NICOLA Sturgeon visited a maternity ward to deliver a New Year message that spoke of her commitment to creating a fairer country that would enable children to fulfil their potential.
The contrast between Nicola Sturgeon’s dignified, positive message and the naked, anti-SNP electioneering of the British parties stands as an excellent metaphor for the state of Scotland’s politics.
THE SNP leadership has for the first time acknowledged that it could form a new UK Coalition with Labour in a bid to keep the Tories out of power, should the electoral arithmetic present the opportunity after next May’s General Election.
A MONEY-saving Jamie Oliver cookbook was a more popular draw than the independence white paper, Scotland’s Future, in Edinburgh’s libraries over the past year.
A real newspaper addressing an adult audience rather than pandering to British nationalist fanatics would have run with how remarkable it is that a political document such as Scotland’s Future could make into the top ten of any book list.
Instead of the infantile pish offered by The Scotsman, a newspaper worthy of the name would have commented at length on the significance of the changes in Scotland’s politics that are signalled by the massive demand for the Scottish Government’s White Paper on independence.
Murray has misunderstood the nature of the modern SNP – and the SNP has understood the nature of Craig Murray all too well.
Not often one gets the chance to agree with The Scotsman.
SCOTLAND’S only elected Ukip politician has said he will stand against Alex Salmond after the former SNP leader confirmed he would contest next year’s general election.
Please! Please! Please! Let this be true! Coburn’s humiliation will be such a delight!
If Labour is elected in May, we’ll abolish the bedroom tax. You can’t have a clearer pledge than that. But this weekend we’ve seen that, for the SNP, the
Labour leader Ed Miliband has been branded an electoral “liability” after reports emerged that he was blocked from speaking in an eve-of-referendum rally earlier this year.
Deputy First Minister John Swinney has hailed the rising number of women in work as a “real success story” over the last 12 months.
The odious Jackie Baillie doesn’t even have sense enough to simply welcome some very heartening statistics. Mindless hatred of the SNP takes precedence over everything. Am I alone in being heartily weary of British Labour in Scotland?
Two weeks later he got a letter from Jobcentre Plus saying he had withdrawn from the assessment and, as such, was being sanctioned
This is not my country.
ALMOST 1,200 hospital beds have disappeared from wards around Scotland in just two years, official figures have shown.
Government ministers have been accused of leading a
SCOTTISH Labour’s brief period of unity has ended after the former spokesman for Jim Murphy’s defeated rival accused the new leader of “abandoning truth” and “making stuff up” about Scottishness.
It is gratifying to know that, whatever their motivations, there are still a few people within British Labour in Scotland who are prepared to speak out against Murph The Mendacious.
A FORMER British ambassador famous for whistle-blowing on human-rights abuses in Uzbekistan has accused the SNP hierarchy of
Last September, when it seemed possible that the United Kingdom might be torn asunder, many people wondered why the Scots had become consumed with such bile towards the English. We looked back to the time when the Scots played such a proud part in that “all-British team” that had more impact on the world than any nation in history. Scotland led everyone in shipbuilding, had a major chemical industry and great coalfields. It produced world-class philosophers, scientists, engineers, writers. Scots played a key part in our Armed Forces and in running the greatest empire in the world. Of the 44 presidents of the USA, 17 had Ulster-Scottish blood.
SCOTTISH ministers were accused of having a “dismal” and “appalling” record on tackling climate change after it emerged the government had failed to make environmental improvements to its own buildings.
It was the year that Scotland made history with a vote which caught the attention of the world.
What these statements emphasise for me is the difference between Scottish politicians and British politicians in Scotland. As well as the fact that we need a lot more of the former. And that we will be well rid of the latter.
Would the SNP really want to prop up a Labour UK government, asks Andrew Whitaker
Had to laugh at that last paragraph. In part, at the suggestion that Douglas Alexander could be right about something. But mostly at the way Andrew Whitaker so unselfconsciously parrots one of the favoured propaganda lines of British Labour in Scotland right after some some disparaging remarks about SNP election slogans. I refer, of course, to the threadbare nonsense about the SNP preferring a Tory government at Westminster.
Setting aside, for the moment, the stark reality that it makes little difference which of the two “main” parties of British politics is in power, the idea that the SNP might find it advantageous if the Tories were to win next year’s UK general election simply doesn’t make sense. British Labour in Scotland has been peddling this line for years. It ties in with the line about the SNP “blaming Westminster for everything”. (As if there was something extraordinary about blaming the body that retains its jealous grasp on ultimate power and the purse-strings.) And, admittedly, there may have been some small sense to it in the past. But only because a Tory UK Government allowed the SNP to attack on two fronts - they could attack the policies AND the fact that the policies were being imposed by a party which was decisively rejected by voters in Scotland.
But, assuming the 2015 elections turn out as expected and the SNP has a significantly enhanced presence at Westminster, the argument that they would prefer a Tory government rather than a Labour one makes no sense at all.
Bear in mind that the SNP has categorically ruled out any deal with the Conservatives. No deal means no concessions. The SNP cannot possibly be in a position to make any demands of a Tory administration. Not so a Labour government. With a Labour administration in place dependent on the support of a large contingent of SNP MPs those SNP MPs are in a position of real political power.
It is simply naive to suppose that the SNP would choose a position of powerlessness under a Tory government over a position of significant power under a Labour government.
It cannot even be argued that the “prize” of blaming unelected Tories would be worth the sacrifice of real influence because there is a prize of at least equal value in blaming Labour for a policy programme that is all but indistinguishable from that of the Tories. Especially if, as is quite possible, British Labour is reduced to a minority party in Scotland.
So we come back to the fact that it is of little consequence to either the SNP or the people of Scotland which of the two surviving British parties forms the next UK Government. Either way, we will be subjected to policies which serve the imperatives of the neo-liberal consensus which removes any meaningful choice from British politics.
Either way, the SNP will be able to argue that the only way Scotland can follow a different path is by bringing our government home.
The Queen has used her Christmas Day broadcast to highlight the importance of reconciliation between opposing sides - from communities in Northern Ireland to those involved in the Scottish Independence referendum.
Given her place at its pinnacle, I suppose it is fitting that the monarch should so clumsily epitomise the British establishment’s total inability to comprehend the nature of what has happened in Scotland over the past couple of years.*
We have had much talk of “reconciliation” from British politicians in Scotland in the months since the independence referendum. Most people, I suspect, recognise this as self-serving cant from those who would prefer that we forget the part they played in Project Fear - the campaign of distortion, deceit and dishonesty by which the people of Scotland were duped into forfeiting the democratic power that they held in their hands for 15 glorious hours on Thursday 18 September 2014 and return that power to the British political elites who are now so desperate to draw a veil over their deplorable conduct.
The Queen’s pious prating on the topic of “reconciliation” is somewhat different. It reflects the attitude of a British establishment which saw in the referendum, not a great exercise in democracy, but a threat to the entrenched power and privilege which defines the British state.
To the ruling elites of the British state, the Yes campaign was not a heartening affirmation of true participative democracy - it was an uprising against the divinely ordained order. Whilst those engaged in the campaign to restore Scotland’s rightful constitutional status gloried in a revival of political engagement and the organic growth of a genuine grass-roots movement, conventional power could only make sense of what was happening by translating it into the language of conflict, revolt and strife. The language of imperial power politics. The language of the British state.
British politicians in Scotland want “reconciliation” so that they can get back to the cosy arrangements which guaranteed them a place in the structures of power and privilege which they like to refer to as “Britiain”. The Queen voices the more general concern of the British establishment as a whole. An arrogant, disdainful concern that those fractious Jocks should stop rocking the boat and get back in their box.
With a casual condescension that lacks any self-awareness, we are being told that we’ve had our wee fling and should now content ourselves with the old order and the old ways.
In the vocabulary of the British establishment, “reconciliation” becomes a euphemism for resigned acquiescence and meek submission.
How little they know. How little they understand.
Political rivals have urged Scots to use the Christmas spirit to heal divisions caused by the independence referendum and to put political differences aside during the festive season.
What all this pious claptrap from these British politicians boils down to is an appeal for everybody to just forget the distortions, deceits and dishonesty of the anti-independence propaganda campaign. They are effectively demanding that they should not be held to account for their scaremongering and lies. They are seeking to use the spirit of the season to get themselves off the hook.
Personally, I am disinclined to oblige them.
I bear no ill-will towards those who voted No in good faith because they were taken in by the mendacity and false promises of the British parties. But those who perpetrated the deceit deserve no forgiveness. Ordinary voters don’t need to explain or justify their choices other than to their own conscience. But politicians must be answerable for their words and deeds. That is democracy.
This desperate invoking of a seasonal spirit of forgiveness is no more than a tawdry ploy. I will gladly wish British politicians in Scotland a Happy Christmas. But I can offer them no consolation for their fortunes in the New Year. They will be justly punished at the polls in May.
VOTERS in Scotland would be more likely to back Labour if the party committed to a left-wing agenda of bringing the railways and utility firms back into public ownership, a survey has found.
Murph The Mendacious versus Santa
British Labour in Scotland has a problem. Even if there were any real impetus to move to the left, there is no way that the North British branch would be permitted to do so. It would be like Starbucks allowing their shops in Scotland to sell Costa coffee. It’s just not going to happen.
The best the new branch office manager can hope to do is use some marketing trickery to convince people that there is such a thing as a “Scottish Labour Party” and that this entirely imaginary political party can have have a policy agenda which is quite distinct from, and even at odds with, the policy agenda of British Labour.
The man chosen to perpetrate this attempt at mass deception, Jim Murphy, will have every advantage the British establishment can offer. The media will be awash with puff-pieces raising his personal profile. Every cunningly crafted deceit concocted by his little army of spin-quacks will be faithfully reported and absolutely never challenged in any way. The words “Scottish Labour Party” will be repeated ad nauseam in the hope that mere repetition might lend some tenuous concreteness to the fantasy.
The entire propaganda machinery of the British state will be at the disposal of Murph The Mendacious in an effort to give specious credibility to his claims of autonomy, and spurious substance to his policy programme.
The reality, of course, is that Santa Claus is more real than the “Scottish Labour Party”. And looking to Jim Murphy to deliver social and economic justice for the people of Scotland is a lot less likely to be effective than writing a note to Santa.
PERMITTING retired Lords to entertain business contacts in Westminster’s taxpayer-subsidised bars and restaurants will mean “the festive season never ends for peers”, the SNP has complained.
The Scotsman missed a trick here. A more typical headline would have said something about the SNP “picking a fight with Westminster”.
Let me quite clear about this. I am not one of those “Angry Villagers” who is constantly raging about the pay and perks of politicians. You won’t even hear me banging on about abolishing the House of Lords. It is a matter which I have always considered should be treated with some caution. The British political system requires a revising chamber. I have always felt that we should be less concerned about abolishing the admittedly unsatisfactory set-up we have, and more concerned about what would replace it. I think recent “reforms” of the House of Lords have validated my approach to the issue.
Relaxed as I am about the remuneration and privileges of serving politicians, I have to say that extending those privileges to retired peers is totally unjustifiable. I don’t particularly mind that MPs and MSPs and even working peers should have access to what is in effect employer-subsidised bars and restaurants. The nature of the job is such that much useful work is likely to be done in such places. But I fail to see how it is possible to justify extending such privileges to those who are no longer employed by the taxpayer.
There is also a strong whiff of the old “them and us” about this proposal to allow retired peers the use of facilities at Westminster. They get juicy inducements to retire. We get compulsory redundancy.
Personally, I am delighted that we have SNP MPs at Westminster who are prepared to take a stand on such matters. Just think how much better it would be if those SNP MPs were there in sufficient numbers to do more than simply protest.
The continued rise of the SNP has led to increased metropolitan suspicion and a growing backlash. What is the content of the SNP’s nationalism?
A record 48 per cent of Scottish voters are now planning to back the SNP in May - with Labour trailing on just 24 per cent. The result would leave Labour with just four MPs.
Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy looked stunned when he heard about the crash as he walked down Buchanan Street, arms laden with Christmas shopping.
SCOTLAND’S North Sea revenues would have fallen to one fifth of the SNP’s predictions in the first 12 months following a Yes vote, a budget watchdog report based on current oil prices has found.
Tom Greatrex and his fellow British nationalist fanatics might not be so gleefully smug about the oil-price slump is they but had the wits to realise that this has happened despite the people of Scotland voting No in the independence referendum.
It would be too much to hope that British politicians such as Greatrex might have the self-awareness and humility to recognise that this downturn in the price of oil is only as serious as it is because of their criminal failure to establish an oil fund.
If Tom Greatrex was even a wee bit clever, he’d keep his mouth shut and hope to avoid embarrassing himself, British Labour and their Tory allies.
Former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke has claimed Scotland’s independence referendum created more uncertainty than it solved.
I may have mentioned before that Willie Rennie is a buffoon. Quite why he feels the need to confirm his clownishness on such a regular basis is something of a mystery. The whole point, as far as Rennie and his British nationalist ilk are concerned, is to lash out at the hated SNP. It doesn’t matter that these mindless attacks attacks make no sense. Intellectually cripple by blind prejudice Rennie is not equipped to think his utterances through to the point where the senselessness becomes embarrassingly clear.
When Alex Salmond spoke of an independence referendum being a “once in a generation” thing, he was expressing a personal opinion. Being Alex Salmond, he was also being very politically astute. It was important to play down the possibility of a second referendum lest people vote No on the assumption that they’d get another chance fairly soon. But it was also important that Salmond did not explicitly rule out a second referendum. Which is why he made it so clear that he was giving his opinion.
But that’s not what Rennie and other British nationalist numpties heard. They heard what they wanted to hear. They heard that which suited their virulent anti-SNP/anti-independence agenda. Regardless of what Salmond actually said - and what sane, sensible people heard him say - Rennie chose to hear a solemn undertaking that there would be no new referendum within a generation.
In his frantic eagerness to contrive a stick with which to beat Alex Salmond. Rennie doesn’t only opt to ignore what was actually said, he also chooses to ignore the glaringly obvious fact that Salmond could not possibly give the undertaking which Rennie is so desperate to pretend he did give. Even as First Minister, Salmond would have no way to prevent another referendum if that was what the people of Scotland demanded.
Like the profound silliness exhibited by Wille Rennie, this failure grasp the fundamentals of democracy appears to be a defining characteristic of the British nationalist fanatic.
Scottish Labour Leader Jim Murphy has been condemned for refusing to join a cross-party effort to save a key air search-and-rescue centre, despite one of his own MSPs proposing the idea.
Let’s face it. Anybody who expected better of Murphy was bound to be disappointed. This is a particularly self-serving individual who envisages a career trajectory which will gain him the leadership of British Labour and even the keys tp 10 Downing Street. Everything he does as manager of British Labour’s branch office in North Britain will be calculated to serve that ambition - and to hell with the interests of the people of Scotland.
There is a new cancer at the heart of the pretendy wee “Scottish Labour Party”.
AN independent Scotland in its first year would have faced a £6.4bn “gaping chasm” in its finances, the Treasury has calculated based on the slump in the oil price.
With perhaps as many as 15,000 jobs at risk, I am surely not alone in being utterly sickened by the unvarnished glee with which British nationalists have greeted the oil-price slump. It appears that the livelihoods of all those thousands of people, and the distress that this will cause to their families, is considered a “price worth paying” by scum like Danny Alexander if it affords them an opportunity to lash out at the SNP and those who aspire to the restoration of Scotland’s rightful constitutional status.
As we as having absolutely no compunction about lying to the people of Scotland in order to defend the ruling elites of the British state, it was notable during the referendum campaign that British nationalists were not at all averse to making complete fools of themselves in the name of preserving the old order and the old ways. Danny Alexander was always among the most eager of these clowns. Nothing much has changed.
In the first place, he stupidly ignores the fact that the oil price forecasts used by the Scottish Government in its economic projections came from bodies such as Oil & Gas UK and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The UK government and the British political parties which were part of the the anti-independence alliance were perfectly happy to use these figures themselves when their purpose was to talk up the oil industry and potential revenues. It was only when they were bent on denigrating Scotland’s economic prospects as part of Project Fear that they would resort to the considerably more pessimistic forecasts supplied by the Office of Budget responsibility (OBR). An organisation whose figures exhibited a remarkable “flexibility” and a curious tendency to align precisely with the doom-mongering propaganda oozing out of Whitehall and Better Together.
Then there are the contradictions and inconsistencies which have also been a defining characteristic of the campaign to deny the sovereignty of Scotland’s people. Out of one side of his deceitful mouth Alexander makes a big fuss about the volatility of oil prices - as if this was something we were unaware of. Out of the other side of his mouth he talks about the price of oil remaining at current levels for two years or more. Which would require stability of a kind which is the diametric opposite of the volatility that the other side of his mouth was banging on about.
Nobody, including acknowledged experts such as Sir Ian Wood, expects the present slump in oil prices to last. It is a blip which defines the very volatility we anticipate and denies the kind of long-term stagnation that is conjured by Alexander’s fevered imagination.
Knowing that oil revenues can fluctuate dramatically, responsible governments in oil-producing nations implement measures to ameliorate the effects. The SNP at least had a plan for an oil-fund expressly for the purpose of evening out the peaks and troughs. Successive UK Governments have failed abysmally in this regard and stand condemned as dangerously inept as a consequence.
Unionists like to prate endlessly about how Scotland is protected by the “broad shoulders” of the UK even as austerity bites ever-deeper and poverty and inequality soar. Simple observation of reality tells us that we are not being protected at all. The ones who need to “reflect very carefully” are those who believed the fear-mongering of the anti-independence campaign and the myth of the British state as an economic powerhouse committed to progressive redistribution. They need to be asking themselves why they put their trust in nasty numpties such as Danny Alexander rather than having faith in themselves.
As part of our #noway series by No voters, John Patrick Harvey on the tribal turn-off of nationalism.
What is the point of this whole #noway exercise? It’s not as if British nationalists lack opportunities to air their ill-informed opinions and bigoted attitudes. They have almost the entirety of the British media at their disposal. If the hope was that some of these British nationalists might have something new or interesting to say then that hope was clearly forlorn. There are no fresh insights here. No clarification of why these people insist that Scotland must be less than other nations - and less than it might be. This whole series has been nothing more than a tedious rehashing of all the fallacies, distortions and lies that we heard from the anti-independence mob throughout the referendum campaign.
The Prime Minister argues the new First Minister should be helping deal with major UK-wide problems like terrorism instead of obsessing about the constitution, ahead of their first official meeting at Downing Street.
I would point out to David Cameron that Nicola Sturgeon has a democratic mandate from the people of Scotland. He does not. The people of Scotland voted for an SNP government. In doing so, they decisively rejected Cameron’s Tories. Nicola Sturgeon speaks for the people of Scotland, NOT David Cameron. It is not for him to arrogantly presume to tell our First Minister what her priorities should be. She takes her instructions from the people of Scotland, not from some jumped-up British politician.
FUTURE dealings between the UK and Scottish Governments should be
When oozing out of a British politician the word “cooperation” is, of course, merely a euphemism for meek compliance and uncomplaining obedience. Nowhere does Carmichael suggest that the UK Government might go any way to addressing the causes of “grievance”. He just arrogantly instructs us to stop feeling aggrieved about having policies we abhor imposed on us by people we didn’t elect.
The tendency is to dismiss pretty much everything that Alistair Carmichael says as mere silliness from a man who is some way from being the shiniest bauble on the Christmas tree. But, whether he is aware of it or not, there is something more to his latest drivelling. Something quite insidious. The notion of the Scottish Government being solely concerned with grievances and picking fights with Westminster is a well-worn line in British nationalist propaganda. It is is just one of the ways in which the British establishment seeks to denigrate and undermine Scotland’s democratic institutions.
Alistair Carmichael makes a poor pretence of holding out an olive branch, when he is fact clumsily wielding a cudgel.
I don’t need to consult the leader.
Jim Murphy is totally deluded if he imagines he can go against the party bosses in London. There is no such thing as the “Scottish Labour Party”. There is only the British Labour Party. Whatever policy line is taken by British Labour, that line is also binding on British Labour in Scotland.
But, of course, Murph The Mendacious is perfectly well aware of this. His assertion that he doesn’t need to consult his masters is nothing more than the kind of pathetic macho posturing which is something of a Murphy speciality.
Read between the lines and what this clown is actually saying is that he will not get into any conflict with the party leadership because he will do exactly as he’s told.
Another insider said it was “plausible” for Murphy to stand down from Westminster next year and take a year out of elected politics.
"Another insider said it was "plausible" for Murphy to stand down from Westminster next year and take a year out of elected politics."
Really? My understanding is that British Labour’s branch office manager must be an elected politician. If Murphy stands down from Westminster then he would also have to stand down as absentee leader of the non-existent “Scottish Labour Party”. Or is this “insider” intimating that the rules would be massaged in order to accommodate London’s man in Scotland?
BITTER Johann Lamont snubbed Jim Murphy in the leadership contest after she voted for his main rivals.
What is all to obvious is the fact that British Labour in Scotland is a festering pit of factionalism and turmoil. What should be obvious is that Jim Murphy is the very last person any sane individual would have appointed to the task of healing wounds. Does anybody better represent the problems besetting the pretendy “Scottish Labour Party” - as identified by Johann Lamont - than Murph The Malevolent?
As Labour politicians, members and supporters in Scotland demand greater autonomy - or at least respect - for the Scottish branch, British Labour in Scotland appoints as its new office manager a member of British Labour’s Westminster elite who epitomises the control-freakery of the British Labour hierarchy.
As British Labour in Scotland is crying out for someone who can smooth ruffled feathers and heal divisions, their London bosses engineer the coronation of a thoroughly obnoxious individual whose idea of dialogue is to repeatedly scream “F*** off!” into the face of his political opponents.
As Scotland moves inexorably towards the restoration of the nation’s rightful constitutional status, British Labour appoints as its man in Scotland a rabid British nationalist fanatic.
The words “death wish” come immediately to mind.
Jim Murphy, Labour’s new leader in Scotland, must turn the tide against the SNP, says Iain Martin.
As anybody more in touch with Scottish politics than Iain Martin - and that’s a big club - will be aware, Alex Salmond was never the “leader of the Yes campaign”. When somebody is so embarrassingly wrong on a matter of such obvious fact then it is to be expected that they will be wrong in numerous other ways as well. Especially if what they are offering is a catalogue of their own mindless prejudice rather than any attempt at rational analysis.
Martin proves the point with his reference to the “wild overconfidence of the SNP”. As clear a case of a clumsy propagandist believing his own distortions as ever you will see. The reality is that everybody in the SNP is being extremely cautious about the party’s prospect in the 2015 UK general election while it is the pollsters and pundits who are hyping up the possibility of massive gains from British Labour in Scotland. Listen in on any conversation among SNP activists and you will hear a mighty scoffing at predictions of the SNP winning 40 or even 50 seats.
But Iain Martin would have no interest in conveying this truth even if he was astute enough to be aware of it. What does the truth matter when your sole concern is to defend the old order and the old ways against the threat of progressive reform?
Which brings us to another interesting point. One which highlights the hypocrisy of British nationalist fanatics such as Iain Martin. While they bleat tediously about the Scottish people’s refusal to meekly get back in their box following the unfortunate outcome of September’s referendum, it is these fundamentalist devotees of the divinely ordained British state who are still fighting the last referendum campaign. And doing so just as dishonestly as ever.
two rival parties who sound as if they are fighting on almost exactly the same political territory
I disagree. I don’t see Jim Murphy as an “immediate problem for the SNP”. Even if Iain Macwhirter isn’t overstating the power of Murphy’s “personality and charisma” - which I strongly suspect he is - there is still the all important matter of trust. Sure! Murphy talks the talk. But who is going to believe he walks the walk?
There was a time when Blair-style posing and posturing might have been sufficient to sway voters in Scotland. But things have changed. The carefully cultivated smiling charm (or smarm) is considerably less likely to impress now than once it might - even if deployed by a more convincing practitioner than Murph The Malevolent.
Likewise, the cunningly crafted political message might once have been enough to convince people that the sentiment and intent behind the words was genuine. But experience of the distortions, deceits and downright dishonesty of the anti-independence propaganda effort has left people much more reluctant to accept anything that any British politician says. The more so when the British politician in question has Murphy’s unappealing track record.
Supposing it is true that we have “two rival parties who sound as if they are fighting on almost exactly the same political territory” surely this means that people will be obliged to choose between them on the issue of trust. And when choices are reduced to a matter of trust, surely the SNP has a distinct edge.
There is no “New Jim”. There is just the same nasty, conniving, opportunistic, self-serving career politician that there always has been with a transparently thin veneer of social democratic disguise. Murphy’s mendacious message might make an impression on traditional Labour voters looking for any excuse to slip back into their comfortably familiar old voting habits. Most people will be protected by a shield of healthy scepticism.
Alex Salmond has got the idea into his head that everything he says is hilarious
Iain Martin offers us a petulant, bilious little diatribe based on mindless hatred of Alex Salmond; dumb anti-SNP prejudice; and prideful ignorance of the Scottish political scene rather than any meaningful observation and analysis. As if we didn’t get enough of this kind of crap from Poor Old Cockers!
The bitter animosity towards Salmond is quite inexplicable other than in terms of some serious personality defect afflicting those who indulge in this kind of rancid hatemongering. There simply isn’t anything particularly offensive about the man. Unless you are the kind of British nationalist fanatic who reacts to any democratic challenge to the divinely ordained British state with spluttering, spittle-flecked, crimson-faced, blood vessel-popping indignation.
As those who do not abandon all rationality at the mere mention of his name will readily acknowledge, Salmond is a particularly astute political operator. Under his leadership the SNP has become the established party of government in Scotland and, in terms of membership, the third largest political party in the UK. Against the combined anti-democratic might of the British parties and their collaborators in the media, Salmond delivered the referendum on independence which the British establishment was determined to deny the people of Scotland.
In the referendum campaign, Salmond wisely took a step back, deferring to the biggest mass grass-roots movement in recent history. A movement which, nonetheless, he can take some credit for triggering. A movement which continues, strengthened and emboldened, despite the pyrrhic victory of the shameful anti-independence campaign.
With Salmond as its political figurehead, Scotland’s independence movement grew to an unprecedented 45% support - approximately doubling relative to the start of the referendum campaign.
At a personal level, Salmond stepped down as party leader and First Minister in a move that was every bit as calculated as the manoeuvring which resulted in the UK government signing the Edinburgh Agreement - a document whose constitutional implications continue to be lost on self-styled political “experts” in the British media, intellectually crippled as they are by a combination of blind belief in British exceptionalism and mindless hatred of anything which threatens the old order and the old ways.
Salmond now stands poised to be one of the most powerful figures in UK politics as a prominent part of a large contingent of SNP MPs holding the balance of power in a Westminster parliament which is on the verge of disintegration. That SNP contingent will be in a position to demand the meaningful powers for the Scottish Parliament that the British parties are determined to withhold.
Nobody who is actually aware of what is going on in Scotland doubts for one moment that, due to the irresistible weight of public demand, there will be another referendum within five years and that the result will be a resounding vote for independence.
And clowns like Iain Martin genuinely believe that this catalogue of successes amounts to failure and defeat. It’s pretty clear who is making a fool of themselves here. And it’s not Alex Salmond. It’s ranting British nationalist buffoons such as Iain Martin.
Labour have backed proposals that would bar Scots MPs from some Westminster committees - in a bid to head off David Cameron’s “English votes for English laws” push.
Thanks to a Commons Library Standard note published on 5 December, we know that the votes of MPs from constituencies in Scotland has almost no effect on divisions.
"Of approximately 3,600 divisions to occur between 26th June 2001 and 26 September 2014, 22 (0.6%) would have concluded differently had the votes of Scottish MPs not been counted." - England, Scotland, Wales: MPs & voting in the House of Commons (http://goo.gl/M42qKb)
It is obvious that “English votes for English laws” (EVEL) is no more than dog-whistle politics of the basest kind. And now we have British Labour following their Tory allies as they pander to anti-Scottish prejudice in England.
But perhaps we should not be too irked by this. Perhaps we should see this as a sign that the British establishment is coming, by its own tortuous route, to the same conclusion that so many people in Scotland reached a long time ago - that the union is unsustainable. The more they seek to exclude Scottish MPs from full and equal participation in the parliamentary process, the more they emphasise the asymmetric nature of the present constitutional lash-up.
The union is broken beyond repair. British politicians’ response is to break it some more. Devolution is dead. British politicians’ response is endless constitutional tinkering which is the equivalent of painting rosy cheeks on the corpse. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense. It’s time to restore Scotland’s rightful constitutional status and build a new union based on arrangements freely negotiated between two independent nations.
JIM MURPHY has been elected as the new Scottish Labour leader, comfortably seeing off challenges from Neil Findlay and Sarah Boyack.
Murphy is an empty vessel. He talks about making Scotland “the fairest nation on earth”, but he remains vehemently opposed to Scotland having the powers necessary to achieve this.
He talks about social justice, but remains fervently committed to squandering resources on weapons of mass destruction.
He talks of uniting the country while crudely dismissing the honourable aspirations of at least half of Scotland’s people as merely “one vote on one day”.
The appointment of Jim Murphy as manager of British Labour’s branch office in Scotland may well be the final nail in the coffin of so-called “Scottish Labour”. Good news for the SNP and progressive politics. Bad news for a once proud movement.
ALEX Salmond has said he would welcome a pro-union pact aimed at thwarting his bid to return to Westminster and insisted that if an agreement was struck to field a single anti-nationalist candidate against him “the SNP will beat them as well”.
One thing that Alex Salmond’s candidacy for the Gordon constituency has done is highlight the extent to which politics in Scotland has been transformed by the rise of a popular progressive independence movement. The old Labour/Tory dichotomy, with it’s faux adversarialism and its shallow personality politics is no longer relevant. The British parties in Scotland have ceased to even pretend to be different from each other.
The choice facing the electorate next year, and in 2016, is between progressive Scottish parties - principally the SNP - and reactionary British parties in an explicit alliance against the parties which actually promise to represent the interests of Scotland’s people.
To me, that doesn’t seem like a hard choice at all. Politics is not given to simple truths. Such things seldom arise. But the simple truth in Scottish politics at the moment is that we urgently need to return as many SNP MPs to Westminster as we possibly can in 2015 and ensure that we continue to have an SNP administration at Holyrood after 2016.
The British parties hate the SNP because it stands as a proxy for the social conscience of our nation. Of course the British parties want to eradicate the SNP! It represents a challenge to the cosy neoliberal consensus and a threat to the structures of power and privilege which define the British state. But they also want to crush the SNP because, in doing so, they suppose they will also crush the new spirit of political engagement and activism which is the proud and pleasing legacy of the Yes campaign.
The British establishment desperately wants the people of Scotland back in their box. Voting for the SNP is one of the most powerful ways we have of ensuring that this does not happen.
