Chaos Theory
The end days of the Starmer project, and of Sarwar’s leadership, look increasingly desperate and colonial.
Wes Streeting’s unfortunate interview with Lewis Goodall for LBC has created a difficult backdrop to Labour’s launch of its Scottish manifesto tomorrow.
“The country has had enough of chaos!”
Wes Streeting rules out Scottish independence, telling @Lewis_Goodall that there will be no fresh referendum even if the SNP get a majority. pic.twitter.com/lVhk2ufozU
— LBC (@LBC) April 12, 2026
Streeting cites a series of disasters and ‘chaos’ that have happened *checks notes* under the Union, “Let’s just think about what the UK has been through,” he says: the financial crash, years of Tory austerity, the disaster of Brexit, the war in Ukraine, the war in Iran, the Covid pandemic …
He’s quite right, our country has had enough of the chaos of the Union.
The position is untenable and undemocratic and a reversal of Starmer’s own position that a majority for the SNP would be a mandate for a referendum. Here’s what he said in 2020:
Slippery Sir Starmer ducking and weaving over his statement that the SNP would have a mandate for a Scottish independence referendum if they won in the Scottish Parliament 2021. Beth Rigby the interviewer in September 2020. pic.twitter.com/8AAQeBC6k7
— Martin MacDonald (@Innealadair) July 12, 2022
Call the Cops
Some have claimed that Streeting’s logic is that Labour winning 37 MPs in Scotland in 2024, gives them a mandate to deny a referendum [Streeting: no second independence referendum as UK has ‘had enough chaos’ | LBC]. But by that logic then presumably the SNP winning 56 of 59 in 2015 was the same? And, presumably, the projected collapse of labour support would equally be a mandate?
None of it makes any sense and Anas Sarwar will have welcomed this intervention like a cup of cold sick as he tries desperately to retrieve his failing campaign.
Home
Streeting’s framing of the issue of a democratic moment, is perennially bleak and dystopian. A referendum would be ‘chaos’ not closure and basic democracy must be resisted at all costs. They seem oblivious to how this comes across. The same tone comes from Andrew Marr, writing in the New Statesman, here reflecting on his return from an Easter trip to Venice:
“And then, by Easter weekend, thanks to the miracles of modern travel, I was with my sisters in Perthshire. “Home” is a smell – in my case, a mingling of soft rain, juicy woodland, distant smoke and, at the appropriate moment, a mutton pie. Sitting around, scanning the news, contemplating the likely disaster for Labour in May, contemplating a disarmed and increasingly humiliated Britain, with low productivity and lower self-esteem, I began to wonder about where the next big shock is coming from.”
I joined the Labour Party decades ago, thinking it had rediscovered its Home Rule principles.
I left the Labour Party decades ago, when I found most members were hard line British nationalists.
Most still are, and if they could magic Holyrood away, they would.
The Independence genie is out of the bottle, first ironically and consequentially in England (Brexit) but now across the board and England hasn’t got a clue what to do about it.
Starmer/Badenoch/Davie, the King or any other aspect of the “British Elite” ( the BBC) have little traction in Scotland, Wales or Ireland these days, so what will they, can they, do?
The lies we were told in 2014 have unravelled, and Unionism now lacks plausible, respected people to front up any campaign to oppose independence in a referendum.
Its why we won’t be “allowed” to have one and will have, at some point, to simply declare a “state of independence” to the wider world.
I’d be more worried about whether the SNP has the folk to front up a credible, or at least an inspiring referendum campaign. John Swinney, decent man and party manager, could not put away a lightweight shouter like Sarwar on tv the other day and seems not to have the style, scope or articulation to promote the strategic or philosophical picture of independence. He will be straight up against some practised liars and charlatans from London in a referendum.
Funny. I don’t remember Andrew Marr arguing that the pursuit of Scottish political agency was founded on an argument about ‘ethnic identity’ in his book ‘The Battle for Scotland’ (1992).