably more likely to signify their own defensive strategy: mute the Ukip menace by having a Tory that walks the very same walk. But should she be returned, Hutchings will be held up as the shining evidence for a more rightward shift.

The opinion polls that exist deliciously contradict each other. The two-way duel could yet turn into a four-way royal rumble if Labour and Ukip can strengthen their hand. This battle is emblematic of the Lib Dems’ future fortunes, and the frothing faction in the Tories have a chance to recapture ‘their’ seat. But if Clegg’s party are to prove they are a Phoenix and not a Dodo, Eastleigh is a must.

When arguing Yes is No

Feb 6

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 32 Comments

spacer Much has been made of the SNP’s watertight party discipline and the remarkable binding that a shared belief in independence can bring. Last year’s NATO debate is the only significant issue in the recent past that I can think of that has torn the party in two, and even then it was conducted so professionally and respectfully that other parties must surely have looked on in frustrated envy.

As a result, and in order to pull layers off the SNP (and Yes Scotland by association), the press and opposition have had to play a clever game. 

Rather than wait in vain for party disarray to fall into their press releases and front pages, a more proactive approach has been taken. A noticeable and increasing trend recently has been for the voices of Yes Scotland’s internal critics to have their arguments complimented and their voices amplified by friendly unionists, resulting in the bigger picture getting lost and unwittingly ending up effectively batting for the other side.

It can arrive via the temptation of having a go at Salmond amongst the ‘other’ parties or the temptation to be ‘reasonable’ for those in the SNP, but the ramifications of a lack of solidarity across Yes Scotland should not be underestimated and the reasons for it happening should be scrutinised.

My concern, pure and simple, is that too many in the pro-Yes camp are getting played by a disingenuously chummy opposition. 

Behaviours are influenced to the pavlovian extent that if you criticise the SNP you’re being objective and if you praise them you’re a cybernat, a Yes voice lost in the crowd. It’s a gloriously subtle and highly effective way to damage the Yes cause. If a bigger reaction is gained by being a wee bit controversial, and journalists will give you a slap on the back, then you could be seduced into selling out your side more often than you should. 

I know, I fall for it regularly, whether I ultimately catch myself or not, not that I’m a member of any political party any more so there’s precious little risk of damage. 

The fairly regular DMs from unionists (from low level activists right up to high level MPs) complimenting my ‘reasonableness’ when I’m critical of the SNP,  is some evidence of what is going on out there. I wasn’t naive enough though to fall for one journalist’s ‘friendly’ email offer to run blog posts past him for advice before I posted them, back in my SNP Tactical Voting days. Nice try (not really).
 
As I say, I’m not a member myself, but it’s quite clear that the phrase that may do the most damage to Yes Scotland over the coming year or so is ‘I’m a member of the SNP but…’. 

There are plenty of individuals who do it, I could list off a few across the Nationalist spectrum, but I’ll only name Jim Sillars as a classic example, his dubious contribution is after all at another level altogether.

It’s not clear whether Jim truly believes he’s being helpful to the independence cause when he is seemingly duped into providing juicy headlines such as ‘Sillars warns SNP that Yes campaign is on the ropes‘ and ‘Jim Sillars: SNP a ‘totalitarian’ and ‘intellectually dumb’ party‘. I could continue. As, I sadly suspect, will Jim.
 
Those genuinely seeking a Yes vote would do well to privately agree to disagree more often than they publicly disagree to agree. This isn’t silencing dissent, it’s simply smart politics to aid a wider cause in the face of an understandably ruthless opposition. Who wants to squabble their way to a 74%- 26% defeat, regardless of how many RTs they get or hits they get on their blog?

The rather brutal oppression of supposed Cybernats is, for me, part of the same game. If some idiot spouts something stupid online, they should be ignored, it should not be front page or even middle page news, and nor should Callum ‘Judge Dredd’ Cashley’s attempts to sort them out. Offence taken in these stories is almost always exaggerated and the message to those ‘reasonable’ Nats cleverly delivered: ‘Look what we ‘ll make of you if you get too wrapped up in this independence business’. What a Cybernat is actually defined as remains conveniently unclear. 
 
Furthermore, the press will have no hesitation to rapidly promote someone to ‘senior activist’ (blogger) or ‘prominent politician’ (councillor) if they can get a good SNP or Yes Scotland rift story into the press. Don’t be an idiot of course, but don’t be afraid to wear your pro-independence opinions on your sleeve either.

Not that this game is limited to individuals. Broadly speaking, if the SNP criticise the Greens for not being Nationalist enough or the Greens criticise the SNP for not being environmentalist enough or the Socialists either feel excluded or exclude themselves, the joint venture of Yes Scotland is simply not going to take off due to prevailing winds. 

If I can compare the alliance to a hot air balloon (crack your own Salmond jokes now), the entity only gets off the ground if each side is appropriately balanced and has enough activation energy pulling it upwards. The Yes balloon is a bit wobbly right now, and whether each stakeholder is puffing in the same direction remains to be seen.

A symbolic incentive to work together has already been presented to the Yes alliance though. The Holyrood 2011 election results yielded 50 odd % of the votes for independence-favouring SNP + Greens + Socialists + Margo. These weren’t votes for independence many will be keen to point out, but a majority of voters have voted for independence-minded parties and whose to say they won’t be persuaded do so again?
 

Criticism is healthy and necessary for both campaigns and Yes Scotland’s greatest risk remains acolytes nodding Salmond into a crushing defeat. However, even though the SNP can just about survive with the fundamentalist vs gradualist tension  continuing to bubble under the surface up to Autumn 2014, adding the amplified consternation of internal detractors into the mix will probably stretch Salmond’s big tent politics too far, and ultimately to the unionist’s delight.

Or maybe I’m just being unreasonable…

Love without borders

Feb 6

Posted by James in Equality, Holyrood, Westminster | 9 Comments

spacer Pleasing as it is to see last night’s vote in favour of equal marriage at Westminster, and to know that the Scottish Government’s parallel process will surely bring fruit, the SNP’s Westminster group’s decision not to vote still perplexes me. Kate’s got a fantastic post up about the implications of the Westminster proposals for Scots law, the roll-call of shame, and concerns about the SNP’s reasoning: I agree with all of that, and there’s no point replicating her arguments here.

There are other concerns, though, about the SNP abstention. The UK is, unless and until the referendum is won, a single nation-state. Until that point it’s extremely hard to identify what does not affect Scotland, and the question of whether England and Wales deliver marriage equality certainly does matter to Scots.

People live, work and love across the border largely without thinking about it. If two Coldstream residents want to marry in Berwick-upon-Tweed, should SNP MPs not speak up for their right to do so irrespective of gender? What if one partner is from Gretna and the other from Carlisle? If the vote had been narrowly lost last night, the effect of the SNP group’s decision would have been to tell that couple they could only tie the knot in Gretna, an idea which admittedly has some historic resonance.

So what if English MPs can’t vote on the equivalent Scottish proposals? It’s not the SNP’s fault that we have this halfway house which institutionalises the West Lothian Question. Equality isn’t a dull managerial England-and-Wales-only issue of the sort Scots MPs might well be justified in avoiding. It’s a question entirely of principle. As such, a supportive position from the SNP would have helped to offset the reputational downside for Scotland of hearing Labour’s west coast dinosaurs braying in their swamp of pseudo-religious bigotry.

Getting a vote on affairs in the rest of the UK is one of the few compensations for the Union. Until independence, if you have a vote, it should be used wherever there’s a point of serious principle at stake. Independence offers a trade-off I’ll be glad to take: losing the influence Scots MPs have at Westminster will be more than outweighed by shedding the influence Westminster has on Scotland.

SNP MPs voted against the Coalition’s hike in tuition fees: good. Scots students wishing to get an education in England and Wales would have been righteously angry had they not. But when the Coalition’s assault on the English and Welsh NHS came forward they sat on their hands. When those students get to university, or indeed any other Scot moves down south, do the SNP not wish them to have a decent NHS to rely upon? Is a publicly-run free universal healthcare system a point of principle or not?

Like it or not, SNP votes at Westminster matter. They may sometimes be decisive, but what’s more, when they’re not, they will be read as a statement of the Scottish Government’s intentions and position. Last night was a missed opportunity to be consistent and to support the idea that the principle of equality knows no borders, just as love does not.

There ain’t no party like a Yes club party

Feb 5

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 14 Comments

The political news today is dominated by the Scottish Government’s timetable for the year and a half after a Yes victory in the looming referendum. This has, of course, invited charges of hubris and complacency from many in the press, not to mention comments that the SNP is happy to say when ‘Independence Day’ will be (March 31st) but not the actual referendum date.
 
These are all fairly low brow objections. The precise date of the referendum is not occupying the minds of anyone save perhaps the odd antsy journalist, and despite the suggestion that the SNP is planning ‘parties’, there is no such mention in the report released today. The Electoral Commission found that the public were uninformed as to what a Yes or a No result would mean and the SNP, for its part, is doing something about that.
 
Of course, one clear offshoot of today’s news is the indirect invitation for Scots to consider what would happen in the aftermath of a No victory. The unionist camp may be cleverly trying to paint this referendum as a choice between full independence and further powers, but there’s no Devo Max option on the ballot slip and it’s not difficult to imagine the current status quo remaining the status quo long after 2014 is done and dusted, the needle returning to the start of the song and us all muddling along as before.
 
Comparing and contrasting with the hint of national jubilation after a Yes vote, the extra bank holiday and the feel good factor of having delivered change may be seductive for many. Even the sight of Yes supporters proudly wearing their Yes t-shirts (once the weather warms up a bit) might start to turn a few minds. Will there be No t-shirts in parks up and down the country? Would that even be good PR if there was? It’s nice to feel like you are a part of something and it’s difficult to get excited about being part of ‘No’, irrespective of what that No entails.
 
So by laying out a post-referendum timetable to independence and subtly challenging our ambitions, the SNP is keeping up its positive agenda today and once again pushing the unionists onto the backfoot. After all, it begs the question, how would Scotland celebrate a No victory?

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