I’ve heard it said in the media and on social media many times. I heard it again yesterday from some pompous eejit with absolutely no understanding of Scotland or Wales, or anything really, apart from how to hoover up wealth off the backs of the misery of others from a large mansion-style house in Berkshire.
A typical example……The challenge for this government is to take on and defeat the rising tide of divisive ‘nationalism’ in Scotland and now in Wales, which threatens to engulf our great nation. We must preserve our Union from these sinister flag waving blood and soil elements.
Do they ever actually stop for one moment though to consider what it is they are talking about? Have they ever considered what it is that has caused the gaping crack in the foundations of the born-of-deceit Union they so adore?
You would think that even the merest smidgeon of self-awareness would surely reveal the truth of the desperate situation of which these public school, private club, hedge fund, Cayman Island cash hoarding elitists seem to fear? Either these folk are pretty thick (they aren’t) or they are deluding themselves, and ignoring the obvious slippery slope towards extremes, as long as the leading political doctrine of the day continues to further assist in their personal enrichment.
There has been no rise in blood and soil populist nationalism in Scotland, or more recently in Wales (as far as I’m aware, I’m Scottish). Nothing has changed for us. We have stayed exactly where we were, where we have been and where we will continue to be, politically, as a left of centre social democratic, socialist-leaning, progressive outgoing country. We’ve never moved an inch, now even a baw hair either way.
But yes indeed, definitely within the membership of the alleged partnership of equals which constitutes the current United Kingdom, there has been a disturbing rise of flag waving blood and soil divisive and sinister nationalism. It isn’t in Scotland or Wales. It is firmly and unequivocally in the power politics of those based in England, who have taken the worst elements of Thatcherism and moved them into mainstream political policy, becoming successively extreme as they draw governments from the crack pot elements of the right of the Conservative Party, who were previously considered too far out-there to matter.
Add to that that under the guise of modernisation, beginning with Kinnock and expanded massively under Blair, a once great movement for change, deeply rooted in Scotland and Wales, has been wrenched off to an uninspiring centre-right position in order to appease English middle class swing voters. They left us. They have betrayed us.
A party in which the word socialist is now a dirty word. A party which would, for all intents and purposes, pass for a Conservative government if handed power. A party ‘of the people’ led by a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. A party who all but pander to the extremes of the government for the few which sits opposite them and amongst them in both Chambers of parliament, lest they upset a policy focus group of Daily Mail and Telegraph readers and lose a few potential votes.
Brexit was a huge triumph for the blood and soil British nationalist elements who used to frequent the fascist National Front, its equally sinister offshoots, the BNP and then the despicable Farage and his UKIP bully boys. Initially winning enough seats in the English Council Elections to frighten Cameron into agreeing to a referendum on EU membership, bringing xenophobia, nationalistic fervour for a long-lost empire, overwhelming and hugely exaggerated criticism and hatred towards immigrants and suspicion of all things European.
The promotion of an unhealthy inward-looking exceptionalism is more than assisted by a malleable media and in particular, a hate-filled news media who have helped twist so many minds that you wonder if they are putting something funny in the water down there.
What did all of that achieve, apart from removing the people of Scotland, against their will, from receiving the benefits of being a member of a huge free-trading, widely advantageous economic and culturally diverse community?
The benefits of Brexit? The increasingly extreme UK government can now deregulate standards which underpin the provision of goods and services and dissolve hard won protections for workers which they previously enjoyed as citizens of a European Union country. Then there’s the small matter of the UK’s wealthy and entitled class, with their cash squirreled away in tax havens around the world, being able to avoid new EU legislation on disclosure and tax avoidance.
In short, even more corners can now be cut to exploit the many to the further enrichment of the few, and those who have benefitted enormously from the sweat and effort of others can continue to avoid the taxation responsibilities the rest of us have. That’s it. That’s the only benefits of Brexit and only for the few, who manipulated the many into voting for it.
The right-wing element of politics in England have poisoned the well of government in the UK. It’s horrible.
Who, even in Thatcher’s time, would not have baulked at the laughing, joking face of Sue-Ellen Braverman as she held court at a Tory Conference fringe event, egged on by the audience, talking of her dream to send desperate survivors of war, persecution and misery, human beings like ourselves, off on aeroplanes to Rwanda to effectively be out of sight and out of mind, without even considering their human rights? (Incredibly Braverman is an individual who, in the current circus that is government, resigned last week having been caught breaching security protocols, only to be returned to the position of Home Secretary in the brave new same as before Sunak government. A farce.)
Yet such actions, such jingoistic xenophobic extreme pronouncements are now accepted, without the battering of an eyelid. Reported mundanely in the news as a government policy, trumpeted as triumph for good old Britannia in the right-wing print hate mail. Disgusting. Something is wrong there folks, very wrong.
No, dear friends, we haven’t risen in any form of divisive hate-filled nationalism. We haven’t changed our political beliefs at all. But we are witnessing it happening to a very close neighbour and for that reason we are most certainly off as soon as we possibly can. Scotland will return to self-government and as a progressive social democratic country whose governments will be focused, as a principal guiding rule, on ensuring that the policies they develop are centred on benefitting all of our citizens, we will become a prosperous outward-looking contributor to the family of nations and a member of the European Union.
Then perhaps we can act as an example to others, a beacon to help bring our closest neighbour back from the brink of what currently is sliding them towards the extremes that so many sacrificed their lives to defeat in the first half of the last century.
itisintruthnotforglory 