GORDON Brown insisted yesterday that the debate about Scotland’s future was “upside down and back to front”.
The former prime minister said discussions about independence have become mired in squabbles over the precise wording of the referendum question.
And he argued that the focus should be on the big issues, such as jobs, education and health.
In a speech to the Scottish Parliament, Brown said the independence debate focused too much on “process and procedures, not principles”.
He insisted: “The referendum campaign should start from where Scottish people are and what they believe.”
Brown said the real question was “whether our beliefs and aspirations are best realised through an independent state separated from Britain, or by working through both the Scottish Parliament and the UK”.
He added: “We should ask whether the nationalists are right that the Union holds Scots back...
“Or whether in fact Scots have been, and are, right to try to shape the Union, not just as a political or a social union, but as a union for social justice – trying to make the Union, for millions of people, the best and most ambitious insurance policy in the world.”
Brown said Scotland was two years from a “make or break” decision which would affect people’s jobs, pensions for the old and prospects for the young.
And he insisted that the countdown to the vote should not begin with “an endless succession of ‘insider’ Holyrood and Westminster arguments about procedures”.
Brown said: “With its current focus on process and not on principles, the debate about Scotland’s future is about the minutiae of process and not about fundamental beliefs.
“We should not neglect the biggest issue of all – what we Scots aspire to as a people.”
Kirkcaldy MP Brown was giving the Campbell Christie memorial lecture at Holyrood, part of the Parliament’s Festival of Politics.
He hailed the former Scottish Trades Union Congress general secretary’s contribution to Scottish public life.
And he returned strongly to the theme of his speech to the Edinburgh Book Festival two weeks ago - that Scots benefit from the “pooling and sharing of resources” across the UK.
Brown hit out at the SNP Government over its plans to allow Scots universities to charge English students fees which Scots youngsters do not have to pay.
He said: “I don’t think it is right that you have a situation, where we believe in the principles of social justice, that you have fees free to Scottish students and anybody from the rest of the European Union but we charge someone from England.
“There should be a negotiation about it, because it seems to me not in tune with the principles I support about social justice.”
Brown argued that Scotland was defined by its commitment to social justice. He said the nation believed in educational opportunities for all, the equal worth of every individual and a “moral core” where we support one another.
And he stressed that Scottish ideas of social justice had helped shape, and could continue to help shape, the Union.
Brown said: “As the life of Campbell Christie shows, these beliefs have come together in a very practical way in the strength of the Scottish commitment to social justice.”
He said Scotland had led the world in schooling for all, campaigned for the right to work and opposed the Poll Tax. He praised “the anti-poverty priorities of the first Scottish Parliament” and “the work of Scottish churches in the poorest countries of the world”.
Brown added: “Because of the insistent Scottish demand for social justice, we have not only shaped what Scottish civic authorities, the Scottish Office and now the Scottish Parliament does at home.
“We have, over many decades, shaped the Union, trying to make it a social justice union – to make it fairer and better in the future.
“It is a social justice union founded on the pooling of risks and resources in a way unparalleled anywhere in the world – so that every Scottish, English, Welsh and Northern Irish citizen should have the same political, economic and social rights.”
Brown said neighbouring countries did not automatically develop common economic rights. But UK citizens had common rights to “a British minimum wage, British pensions, British disability benefits, British child support, help for the unemployed, and common standards of workers’ protection”.
Brown went on: “The Union is based, not just on common political rights, but common social and economic rights.
“There are good principled reasons why we scrapped the Scottish and English Poor Laws and replaced them with a British welfare state – good, principled reasons why we have common pensions across Britain, why workers have the same equal rights to unemployment insurance and benefits.
“We recognise that by unity across frontiers, and by pooling and sharing resources, we can get a better deal for all.”
Source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/independence-debate-must-be-on-issues-not-1278833
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