The Black Isle Show

This is me at the Black Isle show helping out at the SNP stall. This was a great location en route to the food market, so it was going like a fayre most of the time and was glad to give them a hand.

At the show I also had the opportunity to chat with the Scottish Crofting Foundation about many of the issues facing Scotland’s crofters not least the Schucksmith report, which is the result of an inquiry into the future of crafting by a committee led by Professor Mark Schucksmith. At the NFUS stall there was much discussion about the Commission’s proposals for reforming the current EU pesticides legislation as well as the future shape of Europe’s agricultural policy beyond 2013 – all of which I will be taking back with me to Brussels.

The Highland food market was a good opportunity to stock up with some local produce like Connage cheese and to chat with the Highlands and Islands Local Food Network to find out more about what they do and how they do it.

Seeing the North of Scotland's energy potential

This morning Rob’s assistant Niall drove us up from Evanton to Wick. Rob was holding one of his surgeries in his office in Pultney, Wick so having never yet made this far up the East coast of Scotland I decided to join them.

Here’s me outside Rob’s office with Rob and one of his members of staff Gail:

The journey up took two hours driving across the Dornoch Firth towards Golspie, Brora and Helmsdale. While the hills and the greenery of the woods were stunning, the one bit of the landscape that struck me the most was the looming statute of the Duke of Sutherland, which towers over Golspie. You can’t actually miss this guy – 30ft statute sitting on top of a 70ft plinth, 1300ft up at the summit of Ben Bhraggie. It was erected in 1834 in honour of the laird who owned the lands of Sutherland and who played a major part in clearing the families who lived on these lands to make way for giant sheep farms. In 1994 a plan to have this 30ft statute removed from the top of Ben Bhraggie led to an intense and long overdue debate about the Sutherland clearances.

While many books have been written about the Highland clearances over the years I can certainly recommend Rob Gibson’s book “Toppling the Duke – Outrage on Ben Bhraggie?” for anyone who is interested in reading a historical overview and insight into the campaign, which he had also been a part of, in trying to obtain permission to knock down the Duke of Sutherland statute.

This is me at Lybster, which is just off the Caithness coast.

Behind us is Scotland’s first onshore oil drilling rig. Drilling started here at the beginning of July and as I understand it is expected to produce between 500 and 1000 barrels of oil a day. The rig itself is 170ft and the opportunity for the North of Scotland’s energy potential is immense. When it comes to transferring the oil there is certainly a case for the main railway line up to Wick to be upgraded

Rob's second surgery was back down in Helmsdale which gave me the opportunity to visit the memorial to the Highland clearances, which was unveiled last July by our First Minister, Alex Salmond.

The statue was created by the sculptor Gerald Laign, who is based in the Black Isle.

The plaque on the statue's plinth reads:

"The Emigrants

Commemorates the people of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland who, in the face of great adversity, sought freedom, hope and jusice beyond these shores. They and their descendants went forth and explored continents, built great countries and cities and gave their enterprise and culture to the world. This is their legacy.

Their voices will echo forever through the empty straths and glens of their homeland".

A Highland jaunt...

With Brussels now in summer recess I’ve headed North to spend a couple of days with Rob Gibson MSP and his partner Eleanor Scott at their home in Evanton, Rosshire. I was up there a few months ago for the Andrew de Moray walk in Avoch. While the landscape and the countryside round that part of Scotland is pretty spectacular, that’s not the only reason why I decided to spend some of my summer holidays here.

Essentially my Highland jaunt in sunny Sutherland is about my learning and understanding more about Scotland in the sense of finding out who we are as a people and how we got to where we are today, economically, socially and culturally. Any Scottish history I was taught at school comprised solely of Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and William Wallace and that was it. History at school was about the Romans, the Egyptians, 1066 and English Kings and Queens, Shakespeare and the wars. The extent to which the history of our nation was ignored at school was and remains scandalous and is something which I am glad to see the SNP Government is striving to correct by way of working towards the teaching of Scotland’s history and our culture is part and parcel of the school curriculum

Understanding who we are and where we came from is central to our identity and to the future of our nation. And for me this week there is no better way to understand Scotland’s place in the world than going out and about and experiencing our culture, our landscape, and being able to feel it.

The collapse of the WTO trade talks

The failure on Tuesday (29) to secure agreement on the Doha Round of world trade talks is rightly being presented as yet another missed opportunity for improving the trading opportunities for all countries, including the world’s poorest. Back in 2001 when this trade round was launched it was presented as a round that would focus on the needs of the world’s poorer nations. Failure to get an agreement will damage those countries most of all.

Economists are famously unable to agree on almost anything, yet the one proposition that does unite them is that liberalising international trade from national protective controls will generate gains for all – rich and poor countries alike. Of course the problem with that proposition is that removing controls on imports – be this for agricultural or manufacturing products or services – is not painless. Domestic suppliers inevitably will face tougher competition and some local producers may be forced out of business. This is particularly the case where trade concessions are granted for products that can be produced ‘abroad’ much more cheaply than at home. On the plus side, of course, domestic consumers will gain from access to lower priced products as new export opportunities are made available to suppliers from other countries – very often the world’s poorest nations. And as these countries benefit from new exports, and their economies grow, all countries stand to gain from the rising trading opportunities that result.

What happened last week was that a few of the world’s key trading countries (the US, China, India) were unable to agree on how to manage the transition to freer trade in agricultural and manufacturing products. No agreement could be reached on how to spread the “pains and gains” between themselves.

This is far from a new problem. This trade round, as others before it, has been beset by this very issue really since it began in 2001. Much of the dispute centred around a specific issue, i.e. the special safeguard measures (SSM) to be applied by developing countries. Countries such as India and China supported a more flexible SSM to protect subsistence farmers from large amounts of imports from highly competitive agricultural exports. However, on the other side the United States backed by some of the major developing exporter countries in South America (e.g. Brazil) wanted to see a stricter SSM that would enable them to access these markets.

It should be stressed that the EU was not involved in this dispute and in this respect cannot be blamed this time for the collapse of this round of Doha trade talks. Nevertheless, substantial progress was made in a number of other areas, where agreement was reached on duty-free quota-free market access for least developed countries, aid for trade and the “enhanced integrated framework” of assistance to least-developed countries.

What makes last week’s failure especially worrying, however, is that it occurred against a backdrop of what is increasingly looking like an imminent and possibly global economic recession within the richer countries – driven by rising fuel and commodity prices – which is not an environment conducive to trade liberalisation. And there is the not trivial matter of the forthcoming US presidential elections to consider. It was the intransigience of recession-worried US negotiators last week that was partly responsible for the failure to reach agreement. Given that, it is probably expecting too much for either of the presidential candidates to come out at this moment to champion a resumption of global trade talks to get the Doha Round back on track.

But the challenges lie not only across the Atlantic, or indeed in India or China. The EU has to look to its own position. Agricultural policy – or agricultural protectionism – continues to be the main sticking point in these discussions. Since the mid-1960s the EU’s agricultural policy and reform agenda has been largely driven by ‘domestic’ (i.e. intra-EU) political considerations. With France currently holding the EU Presidency, and given its history of staunch opposition to the liberalisation of the EU’s farm policy – itself much criticised by the developing countries – it is difficult to expect Brussels to take on a leadership role in unblocking the stalled negotiations for at least the next 6 months. After that, of course, the EU goes into election mode as the campaign for the June 2009 elections to the European Parliament gets underway and the Commission – and EU trade Commissioner Mandelson – readies itself for the change in personnel that will follow. And that isn’t even to begin to look at elections that are imminent in some of the other main countries involved in the Doha Round, including India.

Notwithstanding this latest crisis, there is a sense that most participants are keen to see this trade round brought to a successful conclusion. The question is to what extent they are prepared to make the short term sacrifices necessary in the interests of securing what will be the very real long term gains.

The timing of the current failure is dire, coinciding as it is with a global economic downturn. There is a real risk that the world’s poorer nations will suffer a double-whammy – first from the immediate effects of declining economic activity and so demand in the richer (and recession-prone) countries and second from a significant lowering of their longer term prospects for raising their levels of exports and so economic growth.

Certainly it is fair to say that the deal on the WTO trade talks table would have had some serious implications for some parts of Scotland’s farming sector, not least beef, pig and poultry meat.

On the other hand, its failure could have a considerably more serious longer term consequence for the multilateral trading order as we know it today. If the Doha Round fails, then serious questions will be raised about the continued role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The sole remit of the WTO is to manage global trading relations on a multilateral basis – that is by including all 153 countries who have been admitted to its ranks in the negotiations, including of course many less developed countries. If it cannot perform this function then there is a very real likelihood that the WTO will be overtaken by direct negotiations between the world’s largest trading blocs such as the US, the EU, China, India, Brazil, and Japan. In that scenario the vast majority of WTO countries will be left out of the very negotiations that will determine their trade prospects, and they will be faced with the option of simply accepting or not the terms of trade decided by the powerful trading nations. This has to be avoided, arguably at any cost, especially given the difficulties we have already seen with the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements.

Globalisation has been, and can continue to be, a positive force for all trading nations. It can lead to rising prosperity and greater opportunities in all countries, including the poorest. But that will only be assured if world trade talks are open to all trading nations: that is are truly multilateral. The WTO is the only guarantor of multilateralism, and in that role is absolutely central to ensuring that the poor as well as the rich countries are able to enjoy the much needed gains from freer international trade.

Victory in Glasgow East!

It’s the morning after the night before and the europhoria of what had been achieved in Glasgow East in the early hours was still very much alive. What a victory, what a result and hats off to the entire campaign team, to John our newest MP for Glasgow East and to the party for pulling off what none of the journalists, election pundits and others thought was achievable – to overturn more than a 13,000 majority and take Labour’s third safest seat by 365 votes.

I spent most of today out ‘knocking up’ with Stewart Stevenson and Alyn in Carmyle, Swinton, Mount Vernon and then latterly in and around off Shettleston road. After a slowish morning, there was a definite sea change in the afternoon and especially late afternoon when folk were arriving back from work and our sheets started to fill up with voted SNP. I knew it was going to be very close but on the doorsteps it was so positive towards us that I began to really realise that we had done it and certainly by 8.30pm I knew. These are exactly the kind of areas that we need to be winning in and to start making the inroads in the once Labour heartlands

Out on the streets I saw a couple of Tory activists who wished us good luck with the Labour cars driving past – shouting vote Labour to save the union. One battered old car drove past us which had previously been a private hire car and they had just written Labour on it – what a shambles.

I went up to the Barrachnie Inn for a while and then headed back to Edinburgh and when it finally happened after the recount, unbelievable, the earthquake had happened and I was glad to be there when it did - a stunning victory and one that will be repeated across the board come the Westminster election. Everything is to play for now. Glasgow East is the first of many victories to come and should send a clear signal to Gordon Brown and London Labour that no Labour seat in Scotland is safe now.

Back in Glasgow East

Having just got back from Brussels late on Friday night I was across in Glasgow East most of the weekend to do whatever I was asked to do. I spent most of my time getting John Mason’s latest leaflet through as many doors as I possibly could manage – this time though the sun was out and on the streets in the areas that we were in we were certainly being warmly received. I had a guy stop me in his car to ask how things were going and to tell me he was voting for John because he was a local and wanted to see the back of Labour – for too long Labour had taken them for granted and it was now time for a change, for someone else to come in and actually do something for the people of Glasgow’s East End.

Another door I leafleted a woman in her 60s was out in her garden and told me she was planning to vote for the SNP on Thursday for the first time because she was just so fed up with Gordon Brown and fed up being ignored by the Labour party who were doing nothing for them.

The atmosphere at the SNP party rooms on Baillieston Road was fantastic and as I have said elsewhere on this site it was like being at national conference. Everyone mucking in, each doing their bit to win this seat to deliver a better and more prosperous future for the people of Glasgow East and for Scotland. Roll on Thursday.....

Responding to Ireland's No vote

Last night I went along to a discussion organised by the Brussels Branch of the Irish Institute of International and European Affairs on “Responding to the No vote on the Lisbon Treaty”. Speaking at it was Ireland’s Minister for Europe, Dick Roche and Brendan Halligan, the Chair of the Irish Institute.

Dick Roche began by saying that “there were no instant solutions” to Ireland’s no vote and that the Irish government was looking at producing a very detailed analysis to understand better the result of Ireland’s recent referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish government will not be bringing forward any solutions at the European Council meeting in October but instead would be presenting a wide progress report. He acknowledged that the issues were very complex and that it was going to take some time to do a very detailed analysis.

It was underlined that the Irish government does not have a “pre-cooked solution” and that the first response is to respect the fact that the Irish people have spoken, and to understand and listen to what the Irish people are saying.

For the Minister, communicating the EU to the people is a problem for the whole of the EU and not just an Irish problem. In this respect Europe has a huge challenge and one which I believe cannot be left to the EU institutions themselves when it comes to communicating Europe’s relevancy. There is a job here to be done by all levels of government. Europe has to move away from its constant institutional navel gazing and focus on delivering on the issues that people are looking to the EU to try and resolve.

In the Irish context as Dick Roche pointed out there is a need to make the EU relevant to the Irish people in a creative way. Right now there is very clearly something wrong with the way in which Europe is not being communicated and there is a need to get away from the idea of blaming Europe when things go wrong and governments taking the credit from the EU when things go right. As Dick Roche said during the referendum campaign there was no discussion about how best to promote Irish interests through the Lisbon treaty. The Minister also spoke of the ramifications if no solution is found before the next European elections but emphasised again that the best way to find a solution was through detailed analysis and the Irish government would take as much time as it was necessary to take.

The Irish Institute has set up a task force on the post Lisbon situation to help the government in its analysis. It will be producing a number of papers on the referendum campaign itself and the various issues as well as the different scenarios if Lisbon doesn’t come into force with two reports planned in time for the European Councils in October and December.

Sitting there in the audience I got the distinct impression that there was a feeling of guilt but there was also a sense that the current situation could not be resolved with timetables and agendas being imposed by external pressure and this was clearly not the role of the French presidency.

I’ve asked a number of my Irish pals how they think this will all pan out and there are many who say they cannot envisage that there won’t be a rerun of a referendum, though this won’t happen before the European elections next June. Indeed, there are murmurings about October 2009 once concessions have been worked out on issues such as abortion, each member state retaining its own EU Commissioner.

But why should the Irish be made to vote again? The people of Ireland have spoken and their democratic decision should be accepted . The Lisbon Treaty has been rejected and should now be put to bed. Its time for Europe to move on and to focus the issues that are relevant to people and which matter the most to them.