INDEPENDENCE IS A TECHNICAL ISSUE

The Scottish Government has published its White Paper (all 198 pages of it) on Scotland's constitutional future. It sets out the various choices the Scottish people could make about the country's future, with an obvious emphasis on desirability of independence.

The SG released a slick video to accompany the launch of the White Paper, which majored on how the contemporary debate fitted into the wider narrative of Scottish history. It was a case of "Bannockburn, the '45 and all that".

Which is a bit disappointing. I'm sure that there is a certain amount of emotional appeal and satisfaction in seeing the contemporary debate in the context of the sweep of Scotland's past and comparing the SNP's mission to the wars of independence all those years ago. But they are irrelevant to the current discussion.

Scotland's electorate has repeatedly demonstrated that it is sophisticated and it is unthinkable that a simple appeal to emotion and history would cause it to vote for a momentous change like independence. If the SNP wants to succeed then it must make a TECHNICAL case for independence not an emotional one. It needs to demonstrate how the government of an independent Scotland would be able better meet the expectations of Scotland's people in the main areas of domestic policy and address the strategic challenges Scotland will face in a globalised world.

The White Paper fails to make that case, which suggests a certain level of political maturity on the part of the SNP leadership. Independence will not (and should not) happen until that maturity is more evident.

Wendy resigns

Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander has resigned. A few initial thoughts:

- I wonder if Labour will learn that the absence of internal party competition is not the same as unity. The contrast between the coverage in today's newspapers of the Labour Party in the UK and the Democrats in the US could not be more stark. On one side (east of the Atlantic) there is a centre left party which 'elected' two leaders (Brown and Alexander) without anyone standing against them. The result? Political disaster with the wrong people appointed and a legacy of resentment and opposition within the party. On the other side (west of the Atlantic) there was a 17 month, hard fought fight for leadership of the Democratic Party. The result? The winner is about 10 points ahead in the polls. Clinton is campaigning for Obama and the vast majority of her supporters have swung behind him. Labour's experience in the early 1980s appears to have left Labour with the impression that looking united on the evening news is more important that having proper internal debate. That needs to change is Labour is going to survive and prosper, north or south of the border.

- Only time will tell, but it will be interesting to see if Wendy's sudden change in policy on an early independence referendum played any role in today's events. Was Brown's previously rock solid support for Wendy undermined by her policy on a referendum and her apparent failure to consult him on it? (STOP PRESS: The BBC has just reported that Wendy resigned despite Brown's urging her to stay.) It will also be interesting to see what happens to the early referendum policy under the next leader.

- The SNP's handling of this situation, the main aim of which appeared to be to destabilise Wendy Alexander and Scottish Labour, has been executed with textbook efficiency. I wonder, however, if now might be time to tone it down. There have been moments when individual backbench nats have looked shrill and bullying. It is important that this does not infect the general perception of the party. We are not there yet but it could happen.

- Finally, I have no idea what Wendy Alexander's plans are but if she wants to make a come back to front line politics, she would have been better to use today for endless mea culpas rather than attacking her opponents. That would have started to repair her image and made anyone who attacked her look mean and small minded. Her tone today was not the first tactical mis-step of her leadership. But it was her last.

The real data losers

There's been another loss of personal data in the public sector, this time by the Scottish Ambulance Service. The politics of this are entirely predicable: the opposition parties will express outrage, blame the government and, if they are having a good day, call for a minister or two to resign. We've seen this happen fairly often recently.

Now I understand the idea of ministerial responsibility but it is absurd to hold a minister responsible for a practical error by an official. Hold them accountable for policy, but for the minutiae of implementation? Be fair.

I've worked in the Civil Service and the problem is not ministerial control but the quality of leadership and management by senior officials. It is, with some honourable exceptions, dreadful. These kind of things will continue to happen until public sector management is dragged up to acceptable professional standards .

So perhaps opposition politicians should stop their histrionics and start thinking about how they can hold senior officials accountable for their managerial failings.

A kingdom divided?

The Scottish Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, called again for an independence referendum in Scotland last night. That she is defying her party leader (one G Brown) and taking a huge gamble on the the very future of the United Kingdom shows that the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections were a very important moment in the history of these islands .

The SNP's victory in those elections was hugely significant, as was the publication of the Scottish Government's White Paper on Scotland's constitutional future. Here was one of the Queen's ministers (First Minister Alex Salmond) kicking off a process which he hopes will break up Her Kingdom. Historic, by any standard.

And extraordinary as well. There are many reasons we have reached this point, and I want to discuss some of these on this blog in the coming weeks and months. But one of the most obvious reasons is a lack of communication and understanding between England and Scotland.

I see one small sign of this every morning. I buy my daily newspaper from the newsagent inside Brixton tube. I tend to go for the Guardian but I could get almost any newspaper from Europe or North America. So today morning I could have read today's El Pais from Madrid, Le Monde from Paris or Die Welt from Berlin. (Strictly speaking I couldn't have read any of them because I am rubbish a learning languages but I could have bought them at the very least.) I could have read today's International Herald Tribune or USA Today. I could not, however, have read today's Scotsman. I could have got yesterday's edition but I'd have to wait until next week for today's copy.

Two nations part of the same state on the same island and yet it's not possible to read for me to read one of Scotland's national newspapers on the day it is published. (By the way The Herald and The Record aren't available at all.)

Why does this matter? Well on one level it doesn't - I read the papers online anyway. But the failure of communication between England and Scotland which this represents and the increasing division within the Union is going to be one of the major domestic political issues in the coming decades. And we need to understand each other if we are going to be able to navigate those issues effectively.