This must be why every state in early modernity tried to get rid of regional politics altogether. Up until around a year ago, Britain’s news media could find easy comparison between the Scottish National Party and the dour massed ranks of the Covenanters, a silly media trope which, I’m ashamed to say, I was taken in by. They were, to use that sickly phrase, ‘the adults in the room’. These clichés would all be packaged up as a kind of morality play: a complacent Westminster, personified by the rumpled patrician Boris Johnson, is undone by a wave of righteous Scottish fury. But behind it all seems instead to lie a perfectly respectable local racket – old, tired and seedy.
The national conversation about Scottish independence has shrunk to match. It does not turn on great questions of identity or nationhood – not even ‘Austerity’, which hung over the referendum of 2014. The debate has instead boiled down to a series of lurid and banal ‘dog bites man’ stories. A man is put in a woman’s prison. People cannot get off their islands because there are no boats. A swindle of £600,000.
That the project for an independent Scotland might break on the rocks of ferry timetables seems like a squalid anti-climax. I doubt that it will, and one clue in this regard is the SNP’s new leader, Humza Yousaf. His position is an embattled one. But he remains strangely chipper. Locked underground for a Channel 4 leadership debate, Humza cheerily answers some very grave questions about his party’s record. He is unfailingly polite to journalists; there is none of the testiness of Ash Regan.
Indeed, Humza seems to genuinely love the old racket. “We are a family,” he declares – he will do anything to hold together “the party I love so dearly”. This is a strange departure from some very longstanding ideas. The SNP, as we are often told, is first and always a marriage of convenience between disparate elements united by one aim, which elements all promise to scatter to the four winds when it is finally achieved. As a result, the party has never been about coming together to work through the humdrum of roads, taxation and hospitals. Each of these issues, like the latter-day stance against austerity, was adopted more-or-less opportunistically, as wedge issues to lever the union apart. “It’s Scotland’s oil” was the old slogan; now the promise is to keep it underground. Humza is a party man for a party whose only purpose is to achieve a solitary aim and then stop existing.
Equally strange is the eagerness to get on with the business of government. The idea of separation from the United Kingdom is only mentioned halfway through Humza’s first speech as party leader. He instead leads with policy, promising action on childcare, prices, wages, ‘life chances’ and climate change. “Your priorities are our priorities,” he finishes, in a Mayite flourish. Humza’s strategy for independence is for the SNP to govern well and earn the trust of the Scottish people. But what would this accomplish? The constituency of people who like the SNP’s ideas but do not want separation is a real one – according to a recent poll it is a little over ten% of their voters. Fixing the ferries and erecting windmills does nothing to advance the cause of independence; what it may advance is the SNP itself.
It is here that we discover why Humza Yousaf now seems so untroubled. For Salmond and Sturgeon, and still more for Yousaf, independence is a way to implement a particular agenda in Scotland, an agenda whose time they think has come. This is, broadly speaking, a new reactionary global order of stakeholder capitalism and degrowth, with a generous amount of old-school Fenianism stirred in. This might seem a strange and unlikely combination, but it’s one that enjoys the backing of the Biden administration, which criticises any move towards economic liberalism abroad, and can never resist extending a feline paw to the cause of irredentism in Ireland. It is an agenda that is pursued by the SNP with real vigour, even at the expense of independence itself. One of Humza Yousaf’s first acts as leader was to dispatch Shona Robinson to overturn, not the Supreme Court’s referendum verdict, but Rishi Sunak’s use of ‘Section 35’ to block the Gender Recognition Bill; a knight errant quest that shows where the party’s priorities really lie.
Of course, trying to recast society in your own image is no sin. In one lifetime, John Knox transformed Scotland from a sleepy kingdom on the edge of Europe to a country famous for its literacy, zeal and energy. But the SNP’s own arid and grassy vision has none of these charms. It is reactionary in the extreme. It looks to the countryside rather than to the city; to the ancient universities rather than the bankers of Edinburgh and the shipbuilders of the Clyde. It envisages Scotland at best as a tourist destination, at worst as a series of windfarms over empty fields. This society will not produce any David Humes. It will not produce anything at all. It will contain nothing of what has made Scotland a worthwhile place over the past five centuries. It will be only a dismal anti-England, perched above a great power as a tool to be used by its enemies.
What has changed with Humza Yousaf is that the pretence of real nationalism is no longer sustainable. Watch him blurt out that Scotland is too white; see his pledge not to pursue independence until a “sustained majority” of Scottish people support it – a miserable clause that, in practice, adjourns the contest forever. The pretence must be kept up all the same; this can perhaps explain the showy lashings of tartan, evermore frequent. Humza has his agenda all worked out, and only waits for the go-ahead. His order of march will eventually come, whether from Brussels, or Washington, or even from Whitehall. In the meantime, no wonder he seems happy to talk about ferries.
J. Sorel is a pseudonym.
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It seems that the police are suffering from the wider malaise that has become almost the norm – that the biggest turds have risen to the top of the shit-heap. It’s an intensification of a general old management problem that has now gone critical.
We see it everywhere, but particularly in politics, academia, schools and in the management of the NHS.
… and in that sense it wasn’t ‘ever thus’ to this degree.
Hooray for young people who may not be gathering for reasons of political ideology but good for them anyway.
Is there anybody out there who used to organise rural raves back in the 90’s and beyond ?
These you will remember were pop-up outdoor music parties attended by many hundreds who would meet in various locations (motorway service area car parks being a favorite) with nobody knowing the actual location until the last minute so as to foil the Police who thought it important to close down kids having a good time in an empty field and all without the benefit of the internet.
Successful events would last overnight and sometimes into the following day.
I think Biker (knownasbiker) over on the swamp used to and looks like he is thinking of starting again.
This sums up our situation perfectly
Talk about doublespeak. By ‘antisocial behaviour’ they mean ‘social behaviour’.
There is something seriously wrong with a regime that defines antisocial behaviour as a group of young people getting together to have a good time. Even Professor Fuckwit will agree that young people have zero risk of contracting covid. Don’t tell me that they go home and give it to granny. Any self respecting granny would be out with them if they weren’t behind bars in a care home.
Just listening to the Good Friday meditation from Canterbury cathedral and reflecting that if Jesus and the disciples, gathered in the garden of Gethsemane, were to teleport to the UK here today, they would be nicked once again.
LS 14th Sept. 2020
How many fines or people arrested outside Batley School this week
Steyn yet again sums up the utterly self defeating attempts of the UK police to bully the law abiding.
( There will be no attempt to enforce this in the edgier housing estates, vibrant communities or Pikey encampments)
“ ‘In Britain, everything is policed except crime’
It has become very apparent that British policemen are very aggressive when dealing with the passive, and very passive when dealing with the aggressive.”
We watched a two-part documentary on police in Manchester dealing with organised crime gangs.
They nicked one guy on suspicion of kidnap and assault. He was seriously mouthing off and threatening the police in the custody suite. They all just stood well back from him as he stormed about making his threats.
I couldn’t help but think that if he’d been a 47 year old man who’d lost his business and was peacefully protesting in Trafalgar Square it would have ended up very different.
As the flu season comes to an end our autocratic government turns up the heat.
It’s time for the younger generation to push back or be suffocated.
Off topic but relevant.
I’ve just had a phone call from my 21 year old granddaughter. She had just been in contact with a friend of hers from university who told her that another girl she had worked with had just passed away after suffering a stroke (caused by a blood clot).
The girl in question had returned home from university about 2 weeks ago when she had the AZ vaccine.
The vaccine passport requirement is putting pressure on ALL people – young and old – to take this vaccine. It needs to stop.
I 100% agree Mayo. A sad story. These vaccines are for emergency use for the hyper-vulnerable (if they want them) – but the goalposts shift and will end up with newborns being jabbed ‘incase they infect granny’ if we’re not careful
The reservations about the snake-oil apply as much to the vulnerable as anyone else.
Very sad but why would a 21yo (presumably) have had a vaccine since that age group have not yet been ‘offered’ it ?
Healthy young people receiving Covid vaccine in parts of …https://www.theguardian.com › world › jan › healthy-y…
Okey dokey, market rules then.
Ffs. Why on earth shouldn’t people gather. The old, the vulnerable and the cretins have all had the marvelous vaccine. No one else is of any higher risk from Covid than they would be of anything else. So why the actual fuck should anyone give a toss. And why would we ‘blow it’. How? And if the vaccine’s so shit that we have to be locked down forever why the fuck do they want a passport to prove you’re still about to drop dead from the deadly virus. This is driving me insane. Why are people so absolutely moronic as to believe any of this shit any more. Thank god for this site and left lockdown sceptics and the very very few other sensible people still left.
lockdown for a year and relentless propaganda has driven the population hysterical
when you look at nazi germany and say ‘it couldnt happen here’ – well it could and it has and we know who would have done it. A big lie repeated enough and some people will accept anything including a mass vaccination of children with something straight out of the lab
I don’t really understand the basis of this, are we now making up laws on the hoof to crush any normal human behaviour? Oh wait, that’s been going on over a year already. Where is the legal system hiding?
Dear Police and Government,
If you don’t want people to gather and socialise and have fun outside in parks and on beaches then open the pubs and the bars and the clubs.
Problem solved.
Too easy? Doesn’t fit with the mysterious and nefarious agenda?
I see. And so do many others.
“the police are operating as gatekeepers of rather than facilitators to lawful protest.” (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1377951144446689281)
After 72 years, I truly do not recognise my country any more and as for the majority of my fellow countrymen and women: DON’T GET ME STARTED!!!
Do the gestapo police now have the authority to make up bans as & when they want? Am I presume that as government ‘restrictions’ are lifted, the unelected are bringing in their ‘restrictions’ to replace them? People in the UK think dictatorships in other countries are reprehensible but fail to see we are under the most despicable and draconian restrictions in the world in this country. We have labelled anti social distancing as ‘social’ and now NOT breaking the law is anti-social? The police are unable to police so they just criminalise everyone by default., They should direct themselves at tackling real crime but I think they prefer to appear in reality TV shows or Haribo adverts. Not fit for purpose.
Treat people like kids and they’ll act like kids. Stop all this nanny state BS NOW!
If you don’t want the gestapo to ‘confiscate’ your legal alcoholic beverage try decanting it. There are some excellent bottles around that keep drinks cold for hours.
Get stuffed Handjob. You blew it months ago!
Where is LS disgust at this. Why is TY and the gang just reporting on this as if this is in any way acceptable? For what reason are these gatherings a risk. Okay, these young kids were being tested every two days. They have been gathering in school for the past two weeks. You top story admits this has had ZERO EFFECT on infections. So why the fuck would gathering over a park (as opposed to indoors) be more of a risk. Take away my alcohol well good luck with that. Please come and try and take away my drink. I really hope pain is something you enjoy!!
Where is LS disgust at this. Why is TY and the gang just reporting on this as if this is in any way acceptable?
That’s what we Swamp-dwellers keep asking!
This week we have seen an increase in antisocial behaviour as people gather in large groups and are hostile towards our officers who attempt to engage with them and explain the coronavirus legislation
Politely telling the interfering cops to F.Off is presumably anstisocial behaviour?
I would like to reassure the public that you will see an increased police presence in the area
Reassure? FFS!!!
The only anti social morons are the Thugs in Uniform. When it a “crime” to meet your mates it proves that we are no longer civilised and live in a fascist police state.