New Labour and Devolution: radicalism or bricolage?

This paper argues that New Labour’s devolution proposals can be seen as part of a strategy of « political distinction » from the Conservative party, all the more necessary as there had been a conspicuous convergence in most other policy areas. After retracing the history of Labour attitudes towards Home Rule on the periphery of the United Kingdom in the xxth century, the paper focuses on the contemporary period, suggesting that Thatcherism was perceived as an “alien” doctrine in both Scotland and Wales, thus hardening the resolve of a significant part of the population to loosen or break the old constitutional ties. It is against this background that New Labour’s positioning as the party of movement is discussed. It is argued that, in Scotland, two factors contributed to making constitutional reform unavoidable from the 1980s on : a major shift in favour of Scottish autonomy in both the cultural and intellectual fields and the creation of a “popular front” in favour of constitutional reform in the shape of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. The paper concludes on a discussion of the contrasting positions of Vernon Bogdanor and Tom Nairn of the state that the United Kingdom is in today.


In tro duc tion
If the La bour party be came New La bour with the ar rival of An thony Blair as leader in 1994, the pro cess of trans form a tion which led to and ac cel er ated under New La bour began -most ob serv ers would agree -a dec ade earlier.With 28.3% of the vote in the gen eral elec tion of 1983 the La bour party re gistered its low est score since the in tro duction of full adult suf frage in 1918.This was the alarm sig nal that was to trig ger, under the suc cess ive lead er ships of Neil Kin nock, John Smith and An thony Blair, the pro cess which is often de scribed in both the ha gi o graphic and the aca demic lit er at ure on the sub ject as the « mod ern iz a tion » of the La bour party and its policies.As I have explained at length else where (Dixon 1998(Dixon , 2003(Dixon , 2005) ) I would prefer the no tion of « con spicu ous con ver gence », as de veloped among oth-ers by Colin Hay (1999), to the mod ern iz a tion thesis 1 which has become part of the Blair ites' (now jaded) self-image.From the mideighties on, the lead er ship of the La bour party, when faced with the on-going suc cesses of the Thatcher gov ern ments, ad op ted a policy of gradual ac com mod a tion with the new policy mix that had been in troduced by the rad ical Con ser vat ives, thus cre at ing a new « com mon sense » of gov ern ment.This pro cess of policy ac com mod a tion was to be more pub licly pro claimed and more ex pli citly the or ized under the new New La bour lead er ship, with some con sid er able help from Anthony Gid dens (1994,1998), first among oth ers in what had be come the New La bour or ganic in tel li gent sia.
By 1996, when Blair pub lished his first col lec tion of speeches and news pa per art icles as La bour leader, en titled New Bri tain.My vis ion of a young coun try, the con tours of New La bour eco nomic and so cial policy were re l at ively plain to see, for any one will ing to read through Blair's not al ways in spir ing prose and look bey ond the rhet or ical gimmicks.The paradigms of eco nomic and so cial man age ment of Bri tain that had been in tro duced by Mar garet Thatcher, which in cluded a large de gree of privat iz a tion, flex ible la bour mar kets, a re formed and wealthy-friendly fiscal struc ture and a leg ally con strained trade union move ment, would be kept by an in com ing La bour gov ern ment.The real ity of New La bour gov ern ment since 1997 has given ample proof that Blair's prom ises have been kept, some times quite zeal ously so.Privat iz a tion has con tin ued in one or other of its vari ous forms (the dom in ant one being that which was bor rowed from John Major in the form of the Private Fin ance Ini ti at ive -now re bap tized Public-Private Part ner ships); la bour mar ket flex ib il ity is con sidered to be so im port ant that suc cess ive New La bour For eign Min is ters have insisted on its serving as a model for the rest of ar chaic Old Europe 2 ; Bri tain con tin ues to be a low-tax re gime, and to at tract cap ital and la bour for that reason; if the trade uni ons have seen their legal situation some what im proved (with the right to trade union or gan iz a tion in the work place now of fi cially re cog nized) there has been no re turn to the trade union rights of the pre-Thatcher period, and the leader of New La bour has reg u larly shown his dis taste for tra di tional forms of trade union ac tion and ad op ted a rhet oric more fa mil iar within the Con ser vat ive tra di tion when con fron ted with strik ing work ers.Sim ilarly, in the area of for eign policy the path fol lowed by New La bour has been one of some times spec tac u lar con ver gence around policies ini ti ated by suc cess ive Amer ican pres id ents, Demo crat and Re publican, thus trans form ing the re l at ively novel and much dis cussed ideo lo gical prox im ity between Mar garet Thatcher and Ron ald Re agan into a model of con tem por ary Anglo-American re la tions.
The policy con ver gence between the New Thatcher ite Right and New Blair ite La bour has been such that the title of Simon Jen kins' re cent book on the re la tion ship between M. Thatcher, J. Major, A. Blair and G. Brown -Thatcher and Sons (2006) -seems much more flatly descript ive and much less pro voc at ive than the au thor no doubt hoped.Given this ex traordin ary con ver gence, the prob lem for New La bour, at least in the early years of its rise to power, has been how to demarc ate it self in this re la tion ship of ideo lo gical fel low trav el ler ship with Con ser vat ive neo lib er al ism.I will sug gest here that de vol u tion, and more gen er ally con sti tu tional re form, have been one of the major ele ments in what we might like to call New La bour's strategy of political dis tinc tion.Al though in the areas of eco nomic, so cial, penal and for eign policy the di ver gence between the two major parties has been a mat ter of what Freud de scribed in an other con text as « the nar cissism of minor dif fer ences » Con ser vat ive and New La bour at ti tudes to wards con s ti u tional re form over the last twenty years have been strik ingly at odds with each other.

La bour, old and new, and the Na tional Ques tion
There were no par tic u lar reas ons why this should be so.Both parties had come to see the Brit ish union as the only vi able frame work in which to op er ate ef fect ively.The Con ser vat ives had of course been more vocal in their op pos i tion to any form of Home Rule from the late XIX cen tury on.In their early mani fest a tions the la bour movement and the first polit ical or gan iz a tions to emerge from that movement were in fa vour of the de mands for Home Rule ex pressed forcefully in Ire land and less so in Scot land (Har vie 1989).How ever, by the 1920s there is an ob serv able part ing of the ways between the Home Rulers and the so cial ists, with some not able ex cep tions (one thinks of Ro land Muir head in Scot land, for ex ample).In the inter-war period in both Scot land and Wales, not to men tion Eng land, the de mands for re cog ni tion of na tional par tic u lar it ies in the cul tural and polit ical fields seemed at best an ir rit a tion as class is sues came to the fore.The am bi gu ity, in polit ical terms, of the na tion al ist move ments in both Scot land and Wales, the propensity for cer tain of their lead ers to lean heav ily to wards the Right and to ma nip u late the dy nam ite of xeno pho bia were to con firm many So cial ists in their hos til ity to wards vo ci fer ous small-nation na tion al ism (Saun ders Lewis was a some time ad mirer of Maur ras and Ac tion Française and An drew Dewar Gibb, the SNP leader of the late Thirties, hated the Irish im mig rants in his nat ive land and made no bones about it (Dixon, 1997).
« What a curse to the earth are small na tions » pro claimed the revolu tion ary so cial ist Scot tish nov el ist Lewis Grassic Gib bon in 1934 (Grassic Gib bon 1934 : 144) and in doing so he was ex press ing the vigor ous re jec tion of na tion al ism by many within the la bour move ment.By the time of the post-war La bour gov ern ment of Clem ent At tlee, the La bour party had be come in its own way as uni on ist as its Conser vat ive en emies (to bor row a phrase from Tony Cros land) and this was to con tinue through out the period of the post-war so cial democratic con sensus which prom ised and to some ex tent de livered a more equal treat ment between re gions of Bri tain and guar an teed a min imum so cial pro tec tion for all -in clud ing those pop u la tions who had still in liv ing memory the in or din ate suf fer ing in flic ted upon them by the free play of mar ket mech an isms in the South of Wales and West of Scot land dur ing what Ken neth Mor gan has de scribed as the « lo cust years » of the Great De pres sion (Mor gan 2002 : 210-240).

5
The ex per i ence of of fice from 1945 to 1951 and again from 1964 to 1970 no doubt re in forced what had be come the doxa within the La bour party, lead er ship and rank and file in cluded, that only a cent ral Brit ish state oc cu pied by La bour could im pose re dis tri bu tion and ef fect ively com bat inter-regional in equal it ies.The Brit ish ness of that cent ral state was in deed more or less taken for gran ted until the rude eruption of na tion al ism on the polit ical scene from the late Six ties on.I will not go into any de tail about the in ternal de bate (or the lack of such de bate) within the La bour party in these cru cial years which saw both Plaid and the SNP be come sub stan tial polit ical and elect oral forces -sub stan tial enough to force both the major polit ical parties into a re-appraisal of the na tional ques tion.Suf fice to say that the Labour party's con ver sion (or re turn, if you prefer) to Home Rule dur ing the ill-fated gov ern ments of Wilson and Callaghan from 1974 to 1979 was a highly un even pro cess, one of whose most sig ni fic ant mani festa tions was a dur able ten sion between a prag matic/op por tun istic lead er ship, strug gling to keep the boat of gov ern ment afloat through deals in par lia ment with the Lib er als and oth ers, and a party rankand-file which was very far from en thu si astic about what it per ceived as con ces sions to the Na tion al ists.This is par tic u larly clear in Scotland where the ma jor ity of the party in the sev en ties con tin ued to see the SNP as Tor ies in na tional cos tume and Home Rule as a di ver sion from the real tasks at hand.

The Thatcher factor
What changed all this ir re medi ably was the Con ser vat ive vic tory of the 3 of May 1979, only a couple of months after the ref er en dum fiasco in Scot land and Wales.Be cause of the very rad ic al ity of Thatcher ite policies, largely in spired by the writ ings of Friedrich von Hayek, that great ad mirer of Eng lish XIX cen tury eco nomic lib er alism, but also be cause of the grow ing di ver gence in the per cep tions of Thatcher ism between a pre dom in antly en thu si astic Eng land (the pop u lous South of Eng land in par tic u lar) on the one hand and an increas ingly hos tile Scot land and Wales on the other, Thatcher ite policies were to pre pare the ground for a major shift in pub lic percep tions in both of these two coun tries (Mc Crone 1992 ; Brown / Mc-Crone / Pa ter son 1998).It is in deed dur ing this period that the movement in fa vour of the re cog ni tion of Scot land's na tional spe cificit ies grows in strength, al though this is not ne ces sar ily re flec ted in the elect oral res ults of the SNP, which does badly through much of the eighties.Na tion al ism, or at least the in creas ingly strident de mand that Scot land and Wales should not be sub mit ted to the re peated onslaughts of an alien doc trine and of polit ical prac tices which were inim ical to the dom in ant tra di tions of both these coun tries, was to grow and above all to spread across the bound ar ies of party polit ics dur ing this period, per haps more than ever be fore.
In the Scot tish con text, I would argue that there are two key factors which were to con trib ute vi tally to cre at ing the con di tions in which New La bour was to emerge in the mid-nineties with its pro pos als for con sti tu tional re form.The first of these is the shift within the in tel-lec tual and cul tural fields which sees the emer gence of a mul ti far i ous move ment in fa vour of the crit ical re think ing of Scot land's place within Brit ish his tory and within the con tem por ary polit ical and cultural land scape.The second, not-unrelated phe nomenon, is the emer gence of a pop u lar front of op pos i tion to the con sti tu tional status quo in the form of the Scot tish Con sti tu tional Con ven tion (al though no doubt some of the more staid mem bers of that au gust as sembly would be un happy with the idea of them being any thing as rad ical as a pop u lar front).
I have no time here to go into the de tail of the con tri bu tion of Scotland's aca dem ics, writers and other cul tural pro du cers in the re writing of Scot land in the 1980s and 1990s and the re act iv a tion/in ven tion of a tra di tion in which Scot land stood apart in its de fi ance of the doc- If the de term in a tions which shape our ex per i ence are to come from within rather than from without, they have to be ex plored and eval uated and acted upon.Each volume in this series will seek to be a contri bu tion to that self-determination; and each volume, we trust, will re quire a re sponse, con trib ut ing in turn to the on-going dy namic that is Scot land's cul ture.

10
Much of this cul tural and in tel lec tual work was to find a strong echo in the vi brant journal and small magazine cul ture of the period, to which Rad ical Scot land was a major con trib utor.
In the polit ical field, the Scot tish Con sti tu tional Con ven tion grew, some times la bor i ously, out of the Cam paign for a Scot tish As sembly, but above all out of the grow ing re cog ni tion that a broad co ali tion of forces in Scot land -from the wo mens' move ment to the local au thorit ies, from the STUC to the Cath olic Church, and from the Com munists to the Lib er als, and cru cially in clud ing La bour -were op posed to the con sti tu tional status quo and were will ing to bury (some of) their dif fer ences in order to pro pose a reasoned pro gramme of con sti tutional change in face of Thatcher ite im mob il ity.No mat ter what the in ten tions of one or other of the act ors may have been (the La bour de sire to isol ate the SNP or the Lib er als' par al lel agenda of re form ing an elect oral sys tem in which they were sys tem at ic ally underrepresented) the cre ation of the Con ven tion and its input as a col lective in tel lec tual into the polit ical de bate con sti tuted a major turn ing point.It thus gave polit ical form to -but also a par tic u lar polit ical inter pret a tion of -the mass re jec tion of Thatcher ism which had expressed it self not only in the bal lot box in Scot land (and Wales) since 1979 but also in the con tri bu tion of the Scots and the Welsh to the major move ments against the new faith in the mar ket, in par tic u lar the 1984-85 miners strike and the « Can pay, won't pay » cam paign against the poll tax in the late eighties 4 .12

The polit ical in her it ance of New La bour
This then is what An thony Blair in her ited when he re placed John Smith at the head of the La bour party in 1994 : a polit ical party still in search of its po s i tion within a much changed Brit ish polit ical field, now dom in ated by mar ket think ing, but also a move ment whose strengths lay on the peri phery where the re jec tion of Anglo-centrism, in the ca ri ca tural form of Thatcher and Major (warm beer and cricket...) was hence forth a force to be reckoned with and which the old in cant a tions about the hor rors of tartan Con ser vat ism and sep arat ist Welsh ness could no longer con jure away.From these two major con straints was to emerge that hy brid creature, Blair ism.One must not un der ses tim ate these sym bolic con straints when meas ur ing the « states man ship » of Blair as con sti tu tional re former after 1997.
The dom in ant group within Blair's New La bour party had no in her ent reas ons for being more at tent ive to de mands for Home Rule than their im me di ate fore bears.Blair him self had paid little at ten tion to the na tional ques tion since his elec tion in 1983, and his base in the North East of Eng land did not nat ur ally pre dis pose him in fa vour of de vol u tion.The new leader was sur roun ded by Scots -but they had been far from being un an im ous in their sup port of Home Rule in earlier times.In deed, Robin Cook had been act ive in his op pos i tion to Home Rule dur ing the 1979 ref er en dum cam paign.Al though Gor don Brown had moved away from his prox im ity with Scot land's nationalist-leaning Left rad ic als of his early Red Paper on Scot land years, he had non ethe less led La bour's first de vol u tion cam paign in Scot land.But by the mid-nineties, his pre oc cu pa tions were no doubt else where as he battled to loc ate him self at the centre of the New Labour ma chine.Neil Kin nock, who con tin ued to haunt the cor ridors of La bour party power and to provide sym bolic cap ital to the New Labour lead er ship, was him self only a re cent con vert to de vol u tion, which he had com batted within the Welsh party in the 1970s.No doubt La bour lead ers on the peri phery, at least in Scot land, were by the mid-nineties ob liged to po s i tion them selves dif fer ently from their Westminster-(or Brussels-) based col leagues, as pop u lar and elite sup port for con sti tu tional change built up.There is no reason to doubt that some of them, like Don ald Dewar, had in deed been won over to the idea of hardy polit ical de cent ral isa tion.

14
From a the or et ical point of view, how ever, La bour in its « new » incarn a tion, al though now of fi cially the party of con sti tu tional movement along side the Lib eral Demo crats, had made little pro gress in rethink ing the na tional ques tion and re mained as hos tile as ever to expres sions of na tion al ism which called into ques tion the cent ral ity or the fu ture of the Brit ish state.Thus An thony Gid dens, who has something to say about al most everything in his strangely in flu en tial book, Bey ond Left and Right (1994), pays scant at ten tion to what he calls « local na tion al isms » which he sees as a pre oc cupy ing symp tom of back ward re ac tions to the glob al iz a tion pro cess which in the main he em braces as a vec tor of mod ern iz a tion.Blair's present a tion of de volu tion in New Bri tain, after the singing the praise of its own mod ernism, in sists on the uni on ist di men sion of La bour's de vol u tion pro posals (a po s i tion echoed in Scot land by George Robertson) and makes it clear where sov er eingty will ul ti mately lie, even after the trans fer of powers has been en acted : « The sov er eignty of the UK par lia ment will re main un di min ished ».
Non ethe less, and in con tra dis tinc tion to the de vol u tion pro pos als of the Wilson-Callaghan period, once in of fice in 1997 the New La bour ma chine moved quickly and res ol utely to im ple ment its 1997 elect oral cam paign pro pos als, car ry ing an ad mit tedly much-cowed party machine and rank-and-file with it.The de vol u tion pro pos als -largely inspired as far as Scot land was con cerned by the de tailed de mands of the Con sti tu tional Con ven tion -were rap idly put to the vote through a ref er en dum in Septem ber 1997, which showed sub stan tial sup port for change in Scot land and an as yet luke warm ap proval of the creation of a re l at ively weak as sembly in Wales 5 .The le gis la tion that was then to lead to the cre ation of the Scot tish par lia ment and the Welsh as sembly in 1999 showed the lengths to which La bour was will ing to go to pre serve sup port for its changes.The in tro duc tion of pro portional rep res ent a tion, in par tic u lar, which self-evidently was in contra dic tion with La bour's im me di ate in terests and con demned the party to co ali tion gov ern ment in Scot land, il lus trates this quite clearly.

Con clu sion: New La bour rad ic alism or pusil lan im ous bri c ol age
In the de bate that has ac com pan ied the con sti tu tional re forms of the suc cess ive New La bour gov ern ments since 1997, two polar po s i tions have emerged.On the one hand, those who see these changes as indic at ors of the rad ic al ity of the New La bour gov ern ment and of its res ol ute at tach ment to mod ern isa tion.Ver non Bog danor is one of the most dis tin guished rep res ent at ives of this view.He has ar gued in a text pub lished at the end of the first New La bour term of gov ern ment that 17 « The cru cial con sequence of the re forms of the Blair era, how ever, is to give us, for the first time in our his tory, a con sti tu tion; and, moreover, a con sti tu tion which is quasi-federal in nature.It can hardly be denied that this is a re volu tion ary change.» (Bog danor 2001 : 146) This in deed is hardly denied by Peter Man del son, gar rulous as ever, who in his The Blair Re volu tion Re vis ited de scribes Blair's « con sti tutional re volu tion » as « the most ex tens ive pro gramme of con sti tutional mod ern isa tion for more than a cen tury -in deed, since the Of the two po s i tions, Nairn's seems to be much closer to the real move ment of his tory -in deed there is some thing strangely un his torical in Bog danor's ac count.As if the massive shift in pub lic and elite opin ion, es pe cially in Scot land, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were no more than the back ground music to Blair ite re forms.How ever, Nairn's own po s i tion re turns us to a cent ral issue only touched upon earlier in this paper : the fact that the anti-Thatcherite res ist ance of the 1980s, strong and pop u lar in both Scot land and Wales res ul ted es sen tially in a move ment in fa vour of a new con sti tu tional set-up, leav ing the rest of the Thatcher ite leg acy in tact.Per haps Lewis Grassic Gib bon was not en tirely wrong when, look ing to a selfgoverning fu ture for Scot land, he stated with heavy irony : 2 This is a cent ral theme of the « Blair-Schröder plat form » for the European elec tions of 1999.In this joint policy doc u ment which bears the hall mark of Peter Man del son, la bour mar ket flex ib il ity is presen ted as the way for ward from "old" Eu opean ri gid it ies.The Ger man so cial demo crats were to be there after less en thu si astic in their en dorse ment of Blair ism after dis astrous res ults in these elec tions.to be a major fig ure in par lia ment ary de bates dur ing the first two terms of the new Scot tish par lia me net after 1999.5 74,3% of voters ex pressed their sup port for a Scot tish par lia ment in the ref er en dum of the 11th of Septem ber 1997 (and 63,5% were in fa vour of taxraising powers for the new par lia ment) whereas a week later in Wales only 50.1% voted in fa vour of the pro posed as sembly.
Wat son, Ro de rick (2007).The Li te ra ture of Scot land.Lon don : Pal grave Mac millan.

English
This paper ar gues that New La bour's de vol u tion pro pos als can be seen as part of a strategy of « polit ical dis tinc tion » from the Con ser vat ive party, all the more ne ces sary as there had been a con spicu ous con ver gence in most other policy areas.After re tra cing the his tory of La bour at ti tudes to wards Home Rule on the peri phery of the United King dom in the XX cen tury, the paper fo cuses on the con tem por ary period, sug gest ing that Thatcher ism was per ceived as an "alien" doc trine in both Scot land and Wales, thus harden ing the re solve of a sig ni fic ant part of the pop u la tion to loosen or break the old con sti tu tional ties.It is against this back ground that New Labour's po s i tion ing as the party of move ment is dis cussed.It is ar gued that, in Scot land, two factors con trib uted to mak ing con sti tu tional re form unavoid able from the 1980s on : a major shift in fa vour of Scot tish autonomy in both the cul tural and in tel lec tual fields and the cre ation of a "pop u lar front" in fa vour of con sti tu tional re form in the shape of the Scot tish Con sti tu tional Con ven tion.The paper con cludes on a dis cus sion of the con trast ing po s itions of Ver non Bog danor and Tom Nairn of the state that the United Kingdom is in today.

Français
Cet ar ticle consi dère que les pro po si tions de ré forme des néo-travaillistes concer nant la dé vo lu tion doivent être ap pré hen dées comme fai sant par tie d'une stra té gie de « dis tinc tion po li tique » par rap port au parti conser vateur, ren due d'au tant plus né ces saire par la forte conver gence dans la plupart des autres do maines.Après avoir re tra cé l'évo lu tion du po si tion ne ment tra vailliste sur la ques tion de l'au to no mie de la pé ri phé rie bri tan nique au cours du XX siècle, l'ana lyse se centre sur la pé riode contem po raine.Au cours des an nées quatre-vingt, le that ché risme est de plus en plus perçu, en Ecosse comme au pays de Galles comme une doc trine étran gère (aux tra ditions po li tiques et phi lo so phiques de ces deux pays), et cette per cep tion ren force la dé ter mi na tion d'une par tie de la po pu la tion de des ser rer, voire de rompre les vieux liens consti tu tion nels.C'est en te nant compte de cette contrainte, que l'on doit ana ly ser le nou veau po si tion ne ment des travaillistes comme le parti du mou ve ment consti tu tion nel.Deux fac teurs en Ecosse ont rendu la ré forme consti tu tion nelle dif fi cile à évi ter pour les néotravaillistes: un chan ge ment si gni fi ca tif en fa veur de l'au to no mie dans les champs in tel lec tuel et cultu rel et la construc tion d'un « front po pu laire » en fa veur du chan ge ment, sous la forme de la Conven tion Consti tu tion nelle Ecos saise.L'ar ticle se ter mine avec une dis cus sion des po si tions di ver gentes sur cette ques tion de Ver non Bog da nor et de Tom Nairn.

Introduction 1 .
Labour, old and new, and the National Question 2. The Thatcher factor 3. The political inheritance of New Labour Conclusion: New Labour radicalism or pusillanimous bricolage 3 trin aire neo-liberalism being im ple men ted down South with in creasing fer vour as we move through the dec ade.As Ro d er ick Wat son has ar gued (Wat son 2007), there is a new flower ing of Scot tish cul ture dur ing this period, in which few or any of the major act ors are will ing to pub licly es pouse the cause of uni on ist Con ser vat ism.If we look at the names of the major fig ures of the period -Alas dair Gray, Jim Kelman, Tom Le onard, Liz Loch head, Janice Gal lo way, Jackie Kay, Iain Banks, Wil lie McIl van ney, they read like a roll call of more or less milit ant anti-Thatcherism 3 .Sim il arly in the aca demic field, a vast amount of work was being car ried out to call into ques tion the histor ical myths of uni on ism, of which Scot tish aca demia had been a major vec tor, and to re design the con tours of Scot land's past and present.Cairns Craig's De term in a tions series at Poly gon is one dis tinguished ex ample among many oth ers of the in tel lec tual vi tal ity of the period.The Series pre face was quite clear in its in ten tions : 9

Great
Re form Act of 1832 » and adds sig ni fic antly « which ap pears to have put to rest the ser i ous na tion al ist threat in Scot land and, to a lesser ex tent, in Wales » (Man del son 2002 : xxii) 19 At the other end of the spec trum, Tom Nairn, in After Bri tain (2000) and more re cently in his in tro duc tion to the 2006 re-edition of The Break-up of Bri tain, has ar gued that the Canute-like re forms of New La bour are un likely to hold back the rising tide of na tion al ism.Nothing more than a clumsy bri c ol age and a last-ditch at tempt to save the un save able : 20 Un der neath the present charades of apostasy and self-contempt, those deeper cur rents that have car ried the break-up so far are not slack en ing, but ac quir ing new force.Just as the tide in fa vour of home rule built up dur ing the eight een years of Con ser vat ive Uni on ism, so the new tide seek ing real in de pend ence is form ing it self be neath the façade of Blair ism.It will rise into the spaces left by New La bour's col lapse, and by the in creas ing mis for tunes of the old Union state.(Nairn 2006 : in tro duc tion) 21

22
It will profit Glas gow's hun dred and fifty thou sand slum-dwellers so much to know that they are being starved and bru tal ized by La bour Ex changes and Pub lic As sist ance Com mit tees staffed ex clus ively by Gaelic-speaking, haggis-eating Scots in saf fron kilts and tongued 1 This is best ex em pli fied in the ha gi o graphic lit er at ure pro duced by Blair's inner circle.See, for ex ample, Peter Man del son, The Blair Re volu tion Re visited (Man del son, 2002).