Transparent duplicity

Side-lined Darling (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Herald reports Cameron to make two-day foray to Scotland to fight for the Union. The only interesting thing here is that the supposed leader of the anti-independence campaign, Alistair Darling, isn't even mentioned. It seems that Cameron has abandoned hope of making the hapless British Labour back-bencher his scapegoat when the people of Scotland vote Yes. It looks as if the Tories have decided to step out from behind the British Labour stooges who have been fronting the No campaign on their behalf and try to appeal to the people of Scotland directly. This has all the hallmarks of a strategy devised in desperation and frustration.

And what of this "more positive slant" to the anti-independence campaign? We've already seen what this amounts to and it's no more than British politicians now adopting the practice of bracketing the same old grinding negativity with claims that they are not being negative. They will preface every rehashing of the tired old "Too wee! Too poor! Too stupid!" line with the words, "Of course Scotland could be a successful independent nation!", uttered with all the false sincerity that a professional politician can muster, before proceeding to assert a ludicrously contrived catalogue of supposed consequences so dire as to persuade any who are gullible enough to believe them that there is no way Scotland could ever be a successful independent nation.

The duplicity is transparent enough to be an insult to the intelligence of the people of Scotland. Quite why Cameron and his advisers think that the lies will be any more convincing - or less insulting - when delivered by Tories rather than their British Labour allies is difficult to fathom.