Escher Politics

escher-big

Under pressure from those who feel soiled by sharing a platform with the Tories (though oddly feel no problem in them running our country with no mandate) Labour today launch their very own No campaign: ‘Better Together (Apart) United’. This will take some herculean spin by Labour, the Conservatives and the Better Together campaign to present a united front amidst the tangled and bizarre set of contradictions it represents.

You don’t want to share a platform with the Conservatives because what they represent is so alien to Scottish political culture? You feel the need to have your own say, articulate your own political vision? Sounds good, but as a mantra for Better Together it’s ridiculous. This is the politics of escher.

The re-launch also represents a re-birth for the elusive former PM. Thankfully Gordon has at least two newspapers dedicated almost solely to him opening things in the Courier and the Fife Free Press and has a reservoir of goodwill in Scotland despite this and – for example this, never mind this. The explanation for this pool of uncritical goodwill is often explained as a) he’s not Tony Blair and b) a folk memory of when Brown as a part of a generation of ‘radical’ thinkers produced The Red Paper on Scotland in 1975 c) he was treated abominably by the media when he was PM.

None of which is very relevant nor going to help the No campaign explain this labyrinth of competing narratives.

The reality is that while Brown lacked the oozing gelatinous charm of Bambi he was his prop and his foil for decades. Any crimes against society that New Labour are guilty of have Brown’s fingerprints on them. The Red Paper on Scotland contains wisdom and insight – it’s just that it’s wisdom and insight that Brown spent the next thirty years shedding and disowning. The treatment Brown experienced as PM is actually a really good reason for independence as it bares witness to English political parochialism.

The contradictions in today’s events are overwhelming. In the Red Paper Brown stated: “Scottish socialists cannot support a strategy for independence which postpones the meeting of urgent social and economic needs until the day after independence,’ he wrote. ‘But neither can they give unconditional support to maintaining the integrity of the United Kingdom – and all that that entails – without any guarantee of radical social change’

As Neal Ascherson has written about Brown’s contribution, there was: “No ‘Hammer of the Nats’ rhetoric, no ‘Tartan Tories’ abuse. ‘What this Red Paper seeks to do is to transcend that false and sterile antithesis which has been manufactured between the nationalism of the SNP and the anti-nationalism of the Unionist parties.’ What mattered to him was the cause of working people – Scottish working people. If the Union became an obstacle to serving that cause, then there was no reason to keep it.”

I think we can assume he won’t be quoting from it today. But which version of Gordon will we see today? Will it be the man who declared his best sporting moment to be England scoring against Scotland? Will it be the proto-Farage Gordon who demanded ‘British jobs for British workers’?
Lesley Riddoch has asked – I think this is rhetorical – “Can Gordon Brown surprise the home crowd with an unapologetically Scottish rebirth as a progressive feminist socialist?”

Thirty years on we see the tragedy of a career politician, who’s vision and idealism was ground away by Westminster and the allure of office. This, almost more than his terrible record in office is the enduring message and why he’s a terrible advert for the Union.

As Alex Salmond has it:

“The case that Gordon Brown is putting forward is political, arithmetical and intellectual nonsense. It is political nonsense because Labour cannot with any credibility call on Scotland to save England from the Tories – while at the same time being in the same campaign as the Tories telling Scots to vote No. No amount of cosmetic launches can disguise the fact that Labour are joined at the hip with the Tories in the No campaign.

“It is arithmetical nonsense because Scotland has had 30 years of Tory governments being imposed on Scotland by Westminster – over half the period since 1959, including the long 18 years of Tory government after 1979, and the current Tory-led coalition. By contrast, for only 26 months – from the 1964 to 1966 elections, and between the two elections in 1974 – have MPs from Scotland made any difference in terms of electing Labour, every other Labour government would have been elected south of the Border anyway. It is impossible for 8.4 per cent of the UK population to dictate to the rest, and the electoral record shows that it is a totally threadbare argument.

Intellectually it is nonsense because the reality is that nations are entitled to choose their own governments – something that Gordon Brown should realise given the disastrous 28 per cent share of the vote Labour got in England in 2010, and which Scotland can do nothing about.”

That’s quite a lot of nonsense.

Comments (11)

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  1. Wullie says:

    The great man has emerged from his self imposed exile in North Queensferry des deux Eglise, to warn against financial disaster, a subject he’s well qualified to speak on.
    Did he ever return the cash he charged the British people for the renovation of his summer house one wonders, he did after all learn his morality from his father, as he never tired of reminding us.
    And how about an a grovelling apology to the good folk of Iceland for threatening them with anti-terror laws when he was “saving the world”.

  2. David McCann says:

    Great article Mike. A defining picture of Brown is the one taken outside 10 Downing St., when he invited Thatcher to tea, presumably to discuss the notion that there is so such thing as society- or socialism.

  3. RevStu says:

    “This will take some herculean spin by Labour”

    Only if they’re actually challenged on it by the media, and OH NOES!

    1. Tom Dunlop says:

      Its seems to me GB & SLAB are asking the Scots to perform the equivalent of one the labours of Hercules, the cleansing of the Augean stables- an impossible and humilitating task- sacrificing themselves to “save” England from the Tories. But we know how that ended up for the task master…..

  4. muttley79 says:

    The problem for both SLAB and British Labour is that they are so close to the Tories (and have been for the last 20 years or so) that a refusal to campaign together for a No vote makes no sense whatsoever. It appears that Labour are basically saying we know that the Tories are so unpopular in Scotland that we can’t risk campaigning together with them. This appears farcical, and it looks like the overall No campaign are in disarray. Labour’s individual campaign will make no difference because they are not going to be offering any more powers to Scotland in the event of a No vote. This was made clear by the shambles over Lamont’s income tax proposal. They have boxed themselves into a corner. Their campaign will be as negative as BT’s one as been. It will become very tired very quickly. Bringing out almost retired politicians, such as Brown and Darling, will only reinforce this jaded message.

  5. Ken MacColl says:

    Good article and it is so obvious that when Elder (Failed) Statesman Brown’s position is subjected to the forensic questioning of our political hotshots from BBC Scotland, the Daily Wrecker and Scotsman Publications it will be cruelly exposed for the sham that it is.

    Aye right!

    1. jdmankj says:

      Just about to give you a hairdryer job when I read the last bit
      “aye right”
      and of course realised your comment was being ironic, the fact that the BBC and their ilk are not prepared to take these people to task and put their paper thin arguments under a spotlight for everyone to see right through them is disgraceful, and after several attempts (by me) to get the OSCE’s attention only to be told the UK government is the only party who has the competence to ask for oversight by the ODIHR to insist on a balanced and fair contest
      I gave up quite disillusioned by the lack of interest in the heart of Europe,
      that the body who’s job it is to ensure a fair debate are not at all interested,is infuriating, who pays these people?

      “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they come to fight you, and then you win.” (M.K. Gandhi)?

  6. John Souter says:

    Brown – another Labour politician you cannot take seriously.

  7. Wullie says:

    Finds himself with a lot of spare time on his hands thanks to the British electorate? I thought he was supposed to be doing the job of an MP.

    1. jdmank says:

      its called the sack to you and me wullie

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