Generations of Discontent

Much of Establishment Scotland is asleep at the wheel, safely cocooned within the cultural and media silos they themselves created and own. They give each other awards, slap each other on the back, and gather in podcasts to agree with each other about how terrible everything is but how nothing must ever change. They collectively police the political landscape, working hard to shut down and smear any ideas that deviate from the accepted norms of their own ideological Whassap group.

On Channel 4 News, Charles Courtenay, the 19th Earl of Devon, rails against reform as he prepares to be removed from the House of Lords, arguing that his long lineage and the fact that his ancestors ‘fought in the Crusades’ provide Parliament with a valuable connection to ‘our past’.

Meanwhile, generations of discontent, often layered for multiple different reasons, are coalescing. The comfortably off are completely ignorant of why and how the seas are rising around them (sometimes literally). You can see this at the wailing as Hannah Spencer calls out the booze-culture of Westminster and people like Andrew Neil are apoplectic; you can see it as Alex Massie opposes affordable rent or food, things he has never had to contemplate; you can see it in the Gammon Rage about climate change being a reality, or the public being opposed to genocide. Increasingly, the media class are totally detached from the general public on a raft of issues, denouncing the public for stubbornly not agreeing with them.

It’s a Slow Learning Curve.

The Daily Record yelps that ‘John Swinney is offering ‘constitutional chaos’ on first day of SNP Government if re-elected’, as if the SNP’s commitment to independence is some surprise addition to their manifesto. The Scottish Daily Mail continues the hysteria, announcing incredulously, “Now Sinn Fein vows to help the SNP ‘break the shackles of Westminster rule”. If you’re that deep in your bubble that you’re unaware that Sinn Fein would welcome the breakup of the British State, I don’t know how to help you.

The curious thing about this immense privilege, and this immense media power is that it actually blinds the participants to what’s going on. Their very privilege and dead-certainty renders them oblivious to the deep undercurrents of change at play.

The collective consequence of the media class is to totally suffocate change. It is the Slow Cancellation of the Future. Ideas, like, a democratic Britain, or affordable housing, or being able to buy food, or you know, dealing with climate catastrophe, are considered so wild and dangerous they must be denounced and smeared.

Unionist Consensus

One result of this propaganda model is that a consensus ’emerges’ and is endlessly reproduced that the election is awful, as are all of the participants. This trope is endless and feeds into a sort of Unionist Doomscroll Effect. It’s an easy transference from ‘everything in Scotland is awful’ to ‘the Scottish elections are awful’ – to, and here’s the next bit ‘Devolution is awful’. In this sense the Unionist response to demands for a democratic exit route for a supposedly voluntary Union is to double-down and not only reject that but undermine the polity that they themselves created, and are failing in.

The state of debate in the Holyrood election is poor. One of the reasons this is true is that the Scottish media class are dominated by a handful of friends with nothing to contribute. The other reason is, that the Unionist Bloc have nothing to say other than variations of ‘Stop the SNP’ or ‘Stop the Boats’. It used to be a cliche to ask for the Positive Case for the Union, but it’s still elusive. This election would have been a perfect opportunity for the Unionist parties (who will NEVER work together! how dare you!!!) to, you know, have something to say about something.

The problem is that when this pantomime collapses in ten days time, the losing side will be suffering badly. I predict strenuous efforts to subvert the democratic vote and somehow do some wild mathematics to shoehorn in someone other than Joh Swinney into Bute House, even if this defies all of the strenuous denials and moral outrage at the possibility of working with the Fascist Yacht Enthusiast. They really will.

No Brainer

The consequences of not cobbling something ridiculous together will be, for the avoidance of doubt, P45s for Sarwar and Findlay, and a lot of questions about, er, campaign strategies. The consequences of advanced hubris and just stirring the stagnant pond of Unionist Triumphalism is abject, if unexpected from those swimming in the pond.

As Jamie Maxwell writes in Jacobin [Keir Starmer Has Given Scottish Nationalism a Booster Shot]:

“…the British state appears to be faltering. Elections are also taking place on May 7 for the Welsh parliament in Cardiff and local authorities across England. In Wales, Reform and the center-left nationalists of Plaid Cymru are competing against an exhausted incumbent Labour Party for control of the Senedd. In England, Reform on the right and the Greens on the left are both set to make massive gains.”

“The collapse of Welsh Labour means there may soon be nationalists who want to break up the United Kingdom holding office in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast, where Sinn Féin became the largest party at Stormont in 2022. Plaid’s likely ascendancy reflects a steady souring of Welsh attitudes toward Westminster. Once a fringe idea, support for Welsh independence now polls at around 35 percent, roughly parallel with levels of support for Scottish independence prior to the 2014 referendum.”

“The UK is now in its hyperpolitical era. Starmer, the least popular British prime minister in history, is on the brink; Farage and Reform are advancing on Downing Street; a trio of separatist governments could soon be collectively chipping away at the Union from the country’s Celtic capitals.”

For some electoral defeat will have no effect whatsoever and will continue to mutter the ‘dream will never die’ as an incantation forever. But the point is that the Holyrood result should mean a complete clear-out and re-set. Unless polls are wildly wrong it will mean a massive pro-indy majority, a decimated Labour/Tory contingent, an increase in Green representation and the arrival of the most far-right political group Holyrood has ever seen.

This will be a moment of reflection for Scottish Labour, who will have poured an extraordinary amount of money into backing Anas Sarwar’s quasi-presidential campaign, with the bonus of a client media and a tired incumbent government surrounded by hostility. If they can’t win in these circumstances when can they?

This is a potentially dangerous moment for Scottish politics. The Unionist parties will take one of two options. Either they will engage in serious reflection on their policies, strategies and ideas, or they will double-down and somehow try and subvert the electoral result. Given the state of desperation that is on display on social media this possibility shouldn’t be ruled out.

There are other possibilities. If Starmer and Sarwar both depart then the possibility opens up for Scottish Labour to jetison itself from UK Labour and operate as an independent political party. That would give players within it the opportunity to re-set their position to the constitutional question, which they must see as untenable, and unpopular even with a section of their own members. The likelihood is that even after facing disastrous results in Scotland, Wales and at local elections in England, Labour is so hollowed-out that even a severely damaged Keir Starmer would stagger on, if only for the absence of a credible replacement.

The paradox at play here is that while the election has been derided as being shallow and uninspiring, it is also an election with potentially dramatic, if not historic, results.

 

Image Credit: Andrew Redmond Barr