Germany comes to the rescue

When was the last time that the British political establishment welcomed major economic advice from Germany over what it claims to be its own affairs? The most recent information we have about PM Cameron's views of any German role in the Scottish independence debate is from today's Glasgow Herald's article which states that 'it emerged at a private meeting earlier this week that Mr Cameron issued what one (attender) described as 'a call to arms' evoking the defeat of Hitler as he addressed more than 100 business leaders.'

But things have changed. Today Germany stands for austerity (in other EU countries) and a strong euro (for German exports.) And it is the fear that anti-austerity, not to mention an attack on inequality, that could emerge from an independent Scotland, that gives rise to the recent comments from Berlin. We can be sure that Cameron was consulted, even that he perhaps initiated the most recent intervention from Germany into Scottish and Britsh history. 

In the Deutsche Bank report, David Folkerts-Landau, the bank's chief economist, said;  'a Yes vote for Scottish independence on Thursday would go down in history as a political and economic mistake as large as Winston Churchill's decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide sufficient liquidity to the US banking system, which we now know brought on the Great Depression in the US.

These decisions, well-intentioned as they were, contributed to years of depression and suffering and could have been avoided had alternative decisions been taken.' 

Indeed the depression in Germany provided a major impulse to Nazi progress. Vote No in Scotland ... to defeat Hitler, twice! 

This would all be laughable if it were not tragic. It is worth noting however just how important for both main classes in society that real votes can be. And how our rulers call on aid from all their allies when substantial questions are at stake, tossing aside their own 'principles' of sovreignty and democracy. It is for the Scottish people to decide, the main party leaders clamour, while building their now international avalanche of fear designed to choke off hope and self determination in Scotland. How different all this is to Britain's general elections in the last 35 years, where precisely no issues of who has the wealth and who has the power have been addressed as the big party consensus on austerity has become embedded as a poisonous type of common sense. Yet how remarkable is the courage of those Scots, still standing firm against the ruling class sunami. Half the nation hold out. All they have is their own intelligence, their own resolution and their support of each other. They are truly a potentially great leadership for a new nation. 

Nick Robinson, BBC political editor, exposes Cameron

Ex chair of the young Tories, now BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, told us all yesterday that it was PM Cameron that had recently mobilised supermarket chiefs to claim the prices would rise in an independent Scotland. This is a small item in the absolute barrage now underway as Britain's rulers try to weaken the resolve of Scotland's pro-independence voters. 

The barrage appears to be having some effect. The politics of fear often work initially - look at post 9/11 USA. But Scotland is at the end of a two year debate. It has politicised a whole nation. The quality of the discussion is higher than at any time anywhere in Britain since the centres of the miner's strike in 1984/5 and before that, 1945/7, across the whole of the British population as it struggled to create a new country, free of fascism and the insecurities of the 1930s. The seed is well planted. Millions in Scotland have a good idea of the conniving, self-seeking and cynical character of the current British political establishment. And they have renewed hope; for a better life, for a better country and they want to do something that really means something. Like all huge offensives, the current onslaught is meant to terrorise, to paralyse, to reverse the advances that the Scots have made. But there will be a fight. The people of Scotland will resist. Whatever the outcome - a movement has been built.  These are moments at the pinnacles of real human history. 

So Robertson's revelation simply confirms what millions already know. If you want and need change you will be fought to the end by those who hold power; you will need to face the fears they try to create; you will need to assert your right to your own destiny. 

Effing Tories (and their Labour fellow travellers) fire the big guns

The Royal Bank of Scotland (owned by us) just decided - along with BP, John Lewis, Lloyds and Standard Life - to bomb the Scottish Independence campaign. Surprisingly perhaps they congregated the announcement of their 'risk reduction' measures on the day that PM Cameron's heart bled in public at the thought of life without the Scots. The multi £billion financial dinosaurs, Standard Life, RBS and Lloyds, need to huddle round the old lady of Threadneedle Street for calm and comfort. Note; apparently the banks and finance companies cannot get Bank of England backing when they fail (again) if they moved to Newcastle, Leeds or Manchester. Meanwhile BP is worried that if it held its assets in Scottish pounds or whatever currency the Scots choose they might see them devalue! Lucky for them that their cash is held mostly in offshore tax havens then. So they have no reason to worry. Perhaps they are more scared of some higher Scottish taxes on their North Sea profits - but if they are they dare not say so. And John Lewis are frightened that their prices will have to rise in an independent Scotland. There's a thing. (But you can get a great Chianti in Lidl these days!)

Salmond is right when he says that these orchestrated moves are designed as frighteners. But that is not enough. Nor is the response of the SNPs finance minister John Swinney. (He argues that Scotland WOULD get currency union, thereby dealing with the worries of the big banks and companies and the SNP had always been ready to 'make concessions' so that tax and spend policies could be agreed with the Bank of England.) 

Whats going on? The unelected Tory leadership and their never elected brothers and sisters in the City of London have decided to stop the Scots' movement towards independence in its tracks. Nobody can deny this is a powerful cabal - the most powerful in Britain. The opposition to independence is coming from the very centre of those who now rule. They are afraid that an independent Scotland could get loose from and then, in time, even challenge their control in the rest of the UK. The yes campaign in Scotland are leading a political revolution. It is a moment parallel to the first steps in the 1948 foundation of the welfare state. 

The argument about independence in Scotland has already shifted onto the question of 'what sort of country do we want to be?' rather than the technicalities of financial structures. The current barrage is a cynical and conscious attempt to push the argument backwards. The establishment threaten: If you go for your own democratic freedom then you will pay! Big banks and companies are lined up in the fight. The yes campaign needs a response. 

The yes campaign should say, we got here because we are tired of you pushing us around. We are turning our back on rulers we don't know and that we never voted for - whether they happen to be in Westminster OR in the City of London, a bunch of crooks, by the way, that nearly destroyed us all. Seven years later we are still paying for the banks and the City's greed and corruption. There are millions of us. Maybe a whole country. If you try to stop or wreck our democratic decision then it is you who will pay! We will set up our own Scottish Peoples Bank, based on our reserves and our latent wealth (including in the North Sea). BP will pay fair taxes, keep its nose out of Scottish democracy or find that they have some problems with their franchises. There are plenty of countries and companies looking for high grade oil in the world today. And as for John Lewis, we'll see what the partners who do the work for you say about your intervention into Scottish politics. Meanwhile we've heard on the internet that there's a good Chianti to be had in Lidl for under £6!

A central part of the yes campaign's struggle is for a real democracy. The Scottish people have taken hold of politics and their own destiny like nothing we have seen in Britain since the end of WW2. A few failed bankers and the odd oil billionaire need to learn that there are much more powerful forces in the world than their self appointed authority and corrupt self interest. 

... and now John Major!

Following hot on the heels of Labour's most distinguished Prime Ministerial failure, George Brown, now John Major, the modern Tories' most hopeless PM, has entered the Scottish Independence debate. If you listened to his interview on this morning's Today programme (BBC Radio 4, September 10) Sir John has used the opportunity of the end of the cricket season to give his strident message of doom regarding the consequences of Scottish independence for Scotland - and for the rest of the UK. 

The interesting part of his solemn, unctuous warnings is that they were mostly focussed on the future troubles facing a specific part of England and the English in the event of separation. We would lose our special relationship with the US because the Scots did not want Trident; we would lose our seat at the UN 's top table; our ability to negotiate a good deal with the EU would be damaged - leading to withdrawal; woe, woe, thrice woe! 

Sir John feels the last threads and binds of Empire being gently pulled away from the hands of Westminster and the City. He foresees his blessed England drifting down the first division of nations settling somewhere way below France and even, possibly Italy! 

A lot of Scots clearly already feel that they would rather do something for the local health service than follow the US into another one of its wars for the 'willing.' Perhaps they are already happy with the prospect of being a smaller country giving priority to looking after its citizens. Sir John's words may well strike deaf ears. As a large section of the English share such sentiments, perhaps Grammar School outsider Sir John will find that his cosy assumptions about post imperial greatness cut little ice with most of the English too. That's why the Bullenden boys don't discuss such things in public. 

George Brown

Son of the Manse, ridden by his own ambition, George Brown will manage to go down in history as the man who tried to save the banks from themselves and the unequal, austerity ridden United Kingdom from the Scots.

The Bullenden boys will dump again him once he has danced to their tune. George Brown; from Blair's wars to keeping the most backward political system in the West together, the man who has made an art form out of his wrong choices, is the last ditch symbol of the 'no' campaign at this moment before the Scots vote on the 18th. Brown has tried desperately to make the transition from a traditional social democratic, moral 'do-gooder' to the leadership of the political class. His ambition has tortured and destroyed him. Not a Greek tragedy though; rather a sad, modern farce.

A new opportunity is emerging; a breakthrough is possible

Len Mcluskey told his UNITE union conference that nothing 'in the next 12 months' was more important than the election of a Labour Government. Nothing more important than the election of another pro-austerity government? Really? It would certainly be a defeat for the Tories, and that might make people feel they could fight more. But we would still have to do all the major lifting, defeat the main government policy, and therefore the government that enacted it. Is getting Miliband elected really the most important thing we can do in what is now the next nine months? So, building the anti-austerity movement remains the priority whoever is elected. But does that mean there is nothing much of interest for the left in the coming election itself?

On the 13 of July this blog pointed to the institutional political crisis now effecting Britain. It was not the first time the point had been made here or elsewhere but as the vote on Scottish independence looms the characteristics of the British political crisis sharpen and become clearer. The independence vote, the rise of UKIP, the referendum on Europe, the austerity consensus of the three main parties and the relentless, excoriating public disgust with all things parliamentary are already shaking the British political class to the core. 

We can now see the shape of the potential wreckage emerging out of the miasma of decay, hypocrisy and corruption that calls itself British democracy. But we can also see clear steps through the fog-allowing the anti-austerity left the potential to take a decisive new political direction and thereby offer a new lead to the wider society. 

Scotland's vote on independence is already changing Britain's political landscape regardless of outcome. The surge for 'yes' has forced new concessions and guaranteed (whatever the upshot of the vote) that anti-Westminster hostility will be front and centre in Scottish politics for some time to come. Scotland has now embarked on its own political dynamic and line of struggle. And now we can also clearly see the potential consequences for the British Labour Party. The removal of Scotland's Labour MPs from Westminister in 2016 would finish Labour's possibility of governing Britain. Whatever UKIP's advances at the cost of the Tories, at a stroke the seductive promise of the possibility of governing, the absolute keystone in the arch of the traditional, bureaucratic labour movement, would have been removed. (It is interesting to note Mr Mcluskey's reaction to such an eventuality. After fuming publicly against any LibLab pacts, he says that would be the only circumstance for him in which he could support a Labour coalition with the Liberals! It is access to government that overturns all of Mr McLuskey's other principles.)  

The first impact of Scottish independence would be for Labour to fragment. Its internal ties and loyalties would loosen. Direct contact would need to be made between potential MPs and their constituents. Left candidates would seek close ties with union and campaign objectives - to guarantee supporters and finance. Links with other groups and individuals would strengthen inside Parliament. Individuals and small political currents (eg the Greens) would have a higher profile in Parliament. And the overall political crisis in British politics would still have only just begun. 

UKIP threatens a regroupment of the Tory right as well as a hemorrhage of some traditional Labour votes, and as Britain would be committed to an EU referendum, an economic crisis would rapidly follow on the heels of acute political change. 

Reality, as a very, well read revolutionary once put it, is always richer and more surprising than any theory. Sketching in some consequences of the current political contradictions inevitably produces just a sketch. But there is a line of march emerging which makes sense of Britain's political crisis and which would test its its potential for the left to advance its cause on a wider political stage. 

The Greens in England have held their most radical conference ever. Besides re-nationalisation of transport, defence of the NHS etc, then have made the bold call for a drastic redistribution of wealth via a citizens wage, paid for by the billionaires. They are anti-nuclear in peace and war. They have a much better record on equality issues than any mainstream party, most unions, institutions and voluntary associations.  And Caroline Lucas consistently wins polls in her constituency. 

Lewisham hospital campaigner, Louise Irvine, has just announced her candidature against Jeremy Hunt on the NHS question. Louise has led the most successful campaign yet to defend the NHS, building a local alliance which embraced virtually all strands of the left AND the local population as a whole. 

Up and down England and Wales there are well known campaigners. They represent the people in their area and they represent anti-austerity - at a time of great party political weakness.

Left partial breakaways from Labour, towards direct union groups in Parliament, representing campaigns and various local coalitions, are becoming possible and will accelerate among certain traditionally Labour MPs and candidates if the Scottish vote yes. As extra-parliamentary activity grows, and even if the Scots vote no, it will be possible to create some 'semi-detached' relationships on the edges of Labour. 

In short, the anti-austerity left should have an informal policy towards the 2015 general election. It is surely NOT the most important thing in the next nine months to secure Ed Miliband his premiership. Out of the industrial action and campaigns against austerity we can identify a group, perhaps one or two, perhaps more, of potential MPs who can genuinely represent the anti-austerity struggle. Under conditions of the general political crisis, the disaggregation of the main parties, their voices are much more likely be heard. Of course it would require some reconsideration in parts of the anti-austerity left of their existing electoral policy - essentially to represent themselves. OK. Let's hope they come along. For the rest of us, there's some work to do. We have to get some MPs elected that really represent something.