Aberdeen is the political battle ground this weekend. The SNP holds its 91st annual conference, fresh from its fifth election victory in a row, and fired up for a new independence referendum campaign. Aberdeen is also at the sharp end of the great debate over the transition to renewable energy.
When I first arrived in Aberdeen, as an immigrant from Ireland aged 11, it was a major fishing port, with a hundred trawlers crammed into the harbour. Ten years later came the oil boom and the fishing boats were replaced by huge, brightly coloured service-vessels for the oil and gas fields offshore. Now we are supposed to be in an orderly transition from oil rigs to offshore windfarms.
But the change from “Scotland’s oil” to “Scotland’s wind” is not going smoothly. Over the last ten years, 75,000 jobs have been lost in the oil and gas industry but only 47,000 have been created in renewables. It’s led to a clamour for a slow-down in the phasing out of oil and gas fields and for the opening of new ones like the Jackdaw gas field off the Aberdeenshire coast and the Rosebank oil field west of Shetland.
Back in June the Conservatives won a surprise victory over the SNP in the Aberdeen South by-election because they championed “drill, baby, drill”. Their argument was that we might as well drill for our own gas and oil, rather than see it imported from less environmentally clean sources.
The SNP and Labour were initially against new drilling licenses but both have now trimmed their positions to “a pragmatic approach” in Andy Birnham’s words. The man himself will be in Scotland this weekend amid speculation that he is about to approve drilling in the Jackdaw gas field.
It’s a rare and cheeky visit to Scotland, just as the SNP conference gets underway. He won’t be going to Aberdeen – though he has been invited – but instead he will be in Lanarkshire outlining his plan for further devolution of power from Westminster to local councils.
Although local councils in devolved Scotland are none of Mr Burnham’s business, it so happens that the Scottish government has just published a plan to reform local councils, and health boards, and give regional authorities more power. Under the proposals, there would be just two health boards, not 12, and six regional councils, made up of councillors from around 120 local burghs.
If Mr Burnham were to go to Aberdeen this weekend he would be drowned in a sea of saltires calling for another independence referendum. And it would be his own fault, because of a slip-up in the House of Commons in which he suggested a pathway exists for another referendum taking place – along the lines of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement. He has also opened the way to another referendum on membership of the European Union.
This has emboldened the SNP. If there’s the possibility of an another referendum on European membership, why not on Scottish independence? At the party’s conference this weekend a major new campaign is to be launched, the biggest since the referendum vote in 2014. The “Chose Scotland” campaign will include a survey of 1.5 million people, on-line advertising, and day of action on St Andrew’s Day, 30 November. The party hopes this will push up support for independence from around 52% today to the magic threshold of 60 per cent, which it says should trigger a referendum.
A lot will depend on politics in England. If Andy Burnham can hold off Reform and deliver an end to government austerity, then I think Scots will stick with the status quo. They will also be happier to remain in the UK if Burnham can undo the mess of Brexit and hold out hope of rejoining the European Union.
Another man the SNP might have invited to Aberdeen is Barack Obama who was in Glasgow this week for “an evening with” 12,000 paying guests. He said social media was causing hatred for particular groups – immigrants, Jews, gays – and we were in danger of forgetting the lessons of the run-up to Second World War. But he said the drift to extremism was not inevitable, if people held on to the truth. I was disappointed he didn’t mention Putin or Trump, the two worst dividing forces in the world today.
It’s a measure of our times that sensible voices like Obama’s are heard only on the fringes of our politics. And that perhaps is another factor in the caution we all have of returning to the divisive times of the Brexit and Independence referendums.
