This is Going to Be Good

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The Scots were never big enough to break the Union. That’s always been a job for the English.

So what do we do now? We’ve just lost a fight, so our instinct is to pretend we can re-organise and regroup immediately, like Rocky Marciano. The hive mind of the Yes movement is already a-buzz across social media with plans and hashtags. We are so busy picking ourselves up off the floor that while we may have grumpily noted that we ceased to be very interesting to the UK media at about a minute past 4 on Friday morning, we probably haven’t quite noticed that the way the story has moved on is entirely in our favour. Quite bewilderingly, our project of Breaking Britain has been taken up with gusto and enthusiasm…by the British State.

Might it just be that a narrow No vote last Thursday was the best possible result in the long term? Before you reach for a brick and tell me to stop being such a smart-arse, consider this.

The best imaginable result was a decisive Yes…but that was never on the cards. The bestpossible result was a narrow Yes – and that would have united all the politicos of the rUK against us. While a narrow, not even that narrow a No vote has turned them on each other. Like wolverines in a sack.

And, as it looks to me this Sunday night, they might be doing a better demolition job on this blessed Union of Nations than we ever dreamed of. And doing it even faster than we had in mind.

Even before the extraordinary developments of the long weekend after the night before, if, up until a couple of weeks ago, somebody’d offered me a 45% Yes vote, I’d have taken it. If you’d offered me that two years ago, I’d have bitten both your hands off at the wrist in bewildered gratitude. But I never expected the speed with which the narrative of the Break Up of Britain would transfer itself to what has always been the epicentre of the earthquake : London.

The Tory plan for English votes on English Laws – for devolution from the centre to the centre – was always on the cards as a post referendum electoral wizard wheeze to trap the Labour Party. And in the context of the decisive No vote Cameron was expecting, might have been just that – a crushing blow not only to Scotland but to the prospect of any decently progressive government anywhere in the UK ever again. That was always the prize the Tories sought that they thought was worth the risk of calling Scotland’s bluff.

It was evident that the risk was never taken seriously, as witness the already notorious and evaporating Vow opportunistically scratched in pencil on the back of a wet fag packet…and the front page of the Daily Record…last Tuesday. A move made in the same spirit of lazy opportunism with which all three UK parties jointly refused to “share” the pound.

They didn’t even need to make those pledges, is what’s rather comical about the whole thing. That one Ipsos Mori poll that showed Yes in front that got all of us so excited turned out to have been the push out of the door and into the polling station that the No voters needed.

All the same, the promises and the timetable laid on the table as the restaurant was closing were a vital psychological prop for No Voters, according to the evidence of Lord Ashcroft’s exit poll. They were enough to make No voters vaguely feel they were voting forsomething, and that a UK that cared about them would deliver them a reward for their loyalty, and that the UK valued them as contributors to a democratic process.

We Yes folk thought that was bollocks. We thought it was a cynical ploy that would vanish with the morning mist. But we were wrong. We had under-estimated the faux cleverness of the Bullingdon boys.

Because Cameron has decided to go ahead with the reform for Scotland and to do so on the timetable that Gordon Brown set out. But..and here is where the wizard schoolboy wheeze comes in, also to tie the timing of Devo Max for England (basically, the sloughing off of any responsibility for anyone on these islands who isn’t already rich) to the timing of those irritating pledges made to the loyal No Voters of Scotland. That is, he is exploiting promises he didn’t mean for a project he really cares about. Winning the 2015 UK General Election.

After all, Scotland’s electoral significance for the Tories is already precisely nil, but this move gives them the chance to paint the Labour Party as putting self interest before the people of England. Labour, already condemned as anti-Scottish in their former fiefdom, can now be painted as anti-English as well! Labour will suffer a bit in Scotland, probably, but they’ll get CRUCIFIED in England. Result!

So the reward for the loyalty of the Labour No voters in particular, and, with heavy, almost delicious irony, for the slow-minded elephants of the Labour Party, is a trap. The Tories can now paint the labour party as being anti-English and as standing in the way of “fairness” out of sheer, naked, Party interest. And the charge will stick. Because it’s entirely justified. The Labour Party opposed our Independence out of party interest, and now the English are going to feel about them exactly the same way that we do.

It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so bitterly hilarious. It is a quite brilliant electoral ploy by the Tories that will almost certainly secure them a comfortable victory in the UK general election of 2015. It is also the beginning of the end of the Union, in an even more decisive way than a narrow Yes vote would have been.

This is not just because an awful lot of No voters are going to feel awful like they were made chumps of…that is only incidental. The real damage to the Union is being done by awakening England to the idea that it doesn’t much like the idea of Union any more either. And if if our feeling that way, some of us, was a problem for the Union, the English feeling that way, and being given an electoral focus for that discontent, is surely going to be fatal to it.

The end of the Union, the Break Up of Britain…or UKANIA, to use Tom Nairn’s more useful term, has its roots in the economic and cultural strategy that broke the post war settlement of 1945, abandoning first the principle of full employment, then that of industrial policy and finally the welfare state. Those things that reinvented “Britishness” in 1945 as a model of social cohesion in the wake of war and depression were progressively and then suddenly abandoned, most dramatically under Margaret Thatcher. That process was never seriously challenged under New Labour. It should not have been remotely surprising therefore that the idea of Britain should have been hollowed out along with its social substance.

Devolution in Scotland was always a compensatory and defensive measure against the dominant concomitant of this “national” decline – that is he dramatically enhanced recent concentration of all cultural, economic and political power in the City State of London. Devolution, at least for us, was much less a matter of asserting our different identity as it was of exploiting that distinctiveness and parleying it politically into the creation of an at least partially protective alternative centre of gravity, cultural, economic and political, here in Scotland that can never rival the pull of london, but can at least negotiate with it.. This has never been an option for the Anglo-Saxons, who confuse themselves with their Norman Overlords, imagining they are the same people. The English do lack strategic advantages that the Scots have.

At least until last week. A decisive No vote removing the threat of independence “for a generation” or “forever” according to Jack Straw in the Times, was supposed to remove that marginal leverage from Scotland. We weren’t supposed to be able to negotiate any more. We were supposed to disappear again from British politics, and return into the obscurity from which we have only ever emerged when the Union was under threat. But a 45/55 split just doesn’t “deliver” that stability, no matter how hard both Labour and Conservatives pretend it does – each for their own reasons.

What is more, thanks to the way the Yes campaign was organically grown rather than directed from above, we are clearly not going anywhere.

So now, with the Scottish question still unsettled, for electoral advantage in 2015, the Conservative and Unionist party have just exploded a bomb underneath the very idea of the Union that they’ve got in their NAME, for goodness sake! They are leaving the Labour party, cri[ppled, exhausted and corrupted by association, as the only “principled” Unionists standing. (Apart from the assorted fuck wits who invaded George Square on Friday)

The West Lothian question now pales in to nothingness besides the suicidally incoherent idea of governments elected in the UK that can’t legislate on schools and hospitals and immigration. (Unless they’re a Tory government, of course). It’s a fundamental attack on democracy in England which the Labour Party have to resist, even though the Tories will make them look undemocratic while doing it.

You can see why Crosby, Osborne and Cameron think it’s such a bang on jape. It will steal UKIP’s English nationalist thunder and cripple the Labour Party. What’s not to like?

Well, boys, if any of you had taken any of the bullshit you spouted about how you love the Union seriously, you’d understand that what the Scots failed to to do in the name of Scotland, the Tory Boys are going to accomplish. The,Tory Boys, who don’t give a stuff about anyone or anything other than their own narrow bunch of buddies are doing a demolition job on the United Kingdom in the name of England – an England they despise as heartily as they loathe Scotland.

They are going to break up the Union for us. And we’ll help, of course. We’ll join political parties. We’ll use the formidable machine of participatory democracy we’ve invented to focus on the new target of May 2015. But the arena we’ll be working in is still being defined before us and not by us. Deliciously. For a week or two, counter to our activist instincts, brothers and sisters, I suggest we pull up a chair and crack open the popcorn.

This is going to be good.

Comments (50)

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  1. Marian says:

    Independence supporters should do everything they can to accelerate the fracturing of the union.

    For starters we should use our collective strength to rid Scotland of every single Westminster unionist MP at the May 2015 UK General election.

    The Tories are almost gone anyway, the LibDems’s are lined up already to go, and the Westminster Labour party are ripe for extinction after their betrayal of Scotland in the referendum campaign.

    Thereafter we should campaign at every opportunity at local and Holyrood elections to get rid of every single unionist there too.

    Then there is the European referendum where we should campaign to keep Scotland in Europe even if the rest of the UK votes to leave the EU.

    We can turn Scotland into a unionist free zone if we apply ourselves properly to the task.

    If we do these things Scotland will become ungovernable by Westminster and they will eventually have to give in.

    1. Grant says:

      Get rid of all Unionist MP’s. That will be very difficult to do.
      Perhaps there is some hope that England will unwittingly help us out here.

      A very long and cold Winter is coming to Scotland, likes of which we have not seen before.

    2. Patrick Hogg, Biographer of Robert Burns says:

      We can get a majority of seats on May 7th and an overall majority of total votes cast, which means we can demand UDI. We will NOT get every Unionist seat but we can get a majority if we all stick together under the Yes Scotland banner..

      1. Grant says:

        Forget the polls and rise in SNP membership.

        You presume that Scotland still supports the SNP. Perhaps the average North Britain Unionist believes that Labour party have not only saved them from the perils of independence but also have granted them the much wished for “Devo Max”.

        Yes my statement is provocative but it seems clear that the average Unionist does not get his/her news from the Internet, only what the mass media spoon feeds them.

      2. muttley79 says:

        Count me out of the UDI talk. It is akin to firing a shotgun at your feet. UDI= complete international isolation. By all means join a pro-independence party in Scotland, the SNP, the SSP, the Greens, vote tactically against unionist candidates in elections etc.

      3. Doug Daniel says:

        Muttley’s correct, and in fact I have it on good authority that the SNP would never countenance such an idea. A referendum is deemed the correct way to get international recognition and approval, so that’s the route we’ll take.

      4. brobof says:

        With respect I think it is a little too soon for that. The #IndyRef campaign hilighted your problems Currency; Pensions; Oil Reserves;… these need to be sorted out first. Some ideas here
        e-Groats and your pension http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sb7cs9
        e–Groats & porridge http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sbirdf
        More to follow.
        What price independence:
        £30 billion / 45% of 5.295 million = £ 12,590.49p per ’45er
        £ 5665.72p per person including everyone!
        Hope is our Duty!

      5. Eddie says:

        I agree, if all the YES voters stick together. We need to put our party preferences on the back burner and unite behind the SNP. If we fragment we play into the hands of Westminster. The way they survive is by divide and rule and they are masters at it. Labour will try the old rhetoric of ” you must vote Labour to keep the Tories out” and we will be offered bribes and promises which will never be kept. So stick together get behind the SNP and once we gain independence revert back to party politics.

    3. Bertie says:

      Having a few problems getting to grips with my grief and anger at the moment. I am so glad that I can come to this great place and have the pain fade away. The articles since Friday have been more inspiring than I could have hoped. Big thank you to all contributors for keeping me somewhat sane x

    4. Niall Truklen says:

      Marian……..would that be maid marian or mad marian ?

  2. Reblogged this on julie ann thomason and commented:
    A must read, thank you Peter.

  3. bruce says:

    I’m on the sofa with you.Do you prefer salty or sweet?

    1. I trust you are still talking about popcorn

  4. Giftzwerg says:

    If this does indeed go ahead, then any Scottish MP’s at Westminster will be essentially lame ducks, unable to vote on any (devolved) matter relating to Scotland or England or Wales or NI and only able to have a say on the ‘core’ UK functions (e.g. Foreign Policy, Defence etc). The real power for Scotland would then rest with the Scottish Parliament which is the way it should be. Full independence would then be just a matter of time.

    1. Patrick Hogg, Biographer of Robert Burns says:

      The real objective for May 7th is so obvious: we elect a majority of SNP/Yes SCotland MP’s and if we get a majority of the total votes cast we declare UDI. If we hold the balance of power in Westminster, WE CALL THE SHOTS. SCotland can use the election next year as a vote on Independence. We are not going away for another generation. Onwards, upwards and take oiur country back. Stuff the popcorm waiting for others to implode in their wee argument posturing. Destiny is not wrought by watching others. We take it OURSELVES.

      1. Tony Quintus says:

        A unilateral declaration of independence would exceed the powers granted to the Scottish Executive by the 1998 Scotland act, as Holyrood would simply be dissolved and all devolved powers would revert to Westminster. Any first minister who made such a declaration would then face criminal prosecution in a London court.

      2. All this talk of UDI is, both unnecessary, and plays into the hands of those who want to portray us as nasty undemocratic nationalist. It’s unnecessary because the UK has no written constitution so the only way it can contain the reverberations of say a big electoral win for the SNP is through some process of political negotiations. You denigrate the SNP by calling for UDI because you assume that the SNP would not be able to exploit any electoral break through to Scotland’s advantage within the legal framework.

        We are presently in a process where the Westminster establishment is having to make concessions, but there comes a point where, having given concessions, the UK system of government works towards independence rather than against it. EVEL, is a case in point, because it makes independence more likely rather than less. This is because it means a Scot can never in the future be Prime Minister or any minister, except perhaps defence or foreign affairs, but even this would be difficult with EVEL. If there is no prospect of promotion at Westminster then Westminster will start to wane in its appeal for Scots. There is no easy way forward for the union once you start unpicking things

  5. Ross Cameron says:

    Was the intention of the Yes movement to break the Union? My understanding and my own wish was to establish control of our own fiscal resources to make the country a better place for those less fortunate among us and to grow the nation into something we can all be proud of? How exactly does this scenario give a specific benefit to Scotland?

    1. MBC says:

      What did you think independence was? Without Scotland there is no union.

  6. LindsayO says:

    In all this talk of getting rid of Unionist Westminster MPs and electing as many SNP MPs as possible, we need to remember the No voters. My guess is that a good swath of them will be empowered by the No result and discover their inner Tory.

    1. Yes they will however if all YES Voters support SNP we can decimate Unionist MPs in Scotland.
      Their vote will divide between the 4 UK parties,

  7. I left this comment elsewhere but I think here is good as well;Over 80 years ago there were several small parties,groups,all wanting home rule,some had left the Labour party as the Labour party had been for home rule up until it got enough members into parliament ,they then joined in and became the Westminster party so many folk even then were sickened by the lies of Labour.I digress,so back to my point,so small parties and groups will form another alliance,and it to will splinter when egos get too big,or its not moving fast enough,various reasons/excuses will be used.Already many folk have asked the same questions about joining forces well why? the SNP with the party machinery is there and still some who want independence wont join or vote SNP for a variety of reasons or excuses.Some still believe the lies told about the SNP some still look from the outside and make judgements instead of getting in and putting their weight behind gaining independence then deciding what type of government they want,this is splintering before even becoming an alliance.

    1. Doug Daniel says:

      I don’t see any splitting going on. What I see is people being energised by the Yes campaign and realising that going back to a life of non-activism isn’t an option, and so they’re joining the party they think best suits their overall aims.

      There is absolutely nothing wrong with people choosing to join the Greens or SSP rather than the SNP – in fact it makes the movement stronger. One of the problems with the referendum campaign was it was all too easy for the media etc to conflate Yes and the SNP. If the non-SNP pro-indy parties can start getting success and increase their numbers in conjunction with the SNP – rather than at the detriment of the SNP – then it’s a win/win situation.

      Let’s be honest, we’re looking to build on the numbers of Labour voters who voted Yes and get them voting for one of the pro-indy parties instead of Labour. “Worst” case scenario is these people all plump for the Greens or SSP instead of going to the SNP. But that doesn’t lead to fewer SNP politicians – it leads to fewer Labour politicians. And to be perfectly honest, the SNP have made some mistakes since getting that majority that they may not have made if they’d had to build broad coalitions like their first term in government, so I for one would be pretty happy with another SNP minority government supplemented by Green and Socialist MSPs as and when required.

      1. fermerfaefife says:

        Quite agree – but they need to organise themselves in each constituency and pick the best candidate from whatever party to stand against labour then let the machinery of the YES group in that area do the canvassing for them. eg Radical Independence candidate in the places they targeted and green candidates where they are strong or even non political YES candidates where talented individuals have a high profile. That way the YES campainers can do the work without the party political affiliation.

  8. UK as defined by the rulers is a parliamentary democracy; people vote and hand over their hopes and desires to functionaries who are not representatives or deputies but members of parliament. They can, within the context of that parliament do as they please, switch allegiance, renege on promises, have other interests, not turn up etc. The rules are so flexible that rarely do they “do anything wrong” unless unwelcome public scrutiny uncovers something dodgy and even then they protest no rules were actually broken. The 55% who voted to stick with Britannia probably never gave that a thought. The current shapeshifting political manoeuvres at the heart of BritState might give some of them pause for thought on the matter. That no really did mean no, nada, zilch.
    Meanwhile the 45% reboot for round 2.

    1. Craig says:

      Great post. I think we need to be as positive and constructive as possible, while going about tightly defined goals.
      No won – whether we like it or not.. They have a mandate to do what they vowed to do.
      We should prepare and engage in the consultation process and, I believe, argue for everything except foreign affairs and defence to be devolved. Nothing less than full fiscal autonomy should be accepted. Based on the polls yesterday, this seems to be the view of the majority of the Scottish people.
      Preparing for the 2015 general election is something that needs to begin now too. This will be a hard battle. One fought between Westminster machines with limited mainstream media focus on Scotland. Working as a pro-devo-max alliance seems more inclusive than a pro-yes alliance and may garner broader support and more chance if delivering more seats. The perverse FPTP system may help our cause, but only if we can be as appealing to as many people as possible.

  9. mike cassidy says:

    If I understand this –

    What is being claimed is that the English electorate see no problem with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland having a different party running their bit of the UK from the party in charge at Westminster if and when this occurs

    but if the same thing happened to them via an English Parliament and Westminster, this would be inherently destabilising for the Union because a lot of English labour voters would object to being top dog at the UK level and playing second fiddle to the Tories at the English level – or vice versa .

    I’m not convinced by this, but bring it on anyway. It could at least be a lot of fun, whether they create an actual English Parliament or use Westminster as a part time one. After all, it does not take a lot of imagination to anticipate that the tories would hate being top dog in only one of the two.

  10. I always said a narrow no would be a disaster for the union. The unionists will try hard to be seen to not break their pledge. Whether that takes the form of an agreement on more powers between them, or Cameron going it alone with the Tories scheme. For those who voted yes, witnessing this only increases the sense the power they feel in their actions. So unionist concessions are double edged: they assuage no votes while emboldening many yes voters. A big push to support the SNP during the general elections may result in a few gains, but against the backdrop of the national campaign themes and leadership debates which exclude the SNP its unlikely to produce more than that. But Peter Arnott is right the UK has lost it’s patrician sense of command and is blinded by short termism. EVEL is now unavoidable and EVEL means no Scot could ever be Prime Minister again or hold any great office of state at UK level. This is how it has been for MPs from Northern Ireland, but Scotland is not tethered to Westminster in the way Northern Ireland is. He is also right in saying that for English people the romance has gone. The idea of union as a means for England to feel a sense of having transcended it’s own limited sense of nationality is dead. Labour do look as if they will be hammered. so 2015 will usher in a very different world; one that we need to organise in order to take full advantage of.

  11. Wullie says:

    Anent “The Scots were never big enough to break the Union”, if you had come out with that particular pearl of wisdom a year ago it might have saved a lot of time, effort & cash. We almost did break the Union and don’t ever forget it.
    Hindsight sages are ten a penny and there are NO voters ringing their bells now who will soon be wringing their hands!

  12. weemeeblog says:

    Reblogged this on weemeeblog and commented:
    Kick back & watch the show Scotland!

  13. ronald alexander mcdonald says:

    We have to strike at the right time. When I say we I mean the people. That entails building up a momentum. Increasing the appeal at grassroots level by explaining the impact of the cuts that are coming and demonstrating a better society.

    We can then organise a national petition to target over 1.8m and demand another referendum. However, even with that it will be one massive struggle. Civil disobedience etc will be the order of that day. That way it’s democratic and in truth the only way forward I can see, as Westminster will never allow another referendum through party political lines.

    1. Dean Richardson says:

      When politicians make peaceful revolution impossible, they make violent revolution inevitable. One day, one or two politicians might actually heed that advice, but I’m not too confident that they will.

  14. You should have been able to answer the currency question much more coherently than you did. You gave people the excuse they wanted to vote no. Get this sorted and watch the tories then hand everything to you on a plate in 10 or so years time.

  15. Tog says:

    Salmond aim to replace Labour as the main party of the left in Scotland has been more successful then even he could have imagined. Truely he is the master of triangulation and makes Blair look like an amateur. Now he might destroy the Labour party in England as well and perhaps help Cameron who seems to have quickly learned from the master to get a until recently unlikely second term as PM. Scotland becomes seemingly the last outpost of progressive politics in the UK and independence becomes the only solution. Genius

  16. jean martin says:

    Enjoying reading the articles and comments. I am 64 and live in Derry in the north of Ireland. I was a young woman when the Troubles broke out. I have been a Republican all my life as were my ancestors going back many generations. I know what the struggle for independence, in the case of Scotland and reunification in the Irish case, entails and how delicate a balance must be maintained. I have been keeping an eye on the Yes campaign for the last year. As Sept 18 got closer and closer and the polls showing an increasing desire for change i could hardly contain myself……I really could see my Celtic cousins getting what we still work towards here in Ireland. To say i was gutted is to underestimate my feeling n the results……but then I looked hard at the 45%…….this is a magnificent result, staggering really. I support you and encourage you for picking yourselves up, getting the head down and start pushing again. you have huge support to begin with and not just in Scotland. Around the world people were supporting your campaign…..don’t let that slip away…..keep the indy campaign going…..you lost a battle, not the war……i’m not as fit as I used to be but you can be very sure that i will be donating a few £ when i can, its the only way i can actively help.

    I want to end on a comment I read on the Saturday edition of the Irish times. A comment made after one of the very many articles about what happened…..the comment went something like this “Scotland Votes NO To Independence…..now we know for real what is actually under the Scottish kilt……nothing”! I was stunned….I wanted to defend the Scots and not kick you when you were down…..I’ll tell you something……I know for a fact that there is plenty under the Scottish Kilt…….i wasn’t always 64 with a slight limp……Prove me right.

  17. keelpeace says:

    An attractive proposition, but I suggest we are all being gamed. The EU map of the non-uk is the objective.
    On it, Scotland is already defined as a region,England is split into nine and wales and north ireland complete the map. Whether the scottish voted either way , yes or no, the map would not have changed – but what is significant (as alluded to) is that the ground has been laid to now split england on the back of ‘fairness’
    I have no doubt that the consequences of devo max for the scottish will be to embrace the eu defined parameters of regional goverance with the same applied to the english regions – sold to us as either independance or equality with a local dynamic, all off the back of resolving the the natural desire for the scots to reclaim their right to self-determination and the english desire to devolve from thier London centric yoke.
    The key element of the map, is the absence of the name ‘England’. For many Scots that may be deemed a success, but I suggest that ‘we’ both would have lost, as real independance is your own currency and title to your own land neither of which we as a people even possess now.
    I do find it odd that the SNP failed to address either of these fundametals duriing the campaign – fudging the currency completely in a ‘we’ll use someone elses’ kind of dependant sort of way – and I dont recall land title being mentioned at all (assuming that scottish land title is as english title – crown property).

  18. If England decide to leave – they can’t take the pound 😉

  19. Phil Deegan says:

    We should encourage the English to go for their own independence

  20. Julie Smitn says:

    This! This article is what I have spent the weekend banging on about (after the drinking and shouting!). How we go about engaging with the general election in 2015 is to be discussed at conferences and meetings the grassroots shall arrange. Whether there’s an electoral pact or whatever – I don’t have a clue. But I think we can discuss and negotiate. We can still maintain our hope, maybe we can ca’ canny a bit more. For folk who haven’t been involved in a major campaign before, it’s the first time they’ve experienced that awful crushing sense of defeat. They’ll learn from the shell shock and harness their anger. For the rest of us, we know you learn from it and keep on keeping on. But this time with a bunch of folk who are now aware of what the British state is prepared to do to keep us in line. Hope, wisdom, strategy and tactics. We’ve loads of the first, gaining the second and can work together on the third and fourth.

  21. I’m actually of the opinion that we should vote out the Unionist parties in Scotland BUT actually join the Labour party, all 1.6million of us Yes voters and eat it from the inside out. Take their party out from underneath them and join with the like minded folks who are Labour as the only current foil to the Tories down South.

    Scotland can make the change but not in Scotland alone. Vote SNP but join Labour and eat them from within. Use the broken system against them and to our advantage. 😀

  22. Ken Bell says:

    Looking to the future, I think it needs to be remembered that the people who voted Yes were not, by and large, drawn from the SNP voting areas. The four councils that returned Yes majorities were those that are dominated by a working class that has been left high and dry by globalisation. What those people are after are jobs, legislation to protect them from voracious management, council houses and benefits for those who are still waiting for jobs. Conversely, the people who voted No tended to be those middle class types who had something to lose from independence.

    So it might be a good idea to concentrate on those new areas where the people have rejected Labour. Seek to represent them on the economic issues that are uppermost in their minds within the context of Home Rule by standing against Labour. Keep talk of independence as a backup in case it all goes to pot, but as things stand it does not look as if it will. Labour wants to hold those seats so will pretty much do anything to keep them.

    All three parties have promised legislation by early next year. I think we should push them to keep their promise, rather than fantasise about a rerun of last week.

  23. nevermore says:

    I think you’ve got a point. They made us suffer, now let’s watch them squirm. One particular good laff will be the sight of the new labour hacks trying to do “business as usual” in the run up to next years election. They took us for granted: they’ve lost us forever.

  24. Debbie says:

    Reblogged this on Life in the Timber House and commented:
    Interesting.
    Have a wee read

  25. Andrew Deuchar says:

    I absolutely take the thrust of your argument but I think your key conclusion is wrong. As an expatriate Scot currently living in Wales, I can tell you the Welsh are not interested in independence. Plaid is a small presence now and legitimately presses the case for Wales, but the people know well that they cannot survive alone…as does the govt. Anyway, there is no real history to support a political/economic argument. N Ireland is in a completely different situation…even Cameron couldn’t think of anything to say about them. And how realistically can England be made more English? What they are aiming to do us to demonstrate that there is no need to do anything because even the Scots, the one bit of Britain to have a history of nationhood and the only party with England to the Act of Union, do not, demonstrably, really want independence…. But I guarantee they will sort the w lothian question because as you say it will stymie Labour.

  26. Dave Ismay says:

    I am worried.
    I look at Westminster and I see Tory Labour Libdem and others. Those with the most MPs form the Government or those that can get support from Libdems and others sufficient to form a Coalition with majority if the largest party does not have an overall majority.
    If we manage to wrestle seats from Unionists here in Scotland they will be mainly Labour seats which effectively increases the chance of the Tory party forming a government as the party with most MPs.
    How big a majority they have depends on the Libdem vote holding up which I believe is unlikely.
    Reduce Labour numbers and reduce Libdem numbers and even with a Scottish Independence Block of 40 or 50 the Tory Party is secure and probably holding a majority of around 100.
    If they then have devolved powers to the regions such a block would be virtually powerless as would Labour and all the remaining Others.
    Prepare yourselves folks you will not win at Westminster!

  27. Andy Stewart says:

    Was already aware of the the Tory plan, although not 100% certain. This just seemed like common sence to me Hopefully our causin’s in the rest of the UK will see through this aswell and won’t be fooled or blinkered as planned by the Westminster Government and blame the break up on the Scottish voter, although we lost due too media bias and scaremongering, too me this has just put independence back a little. Think lot’s of people across the UK are fed up with UK Goverment, it has been Scotland who ended apathy in the UK and we have mostly awoken too what is in the the plans of the Westminster government and we will overcome hope it does’nt happen too late

  28. Point of order: An Independent Scotland must be defined by itself, for it would be dependent on something other,if it did not.

    A plurality of 4 areas of geographic definition on this Earth can define itself an an “Independent Scotland” by democratic principle if the above is applied and by consent the people agree to it being defined as the 4 areas as defined.

    Scotland is not a FIXed space on the Earth, as can be clearly seen by it’s changed definition in 1999.

    So a pledge of the majority of the 4 areas that define themselves as an Independent Scotland can stand on these principles:

    The Truth.

    Democratic process.

    Points of order.

    Further it is the absolute truth on this Earth, that the United Kingdom is in fraud in the matter of the recent referendum. People have been held away from voting and participating, the UK having been notified of people being blocked from access to the UK, have refused to protect the people of the UK in this matter.

  29. Murrin says:

    i found this very interesting. I also realise now after the GE. That everything you all said has come to fruition. Tory’s got in. Labour Destroyed in England and Scotland. The SNP have taking all of Scotland accept 3 Seats. Cameron now going for in out on EU. Carmichael the MP for Orkney and The Shetlands. Has been caught out in a Lie. Cameron will not allow his Resignation. They will support him as he is the Oil and Orkney and Shetlands MP. They need him up there. The man has no Integrity. He is without Honour. He Concocted the whole story. And with knowledge Mundell. Rennie. And Carmichael all had a part in this leak. That First Minister of Scotland wanted. Cameron back in. He lied. Said he did not have a hand in it. Investigation cost the Tax Payers £1.4 Million and rising. The Man must go. Also Rennie and Mundell .

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