Scotland : independent or a lamp post

The liar Johnson who is still Prime Minister is in Scotland today (Monday), or as it is known by the Express newspaper, “certain parts of the UK”. He is on a self-proclaimed mission to unite the people of Scotland, or as it is known by the BBC “the north of the UK”. Johnson is here to do his usual thing of keeping as far away as possible from any actual Scottish people in case they prove to him that they are indeed united in their loathing for Boris Johnson.

This time Johnson isn’t just keeping away from Scottish people in case they have pro-independence tendencies, or belong to the dwindling band of Labour supporters, he’s also keeping as far away as possible from the Scottish Conservatives. With the exception of toady in chief Alister Jack, who knows that without Johnson in Downing Street he’d be out of a job as soon as you could say “ineffectual colonialist toff”, all the other elected representatives from the Scottish Conservatives have either already come out and said that Johnson should resign, or they are doing their best to keep as low a profile as possible in case anyone asks them if they think that Johnson ought to resign. This is being made easy for them by a Scottish media, sorry, a media in the north of the UK, which isn’t exactly hounding them for answers. It’s far too busy with the vital job of telling scare stories to pensioners for that.

It’s a sign of how dysfunctional British politics have become that Johnson is still in office. It tells us that there is no accountability in the Westminster system, and without accountability there is no real democracy.

Johnson didn’t come to Scotland in order to learn anything. He most certainly didn’t make the trip in order to engage with Scottish opinions or views. He has zero concern for Scottish opinion. He is only here in order to demonstrate that he is the man in charge, the world king gracing a part of his domain with his presence. Johnson is visiting Scotland in the exact same way that a dog visits a lamp post and cocks its leg on it. To assert ownership and territorial dominance. It is pathetically transparent. Johnson is here for some photo opportunities which he hopes might impress the only people whose opinions he does care about – at least for the time being – the opinions of those Conservative back bench MPs whom he intends to threaten, cajole, browbeat, or bribe into keeping him in office.

It’s not just Johnson who has made it clear that he has no interest in listening to Scottish opinion, the Labour party leader Keir Starmer is just as bad. While Johnson was avoiding contact with any Scottish people, Keir Starmer was in the north of England where he asserted that there was “no case” for rejoining the European Union and made it clear that he would not try to take the UK back in. During an interview on BBC radio Newcastle he said: ” We have exited the EU and we’re not going back, and let me be very clear in the north east about that – there’s no case for rejoining.”

There is of course a case for rejoining. Starmer doesn’t want to make that case, but to say there exists no case for for rejoining the EU is flat out false. We’ve already got one UK party leader who is defined by his lies, we don’t need another. Starmer is telling that lie because he knows that his only route to Downing Street lies through recovering the so-called “red wall” seats in the north of England which voted in favour of Brexit and which fell to the Conservatives in the December 2019 General Election. The interests of strongly remain voting Scotland are to be sacrificed to Northern England’s political imperatives. In Scotland we know that there is a very strong case for rejoining the EU, but the British Westminster politicians who claim that they want Scotland to remain a partner in this so-called Union won’t even allow that case to be given an airing. And that right there tells you all you need to know about how Scotland’s needs can never be met within the United Kingdom.

Starmer hasn’t just given Scotland a lesson in how the UK is fundamentally incapable of meeting Scotland’s needs or providing a forum for Scotland’s concerns, he has also just blown up the small and diminishing chance of the Labour party in Scotland of recovering even a fraction of its former power and influence. Labour has already made it clear that it is just as disposed as the Conservatives to ignore the outcome of the democratic process in Scotland and continue to try and block any attempts by the Scottish Parliament to do what it was elected to do and deliver a second independence referendum. This makes it all but impossible for the Labour party to regain those voters in Scotland who defected to the SNP because they either support independence or because they see the necessity of another independence referendum in order to settle the constitutional question. In the Tories Scotland already has a party which defines itself by its visceral opposition to Scottish independence. It doesn’t need another.

Now Starmer has shown Labour’s remaining supporters in Scotland, a majority of whom were opposed to Brexit and who feel alienated by the self-harming course that the UK has taken since leaving the EU that they cannot look to Labour to undo the damage of Brexit and to restore the rights of European citizenship that were lost when the Conservatives took the UK out of the EU and into the hardest possible Brexit for purely selfish party political ends.

Scotland has already been abandoned by a Conservative party which knows that it does not need Scottish votes in order to secure power in Westminster. Now Scotland has also been abandoned by a Labour party which has as its over-riding priority the need to shore up its support in the English regions. Labour merely enables the Tories and can only ever attain power in Westminster by adopting Conservative policies.

If Scotland has been abandoned and rendered voiceless within the UK then there is no point at all in remaining within the UK. Independence is the only way that Scotland can either rejoin the EU or return to the Customs Union and Single Market. But more than that, independence is the only way that Scotland’s voice can be heard. Scotland deserves better than to be nothing more than a lamp post upon which British nationalist politicians mark their territorial dominance.

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