Facing down the beast

Nicola Sturgeon: The Beastmaster!

From reports of party donations it looks like the British establishment is rallying round its political servants. (SNP donations dwarfed by Labour and Tories as parties build election war chests) Big business and other vested interests are pouring money into the coffers of the British parties as they desperately seek to resist the tide of change flowing from Scotland. A tide that threatens to sweep away the comfortable certainties of the old order and the old ways.

But it is not clear how much good this filling of the British parties' "war chests" will do. The establishment parties already have massive resources, not least in terms of the compliant and complicit mainstream media. They have also been shown to be prepared to stoop to any base practice as they fight to preserve the power and privilege of the British state's ruling elites. All of which only just helped them scrape a rather pyrrhic and evidently inconclusive victory in Scotland's independence referendum.

What use is their money, their propaganda machinery and their total lack of scruples against the will of the people? So long as there is a functioning democratic process in the British state, however flawed, the ruling elites can be challenged. The people of Scotland have woken up to this fact. The people of England have yet to do so.

Last night, Nicola Sturgeon faced a pack of the British establishment's attack dogs on BBC Question Time. Was she fazed? Not in the slightest! Because she knows that however enormous and vicious the snarling beast of the British state may be when cornered, it is no match for the popular power that Scotland's First Minister represented with such commanding calm.

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