Obviously meriting the top headline on the British State broadcaster’s online Scottish news page, and ably supported, of course, by an interview on “Good Morning Scotland” are the authoritative comments of the leader of the North British Branch of New Labour about her proposals to halt in its tracks the evil menace of the people of Scotland having control of their own government. This she proposes to do, she says, by giving the people of Scotland control of their own government, sort of. Gordon Broon eat your heart out, you’ve got competition in the un-authorised and not qualified snake oil business.
It seems that Kezia Dugdale is due to deliver a speech about Scotland’s post-Brexit future to the David Hume Institute later in January. I wouldn’t trust her to deliver the milk, never mind a speech about a subject surrounded by so many imponderables that nobody has the first clue how things will end up once the good ship Rule Britannia, flegs waving furiously, sails away from mainland Europe.
The forces of right wing British nationalism are creating headlines at one end of the spectrum by their inaction around their massive self–inflicted scab, with absolutely no plan to deal with it, other than making arrogant statements about how they’ll get their own way, and how lovely the colours of their aforementioned fleg are, resulting in a seasoned senior civil servant with extensive European negotiating expertise, whom they’ll need, wandering off into the night, shaking his head whilst muttering about what a bunch of feckwits they are. At the other end of the spectrum, also making headlines, are the Scottish government, who agree with him, who are doing their utmost to ensure that the democratic will of the people of Scotland to remain a member of the European Union is protected. In amongst all of that ‘Kez’ is obviously feeling just a wee tad left oot.
In a kind of a “look at me, look at me, hey, I’m over here” sort of approach she’s calling for a Federal UK (where have we heard that before?) and, God forbid, the formation of a new Act of Union. We’re still trying to come to terms with the first one.
The words non-entity and irrelevant come to mind, but even these words don’t adequately describe how out of touch, and extinct Ms Dugdale and her party are in Scotland. They’ve made their bed (the founders of a once great movement for social change are wailing and birling in their boxes) to the point of being indistinguishable from their other unionist colleagues, so they can lie in it. There is so much her party, both in Scotland and at Westminster, could be doing to moderate the excesses of withering Tory policies targeted at the vulnerable, if they stood firm beside the SNP, but no, blinkered, the Union must be defended at all costs. They are entirely lacking in credibility and as culpable as the Westminster government. Hell mend them.
Ms Dugdale says of her proposal for a new Act of Union that it is needed to “safeguard our family of nations for generations to come’. How is she defining family? I always thought a family cared for each other, looked after each other. You wouldn’t rob your sister or your brother, you wouldn’t threaten them, you wouldn’t marginalise and humiliate them, you wouldn’t try and fiddle them out of what was rightfully theirs, you wouldn’t keep them short of cash so that your nephew and niece don’t eat regularly, you wouldn’t do everything in your power to hold them back from a better life if they had the opportunity to have one?
Going back to 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, the man whom the Institute where Ms Dugdale is to make her stateswoman-like speech was named in honour of. Hume once said “ Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few”. Never a truer word was uttered, and it’s high time that changed.
It’s just a matter of when.
itisintruthnotforglory 