Sunak’s political honeymoon is already over

The Conservatives continue to provide evidence of their unfitness for office despite the coronation of a new unelected Prime Minister who unlike the previous unelected Prime Minister looks as though he will enjoy a honeymoon period in office albeit one which is likely to be short lived and which will not succeed in overturning Labour’s large lead over the Tories in the polls. The most recent poll has seen the Conservatives claw back 5% of Labour’s huge lead, but Starmer’s Tory Lite party remains well ahead.

Sunak is reportedly considering the implementation of a package of spending cuts and tax hikes worth up to £50 billion in what would amount to a return to 2010-style austerity, in the model of David Cameron’s government. However this time round the austerity will be being introduced in order to rescue the economy from the devastation wrought on it by the Conservatives themselves, not least their ideologically driven hard Brexit. Once the effects of Sunak’s austerity 2.0 start to be felt his polling honeymoon will be well and truly over.

However it has only been a week and the cracks are already showing in Sunak’s administration. Within days of taking office Sunak faced a barrage of entirely justified criticism for his unconscionable decision to reappoint the truly appalling Suella Braverman as Home Secretary just six days after she was forced to resign for what has transpired to be serial breaches of security. Her reappointment was part of a cheap and shoddy political deal as Sunak tried to prevent the various warring factions of his deeply divided party from plotting against him.

The Braverman story refuses to go away, it has now become apparent that Braverman is notorious amongst her colleagues for her willingness to leak sensitive information in order to secure a political advantage over members of her own party. It is a sign of Sunak’s weakness that he did a deal with Braverman, bringing her back into the job she was so recently sacked from in order to shore up his support on the frothing far right extremist wing of the Conservative party. This is despite the fact that it was widely known in government circles that Braverman could not be trusted with sensitive information. On Sunday we had the ludicrous sight of Michael Gove trying to defend Braverman by claiming that she accidentally sent a sensitive document to someone who was not permitted to see it it while she was deliberately trying to send it to someone else who was not permitted to see it either.

There is now also serious doubt about Braverman’s claim that she quickly took action as soon as she realised she had sent sensitive information to the wrong person. In an email seen by the BBC, Braverman told the recipient of the information to delete it and ignore it, rather than, as she had insisted, rapidly reporting the breach to the relevant government officials, saying, “as soon as I realised my mistake I rapidly reported this on official channels.” However it now appears that Braverman tried to cover it up and only came clean after being confronted with indisputable evidence of her breach of the ministerial code. Goodness, you don’t say that Braverman is dishonest as well as cruel and incompetent.

On Sunday we also had a report in the Sunday Times that Braverman ignored legal advice that the government is illegally detaining thousands of asylum seekers in an overcrowded and unsanitary detention centre which is experiencing outbreaks of diphtheria and scabies. The move could result in an expensive court action, if as seems likely, the detentions are challenged in court. The paper also reported that said Braverman was warned by officials that the Home Office had no chance of defending a legal challenge and the matter could also result in a public inquiry if exposed. Despite this, Braverman has done nothing to resolve the matter because she had refused to authorise spending on hotel rooms that would have allowed the migrants to be moved out of the detention centre.

This is a Home Secretary who is not just incompetent but is also deeply nasty and who revels in her inhumane unpleasantness. But never mind the institutional cruelty, Nicola Sturgeon called the Tories detestable, and that’s far far worse than illegally detaining people in disease ridden conditions and repeatedly leaking sensitive government information to your pals.

The laxity with which this Conservative government treats national security was further exposed the revelation that while she was Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss’s phone was hacked by spies believed to be working for Vladimir Putin, but the story was hushed up by Boris Johnson and cabinet secretary Simon Case in order not to damage Truss’s chances of becoming Tory party leader. The spies reportedly gained access to sensitive information, including discussions about the Ukraine war with foreign officials, as well as hundreds of photos of Truss posing in different hats, cosplaying Margaret Thatcher, and a letter to the editor of Vogue begging for a photo shoot.

At this juncture it’s worth pointing out that If the Tories wanted to keep their phones (and British interests) secure, they easily could. But in their immense arrogance and stupidity they chose not to, either that or they are bought and paid for by Russian money. Not that there is anything suspicious at all in the millionaire son of a KGB operative getting a peerage, oh no, and how dare you even suspect otherwise.

On Monday Sunak is due to meet with Scottish Conservative U-turner in chief Douglas Ross to discuss a strategy to ‘save the Union’. You might think that they could start with a rapid and whole hearted implementation of all the commitments made in Gordon Brown’s Vow, commitments which the Conservative party also signed up to, but we all know that there is as much chance of that happening as there is of Suella Braverman turning into a competent lawyer and politician who actually understands that illegal detentions and sacrificing human rights for short term political advantage are the kind of thing done by actual fascists.

You might also think that if Ross and Sunak really wanted to save the Union they might prevent their party from acting like fascists, and respect the results of those democratic events in Scotland which did not produce an outcome to their liking, but we all know that’s not going to happen either.

Instead it is reported that we are going to be in for a UK Government ‘charm offensive’ which is risible given the charmlessness of Douglas Ross and the Conservative party. Scotland’s democratic deficit will only deepen, but the Tories will score themselves some headlines in the anti-independence press, and that’s all that they are really interested in. Douglas Ross gets his hapless and petulant arse handed to him on a plate every FMQs, Ross is in no position to save the Union, he can’t even save his own credibility.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The Liz Truss of political prose

It’s not a joke, well, it is a joke, but in a different way entirely. The right wing Spectator magazine must have had some sort of nervous breakdown because it has seen fit to publish the turgid musings of “I’m not a nationalist because I’m British” blogger Effie Deans, writing under what may or may not be his or her real name of Irena Skuba. I am guessing that this too is a pseudonym as “Irena Skuba” has a suspiciously limited internet presence and there have been persistent rumours that Irena/Effie is really a male academic at Aberdeen Uni or perhaps even a joint creation of more than one person. I have yet to be convinced that Effie is not actually a performance art piece created by an independence supporter trying to see just how unhinged the writings of an anti-independence British nationalist can get without being rumbled as a parody. The answer to that is, very unhinged indeed.

The Spectator tells its readership of golf club bores that it is the “best written” weekly in the English language and that its writers’ only allegiance is to “clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion”. But they decided to have a week off for Effie.

For those of you with the immense good fortune never to have come across the semi-literate witterings of Effie/Irena, she/he or possibly they, is a Conservative supporting anti-independence troll whose prose does to the English language what a bowl of cement powder does to the digestive tract. As a writer, Effie has the same sensitivity to language as one of those random name generators on the Internet. Effie believes that sentences are not to be lovingly crafted on the page, but rather beaten into submission by the sheer weight of the syllables that are squeezed into them.

But it’s not just the frequency of Effie-isms, sentences which you have to read four times before concluding that they make no sense whatsoever, that elevates Effie into the hallowed halls of truly appalling writers, it is also the sentences that are, sadly, comprehensible, because all too often these contain opinions which are not just ungrounded, but which have flown off the planet altogether and are currently orbiting a distant planet like a black hole which crushes all sense and meaning out of existence. Effie truly is the Liz Truss of political prose.

In one memorable piece, Effie suggested that Scottish nationalism could be killed off for good by flooding Scotland with patriotic migrants from England so that the pesky natives were everywhere outnumbered by monarchy supporting true blue yeomen and women from the leafy shires. Cultural genocide doesn’t count when it’s committed by Brits.

In another article, Effie wrote of her horror of bilingual road signs in the Highlands, which she claimed got her hopelessly lost on her way to Fort William. This is because two lines of text is apparently far too confusing, although if you’ve ever tried to read one of Effie’s blogs, one line of text is confusing enough. Effie is one of those poor Brits who are confused and defeated by the Gaelic language, and still suffers night terrors about that time she went up to a big green and yellow square van with flashing blue lights and AIMBEALANS written on the side and tried to order a double vanilla and chocolate ice cream cone with sprinkles.

Now that Effie has broken into the mainstream media, she is a definite contender for a future episode of BBC Question Time, which needs a replacement for orange jaiket man now that we all know who he is and now has to bus in Tories from the North of England in order to make up a properly BBC balanced studio audience. As long as it isn’t filmed in Fort William she might actually make it to the studio.

It certainly will not be long before the BBC Scotland is doing the paper review and quoting Effie, next up is Brian Spanner presenting Debate Night Scotland.

The main thrust of her Spectator piece is that Nicola Sturgeon will find it harder to challenge Rishi Sunak because he is British Asian and his recent ancestors did not stride across the fields of Culloden slaughtering Jacobites. Effie, like many right wing British nationalists who are blind to their own nationalism is convinced that : ” Scottish nationalism depends on people who dislike Britain for a variety of historical reasons. The typical SNP supporter opposes Britain because of various historical grievances which it associates with the Tories. Mixed in with this is typically a West of Scotland sectarianism that blames Britain for everything that has gone wrong in Ireland.”

Nowhere in Effie’s world view is there any recognition of the reality of the modern Scottish independence campaign, that it is rooted in dissatisfaction with a semi-democratic Westminster system of government which perpetuates inequality and privilege and not at all about the past or ethnic nationalism. That is not a conceptual leap that Effie is willing or able to make because to do so would entail accepting that the rise to political prominence of the modern Scottish desire for independence is rooted in the shortcomings and failures of a British state which proclaims itself to be a union of the nations of these islands while simultaneously acting like a highly centralised unitary nation state. The modern Scottish independence movement is not primarily concerned with ancient history, rather it is motivated by finding workable solutions to the problems of modern Scotland, solutions which can only be implemented if Scotland possesses the full powers of an independent European state because these solutions are blocked by a sclerotic and undemocratic Westminster which runs the entire UK for the benefit of the wealthy and the interests of the financial sector in the City of London.

It is far easier and far more comfortable for Effie and her fellow Conservative Anglo-British nationalists to deny that they are in any way the problem, and that if they really want Scottish independence to go away it’s them and the British state that need to change, so instead they assert that it’s all the fault of Scottish nationalists, their hatred of the English and their obsession with the events of past centuries and historical grievances. No wonder the Spectator has published her, she provides a soothing balm to its Conservative readership in the rest of the UK, which has no understanding of just how unmoored her ideas are from the realities of modern Scottish politics. The fact that a prominent Conservative magazine has seen fit to publish Effie merely tells us how intellectually bankrupt British nationalism in Scotland has become.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Sunak : Zero to Nero in six hours

Well that didn’t take long, did it? It took a couple of weeks for the sheer useless awfulness of Liz Truss’s government to become apparent, although admittedly that was in large part because all of politics came to a halt due to the compulsory British nationalist commournathon. However Rish! Sunak’s exclamation mark is certainly nothing if not efficient. Normally an incoming Prime Minister can count on a honeymoon period of goodwill during which the floating voter public and their own party are willing to give them the benefit of any doubt that is going. It took Liz Truss until the unveiling of her gob-smackingly bad mini-budget to destroy that goodwill. Rish! has managed it in a mere six hours.

Anyone who wasn’t a fully paid up member of the Conservative party had low expectations of Sunak to begin with, after all, this is the guy who spent the last two and a half years enabling Boris Johnson, got fined by the police for breaking lockdown, kept his US Green card and his wife’s non-dom status so the couple could avoid paying British taxes on their immense fortune, and then like the thin skinned man child that he is, acted like he was the victim when it became public knowledge. Even so, what little credibility he had left was blown completely out of the water with the announcement of his cabinet of Brexit liars, fools, people whose hobby is pulling the wings off flies, and retreads from the Johnson premiership. Sunak managed to go from zero to Nero in just six hours.

At midday Sunak was promising to restore ‘integrity, professionalism and accountability’ to government. By tea time he had put Suella Braverman back into the post of Home Secretary, just a few days after she had been forced to resign for what turned out to be gross and repeated breaches of the ministerial code and then lying to the Prime Minister about it.

Braverman is, and I do not say this lightly, a truly repugnant politician, even by the appallingly low standards we have come to expect of the detestable party. In her brief tenure in office under Liz Truss she managed to deliver a frankly infantile and petulant blast at her opposition counterpart, characterising those who still have a functioning moral compass and who oppose her institutionalised cruelty as ‘the tofu-eating wokerati’. Before entering Parliament her licence to practise law in New York state was suspended. According to human rights lawyer Shoaib Khan, “Can honestly say I have not met a single person who knows Suella Braverman, has worked with her or met her who has had anything positive to say. She’s just incompetent. He added, ” She’ll say things about law, which are plainly wrong and stick to it.”

The rise of Suella Braverman is one of the genuine mysteries of modern politics. She has no discernible charm, intellect or talent and projects cruelty like toxic radiation. She has lied about her experience, falsely claiming on her CV to have contributed to an important legal text book, a book whose authors assert that Braverman made no more contribution to than doing a spot of photocopying. The truth is that Braverman would be out of her depth as under secretary for photocopying.

Braverman also said that her ‘dream’ was to see a plane packed with desperate asylum seekers taking off on a one way trip to an oppressive central African dictatorship. There’s a word for people like Braverman who delight in their own cruelty and take pleasure from the suffering and misery of others, that word is sadist, and no one who claims that his government will be characterised by ‘integrity, professionalism, and accountability’ should put someone who clearly displays sadistic personality traits in a position of power over vulnerable people, and certainly not when that sadist was sacked from the same job just last week for committing a gross breach of the professional standards demanded of those in such a position. Putting her back in charge of the Home Office is an atrocity, It displays neither integrity, professionalism nor accountability on the part of Sunak, what it really displays is his political weakness and that is priority is to placate the warring factions of his deeply divided party in the vain hope that it will prevent them from plotting his downfall.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we now also have the gurning mug of Michael Gove back in the cabinet, a man who thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to tell the most blatant and intelligence insulting lies as long as he’s terribly terribly polite while doing so.

We also have the return of Dominic Raab and his angrily throbbing temple vein, and just to pour caustic soda on the open wound, Gavin Williamson is back, the bastard offspring of Private Pike from Dad’s army and Joseph Goebbels. Even Tory commentator, founder of Conservative Home and G Beebies News presenter Tim Montgomerie was appalled by Williamson’s return to cabinet, tweeting : “A PM committed to integrity does not appoint Gavin Williamson to government.”

Williamson is a man who, let us not forget was previously sacked from the government for leaking national security information. It’s a mark of just how appalling the re-appointment of Braverman is that no one is talking about Williamson.

This is a cabinet which illustrates how tired and lacking in talent the Tories have become after Johnson’s purge of Conservative remainers. It’s a cabinet cobbled together in an attempt to buy Sunak some time.

We now have Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Gavin Williamson back in the cabinet, all of whom were sacked for breaches of the ministerial code. This, apparently, is what passes for integrity, professionalism and accountability, in case you were wondering.

On Wednesday it was Sunak’s first PMQs, and what we got was truly dire. It was the exact same shtick we have come to know and loathe from Boris Johnson, a copy of all Johnson’s worst lines, but delivered by a low energy nerd, even down to the tired old Corbyn and Brexit jibes. It was not just poor, it was also dishonest.

It’s only Sunak’s first full day in the job and he is already coming under pressure to sack his Home Secretary and his judgement is being seriously questioned. Suella Braverman failed to turn up to the House of Commons to answer the Urgent Question on her resignation and reappointment as Home Secretary. Waste of space Speaker Lindsay Hoyle conveniently waite until Braverman had scuttled out the chamber before announcing the Urgent Question on her reappointment six days after resigning for misconduct over a security breach. Accountability much?

This, and Sunak’s lacklustre performance at PMQs will have done little to reassure jittery Tory nerves that he is the guy who can pull their failing party back from the electoral abyss.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

An elected dictatorship without the election

We are in for the fifth Prime minister in six years, and the tenth Tory Prime Minister that Scotland hasn’t voted for. They say that bad luck comes in threes and right on cue along comes the third Conservative Prime Minister this year. This time the Conservatives aren’t even pretending that there’s anything democratic about it, Rish! Sunak with his exclamation mark of ambition becomes Prime Minister despite having been rejected by his own party just six weeks ago. He does so without facing a single hustings, a single interview, or even the most cursory questioning, never mind facing any sort of vote, not from his party members, and certainly not from the wider public. He didn’t even make any public statements during the truncated leadership contest. Sunak become Prime Minister after party elders stitched it up by themselves behind closed doors, the kind of process you more normally associate with a tinpot dictatorship.

It was traditionally said that the Westminster system, which hands almost unlimited power to the Prime Minister, is an elected dictatorship, now the Conservatives have dispensed with the elected part, we are just left with the dictator.

Sunak is the guy who, during his failed leadership campaign a few weeks ago boasted about taking public money away from the most deprived areas in order to give it to leafy and well-heeled Conservative constituencies. We now have an unelected multi-millionaire imposing austerity and spending cuts on the poorest and the most vulnerable, making them pay for the economic havoc caused by his own party. You can bet it won’t be Sunak, who together with his wife has an estimated fortune of £730 million, or his rich cronies who will suffer financially due to the Conservative created economic crisis assailing Britain. It will be benefits claimants, the low paid, and ordinary struggling households.

During his previous failed leadership bid, Sunak vowed to extend ‘vilification of the UK’ to the definition of extremism and people deemed to be guilty of vilification of Britain would be referred to the anti-extremist Prevent programme. Sunak vowed to “root out those who are vocal in their hatred of our country”. Peter Fahy, a former senior police chief denounced Sunak’s plan, saying it strayed into thought crime. With Scottish Tories constantly loudly proclaiming that Scottish independence is predicated on a hatred of the English, no one in Scotland who values democracy and Scotland’s right to self-determination can afford to be complacent as this Prime Minister who was elected by no one attempts to block the Scottish Parliament from implementing the mandate for another independence referendum given to it by the electorate of Scotland at the Holyrood elections of May 2021.

The Tories are now trying to tell us that Sunak is a ‘safe pair of hands’ who can be trusted to make the right decisions on the economy, but Sunak told us in 2016 that Brexit would be good for the economy, an assertion which was obviously wrong then and is even more painfully wrong now. The questionable nature of Sunak’s judgement was also evident from his ‘eat out to help out scheme during the pandemic which at great cost to the public purse was estimated by researchers to have been responsible for one sixth of covid cases during the late summer of 2020. Then he handed over £37bn to his Tory cronies for dodgy PPE contracts which were never delivered. Sunak is no one’s saviour, certainly not ours, and not the Tory party’s either.

Now, as he introduces a new round of austerity his new scheme will be eat nowt to help out the rich.

Unburdened by any public mandate as he is, Sunak has, entirely unsurprisingly, ruled out an early general election. This is for the exact same reason that the Conservatives also rule out a second Scottish independence referendum, because they are terrified of the verdict of the people. If there was to be a general election within the next few weeks, the Tories would be facing electoral oblivion.

After accepting the crown, sorry, job, Sunak addressed the public with a brief acceptance speech that made Liz Truss seem like an animated and engaging public speaker, Sunak gave us heavy vibes of the area manager for a car part distribution company. It was like someone had deep-faked an android mash up of Truss and Sunak, the Trussunak Mk 1, complete with a long and very awkward pause at the end. He had all the presence of a sex robot which had just been told that no one fancied it. Then he left without taking questions. Why should he take questions, it’s not like he’s accountable to anyone. We shouldn’t be surprised that Sunak struggled with the auto-cue, and both looked and didn’t look at the camera at the same time, after all, he can’t fuel up a car properly or work a contactless card machine. He has staff for that sort of thing.

The fact that a British Indian and practising Hindu has become Prime Minister has been hailed as a victory for diversity and inclusivity, Sunak’s policies are very much a defeat for diversity and inclusivity. However It is genuinely moving we have a Prime Minister whose wife is a billionaire who doesn’t pay her taxes, and we can all be proud that someone has finally climbed their way up from private school to Oxbridge to merchant banker to Prime Minister, taking in immense wealth and privilege along the way.

Sunak’s coronation represents the final collapse of the democratic pretensions of the Westminster Parliament. We have an appointed Prime Minister who was rejected by his own party just a few weeks ago, who does not have the support of Conservative members or the wider electorate , and who is about to embark on a damaging new round of austerity for which the Conservatives have no mandate, an austerity which is only necessary because of Conservative lies about Brexit and their criminal mismanagement of the economy. The Tories will try to avoid a General Election as long as they can in an effort to stave off the damning verdict that will be passed on them by the electorate, but the very best that they can hope for now is that the Rishbot can salvage a few seats from the political wreckage that calls itself the Conservative and Unionist party.

The Tories have broken democracy, they have broken the economy, they have broken Britain and they have broken the union, it is some comfort that among the damage that they have wrought, the Conservatives have also broken themselves. Here’s hoping it finishes the detestable party off for good.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The Tory lettuceship contest

The lettuce wins hands down. The Star newspaper had set up a live feed of a photo of Truss beside a lettuce and a caption asking which would last longer, well now we know, the lettuce wins hands down. This may mean that the lettuce will be the next Prime Minister, and it would certainly make a better job of it than Truss did.

As Mhairi Black MP tweeted, this feels like the Tories had signed up for a month’s free trial and have only just remembered to cancel it. Truss’s six week reign as PM also included 10 days off for national mourning and two weeks off for the conference season. She worked just 12 days as PM during her time in office.

Truss did not apologise in her brief resignation speech, none of it is apparently her fault. Shockingly, but not surprisingly, the Tories do not want a General Election but are planning an internal party lettuceship election to stitch things up amongst themselves. According to the Times, Boris Johnson plans to stand. May all the gods help us.

This is of course most likely what Johnson had in mind all the time when he backed Truss for PM, it stuck the knife into Sunak, which would have been reason enough, but by backing a weak candidate he knew was unsuitable for the job he could position himself for a return to power once Truss failed. Although it’s unlikely that even Johnson realised just how quickly Truss’s administration would implode.

Since being forced out of office Johnson has been in the USA giving speeches at £150K a pop. He missed last night’s vote because he is on holiday in the Caribbean, but he’d probably have missed it anyway because he has missed every vote since July. He hasn’t stopped claiming his £84K salary though. People briefing on behalf of Boris Johnson say he is expected to stand in the Tory leadership contest because, ahem, he believes it is a matter of national interest and for the good of the nation that he does so. Give me strength. He’s getting his lying in early this time.

So there’s the Tories this week, wittering on about the need for calm and stability in government, and how next week they can give the country a sober and sensible head, and along comes that lying corrupt balloon and the Brexit circus of grotesques that he brings along in his wake.

There were reports on Thursday afternoon that the head of the 1922 Committee said on Thursday that the membership would get a vote. These are the clowns who inflicted Truss on us, if there was any justice, the Tory membership should be banned from having any say on who becomes the new Prime Minister and should collectively be sent to the naughty step to sit in darkness and reflect on just how out of touch and outright nasty they are. The Tories are now going to choose a new Prime Minister just six weeks after they chose the last one. The Conservatives are allowed to change their minds, but they insist that the voters of Scotland are not.

I cannot stress enough just how few fucks I give about the opinions or feelings of a Conservative party membership which was entrusted with steering the ship of state and steered it straight into an iceberg, and now it seems that the Westminster system is going to let them do it all over again – and you know that they will give us back Boris Johnson, who was forced from office in disgrace just a few weeks ago. This is beyond absurd. At this rate the next Prime Minister will be Murdo Fraser.

We need a General Election now if democracy is to have any meaning. As Nicola Sturgeon pointed out, Liz Truss is merely a symptom of a fundamentally dysfunctional Westminster system. Are there any Better Together types who still want to argue that Scotland could not possibly do better than this complete and utter shitshow, because if they are still intent on arguing that – and you can bet that they are, they now have even less credibility and self-awareness than an ex Prime Minister who went head to head with a lettuce and lost. Do any of them have any nuggets of wisdom about those ‘broad shoulders’ of the UK to share with us. A written constitution does not seem like a bad idea at all at this juncture.

And right on cue up pops the perma-smug Andrew Bowie who tweeted : “Let’s get this done and get on delivering on the manifesto that we got elected on. That must be our focus after all this.” Your party has had twelve years to ‘get this done’ Twelve years, twelve years in which you have wrought economic and political havoc, and now you want to ‘get this done’ It’s your miserable party which is done, and along with it your career. We are sick of the Conservatives, sick of careerists and the revolving Tory door of talentless hacks competing to out Daily Mail one another – look where that has got us.

Even now after all that has happened it is striking that so many conservative MPs are still talking about what is “ best for the party”. Party still comes before country and constituents and democracy. It’s not a General Election that is needed, it’s a revolution, and every single sitting Tory MP should be disbarred from standing for re-election.

But we know that the Conservatives are determined to avoid a General Election as they know that they would be annihilated. Johnson said that the last General Election was the most important in a generation, that’s how long it would take for the Conservative party to recover. But whoever takes over will inherit a divided and broken party which is unable to govern. The instability, the plotting, the sheer self-interested selfishness, the corruption and the traducing of democracy and standards of decency in government. None of it will stop. And on top of it all we will have a government led by a Prime Minister who is implementing policies that no one has voted for, not even their own party. The infighting and navel gazing will only continue while people freeze, food prices soar, and trade with Europe continues to fall off a cliff.

There’s a lot to be said for having the independence referendum next week.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Building a winning case

On Saturday, a full 48 hours before the publication of the Scottish government’s paper setting out the economic case for independence and its plans for the currency and the border with England, Blair Mcdougall, the former chief of Better Together was tweeting the imminent release of a video which he claimed was going to comprehensively debunk the paper. Since the paper had yet to be published and Blair cannot possibly have seen it, much less digested and considered its contents, that leaves only two possibilities.

The first possibility is that the video he mentioned must have been produced with the assistance of Blair’s time machine, although you might think that he really ought to have have loaned it to his Better Together buddies in the Tory party and then they would have seen just how much of a disaster Liz Truss was going to be for the claim that Scotland needs the economic stability of the UK. Mind you, he could also have used it to see the abject failure of the Better Together parties to ‘kill nationalism stone dead’, so he might have had a wee word in their ear about the need to ensure that all the fine promises that they made in 2014 actually got kept, and then in 2022 he wouldn’t be desperately tweeting that he had already debunked an economic paper that hadn’t yet been published.

The only other alternative is that Blair is a dyed in the wool British nationalist who would still argue against Scottish independence even if presented with unarguable evidence that in an independent Scotland every sheep would shit solid gold turds. But no, that can’t be right, because Blair is a Labour man and that means his British nationalism can’t possibly be nationalist.

I would not be remotely surprised if this debunking video features the stylings of man who happens to share a name with a fast food burger clown, who is very much the go-to guy for warnings that whatever economic policies are adopted by an independent Scotland, we will be without a fixed abode, sitting in the dark, and unable to put food on the table of the home we have just been evicted from. Oh, wait, that’s the UK.

Meanwhile the heid bummer, with the accent on bummer, of anti-independence graph manufacturers These Islands tweeted in reply to an independence supporter who wanted to know if his anti-independence think tank had anything to say about the political and economic crisis engulfing the UK other than to suggest that all will be well with a General election and to tell Scotland that things will always be worse in an independent Scotland

“Think of it this way. Scottish nationalism is a virus. I’m in the vaccine business. And you’re a vaccine sceptic: demanding to know why the vaccine doesn’t cure every known disease.”

We can take that as a no then.

Presumably British nationalism is an even more virulent and debilitating virus, because one of its prime symptoms is deluding those infected by it into believing it doesn’t exist and to deny that there are any structural or systemic issues with the British state that cannot be solved with a change of governing parties after a General Election. This delusion then leads them to do mad things like voting Tory or setting up patronising ‘think tanks’ with the likes of Neil Oliver, British nationalism’s Propagandalf.

Just about every mainstream commentator is wondering whether the current self inflicted Anglo- British nationalist malaise of the British state is worse than Suez or not, we have had four chancellors in as many months and a Prime Minister who has only been in office for just over a month might not survive in post beyond next week. The pound is tanking, interest rates are soaring, and even the Telegraph has been forced to concede that Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster. Yet the response from These Islands is Nothing to see here, look over there, Scottish independence would be infinitely worse because it’s nationalist, and that’s bad.

Unlike Blair, I’m not going to pass much comment on a paper which I’ve not read. However I do want to talk about the fascinating opinion poll published on Sunday in The National, you know, because you can actually meaningfully discuss things which have already been published. (Wee hint for you there Blair.)

The poll gives a baseline support for independence of 50% when the standard question is asked, however the really interesting finding is that support for independence soars to 61% when respondents were asked about an independent Scotland in which the happiness and well-being of citizens and respect for the environment are prioritised and where state pensions are boosted from £141.85 to £225 per week.

You might think, “Oh big deal, offer a land of milk and honey and people will vote for it.” However the real point here is that this poll tells us that the 50% who say that they’d vote No to independence are not in fact all hard core British nationalists, sorry ‘anti-nationalist unionists’, à la Blair McDougall and his pal Ronald, many of them are open to persuasion if the independence movement makes an attractive and plausible case to them. The magic figure of a 60% yes vote is attainable if the independence movement makes the right case and fights an effective campaign.

This is all the more reason to stop obsessing about process, we won’t win independence by arguing amongst ourselves. Instead we need to concentrate on making that positive case for independence which can build overwhelming support for independence amongst the wider public in Scotland. This poll tells us that unarguable majority support really is possible, ad that is what has got Blair an These Islands Mr Patronising so rattled.

Hopefully tomorrow with the publication of the Scottish Government’s paper we will have a firm basis upon which to build that case. It comes as pressure mounts within the Conservative party to ditch Liz Truss in a last ditch effort to minimise the scale of the defeat which the Tories are staring at.

It looks like we are going to be in for a news-packed week, unfortunately I might not be able to blog every day as my other half is going to the USA to visit his family, the first time he has seen them since the pandemic and since his sister passed away from covid. I will be staying at home as I am not really fit enough for a transatlantic trip. It’s the first time sine the stroke that he has gone away, some friends are coming to stay to help me as I’d struggle to manage by myself. I will blog when I can.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The new Tory magazine: Chancellor Monthly

Liz Truss has attempted to save her political career by throwing her Chancellor under the bus and sacking him for doing what she wanted him to do and making a screeching U-turn on her flagship policy, announcing that she will not after all be cutting Corporation Tax but will instead be going forward with the increase planned by Sunak and Johnson. Truss has just ripped up the policy which Tory party members elected her to deliver just a few weeks ago. This is a government in free fall. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, noted that reversing the decision not to raise corporation tax will not by itself fill the gap in the public finances created by the unfunded tax cuts in the mini-budget.

Truss’s press conference on Friday was only a few minutes long but still managed to be awkward and excruciating. Truss’s press team had clearly taken the decision that the less time she was exposed to the media the less damage she could do. There were no apologies, no explanations, no acknowledgement that anything that has happened over the past few weeks was in any way her fault. However in those brief few minutes she showed that she has no clue how to fund the tax cuts that she insists are necessary. Truss delivered a brief stilted statement,and looking like a terrified rabbit caught in the headlights with long and uncomfortable pauses as she scanned the journalists in attendance desperately looking for a friendly face. Unfortunately for her Vogue was not there.

She was asked why she wasn’t quitting as Prime Minister, and the prime architect of the economic chaos of the past couple of weeks said that she was staying to ensure ‘economic stability. Truss took just four questions, two from right-wing newspapers, one from the BBC and one from ITV, no follow up questions were allowed. And then she fled the room. Even those supposedly friendly faces asked difficult questions, Truss is not just brazenly incompetent – she’s a coward – she had lost the room, she has lost the country, and she has lost her party.

If you do a press conference at a time of crisis in your leadership like this, you stay and answer all the questions. Even Boris Johnson knew that. There was no opportunity to ask her what she meant about a controlling the size of the state and does this mean that there will be a return to spending cuts despite her assurance to the Commons on Wednesday that there would be none. In her brief time in office she has already made a number of major U-turns, no one should have any confidence that her promise not to cut public spending should be any different.

Kwarteng has been replaced by Jeremy Hunt, the fourth Chancellor in as many months, a decision that Hunt will certainly come to regret. Chancellor monthly, it’s the Tory party’s new magazine. Kwarteng is the second shortest serving Chancellor on record with just eight days longer in office than Conservative MP Iain Macleod who served only 30 days as Chancellor in 1970 before dying of a heart attack.

It’s not just Truss and Kwarteng who have ruined what little was left of their political credibility. It was only yesterday that Douglas Ross insisted that he had every confidence in the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and just a couple of weeks ago that he and the Scottish Conservatives were hailing the tax cutting mini budget and demanding that the Scottish Government copy it in full. You can be sure that BBC Scotland will be hounding him for a statement. Yeah. Right.

If Truss thought that blaming Kwarteng for a disaster she shares responsibility for was going to restore confidence in her leadership she is going to be sadly disappointed. Truss needed to deliver a reassuring performance at that press conference, but she did worse than anyone expected even given the low expectations we have come to have of her. Truss has no political authority left. She has no support amongst her own MPs, who are now happily leaking the private conversations in Conservative MP WhatsApp groups in which they plot the quickest way to get rid of her.

Even the staunch Truss backer Christopher Chope is in dismay after Truss’s abysmal performance, telling Times Radio the Tory party is a ‘laughing stock’ and the Conservative economic agenda is ‘trashed’, adding: ‘I don’t know where to go from here frankly.’

Truss needed her press conference to reassure three constituencies, the markets, Conservative MPs and the public. She failed to reassure the markets, she failed to reassure Tory MPs, and it’s highly unlikely that she will have reassured the public. This is a Prime Minister whose remaining time in office is numbered at most in terms of a couple of weeks. According to reports it is widely believed among Tory MPs that her press conference has only made things worse with one telling Beth Rigby of Sky News, the question is no longer should Truss go, but when should she go.

The odds on Truss surviving the next few weeks have now shortened dramatically. Even her own supporters are in open despair with some plotting to replace her with a caretaker administration headed by Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak.

We have had four chancellors in four months and five prime ministers in five years – the way things are going we might be in for a sixth prime minister very soon, but in the meantime we are certainly in for more uncertainty and instability from a Conservative government that has crashed the economy, adding to the misery of hundreds of thousands of households who are already struggling to make ends meet due to the economic mismanagement of the Conservative party. So how is that ‘strong and stable UK’ that Better Together promised us working out for everyone?

To paraphrase what one of the few sensible audience members on BBC Question Time said, a woman who unaccountably got through the BBC’s anti-independence vetting : “There will never be a perfect time for a referendum, there is never a perfect time for any major life decision, but let’s get real here if this isn’t it, I really don’t know when is.”

Meanwhile, on social media a screen shot allegedly taken from Neil Oliver’s GBeebies show was circulating of British nationalism’s and the anti-maskers’ very own Propagandalf apparently railing about how “woke-a-nauts” are using “death spaniels”.

Everyone I sent the photo of the screenshot to asked if it was real. I can only say Oliver and GBeebies’ attempts to stir up hysteria about the culture wars are so far gone down a spiral of crazy, and the right wing in the UK is so detached from reality, that I find it impossible to tell.

It’s probably a fake but the scary thing is that it could all too easily be genuine. We are living in a satirical nightmare, I have no idea what “woke-a-naut death spaniels” means, unless it’s a post-punk band featured on the John Peel Show in the 1980s, but two years on from my stroke, if I am ever able to get another dog it’s definitely going to be a wee ginger woke-a-naut death spaniel. It would be the perfect dug for this unhinged age.

 

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The growing distrusst in the Tories

It’s day two in the court case that is only happening because the Conservatives and their Labour fellow travellers refuse to accept the democratic will of the people of Scotland as expressed through the ballot box in last year’s Scottish Parliament elections. As far as those parties are concerned Scottish democracy was a one off event which took place on 18 September 2014 when the Scottish people gave them the answer that they were looking for and apparently this meant that the Scottish electorate would not be permitted in any subsequent democratic event to deliver a result that was not to the liking of the Better Together parties, well who knew? certainly not the people of Scotland. If the Better Together parties had told us that a No vote in 2014 would result in giving them carte blanche to cancel Scottish democracy, the result of that referendum is likely to have been very different.

The mere fact that this court case is happening at all is proof in and of itself that democracy in Scotland is not safe as long as this country remains under Westminster’s lying and gaslighting thumb. What we have right now is a British Government which is insistent that the people of Scotland do not have the right to vote for another independence referendum to be held despite successive British governments assuring us that the people of Scotland have the absolute right to decide Scotland’s future for themselves within a union which we have always been told is voluntary.

The question has now gone to the judges to decide and it is likely to be some months before a ruling is given. In the meantime Scotland must endure the full brunt of the horror show that is this Conservative government, a government which Scotland didn’t vote for and which is hell bent on implementing catastrophic policies which no one voted for, not even those who were foolish or selfish enough to vote Conservative in the General Election in 2019.

Truss promised growth, growth, growth, and true to her word she has delivered, debt is growing, inflation is growing, mortgage and rent costs are growing, despair is growing, public anger is growing, the risk of a recession is growing, the detestability of the Tories is growing, and the number of people who wish they could go back to six months ago when they had never heard of Liz Truss is growing.

Just two people, Truss and Kwarteng, have tanked the U.K. economy and put mortgages and pensions at considerable risk. No mandate, no vote, no supporting evidence. This is the Westminster system, maximum power with minimum accountability.

The implosion of Truss’s leadership is not surprising, merely the speed with which it has happened. However Truss is only the logical and inevitable consequence of a Conservative party that has abandoned, truth, honesty and common decency and a Westminster system that gives almost unlimited power to a Prime Minster who can attain office purely on the say so of their party and without having to face the public in a General Election.

The crisis caused by Kwarteng’s utter calamity of a mini-budget has not been averted. On Friday the Bank of England will stop buying up government gilts yet Truss today insisted that her government will neither do a U-turn on its £45 billion package of tax cuts which preferentially benefit the rich nor cut public spending to make up the shortfall in government revenues which those tax cuts will create. Economists such as Richard Murphy have warned that there is now a very high risk of another catastrophic fall in the value of the pound, which will have a knock on effect in terms of higher prices for imports and above all for energy, which is priced in dollars on the international markets. Others have said that there is now no credible route out of this crisis which does not involve reversing the planned tax cuts or possibly even tax rises.

Either of those would represent a humiliating climb down for a Prime Minister who has only been in office for a month. Following her appearance at PMQs in front of a grim faced Tory party – and you know it’s bad for the Conservatives when even Andrew Bowie has that trademark smug smirk wiped off his face – Truss undertook a tour of the Commons tea rooms and later to address Conservative MPs at a 1922 Committee meeting in an attempt to bolster support for a leadership which is already failing even as it has only just begun.

Tours of tearooms and letters to the 1922 Committee, this isn’t a grown up Parliament, it’s bloody Hogwarts. Reports of the meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee on Wednesday where the Prime Minister tried to rally her MPs made for grim reading for her dwindling band of reporters, according to Jim Pickard of the Financial Times : One Tory MP said the overwhelming mood at the 1922 meeting was “sad”, adding: “It was just a terrible feeling of sorrow in the room.” That would be sorrow for themselves, not for the lives they are ruining. Self serving and self-regarding to the end.

The political editor of the Daily Mail, which did so much to inflict Truss on us, said that a Tory MP in attendance at the meeting said that Truss’s appearance “was like someone trying to light a fire using a magnifying glass. Using damp wood. In the dark.” So one of her more animated performances then. Another described her appearance as ‘funereal’ and replied Absolutely not” when asked if she had managed to reassure MPs worried that their party had made a terrible mistake by choosing her as leader.

ITV’s political editor Robert Peston tweeted: A” member of Truss’s own cabinet tells me Truss’s and Kwarteng’s governance is so dire that some Tory MPs would vote against her in a confidence vote, preferring even a general election that cost them their seats to the current economic chaos.” It seems as though the 1922 Committee want Truss gone as much as everyone else does.

This is unprecedented stuff about a leader who has only been in office for a couple of weeks and who should in theory be enjoying a political honeymoon. Should the pound tank on Friday as some have predicted there is a very real chance that Truss may not survive in office until the end of next week. The only problem is the damage that she might do before Tory MPs decide that losing their seats in a General Election is a more preferable option to the economic meltdown she and Kwarteng might cause.

I am feeling pretty fatigued today (Wednesday) and wasn’t going to write a new blog piece but today is also the second anniversary of my stroke, my ‘strokiversary’ and the two year mark represents the period after which it’s unlikely that any further recovery will be made. I still have significant disabilities which it now appears will be life long, but on a more positive note I am still very much alive, with a full set of marbles, and have started to tentatively dip my toe back into public speaking again, although I am completely reliant on transport being provided as I can no longer drive and using public transport is challenging and exhausting. It’s vital that campaigning for Scottish independence to get us out of this Westminster mess steps up a gear and I am determined to play as full a part as my partially functioning body allows.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The seismic court case

Over on social media Tory supporters are still greetin like snottery nosed weans whose X-Box has been taken away because of their detestable behaviour. It’s not fair! Apparently we now live in a country where it is a far worse crime to say that certain behaviours and political policies are detestable than it is to implement, espouse or support detestable political policies which by any objective standard are cruel, inhumane, or unjust and which have led to the deaths of many tens of thousands of people. Because the real hard done by individuals here are Conservative supporters on social media, not those whose lives have been blighted or cut short by the policies of a party that they continue to support despite a mountain of evidence that it is actively malign.

The performative outrage of Tory supporters on social media is a joy to behold as they howl their anger into the heartless and compassion free void of their echo chambers. What are they expecting to achieve? To get some undecided voters to go : “Well that’s it, I feel really sorry for those poor Tories. Never mind that I work every hour god sends but I can’t feed my kids, never mind that I can’t heat my house, never mind that I don’t know if I will be able to keep a roof over my family’s heads, they’ve got my vote.” Aye right, that’s about as likely to happen as Suella Braverman suddenly discovering a social conscience.

What those Tories on social media fail to grasp is that neither Nicola Sturgeon nor anyone else who believes the Tories to be detestable cares about their butt hurt. As far as Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are concerned dyed in the wool Tory supporters are politically expendable. They are never going to back the SNP under any circumstances but publicly calling out the Tories for being detestable will bolster her standing amongst the large majority of voters in Scotland for whom the Conservatives are anathema. The Tories are happy to consider remainers, Scottish independence supporters, migrants, EU citizens, benefits claimants, the disabled and the poor as as politically expendable, but oh how they squeal when it’s their turn. So repeat after me, Tory snowflakes, we don’t care about your feelings.

However the big news on Tuesday was the first of a two day hearing at the UK Supreme Court into the Scottish Government’s case about whether Holyrood has the right to proceed with an independence referendum without the approval of Downing Street. In strict legal terms it’s the approval of the House of Commons which may or may not be required but in practical terms in the semi-democracy of the United Kingdom that means the permission of the Prime Minister, an office whose current incumbent is a representative of a party that Scotland has consistently rejected at the ballot box since 1955 and who enjoys her power with no public mandate derived from a UK General Election but rather was put in office by a vote of her own party members.

It is safe to say that this is one of the most important cases ever heard by the UK Supreme Court, a case which has immense constitutional ramifications and which goes to the very heart of the nature of the British state itself. This case will determine whether the United Kingdom is in fact what generations of British politicians have assured us that it is – a voluntary partnership of free nations, or is Scotland a de facto prisoner of an unequal union where the democratic voice of the people of Scotland counts for nothing and can be vetoed by a Prime Minister with no democratic mandate from Scotland.

The sad truth is that if the Labour and Conservative parties had respect for the democratic will of the people of Scotland then this case would never have been necessary in the first place, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross angrily called it a disgrace that the Scottish Government is bringing this case, the real disgrace is that he and Labour’s Anas Sarwar refuse to accept that their parties lost the May 2021 Scottish Parliament election and are still trying to impose their will on the people of Scotland regardless.

Democracy can only function when those parties which lost the argument at the ballot box accept the verdict of the people. No one is saying that the Conservatives or Labour must now actively support another referendum. They are free to continue to put their case against another referendum to the people of Scotland in future elections, and if they win a majority at Holyrood they can prevent another referendum from taking place, but what they cannot do while claiming to be democrats is to prevent the people’s will as expressed in the May 2021 election from being implemented. Yet that is precisely what they are trying to do now. It is indeed, as Nicola Sturgeon said, a disgrace that the Scottish Government is having to take its case to the UK’s highest court in seeking to hold an independence referendum. This should not be decided by judges, it should be decided by the people and it was decided by the people in May 2021.

Despite what the Tories claim, the SNP did accept the outcome of the 2014 referendum, the Scottish Government did not attempt to declare independence anyway, Scotland remains a part of the UK, but because we are supposed to live in a democracy, supporters of independence remained free to put their case to the people in subsequent elections, that is how democracy works. Because of widespread unhappiness in Scotland at the difference between what Better Together promised in 2014 and what the Conservative party at Westminster has actually delivered,in May last year the pro-independence parties secured a majority at Holyrood elected on an unequivocal mandate for another independence referendum. If the Tories and Labour had honoured their 2014 promises to Scotland we might not be in this position now, but they didn’t, and they are resorting to undemocratic measures in an attempt to prevent the people of Scotland from holding them to account.

If the Supreme Court finds in favour of the British Government it will be a ruling that Scotland has been lied to for generations by British politicians who have always told us that this is a voluntary union and that the people of Scotland have a sovereign right to determine their future for themselves. It will be a ruling that the Union as it has always been understood is dead. This is a seismic case and whatever the final ruling turns out to be it will shake the foundations of the union and may very well be the key event that brings the whole crumbling edifice crashing down.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

A tale of two speeches

Twitter on Monday was like : “I started my own company with 5 pence and a stale bread roll and now I employ 7 million people and spend all the profits on taking blind deaf orphans from deprived communities on holidays to the seaside. I’m a Tory voter, why does Nicola Sturgeon hate me?” Oh I dunno, possibly because you are a liar.

Of course if the Scottish Tories had a shred of self-awareness they would rein in the bot farm and instead ask themselves why it is that Scotland hasn’t seen fit to give them a majority since 1955. That reason might lie in the differences between Liz Truss’s speech to the Conservative party conference and Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the SNP party conference. It was not just the difference in delivery, Truss gives a robotic and stilted performance in all her public appearances, far more importantly it was the content, but also the emotional intelligence behind the words, or rather the lack thereof as far as Truss’s speech was concerned.

Truss’s speech was just 36 minutes long, the shortest conference address by any leader of a major party in recent history. Typically the conference speech of a party leader comes in at about an hour long, which was the approximate length of both Nicola Sturgeon’s and Keir Starmer’s speeches to their own party conferences. The relative brevity of Truss’s speech might just be because Truss knew that the shorter her speech, the less time there would be for her to make yet another catastrophic error and send the pound crashing to parity with the Vietnamese Dong. It was also likely to be because she was facing an audience in which a large majority of the party’s elected representatives do not support her and would be looking for more ammunition which they could use to bring her crashing down.

As it was the most memorable thing about Truss’s speech was that she chose to wear the exact same dress as Emma Thomson wore when portraying a fictional fascist leader in a future dystopian Britain in a BBC drama as she delivered a speech announcing the introduction of internment camps for her opponents. Meanwhile in today’s dystopian Britain, Liz Truss used her speech in a fascist frock to deliver a list of her enemies whom she dubbed the “anti-growth coalition.” She stopped short of announcing the introduction of internment camps but you just knew that Suella Braverman was gagging to book some one way flights to Rwanda.

Suella Braverman told the Conservative party conference that her dream was to see a plane packed with desperate asylum seekers take off on a one way trip to Rwanda, for her part Nicola Sturgeon told the SNP conference : “My dream is that we live in a world where those fleeing violence and oppression are shown compassion and treated like human beings. Not shown the door and bundled onto planes like unwanted cargo.”

For her part, the dominant theme in Nicola Sturgeon’s speech was compassion. You don’t hear much talk of compassion, empathy, love, humanity, or decency in a Conservative party conference speech because if the Institute for Economic Affairs don’t think that something can be commodified and made to turn a profit for a corporate blood sucker, then it’s not important, indeed it’s a sign of weakness.

For their next pro-independence campaign video the SNP just need to run Truss’s speech side by side with Sturgeon’s, the contrast is stark and telling. On the one hand you have a leader who speaks about compassion and developing Scotland’s immense renewable energy potential, and on the other a Prime Minister who lists her enemies and feeds the bank balances of the wealthy while extending fracking and banning solar and wind farms.

The real point of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech is that Scotland does not have to be resigned to the callous, cruel, and commodified Britain that Truss and her IEA backers have in store for us. This is not as good as it can be, this is not the best of both worlds that was promised to us by Better Together in 2014, this is a Britain that is isolated and increasingly impoverished cut off from Europe and obsessed with its faded glory, substituting flags and royalty for democracy and accountability. The UK has long since ceased to be a grown up polity.

Labour won’t change much, it has set its face against any meaningful reform of the House of Commons, the ground zero of British political dysfunction. As Nicola Sturgeon pointed out, Scotland’s problem is not with the party which is governing at Westminster, it is with Westminster. Labour is now further to the right than the Conservatives were under Ted Heath because the only way that Labour can get elected in England is to don Tory drag. How then can the Labour party plausibly claim to offer the people of Scotland an alternative to the Tories, especially when we can see Labour is hand in hand with the Conservatives in local authorities across Scotland. Despite its claims Labour is not resurgent in Scotland, the Conservative vote is collapsing and Tory voters are switching to Labour, because they too see Labour as merely the twin cheek of a British nationalist arse, both equally willing to deny Scottish democracy when the people make a choice not to their Westminster supremacist liking.

Naturally in its report on the speech BBC Scotland did its utmost to find some negative reaction, choosing for its obligatory vox pop segment a pensioners’ group. This has nothing at all to do with the fact that older voters over pension age are the only age cohort in Scotland where there is a significant majority opposed to independence. Oh no, and shame on a vile nationalist for even thinking such a thing.

In her speech the First Minister expressed her hope that the Supreme Court will find in the Scottish Government’s favour when it publishes its ruling in the independence referendum case, if it does, there will be an independence referendum on 19th October next year, however if it does not she reiterated that this would merely mean that the question of Scottish independence would be put to the people of Scotland in an election, adding that democracy itself would be denied if it were not, and Scottish democracy will not be denied.

_____________________________________________________

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.