Silicon Glen vs Silicon Valley: Rachel Reeves and the Caledonian Antisyzgy

Neil Blain argues ” … it’s the very levels of acceptability by the Scots of their political situation, including the manner in which they’re addressed by the London media and their own journalistic institutions, which remain very puzzling.”

I

From the 1980s I was in the habit, for some reason or other, of visiting the Irish republic to engage people involved with politics, culture and the arts in conversation about political identity; often identity with a geopolitical emphasis. This covered topics like Ireland’s relationship with the United Kingdom, particularly the north of Ireland: and Europe, especially the EU.

The conversation tended to reach a point where we’d worked over Irish identity quite thoroughly, and whoever I was talking with was showing signs of wanting me to talk about Scotland. 

The approach varied according to the diplomatic skills of my companions, but lurking in the wings was always the question: ‘and what’s wrong with you Scots’? 

I particularly recall being asked that question in very direct form by a key figure of the time in the Irish arts world, in Dublin over coffee beside the long-gone cherry tree in Bewley’s in Grafton Street. 

But the question was always implicit, even if not always direct: what’s holding you back? In the 1980s the topic of Scottish independence had long reappeared to the extent where the question ‘why don’t they go ahead?’ was puzzling sympathetic and knowledgeable folk beyond Scotland, even including England.

So no surprise that the theme, at least among some interested folk, had salience in a country with as much shared history with Scotland (both good, and also very bad) as Ireland.

Past tense because most Irish folk, at least those who were interested at one time, have given the question up. And also, given us up.

Of course, the perception of a kind of pathology in Scottish consciousness of the national dimension is an old and even boring question in Scotland. I won’t quote the poet Alan Jackson again – I’m always quoting him – ‘O Knox he was a bad man/He split the Scottish mind/ The one half he made cruel/And the other half unkind.’ 

(I see I’ve quoted him again – talk about the split mind!) 

Jackson in these couplets typified a number of Scots writing about conflicted mental states in parts or most of their work – R.L. Stevenson and James Hogg prime among them – as a national trait. It’s no coincidence that it was a Scottish psychiatrist, Ronald Laing, who wrote The Divided Self. (And can be credited with the invention of anti-psychiatry, a more radical kind of divisiveness.) 

Duality is considered to be a characteristic theme of Scottish literature. As is well known, G. Gregory Smith initiated the term (in 1918) ‘Caledonian Antisyzygy’ (later taken up by Hugh MacDiarmid) which he explained in various phrases: for example Scottish culture as a ‘zigzag of contradictions’.

Such thoughts returned to me as I was thinking about Rachel Reeves and the Labour government, in a kind of wonder about their conception of the United Kingdom. 

Ethnocentrism isn’t unknown south of the border, to put that mildly. But the level of geopolitical myopia displayed by Starmer and Reeves – as has been often observed, you would think that just being called Keir would remind the PM of somewhere called Scotland – is mystifying.

But the greater wonder is how we continue in Scotland to react to being invisible, ignored and slighted. Was the Chancellor’s vision of a ‘Silicon Valley’ ‘twixt Oxford and Cambridge based on genuine ignorance of Silicon Glen, or was it a further test of the mugs north of the border?

Either way, it’s alarming. But the problem isn’t England, if it ever was.

It’s us.

II

The Scottish media reaction the day after the Reeves announcement – to the very limited extent we can talk about there being a ‘mainstream media’ or even a ‘legacy media’ in Scotland in 2025 – was nonetheless very revealing.

The Mail and Express as habitual carried prominent anti-SNP front page stories on 30 January (‘New SNP betrayal of crime victims’; ‘Top police slam new plans to release prisoners early’) and the Times joined in: ‘Watchdogs accuse SNP over failing car policy’. The Herald didn’t display any sign at all on its front page that Reeves had proposed policies that vastly increased the viability gap between southern England and the rest of the UK, preferring to go with ‘Electric rail plans stall as moves to get cars off Scots roads are failing’ and another piece headed ‘Questions over probe into ex-FM’. The Record chose to go with ‘170M shoplifting explosion’. The only mention of Scotland on the Telegraph front page was headed ‘Police Scotland hires gay porn star for abuse awareness ad’. 

It has to be admitted that no ferry fiasco stories were observed, at least on the front pages.

(The Courier and P&J , and the evenings, exempt themselves from This Kind of Thing.)

The Star, always good for cheering one up in the morning, carries a front page on Peter Mandelson’s change of heart on President Trump, titled ‘Creepy McCreepface’ (no comment). The Scotsman, rather surprisingly, carries a front page headline ‘Reeves insists Heathrow will be boost for Scots exports’ and a subheading ‘But SNP laments Chancellor’s lack of direct action for Scotland’.

‘Lack of direct action’ is a mighty euphemism! But while the Scotsman tries to put a positive spin on the announcements (‘greeted with optimism by Scottish business groups’: Heathrow? really?), at least it raises doubts by omission.

It’s left to the National (obviously) to state: ‘And nothing for you, Scotland’, listing initiatives by the chancellor which occur exclusively in England, and to England’s benefit.

It will be objected that all this is predictable, routine, merely tedious, and that we all know the press is terminally ill in its print form, and struggling online.*

And moreover, that none of this matters in Scotland and everywhere else, because younger people don’t read newspapers, and that the only regrettable consequence of note is that even more people will lose their living. 

That this is a dangerous argument in the online age and with current developments in AI, is a crucial subject in itself. Online, in the sense of Insta or TikTok, is not in the main concerned with the real world (the consequences of which have just been seen in an American election). 

The many responsible information-driven online outlets, which include quality newspapers globally, are nonetheless competing for attention with Facebook and X, which work mainly to distract or disinform.

The fact that the primary purpose of the London press has not been to inform about the world, rather to maintain the socio-economic and class structure of the United Kingdom, doesn’t affect the argument about the value of a national press. Even in the London press, hard information gets through, and not just in the Guardian and the FT.

In Scotland, both through loss of resource and editorial policy, the press has become greatly less significant, and yet more imbalanced on the constitutional question. These trends arguably apply in whatever measure also to the BBC. 

But it’s the very levels of acceptability by the Scots of their political situation, including the manner in which they’re addressed by the London media and their own journalistic institutions, which remain very puzzling.

III

Reactions to the Silicon Valley and Heathrow announcements were more evident in England than Scotland, in the context of the ‘north vs south’ debate. (Which generally means England.)

Late on 29 January even the Guardian (which has drifted far from its Mancunian roots) carried an Ella Baron cartoon online, featuring a poster showing Reeves and Starmer, in theatrical posture, against an Oxford and Cambridge backdrop, announcing the new Silicon Valley, ‘coming soon’. 

The poster is displayed in a rail station titled ‘The North’: a slumped figure leaving the station has painted a correction, ‘not coming soon’ and ‘not here’. The platform has a series of maps of rail routes, plastered over with stickers saying ‘suspended’, ‘canceled’, ‘delayed’, ‘closed’.

That about sums it up. 

But the protest is about ‘the north’, and in Scotland we know what that means. We’re beyond even the north.

Today, the last day of January, as I scan the Scottish media (I keep meaning to seek therapy for the habit), the Scotsman has council tax on the front page, the Herald has a story about Scotrail (also the Washington plane crash), the National is back to SNP stories, and only the Express carries a front page which jumps out, ‘WE NEED PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN BREXIT’ (N. Farage).

The BBC Scotland news website leads with a story about the two missing sisters, as does the STV news website. Both carry a story about Scotrail fares increasing, though they slightly disagree by how much (STV 3.8%, whereas the BBC is paying 4%). 

Meanwhile, across the water: in this month in 1972, a Treaty of Accession was signed in Ireland, and after a referendum the following May with 83% in support, Ireland joined the European Economic Community in January 1973 which later became the EU. Of which the republic is a long-time member.

And thinking about that occasion in Bewley’s maybe 40 years ago, I’m not any clearer on the answer to the question ‘What’s wrong with you Scots?’.

*When our last cat died, I stopped buying print newspapers, which I had used to line cat trays (after reading them, obviously), moving to online subscriptions. Being fastidious, the cats preferred separate trays, thereby doing twice as much to maintain the Scottish press in print form. I think they deserve that to be put on the record. Not the actual Record, the cats preferred broadsheets on account of their better coverage.)