United Kingdom
Related: About this forumThe Tories would now rather face Scottish independence than lose Brexit
New Statesman
By Chris Deerin
June 17, 2019
...Westminster itself is more Anglicised than at any time in living memory. The only Scots MPs on the frontbench of either main party hold the relatively junior posts of Scottish secretary and his shadow...Even the teams of advisers around the leadership lack that familiar, salty, Tuckerish tang. This contrasts with the tartan spine of the Blair government and the historic Labour Party, and even the Thatcher and Major years, with their Youngers, Langs, Rifkinds and Forsyths. The Brexit debate is England talking to itself. Screw the French and the Germans. Screw Belgium and Luxembourg. Screw Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic. Wales will do what its told. Hello there, Mr Trump.
Tiny Scotland voted 62-38 to remain in the EU, an overwhelming majority in modern British democratic terms. Every one of its 32 local authority areas had a majority for Remain. In contrast, big England voted by the narrowest of margins to leave, and thats what counts.Subsequent Scottish suggestions about single market membership and a customs union, about immigration needs, about global reputation and alliances, have been given short shrift. The English half-decision is being interpreted in the most extreme fashion possible.
The Tories would anyway rather leave the EU and lose Scotland than the opposite. They would sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. Nothing, not even the integrity of the country itself, can stand in the way of English exceptionalism...
This is not intended as a clarion call for Scottish independence. It is, I suppose, a statement of accounts from a frustrated and baffled and somewhat distressed section of north Britain. It is based on many months of conversations with Scots in politics and business and elsewhere. The bonds are coming loose, and in the unlikeliest of places. Are you listening, England? Do you care? What, in any event, can you do about it? After 300 years or so, is the United Kingdom to die of neglect?
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/06/tories-would-now-rather-face-scottish-independence-lose-brexit
hlthe2b
(106,339 posts)How they could be the descendants of those who held the lands of the UK (as well as much of the world) for so long, yet be so blindered, is beyond me.
bronxiteforever
(9,403 posts)Doodley
(10,379 posts)Resign? Because the Tories are in disarray over Europe and have been for decades. The idea that Tories want dump Scotland or NI is BS. Not that I would defend them, but these kind of stories are about creating division.
hlthe2b
(106,339 posts)and further breaking up the UK is quite likely to be one of them
Denzil_DC
(7,941 posts)For further background, a number of polls over the last year or so have shown that a majority in England, not just Tories, would accept Scottish independence and Irish reunification as the price of Brexit.
bronxiteforever
(9,403 posts)I found Deerins last paragraph in the article a cry from the heart and very moving.
I find it incredible that people would be willing to sacrifice the United Kingdom for a Little Britain. It feels like an alternative universe.
Denzil_DC
(7,941 posts)Many are willing to go full kamikaze Brexit.
So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the partys preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.
Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenant of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.
* Even outside the issue of Brexit, it is notable that a sizeable minority of members of what is officially called the Conservative and Unionist Party would be happy to see the United Kingdom broken up. As many as a quarter (26%) of party members would be happy to see Scotland split from the UK, while a further 20% would be happy to let Northern Ireland go.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/06/18/most-conservative-members-would-see-party-destroye
Doodley
(10,379 posts)hlthe2b
(106,339 posts)ProfessorPlum
(11,365 posts)and its antidote
T_i_B
(14,800 posts)Difficult to know where to begin with this idiocy.
https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-ban-scottish-people-from-being-prime-minister-2019-6?r=US&IR=T
Johnson, the strong favourite to be Britain's next prime minister, also authorised publication of a poem describing Scottish people as vermin who should be exterminated.
Writing in the Spectator in 2005, Johnson said that it would be "utterly outrageous" if the then Chancellor Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister on the grounds that he is Scottish.
"The Labour machine will try, at some point in the next few years, to insert Gordon Brown," Johnson wrote, in comments unearthed by the Scotsman newspaper on Monday. "That would be utterly outrageous, not just because he is a gloomadon-popping, interfering, high-taxing complicator of life, but mainly because he is a Scot, and government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context." Johnson claimed that Brown was "not really interested in British values" but instead in "his personal political disability as a Scottish MP."