From ‘Lead Don’t Leave’ to ‘Do What You’re Told’

 

The consequences of Brexit mayhem suggests ‘strengthening the union’ but really means ‘centralising the UK’, and new narratives about Covid are attempts to force a bizarre unity and slide Scotland out of existence.

In extremis, under intense pressure Unionism is becoming more atavistic. With sweet (and bitter) memories ringing in our heads six years on from September 2014 it’s worth remembering the Love Bombing and the entreaties that flowed North. At that point we were being pleaded to “Lead don’t Leave” this “Family of Nations” and “Partnership of Equals” was the clarion call as wave after wave of Celebrities A through to Z tramped up to declare their “love of Scotland” or how they would be bereft if they “lost” Scotland. It may have been strange and sickly, misplaced and deluded, but it was heartfelt. Now the mood is distinctly darker. There will be no attempt at reconciliation – no promises (fake or otherwise) of more powers or of the ‘greatest devolved country in the world’. Whilst the Better Together campaigns oscillated between love notes and death threats, it at least had this variance.

The tone this time (and be clear the campaign has already started) is very different. The Times this week was positively churning out articles about Scotland – Jamie Blacket popping up to re-tread the old canard about Shetland and Orkney and positively willing on the Balkanisation of Scotland, wailing: “Why should pro-British Orkney, Shetland, Dumfries and Galloway, Borders and other regions be dragged out of the Union just because densely populated Glasgow and Dundee dictate it?” This was quickly followed by David Cameron popping up to  declare that Boris Johnson should reject a second independence referendum if the SNP wins a Holyrood majority because the UK government allowed the nationalists to set the terms in 2014. He seemed to forget that he had been the signatory to the Edinburgh Agreement, he agreed to any setting of terms and he knows fine well that it says nowhere anything about a ‘generation’.

The landscape has changed dramatically.

If Donald Trump makes Dubya Bush look like a towering intellect, Alister Jack makes David Mundell look like a suave and confident media operator. This week saw Jack giving evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee, flanked by two underlings he spluttered out a message that was effectively saying that Scotland and Wales shouldn’t be allowed to decide what to do on tackling covid. Despite the fact that there’s clearly regional, local and city lockdowns and variety of responses across Britain and across Europe he insisted: “We are effectively one country … I mean not effectively we are ABSOLUTELY one country … we have borders that the virus doesn’t respect … they are geographical borders not physical borders … and we really have to understand people move around the UK … we need to stop the confusion… we should be grown up and not be different not just for the sake of it.”

 

Setting aside the sense of erasure that’s now a common theme from Tory High Command about borders (they don’t exist – and thereby neither do you) – what’s extraordinary is the demand for complete compliance. What’s required is no deviance at all. If the Britain of Better Together 2014 could try and talk of a country evolving and promising change, the Better Together of 2020 just demands fealty.

Keir Starmer effectively had the same line: “At this crucial time, we cannot have a situation where the four nations of the UK are pulling in different directions”.

Starmer had an opportunity to slay Boris Johnson for his incompetent chumocracy and support his colleague Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester,  who has been advocating regional and national variation and denouncing No 10s centralising diktats. Instead he chose to parrot the Tory line.

*

But this  was the week when the English commentariat seems to have woken up all of a sudden – bolt upright in bed – to the realities and consequences of Brexit Britain. They seem to be tumbling over themselves to make sense of it all.

Writing in the Financial Times Philip Stephens writes (Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan will break the UK union): “The performance of the two nations in curbing the spread has not been that different; the styles have been miles apart. The cautious, open approach of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National party administration has sat alongside a strategy in Downing Street most kindly described as shambolic bluster.”

 

He notes:

“Boris Johnson’s readiness to tear up the UK’s reputation for honest dealing by rewriting the EU withdrawal deal has grabbed the headlines. The news, though, is worse. Legislation to create a post-Brexit single market across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland shows equal contempt for the UK’s constitutional settlement. By asserting unassailable English supremacy, the prime minister is inviting Scotland to leave the union.”

All of this points to the fact that Starmer and Jack’s desperate attempt to go back to pre-Covid constitutional relations is too little too late.

It’s not just that they seemed to have woken up to the consequences of Brexit and Covid but they seemed blissfully unaware of the consequences of Devolution. What, you are in charge of Health? Schools?

As Johnson’s Brexit ‘negotiations’ flounder in a pique of choreographed incompetence Europe is carrying on, evolving and making plans for collective action. Paul Mason writes (‘How the UK is destroying itself over Brexit’):

“In Europe’s capitals, the current flurry of rhetoric and recrimination in Westminster is seen not even as a negotiating tactic, but “Britain negotiating with itself”. A more accurate view might be: the UK destroying itself. Because not only have Johnson’s bad faith negotiating tactics backfired in Berlin and Dublin, they are driving support for Scottish independence steadily upwards. The Scottish government, despite its missteps, has looked like a model European administration in the face of Covid-19, while Johnson’s government has floundered. Now Scots, who voted for Remain by a clear majority, are handcuffed instead to a government of incompetents, spitting out xenophobia in response to all its problems … Johnson’s confrontation with Europe is designed to pull a single organ stop: the xenophobic sentiments among old, white voters in small-town England. And he will go on pulling it, loading the blame for all future problems on the unfairness of any deal; or revelling in the economic pain that would result from tariffs and disinvestment in the case of a no-deal Brexit.”

Paul Mason argues will be nurturing his Withdrawal Agreement, as the German populist and fascist right used the Treaty of Versailles – “an ever-present explanation for failure and a driver of political resentment against a foreign “other”. “International law”, in this revived right-wing mindscape, will replace “European red tape”.

This is a dangerous new terrain and marks the extent to which the entire political landscape has changed since 2014. But then, as Starmer and Jack seem to have overlooked the entire world has changed because of covid, and yes this has geopolitical and constitutional ramifications. The Brexit collapse and the pandemic has set Britain’s elite back to their old default settings: centralisation; cultural ignorance; tumbling backwards.

Writing in the London Review of Books Neal Ascherson writes (‘Bye Bye Britain’): “Rhetoric about ‘strengthening’ the union really means centralising the UK state, so that no alternative source of power can challenge the ‘sovereign’ absolutism of the Westminster parliament. Remember 1986? With a scratch of her pen, Margaret Thatcher ended the democratically elected self-government of English cities. She did it because some of the six ‘metropolitan authorities’, London especially, were daring to pursue their own un-Thatcherite policies. And she got away with it. In a constitutional republic, she would have been impeached. This sort of monarchical atrocity has a long record in the Anglo-British state, which is still, in its dark innards, a 17th-century kingdom.”

Why then this desperate bid to maintain a failed Union and to foster the hollowed-out construct of Britain and Britishness? One practical example given by Ascherson is the symbolic icon of Trident and what it means for world status and the UK’s permanent seat at the UN Security Council. But with enough bravado Plymouth could do that for an Unchained England.

Another given reason is that ‘Britain’ keeps en emerging ‘England’ in check as much as it does en emergent Scotland. Ascherson writes:

“The union’s superstructure of Britishness also seems to maintain the myth. The elite, or upper crust, or ruling classes – whatever we call them – have a powerful interest in preserving this long-constructed British identity, using it to block the advance of political Englishness. They see English nationalism in class terms: as an angry and envious form of vulgar populism which potentially threatens the whole social order. For two centuries, the Ukanian middle class, in Tom Nairn’s coinage, in striking contrast to the role taken by bourgeois parties on the Continent, denied English popular nationalism a chance to mature into a radical, modernising force. Instead, it has been deliberately defined – by Farage-loathing Conservatives as much as anybody – as the politics of a xenophobic rabble which must at all costs be kept on the fringes.”

This is a difficult concept for many Scots independentistas to get their heads round, but it’s worth trying and is all part of the very different world we are fighting the next referendum in.

So much has changed since 2014 when the idea of an independent Scotland seemed distant and romantic it now seems probable if not inevitable. A campaign starting tomorrow would begin with a ten point lead and look across at Unionist opponents whose arguments have been debunked, exposed, shattered and disproved. Britain as a source of strength and stability has gone. Britain as a source of credibility and respect has been replaced as a country that is an international laughing stock. In 2014 the image of Mo Farah Farah winning the final of the 10,000m to take the gold medal in the Olympic Stadium at the London 2012 Olympics Games was still in the minds eye. The notion of a progressive ambitious and multicultural Britain could be laid out, even if some of us found it unconvincing, others didn’t. In 2020 the image is replaced by Priti Patel and Nigel Farage,  a sort of snarling revanchism cloaked only by a colonial paternalism, Alister Jack like the slightly confused attache at an imperial outpost. Britain has changed from something you might have to cling onto in difficult times to something you know you have to swim away from: David Cameron’s smooth confidence was replaced by Theresa May’s terrifying fragility and now Johnson’s bombastic chaos.

Scotland must be liberated from this chaos, but so to must England. As Ascherson writes: “Britain dreams of becoming a heavily armed, swaggering pirate power, defying international rules; England is a minor, sceptical nation with a taste for satire and democracy … End the timed-out union, and allow England to encounter itself at last.”

We must at long last come out of lockdown and get back to normal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (17)

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  1. John S Warren says:

    “We are Absolutely one country”. Notice the word “absolutely”. This goes to the root of the matter. Absolutism has been a cry of ideological Toryism, since Jacobitism; it seems to survive anything and everything. Why stop at COVId-19? Why stop at health? Why stop at the NHS? Why stop at education? Why stop at the law? Why not just eliminate Scots law altogether. Declare openly that Britian is an absolute unitary state. We have already seen the resignation of the Advocate General from the Government. As yet there is no replacement. Which Scots lawyer will feel inclined to step forward?

    Why stop at the Advocate General? Just give everything to Westminster; or rather, according to Mr Jack, we already have. If you did not not know this, be in no doubt; ye ken noo.

  2. Axel P Kulit says:

    “Johnson’s confrontation with Europe is designed to pull a single organ stop: the xenophobic sentiments among old, white voters in small-town England.”

    He has now courted younger English racist voters.

    “English nationalism ….. has been deliberately defined – by Farage-loathing Conservatives as much as anybody – as the politics of a xenophobic rabble which must at all costs be kept on the fringes.”

    But this xenophobic rabble is exactly the group put Johnson into power and is the basis of his remaining popularity. He did this in order to outflank UKIP and the Brexit party.

    If they get rid of him Farage will popup again.

    And it is exac

  3. Dougie Harrison says:

    The author of this piece has captured the incoherent wailing of an English – and Scots – ruling class in total panic, as they finally begin to understand that a majority of Scots really might now believe independence is the best future for our 5.4m people. ‘Yes’ never won a majority in the runup to 2014, until one stray poll put the wind up Gordon Brown days before the referendum – and ‘The Vow’ ensured we were defeated. (A ‘vow’ of course, of which we have heard nothing since. But it did its job, and secured a No vote.)

    So 53-55% is not enough. Even if we won the right to hold Indy2 in a few months, as some folk want, the near-united force of the media, and the most powerful political campaign we have ever seen – will be how the ruling class put everything they have into trying to reverse the views of a majority of Scots, and defeat any call for independence. They have their backs to the wall now. They are fighting for their very political and economic lives.

    So they know it’s time to call on the only political card they haven’t yet played since 2014; the mythical tarot card promising ‘federalism’ as the way to retain a United Queendom. It’s been the last-gasp defence of the Labour leadership for a long time, and was used successfully by failed ex-PM Brown in 2014. It will be used to try and resurrect the electoral fortunes of Richard Leonard before the Scottish General Election next year. One of its champions had an article in yesterday’s ‘Herald’, as the trailer for the movie he (one Andy Maciver – and no, I hudnie heard of him either) and fellow federalists will try and con the Scottish people with soon. If the ‘federalist’ red herring can con enough Labour and LibDem-voting Scots, we won’t win Indy2. We only have to lose a few percent of the voting intentions most polls currently say we have.

    So we have to destroy any credibility the federalist case may have, and it’s a task few in our movement have even considered so far. Fortunately, its not that hard – there are good reasons why federalism hasn’t been seriously considered in the UK – it simply couldnie work. But it isn’t necessary for it to work. All that has to be done is con a small percentage of potential Scots voters that it MIGHT. Interestingly, a draft article I have written on the subject has been rejected by a key element in the Labour-influencing media… could it be because because they don’t wish a reasoned critique of ‘UK federalism’ to enter the public domain? Of course it may just be because I cannie write a ‘good’ (ie publishable) article….

    1. mince'n'tatties says:

      No daft games from me Dougie , who in your mind is a Scot? You seem to forget that Salmond brought in the vile determination of who was a Scot. In plain terms the SNP was allowed to determine who is and isn’t a Scot. Otherness….exclusion, sound familiar? Eurpoe 1930’s
      Independence desire gone nasty, turned into weasel politics
      As I understand it if you stand on Scotlands soil you qualify, that’s it. that’s enough. If you don’t, well you just don’t. Birthright, what is that? Oh please.
      Salmond and the Murrells definition won’t cut it. Far too raw. Stormy seas ahead, unless we invoke State enforcement. Inclusion now there’s a thought.
      I am genuinely concerned about the SNP’s lack of intellectual rigour, ok laziness.

      1. Dougie Harrison says:

        Simple answer from me pal. A Scot is someone over the age of 16 who has chosen to live in Scotland, and has bothered to register to vote here. Non Scots-born folk like myself (I was born in what was then a British colony, of Scots parents, and have only lived in Scotland for 71 years), including those who have chosen to live here rather more recently than I did, are included if they care to register to vote.

        THEY are not our problem. Our problem is with former Scots who have chosen to live elsewhere, and whom many unionists now clamour to give voting rights in Indy2. They have CHOSEN to move. They won’t have to live with the consequences of Indy2. Argal, they are not entitled to vote on Scotland’s future, any more than they are entitled to vote on which local cooncillors organise rubbish collection in Scots local authorities.

        1. mince'n'tatties says:

          ‘ THEY are not our problem’. And here was me thinking THEY were as Scottish as me. Anyhow be that as it may, it seems to me THEY will figure large in an agreement on Indie2. Little point stamping your tootsies. Adjust. And so let’s be clear; if you arrive from Taiwan, Tehran, or Timbucktoo you can vote then fly home if things don’t pan out as you had hoped. Mmmm.
          Nice to get your thoughts though, and on that note ever does it ever cross your mind that persuasion might be better long term than exclusion?
          Too much like hard work I suppose.
          Oh and Bella ain’t a online dating agency….I’m not and harbour no desire ever to be…your pal.

          1. Dougie Harrison says:

            This response guarantees that by virtue of your inability to make yourself clear on the second-most important issue facing the Scots citizenry – after climate change – you are unlikely to ever be my pal. So nae worries on that score, non-pal.

            It’s interesting that you fail to even notice in your incoherence the real issue I was highlighting: the danger of unionists conning a small percentage of Scots voters into voting against independence, by trotting out the auld deid duck of UK federalism. But maybe that’s because you’re daft enough to believe, despite the evidence, that federalism might be the ‘solution’ to the Disunited Queendom’s ‘national question’?

    2. Lorna Campbell says:

      An illustration should be cobbled together forthwith, showing that England will still come out on top. Should not be difficult as it is the truth, anyway. No way would they ever seriously share power with any other part. Anyone who believes that must believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden. England-as-the-UK wants to hold on to its power. Some Scots and their rUK allies benefit from staying in the Union and care not a jot about anyone else; they are a minority, but, if you hadn’t noticed, Dougie, minorities of all kinds call the tune in this Scotland of ours. Those two facts are the reason why we are not independent. That, and the fact that the SG positively enables these minorities to flex their minority muscles so that the majority is overwhelmed. Colonialism takes several forms.

      1. Dougie Harrison says:

        Lorna, this is the information in a letter I have today sent to a newspaper. It may answer your plea for information about why England would always come out on top in a federal UK – which is why such a state will never be created:

        “Some folk claim, despite political geography and history, that federalism remains the future of the UK. In times of political crisis, this delusion is aired by folks like Gordon Brown in 2014, and Richard Leonard MSP today.

        A fatal flaw negates the possibility of UK federalism working.

        Unless England is divided into several units, it can’t happen. England is most unlikely to be so divided, and won’t be before Scotland regains nationhood. A 2004 Government ballot in the North-east, with the strongest ‘regional identity’ in England, rejected an Assembly by 77.9% to 22.1% on a minority poll. The Blair Government abandoned the idea.

        England has 84.3% of the UK population, Scotland 8.2%, Wales 4.7%, Northern Ireland 2.8%. (Wikipedia estimates based on 2011 Census figures.)

        If Kernow ruled itself, and the Isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey were to join a new federal UK, England would still be able to outvote every other component three times over. That applies, even in the impossible event that the Irish Republic’s nearly 5m people were to join a federal UK.

        There are many federal states in the world. But not a single one in which one part can outvote all the others combined, several times over. Federalism can’t work here. Scotland will inevitably regain the independence voluntarily foregone to create the UK in 1707. Soon.”

        1. Dougie Harrison says:

          I should perhaps add Lorna, that I’m a socialist economist who has worked and campaigned for Scottish devolution since I came into political consciousness as a teenager, in the 1960s. I played a wee part in ensuring that the Scottish trades union movement kept the flame alive in the dark Thatcher years – which led directly to the creation of our devolved Holyrood.

          It was only as a paid lobbyist for a health charity in the early years of Holyrood, when I had to understand how the institution worked in order to win its support for people with multiple sclerosis, that I became fully aware of the limitations of devolution. I have actively supported independence politically (active as in read, written, pounded streets and chapped doors, debated in meetings, shelled out cash etc) for well over a decade now.

          So I’m not some daft wee boy who’s politically wet behind the ears. And I regard any view that people somehow deemed ‘non-Scots’, and therefore incomers, should not have a vote which could deeply affect their future wellbeing, as verging on racist. And therefore to be fought. Who is the God of St Andrew who is going to decide whether anyone over 16 resident here, should or should not be entitled to participate in our democracy?

          1. Lorna Campbell says:

            I absolutely agree that no one’s vote should be removed or even amended for any future referendum. The would be contrary to human rights and retrograde. I trust that you did not think that is what I meant. Having said that, we must be realistic about that mindset that cannot conceive of any other part but England being in any kind of control of the UK or of itself. That, in itself, is stridently racist and must be called out. I also believe that we have a naive, airy fairy attitude to England-as-the-UK that does not bear close scrutiny. Election after election, and certainly, in the referendum on Brexit, the English working-class, such as it remains, voted for Brexit, with no regard for the rest of us. I’m afraid that, like so much else, this is mythology, and the ruling elite in England is very much the same as it always was, as it was when Bruce met Edward II at Bannockburn, much the same as it was in 1707 and much the same as it has always been. The nation has had many fine qualities, and, believe it or not, I am an Anglophile in most things, except in politics, defence, foreign affairs and colonial expansionism. In those areas, and a few others, it is to be feared, and cannot be trusted.

        2. Axel P Kulit says:

          The only way Federalism mightwork is if each country/region had exactly ONE vote. This would mean that, for example if a majority of Scottish MPs voted for a measure it would mean ONE vote. If a majority of English MPs voted against the measure that would be ONE vote

          Of course England would gladly give up their power to preserve the union and the endless stream of flying pigs and unicorns that would fly to them from the sunny post Brexit uplands.

        3. Lorna Campbell says:

          The is the case against in a nutshell, Dougie, and it should be read by all those who favour federalism as some kind of solution. It would never work. They know that, and they would renege if it ever made it to the point of being drawn up, or they’d move the goalposts, but so many up here might fall for it. Good man.

          1. Dougie Harrison says:

            I am perfectly aware that federalism cannot ever be a way forward for any part of the Disunited Queendom. The only ever attempt in recent history to make a federal state work, in which one part was so large in comparison to the others that is could outvote them all combined, was the USSR, which was of course dominated by Russia. We know what happened to that.

            But the fact that it couldn’t work in any way in the DQ, does not mean that desperate unionists with their backs to the wall won’t try to con some Scots into thinking it MIGHT. Even if we went into referendum indy2 with a consistent 60% pro-indy majority in the polls, our opponents would only have to persuade a few percent that federalism MIGHT work, for it to rob independence of a majority. So part of our additional political work to attain independence now has to include the arguments to destroy any credibility the notion of federalism might have in Scots minds.

            We need to get used to federalism being employed as a campaign tactic by unionists, and be prepared to destroy it every time it surfaces. The fact that one Andy Maciver, author of the piece proposing federalism in last Saturday’s Herald, is a former head of Communications for the Tories in Scotland, should convince all those who support independence that this will now be used to attempt to weaken us. People who have started to consider voting for independence because they are anti-Brexit, or because they’re on the left and hate Tories, or just because they have been impressed by Nicola’s professional competence in handling covid, are precisely the people whom Mr Maciver and his ilk are seeking to con. And if we do not destroy the concept of federalism in the DQ, they might just con enough of them.

            That is why I’ve raised the issue here.

  4. Lorna Campbell says:

    English Nationalism has not changed in its essentials for nigh on a thousand years, and to try and deny that is pointless and retrograde. Its whole thrust has been, and remains so, to subjugate the other nations on the British Isles and to bend them to its will. There has never been a time in our mutual history when England has left Scotland alone, when it has not interfered in our internal politics, in our economics, in our social order. That is the pure, unvarnished truth, and, unless we start from there, and why that should be so, we will never even begin to understand what makes England tick. It is a fact that a substantial percentage of people from the English working class, totally contrary to the universal working-class solidarity that Unionist Scots witter on about, erroneously, voted for Brexit, and has consistently backed the measures being taken to silence the three satellite nations – because that is what we are.

    Placing Trident in Scotland was quite deliberate. It kept it away from the biggest centres of population in the British Isles, which are in England. The Scots are expendable. Simple and efficient, just as the removal of the Chagos Islanders was, for very similar reasons. Reprehensible, but simple and efficient. Unless we are willing to face up to what these facts tells us about our relationship with our large neighbour, we will find ourselves being unable to negotiate our withdrawal from the Union. I do not understand why it is so difficult to accept that the English ruling elite wants to keep hold of us for geo-political and economic, territorial and power reasons. I do not understand why it is so hard to admit that many people who have moved to Scotland from the south have this mindset and will never vote for independence because the last referendum voting analysis proved it in black-and-white. We are so afraid of offending English people in our midst that we hand them a free ‘get out of jail’ card and allow them to escape scrutiny.

    Yes, we do need fresh blood, and yes, it would be contrary to basic human rights to alter their status or voting status in Scotland. It is not contrary to any human rights, however, or to suggest any form of racism, to force them to defend their negative attitude to Scottish independence. Why not? We force our own Scottish Unionists to do so every day. I really am fed up of all this pussy-footing around. We need to make it plain now to both England itself and to our English-born Scots that we are going to be independent, and they will not stop us. If they want to go first and become independent themselves, that’s up to them. England must sort itself out by itself; it is not for us to do it for them, any more than it was for us to oppose Brexit on behalf of the whole UK. That was always a very costly strategic error on the SG’s part, and it has cost us dearly in terms of delaying independence, just as how we relate, with cringing, obeisance to the English NO vote in our midst, has cost us dearly in terms of time and wasted effort.

    England-as-the-UK is fast descending into a proto fascist state as it wrestles with the need to be top dog, at least on its own patch, and in neighbouring Europe, and the need to widen its trade and other international requirements, now that it has repudiated the EU. This is pure English Nationalism. That it is a country that has always had its own liberal conscience and forward-looking approach to human rights even as it steeped itself in illiberalism, is relevant, and not easily overthrown, even now, but the acquiescence of a substantial part of the working-class and middle-class in this proto fascist approach to world upheaval and change, where America is on a slow, pitiless waning, and the new states are rising – China, India, etc. – is indicative of a loss of confidence and of a consequent desire to control all around it. We, like Wales and NI, are in the firing line, and the grip will only tighten the longer we leave it before we go. We cannot live with a resurgent England, so something must give. Whatever that is, it will make no difference in the end to England-as-the-UK’s reaction. Stay or leave, we must resist, and our resistance will bring its own answer from England-as-the-UK. It cannot now be any other way.

  5. Thom Cross says:

    ‘ We must at long last come out of lockdown and get back to normal. ‘ No Mike there will no “back to normal” : normal is being decimated, let me explain why.
    The UK business culture of market-driven capitalism is in deep crisis and close to collapse under a Conservative Government. It is more than incredible to even consider that scenario but with further business lockdowns, commercial restrictions and wider Government interventions announced, the ‘Tory free market’ is in a desperate condition.
    To add to this apocalyptic scenario we are about to face six months of four perfect-storms: Covis induced massive unemployment over Christmas, Brexit created serious trading dislocations in January, major political crisis with a polarised Presidential election in the world’s capitalist capitol, November through January, all against a backdrop of persistent global climate disasters.
    Contemporary Capitalism cannot cope with the impact of these four ‘horsemen’ of the free-market apocalypse. As we speak the business community is pleading for public sector intervention, tax-payer support and state funded bail-outs just for their “normal” commercial survival.
    This is Corbynista socialism but with Boris-Conservatives in charge. Contradictions all around we see. These existential crises urgently requires fresh thinking with public engagement in the formulation of radical alternatives. The idea that a few wise men or a cabinet or even a Scottish parliament can deliver a sustainable normal future for our communities is a discredited model. The national movement needs a public conversation on post-disaster policies without a return to ‘solutions’ that were never ours. How can Scotland develop a popular approach to public policy initiatives and a reform agenda?
    The levers of power over our lives are too remote tucked away in Whitehall or even Bute House. This creates a natural build up of popular resentments that can spill over into social frustrations. Perhaps Boris Johnson recognises this with his threat to deploy the military ? The ruling circle in Edinburgh is so small it is like a bulls eye. There is no going back; there is no new normal. We need new popular policy paradigms. When do we want them?

    1. Hi Thom – you are right (unfortunately) in every respect.

      Sorry – I was meaning ‘come out of lockdown and get back to normal’ as a metaphor for our constitutional state. Not very clear of me.

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