With Labour on the verge of a return to power, the SNP are in need of a nationalist explanation of why Labour governments are bad for Scotland. This perhaps explains the resurfacing of an old myth: the idea that Jack McConnell’s government returned money to Westminster rather than spending it in Scotland.

Don’t Repeat Their Frame: As with many of the nationalist memes this section seeks to unpick, the underlying idea of this myth is that England is stealing our resources. In this case, the target is Labour politicians who are framed as working for England rather than Scotland. Don’t engage in this England v Scotland argument, instead point out that the funds were spent by the Scottish Government and instead start with non-nationalist values:

We share resources with the rest of the UK for everyone’s benefit. Our share of these UK funds is worth billions for the NHS and other public services. However, it is simply untrue that this money was given away by Labour: you can see in the budget that it was spent by the Scottish Government.

Claim: The last Labour/LibDem government in Scotland gave £1.5 billion back to Westminster.

Governments have underspends. Programmes and projects that governments had hoped to complete slip. The Treasury at a UK level, and the Finance Secretary at a UK level, have to try to manage this. Those rules have changed over the years and if you’re really interested in the mind-numbing details of numbing public finance accounting then google ‘End Year Flexibility’ or ‘Budget Exchange System’.

In the first few years of devolution £1.5 billion was built up from various underspends over eight years. To put that into context, the latest underspent by the current Scottish Government, in a single year, was £2bn.

One of the sources cited by nationalists to try to justify the claim that this money was lost to Scotland is this sentence taken from Audit Scotland’s 2007 report on the Scottish Government:

“Since devolution, the Scottish Government’s unspent balances held by HM Treasury had gradually accumulated until they reached £1.5 billion at 31 March 2007.”

Strangely they don’t continue with the rest of that paragraph which makes it clear that the Scottish Government will spend this money during the 2007-11 parliamentary term. The allocation of these funds was as set out in the table below. So actually the £1.5 billion supposedly stolen by England, aided and abetted by Labour ministers, was spent by the Scottish Government.

With their political cause in crisis and a resurgent Labour Party threatening their dominance of Scottish politics, it is understandable that nationalists are increasingly desperate. That is why they are reaching back through time to fictional theft. Scotland has too many real problems today to spend time on imaginary ones from the past.

A reminder of how best to use the posts in this section is here.

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Nationalism needs a grievance to survive. For it to survive its own nation rejecting its nationalism, as happened in 2014, it needs a really big grievance. Rather than contemplate the fact that Scots are comfortable sharing sovereignty with our friends and neighbours, the SNP has spent most of the last decade telling Scots they were fooled by The Vow. The SNP seem to believe Scots are stupid.

Don’t Repeat Their Frame

The nationalist accusation is that politicians cannot be trusted and that Scotland was tricked. Nationalists, tellingly, cannot quote a single line of the Vow that wasn’t delivered. However, if you find yourself arguing that politicians kept their promises you are probably on a losing argument. Instead, talk about the power the Scottish Government has and how the SNP should do better with it.

The SNP argument rests on the hope that Scots are ignorant of the power that they have. This is about lowering the expectations that voters have so that they are not held to account for using the enormous power they have. Unfortunately for the SNP Scots aren’t daft. More and more of us understand that Yousaf’s failures are because of a lack of ability, not a lack of powers.

Claim: The Vow Was Not Delivered

Let’s start with what The Vow actually promised as nationalists make all sorts of wild claims about what was within this fairly simple political statement.

Let’s go through the text line by line.

“The Scottish Parliament is permanent…”

The first clause of the first part of the 2016 Scotland Act which followed the referendum reads: “The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are a permanent part of the United Kingdom’s constitutional arrangements.”

This, as proposed by Angus Robertson, is backed up by a statement that the Scottish Parliament can only be abolished through a referendum of the Scottish people.

“…extensive new powers for the Parliament will be delivered by the process and to the timetable agreed and announced by our three parties…”

Extensive new powers were delivered:

• On social security power over the Best Start Grant, Carer's Assistance, Cold Spell Heating Assistance, Disability Assistance, Discretionary Housing Payments, Employment Injury Assistance, Funeral Expenses Assistance, Winter Heating Assistance and the housing elements of Universal Credit were devolved. Additionally, the Scottish Government now has the ability to top up reserved benefits. The same people who talk up the decisions made by Social Security Scotland pretend these powers aren’t devolved.

• Management of the Crown Estate was devolved. Yet the same people who tell us how great the Scot Wind leasing decisions were pretend this didn’t happen.

• Control over income tax rates and bands now rests with the Scottish Government. Again, the same people who talk up how Scotland has different income tax rates and bands pretend these powers were not devolved.

• Air Passenger Duty was also devolved. How can SNP Ministers be making decisions on this tax without the power to do so?

• The ability to create an aggregates levy. SNP Ministers are consulting on how to use this power that they would have you believe doesn’t exist.

• Assignment of Scottish VAT revenues to the Scottish Budget. A few days ago the SNP government decided not to use this power but no doubt will claim betrayal.

• Speed limits and road signage were devolved. Again, being used by those who claim pretend powers were not devolved.

• Powers over rail franchising that the SNP boast about securing.

The welfare powers alone were described by the then SNP Social Security Secretary as “the biggest transfer of powers since devolution began” Of course, nationalists who exist purely to ensure that all state power is held in Edinburgh have to pretend these aren’t extensive. However, the Scottish Parliament’s Information Service looking at the financial powers devolved after The Vow found that Scotland’s tax and spending powers compare favourably with other devolved or federal systems:

“…starting on 19th September.”

David Cameron announced the process for the Smith Commission on the 19th September.

“And it is our hope that the people of Scotland will be engaged directly as each party works to improve the way we are governed in the UK in the years ahead.”

The Smith Commission held 25 events across Scotland, attended by over 215 organisations, and received 407 submissions from civil society and 18,381 from members of the public.

“We agree that the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all by sharing our resources equitably across all four nations to secure the defence, prosperity and welfare of every citizen. And because of the continuation of the Barnett allocation for resources, and the powers of the Scottish Parliament to raise revenue, we can state categorically that the final say on how much is spent on the NHS will be a matter for the Scottish Parliament.”

This is an important passage. Again and again, nationalists pretend that the vow offered Devo Max or Fiscal Autonomy. In fact, the wording explicitly rejects fiscal autonomy by promising to maintain the Barnett formula whereby resources continue to be redistributed around the UK. The Fiscal Framework agreed by the UK Government and Scottish Government last week agreed that “the Scottish Government’s block grant will continue to be determined via the operation of the Barnett Formula.”

“We believe that the arguments that so powerfully make the case for staying together in the UK should underpin our future as a country. We will honour those principles and values not only before the referendum but after. People want to see change. A No vote will deliver faster, safer and better change than separation.”

Here we’re into areas of political debate, but it is difficult to credibly claim that the change offered by voting no - the powers delivered by 2016 - was slower or more risky than the prospect of years of unstitching 300 years of integration between Scotland and the rest of the UK.

The SNP can’t say one minute that powers weren’t delivered and then talk the next about how we have a separate social security system, a Scottish rate of income tax, or how the Scottish Government has leased the seabed for wind energy development - all powers devolved after The Vow. The real con is the SNP trying to pretend they are powerless to make things better.

A reminder of how best to use the posts in this section is here.

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The day after this post goes live the SNP conference will give a platform to Paul Kavanagh, an activist whose most notable contribution to the independence cause was leading the charge against the theft of export duties on Scotch whisky. The only problem is that there are no export duties on Scotch.

Don’t Repeat Their Frame

The idea behind this claim is that England is stealing Scotland’s resources.

In this instance, that idea is as clearly untrue as it is possible to be. However, remember that repeating a lie, even to deny it, amplifies the lie. Don’t get into an argument about Scotland’s share of taxes or other resources - that encourages the idea that Scotland is already somehow separate and encourages thinking about resources as something which must be hoarded rather than shared. Instead stick to the Achilles heel of this claim: this tax does not exist.

That this myth continues to be spread is a sign of the weakness of the nationalist case: they can’t make the sums add up by counting up the taxes we really pay so they have to create make-believe ones to explain away the massive austerity that would come from giving up our share of UK funds.

The thing the nationalists are claiming is stolen does not exist. They need you to be angry at England so much that they are simply making things up. Thankfully you are smarter than that. Of course, we can have a conversation about the best way to fund the NHS and other public services, but surely we can all agree they can’t be paid for by taxes that don’t exist?

Claim: whisky export duty goes to London and is stolen from Scotland.

There is no export duty on whisky. If you don’t believe me, maybe you will believe the SNP government’s own economists who were forced to come out and explicitly say that this mythical tax:

“There is no export duty in the UK.”

The thing that makes this particular nationalist myth so daft is that it is only whisky that is not exported that has Duty collected on it.

If other states collect duty on whisky it goes to their treasury. If we were a different country from the rest of the UK then any duty put on a bottle of whisky would still go the UK treasury, not to a separate treasury in Scotland.

If that doesn’t make sense, think of it this way: the UK collects duty on French champagne, Jamaican rum, and Mexican tequila but those tax revenues do not go the French, Jamaican or Mexican government’s coffers. A separate state could do many things, it couldn’t sequester the taxes paid in other states.

Claim: whisky taxes are not allocated to Scotland in GERS.

First of all, very obviously the imaginary export duties are not counted in GERS because they don’t exist.

Duties paid on whisky are covered in GERS, the official statistics on taxes collected in Scotland. Sometimes nationalists argue that it is wrong that all duty paid on whisky is not allocated to Scotland, but, again, this is a consumption tax. So whisky duty paid by consumers in the rest of the UK is allocated to the rest of the UK and whisky duty paid by Scottish consumers is allocated to Scotland.

Sometimes the argument is that other taxes associated with the whisky industry are not allocated to us, such as income tax paid by workers or taxes on whisky company profits. Again, the SNP Government’s own economists wearily issued a statement to make it clear this was not true:

“Like any industry, the whisky industry’s activity in Scotland generates tax revenue through a range of sources, such as corporation tax on profits, income tax and national insurance contributions on staff earnings, and non-domestic rates payments on business premises. These are all captured in the estimates of Scottish public sector receipts reported in GERS. In addition, whisky consumed in the UK is subject to VAT and alcohol duty. This is assigned to Scotland on the basis of how much is consumed in Scotland.”

A reminder of how best to use the posts in this section is here.

A conspiracy theory that refuses to die is that, on the eve of devolution in 1999 the Labour government secretly moved Scotland’s sea border and handed oil fields to England. Various memes and misinformation claim that a 1987 border was replaced with one that steals huge tracts of our sea bed.

For example, The National’s false fact-checking service claims that the border was changed in order to “annex Scottish oil fields”. A petition signed by thousands of dupes demands that something that never happened be reversed. And the favourite conspiracist theorist of Scottish nationalism made an error-filled video on the issue.

Don’t Repeat Their Frame: These memes invite us to participate in an imaginary post-independence fight with England over resources that today are neither Scottish nor English but shared. Engaging in this framing helps nationalists. They ignore the many other boundaries in place in Scottish maritime law and obsess only about the one with England because it serves the nationalist fantasy of a rapacious England stealing our resources.

Instead, start conversations with non-nationalist values before explaining why these claims are wrong and explain why people are choosing to spread a falsehood: We share some things with each other because it makes us all better off, but it is important to understand the border for oil was never changed. Those who created this myth know it isn’t true but their political cause needs people to think of England as an enemy we are fighting with over resources.

Claim: This changed the boundary.

The legislation in 1999 created a boundary for the purposes of fishing and other matters that were about to be devolved to the new Scottish Parliament. We didn’t need this boundary before because we didn’t have a devolved parliament before.

Before then there was another boundary further to the south. This boundary still exists and covers oil and gas. As this graphic from the Marine Division of the SNP Government shows Scotland actually has many maritime borders, there are the Territorial Sea; the Exclusive Economic Zone for Scotland and neighbouring countries; Continental Shelf Limits; Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundary;  Civil Jurisdiction (Offshore Activities) boundary; Renewable Energy Zone & Gas Importation and Storage Zone Limits; and those set by the Scottish Marine Regions Order 2015.

As the SNP Government’s own map shows, the 1987 border, that this conspiracy theory would have you believe was removed, is still in place. Don’t believe me, have a play about on the SNP Government’s website with the various boundaries and limits.

There are lots of different lines for different purposes, reflecting international norms. The important point is that the 1987 border which they claim was removed for the purposes of oil and gas is still in place for oil and gas.

Claim: This boundary steals oil fields.

The government at the time went out of its way to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with oil. Presenting the legislation to parliament, the Minister could not have been clearer in telling the Committee:

“I wish to make it clear, though it should be self-evident, that the boundary has no significance for other matters at sea which are reserved. In particular, it has no relevance to the regulation of oil and gas exploration and production at sea, which are reserved matters.”

This is simple: the 1999 order creates a boundary for devolved issues such as fishing or monitoring of pollution. Oil and gas are not devolved so this boundary has no impact on oil and gas. The order changed nothing to do with oil and gas.

Claim: This was done in secret at the last minute before devolution.

This was legislation that was presented to Parliament two and half months before the Scottish Parliament was created, not as some claim on the day before. It was adopted after Ministers answered questions from parliamentarians in both houses of parliament. The name of the piece of secondary legislation, The Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999, hardly tries to conceal its subject matter. The establishment of the fisheries boundary was covered in the newspapers back in 1999, where this daft conspiracy theory began.

Something that was scrutinised for months in Parliament and the media can hardly be claimed to be secret or last-minute.

Claim: This boundary underplays oil revenues and exaggerates our deficit.

Ironically, the people using the 1999 boundary for the purposes of oil fields are the SNP Government themselves in calculating the annual GERS figures on Scotland’s fiscal position. It is worth noting though that it is the SNP Government that decides what boundary to use when calculating Scotland’s share of oil revenues. The SNP could change the way oil revenues are allocated but choose not to because they know the 1999 boundary makes a negligible difference.

The reason they haven’t changed it is that to do so would make a tiny difference to the oil revenues concerned. For example, even if every penny of the UK’s oil and gas revenue in the last five years was allocated to us (which makes no sense, but let’s do it anyway) it would have added an average of £138 million a year to Scottish revenues a time when our deficit averaged £22,491 million. If this is a dastardly plan to explode our deficit, choosing to add a fraction of a percentage to it seems a strange way to do it.

Finally, it is worth noting that Scotland’s share of UK oil revenues in GERS is *more* than 100% over the last few years as companies are claiming refunds on previous years’ payments against current losses and decommissioning costs.

In recent years Scotland has kept every penny of oil revenues while also getting our share of UK funding - around an extra £10 billion a year for our public services. The geographical allocation of oil revenues in our national statistics is decided by the SNP and if they genuinely believe that the border should be drawn somewhere else to improve the case for leaving the UK, they could do it tomorrow.

A reminder of how best to use the posts in this section is here.

Today I’m launching NoNsense a new section of Notes on Nationalism that aims to give you the resources to effectively counter the myths, misinformation, and madcap conspiracy theories circulated by nationalists. Over time this will build into a searchable resource for activists.

Sometimes you find yourself engaging with someone online whose belief in their position is completely at odds with all the evidence. For example, in the debate about Scotland’s finances, many nationalists have created a framework where it is impossible for any evidence that Scotland benefits from being in the union to be admitted. If Scotland is such a drain on UK finances, why would they want to keep us, eh? This resource is not for those people.

This resource is also written with skepticism about the effectiveness of fact-checking.

Repeating the information contained in an inaccurate meme and the framing that contains it, even if you are only repeating it in order to challenge it, can simply amplify and reinforce your opponent’s false beliefs. Moreover, spending too much time talking about our opponent’s view of the world, even when we are pointing out it is based on lies, stops us from talking about our own ideas.

Some argue that the way to move people off of irrational views is to offer them a more compelling alternative story that fits with the values that lead them to hold the mistaken belief in the first place. For example, if you see someone arguing for leaving the UK on the basis that we Scots are a uniquely caring people, rather than pointing out that most people in most nations around the world are kind-hearted too, you might decide instead to argue that yes, we are caring, and caring people don’t walk away from their friends.

Others point out that the experience of online discussion is that nobody ever had their beliefs changed by facts. The idea here is that people simply ignore evidence that doesn’t fit with the conclusion they have already arrived at. Even worse the feeling that their deeply held beliefs are under attack by facts causes them to dig in even deeper. The truth is less important than the feeling of belonging people get from being part of a tribe.

So, why bother offering factual rebuttals of falsehoods?

Firstly, the binary tribes of the Scottish constitutional debate are not the only identities people hold. In fact, those people in the middle who do not take sides in the never-ending argument value other ideas above being seen as nationalists or a unionist. Alternatively, there are characteristics of those two tribes that they find off-putting.

Over the last decade, voters have watched a new breed of politicians emerge who have a new lexicon. These leaders offer “alternative facts”, and deride attempts to correct them as “fake news” or “scaremongering”. Meanwhile, online cults move from conspiracy theories about chemtrails, to 5G mobile masts, to vaccinations preying on the vulnerable and gullible.

The fact that so much of Scottish nationalist argument is based on denying basic facts is deeply unattractive. People do not want to be part of that tribe and so it is important to remind voters that the populist politics we see in Scotland shares characteristics with other movements that are hostile to evidence and expert opinion. Nobody wants to feel they are being manipulated by cynical actors who view them as gullible dupes.

Secondly, false information is often spread by people who don’t know and don’t care whether the idea they share is false. However, it is also spread by politicians who do know what they are saying isn’t true. If they operate in an environment where they are rewarded for such behavior then they will continue to do so.

You might doubt it, but most politicians still have a sense of shame. When they are challenged and held accountable for spreading false information embarrassment, it makes it less likely they will do so in the future. Those demagogues without shame require challenge too, as this is what more clearly defines them as part of unattractive trends. Building such a narrative requires concerted and collective effort.

In this sense the content I’ll provide in this new section isn’t about persuading the unpersuadable, it is to help make the various conspiracy theories of nationalism less socially acceptable in polite company and in doing so making them less powerful.

Those of us who long for informed political debate to replace the populist us-and-them narratives of politics can be smarter in how we challenge falsehoods. Below are four tips for doing this. I offer this advice fully aware that I too often fail to live up to them in my own online interactions. I’ll try to do better too!

1. Don’t start by repeating the misformation

Instead, start with what you want to say. When we start a conversation that seeks to correct a falsehood we need to be careful not to amplify the language used by our opponents or the worldview it seeks to encourage. Instead, we should try to start every interaction with our own values.

So, for example, the first NonSense takes on the myth that England stole Scottish oil wells on the eve of devolution. This nationalist myth frames resources as something Scotland and England are in competition for, rather than the way we see the world which is where resources are something we share for mutual benefit. The factual claim isn’t true, the border for oil wasn’t changed, but we have to be careful that, in refuting that falsehood we don’t encourage the debate that nationalists want: exclusive sovereignty rather than shared decision-making.

So the suggestion is to lead with the alternative worldview before explaining the real situation: We share some things with each other because it makes us all better off, but it is important to understand the border for oil was never changed.

2. Look for shared values.

Within every falsehood spreading across the internet is something positive. If the idea contained within the lie didn’t connect to a deeply felt positive value it would not spread. The most divisive political ideas appeal to a sense of community. Populist movements masquerade as something they are not.

People might be easily-lead if they share lies but they’re not evil. In responding to a mistaken belief look for the common ground between the truth you need to communicate and the positive idea that has become infected with a lie. Nationalism relies on othering and dehumanizing those of us who believe that we should share decision-making with our friends and neighbours. Before you can get them to accept a specific truth you need to look for the connection of the non-specific value behind the issue.

The bigger objective is to prevent these falsehoods from dividing people against each other, so start your conversations with the values that we share. For example, if you find yourself ten tweets into an argument about GERS, ask yourself if you might have been better starting with why that debate really matters: it is about our ability to heal people in the NHS, teach our kids, and look after the most vulnerable in our communities. Lies can hide more easily among abstract ideas.

3. Remember why conspiracy theories are so powerful.

Conspiracy theories make people feel smart. They appear to offer esoteric knowledge that is reassuring to people who were struggling to understand the complexity of a frightening world. In that sense nationalism is a grand conspiracy theory: your life is hard because a foreign elite, with different values to us, is stealing the resources that are our birthright. That narrative offers a one-size-fits-all analysis of any political problem that means those applying it can feel intellectually superior while being utterly ignorant.

Ironically, the best way to defeat a false conspiracy theory is with a true conspiracy theory. We need to talk about the motivations of those who spread these lies. They are spreading us-and-them narratives because they want you to be angry at outsiders rather than angry at the failures of their own government. Once misinformation is in the wild it is spread by unwitting dupes, but almost always they are being manipulated by someone whose narrow political interests the lie serves. Help people see the bigger conspiracy based on the truth behind the conspiracy theory that mixes truth with a big lie. Explain why this falsehood is being spread and who it benefits.

Going back to the example of the oil border myth, we make the suggestion that we say something like: Those who created this myth know it isn’t true but their political cause needs people to think of England as an enemy we are fighting with over resources.

4. Persuade don’t perform.

Care more about persuading people than defeating your opponents. By all means, if you see a politician engaging in nonsense, call them out. However, if you see someone in your own social network of friends and family sharing something that is factually incorrect, it is far better to send them a private friendly message with a link to some corrective information. Engaging in public correction of people with whom you share a common audience of friends is more likely to turn the conversation into a performative defence of opposing beliefs rather than a considered discussion of the facts.

If you are correcting a true believer who you don’t expect to persuade, remember your audience isn’t the person you are debating with but rather the persuadable third parties watching the conversation. Let your opponent engage in abuse or othering of you, but don’t reciprocate. Be the reasonable voice in the face of unreasonable and unattractive views.

If there is a mistruth, meme, or misunderstanding you see repeated again and again online, please get in touch to suggest it as a topic for a future edition of NoNSense.

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