The Festival of Exit Britain

The Conservative party say that they’re going to introduce innovative technological solutions to the Irish border question, but they can’t even introduce an app for their conference without buggering it up. The app was so poorly designed that it allowed anyone to log in as members of the Cabinet and see all their personal contact details. But it’s not all bad, at least it’s the first time ever that the Tories have been accessible to the public.

The conference isn’t really a conference of course. It’s essentially a public relations exercise in which assorted Conservative figures will get up and give speeches pretending that the party isn’t being torn apart by ideologically driven right wing zealots. But they can’t even manage that convincingly. There is absolutely nothing that the Conservative party can do to heal the gaping wounds and come up with a coherent policy on the Brexit which that same Conservative party only inflicted on the UK in the first place in a hauf-airsed attempt to deal with its own internal divisions. It was as though the Conservatives had an issue with an itchy skin rash on their leg, so they cut both their legs off and we’re now all drowning in the blood. Then having done so, they decided that Brexit was really an internal party matter, and did their best to sideline that parliament whose absolute sovereignty they claimed they were defending.

Both the hard line Brexists and the remainers within the Tory party have enough support amongst Conservative MPs to hold Theresa May hostage, but neither of them have enough support in order to get something through Parliament. The result is confusion and stalemate. The UK is staring at the biggest peacetime crisis it has ever faced in the past 100 years, and yet none of the UK parties have any clue about how to get out of the mess that they themselves created.

Meanwhile in another of her sofa soft interviews on the tellybox, Ruth Davidson has said that if there were to be another Brexit referendum she’d vote remain. So she’s prepared to countenance another referendum, just not another Scottish one. Thanks for clearing that up Ruth. It only confirms something that many of us have known for some time, that you’re only willing to consider referendums if you believe you can be on the winning side of them. But Ruth did find time in her busy schedule of self-promotion to send a Tweet about the presents that Theresa May had given her for her new baby, including a copy of Theresa’s favourite book, Swallows and Amazons. It’s a romanticised little England story of privileged middle class brats fighting amongst themselves on a small fantasy island while they subsist on corned beef and patronise and ignore the local working class people who actually do all the hard work. At least now we know where Theresa May got her Brexit negotiation strategy from.

Theresa’s big idea is to hold a Festival of Brexit Britain and has already pledged £120 million to pay for it. This is the closest that they have to a Brexit plan, a celebration of Little Britain. It’s typical of the Tories that they look back to a romanticised vision of a past that never existed. Most of us would prefer to have a future where we didn’t have to worry about our government warning us about shortages of medicines and food. This Brextival is the political equivalent of one of those mothers slapping their wean during a wet and grey weekend in some dreary seaside resort in the 1950s, shouting at the kid to be happy and enjoy itself.

The Prime Minister wants to hold this Brexfest in 2022, we’re told it’s to celebrate 70 years since the Festival of Britain in 1951. This is the level of numeracy that brought us Brexit in the first place. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the British partition of Ireland, and now the UK government is going to hold a festival to celebrate partitioning Ireland again. Which only shows just how little British governments consider the sensitivities and needs of everywhere in the UK that isn’t the Home Counties.

Everyone attending the Brextival will be given a free pair of rose tinted spectacles. It will be like the Hunger Games, but with Morris dancing and held in a closed down Pontins in Grimsby while contestants beat one another to death with Dyson vacuum cleaners. It will be like the Wicker Man but without the big bonfire because no one can afford the heating bill. Just to get everyone in the spirit of the postwar Festival of Britain, there will be a lottery for ration books. At least the catering should be easy to organise, even for the serial incompetents in the Conservative government. There will be plenty of gammon, but apart from that no food. You can bet there will be plenty of red white and blue bunting and flegs, and Theresa May telling us about the evils of identity politics.

Some people on social media have compared the Brextival to The Last of Us. But that’s unfair. One of them is filled with aggressive and vicious brain dead creatures who destroy all that is decent and human at the slightest provocation in an authoritarian nation where only the strong and the rich have a chance of survival, and the other’s a video game.

Despite the utter confusion, civil warfare, and mutual recriminations in which the Conservatives are mired, despite their flights of British nationalist delusion, they’re still ahead of Labour in the opinion polls. The Conservatives are the political equivalent of a one armed boxer who’s blindfolded, drunk, and has cramp in one leg, and the Labour party still can’t land a blow. Labour in Scotland is consuming itself in the Kezia Dugdale civil war, which is turning into a proxy for the fight between Corbynistas and the old guard, and Labour in the rest of the UK is desperately trying to avoid having any position on Brexit in order to placate both the Leavers in working class constituencies in Northern England, and the Remainers amongst the youth and in the big cities. The result is that they’re pleasing no one.

And this political wasteland of a UK is what Theresa May wants to celebrate with a Brextival. Scotland can’t fix the self-inflicted mess in which the UK finds itself. It is not the job of Scotland to make a futile attempt to save the rest of the UK from itself, and to destroy ourselves in the process. Scotland desperately needs a Festival of Exit Britain of its own. We can celebrate by having a referendum and voting to leave. Let’s get on with organising it.

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The Cheshire cat of politics

I had been toying with the idea of writing this blog article about how it’s unproductive for supporters of independence to join in the social media campaign calling for a boycott of the Guardian newspaper. About how when we embark on campaigns directed against individual newspapers we only allow that paper to paint itself as a victim of the social media abuse of journalists. About how we need to occupy the moral high ground and save our energies for countering the really nasty and vicious bile published by the right wing press, like the Daily Mail. About how a newspaper like the Guardian is not the BBC, it’s not a public service that all TV viewers are legally compelled to pay for and has no obligation to neutrality. About how the boycott is a campaign organised by the frothier end of the Corbynista movement who are no more supporters of or sympathetic to the cause of Scottish independence than the self-righteous metrocommentariat of the Guardian are, and who are equally blind to British nationalism.

And then I read the Guardian’s hagiography of Ruth Davidson. After reading that love-in that failed to ask Ruth anything approaching a difficult question, that allowed her to pose as a personality bereft of any political principle other than her own self promotion, I’ve decided not to bother. You want to boycott the Guardian? On yese go. Knock yourselves out. I’m past caring.

So we are told that it is a credit to Ruth Davidson that she has made the fact that she’s a pregnant lesbian so unremarkable in a country where homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised until 1981. There’s still some way to go in ensuring full equality and acceptance for LGBT people in Scotland, but it is a testament to the good sense and humanity of the people of Scotland that in terms of legal protections and rights this country is now one of the best places in the world in which to be gay.

But is this thanks to Ruth Davidson? Eh no. Now I will admit that I have a personal interest in this particular topic. I am one of those Scottish gay people who came of age when homosexuality was still illegal in this country.  It galls me no end to read heterosexual journalists claiming that Ruth is so groundbreaking and giving her the credit for social changes which others have achieved. If you believe that Ruth Davidson is responsible then clearly you’ve not been paying attention.

Speaking as a gay Scot who is a fair bit older than Ruth, I can assure you that the fact that it’s unremarkable that Scotland has a gay Conservative leader who’s starting a family of her own is nothing for Ruth to take credit for. She is merely the product of the changes in Scottish society that a previous generation of lesbian and gay Scots fought for, fought for tooth and nail in the face of the bitter opposition of the party that she now represents. And, while we’re on the topic, in the teeth of bitter opposition from very large and influential sections of the Labour party in Scotland too.

Ruth is benefiting from the changes that were brought about by an older generation of LGBTQ people in this country, a generation which stood up and made change happen at a time when it still created a serious risk to your livelihood, your career, your family relationships, and even your physical safety. That was a time when the Aids epidemic was destroying our communities, and we were wracked with grief at the loss of so many. We stood up and spoke out because it really was silence or death. And if you were going to die anyway you might as well go shouting. My own first partner died of Aids.  Back in the 80s was when it was brave to stand up and be counted, to stand up and make your voice heard. Ruth stands on the shoulders of those who won that victory of social acceptance, all too often at immense personal cost. She’s not the cause of it, she’s the beneficiary.

Some of us gay people were creating our own families over two decades ago at a time when those same newspapers which now print hagiographies of Ruth Davidson were demonising us. I have daughters with a lesbian couple, my eldest is now in her 20s. Gay folk having kids is not a new thing. But when we created a family there were no gushing articles in newspapers telling us how groundbreaking and brave we were. There were only hate articles insisting that people like us shouldn’t be allowed to have children.

So don’t tell me how leading-edge Ruth Davidson is. She’s a latecomer to the baby shower, she doesn’t get the credit for organising it. She didn’t normalise gay families. An older generation of gay people did that. She didn’t normalise being gay in public life. Aulder gay folk did that. She’s able to enjoy the privilege she does as the leader of the Scottish Conservatives because other people have done the hard work of attaining public and social acceptance, and suffered as a result. That was work which the Scottish Conservatives actively sought to undo and which they tried to prevent happening.

And yeah, I have a particular bugbear about this, because I was one of the ones who got gaybashed – more than once – in order to secure Ruth’s privileges. So don’t tell me how bloody groundbreaking she is. It scunners me no end to see her get the credit for the changes that others suffered and sacrificed for in order to bring about.

Now I’ve got that out of my system, what was even worse was that a national newspaper printed an article praising Ruth Davidson for talking about her mental health issues without seeing fit to mention the destruction of mental health service provision in England under the auspices of her own Conservative party, and the Conservative threat to the Scottish budget meaning that the Scottish Government has to cut services in other areas to protect NHS Scotland.

But hey, it’s OK that an axe is being taken to mental health services, that benefits for disabled people are being slashed, that there’s an epidemic of food poverty, that mental health issues and drug and alcohol dependency are strongly influenced by the poverty and deprivation that Conservative policies are making worse. It’s OK that Ruth Davidson presides over a party through which sectarianism, racism, and misogyny run to its rotten core, because doesn’t Ruth Davidson have a lovely smile, and she’s so willing to talk about her personal life.

Talking about her party’s policies? Not so much. Because that might mean she’s questioned on them, and when she’s questioned the smile disappears. It becomes as invisible as her political principles. Ruth is the Cheshire Cat of politics, smiling into non-existence.

When a newspaper treats a politician like a celebrity off the telly, it does no one any favours. It doesn’t hold the powerful to account when a politician is treated as some sort of cheerful outsider with a compelling personal narrative, and not as a member of the governing party in the UK. It helps no one when Ruth Davidson is not challenged on the gulf between her words and her party’s actions. All it does is to reduce British politics to a species of reality show, politics as spectacle not as principle. When the political means of holding the powerful to account are as weak as they are in the UK, it’s all the more important that the press does it. They’re failing us.

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Not keeping calm and carrying on

Safer. Are you feeling safer? More secure. Are you feeling more secure? Those were the key promises of the Better Together campaign in 2014. Why risk independence when you can continue to enjoy the safety and security of the UK, they told us. It was their key selling point, the single point that more than any other persuaded the switherers to vote against independence. All that uncertainty. All those unknowns. All that doom, gloom and McArmageddon that opponents of independence forecast, all of it could be avoided by the simple expedient of a no vote, and then Scots could continue as a part of the UK, a part of the EU, and no one would have to worry.

Only now we’re confronted with a greater insecurity than anyone forecast with independence. We are less safe than we have ever been. Not even Alistair Darling warned that independence might mean the reintroduction of rationing, of food shortages and the necessity of police intervention in order to maintain civil order and security and safety at ports and airports. Yet that is precisely where we are now as a result of Theresa May’s calamitous handling of Brexit. A Brexit which, moreover, Scotland voted against by a considerably larger margin than it voted against independence. A Brexit which Scotland has had no role in shaping or determining. A Brexit which is being imposed upon us by the right wing ideologues of the Conservative party.

Faced with the potential of serious disruption to supply chains and the very real possibility of food and medicine shortages, the British government has now appointed a minister for food security. Conservative MP David Rutley was given the brief as a part of the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) earlier this month. His responsibilities will include ameliorating the effects of a no-deal Brexit or a hard Brexit on the supply chain networks, and planning for the all too real possibility of food and medicine shortages. He’s the minister for ration books and for recipe books that make half an egg, one ounce of butter and a packet of wallpaper paste into a hearty meal.

This week, Police Scotland confirmed that they have been making contingency plans to deal with massive queues at ports, and to cope with the potential of civil unrest in the event of food shortages. Chief Constable Iain Livingstone has confirmed that he is seeking assurances from the UK Treasury that it will reimburse the force for the extra costs it will incur as a result of the additional duties it will have to cope with as a result of the Tories’ crazy mad Brexit. Although he didn’t actually say “crazy mad Brexit”.

There are those who voted against independence or voted for Brexit because they harked back to some fantasy glory ideal of a Great Britain that was last seen during WW2, but even they probably weren’t counting on the reintroduction of rationing. The Conservatives have been criticised for their Dad’s Army approach to the Brexit negotiations, but this is shockingly literal, and not in a laughable way. The stupid boys of the Conservative party really are telling us “Don’t panic!” So how’s that WW2 nostalgia working out for those who voted for Brexit?

We’ve gone from punching above our weight and bestriding the world stage as a partner in the most perfect union of nations in the multiverse to assurances that there will be enough food. That’s how far short of reality the delusions of British nationalism have fallen. Do you really need any more confirmation that you were lied to in 2014 by the proponents of the UK? Just how much of a gap do you need between what you were promised and what you were actually delivered before you recognise that the people of this country have a right to vote on the performances of our political masters?

The diehards of British nationalism insist that this is what Scotland voted for. But it isn’t. Scotland did not vote for rationing. Scotland did not vote to be ripped out of Europe. Scotland did not vote for the destruction of our public services by far right xenophobes in the Conservative party. Scotland did not vote to be powerless and marginalised. That is not what we were promised in 2014. Respect the result of the referendum? Sure. Just as soon as those who won that referendum respect the promises and commitments that they made to the people of Scotland in order to win it. The people who need to respect election results are not those who lost those votes, it’s those who won them. And what Scotland has witnessed from Westminster since 2014 has been the opposite of respect. It has been contempt, disdain, and scorn.

So you’ll have had your security and safety as a part of the UK, Scotland. It will depend on how many potatoes you can grow in your back garden, if you are lucky enough to have a back garden. Dig for victory. Dig the political grave of the British state. You can’t feed yourself and your family with WW2 sloganeering about pluckiness and grit.

Keep calm and carry on? Bugger that. I’m Scottish and I was lied to. I have no intention of keeping calm, and I’ll carry on until this country can escape from those mendacious fools whose red white and blue nationalism-that’s-not-nationalist-at-all has brought us all to the brink of ruin and turned us into the laughing stock of Europe. The only reason we’re not the laughing stock of the entire world is because of Donald Trump.

The UK is a state of delusion. It’s a state of self-deception. It’s a state of confusion, a state of disgrace. Brexit was always a fantasy. The idea that the UK punches above its weight was always a fantasy. The notion of Scotland as a partner in a Union was always a fantasy. The reason we’re in this mess now is because the British state still hasn’t come to terms with the reality of itself as a medium sized European country which must form partnerships in order to survive and thrive. The fantastists of British nationalism still dream of standing alone on the White Cliffs of Dover and shouting defiance at the world, and then they can go home to their potato peel pie and their drawn on nylons.

They can go by themselves, Scotland won’t be joining them. Scotland will be rejoining the real world. And until we do so, we’re not keeping calm. We’re angry. We’re carrying on until we escape.

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Saying what really matters

Theresa May is scared. She gave an interview to Reporting Scotlandshire and instructed us to forget about another independence referendum and told Nicola Sturgeon to concentrate on the day job. Which is pretty rich coming from Theresa May. Nicola Sturgeon manages her day job rather well, presiding over a government which manages – on the whole – to achieve what it has been tasked with achieving. A government which is united and focused on the job at hand. Theresa May on the other thinks that her own day job largely consists of going to war with other parts of her own party and making just enough in the way of concessions to one or other of the warring factions in order to keep her in her post.

In the Gospel According to the Unsaintly Theresa, delivered unchallenged to the BBC’s Department For Keeping the Jocks In Order, the issue of Scottish independence was definitively decided in 2014. Scotland voted to remain a part of the UK, and that’s that. Only that’s not that. Some of us were paying attention in 2014, and some of us who were paying attention object to the selective rewriting of history by the likes of Theresa May. Yes indeed, Scotland voted to remain a part of the UK in 2014, but those who were campaigning for a No vote were unequivocal in their assertions that Scotland was not voting for the status quo. There was no status quo, they told us.

So for example on 9 September 2014 the Guardian newspaper informed us that, “Even with a no vote, the status quo isn’t an option.” On the 14th of that month, just a few short days before the referendum vote, Alistair Darling the leader of the Better Together campaign wrote in the Scotsman newspaper that choosing to stay in the UK didn’t mean voting for the status quo. “Saying No Thanks does not mean no change,” he wrote. “It means faster, better and safer change.” https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/alistair-darling-more-powers-without-risks-1-3541113

That faster, better, and safer change has turned out to be the discovery that the powers of the Scottish parliament can be removed by Westminster at its whim, the undermining of the foundations of the devolution settlement, the ripping up of the Claim of Right by Richard Leonard, and being wrenched out of the EU into a chaotic Brexit without any say, without consultation. Scotland is facing the most uncertain and insecure future it has ever faced in peacetime, thanks to the collective failure of the British nationalist parties.

Back in 2014 in that Scotsman article Alistair Darling wrote that it was “beneath contempt” that supporters of independence were arguing that only independence could protect the NHS from privatisation. Earlier this month we discovered that the hard line Brexiteers in the Conservative party plan to open up the NHS to US health companies after Brexit. The European Research Group, which is linked to Liam Fox and Michael Gove, seeks to open up the NHS to foreign companies, and to trash consumer and environmental regulations. The only contempt here is the contempt with which the British nationalist parties have treated every promise made by the Better Together campaign.

Since Scots were not voting for the status quo in 2014, having been told by the opponents of independence themselves that there was no status quo to vote for, then it’s only fair and reasonable that those same opponents of independence be held to account for the difference between what they promised and what they have given us. We have the right to say “No thanks” to what the British parties have actually delivered. If an electorate has no means to hold politicians to account, then there is no democracy.

Theresa May doesn’t want us to hold her to account because she is afraid of what we’ll tell her.  To her, Scotland is a trivial northern province whose expectations can be managed and ultimately ignored. We figure as a minor distraction in her day job, which is pursuing the internal warfare within the Conservative party. She tells us that the SNP should focus on the issues that matter to the people of Scotland.

Well speaking as one of the people of Scotland, Theresa, what matters to me is that you and your party are held to account for the promises that you made to Scotland, promises that you have trashed. What matters to me and to other people in Scotland is that Scotland has a voice and a say in saving itself from the madness of the Brexit that you are imposing upon us without our consent. What matters to me and to other people in Scotland is that it’s us, the people of Scotland, who decide the path that this country takes. Not you. Not your Conservative party that knows little about Scotland and which cares even less. Don’t you dare to presume to tell me what matters to me. Because I will be the judge of that, not you.

And together with five million other people in Scotland, we will be the judge of you Theresa. We will be the judge of the ruin and the mess and the upset and the uncertainty that you have created in pursuit of your narrow party interests. We will be the judge of the alienation that you have created with our neighbours in Europe.  One way or another, Theresa, the people of Scotland will have our say, and we do not take kindly to being told what does or does not matter to us by someone whose actions and politics have made it abundantly clear that Scotland doesn’t matter to her. Do not tell us what matters, Theresa. We’ll tell you. What matters to us is that we’re no longer subjected to you and your arrogant ignorance.

We were promised stronger devolution with less risk by the proponents of the UK. Instead we have weaker devolution and greater risk. There’s only one way Scotland can get more powers with less risk. That’s with independence. Then Scotland can choose its own path and its own destiny, and we will not be at risk of governments which we didn’t vote for, at risk of the delusions of British nationalists who have never got over the loss of empire, or at risk of having all our public services privatised by free-market ideologues. And most of all, we will no longer be at risk of being told what matters to us by politicians to whom we do not matter at all.

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Please also use this email address if you would like the dug and me to come along to your local group for a talk.

Gaelic maps of Scotland are available for £15 each, plus £7 P&P within the UK for up to three maps. T-shirts are £12 each, and are available in small, medium, large, XL and XXL sizes. P&P is £5 for up to three t-shirts. My books, the Collected Yaps Vols 1 to 4 are available for £11 each. P&P is £4 for up to two books. Payment can be made via Paypal.

Breaking the glass of the fishbowl

So there you go, you write a blog article about the double standards of British nationalism, and how violent metaphors and imagery are the norm for opponents of independence, but if supporters of independence were to use equivalent words or imagery, there would be outrage. And then the very next day the zoomers of Scotland in Union go and like a Tweet from a well known British-nationalist-so-he’s-not-a-nationalist-at-all troll displaying a blunderbuss and the caption that he’s ready for the SNP day of action. Because that doesn’t condone violence at all.  Oh no. It was just banter.

It ought to be superfluous by now to point out that had a similar image been approved by an independence supporting organisation, there would be demands for the police to investigate hate crimes, which would shortly be followed by acres of anguished commentary about the violent evils that Scottish nationalism have unleashed on a society that was perfectly content to thole bouts of Tory rule until that pesky SNP came along and spoiled everything. Witness the anger and pursed lips that were provoked by the infamous Tory Scum Out banner. But a British nationalist and a photo of a weapon with a threatening caption, it’s just a spot of banter and only a humourless separatist could object to it. Calling opponents Tory Scum is a very bad thing, threatening opponents with a blunderbuss, that’s just fine.

The fact is that British nationalism in Scotland is a violent ideology. Before independence became a mainstream political idea in Scotland, British nationalism in this country most commonly manifested itself in Orange Parades and songs about being up to your knees in Fenian blood. Now independence supporters have taken the place of Catholics as the favourite bogeypersons of British nationalism. We all know that the real reason that opponents of independence don’t organise mass public events, marches, or rallies is because if they were to do so those events would be indistinguishable from an Orange Parade combined with a Britain First rally and would attract a significant number of far right extremists.

British nationalism in Scotland prefers to operate in the dark, because coming out into the light would expose it for the intolerant ideology that it really is. The real reason that the parties and organisations which oppose independence don’t organise large scale public events is because they’re afraid of how ugly so much of their public really is, and they don’t want mainstream Scotland to see it.

The willingness of opponents of independence to use violent imagery is only to be expected after all, and not just because British nationalism is an ideology which glorifies warfare and the military. The whole justification given for keeping Scotland within the UK is based on fear, scaremongering, intimidation, and negativity. The favoured arguments of opponents of independence rest upon telling Scotland how poor we’d be, how helpless we’d be, how hopeless we’d be. There is no vision, no poetry, no soul in British nationalism in Scotland. It cannot convincingly paint a portrait of a Scotland that is a better and a happier place for being a part of a UK in which it is systematically ignored and sidelined and its democratic will subordinated to that of a larger neighbour. British nationalism is an ideology of threats. When the basis of your politics is a threat, it’s a very short step to indulge in threats of violence. The essence of British nationalism in Scotland is “You’d be nothing without us.” It’s an abusive relationship as a political principle.

British nationalists reject the label nationalism, and not just because one of the abiding myths of British nationalism is that it’s not nationalist at all. Partly they do so in order to avoid dealing with the mental contradictions and contortions of believing that Scotland and the UK are both nations and that Scotland is simultaneously a nation and a region. Partly they do so because the myth of British exceptionalism tells them that being British means you are above petty nationalism, a curse which only afflicts lesser nations.

How many times have you heard a confirmed opponent of independence say something along the lines of, “But I just don’t think about nations at all. It’s only you nats who do that.” The British state regards itself as a nation state, and British nationalists don’t think about the role of the nation state in the exact same way that heterosexual people don’t think about sexuality, able bodied people don’t think about disability, or men don’t think about sexism. The British state is the political water in which British nationalists swim, and they are the goldfish who are happy to be swimming in circles inside the fishbowl which contains and constrains it. It’s only when you want to swim free that you bang against the glass. When you don’t challenge your boundaries you can live in the comfortable ignorance of telling yourself that the boundaries don’t exist and that you are boundless.

The violent imagery and metaphors from British nationalists are only going to get worse. As it becomes increasingly clear that the British state’s grasp on Scotland is slipping, that Scotland is getting closer to regaining its independence, the fear of the fearmongers will grow ever more strident. They will project their own intolerance and intimidation onto us, because there is no one more quick to claim victimhood than the powerful who fear losing their privileges and power.

The difference between this time and 2014 is that they can no longer pretend to themselves that we represent no real challenge. They know that we are. They also know that they have nothing positive to offer, because no one is going to believe a Vow Mk II. All they have left are threats, scare stories, and the mewlings of imagined victimhood. That’s going to be the British nationalist playbook for the second Scottish independence referendum. But this time we’re not going to let them get away with pretending that the Scottish constitutional debate is a debate between nationalism and non-nationalism. There is no unionism, because there is no union.  There is only a unitary British state with the window dressing of devolution.

All that opponents of independence have to offer is the nakedly xenophobic British nationalism of Brexit and swimming in circles in a fishbowl bedecked with flegs. We’re breaking through the glass and swimming in the open ocean.

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Trying to kill us but not with kindness

It’s been obvious for a good while now that the Labour Branch Office in Scotland is composed of an angry and embittered bunch of British nationalists who are united by only three things: their utter inability to comprehend that their British nationalism is in fact nationalism, their unshakeable conviction that they have an absolute entitlement to Scottish votes, and their pathological loathing of the SNP. The only thing that your average Labour politician hates more than the SNP is another average Labour politician.

Labour’s fall from grace with the Scottish electorate is therefore just a phase that the country is going through, and all that the Branch Office needs to do is to keep with the tried and trusted formula and eventually voters will come flocking back to their true home. All that is required is to find an SNPbad story that’s big enough and bad enough, and no one will ever think about Scottish independence ever again.

The rest of the party takes their cue on all matters Caledonian from the Branch Office. Hence the statement from Labour chair Ian Lavery at the party conference on Monday, “We need to kill off the nationalists in Scotland and regain that great country.” Are you feeling the love there? Here we are, four years down the road, and Labour is still spouting the same sentiments as the unlamented Ian Davidson who claimed that after a No vote in the referendum all that would be needed would be to bayonet the wounded. Almost 20 years ago, George Robertson claimed that the introduction of Labour’s specially pauchled devolution would succeed in killing Scottish nationalism “stone dead”. How’s that working out for you then?

Can you imagine the outrage, the headlines, the TV programmes dissecting the cancer lurking at the very soul of the Scottish independence movement if some SNP politician had said, “We need to kill off the Unionists and regain this great country?” There would be a special edition of Scotland Tonight with a panel of very sad and angry Labour, Tory and Lib Dem politicians clutching their pearls and bewailing the monster that nationalism creates. There would be anguished editorials in the Herald, the Scotsman, the Record, the Press and Journal and the Courier. It would be the lead story on Reporting Scotlandshire for three days running. There would be a clamour for apologies and resignations which would not cease even after some heads had rolled.

But it was a Labour politician who said it about the SNP, so that makes it all just fine. Scottish politics always comes with a heavy dose of British nationalist double standards. Anti-Scottish remark from an English commentator or politician, just a spot of banter, complaining about it make you dour and humourless. Anti-English remark from some random punter on social media, a deep dark evil lurking at the very heart of the Scottish psyche.

Ian Lavery’s tactless choice of words is precisely what we don’t need in politics. Coming as it does from a party which has just stated its intention to overrule the will of the Scottish people as expressed at the ballot box, it’s not just unwelcome and unhelpful, it’s also deeply worrying. If Labour is sincere in its desire to regain Scotland at the ballot box, it can only do so by engaging with the concerns of voters who seek Scottish independence, not by threatening to extirpate them. But Labour doesn’t want to engage, it just wants the whole issue to go away. It doesn’t understand it. It’s still hurting at the rejection. It hasn’t passed beyond denial in the stages of grief.

What is it with British nationalists and violent metaphors? It must be something to do with the cognitive dissonance involved in pretending that your nationalism isn’t nationalist at all. Or possibly it’s all that anti-Catholic banter. If you don’t actually sing about being up to your knees in Fenian blood it’s just a joke. Let’s be honest here Labour, if you are incapable of recognising your own British nationalism for what it is, you’re never going to be in any position to challenge a Scottish nationalism that at least has the virtue of knowing what it is and what it stands for. Truth always defeats self-delusion.

It is an abiding and deep rooted trope of British nationalism that it’s not nationalist at all. That’s why they call themselves Unionists. The British conceit is that the UK is a family of nations, and therefore it transcends narrow nationalism, but we all know that is a lie. In more recent years that conceit has extended to the multicultural population which has developed in the UK after WW2. The truth is that British nationalism is the respectable face of English nationalism. It’s union flegs in Tesco. It’s interminable telly programmes about the Royals. It’s Brexit, bloody Brexit. British nationalism is a nationalism which is incapable of seeing the truth about itself because fundamentally it’s a nationalism of denial. The Loyalist sectarianism of Northern Ireland and the West of Scotland is a disease of British nationalism, but British nationalists prefer to portray it as two warring tribes with the British state as some disinterested father figure holding their jaikets. Give me an honest Scottish civic nationalism any day of the week over this delusional dreamscape of Ukania.

Labour supports Brexit, a project which is nationalist to the very core of its conception, yet still tells itself and the rest of us that as an organisation it’s opposed to nationalism and stands for solidarity. It’s a peculiar concept of solidarity when it ends at the White Cliffs of Dover and depends upon being ruled by the Westminster Parliament. It’s an even more peculiar concept of solidarity to demand that the only proper role of socialism in Scotland is to sacrifice itself on the altar of the British state and to save England from itself when that country keeps persisting in voting for Conservative governments.

Labour sincerely believes that it has a right to Scottish votes. The fact that Scotland has turned its back on the party, especially that West of Scotland Catholic community which once voted for no one else, is a source of genuine hurt and confusion to Labour in Scotland. They really don’t know where they went wrong. There they were, doing the same thing for decades, parcelling out MPs seats and cooncils to their pals, and then those pesky nats came along and stole all their voters. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

So here’s a message for Labour, and I’m not even an SNP member. You can’t kill us off, because you can’t crush hope. The great victory of the Scottish independence movement in 2014 was to do something for working class people in Scotland that Labour forgot how to do decades ago, to give us hope. The best that Labour can offer is more of the same, a brief respite from Conservative rule, a respite that can only be achieved by a Labour party that apes the Tories in order to appeal to the Sun reading voters of Middle England. There is no hope, no poetry, no vision, no dream. That’s why Scotland will never come back to Labour, because Labour has no soul. We dream of something better. We’ve learned how to hope again. Labour can’t take that away from us.

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Time for the stars to shine

Oh dear gods. Oh all the deities that anyone has ever worshipped. Oh anthropomorphised personification of an impersonal and uncaring universe. I’m fed up. I’m fed up with the wibbling wankwits dribbling drivel and calling it wisdom. I’m fed up with the mendacious mouth-breathers. I’m fed up with the self-serving and the selfish stupidity. I’m fed up with the dishonesty, the duplicity, and the deceit. I’m fed up with the arrogance of arsewiping addlebrains. I’m fed up with the harebrained scheming of heartless scumsuckers. I’m even fed up with the artful invention of alliterating insults. It’s that bad. This is what happens when you pay attention to British politics and the British media.

The UK is a mess. If it was a horse it would be shot. If it was a cow it would be the patient zero in a foot and mouth epidemic. If it was an earthworm it would be lying shrivelled on a hot pavement and not even a ravenous crow would think it was a tasty morsel.

Today, at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Branch Office manager Richard Who He stood up and perorated in a dull monotone that made even Iain Gray seem like a charismatic and amusing after dinner speaker that people in Scotland don’t want a referendum. Richard gave no evidence for this assertion, but presumably he’d read it in the Daily Record and has been hearing Ruth Davidson repeating it at every opportunity for the past four years, so it must be true. After all, who needs democracy when you can have baseless assertions and the occasional opinion poll in the pages of the anti-independence press. So because of this, Labour is going to include a manifesto commitment in the General Election which will give Jezza a mandate to refuse to allow any future indy ref in Scotland. That’s you telt, uppity Jocks.

It doesn’t matter what Scotland votes for. It makes no difference if there is a Scottish Parliament with a mandate for another independence vote and a majority of MSPs who support it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pro-indy party which gains the largest number of seats and votes in a future Westminster General Election in Scotland. Jezza will be able to opt for the Partido Popular solution to referendums because he’s Prime Minister on the back of votes in the rest of the UK.

Labour has just destroyed any pretence that it’s a party which supports the Claim of Right underpinning the devolution settlement and Scotland’s place in the UK. That all by itself counts as a material change of circumstances as a trigger for another independence referendum. Labour can no longer pretend that the UK offers Scotland what Scotland votes for. Labour has turned its back on the principle that the people of Scotland have the sovereign right to choose the form of government best suited to their needs. Labour has abrogated that right to itself.

Meanwhile, despite the very clear evidence that a huge majority of Labour’s own members want another referendum on Brexit, Labour has instead decided that two faces are not enough for the party leadership. You can have a referendum, says the Labour leadership, just not a referendum on what you want to have a referendum on. Instead you can have a referendum giving you a choice between a no deal Brexit or a crappy deal Brexit.

Labour has just destroyed itself in Scotland. It’s opposed to any future independence referendums, alienating that large segment of the Labour vote in Scotland which supports independence. And it is opposed to any revisiting of the decision to leave the EU, alienating that even larger segment of the Labour vote in Scotland which wants to remain a part of the EU. The Jezzagasm has proven less conducive to a last relationship with the Scottish electorate than a blind date who turned out to possess the engaging wit of Richard Who He, the numeracy of Jackie Baillie, the colour and charisma of James Kelly, and the sex appeal of Gordie Broon.

Meanwhile the Lib Dems continue to provide a lesson in the meaning of the word hypocrisy, demanding a second Brexit referendum but refusing a second Scottish independence referendum, even though both claims to a second vote are based upon the same grounds – that voters were lied to and those who won have not delivered their promises.

The Tories continue to be their usual repugnant selves, the only two things that they’re competent at are being vile and fighting amongst themselves. Today the arch Brexists of the European Research Group had another press conference to present their plan for Brexit since the last plan they presented at a press conference was ridiculed. The new plan is exactly the same as the old plan, and largely consists of the assertion that everything will be fine because we’re British and we won the war. The ERG wants to rip up European standards on food, workers’ rights, and environmental protection in pursuit of seeking trade deals. Because clearly the UK will only be able to compete if British workers have similar levels of protection as those in sweat shops in South East Asia, where they munch hurriedly on chlorinated chicken sandwiches during the five minute lunch breaks that they don’t get paid for halfway through their twelve hour shift. We can look forward to more backstabbing, infighting, and manoeuvering for position from the careerists of the Tory party at their conference in Birmingham next week. What joy.

All this is bad enough. It’s worse than bad enough. It’s at times like that that a country is desperately in need of a press which forensically dissects the claims and pretensions of British political parties. But what we’ve got is a highly partisan media that specialises in stirring up hatred against minorities, migrants, and the marginalised. The EU’s justice commissioner Věra Jourová, who was brought up in the totalitarian Czechoslovakia under Communist rule, has compared the British press to the media in 1970s Czechoslovakia in its single minded pursuit of xenophobic nationalism and desire to spread hatred.

I’m fed up, because the politics and press of the UK are broken and they can’t be fixed. I’m fed up, because there is no remedy, there is only escape. I’m fed up being told to wait, being told to trust, being told to hold back. I’m fed up, because patience is a finite resource and even a saint runs out of it eventually. I’m fed up sailing through the long dark night without a star to guide me. It’s the SNP conference the week after next, and I expect the party leadership to take note. It’s time for the stars to shine.

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If you have trouble using the button, or you prefer not to use Paypal, you can donate or purchase a t-shirt or map by making a payment directly into my bank account, or by sending a cheque or postal order. If you’d like to donate by one of these methods, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I will send the necessary information.

Please also use this email address if you would like the dug and me to come along to your local group for a talk.

Gaelic maps of Scotland are available for £15 each, plus £7 P&P within the UK for up to three maps. T-shirts are £12 each, and are available in small, medium, large, XL and XXL sizes. P&P is £5 for up to three t-shirts. My books, the Collected Yaps Vols 1 to 4 are available for £11 each. P&P is £4 for up to two books. Payment can be made via Paypal.

Labour rips up the Claim of Right

It is being reported today, Sunday, that following Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestion that he might be prepared to ‘allow’ Scotland to hold a future independence referendum should he become Prime Minister, that the Scottish Branch Office is to press for the inclusion of a clause in the Labour manifesto explicitly opposing another independence referendum. The Branch Office is thought to believe that this would mean that a future Labour government would have a mandate to forbid any future independence referendum and to refuse to give the Scottish Government a Section 30 order, irrespective of any mandate that the Scottish Government has been given by the people of Scotland in a Scottish election and irrespective of the vote share received by independence parties or the number of MPs they achieve. According to Nick Eardley of the BBC, an announcement to this effect will be made at the Labour party conference in Liverpool.

So there you go. Labour in Scotland has now told the people of Scotland that the fate of Scotland will not be decided by the people of Scotland. The Claim of Right which Labour MPs, including Gordon Brown, signed up to in 1989 has been ripped up and is as valueless as the Vow. That Claim of Right asserted the sovereignty of Scotland within the UK. It stated that the signatories acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount. The Claim of Right was signed by every Labour and Lib Dem MP who was currently serving, with the exception of the arch British supremacist, the late Tam Dalyell.

If Labour goes ahead with this announcement at its party conference in Liverpool, it will signify Labour’s rejection of the Claim of Right. The official position of the Labour party in Scotland now is that the decision on whether Scotland can or cannot hold a future independence referendum will be decided by the electorate of the rest of the UK. The Labour Party in Scotland can no longer legitimately claim that it represents the interests and political will of the people of Scotland. It is a party of British supremacism. For the Labour party in Scotland, Scotland’s vote, Scotland’s voice, is subordinate to the electoral will of the rest of the UK.

If this measure is adopted, it means that the official position of the Labour party is that it doesn’t matter what Scotland votes for. It doesn’t matter if Scotland returns a huge majority for a party that seeks a referendum on independence whether in a Westminster General Election or a Holyrood election. It doesn’t matter if a party achieves a mandate within Scotland to seek self-determination. That mandate will be overturned by whatever it is that the 91.7% of voters in the UK outwith Scotland have voted for.

Labour’s position is now that the future of Scotland is not for the people of Scotland to decide.  It’s for the rest of the UK.  Labour no longer acknowledges the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to decide the form of government best suited to their needs. It’s for the rest of the UK.  Labour no longer recognises that the interests of the people of Scotland shall be paramount. Scotland, Labour tells us, will get what the rest of the UK votes for, and that will include deciding the form of government best suited to Scotland’s needs. It will do so, even though the interests and concerns of Scotland scarcely register amongst the electorate outwith Scotland, and voters in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland will not be making their voting decisions based upon support or rejection of whatever it is that Scotland wants. The message from Labour is, “Scotland, get back in your shortbread tin. You’re just not that important.”

Labour can no longer argue that it supports the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to decide the form of government best suited to their needs. You cannot place limits on that sovereignty in order to suit your party interests. There is a fundamental contradiction between the Claim of Right and an assertion from the Labour party that it can use a mandate derived from voters outwith Scotland to reject a second independence referendum, even if there is a majority for that referendum in the Scottish Parliament, and even if a majority of Scottish MPs were elected with an explicit mandate to bring one about. Labour has shredded the Claim of Right and replaced it with an assertion of Westminster supremacism. Tam Dalyell would approve.  But Tam Dalyell is long gone, and so is the claim of Labour in Scotland to be a Scottish party.

It is not coincidental that this anti-democratic move from Labour’s Scottish Branch Office comes as support for independence has never been higher. It is not coincidental that this move happens as the UK destroys itself over Brexit. The reality is that if Labour and the other British nationalist parties sincerely believed that there was no credible and realistic prospect of Scotland voting yes in a future referendum, they would be those crying most loudly for a second independence vote to settle the issue for good. The reason they’re doing their utmost to prevent a vote coming about is because they’re terrified. It’s because they know that they have no positive arguments to make. It’s because they know that after the betrayal of the Vow they have no carrot to offer, only the stick of threats and intimidation. They’re trying to prevent a referendum because they’re going to lose it.

A couple of days ago in this blog, I argued that the biggest lie of British nationalism in Scotland is that Scotland is a part of a Union. The reality is that there is no Union and there never was. Scotland is a subordinate part of a unitary state.  I never expected that the Branch Office would confirm that so quickly and so blatantly. I never expected that so quickly and so obviously Labour would confirm that it is a British nationalist party, an upholder of the supreme right of Westminster, and would rip up the Claim of Right and explicitly deny that the people of Scotland have a sovereign right to determine their own future.

But here’s the thing. Scotland doesn’t need the permission of the Labour party to hold a referendum. Scotland doesn’t need the permission of Westminster to hold a consultative referendum. Any election held in this country can be transformed into a plebiscite election on independence, because this is not Spain. Whatever cant the Labour party comes out with, Westminster will consent to a Scottish independence referendum because a vote will be held with or without their permission.

What would really destroy any last hopes that the British nationalists might have of clinging on to Scotland would be if they have to fight a campaign on independence when they have refused to allow the people of Scotland to have a say. That’s not a good look for their so-called Union. It destroys any pretence that Scotland is in a Union and exposes the big lie of a Union that is no union at all. All Labour has done now is to rip up the Claim of Right and to prove to the voters of this country that the party doesn’t care what Scotland votes for.  This only makes independence more likely.

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Please also use this email address if you would like the dug and me to come along to your local group for a talk.

Gaelic maps of Scotland are available for £15 each, plus £7 P&P within the UK for up to three maps. T-shirts are £12 each, and are available in small, medium, large, XL and XXL sizes. P&P is £5 for up to three t-shirts. My books, the Collected Yaps Vols 1 to 4 are available for £11 each. P&P is £4 for up to two books. Payment can be made via Paypal.

The gravity of theory

On Friday, Theresa May gave her considered response to the entirely predictable rejection of her Chequers Plan by the EU. The rejection should not have come as a surprise to anyone who was paying attention. The EU has been signalling ever since the Chequers Plan was cobbled together that it wasn’t going to be acceptable. For the past two years it has been patiently and consistently explaining that the four freedoms are indivisible, and the British Government can’t pick and choose those parts of them that happen to suit the interests of maintaining some sort of semblance of unity within the British Conservative party.

It’s just unfortunate that the British Government counts amongst those who weren’t paying attention, and so it reacted to the EU’s refusal in much the same way that a toddler reacts when it goes in a huff and knocks its sippy cup off of the high chair and then discovers that there’s such a thing as gravity. Only with somewhat less maturity and more of a sense of entitlement.

There are a number of ways to react when you discover the existence of gravity. You could do what Isaac Newton did. Newton was a busy man, in between taking the credit for the work of Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed, nursing a pathological hatred for Robert Hooke and Gottfried Leibniz and trashing their reputations at every opportunity, and ensuring that part time dildo manufacturer William Chaloner was hanged and publicly disembowelled for the crime of counterfeiting a few coins, he sat down and worked out a detailed and rigorous exposition of the nature of gravity which underpinned all scientific understanding on the phenomenon for hundreds of years after his death. Think of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, only with the power to have people tortured to death, and you’ve got a rough idea. And you’d think that, being a nasty and petty minded vindictive git who allowed his grudges to become all-consuming, Newton would have been an ideal role model for the Conservative party.

Or you could do what the baby in the high chair did, which was to throw its dummy after the sippy cup and have a hissy fit while screaming that it wasn’t fair and threatening that if it didn’t get its own way, it was going to soil its nappy. The British Government went for option B. That’s where we currently are with Brexit. The British Government is threatening the EU that it had better come up with a compromise plan that the UK can agree to, or the UK is going to pee in its pants. And then the EU will be sorry. Over two years after the Brexit vote, with just six months to go until Brexit day, with just four weeks to go until time runs out for reaching agreement, this is what passes for a plan. Not only do our Westminster rulers have no concept of the theory of gravity, they have no concept of the gravity of theory.

The Brexists are full of the I-told-you-so’s, but none of them have the foggiest idea what to do either, other than wish the Irish border out of existence and tell themselves that everything will work out just fine because they’re British and being British means being better and having Union flegs plastered on everything in Tesco. Brexit might cause a few problems for people who don’t manage hedge funds, but hey, blue passports. And anyway, it’s all the fault of the EU for refusing Britain’s perfectly reasonable demands for unicorns, cherry bedecked cake, and a Schrodinger’s Irish border that simultaneously exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. We won the war you know.

The blame for this mess lies entirely with the British political establishment. Largely it lies with the Conservatives, who have selfishly put party interest before all other considerations and who have failed miserably to engage with the realities of Brexit. But a portion of blame also lies with the Labour party, which has equally spent the past two years consuming itself in internal battles and refusing to confront the realities of Brexit or to challenge the Conservatives’ lack of planning in any meaningful way. It was telling that today, when the British Brexit befuddlement finally crashed into reality, the Labour party couldn’t find anyone to go on Channel 4 news and speak about it.

It has always been obvious that the EU was never going to agree to a division of the four freedoms. It was always obvious that the EU was never going to agree to any border on the island of Ireland, a position which the UK agreed to last year when it consented to the so-called backstop. However instead of engaging with these realities and preparing the country to accept a concession, the Prime Minister and the British political establishment have wasted the last nine months in posturing and party in-fighting. And now that the EU is taking the initiative and laying down to the UK precisely what the UK had agreed to, Theresa May is acting all surprised.

Now Theresa May is telling us all that no UK Prime Minister would ever consent to a customs border down the Irish Sea, because that would be tantamount to the partition of the UK. Her concern about retaining Northern Ireland as an integral part of the UK is not unrelated to her dependence on the DUP’s votes in the House of Commons. Just today, a reader of this blog (thank you Michael Bruce) pointed out to me that Winston Churchill, that PM so beloved of the Tories, offered to give up Northern Ireland to Eamon De Valera in 1940 when he was courting the support of the Irish State in exchange for Irish support in the war against Germany. The episode is detailed in the book Operation Sealion by Leo McKinstry.

Northern Ireland, just like Scotland, is and always has been disposable if it’s in the interests of the British state. That’s why it’s Scotland which hosts Westminster’s nuclear viagra, because if there happens to be a serious accident at Faslane, it won’t affect anywhere that the Tories really care much about. Theresa May’s concern for the integrity of the UK is so much cant.

That’s the biggest single argument in favour of independence. We are governed by people for whom our interests and concerns are at the very best minor considerations, and which all too often don’t even figure in their calculations at all. The Brexit process exposes that. Brexit has been carried out entirely in the interests of sections of the Conservative party. This is a process which has no positive outcome, and you can be certain that the people who are going to suffer the negative consequences will not be those people in the Conservative party who argued most strongly for it. That’s why Scotland needs a government which is answerable to the people of Scotland, and which the people of this country can remove from office when they do not respond to our concerns. We need to teach the Tories the gravity of the theory of political accountability, and we can only do that in an independent Scotland.

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Please also use this email address if you would like the dug and me to come along to your local group for a talk.

Gaelic maps of Scotland are available for £15 each, plus £7 P&P within the UK for up to three maps. T-shirts are £12 each, and are available in small, medium, large, XL and XXL sizes. P&P is £5 for up to three t-shirts. My books, the Collected Yaps Vols 1 to 4 are available for £11 each. P&P is £4 for up to two books. Payment can be made via Paypal.

When they try to silence us it means we’re winning

The National is reporting today that a number of newsagents have cancelled their orders for the Sunday National, despite selling out the copies that they previously received. The news has been received with the usual contempt and dismissal by opponents of independence, some of whom have openly accused the newspaper’s staff of consciously and deliberately inventing an outright lie in order to mislead and deceive – you know, as if it were a right wing tabloid which specialises in stories about Diana’s ghost telling a medium that she supports Brexit.

It’s a sad reflection of some people Scotland that they are so terrified of independence that they will attempt to prevent other people from talking about it and reading about it. It’s a perfectly legitimate point of view to oppose Scottish independence. It’s not a view I share. It’s a view that I believe is wrong on multiple levels. But I wouldn’t ban an anti-independence newspaper from a shop or hide it so that people couldn’t find it. Although to be fair, if you tried to hide all the anti-independence newspapers there wouldn’t be many newspapers left.

There are some 38 daily and Sunday newspapers in Scotland, and only one which supports independence despite the fact that independence is the constitutional option favoured by half the population. However British nationalists are so threatened by the existence of a single newspaper with a pro-independence editorial line that they will hide it, censor it, and try to prevent people reading it. They loudly take to social media to decry it as McPravda, as though the Scotsman or the Mail were beacons of balance.

For decades opponents of independence had the entire Scottish media on their side, independence was a marginal idea, consigned to the far edges of the frayed tartan blanket of Scottish newspapers. It wasn’t taken seriously. It is now, but the media in Scotland still hasn’t adapted to that new reality, and neither have many opponents of independence. Their problem is that they still hanker for the days when independence wasn’t taken seriously. Their entire strategy is based upon the mistaken idea that they can put us back in the box. That’s why there’s the barrage of SNPbad stories. It’s not going to work.

When Callum Baird, the editor of The National, stated in public that one of the difficulties The National experiences in distribution is that there are individuals who hide copies of the paper, he was called out as a conspiracy theorist and mocked by anti-independence journalists. Callum didn’t just invent the allegation that individuals opposed to independence were hiding copies of The National so that they couldn’t be seen on newspaper displays, he said so because people attending National Roadshow events had told him that they’d caught them in the act of it.

Someone who reads this blog wrote in to tell me that they are an employee of a large supermarket chain, and they had caught a person taking copies of The National off the newspaper display and hiding them. The person was banned from the store as a result. I have also had people attending a talk or event I’ve been at telling me that they have caught opponents of independence hiding copies of The National.

The allegation that opponents of independence are hiding copies of The National in order to prevent them being seen and purchased is credible and well sourced, not a wild eyed invention. The wild eyed invention is refusing to believe, a priori, that the allegation cannot possibly be true because it’s only independence supporters who are nutjobs. Honey, your bias is showing. The truth is that the actual fascists, sectarian bigots, racists and anti-democratic right wing extremists are largely to be found on the anti-independence side of this debate.

It’s not a conspiracy theory to point out that the press in Scotland is overwhelmingly opposed to independence. It’s a simple fact. When the Sunday National was launched, it was announced on social media and on the BBC’s Reporting Scotland that the Herald, and the new Sunday edition of the daily Herald, would continue to be “neutral” on the topic of independence. It’s not often that I laugh out loud during a broadcast of Reporting Scotland, but I did that day. The Herald is neutral on the topic of Scottish independence in the same way that the Kardashians are neutral on whether they want to avoid publicity.

The fact that a newspaper occasionally carries opinion columns from people who support independence doesn’t make that paper balanced or neutral on the subject of independence. It’s the newspaper’s editorial stance that counts, and it’s the choice, selection, and presentation of their news stories. What we see in Scotland is a rush to publish anything that paints independence in a negative light, and a corresponding reluctance to publish anything that is positive for independence.

There remains amongst the deeply conservative (with both a small and a large C) Scottish press the notion that opposition to independence is the neutral and apolitical stance, the status quo, whereas support for independence is political in a way that opposing it is not. That might have been true a couple of decades ago, but it’s most certainly not true now as the UK lurches toward a chaotic Brexit that Scotland has consistently opposed. There is no status quo any more. There is only Brexit, or independence. There is only change. There is only change imposed upon Scotland, or change which Scotland has a voice and a say in. That’s it. Those are the only options.

The ostriches of British nationalism want to pretend that change is not happening. The ubiquitous anti-independence media is pushing a nulliquitous reality, a reality that is the opposite of ubiquitous, it doesn’t exist anywhere. But it means that independence supporters can take heart. The fact that our opponents feel the need to hide from us, to censor us, to silence us, can only mean that they have no confidence in their own arguments. It means that those of us who support independence must redouble our efforts to support the pro-independence media that we do have. It means that we are making compelling arguments. The attempts of some newsagents to prevent the message getting to their customers means that we are getting through. They’re only doing it because they are afraid.

The panic in the British state was clear in Theresa May’s Brexit speech this afternoon. The UK is threatening to commit economic suicide if the EU doesn’t meet it halfway. But the EU is under no obligation to meet the UK halfway when it’s the UK which has moved off into a fantasy world. It’s not independence which is based in romantic notions of an idealised past that never really existed. That would be the UK. Theresa said today that she will not overturn the result of the EU referendum, and she will not “break up her country”. She doesn’t need to worry, Brexit has broken it up for her. Theresa May had her bluff called in Salzburg, but she’s still trying the same bluff with the same cards. This has been going on for two years. Her bluff will be called again tomorrow and she’ll still have nothing. Rinse and repeat, until the UK crashes out of the EU.

People all over Scotland are waking up to the truth that there is no security and stability in the UK any more. And that means we’re winning.

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