A week is a long time at the Scotsman

Such has been the tumult in recent weeks at The Scotsman Publications Ltd (TSPL), it is remarkable that a paper has made it out the door every day.  The changes have not, though, been confined to the Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and Edinburgh Evening News, but extend to all Johnston press holdings.

Ashley Highfield, appointed Chief Executive of Johnston Press in July, has set out his strategy for survival and it involves even more tumult and upheaval.

First step has been to flatten the management structure.  February saw the first stirrings of this with senior executives of parts of the holdings put on gardening leave and ultimately, made redundant.  At the same time, the MD of TSPL, Andrew Richardson, was appointed MD of all the Johnston Press holdings in Scotland.  This process culminated in the removal of John McLellan from his role as Editor-in-Chief of the Scotsman and its sister papers, and cue a public outpouring of indignation and sentiment (did John McLellan ever know how much his staff loved him so?!) from the papers’ journalists.  Incidentally, McLellan was one of three senior executives to go.

Eyebrows might have been raised by many at the Scotsman winning Newspaper of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards last week, but the newspaper family is a sentimental one. This award was the equivalent of a group hug, a solidarity gesture and as a kind of good luck charm to prevent the rot extending to others.

Some of the other changes coming won’t actually affect the Scotsman or Scotland on Sunday.  Johnston press is redesigning and relaunching most of the group’s newspapers.  I’m not a newspaper person but this sounds like maximising output from the content system invested in a while ago, by creating templates and sharing non-local content across titles more efficiently. It also means creating a single unit price for similar products.  Such harmonisation is long overdue and will raise the profit margins overnight on some publications.  The pilot area is the North of England where some dailies will also become weekly papers.

Implementation of the digital strategy will surely involve TSPL.  Highfield aims to grow audiences (not readers, note) by being “local, social and mobile”.  There will be more ipad apps for example, and mobile content to reach a younger generation currently bypassing newspapers for news.  This strategy will also create vertical content businesses, grouping content by genre (football, gardening etc) so that it can be accessed in one place.  Frankly, some of this is so basic in marketing terms, it’s remarkable that it hasn’t happened yet.

Clearly, once this process is complete, more jobs, particularly at editorial level will go.  You don’t need individual editors for newsprint and digital versions of every local paper, especially when the design and production processes are shared.  Traditionalists with inky fingers may despair but it is the way of the future.

There is also comfort to be had in that this is a strategy for growth.  It is about maximising profit, cutting costs and increasing revenue, while investing to reach wider audiences.  The crucial link in the chain is content.  More journalism, not less should result, but it will be different journalism.  All this might be bringing some at TSPL out in hives, but they would do well to get with the programme and work to put their papers ahead of the change process.

Kenneth Roy at the Scottish Review might envision a back to the future approach to rejuvenate the Scotsman, but such nostalgia is unhelpful.  The newspaper industry in Scotland and elsewhere must change or die.  What Highfield is setting out represents a major shift in culture, one that has largely been resisted by the industry in Scotland.  Where Roy is right, though, is that the Scotsman (to a lesser extent, Scotland on Sunday) has lost its way, in terms of its purpose and its direction.  Politically, its editorial line has become increasingly brittle:  how else to explain the contest to produce an independence-bashing front page splash daily?

Being so out of step with the political zeitgeist overshadows the fact that actually, the paper is producing outstanding comment and analysis on political and public issues.  The range of voices provided daily is impressive and has become essential reading for the burd.  It also masks the rest of the newspaper’s strengths – decent domestic and international news coverage coupled with innovative and solid lifestyle, sport and other content.  What is missing is a sense that the Scotsman is happy with its place in our world  – resolving this, so that it and Scotland on Sunday better reflect the political mood of the nation, is vital if Highfield’s audience growth strategy is to be realised.

Highfield is a businessman operating in a media universe: he can only do so much to fight for the survival of Johnston Press, and in particular TSPL.  This is only the start, not the end of the process of change.  Sadly, there will be more jobs going, but there is also the opportunity to create new jobs.  And if those journalists currently employed at TSPL want to have a future, they need to get their heads around the changes coming and fast.  Best of all, they need to work with their company to deliver.  No matter how many platforms, templates and audiences, the key to success is still content:  “brands are nothing without content, content is nothing without investment” noted Bill Jamieson sagely at the Scottish Press Awards.

He also reminded (to a standing ovation apparently) the assembled throng that “words are our gift, words are the mission of our life“.  Such a noble sentiment, though, is worthless without places to lay those words nor readers to savour them.

Voting yes will enable us to say no

When silence is deafening, it is often also illuminating.

Yesterday, Scotland on Sunday published a frontpage splash suggesting that independent Scotland might not be able to rid itself of nuclear weapons, should the SNP abandon its longstanding commitment to non-membership of NATO.  The claim was made by Professor Malcolm Chalmers, who is defence policy director at the Royal United Services Institute, in a paper on defence in an independent Scotland commissioned by the newspaper.

Needless to say, the splash picked out a couple of ripe plums from what is a considered and balanced treatment of a range of defence issues, albeit approached with a glass half empty.  Professor Chalmers had many interesting thoughts, however, the NATO-nuclear issue was the one deemed newsworthy – for obvious reasons.

More interestingly, there has been no response from the SNP, nor any of the online outlets which leap to rebut bad news (or even sometimes an alternative viewpoint) for the Scottish Government and the indie referendum.  There are lengthy comment threads at the Scotland on Sunday online, but they largely contain irrelevant chaff.   Elsewhere, the Cyber Nats have been curiously silent – even allowing for the Easter holiday weekend.

Only the Reid Foundation found time to issue a stark warning: “Whomever is briefing that the SNP is going to U-turn on its opposition to Nato must be stopped immediately by the Party leader. If this speculation is allowed to continue, the inference that the left will draw may irreparably damage the Party’s support.”

Robin McAlpine suggests that shifting its stance on NATO is fraught with risk for the SNP: “I doubt that is the intention of the party generally to pick a fight with the left, but if it believes (as New Labour did) that the left can be ignored because the left has nowhere to go then it will pay a price and it will deserve to.”

The potential political consequences of a policy shift are worth returning to separately but they do suggest one reason for silence on this splash.  When SNP-minded folk are discomfited by policy movement, they go to ground.  Like an inverse barometer of acceptance, we can read into the current lack of chatter a considerable amount of unease.

It does not help that the Professor has raised issues that deserve, nay require proper scrutiny and debate – issues which the SNP is keen not to have aired at the current juncture, precisely because they are so troublesome. Some consider that we only need to worry about sorting such issues after independence.  And others are happy to take an ostrich-like approach on such toughies.

Blind faith also comes into it: whatever the party leadership determines on such matters is what is necessary and good to get us through the winning post of independence.  Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat, and whatever you do, don’t give any of the enemies of independence succour by exposing a fault-line.

It demonstrates admirably the discipline in the party’s rank and file and has played a crucial role in recent SNP electoral success.  But these are precisely the debates and discussions we should be having right now;  of course, everything is an option but people – especially doubters- want to know the possibilities on a wide range of issues – including defence and the kind of things that Professor Chalmers discusses.

Of our conventional forces, which will be most important to build and maintain?  What kind of air capacity, if any, shall we need?  What would a Scottish Defence Force look like? Will women be allowed or required to fight?

Do we want to have an arms industry or will we be happy to forego these jobs and replace them with less objectionable employment opportunities?  If not, how would such a skills capacity and export trade square with a previously stated aim of becoming one of the world’s peacemaking nations?

Yet, if one of the biggest future threats is from cyber-terrorism, surely our skills in this field is something we would want to continue to develop and contribute to globally?

Professor Chalmers approaches his analysis with some loaded suppositions – that Scotland would need to bolster against a possible Irish variant of terrorism, ignoring the fact that for inter-related cultural, historical and practical reasons, Scotland was rather protected against this possibility at the height of the Troubles.  Moreover, he pre-supposes that border controls in Scotland as part of the UK are currently well invested when the reality is very different.

He also queries whether Scots would still be able to use rUK training camps and leadership colleges post-independence, without contemplating why we might want to.  Independence would give us the right and opportunity to seek mutually beneficial relationships with other countries’ training facilities – as exists between UK and many others currently.  As someone who grew up with the screech and boom of low-flying aircraft and the spectacle of NATO exercises (with men dressed as bushes appearing out of burns regularly), why wouldn’t this kind of activity continue – if we wanted it to, of course, and whether or not we were members of NATO?

Currently, many who doubt independence tend to put obstacles in the way.  I’m pretty sanguine about whether or not independent Scotland seeks membership of NATO:  I can see pros and cons to being on the inside of the tent.  But I am implacably opposed – like most SNP members and supporters (including the First Minister and Depute First Minister) – to nuclear weapons remaining on Scottish soil.  And while the Professor acknowledges that most folk in Scotland want rid of Trident, he fails to link this aspiration to the need to vote for independence in order to achieve this.  He might be right – it might take decades rather than years to be rid of nuclear weapons from our soil, but better that than never.  Only by voting yes will we get the chance to say no.

While refusal by NATO to allow a nuclear weapon-free Scotland in might be a deal breaker, the Professor indicates that it has not prevented other countries who have been in NATO from the start, despite never having a nuclear option.  He is right to consider whether or not the rules might be different for an acceding nation in the current climate, but given the complexity of current membership and co-operation arrangements between and among countries in a whole host of international treaty organisations, there is nothing to suggest that Scotland would be treated with less flexibility than many others, if – and it is a big if – independent Scotland sought to join NATO or other such alliances.

These quibbles aside, Professor Chalmers has made a very good attempt at teasing out some of the defence issues for post-independence Scotland, not least its cost and how we might afford that.  It’s a shame then that his efforts have been ignored by most on the pro-independence side, at least publicly.

Yes, they are matters that can be sorted after we get there but pretending they don’t exist and that people don’t want a debate on the detail and possible options now – before they vote yes or no – puts at risk our ever getting there at all.

Why the English NHS bill helps the cause of Scottish independence

In truth, I’ve been wrestling with this piece for more than a week now.  Three times I’ve picked it up and put it down.  Sometimes, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees, to be able to pluck the analysis from the swirl of detail and politics.  Headspace for thinking is sometimes hard to find.

But two very important thought pieces in Scotland on Sunday today helped crystallise the nub of what I’m about to say.  Must-reading for everyone in Scottish politics, frankly:  first, Duncan Hamilton sets out how three events this week have shown how Labour’s political influence in Scotland is plummeting still and second, Kenny Farquharson details how the SNP is engaged in a cultural revolution encouraging its supporters and indeed, Scots to embrace their inner Britishness.  As an unreconstructed Nat, it makes for discomfiting if thought-provoking reading.

Both articles, to some extent, provide context for my assertion that one of the key independence battlegrounds is in England and specifically, over the NHS bill.

The most important speech in Scottish politics over the last few weeks wasn’t actually made at a party conference but by Depute First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon in a lecture at Glasgow University.  Here was a senior SNP figure beginning the process of laying out what independence is for and highlighting key differentials between “there” and “here”.  The NHS and its treatment was key, so key, in fact, that it featured in not just her address to the SNP Spring Conference a week later, but in all the major speeches of the weekend.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health asserted that independence was but a vehicle to a fairer Scotland and that the biggest threat to the welfare state – the quintessential British construct – was the current UK Government. “Independence will give Scotland the opportunity to make different decisions and to implement policies designed for its own needs in every area. In welfare as well as health, the economy as well as education. In the past the union would have been seen as not just the creator but also the guarantor of the values and vision of the post-war welfare state. Today, many see that it is the union, under the Westminster government, that poses the biggest threat to these values and that vision.”

Both she and the First Minister laid out in their Spring conference speeches quite deliberately and clearly that the little amount of independence we have currently – an interesting take on the devolution settlement which was largely ignored by the mainstream media – enables Scotland to choose a different path over the NHS.   In essence, there will be no privatisation of the NHS in Scotland under the watch of an SNP Government.

Whatever the detail of the NHS bill currently causing such storm and fury south of the border – and it is hard to keep up with the convolution of its measures amidst the spin and counter-spin – we in Scotland are looking from afar at the Conservatives doing what we always suspected them of doing – of dismantling that which we hold dear – the idea of an NHS in public hands, free at the point of need.

For sure, the Liberal Democrat membership tried to stymie their leadership’s complicity in the deal, but they failed.  Despite a refusal to back the bill at the party’s UK Spring Conference, their MPs and Lords are holding fast to their commitment (largely) to coalition government and supporting it.  Meanwhile, Labour is doing a grand job of leading the charge under Andy Burnham, whom most commentators agree is playing a blinder, but it will come to nought.  As Duncan Hamilton points out:  “politics is about power, and Labour has none”.

Especially here in Scotland, which enables the SNP to drive a further nail in Labour’s coffin. One of the other interesting themes of the First Minister’s speech in particular, was that only the SNP can protect Scotland’s interests against the worst perfidy of a Tory-led government at Westminster.  Whereas Iain Gray tried to make this concept stick during the 2011 Scottish election campaign and failed, the SNP can state it with greater authority.  Because the SNP has the power and the backing of the Scottish people to do so.

Hence, the clever tactical focus on measures like the NHS bill which point this reality up and which enable the SNP to make the positive case for independence.

Clearly Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond – and the unseen army of often brilliant party tacticians and strategists – have a nose for these things and have determined to capitalise on the coalition’s woes. The Scottish Government will wring every last drop of political advantage from the situation unfolding south of the border.

Tom Gordon at the Sunday Herald erroneously portrayed the core of the First Minister’s speech to conference as an attempt to pitch the referendum as a personality contest between himself and David Cameron.  He’s wrong:  the messaging here is much more potent and heady, more complex and far more fundamental than that.  It’s about appealing to values held dear, and nothing is held in greater esteem by Scots than the NHS.  In any poll, health is always top or nearly so;  indeed, clinging to the notion of a universal, entirely public NHS exposes Scots’ innate conservatism (as Alex Massie pointed out).

The Massie one also beat me to the observation that there is an irony inherent in the SNP – the party which wants to change the rules of the political game forever -  aiming to do so by changing not very much at all.

But the politics has a purpose.  They privatise, we protect.  They ignore, we listen.  They dismantle, we build.  If devo-whatever is Ruth Davidson’s line in the sand, then the NHS could become a symbolic no passeran, one for which the Scottish public might well take to the barricades, or at least to their ballot papers.

The SNP’s instincts on this are spot-on.  Claiming to protect the NHS with the little independence we have, and articulating the idea that real independence would deliver the health service we want;  laying claim to be the real defender of a tenet of Britishness which is safer if Scotland goes it alone;  these are the kind of arguments which will make Scots pause and think.

And persuade many to realise that a yes vote might deliver the change – no change at all, in fact – they wish.