Oh no EU can’t. Oh yes we can

One of the EU’s most senior parliamentarians has said in an interview that the entry of an independent Scotland into the EU should be easy. The German veteran MEP Elmar Brok made the remarks while being interviewed by Alex Salmond on the latter’s show on RT. Since Scotland is, for the time being, a part of the EU by virtue of being a part of the UK, it is already in compliance with all the requirements necessary of an EU member state. That in turn means that should Scotland vote for independence before Brexit Britain has substantially diverged from EU norms and standards, Scotland will be able to rejoin the EU in sharp order, should it so decide.

Elmar Brok now joins Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian Prime Minister and the EU Parliament’s representative on Brexit, who said in June 2018 that it is “a simple fact” that Scotland would face no big obstacles to attaining EU membership. And in 2017 a group of 50 European parliamentarians from across the political spectrum and led by German Green MEP Terry Reintke signed an open letter to the Scottish Parliament in which they stressed that Scotland would be most welcome as an EU member, and offered their full support to ensure that Scottish membership of the EU would be as swift, smooth and orderly as possible.

There is considerable sympathy for Scotland in the EU. Guy Verhofstadt said in 2017 that the EU can’t afford to lose Scotland. It is recognised that Scotland is the most pro-EU part of the UK, and that public opinion in Scotland is very different from that in the rest of the UK. An independent Scotland which was a member of the EU would not be the constant thorn in the flesh of other EU member states that the UK has proven to be, with its constant demands for special treatment.

It is significant that Elmar Brok is a member of the German Christian Democratic Union and is a close political ally of Angela Merkel. The reason that this is important is because the German CDU is one of the most important components of the European People’s Party, the bloc of MEPs in the European Parliament which was most vehement in its opposition to Scottish independence in 2014. This opposition was orchestrated by the Spanish Partido Popular, which is likewise a member of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament, and which had sought to build a pan-European opposition to independence movements along with the British Conservatives. Ruth Davidson and other members of the Conservative party took part in talks with Partido Popular representatives to this effect in 2012.

During the independence referendum of 2014, a series of EU politicians were trotted before the British press, all of whom made comments to the effect that Scotland would find it difficult to become a member of the EU in its own right. The majority of these politicians were members of the European People’s Party of which Elmar Brok is a prominent representative. This was a direct result of the behind the scenes machinations of the Spanish Partido Popular and the British Conservatives.

That alliance is how ancient history. The European People’s Party is no longer disposed to do the British any favours. The UK is now a third country as far as the EU is concerned. Spain has had a change of government, and it is now far more interested in ensuring that other EU states support it over Gibraltar than it is in discouraging Scottish independence. Scottish independence is always an issue that Spain had considered manageable, despite the protestations in the British media that Spain sought to veto Scottish EU membership in order to discourage Catalonia.

Indeed, the Spanish government has now made it clear that provided Scotland achieves independence constitutionally and legally, it would have no issues with a Scottish application to join the EU. This was explicitly stated by the current Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell in 2018. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-spain-politics-scotland/spain-would-not-oppose-future-independent-scotland-rejoining-eu-minister-idUKKCN1NP25P He was restating a position which had previously been articulated by Alfonso Dastis in 2017 when he was Foreign Minister in the Partido Popular government which was replaced by the PSOE minority administration in June last year. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/spain-drops-plan-to-impose-veto-if-scotland-tries-to-join-eu Both the major Spanish political parties have now stated that they have no objections to Scotland acceding to the EU as an independent state in its own right and that they would not seek to veto Scottish membership.

Just as an aside, the link to Guardian article is entitled “Spain drops plan to impose veto if Scotland tries to join the EU.” This shows how engrained the myth of the Spanish veto had become in the British media. The truth is that there was never any such plan in the first place. A Spanish veto of an independent Scotland which had attained independence legally and constitutionally would destroy the arguments deployed by the Spanish government against the Catalan independence movement. Spain knows that, and so does Catalonia.

Spain’s argument against Catalan independence is that it would be illegal under Spanish law, and that’s why Spain can resist Catalan independence while at the same time claiming to respect the right to self-determination. A veto of an independent Scotland ruins that argument and opens up the Spanish government to Catalan attempts to internationalise their dispute. It’s only the British press which appears ignorant of the reality. Mind you, a lot of the anti-independence trolls in Scottish newspaper comments sections and social media still haven’t caught up with that news, reluctant as they are to let go of one of their favourite threats.

What all this means is that during the next independence vote, opponents of independence are not going to be able to find EU politicians to lecture Scotland against independence. The mood music from the EU is going to be very different. Instead of EU politicians who are warning against independence, it’s going to be comparative easy to find EU politicians who are willing to encourage Scotland.

Naturally the Scotland in Union trolls who infest the comments sections of newspapers were not at all impressed by Elmar Brok’s remarks. They of course know far more about the process of accession to the EU than the EU’s longest serving parliamentarian and one of the most respected members of the European Parliament.

What we see now is a series of spurious arguments as British nationalists desperately try to argue that an EU whose prominent politicians say would welcome Scotland with open arms would in fact reject Scotland. So they tell us that because Scotland doesn’t have a Central Bank, we can’t join the EU. This is one of the those anti-independence arguments which on the surface looks terribly serious, but when you scrape off the shiny gloss which has achieved by repeatedly polishing the spittle flecks of dozens of British nationalist zoomers on social media and in the comments sections of newspapers, you discover all the stupid lurking underneath. Of course Scotland doesn’t have a Central Bank. Scotland doesn’t have a Central Bank for the exact same reason that Scotland doesn’t currently have its own diplomatic service and embassies, its own armed forces, or its own seat at the United Nations. Scotland doesn’t have a Central Bank because we’re not independent yet. Saying that Scotland can’t join the EU because it doesn’t have a Central Bank is like saying that you can’t get a driving licence until you have a car.

In any event possession of a Central Bank is only a requirement for joining the Eurozone, not for joining the EU. The same applies to the argument touted by British nationalists that Scotland’s deficit means that it would be ineligible for EU membership. That one is particularly rich, seeing as how it’s the British government which is responsible for creating Scotland’s deficit.

Meanwhile British politics has been reduced to a parade of government ministers that you’ve never heard of resigning from posts you never knew they held so that they can voice their opposition to a policy that they supported last week. Answers from government ministers in the Commons have been reduced to ministers saying that their job is not to know anything. No wonder the British nationalists of Scotland in Union who infest newspaper comments sections are becoming so desperate. A better future for Scotland is waiting, and they have nothing to offer except negativity, scare stories, and threats that are losing their effect.

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The myth makers of Westminster

I wouldn’t normally give the oxygen of publicity to anything published by the extremoyoons of the laughably misnamed A Force For Good. They’re the tiny wee group of far right zoomers who stand at independence rallies and shout abuse at indy supporters while thon guy with the manky shirt preaches with a megaphone. They make Ukip seem like open armed welcomers of all things Islamic.

You can get a good idea of the contents of their website if you imagine a bus full of wasps which is on fire and has been driven into a nursery school attached to a children’s hospital. Only without the zenlike calm which that mental image implies. My attention was drawn recently to an article which makes even the batshit zoomery which is the baseline state for this grupiscule seem like a sedate outing in scientific reasonableness. The claim that the union is really 5000 years old.

The basis of this claim is that Neil Oliver said so on the BBC, so it must be holy writ. More exactly the extremoyoons are getting confused between cultural areas and political unions. Back in the Neolithic, a megalith culture spread across the British Isles, seemingly having its centre in Orkney. What A Force For Good don’t mention is that this culture also spread beyond the British Isles to France. Later on in the Iron Age, the British Isles were a part of a common Celtic culture and language area that stretched across Europe from Ireland and Scotland to the Balkans and Turkey. Funnily enough A Force For Good are not arguing that this means we need to remain a political union with the EU. I wonder why.

Culture areas are not political unions. They don’t even provide evidence that all the areas which participated in the culture area belong people speaking the same language or possessing the same ethnic identity. One of the most clearly defined culture areas in aboriginal North America was in the Pacific North West. All the inhabitants of this area participated in a unique culture distinguished by totem poles, the potlatch ceremony, religious beliefs centring on a raven god, and had similar maritime based economies. They were all closely linked by ties of trade and exchange. However the area was also home to dozens of different languages, and dozens of different tribal groups which fought and warred constantly with one another. There’s no reason to believe that the British Isles during the neolithic era were any different.

What this illustrates is that opponents of independence base many of their claims in romanticised myths. Yet that’s precisely what they accuse independence supporters of. Myth-making is the foundation stone of anti-independence arguments. The biggest myth of all perhaps, and one that is deeply beloved of British nationalists, is the myth that Scotland is financially dependent upon the UK.

The real nature of this so-called financial dependence has been revealed by the McCrone Report, which has just been published by The National newspaper. The report has been available online for a while, but this is the first time that it’s been published in print in a Scottish newspaper. Until now, the Scottish press have preferred to pretend that the McCrone Report didn’t happen. That’s because the report reveals that this isn’t a union of equal partners, it’s a hostage situation. The purpose of this supposed union is to keep Scotland poor and dependent. It’s to ensure that Scotland remains a reservoir of natural resources and skilled labour for the rest of the UK.

The Herald, you know that ahem ‘neutral’ newspaper, responded by publishing a short statement by Gavin McCrone himself. The report’s author says that the report was never hushed up, as it was a confidential report for ministers which was never intended to be published in the first place. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty much like the definition of hushed up to me. Whether the report was hushed up, or was always intended to be confidential is semantic nitpicking and makes no material difference. Information about the true state of the Scottish economy which could have had a substantial impact on the debate about independence was still kept a secret from the people of Scotland by the British establishment. Yet again, supporters of the British state have to resort to sophistry.

However the point here is that those government ministers for whom the report was intended continued to tell Scotland that it was a subsidy junkie which couldn’t afford independence, and continued to minimise the economic potential of the oil to Scotland, and still minimise the contribution that Scotland has made to the UK’s finances, despite knowing that over the course of the past 45 years Scotland has been a net subsidiser of the UK. That’s the point. The issue here is not what Mr McCrone thought was supposed to happen with his report, the issue is what successive British governments did with the information that it contained. They kept it from the people of Scotland who pay their wages in order to ensure that the people of Scotland kept paying their wages.

Neither is the issue that we should be trying to move away from the exploitation of fossil fuels because of the environment and climate change. Of course we should. Nor is the issue that circumstances have changed and therefore the report is a less relevant assessment of Scotland’s economic potential today than it was when it was written. Well duh. Of course. Way to go to point out the obvious there guys. Absolutely no one is arguing that the McCrone Report remains an up to date assessment of Scotland’s economic potential in 2019. That is not and was never the point.

The point is that Westminster flushed Scotland’s wealth down the toilet of the City of London, and they are now telling us that we’re too poor to leave them. They’ve impoverished Scotland, yet insist that we need to trust them with our finances and economy. It’s like having a partner who spends your inheritance on drink and gambling, who brings you to financial ruin while he drives about in an expensive car which he won’t let you have the keys to, and then he tells you that because he’s spent all your money that you’re too poor to leave him.

The point is one of trust, or rather the lack of it. If the British government is prepared to lie to us to the extent revealed by the McCrone Report, if it is prepared to keep the truth from us in order to prevent the people of Scotland making an informed decision about their future, then it’s legitimate to ask what other information the British government is withholding from us right now. We have a government in Westminster which patently does not trust the people of Scotland, as evidenced by the fact that it has been proven to keep vital and relevant information from us about the economic potential of Scotland. Therefore the question raised by the McCrone Report is why should the people of Scotland trust the British government? Why should we believe a government which has repeatedly lied to us and which has been proven to lie. What proof do we have that they have changed? The answer to that last question is none.

Unions imply equality, trust, and good faith. There is precious little of that in Westminster’s dealings with Scotland. The real point is that this is a so-called union that is based upon lies, myths, and deception, and as such it is no union at all. In that respect the myth-makers of Westminster have more in common with the zooming extremists of A Force For Good than they’d care to admit. When what Westminster tells us doesn’t add up, it’s time for Scotland to subtract itself.

 

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The National publishes the McCrone Report

Today, in a historic first, The National publishes the McCrone Report, the secret British government report into Scotland’s oil wealth. Kept hidden from the Scottish public for 45 years, the report demonstrates that had Scotland voted for independence during the 1970s, this country would now be sitting on a sovereign wealth fund of trillions. Scotland would not be facing austerity. Our public services would be well funded, and our infrastructure would be world class.  We would not currently be staring into the Brexit abyss, wondering whether we’ll still have an NHS in ten years time.

Instead of providing a bonanza for Scotland, Scotland’s wealth was squandered by successive British governments on tax cuts for the rich, and on social security payments for the hundreds of thousands who were made unemployed as a direct result of Margaret Thatcher’s decade and a half of vindictiveness.  And all the while, even in the 1980s, British politicians told us that the oil was running out.  Under Westminster rule, Scotland is the only country in the world which discovered oil and then became poorer.

The McCrone Report is a shameful episode which illustrates the deceptions to which British governments will descend in order to maintain Scotland firmly within the UK.  The report was kept quiet in order to dampen down claims arising within Scotland for self-government or even independence.  The McCrone Report demonstrates that the British government is so keen to keep hold of Scotland because it allows Westminster to use Scotland’s wealth in order to benefit the British establishment, and not the people of Scotland.

The McCrone Report shows that Westminster does not now and never had the interests of Scotland at heart.  As such it is essential reading both for everyone who supports independence, but more importantly for those who are unsure.  And even more importantly, it leads us to wonder what other dirty little secrets Westminster is hiding from the people of Scotland.

The McCrone Report and the way it was hidden from the people of Scotland for so long proves that we are ruled by a Westminster establishment which doesn’t trust us, and which holds us in contempt. This is not a partnership of nations, it’s a con job.

Buy an extra copy of The National tomorrow, and give one to your friends who are soft no or who are uncertain about independence.  It will show them that we’re governed by a UK that doesn’t have our interests at heart.  It demonstrates that we need independence in order to have governments which are directly accountable to the people of Scotland.  Then we can vote them out of office if they deceive us.

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The secretary of state for temper tantrums

Yesterday I wrote a blog article in which I compared David Mundell, the Scotland Secretary, to a union fleg branded supermarket bag, flapping uselessly in the branches of a tree. I would like to say now that this remark was unwarranted and utterly uncalled for. Plastic bags do have a useful purpose.

It is being reported today that the Fluffy one disassociated himself from a group of rebel cabinet ministers who had threatened to resign if Theresa May does not take a no deal Brexit off the table. The reason he did so wasn’t because he thinks a no deal Brexit wouldn’t damage Scotland that much after all, it’s because he didn’t want to give the SNP an “easy win”. So there you have it. It’s far more important to the Scotland Secretary that he avoids doing anything that might assist the SNP than it is to stand up for Scottish interests.

It is universally agreed by everyone in Scottish politics who isn’t Ross Thomson that a no deal Brexit would be a disaster for the Scottish economy. It threatens to double unemployment and Scotland will be mopping up the consequences for years to come. You might think then that avoiding such a calamity would be the top priority for every Scottish politician who has the slightest degree of intellectual or emotional maturity. So again, not Ross Thomson then. But sadly, you’d be ignoring the kneejerk tribalism of David Mundell, who like his boss puts the interests of the Conservative party above the interests of the country he purports to represent.

David is not going to threaten resignation, because for weeks now the SNP, and independence supporters in general, have taken to referring to him as David Mundell who hasn’t resigned yet. That’s because both he and Ruth Davidson threatened to resign if Northern Ireland was to be treated differently in any Brexit deal from the rest of the UK. That’s what Theresa May’s deal is proposing, yet neither David nor Ruth has resigned.

So if David did indeed threaten to resign now in order to press the Prime Minister to take a disastrous no deal Brexit off the table, and then he actually followed through, he’d give the SNP that easy win the avoidance of which is his overriding political imperative. Because then the SNP would have the satisfaction of seeing him resign. There is some sort of a logic there. It’s the logic you’ll find amongst five year olds on the school playground. The truth is that the SNP would rather see him remain in office, because he’s totally useless at his job and is a walking advert for Scottish independence. The only person who thinks that David Mundell is effective at his job is David Mundell.

Heaven forfend that the Scotland Secretary might think that the best way to stand up against the SNP was by demonstrating that there is a strong and confident voice for Scotland within the UK. After all, if there was a way in which Scotland’s needs and concerns could be aired and responded to at the highest levels of the British government, if the British government could be seen to be forced into taking Scotland’s needs into account, then there wouldn’t be so much support for the SNP. If David Mundell had set out after the 2014 to ensure that all the promises and commitments made by the Better Together campaign of which he was a part had actually been honoured, then the SNP would be a whole lot weaker than it currently is. Because what really drives the Scottish independence movement is the unwillingness or inability of British politicians to hold Westminster to account for the promises it makes to the people of Scotland.

However the actions of David Mundell and his Scottish Conservative, and Labour and Lib Dem, colleagues in Better Together demonstrate that the most important consideration for British nationalist politicians is to keep Scotland within the UK. If that means damaging Scotland or harming Scotland’s interests, that’s something that they can live with. If that means ensuring that Scotland is silenced, that’s a price they are willing to pay. Fundamentally, the role of David Mundell is not to speak for Scotland in the British government, it’s to speak for the British government in Scotland. It’s important that we call him out for that.

It’s being reported in the British press that Mundell didn’t want to resign because he says that there’s a group of 35 SNP MPs who are actively working for no deal. Clearly, he’s not been paying attention. The SNP – and to be fair the Lib Dems and the Greens – have consistently opposed Brexit from the outset. The Scottish Government has produced a detailed plan which sought to minimise the ill effects of Brexit on the Scottish economy. It is simply incorrect to say that the SNP want a no deal Brexit. The SNP, like most people in Scotland, doesn’t want Brexit at all. There is no such thing as a good Brexit for Scotland, or for any other part of the UK. The arguments for an independent Scotland are easiest to make within the context of a UK which remains a part of the EU, or a UK which has a good deal with the EU. Despite the constant claims to the contrary from anti-independence politicians and the media, the SNP doesn’t hate English people, and it certainly doesn’t wish a no deal Brexit on the rest of the UK out of any animus towards the English.

But David is now saying that he’s not going to stand up to a Prime Minister who risking a no deal Brexit, because he doesn’t want to help an SNP which he claims is working for a no deal Brexit. Even by the standards of the five year olds who inhabit the yah boo sucks Scottish Conservative playground, that makes no sense at all. There’s British statesmanship for you. There’s punching above our weight. That’s exactly the kind of political immaturity and self-defeatism which has led to the UK losing what remains of its international standing and being reduced to a laughing stock, not just within the EU, but around the world.

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The flapping plastic bags of Britishness

It’s been reported over the weekend that three Conservative cabinet ministers have warned Theresa May that they are planning to support an amendment to delay Brexit and take a no deal Brexit off the table. The former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Heseltine, one of the grandest of the party’s grandees, also spoke out to say that cabinet resignations are likely unless MPs are allowed to block the most catastrophic aspects of Brexit and the Prime Minister ceases her dance of death with the zealots of the European Research Group and the DUP.

The three cabinet ministers who spoke out in an article in Daily Mail,what Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, the justice minister, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, warned of the damage and chaos that would be produced by a no deal Brexit, and stated that it would wreck the UK’s economy and put national security at risk. The three are insisting that the Prime Minister allows cabinet ministers a free vote on an amendment due to be voted on in the House of Commons on Wednesday and have said that if the Prime Minister doesn’t do so then they will resign. Put forward by another former Conservative cabinet minister Oliver Letwin, most famous for leaving his cabinet briefing papers in a public bin, and Labour’s Yvette Cooper, the amendment would oblige the British government to ask the EU to delay Brexit unless a deal has been passed by the Commons by the middle of March.

Under normal rules, cabinet ministers are obliged to vote with the government. But these are not normal times, and this is a government which has hitherto shown very little respect for normal rules. If normal rules were respected, the Prime Minister would have already resigned when her flagship policy went down to the greatest defeat in parliamentary history. But this isn’t a normal Prime Minister. This is a Prime Minister who has the listening skills of a rock and the interpersonal skills of the speaking clock. Even now, she’s still refusing to change course and refusing to acknowledge any need to alter her plans.

On Sunday, faced with yet another humiliating defeat in the Commons and an EU which is steadfastly refusing to budge, Theresa May yet again displayed her lack of respect for normal rules and announced that she was postponing the meaningful vote planned for this week until March 12, just two weeks before the UK is due to leave the EU. The move has tensions amongst cabinet ministers and Conservative backbenchers even further. She’s a minority PM behaving like a dictator, playing a game of chicken with the entire economy, with the personal lives of millions of people, and the future of the UK. Only a person without the slightest concern about the effects of her actions on other people could pursue such a path. Theresa May makes Margaret Thatcher seem humane, compassionate, and understanding.

Other than being Tories who are speaking out against the calamity of a no deal Brexit, what Amber Rudd, David Gauke, and Greg Clark all have in common is that none of them is David Mundell. Even amongst the no marks of the Conservative cabinet David Mundell fails to make an impression. He’s the political nobody’s nobody. The Scotland Secretary is the living embodiment of a shredded plastic supermarket bag with union flag branding, flapping aimlessly in the breeze in the branches of a tree, signalling nothing but its own uselessness. At least you notice that the bag is present and it impinges upon your consciousness, which is considerably more than can be said for David Mundell.

When you have a cabinet where collective responsibility has broken down and a party which is at war with itself that is precisely the time that any politician who has an ounce of moral fibre should be standing up for her or his constituents and personal beliefs. Yet from a Scottish perspective, what has been most noticeable about the power plays, staking out of red lines, cabinet splits, and internal battles which characterise the Conservative party is the silence and passivity of Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservative™ MPs. That’s those MPs who we were told were going to vote as a bloc to protect and defend Scotland’s interests within this so-called union.

You might think that amidst all these power plays, that Scottish Conservative MPs might seize the opportunity to make their own mark on Brexit and in the process demonstrate to the electorate of Scotland that they are indeed an effective voice for Scotland within the UK. But instead the closest thing we’ve got from any of them to a distinct political manifesto is Ross Thomson’s denial that he did anything wrong when he allegedly mistook a man’s crotch for an item of furniture.

It is striking that even when party discipline has all but collapsed, when cabinet ministers feel free to brief against one in the press and openly defy the Prime Minister, that none of those Scottish Conservative MPs is speaking out against a hard Brexit and defending the interests of their majority remain voting constituents – never mind a Scotland which voted to remain by a considerably larger majority than it voted against independence. The fact that even when there are going to be few political consequences against them within their own party for speaking out, yet they still don’t speak out, is indeed a testament to their character. It’s just not a good testament.

You might think that that Scottish anti-independence media which was so keen to big up Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives™ in the first place might now be holding those silent and complicit Conservative MPs to account. But then if you think that you probably also think that the BBC Question Time audience was a fair and balanced representation of the people of Motherwell. When this period of Scottish history is written about in future decades, the failure of anti-independence MPs and the anti-independence media to speak up for Scotland and defend Scotland’s interests within the UK will be cited as one of the most important reasons which led to Scottish independence. Even on their own terms they are failing Scotland. It’s not just David Mundell who’s a union flag branded plastic bag caught in a tree.

Scotland will become an independent nation because the British state and its institutions have proven themselves incapable of responding to Scotland’s needs, views, and concerns.

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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.

A shit argument for Brexit

I wrote a blog article last night which was published in the wee smaa hours. Then this afternoon I published the weekly dugcast. So I had reckoned I’d done enough for one day to keep readers of this blog amused. But then I came across Giles Fraser’s apologia for Brexit and ending freedom of movement on the digital site Unherd, and now I’m fuming.

https://unherd.com/2019/02/why-wont-remainers-talk-about-family/

I’ve not been this angry since Magrit Curran was my MP. First off, a word of caution. Please don’t read on while eating. This blog deals with some unpleasant realities about the human body.

Essentially, Giles’ argument about why ending freedom of movement is a good thing boils down to this. When you’re old and incontinent, it means that your kids can wipe your arse for you instead of some social services worker from the EU, and that’s great for family cohesion. We can all bond as a family over soiled toilet paper.

It’s telling that Giles in his piece felt it was the role of a daughter to wipe her father’s arse. Not a son. Those antiquated gender roles are symptomatic of the regressive nostalgia that characterises the entire Brexit process. Asinine and insensitive doesn’t begin to describe it. I don’t know if Giles has ever been put in the situation of having to wipe the arse of a loved one, other than a small infant. Judging from the tone of his facile article, I’m guessing not.

Well I have. My late partner suffered from dementia, and as his illness progressed he lost control of both his bladder and his bowels. It was a deeply distressing experience for both of us. It’s difficult to reassure your loved one, a once proud and self-sufficient man who is already upset because he has soiled himself, that you’re going to be there for him and are not judging him when you are in fact gagging and vomiting because of the smell. It’s difficult to maintain the dignity of a loved one who is in the advanced stages of a terminal illness when you have to strip off their underclothes and wipe their arse. It’s hard to calm down a crying relative and reassure them that they’re not being a bother when you’ve got their shit all over your hands. You’re not doing much bonding, except with the tears, and the disinfectant, bleach, and the lingering terrible smell. And then wash, rinse, repeat. You’re doing exactly the same the next day.

As someone who has stood crying as I scraped shit off the bedsheets, as someone who has woken up in the marital bed in a wet patch of someone else’s urine, as someone who has literally vomited as I realised that my clothes were stained and smeared with someone else’s shit, I can assure Giles that this was not a bonding experience. There was nothing positive about it. It distressed my late partner immensely. It distressed me. It is not an experience that anyone who has gone through it would ever for a second consider wishing on others. It is not something that anyone who has lived through would ever for an instant regard as a positive learning experience that others should undergo. To put this forward as an argument for Brexit is crass beyond belief. It’s scraping the bottom of an already shitty barrel.

Eventually my partner and I started getting social care services. Social care services which are free in Scotland thanks to a Scottish government which doesn’t prioritise profit over humanity. Those angels took over, at least partially, the tasks of undressing, cleaning, and re-dressing my late partner. That was a huge relief to him. He found it a lot easier, mentally and emotionally, to accept that sort of care from a person in a health worker’s uniform whose job it was than to accept it from me. It distressed him far less. It allowed him to maintain what dignity he could, what little dignity that his illness hadn’t stripped away from him. It helped him to come to terms with his declining health in a way that he wouldn’t had he relied solely upon me to do those intensely personal tasks for him. And if it was difficult enough for a spouse to accept that kind of assistance from their partner, it must be far more difficult for a parent to accept it from their adult child. Clearly, none of this has occurred to Giles, because he’s never walked in our shit stained shoes.

The broader point Giles was trying to make, the one I am struggling to get to through the crap, is that freedom of movement breaks down families because it makes it easier for people to move away. There was of course not the slightest recognition in his piece that ending freedom of movement breaks up families. Neither was there any awareness that the Brexit fetishisation of tackling immigration has led to thousands of children being separated from a parent, many thousands of spouses separated from their significant other, countless grandparents separated from their grandchildren.

But no, in Brexitland we can all be stuck in the towns and villages of our birth, trapped by a lack of opportunities and the newly valueless nature of a British passport. And then we’ll be able to wipe our parents’ backsides when they become frail and incontinent because the arse has been ripped out of social care services by the very same right wing politicians who are so keen to foist the hardest possible Brexit upon us.

Brexit supporters once promised us the sunlit uplands. They promised shedloads of cash for the NHS. Now they’re reduced to making the argument that suffering is good for us, that we should be nostalgic for antiquated gender roles, and telling us to restrict our horizons and not to dare to dream of spreading our wings and flying.  Now they’re reduced to sophistry and telling us that Brexit is good for you because you too can get to wipe the arse of an infirm relative. Giles’ article is quite literally and in every sense of the word, the shittiest of arguments for the shitshow of Brexit.

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Wee Ginger Dugcast, Friday 22 Feb

In this week’s dugcast, Callum Baird (editor of The National) and I discuss the BBC and its audience selections, the report of the Dug’s death being somewhat exaggerated, sectarianism in Scotland and its roots in British nationalism, and the defections from Labour and the Tories at Westminster and how the new grouping is going to get far more invites to appear on Question Time than the SNP will.

 

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A disease of British nationalism

Scottish social media is yet again working itself up into a lather over sectarianism at a fitba match. The Kilmarnock manager Steve Clarke was subjected to a torrent of sectarian abuse from a contingent of Rangers fans at a recent match. Yet again, a minority of Rangers fans have succeeded in confirming the image of their club, and of Scotland in general, as a pigswill filled bucket of antediluvian sectarian hatred. So thanks for that. There’s the ugly truth about British nationalism for you.

There are some who have been blaming Catholic schools for sectarianism. That’s a classic case of victim blaming. I went to Catholic schools, and do not look fondly upon the experience.  Being a gay teenager at a Catholic school in Coatbridge in the 1970s was not a bundle of laughs.  But Catholic schools are not the cause of sectarianism in Scotland. Catholic schools are a product of sectarianism, not the cause of it. Blaming Catholic schools for sectarianism is like saying that craving certain foods causes pregnancy.  A symptom is not an etiology.

Catholic schools were established back in the 19th century when Catholic parents feared that their children were being targeted for conversion by the Kirk elders and ministers who controlled religious education in the supposedly non-denominational schools. Catholic schools were an attempt by a beleaguered community to preserve a small measure of its autonomy in the face of a deeply hostile British nationalist Scotland which rejected Scots of Irish descent as unwanted and despised alien intruders. They provided a space where Catholic children, who were overwhelmingly of Irish descent, could be educated in a space that protected them from the discrimination that was rampant in wider society.

I am no fan of religious based education, however other countries have faith schools and yet don’t have the same issues with sectarianism. Clearly something else is going on in Scotland.

It’s important to recognise that modern Scottish sectarianism is but a shadow of its former self. In previous decades, everyone who was brought up a Catholic in Scotland knew that there was a whole slew of places where you could forget about applying for a job. We knew that some jobs or occupations were always going to be closed to us. We knew that we would face constant and persistent discrimination in the workplace, in housing, and in life opportunities.  You were never going to be a judge or a bank manager or a senior police officer.  It was considered perfectly acceptable in douce and middle class Scotland that the Rangers football team had a ban on Catholic players, because the bowling clubs, tennis clubs, and golf clubs that those middle class worthies went to had similar bans of their own.

Sectarianism in Scotland is no longer a “respectable prejudice”. It no longer has the power to define careers and shape, or more accurately deform, lives.  That’s a result of the general decline in the role of religion in Western society.  Scotland has never had a proper national conversation about sectarianism in Scotland. We have, as a nation, never dealt with it in a systematic or comprehensive way. We continue to talk about sectarianism as a problem that afflicts football, or the West coast – conveniently ignoring the Orange lodges that infest the Lothians or Fife.  We continue to restrict what efforts there are to bewailing the lingering symptoms of sectarianism in Scotland, and never look at the underlying cause.

Sectarianism is still granted a leeway and a tolerance that wouldn’t be granted to other forms of prejudice. If that loud and aggressive minority of Rangers fans habitually chanted racist abuse directed against black players, the club would be expelled from the league until it got its house in order. In these modern times, there is less of a tolerance for homophobia than there is for sectarian bigotry – and it wasn’t so long ago that homophobia was obligatory.  Yet we allow our streets to be blocked by sectarian marches.  We turn a blind eye to rampant sectarian abuse on social media. We tut about sectarian chanting at football matches. And we do nothing about it.

The real reason that nothing is ever done about the sectarianism that lingers in Scotland is because it is a product and creature of British nationalism. Tackling sectarianism in Scotland means recognising the truth that Britishness in Scotland is not the fluffy and inclusive non-nationalism it is asserted to be by the modern anti-independence parties. Tackling the roots of sectarianism means looking at the nasty truth of how a British identity succeeded in imposing itself on the population of Scotland.

Dealing with sectarianism means facing up to the ugly realities of Britishness and a British identity in Scotland, and that’s the very last thing that opponents of independence want to do at a time when Britishness is threatened in Scotland like never before. Britishness in Scotland is not and never has been a cosy neutral identity that was all embracing and all inclusive.  Examining sectarianism deprives British nationalists in Scotland of their fictitious claim to the moral high ground that only Scottish independence is defined by ethnic exclusion. It’s far more comfortable to pretend that Scottish sectarianism a problem about football, that it’s a West Coast thing, that it’s about Catholic schools, or that there’s a moral equivalence between the two sides of the sectarian divide.

This red white and blue comfort blanket draws a convenient veil over the nasty truth about British nationalism and a British identity in Scotland. Historically, British nationalism in Scotland was exclusive, racist, and took its strength from the demonisation and rejection of Catholic Scots, who were overwhelmingly of Irish or Highland Gaelic origin, those who historically had rejected the imposition of a British identity. If you were of Irish descent, a nation that fought to reject the British identity that was imposed upon it by force, then naturally you couldn’t be Scottish either.  That union fleg so beloved by certain supermarket chains was a symbol of sectarian exclusion and hatred, long before it became co-opted as an anti-independence symbol.

British nationalism in Scotland sought to neutralise Scotland by controlling and defining Scottishness.  It preached that if you were not British then you couldn’t be Scottish. Catholicism became defined by British nationalism as an inherited condition, a quasi ethnicity. It didn’t matter if you were personally an atheist or an agnostic, if you were born into a Catholic family you could never be British, and that meant you couldn’t be Scottish either. That’s doubly true if you were born into a Scottish family of Irish origin. As the largest group by far of Catholics in Scotland, sectarianism most commonly manifests as anti-Irish racism.  It’s never been about religious beliefs at all. A person’s family religion was just the convenient cultural difference used to lever apart Scotland’s communities and keep us all under British rule.

It is not a coincidence that now independence is the fulcrum of Scottish politics that the bigots of British nationalism have responded by enlarging their arena of hatred and fear to include manifestations of Scottish culture. The Gaelic and Scots languages are now almost as much a target of British nationalism in Scotland as Scots of Irish descent once were. The new targets of British nationalism are Scottish independence supporters.

The targets of British nationalism in Scotland are those who are perceived to threaten and undermine British rule. A century ago that meant Irish Catholics, and we are still living with the consequences. Now it also means supporters of Scottish independence. Irish people were demonised for their family religion, independence supporters are demonised for a supposed anti-Englishness. Yet the nationalism in Scotland which is most defined by racism and exclusion is British nationalism, the nationalism which is quickest to claim victimhood status, the nationalism which is the first to project its own sins onto its opponents.

Sectarianism in Scotland is about Britishness and the divide and rule tactics of the British state, and it always has been. Sectarianism in Scotland is and always was a disease of British nationalism. The cure is independence.

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Business as usual

Sorry for the intermittent blog posts over the past week, but pretty much on the spur of the moment I went to Connecticut to be with my husband for Valentine’s Day. I didn’t mention it on the blog because I wanted to surprise him.

On the day I left I had published a piece in The National about the issues around the BBC’s lack of proper representation of independence supporters in their debate programmes. Although I do most of the public speaking for The National’s Roadshow events, I’ve only ever been invited once onto a BBC current affairs programme, and that was in the aftermath of photiegate, when the Sunday Herald published the photo of the huge rally in Glasgow which managed to make a tiny wee group of right wing British nationalist extremists look the same size as an independence rally of 60,000 people. I felt that the only reason the BBC had asked me on was because they were looking for an independence campaigner to slag off a pro-independence newspaper. I was conveniently busy that day.

I don’t really expect to be invited onto the BBC, because I used to be involved with Newsnet Scotland, and am one of those people that Ken McQuarrie, the former director of BBC Scotland, once described as “those bastards from Newsnet”. However in the piece for The National last Tuesday I had mentioned that despite my extensive contacts within the independence movement, I didn’t know anyone who had been approached by the BBC to appear on any of the new politics or current affairs programmes planned for the new McGhetto channel scheduled to launch next week. This doesn’t bode well for the BBC’s repeated promises to listen to its Scottish viewers.

I landed in Hartford Connecticut on Tuesday afternoon last week, and the moment I logged into the airport’s WiFi, I received an email from Mentorn, the production company responsible for Question Time and BBC Scotland’s The Big Debate, asking me if I was available to appear on the panel for an edition of The Big Debate to be filmed that Sunday. Given the article I had published in The National that morning, I laughed out loud when I got the email. I wasn’t due to return to Scotland until Wednesday morning this week, so had to decline. In their email, Mentorn had offered to pay my travel expenses, but obviously they didn’t mean paying for a transatlantic flight. They only do that if you’re a far right Ukip candidate and a member of a sectarian flute band. I have told them that I’ll be available for future programmes, although I still have deep reservations about their audience selection procedures.

I’m back home now, and normal ranting service has been resumed. When I flew back into Dublin yesterday morning, I presented my British passport to the Irish immigration officer and said “It’s the passport of shame.” He laughed and replied, “Well not for a couple of weeks yet.” I remarked that I hoped that pretty soon I’d be coming into Dublin with a European Scottish passport, the immigration officer gave me a big smile and said “That would be the best thing. Hope you go for it.” When even immigration officers are telling you that Scottish independence is the best option, you know it makes sense.

It’s obvious now that Theresa May’s strategy is to run down the clock so that at the very last minute the House of Commons is presented with a choice between her hard Brexit mess of a deal or no deal at all. This is respecting the will of the people, apparently. But not the Scottish people, because we don’t register in Theresa’s calculations, and not the will of the slightly less than half of the UK which voted to remain. Which if nothing else means that Scotland has company as it’s being marginalised and ignored. This is now the only constitutional argument that opponents of independence have got left, “Parts of England are being ignored too, Scotland.” Because that makes it all OK then. Not.

It’s worth stressing that Theresa May’s deal is a hard Brexit. The Brexiters might not have succeeded in coming up with a realistic or plausible plan, but they have successfully moved the goalposts in the media over the course of the past two years. What was once called a hard Brexit, that is leaving the customs union and single market, is now called a soft Brexit. What was once called a soft Brexit, remaining in the customs union and single market, is now called Brexit in name only and is regarded as no Brexit at all. A hard Brexit is now defined as a calamitous falling out of the EU with no deal. The choice that Theresa May is trying to force on Parliament is a choice between a hard Brexit, or the chaos of no deal.

Meanwhile, the Fluffy One, Scotland’s very own stuffed toy cabinet minister, is making a speech in which he claims that Brexit strengthens devolution. Because Scotland being sidelined, marginalised, ignored, and told to shut up, is really an exercise in the respect agenda that David Cameron promised us way back when he wanted our votes. It’s just a pity that David Mundell doesn’t stand up and publicly lecture his cabinet colleagues in the same way that he lectures the people of Scotland. On most people his speechs make as much of an impression as a small piece of wet toilet paper being fired at a rhinocerous. His real target audience is the SiU trolls who infest the comments sections of Scottish newspapers. But then David’s job isn’t to represent Scotland in the British government, it’s to represent the British government in Scotland. His job title is Scotland Secretary, but 100 years ago there was another job title for those doing what David does. It was Governor General of the Colonies.

David Mundell’s claim is delusional, but then he represents a party which says that Theresa May’s Brexit deal “works for Britain”, so delusion and self-deception is pretty much the base state here. Brexit undermines the foundations of the devolution settlement, because the Conservatives have decided to use it to unilaterally take control of a slew of devolved powers. They further undermined the devolution settlement by passing legislation using MPs from outwith Scotland in order to retrospectively remove powers from Holyrood so that the Scottish Government’s EU Continuity Bill couldn’t be passed into law.

The big political news is of course the defection of eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives to form a new “centrist” grouping. It’s a symptom of just how screwed British politics has become that we’re being invited to pin our hopes on a Lib Dem tribute band. There are rumours that other MPs are set to follow. The goal of this new grouping is to attain 36 members, and then they can overtake the SNP as the third party and will take the SNP’s slot at PMQs. So Scotland will get even less of a say than it currently does, an already marginalised country being silenced by entitled people complaining that their voices aren’t heard. That tells you all you need to know about the priorities of Westminster.  That’s their business as usual.

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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 not so magnificent seven

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Well it finally happened. There have been rumours of impending splits for weeks, the only uncertainty was whether it was Labour or the Conservatives which would break first. Now we know, Labour broke itself. In the UK we don’t have a political system, we have an ego massage for no marks who lack even the so bad they’re good talent needed to appear as let’s all have a laff at them candidates in the initial stages of the X Factor or the good looks and expensive teeth required to appear as extras in Hollyoaks. Politics is broken, said the new Independent Group, and so is their website. It’s not incompetence, it’s a metaphor.

For the rest of us, today’s events are confirmation that not even the Labour party thinks that the Labour party can save us from a Tory Brexit. Seven Blairite MPs have flounced off from the Labour party in order to perform a tribute act to the unlamented 1980s one hit wonders the SDP. They will succeed in precisely bugger all, except to make Labour even less electable than it already was. Although you can bet your rapidly depreciating pound coin that they’ll get considerably more favourable media coverage than the entire Scottish Government and SNP combined. Next week’s BBC Question Time will feature one of them fielding a question from a flute band member in the audience about how Scottish independence is even worse than Brexit.

According to a report in the New Statesman, the rebel Labour MPs considered asking Ruth Davidson to head their new movement. Which can only mean that they are as clueless about the true nature of the intensely careerist Ruth, as they are about Scottish politics in general. Either that or they were hoping for some of her dark money and burly men. If they do decide to stand in Scotland they’ll have to change their name to the The Independent But Not For Scotland Group, either that or they’re going to be a Scottish Independent Group that is anything but independent. So not really that different from the Labour party in Scotland after all then.

Surprise surprise, the not remotely magnificent seven spent most of their press conference slagging off the rest of the Labour party, and not attacking the Tories, that hate group which is actually the root cause of the Brexit problems which are screwing over the UK in the first place. On they trotted, each of them laying out their issues with Labour, every one of them greeted with “Who’s that?” from the assembled audience, followed by “Didn’t she once represent a sofa on Gogglebox?” Whoever was caught by the BBC microphone greeting the announcement with an “It’s mad. Between this and Brexit we’re absolutely fucked,” had it spot on.

The Independent Group isn’t social, it’s not democratic, and it’s not a party, but apart from that it’s exactly like the SDP. When the Gang of Four broke away from Labour in the 1980s in protest against Michael Foot daring to take a party that was supposed to be socialist in a vaguely left wing direction, the flouncers were at least big beasts within the party. All of them had been cabinet ministers in previous Labour governments and two of them had held one of the great offices of state. David Owen was a former Foreign Secretary, Roy Jenkins had previously served as Home Secretary. The others were almost as illustrious, Shirley Williams had been Education Secretary, and Bill Rodgers had served as Defence Secretary and Secretary of State for Transport. Yet even though any one of them possessed greater political experience and ability than today’s sorrowful seven combined, they still failed to make any serious electoral impact with their new party and only succeeded in splitting the opposition and ensuring a decade and a half of Conservative rule.

There are, it has to be said, serious issues with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party. He is the mirror image of Theresa May, incapable of reaching out beyond his own support base, narrowly tribalist, and ideologically inflexible. He came to power promising to be different, that he’d listen to the membership and prioritise what ordinary Labour members wanted. Once in power he’s done the opposite. He’s turned into exactly the kind of Labour leader that he himself serially rebelled against, and he is doing his utmost to ensure that Brexit happens. He just wants the Conservatives to take the blame for it and then hopes that he can coast to power in the ensuing chaos. It’s a breathtakingly cynical form of politics from a man who promised honesty and moral fibre.

Yet today’s split is self-serving and will ultimately prove futile. It pretty much guarantees that if the Conservative party can hold itself together, that it will remain in power for the foreseeable future even though it is the most incompetent, inept, clueless, and randomly vindictive government that the UK has ever seen. None of the splitters has the slightest intention of submitting themselves to the electorate even though they claim to have split on the question of allowing the electorate to have its say. The kindest thing you can say about The Independent Group is that it’s all an elaborate exercise in trolling the Corbynite wing of the Labour party, who are now demanding that if you’re not giving the voters what they thought they were getting then you need to resign and allow the electorate to vote on it, and thereby logically force them into supporting a second referendum. If that’s the tactic, it’s doomed already.

For Scotland this is merely more confirmation, if yet more confirmation was needed, that British politics are irredeemably knackered. It’s more knackered than a nag that’s already been boiled down for glue, but with less ability to make anything stick. The Labour party isn’t going to save Scotland from Brexit, because the Labour party can’t even save itself. If we want to avoid a repeat of the 1980s and the long dark night of Tory rule with no apparent end, we need to save ourselves. Today, the Labour party gave us seven more reasons for Scottish independence.

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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.