In the event of independence for Scotland (presumably following a ‘yes’ vote in a referendum, in the wake of an SNP victory in the Scottish Parliamentary elections), what would be the criteria for citizenship of the new country?

Now, I am registered to vote in Scotland (I even own a flat in Edinburgh, off Dalry Road). I would presumably become a citizen of the Independent Republic of Scotland, if it came into existence. However, I am at present a citizen of the United Kingdom, a country that will persist (albeit in a leaner form) should Scotland choose Independence. In that event, will I be stripped of that UK citizenship? Any mechanism to do so would, I think, be an odd an illiberal thing. In any case, having been born in London to British parents, I would be an unassailable candidate for dual citizenship, even if I did have to actively apply for it.

I imagine the reverse case would be true for the Scottish diaspora elsewhere in the world. They are citizens of other countries, but would be eligible for Scottish citizenship too. Personally, I don’t have a problem with a high proportion of the population having dual citizenship (I am, after all, a dangerous multiculturalist). But surely such a situation would be undesirable for the Nationalists. Gaining independence from the English, only to see hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people applying for dual citizenship, would seem to be a hollow victory.

What are the lessons from other partitions and secessions? The Scottish Nationalists claim to be ‘different’ from the English, and yet there are no clashes of religion, ethnicity, or language. Therefore the choice over which side of the border to stand is less obvious. And the reasons for drawing a border in the first place are less clear.

Listening to all this, the first thought that occurred to me was not the metaphor of animals in cages, the dehumanising of the Palestinians. Rather, it occurred to me that the restrictions described by Mr Omar would be scorned by free-market capitalists and libertarians alike, were they imposed in any other country. Why the silence on Palestine from the Libertarian Right? Or (and this is entirely possible, indeed probable) have I just been reading the wrong blogs?

I guess many people feel uneasy at sympathising with the Palestinian cause because of the distaste they feel for those already a part of the campaign: the despised Left. This is a mistake in their thought process, of course. Imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people in a walled ghetto, or imposing a religion on a populated region by force: The gross immorality of these acts is not mitigated by an ad hominem objection to those who already oppose the occupation.

There’s a crude and simple way to distinguish, should you care to, your right from your left. Waistlines.

I’ve been reading Paul’s polemic, which states that Left-wingers are fatter than Right-wingers. It occurs to me that Father Christmas is a well-known fat bastard, famous for (among other things) scoffing mince-pies and slurping sherry that is not his own, at fire-places up and down this land. He would definitely be a ‘Lefty’ by Paul’s criteria.

This hypothesis is certainly backed up by other facts too. He wears red tunic, long time favourite colour of the revolutionary left. And of course he is interested in the systemised redistribution of presents, in apparent disregard of market forces.

Don’t let that beard and Norwegian charm fool you. This guy is no hippie. He is a dangerous authoritarian. If you do not conform to his insidious conception of ‘nice’ you risk being classified ‘naughty’ and denied basic presents. Everyone is kept under surveillance, parents are turned into informants on their own children and Santa catalogues the good deeds and the bad. What is more, he can only deliver his presents if he keeps a comprehensive computerised database of names and chimney locations. It is only a matter of time before this information is shared with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, and before you know it a cheeky request on a Christmas list from five years ago could see you lose all profits from your tooth harvest.

Its not as if the system fosters any kind of equality anyway. We all know that although Santa’s “presents for all” populism might appear to treat each case on its merits, but when the service is applied on the ground we find evidence of blatant institutional racism. It is a well-known fact that Father Christmas is less likely to visit children from Muslim, Hindu and Sikh families. Yes yes, we’ve all heard the excuse about a lack of available chimneys, but I notice that Santa will gladly slip in through the French windows for middle-class atheist families. He is also happy to pocket the filthy shill from Coca-cola Company for corporate sponsorship, but do you see the elves getting a pay-rise? No, the fat bastard Father Christmas is a Lefty in name only.

Time was when young people would have cared about the questionable ethics of their largest benefactor. But not this generation. Oh no. The ‘me’ generation too busy talking about X-boxes and X-factor to even consider whether Santa’s seal-skin boots were bought Fair Trade or not. They see the presents dangled in front of their eyes, and once again they fall for his patter. They will let him into their bedrooms, and there is nothing the parents can do about it. Only when Santa has sledged off into the night sky will the parents be called to sort out the misery in his wake. Once again, the cumbersome, centralised, present giving system will not have supplied batteries for the presents, and decent, hard-working parents will be called in to pick-up the tab.

Do not be fooled by his rosy cheeks.
This man is a threat to society as we know it.

“In such circumstance, when a government refuses to enter into open public debate on legislation it is seeking to pass, the only wise, sensible and prudent response is not to permit them that legislation.”

But nevermind ‘The Establishment’ – That ultimately bends to the prevailing wind. And, yes yes, throughout the ages, our monarchs have interbred with the Royal families from around Europe… but this practice was always been an exclusively caucasian preserve. Would The Country accept a black or indian Queen consort for King William V? Would The Country accept a mixed-race monarch? Are we there yet?

It wasn’t just the Bush team that made mistakes, of course. Didn’t we all underestimate the challenge?

Well, no. “We all” did not. Some of us saw precisely the size of the challenge. Some of us had no confidence in the motives, the leadership, or the ability of President Bush to meet that challenge. We foresaw a mess, and put our hands up and asked whether it was all such a good idea. To us, it seemed obvious. But we were called “appeasers” for our troubles.

As people come out with expressions of regret that they supported the war, they rarely do so with reference to those who do not regret protesting against it. I wonder if there are any hawks out there who now think that some of the protesters had a point? Reading people’s analyses of their own decisions on the matter, it is as if there was no opposition to the war but a bunch of shrill communists who took a stroll through Hyde Park.

The Normblog take on the matter puzzles me. It seems quite wrong:

Had I foreseen a failure of this magnitude, I would have withheld my support. Even then, I would not have been able to bring myself to oppose the war. As I have said two or three times before, nothing on earth could have induced me to march or otherwise campaign for a course of action that would have saved the Baathist regime. But I would have stood aside.

Why, if Norm had forseen the catastrophe that now engulfs Iraq, would he not protest to prevent it? Being against that war is not to be against all war. Very few of us gave a categorical “No”. We just said “Not yet, and not like this.” Sometimes doubt can be a very strong emotion, which leads to protest. Concieving of the protests (and indeed, the entire political climate of early-2003) as either “for” or “against”, as Norm does above, is to fall into the manichean trap. Many seem to do so willingly, because it justifys and mitigates their past mistakes.

I sense that, as with all low points in history, there is a revisionism taking place about the Iraq war. The efforts to change the reasons for the invasion – from “immediate threat” to “humanitarian intervention” – have failed. So instead we see people forgetting that there were simple, honest, and prescient objections to the war.

It is not a fact which pleases me in any way, but: Yes, actually, we did “tell you so”. Do not mistake this for an unseemly, Parris style gloat. Do not mistake this as a final word on whether it was right or wrong to topple Saddam in 2003. I just say: We did predict this outcome. And I just ask: How come everyone now acts otherwise?

Update: Andrew Sullivan confronts the same subject head on:

They were African-American and said it was obvious to them that the WMD argument was what they called “game.” They weren’t surprised. I was. I believed George W. Bush. And I trusted him. And as the evidence has poured in that my faith and trust were betrayed, my surprise has turned to rage … The anger of the left, I realize, was always there. But the anger of the betrayed and decent right and center is deeper.

What did they all see in Bush?

“But the US could take the risk of alienating the world and discarding international law only if its leadership was going to be effective. Instead its leadership has been desultory and uncertain and tragically ineffective.”

That’s Gerard Baker in The Times last week, bemoaning the poor record of George W Bush. A slightly more articulate version of the analysis that John Prescott apparently did not give to Labour MPs that same week.

Politics is, unfortunately, not just about issues. It is also about personalities, about diplomacy, about leadership. Governing a country means making a decision, giving orders, and allowing others to implement your policy. You need to ensure this will happen, and sometimes a constitution, a chain-of-command, is not enough to drive your agenda through the bureaucracy! Similarly, achieving your foreign policy aims, whatever they may be, requires at least some practice in the art of persuasion, whereby you can convince people over whom you have no political power that you are an ally, not an enemy. Call it charisma, call it gravitas, there are certain qualities that make one a more effective leader and diplomat.

I’m not sure George W Bush ever had those qualities. His diplomacy and ability to build coalitions world-wide has been half-hearted at best. For example, the arrogant US diplomacy from late 2002 onwards, embodied in the persona of the President, effectively sealed off certain possible pathways, possible worlds. Instead of a full-blooded UN force that the President and his Defence Secretary needed, the organisation was alientated and the Iraq invasion was under-manned. I cannot shake the idea that different – better – leaders would have begat different – better – consequences. It is not enough to simply describe the unfavourable political situation (in the case of the UN, we might cite the intransigence of the French) and say “it was impossible.” A good leader, with a dash of good rhetoric and proper diction, can set events onto a more favourable path.

The recent fiasco on the Lebanon/Israel border is another example of this tragically in-the-box attitude. The crisis (and of course, the wider Palestinian problem) cries out for some unexpected thinking. Something that ‘received wisdom’ says is impossible today, yet might become possible tomorrow. I am certainly not suggesting that if only we had a Churchill, say, or a Kennedy, that somehow everything would work itself out. More the opposite – the current crop seem almost resigned at their inability to influence actions for the better. They spout nothing but platitudes, as the pre-prepared script says they must.

Perhaps Ariel Sharon was on his way to such thinking when he ordered the withdrawl from Gaza. However, his party was split irreversibly as a result, so whether he succeeded or not is an open question. Certainly it was a bold move, and despite the election of a Hamas government, it nevertheless created a new ‘climate of the possible’. Soon after, we heard talk of Hamas recognising the two-state solution… But then all sides jumped back into their boxes.

It seems to me that if we are to effect real paradigm shifts in the political landscape (whether the issue is the Middle East, global warming, the existence of the EU, NHS reform or anything else) then it requires a strong, articulate and above all diplomatic leader to push the policy forward to fruition. Unilateral action may appear strong, and even win elections in the short term. In the long term however, it sunders friendship and causes political capital to crumble. It makes leaders less effective, and finally impotent. It is the long term that matters, and in the long term, the diplomat with the smile will win.

Tibet vs China: the human rights showdown