She’s Back, and this Time it’s Personal

Armed with a whole new set of active verbs, a hot mic’d speech and a media adulation that others could only dream of, Ruth Davidson is back.

Davidson told a small gathering in Aberdeen that: “No more Scotland being a country that ‘might’ or ‘should’ or ‘could’ do things. I want to live in a country that ‘will’, that ‘shall’, that ‘can’ act, and can act right now.” It’s an exercise in cognitive dissonance for a party that has halted Scottish agency and democracy for hundreds of years and who still acts to undermine even devolution itself. The things we “should” or “could” do without Davidson’s party in office despite being rejected at the ballot box in Scotland are almost endless.

We will and we shall prove that to Ms Davidson very soon and this whole charade can be over.

Facing the worst Tory election results in England since 1995, with recent YouGov opinion polls showing her party dropping behind even Richard Leonard’s Labour Party in Scotland, and with Michael Gove donning a constitutional suicide vest – and – presumably – clutching Ruth to his British Power vision  – Davidson strode onto the Aberdeen stage to deliver a speech replete with familiar vacuous slogans.

For someone trying to re-frame herself and her party as something positive, it’s remarkable that she would re-tread her slogan “We said no and we meant it.” Despite their jarring differences on sexuality and social policy (a clash that we know causes Davidson existential crisis), she is very similar to Arlene Foster in having carved out a political career by saying “No.”

In a world of one dimensional policy-free politics, Davidson is a powerful force. After eight years in post, if you stopped a hundred people in the streets I doubt a single one of them could name a policy she’s developed.

But who cares? In a country where contemplating the realities of human extinction is actually favourable to continuing discussing Brexit, Davidson may be on to something when she says to people will call a moratorium on any future referendums. Even though she doesn’t have the power to do this, it may have its charm to the weary voter.

This call for “unity” and “harmony” and to “heal division” is attractive, if entirely reactionary. The divisions Scotland and wider Britain face reflect deep social and class conflicts, regional inequality, constitutional dysfunctionalism and inter-generational crisis, and can’t be wished away because they’re ‘awkward’.

The media adulation Davidson receives is bizarre to many. For example Scotland on Sunday this morning engages in a twin fantasy, that she has mass appeal to ‘blue collar workers” and that she can become First Minister.

In the same paper Ewan McColm argues first that: “First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continues to threaten a referendum that she has neither the power to call nor the political momentum to win” and then that what’s required for Davidson’s party is for it to adopt (stop giggling at the back) independence from the Tory party.

Resurrecting Murdo Fraser’s plan for the Scottish Conservatives is essential he argues because:

“Standing against the break-up of the UK remains a reactive position. If Davidson is ever to take control of the debate, she will have to tell us what she will do as well as what she won’t. The maintenance of the United Kingdom under a new federal arrangement might just spike the nationalists’ guns.”

Constitutional change to “shoot the nationalist fox” or “spike the nationalists’ guns” has long been the driving force of both Labour and Conservative unionists, to little effect – and “Federalism” is cherished like a secret antidote by the radical Centre and the politically homeless who inhabit Scotland’s commentariat like the Undead.

Martin Kettle mirrored the breathless coverage of Davidson’s return in the run-up to her Aberdeen speech. In an incredible counter-factual revelation, Kettle explains:

“Cameron had a succession plan that isn’t on the cards this time. He had intended, after winning the European referendum, to reshuffle his cabinet for the remainder of his premiership. One of his moves would have been to confer a peerage on the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, and make her defence secretary, sitting in the House of Lords. The aim was to help to position her to be Cameron’s chosen successor.

At some point between then and Cameron’s departure, the plan went, Davidson would “do a Douglas-Home” and move to the Commons – as Harold Macmillan’s successor, the Earl of Home, had done in 1963. Davidson would remain in the government, renounce her peerage, and be fast-tracked into a safe Commons seat. There would be a byelection, and she would then be in the Commons, in a box seat to win the leadership – the best bet to stop Johnson, and all with Cameron’s backing.”

It’s an extraordinary description that seems to be oblivious of how undemocratic it would be. Here’s a politician who would be maneuvered into office by unelected means and its described as if it’s a wonderful thing.

Kettle continues: “She is one of the few Tories with some cut-through to younger voters and non-Tories. She is more popular with millennials than her colleagues are; far more socially liberal than much of her party; pro-European in a party that has slewed increasingly heavily against it; just about the only Conservative with wide appeal in Scotland; and one of the most articulate defenders of the union in a thin field.”

His description is untested and largely untrue.

These sort of media fantasies can only possible in a land of pygmies, or if you haven’t actually seen Davidson operate outwith set-piece conference speeches and media stunts. Davidson is a giant in a Holyrood in which she competes for media attention with Willie Rennie and Richard Leonard. She is less politically toxic than Boris Johnson and smarter than Murdo Fraser. She is more socially liberal than Jacob Rees-Mogg and has a wider reach than Annabel Goldie. It’s a low bar.

Despite the relentless negativity and policy void, there are other issues which will prevent Davidson’s arrival in Bute House despite the media adulation.

The Arlene factor can’t be magiced away. Davidson may have been conveniently absent as the Tory Civil war raged and Britain was broken on the back of post-imperial fantasy, but that landscape is a reality and the DUP’s role in it – and their deeply reactionary policies on religious tolerance, gender and sexuality – can only be ignored by the most pliant of commentators. Despite Davidson’s plea to move beyond constitutional questions they just can’t be wished away. The Irish question and the Scottish question are intertwined. This is a situation created by English and British nationalists (take your pick) and exacerbated by her partys ignorance and incompetence.

Despite McColm’s suggestion that there is no political momentum for independence, the evidence, both in the polls and on the streets says otherwise. This is precisely why, with Theresa May a Dead Woman Walking, and far-worse candidates waiting in the wings, so many are trying desperately trying to resurrect Davdson’s career.

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  1. Derek Henry says:

    She wants the result of the Scottish referendum to be honured for a generation.

    Wants the result of the Brexit referendum overturned even before it has been implemented.

    The SNP and the Indy movement have dug themselves in the same hole of lies and deceit. They should have honured the brexit result left Europe and then become an independent country. True independence to create an economic model the majority of Scots want.

    Not get Independence then march into the heart of Europe and become trapped in a worse union that we already have.

    Scotland currently has a budget deficit of around 8% which means Scottish households, Scottish businesses and exporters to Scotland share a surplus of 8%. In the heart of Europe where the SNP will take Scots and nobody will be able to stop them that will be cut to below 3%. Exporters to Scotland and Scottish businesses will hold most of that. Scottish households you can forget it.

    Scots have no idea what devastation and deprivation and rampant privatisation that will cause and yet over 60% of Scots support it. Sleepwalking Scotland into an EU prison they’ll never be able to escape from.

    1. Millsy says:

      Not all Scots want independence from the UK then attach ourselves to the EU ; then again some do ! That is what happens in a democracy . When we get independence then We can decide what sort of ‘unions’ we want to join or not .

    2. Rory MacLean says:

      Sleep walking into remaining in an international community of partners others are queuing up to join and only a deluded fool would want to leave?

      The EU has been hugely beneficial to Scotland, you can not say that about the other union we are trapped in!

  2. Derek Henry says:

    It is there for all to see what happens when you reduce government defcits and thus reduce everyone elses surplus. All you need to do is go to the trading economics website and graph the UK budget deficit aginst household savings and you can see the nightmare yourselves.

    The office of national statistics paints the picture in their quarterly sectoral accounts releases on the ONS website.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/quarterlysectoraccounts/apriltojune2018

    In Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2018, real household disposable income grew for a second consecutive quarter, with growth of 0.4%, compared with an upwardly revised growth of 0.7% in the previous quarter.

    Despite a marginal increase in the households’ saving ratio to 3.9%, in Quarter 2 2018, it remains historically low and is the fourth-lowest since records began in 1963.

    Households were net borrowers for a seventh consecutive quarter (at £7.2 billion) in Quarter 2 2018 as they continue to spend and invest more than they received in income.

    Corporations increased their net borrowing by £11.7 billion in Quarter 2 2018, to 2.2% of GDP.

  3. Derek Henry says:

    If the Scottish government in an Indy Scotland…..

    Created £50 billion and put it into the Scottish economy via government spending

    Then

    Stripped out £30 billion out of the Scottish economy via taxes from that spending.

    We live in a spend and then tax economy not a tax and then spend one.

    Scottish households, Scottish businesses and exporters to Scotland would share a £20 billion “surplus”. That £20 billion ” surplus ” would be held as Savings. The Scottish government “deficit” is just government spending that has not been taxed yet because people have decided to save their “surplus” rather than spend it. Some of that savings will be swapped for gilts when people decide to put money into their pension.

    Scottish government spending not only needs to pay for goods and services that the Scottish government requires. It also has to meet the saving desires of everyone else. Which is why we’ve only ran budget surpluses very few times in the last 300 years. 3 times since 1950.

    The only thing you need to worry about Scottish housholds, Scottish businesses and exporters to Scotland ” surplus” is if it will cause inflation as too much money chase too few goods. So the size of a government budget deficit say of 3% the neoliberal globalist number made up on the back of a fag packet that flows through the growth comission and the EU treaties like Blackpool rock is nonsense.

    The wrong size of a government “deficit ” and thus the non government sector “surplus ” is when it causes inflation end of Story. When you are a running a trade deficit the only time you should be running a budget surplus is when the economy is overheating and runnning at full tilt so you can strip out currency from the economy via taxes or cutting government spending to cool things down a bit.

    So what’s needed in an Indy Scotland is the Scottish government needs to replace a budget constraint with an inflation constraint model.

    Let’s stop pretending that replacing a budget constraint with an inflation constraint is so hard. It involves a change in perspective, nothing more and nothing less. It doesn’t give license to policy makers to do whatever they want. It does mean the Indy Scottish treasury will finally be doing something useful with its deficit projections—namely, building models to understand how deficits will affect the macroeconomy (while its current practice is to assume an economy at full employment and warn of impending financial ruin as a result of deficits).

    Either going with the Growth comission or being at the heart of Europe will be economic suicide trapped and not independent at all. As they balance government finances as if it is a household budget with an immaginary budget constraint that only suits the bankers and pushes Scottish households and Scottish businesses into ever more debt. The debt that really matters.

    https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/01/replacing-budget-constraint-inflation-constraint.html

  4. Derek Henry says:

    We live in a spend and then tax economy not a tax and then spend one.

    If Scotland was to become Independent and created a new currency lets call it the ” Malt ”

    They could not collect taxes from the Scottish people in order to spend as nobody in Scotland would have any ” Malts ” yet the only place that would have ” Malts ” would be the Scottish government and they have not spent any into the Scottish economy.

    They would spend ” Malts ” as many as they like on the goods and services they need and then from that spending they would collect ” Malts ” as taxes in order to control inflation.

    Try it yourself at home get some monopoly money from your Monopoly board game and some lego men/Women. Get 50 lego man/Women and put them in a line on your carpet and then give the first lego man/Women £1,000 and create your own tax rate say 10%.

    The only rule is every lego men/Women has to spend all of their income.

    First lego man/Women receives £1,000 pays their tax passes it to the second lego man/Women they pay their tax. Third pays their tax passes it to the fouth lego man/Women they pay their tax. Fourth pays their tax passes it to the fith lego man/Women they pay their tax. So on and so on right along the spending chain.

    What you’ll find is all government spending pays for itself with any positive tax rate. The Orginal £1,000 will be cancelled like a tally stick as you get to the end of the spending chain. The only choices the lego man/Women have in the spending chain is to either ” save ” or ” spend ” their income after they have paid their tax. The government spent £1,000 and collected £1,000 from that spending and blanced their budget.

    SO lets change the rules and allow the lego man/Women to save some of their income.

    lego man/Women 5, 15, 25, and 30 save £50 each.

    What’s happened now ?

    The government spent £1,000 and only collected £800 from that spending the government is running a £200 deficit.

    Which is equal to the penny of the “surplus ” of lego man/Women 5, 15, 25, and 30 who saved £50 each.

    1. Jo says:

      Sorry Derek, I really hate it when folk pollute threads like this with lengthy posts one after the other. It’s not that I’m illiterate, it just switches me right off. Just saying.

      1. Alistair Taylor says:

        Aye.
        The Derek Henry show.

  5. Jo says:

    I agree that the media obsession with Davidson is extraordinary and, to put it mildly, inappropriate.

    That Davidson represents a Party which is responsible for so much that is bad, yet, for reasons I can quite fathom, is the darling of the media should tell us all how mad the political world has become.

    There are things Davidson has clearly worked on. No matter how much work she’s done, however, it hasn’t changed Conservative policies and what they stand for. Again, incredibly, so-called journalists devote little time to those things.

    We may ask about the sorry state of politics right now, but the responsibility for that lies fairly and squarely at the door of a media which fails to hold politicians to account. The BBC is the worst offender, publicly funded and, ironically, bound by its own code of conduct to remain politically impartial. And yet it repeatedly ignores that code and gets away with it.

    Davidson is hyped as the great Tory hope. That should tell us how bad it is! I heard her say again this week that the Tory leadership wasn’t on her radar. I’m sceptical about that. I’m also certain that she’d be warmly welcomed to the contest and there will be pressure on her to compete. No doubt she’ll get plenty of support from journalists and the BBC.

  6. Derek Henry says:

    We live in a spend and then tax economy not a tax and then spend one.

    If Scotland was to become Independent and created a new currency lets call it the ” Malt ”

    They could not borrow from the Scottish people in order to spend as nobody in Scotland would have any ” Malts ” yet the only place that would have ” Malts ” would be the Scottish government and they have not spent any into the Scottish economy.

    Infact, government borrowing is not even a fiscal operation. Government finances does not operate like a household budget. Government borrowing is a monetary operation not a fiscal one.

    That is, the bond sales (debt issuance) allows the central bank to drain any excess reserves in the cash-system and therefore curtail the downward pressure on the interest rate. In doing so it maintains control of monetary policy. Importantly:

    fiscal deficits place downward pressure on interest rates;

    bond sales maintain interest rates at the central bank target rate;

    Government borrowing allows the central bank to hit its overnigt interest rate.

    I rekon over 90% of people in Scotland believe that government borrowing is exactly like their own household or business borrowing when nothing could be further from the truth.

    http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=381

    1. Me Bungo Pony says:

      Well, we can’t all be as clever as you Derek 😉

  7. Roland Stiven says:

    Brilliant paragraph
    ‘Davidson is a giant in a Holyrood in which she competes for media attention with Willie Rennie and Richard Leonard. She is less politically toxic than Boris Johnson and smarter than Murdo Fraser. She is more socially liberal than Jacob Rees-Mogg and has a wider reach than Annabel Goldie. It’s a low bar.’

    1. John B Dick says:

      My neighbour voted for independence “in the hope that after independence we might get a Conservative party I could vote for”. I think he remembers the Butskellites, and we have had them on the Highland List, but I don’t see Ruth Davidson attracting them to the party.

      I’m beginning to feel sorry for the PM, whom many see as the best prime minister the Conservatives can put forward. She is doing her best in a situation with everything against her, and getting no thaks for it.

      Can I get counselling for that?

      1. Jo says:

        “Can I get counselling for that?”

        I doubt it John but I bet Theresa will need plenty when she staggers off.

        Isn’t it incredible what being PM does to people? She looks haggard. She once walked quite straight and quite quickly. Now she is stooped and walks like her shoes are too tight and she’s in pain. She’s slowed right down. Unbelievable transformation in less than three years.

        1. indyman says:

          I know an ex-tory who left the party in disgust at what they have become. She knew May and said that the only thing May had the slightest understanding of was internal Tory party politics. That served her when she was Home Secretary as she was able to get out of the job before the effects of her catastrophic policies (cutting police numbers etc.) came home to roost as they are doing now.

          As PM she faced a job way beyond her competence, experience and even powers of comprehension. Her pathetic response to questioning has become a national joke, but not a funny one. Once she leaves office she will be despised by virtually everyone she was hoping to impress as PM. She will be tortured by her record as the worst PM in living memory and it will affect her health and possibly sanity.

          I could almost feel sorry for her if it wasn’t for the misery she has inflicted on millions of people in this country and the thousands of deaths attributable to her policies as Home Secretary. She has aged 15 years in the last 3 and IMO she deserves everything that is coming her way. There is not enough money in the world that would persuade me to swap places with her.

          1. Jo says:

            Interesting post Indyman.

          2. Rory MacLean says:

            I too have no time for Mrs May.

            What goes around comes around!

            The pain and suffering Mrs May put the Windrush folk through and the blackmail her whips have put on mps to vote for her deal, I have no sympathy for her.

            Ms Davidson supports anything Mrs May does and is a supporter of the Rape Clause, politicians like this with no empathy, reap what they sow, they have no feelings for those they hurt, why would we sympathise with them?

  8. Richard Easson says:

    The Arlene factor is there , not just under the surface. There is no Scottish Conservative party for Davidson to lead and the fiirst mention of any Union in the Conservative title came after the Irish Union and then, after partition it officially, by Act of Parliament became The Conservative and Irish Unionist Party.

  9. John Mooney says:

    Davidson a leader? More a modern day Toom Tabard!

  10. indyman says:

    Derek Henry is talking bollox. We live in neither a tax & spend OR a spend then tax economy. We live in an economy where the government prints its own money to suit its own purposes. How he can write thousands of words about this without mentioning the words “Fiat Currency” and expect to be believed is beyond me. The only restraint to government money printing is the resources that the country has to back up its currency. If its resources in the eyes of the international monetary community do not support the amount of money the government is printing it devalues the currency.

    An independent Scotland would have the resources to support its own currency, no sane person could deny this. The SNP also has a track record of economic competence which is truly remarkable in the face of the UK strategy to cause as much damage to the Scottish economy as they think they can get away with. Without Scottish resources the Pound Sterling would continue to go down which is why Westminster is panicking about the possibility.

    As time goes on we will see more desperation from Westminster and their sock puppets like Mundell, Davidson & Corbyn, along with more bovine excrement from the likes of Henry polluting the comments section of sites like this.

    1. Derek Henry says:

      Wrong Indyman !

      Only constraint is an inflation constraint and fiat currency is a given.

      Doctors and nurses don’t grow out of the pavement no matter how much money you through at them. The skills and real resources have to be available or prices go up. Infrastructure construction if you run out of cement, hard rock and concrete and other building materials, pushes up costs.

      So the key is if the Scottish government spends X and those skills and real reources are not there you get inflation.

      As for your description of what puts pressure on the markets as per usual you think we will be using fixed exchange rates and not free floating ones. Also, you are only looking at one side of the exchange rate. Let’s use your example just to prove the point.

      I don’t know where it comes from or what books you have been reading but lets say the £ continues to fall against the new Scottish currency lets run with your thought process. What does that actually mean ?

      Well that means the new Scottish currency will get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger against the £. That’s really bad for our exports infact it will kill them stone dead. So of course your fantasy isn’t going to happen.

      As soon as Scottish exports get too expensive for the rest of the UK to buy people stop buying them. So why do they stop buying them ? Well large swathes of people stop buying them because most of us only have a set amount of disposable income every month to spend on goods and services. So instead of buying Scottish seafood which has just shot up by a tenner or Scottish wood, or Scottish water they will look for alternatives in their weekly shop. Consumers in the rest of the UK will cut their cloth to fit in their monthly disposable income. Unless of course you think Indyman they will go to the bank to borrow money just to buy Scottish Salamon.

      So now Scottish exporters to the rest of the UK have just lost their market share that they have spent 30 years building up. Now have some very tough choices to make. Cut wages, cut hours for their staff, cut prices or even worse go bankrupt like the Irish Mushroom farmers did when the Euro got very strong as the £ dropped after the brexit vote.

      If Scottish exporters to the rest of the UK decide to cut their prices under this enormous pressure you describe just to try and keep market share or stay in business. Then guess what happens Indyman ? The “flexible ” exchange rate adjusts and does not do what your fixed exchange rate in your mind does. The new scottish currency will start to fall and the £ will start to go up again.

      That’s why these things are always one off adjustments.

    2. Derek Henry says:

      Even though you haven’t a clue what your talking about Indyman and probably think the EU is going to save you and handing control over to Brussles is going to work.

      Dream on ! – Fantasy la la land.

      You highlight a very important point. What does an Indy Scotland do with its central bank and the commercial banks if the hedge funds decide to attack and shorten the new Scottish currency because the Scottish government has chosen a left wing policy.

      Why you can ignore most of what is written about floating rate currencies and why the commentariat always gets it wrong.

      The UK is an island economy that exports demand to the rest of the world. In a world short of demand that means the rest of the world has to retain access to that demand somehow — or they have to take the economic impact on their own export led strategies.

      For a country to have excess exports it has no choice but to save other currency denominations to excess. Otherwise its own currency goes sky high and kills the excess exports. This is why there are ‘sovereign wealth funds’ and huge hoards of currency and financial assets held by offshore entities. They are a consequence of excess export policies across the world and the currency management that enables them to exist.

      If you ban UK exports to your nation, or you refuse to take them, or you put extra taxes on them, or you refuse to buy Sterling assets then that means you have to save more Sterling if you want to continue to export to excess to the UK.

      What economists always get wrong is the idea of funding. A current account deficit isn’t funded. For it to exists at all it must already have been funded. Every short has to have a corresponding long. Similarly for every excess import of goods and services into a currency zone there has to be a corresponding external sector held asset denominated in the currency of the import zone. One cannot exist without the other. It is a simultaneous requirement in a floating system. If any step along the way fails the whole deal falls through, eliminating both sides instantly.

      At the moment the speculators are playing silly games laying on shorts in Sterling. They will do so until there is nobody is prepared to take the other side, no soft holders to panic out of their savings and no more flash crashes allowing dealers to close open long positions. In other words until the liquidity drains away until all that is left is that required for the underlying trade flows.

      Then you will get the mother of all bear squeezes.

      The game, of course, is to tempt the patsy of last resort — the central bank — into the speculation market to throw fresh salmon to the bears. A wise central bank will avoid doing this. Instead it will offer to clear needed trade flows with its reserves on a strict national policy basis — food and power: yes, Learjets and Ferrari’s: no. It will offer refinancing to firms who have foreign currency loans, as long as they go through administration first so that the foreign currency loan is wiped out and the foreign bank is force to take the loss. A wise central bank would do everything it can to ensure the squeeze stays on track. It would make its intentions known — there will be no liquidity for speculation outside the ‘natural’ supply. And that means, in an over-the-counter market of foreign exchange, liquidity may run out.

      A wise central bank understands that is the responsibility of the other central bank with the high currency value and an excess export policy to decide what they want to do. A wise central bank will keeps it head while all around are losing theirs.

      The problem is that central bank policy makers are still talking about shocks and equilibrium. They talk about pass through for exchange costs and there is apparently an extensive literature on the subject. But there seems to be little analysis of pass back (volume/price impact on the export side) because that would require acknowledging that the demand side matters — contrary to dogma.

      Last year there was a suggestion that entities may respond to the exchange rate in different ways and this may change the response profile. Apparently this a revolutionary concept (!) Eventually they’ll realise that you can get supply from more than one foreign country and they may just compete with one another for your business. But putting more than one foreign country in the model is a bit much apparently. Perhaps that is next year’s revolutionary concept.

      So we still have central bank following policies guided by incorrect thinking and developed using unbelievably primitive models. We are still trying to fly aircraft with techniques developed for riding a horse. Is it any wonder the commentary around Sterling and floating currencies has more in keeping with witchcraft than science?

      Now in the EU you can’t do any of those things to protect yourself and the markets you go on about Indyman will attack the bond markets like they did in Greece and Italy pushing interest rates higher in EU countries.

      In an indy Scotland with a free floating currency that won’t happen we will set the interest rates that’s if we even decide to issue debt in the first place.

      You won’t get rid of me. I’m going to stop people like you from leading us into the heart of the EU = Economic suicide and run by the bankers.

      1. john burrows says:

        Please stick to the point.

        This article is about Ruth Davidson and the Conservative party.

        Do you have an opinion you would like to share about the alternative governance and financial ramifications she and her Union will impose on Scotland post Brexit?

        Or do you confine yourself only to critiquing the SNP?

        Newspapers and blogs are thick with criticism of the SNP’s thinking vis a vis Europe. I myself am skeptical of their stance on many issues. But hijacking a thread using an unrelated subject is just rude.

        I am sure you are sincere, and my apologies for saying so, but your Eurosceptic evangelism is tedious in the extreme.

        Try to broaden your reach if you wish to be taken seriously.

        At the moment, you appear to have disappeared down your own rabbit hole.

        For future reference, just write a book if you wish to control the entire discussion.

      2. Millsy says:

        There is medication available for what ails you , Derek . Or alternatively , you could look on the bright side – independence means we will go to Hell in a handcart , but it will finally be out decision and not Westminster’s !
        Love an optimist !!

      3. Me Bungo Pony says:

        But Derek, to me, you’re just some guy on a thread with an evangelistic take on economics and the EU. For all I know you could be nothing more than a bloke who has read a book and now thinks himself an expert, keen to convert us mere mortals to your “truth”. There are plenty of eminent economists who disagree with your “truth” and prefer their own “truths”. Why should we believe your counter-intuitive sermons over their’s?

        You’ve made your point …. over and over and over again ….. and frankly its been counter-productive. I was initially sympathetic to your “theories” but am now sceptical. I do not believe smashing the EU will destroy neo liberalism. It is neo liberals who are keenest to smash it. Jacob Rees Mogg doesn’t want it destroyed to help out “the little guy”. He wants it destroyed so he and his ilk can increase their personal wealth by exploiting “the little guy” without all the irksome EU legislation that protects him. And I do not believe an independent Scotland can thrive in “splendid isolation” with an economic model that relies on a belief that massive debt is actually a wonderful surplus. It sounds like an economic calamity in waiting.

        When proselitysing, less is more lest you badger your potential converts into stubborn opposition.

        1. Wullie says:

          Davidson is a fraud & a con-artist, May used to be called “The Submarine!” for her disappearing tricks when the Tories hit stormy waters. Davidson has tried the same stunt with this planned pregnancy, hoping to be absent when the Brexit shit hit the fan & she would pop up smelling of baby-powder. Anybody who can’t see through Ruth Davidson needs to go to Specsavers.

  11. Rory Maclean says:

    Back to what?

    To being obtuse, economical with the truth, keeping dubious company, flip flopping on policy and not conducting surgeries for constituents?

    This time round I hope the press and bbc hold her to account and remind her of past positions she has held and statements she has made.

    It looks like she is being heralded as the saviour for the the union and the answer to brexit in the same breath, whereas in reality she is a one trick pony who avoids the public and crumbles when exposed to rigorous questioning.

    Let’s not forget too, her party is in the midst of a civil war, they have toxified politics at all levels, are completely incompetent, have seriously annoyed uk’s allies, and have absolutely no vision for the future!

    Time for proportionality and truth to be ascribed to Ruth!

  12. Saramac says:

    The Mooth’s appearances on TV this past weekend showed someone who had been in hibernation and unaware of what has been said about burning issues. She re-spouted all the cliches and “arguments” which have already taken place. This, of course, was in between the inevitable chumly giggles. For me, she has never said anything worth listening to and seems totally obsessed by Scottish Independence.

    1. Millsy says:

      (T)ruth Davidson has arrived at the eleventh hour to save the nation ( which one ? ) ; her wise words will cut through the complex Brexit impasse ; her benign visage with her cheery grin will salve the fevered brows of those unlucky mortals who are NOT (t)ruth ; she is the embodiment of all that is good in these days of squabbling factions who cannot see that the way forward is to trust in (T)ruth .
      All hail ( T)ruth !

      ” Right now (T)ruth – can we have a wee photo of you and the baby on a tank ?”

  13. SleepingDog says:

    Ruth Davidson reminds me of those human-like figureheads in old Doctor Whos that you know will turn out to be puppets/creations/illusions of malevolent aliens. The human population usually don’t twig immediately en masse because they are drugged, set against each other, conditioned from birth, bombarded by media propaganda or subject to some other form of mind control.

    Given that psychology may be largely the science of comparisons, the article is surely right in pointing out the degraded plastic state of the doll’s tea party that this stuffed animal is placed within.

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