Mike Vickers' Blog

As I understand it the No vote carried the day in the recent Referendum.

Labour although being on the winning side appears to have lost the vote.

The SNP looks to have won – at lease their membership has trebled – so by the way has the Greens.

And the situation now is that the Smith Commission is tasked with defining what Home Rule means for Scotland. The members round the table need to come forward with a compromise – and this will be difficult enough – but what is surprising is that the two major parties in Scotland, Labour and SNP, rather than fighting for what both agree is for a centre left Scotland where social welfare and democracy is what most of us would like, are dissipate all their efforts attacking each other without mercy.  Indeed it could result in the Tories making a much more coherent  case to Lord Smith.

All this is more eloquently laid out in today’s Scotsman Leader.

Yes I had no problem with misssymartin (BlogSpot.com) providing a good format for mixing and matching the common person’s ‘have your say’ to the Smith Commission. However I commend to all readers the response to the Commission by the Scottish TUC (my thanks to Andy Wightman for pointing it out) http://www.stuc.org.uk/files/Smith%20Commission%202014/STUC%20submission%20to%20Smith%20Commission.pdf

But if I go back to my beginning – to me what got to the Yes voters was the thought that for once ‘we might be able to be part of the party in terms of democracy – not just having decisions thrust on us either by Westminster or dare I say Holyrood. Let’s hope that one side effect of the Referendum is that Smith enters a footnote into his recommendation that the governments in Westminster and Holyrood recognise that there are we down here at the grass roots and that we would like to have our say not just every five years but on an on-going basis as to what we want for ourselves.  May be the COSLA report might just catch one of their eyes in passing as they walk along the Corridors of Power.