Scotland is not for sale Pt. I

Scotland may not be privatising the public realm with quite the zeal of Starmer’s Labour, but it is happening constantly nonetheless. A vision for a public good-driven democracy is needed.

What does democracy mean to you? Does it mean simply voting in elections? Perhaps it means that a maximum number of people are involved in debate and decision-making? Whatever it means, does it really seem like we have it?

I mean, it would appear that we vote in some form of election fairly regularly, yet are we really happy with how we are governed? It would also appear that the Scottish government (at least) also attempts to involve us, the public, in decision-making through consultations and the occasional citizens’ assembly. However, what is the point of a consultation if it simply asks for confirmation about how the government plan to enact a policy that they had drafted by a private sector consultant?

Or is it really democracy if the government contacts every landlord in the country to fill in a consultation about the housing bill and rent controls, but not every tenant? What about the citizens’ assembly on climate change which had near unanimous agreement over carbon taxes and publicly-funded retrofitting but whose recommendations were largely ignored by the government?

Democracy is as much about being invested in your life as it is about these practical and legal measures. When people are systematically excluded from the organisation and management of everyday life it is no surprise that they will express discontent with the current political establishment.

And that’s exactly the problem with liberal democracy — the economy, which accounts for and dictates the everyday, is treated as separate from ‘politics’, when really they are one and the same. This separation, as I’ve said before, is what leads the likes of Rachel Reeves and George Osborne to argue that we need ‘fiscal rules’ because the invisible hand of the market is the only thing which dictates the economy, not ordinary citizens and certainly not the workers that allow the wheels of industry that drive the economy to turn.

This denial of economic democracy as fundamental to everyday politics has other consequences too. Because the economy is held up on a pedestal of complexity and independence from political decision-making, it means it can only be understood by those who specialise in the ‘dynamics of the market’. And because the market should not be interfered with it is therefore not in the public sector.

Who does this leave to be experts on the economy? The private sector and economists. The former have a vested interest in keeping the public out of the economy, while the latter I would argue are no more than statisticians if they do not apply a political analysis to their data.

It is very much this democracy which the Scottish and UK governments are implementing. These ‘experts’ are the only people that really need consulting on and as a result there also get the business roundtables, private meetings with ministers, and consultancy contract after consultancy contract, no matter how many fines they accumulate for financial misconduct or otherwise.

When you compare the current Labour government at Westminster and the SNP government at Holyrood, the parallels on this are uncanny. At the same time that the SNP are accused of being addicted to contracting out service design to the Big Four, the Labour are heralded as being the ‘first private sector government’ (listen to our recent Skotia podcast episode on Lobbying with Open Democracy’s Ethan Shone and The Ferret’s Paul Dobson).

It is notable the close relationship between Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves and US multinational BlackRock, with much handwringing between the firm and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds as CEO Larry Fink attended a key business summit within the PM’s first months in office. This and the appointment of a number of ex-city officials to ministerial role point to broader ambitions about selling off the economy to the “experts”, such as Palantir the private US health technology firm whose CEO has already aired his prioritisation of profit over data regulation but also their organisational support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.

In Scotland, the sell-off of key assets feels far less sinister, moreso embarrassing. The pattern repeated time and again is the contracting out of key service design to Ernst & Young (EY), PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Deloitte, and KPMG - the Big Four accountancy firms which also run management consultancy services as part of their ‘global offering’.

“It seems that almost anyone can own Scotland’s economy apart from Scots.”

The Scottish Government has used both PWC and KPMG for ‘Programme Governance’ and ‘Design Authority’ on a £107,000 contract in the case of the former, and in the case of the latter, a £655,200 contract for a ‘Targeting Operating Model’ and ‘Programme Business Case’ (which turned out to be a set of Powerpoint slides) in the process of writing legislation for the National Care Service Bill.

Deloitte were also offered a £9 million contract relating to digital solutions for the infant Social Security Scotland. And lastly, it seems EY are the preferred bidder when it comes to CalMac ferry service designs, with multiple contracts for reports and other consultancy services amounting £6 million over a number of years (see my recent Skotia podcast episode for a full deep dive into this).

I call this embarrassing, because if nothing else, it points to a lack of confidence by the Scottish government in themselves and in the civil service to either come up with any new ideas or to be competent in… their jobs?

Add this to the litany of sell-offs of key public sector assets in the green economy, and you begin to wonder what’s left for citizens of Scotland. Consider the capped auction which saw oil and gas giants like Shell and BP pick up leases for offshore wind development instead of a National Energy Company or a municipally-owned energy company. Consider also the PFI deal for trees which effectively allows the individuals and businesses in the private sector to buy swathes of land to offset carbon emissions.

Or consider the “green” “industrial” “strategy,” which is hardly green given the emphasis on the disproven carbon capture and storage, is hardly “industrial” given not only were trade unions barely consulted on it, but the emphasis on “green financial services” over any way of supporting the manufacturing and engineering sectors as part of our transition to renewables. Consider also the way in which the workers at Grangemouth have been left out to dry by both UK and Scottish governments despite having much advanced foresight of the closure of the oil refinery.

From ScotWind to the National Care Service, we at Common Weal have highlighted the extractive economic model which is blighting the lives of ordinary Scots. It feels like a lifetime ago but just last year we published one of our most well-received policy papers, Profit Extraction: How foreign ownership drains Scotland’s wealth.

In it we critique how the Scottish Government’s political choice to maximise ‘foreign direct investment’ has left Scotland with one of the most foreign-owned economies in the world outside of tax havens and micro-states. In the report we found that £3.9 billion was extracted to elsewhere in the UK whereas £6.2 billion was extracted to elsewhere in the world. All of this, and I haven’t even mentioned the Green Freeports!

This is all very well, you might argue, but what is the alternative? And you’d be right to ask, especially given we’ve been led to believe that “there is no alternative’. For that you’ll have to wait until next week where, in a follow up article, I will outline different models of ownership for the economy that put Scots first, not private profit. In the meantime, Common Weal will continue to hold the government’s feet to the fire and put forward our case for a better Scotland.

We can’t do that without your support, so if you want to ‘do something’ about it, please consider support us, or at least sharing our work wider. Last but not least, next weekend, Craig will be sharing lessons from that very profit extraction paper at Scotland is not for sale on the 28th June in Glasgow, a day long event that brings together intellectuals and activists to organise against the asset-stripping of Scotland’s economy.