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Bagehot: Alex Salmond, Little Englander

ALEX SALMOND, leader of Scotland?s pro-independence party and first minister of the Scottish government, has a revelation to share. Over the years, he confides, there has been a tendency among some people in Scotland to blame things that go wrong on the English. He adopts a sorrowful air, as if pondering?for the very first time?man?s capacity for grievance.Happily, Mr Salmond has a plan. He intends to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn of 2014. Grant his homeland its independence from the United Kingdom, he says, and the honest folk of Scotland will be friends with the ?plain people of England?. Flanked by a pair of large Scottish Saltire flags, he quotes the homespun wisdom of a childhood family friend, predicting that, after independence, England will lose a ?surly lodger? and gain a ?good neighbour?.Mr Salmond calls himself the most Anglophile figure in Scottish politics. He has ?great faith? that the English people can craft a modern new identity without the ?appendage? of Britain. In a public lecture in London on January 24th, he plans to argue that the example of an independent...
Town-centre retailing: Nation of shop critics

DUNSTABLE is not a deprived place, although a look at its main street suggests otherwise. Roughly one in four shops in this Bedfordshire town of 35,000 people, north-west of London, lies empty. Some have acquired a decayed look. The shops that seem to be thriving are weighted towards chain stores and payday loan outfits. It does not help that Dunstable?s high street is part of the A5, a dead-straight Roman road filled with cars. But even the town?s purpose-built shopping centres, set back from the main road, are partly empty.Many British high streets are sickly, and some are in a critical condition. In December a report commissioned by the government claimed that one in three of the nation?s high streets is failing. Almost 15,000 shops in town centres closed between 2000 and 2009, with a further 10,000 losses in the past couple of years. There followed a lousy Christmas season for high-street fixtures like Argos, a catalogue chain, Mothercare, a baby clothier, and Thorntons, a chocolate maker. They plan to close up to one third of their shops.Some retailers did not even make it into the new year. Fully 183 fell...
John Lewis as a model: The feeling is mutual

A gift he couldn?t wait to give
JOHN LEWIS, an upmarket department store, has a special place in the minds of Britain?s consumers. In a speech to City folk on January 16th, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister, called for ?more of a John Lewis economy?. Yet he was enthusing not about the chain?s pretty teapots and bed linens or even its fair pricing and kindly service, but the company?s partnership model. It is owned by its 76,500 workers?or, to be more precise (which Mr Clegg was not), an independent trust holds all the shares and allots staff an annual bonus.John Spedan Lewis (pictured), son of the store?s founder, formed the partnership in 1928 partly to head off rising communist sentiment. But despite his belief that the model could replace traditional capitalism, few have adopted it. Even Charlie Mayfield, John Lewis?s boss, says it is ?not the answer to all ills?.The idea of a more caring, cuddly capitalism has long appeal. Staff share-ownership schemes emerged in America in the 1920s. In 1998 Gordon Brown, then Labour chancellor, preached of...
Extradition: The ties that bind

Sticking around
TWO new court rulings on extradition and deportation have provoked heavy breathing in a country where both issues are increasingly neuralgic. On January 13th a Westminster district judge said Britain would have to hand over Richard O?Dwyer, a university student who ran a website with links to sites offering free film and TV downloads, to America to face charges of breaching copyright. Though it is not clear that his behaviour constitutes an offence in Britain, the judge ruled that on balance he thought it would. If found guilty, Mr O?Dwyer could face up to ten years in an American prison.Yet Britain?s government cannot hand over someone it would dearly love to get rid of: a radical Islamist cleric known as Abu Qatada, once alleged to be Osama bin Laden?s right-hand man in Europe. On January 17th the European Court of Human Rights told Britain it could not deport Mr Qatada to his native Jordan, where he has been convicted in absentia of terrorism. Britain has been locking him up or dogging his footsteps for over a decade. It hoped to deport him after negotiating...
Schools in Wales: Down in the valleys

Taffs not toffs
GWYN THOMAS, the 12th child of a coalminer from a grimy town in the Rhondda valley, won a place at Oxford University in 1931. He later described in an autobiographical novel how his father ?was congratulated on having given a new sheen to the poverty belt?. In the poorest pockets of Wales, a university education offered an alternative to working down the mines. Aspirations remained surprisingly high even as the welfare state grew and the pits closed. Now lacklustre exam results threaten that tradition.As soon as it got devolved government in 1999, Wales set out on a distinctive path of school reform?or lack thereof. League tables of exam results were abolished in 2001. Wales?s strong trade unions opposed the creation of any ?academy? schools, which are independent of many state restrictions and are widespread in England.Parental choice has been limited to deciding whether to send a child to a school in which lessons are conducted in English or in Welsh. England?s classroom revolution, which aims to offer parents the same choice and quality in state schools as...
Exports and the economy: Made in Britain

JUST over a mile from Liverpool John Lennon Airport, named for one of Britain?s most successful exports, sits the Halewood operations of Jaguar Land Rover. Its foreign sales would make a Beatle envious. Over the December holidays the Tata-owned car factory ran extra shifts to keep up with demand. An expansion to the facility, which could create 1,500 jobs, is reportedly under consideration. JLR is already building a new engine plant in Wolverhampton. Other car firms are enjoying similar success. In 2010 Nissan invested over �400m in its state-of-the-art Sunderland factory, which produces for export to more than 90 countries.As Britain?s economy stumbles toward a likely recession, hopes are pinned on exports, particularly to faster-growing parts of the world. George Osborne, the chancellor, flew to China this week and marvelled at that country?s hunger for goods and services. Since 2007 the pound has dropped nearly a quarter on a trade-weighted basis. A devaluation in the early 1990s helped Britain export its way out of recession. Can it repeat the trick now?There are some encouraging signs. Britain?s trade deficit shrank from 4% of GDP in 2007 to around 1% of GDP by early 2011. But the economy might have been expected to do better after such a big depreciation. The obstacles have been many. Falling global demand blunted the impact of a cheap pound in 2008 and 2009. Once...
David Hockney: The beauty of the boring

AMERICA?S soul resides in its wilderness, France?s in its towns and England?s in its countryside. The burst of hawthorn in a hedgerow or frost on a ploughed field have inspired many of its best painters and poets. The latest to follow in the tradition of Constable, Gainsborough and Wordsworth is David Hockney, who, with the opening of his latest exhibition at the Royal Academy this week (and the death of Lucian Freud last year) has no rivals for the title of Britain?s greatest living artist.At 24, Mr Hockney left ?boring, stifling? England for California, seeking more light, shadow and sexiness than were available in 1960s Bradford. Age has brought him home, and opened his eyes to the beauty of the place. East Yorkshire, where he lives and paints, is flat and dull, its colours muted. Yet he sees, and captures, brilliance in this unremarkable landscape. The pictures are enhanced by his enthusiasm for technology. Some of the most successful were drawn on an iPad: even the printouts are luminous.The volume of work is as remarkable as its intensity: wall after wall is covered with paintings of the same bit of ground...
The Leveson inquiry: The Street of Shame responds

OVER the past three months Lord Justice Leveson, an appeal court judge, has presided over a mighty airing of Fleet Street?s dirty laundry. His inquiry, set up following revelations of phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch?s News of the World newspaper, has heard of misery inflicted by intrusive and immoral reporters. Lord Justice Leveson will almost certainly call for the press to be reined in. The stakes are high for the newspaper editors who testified this week. Yet they hardly presented a united front.Three lines of argument emerged. The first is represented by regulatory refuseniks who resist more constraints on the press. Leading that camp (which includes Richard Desmond, the idiosyncratic owner of the Express newspapers) is Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye. That magazine routinely publishes stories which embarrass the mighty, including proprietors. ?If the state regulates the press, then the press no longer regulates the state?, the aphoristically-inclined Mr Hislop asserted. Existing laws against harassment and illegal accessing of data should simply be more firmly applied, he added.The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday took a second position, conceding that some form of tighter regulation is necessary but trying to keep politicians at...
Labour?s fiscal rethink: Plan B

ED MILIBAND has made a great many speeches and announcements since becoming Labour Party leader in 2010. It might be that none of them won him as many swing votes as the onslaught he endured at the hands of irate trade unions on January 17th. Mr Miliband offended the likes of Len McCluskey and Mark Serwotka, who run the Unite and Public and Commercial Services unions respectively, by softening his opposition to the government?s austerity programme.First Mr Miliband gave a speech on January 10th which acknowledged that the next Labour government would not be as free-spending as the last. Four days later his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, went further by suggesting that he would not reverse the coalition?s cuts. Shadow cabinet members?including Jim Murphy, the defence spokesman, and Stephen Twigg, who carries the education portfolio?have also pointed to specific government cuts that they support.For a politician striving to slip off the tag of ?Red Ed?, the ire of left-wing and often militant union bosses is welcome (Dave Prentis of Unison, another large union, weighed in on January 18th). Opposition...

The Economist: Britain Thu, 19 January 2012 16:07:07 GMT