So this didn’t go down too well on social media last night.
Prof Bueltmann, who’s made her life in Scotland for 20 years, was (as far as we can tell) the only independence supporter to speak at a poorly-attended rally in Edinburgh calling for a fatuously-named “People’s Vote” on Brexit.
Pretty much everyone else on the platform had campaigned for No in 2014 in one way or another, from Gavin “Vote No Borders is a grassroots organisation” Esler to Rory “the best of both worlds” Bremner, Ming “freeze out the Nats” Campbell and Malcolm “Medics for No” Macleod.
And when some Twitter users expressed a modicum of resentment at being ordered to get behind the “People’s Vote” campaign by the very people who are responsible for Scotland still being shackled to the UK and therefore dragged out of the EU in the first place, the Unionists got terribly hurt and sniffy.
But the stushie did serve to illustrate the hideously uncomfortable relationship that now exists between the traditional UK liberal left and supporters of Scottish independence, who under any rational conditions might have expected to have had the support of the left in the same way it unquestioningly supports independence for every country on the face of the Earth that isn’t Scotland.
(The other exception is Catalonia, about whose brutal and literally fascist oppression by the Spanish government Labour is still doggedly and disgracefully silent.)
Because let’s face this fact head-on: a second EU referendum and a second indyref do not exist in isolation from each other. Each one damages the interests of the other. An independent Scotland would reduce the rUK’s chances of reversing Brexit, and reversing Brexit would damage the arguments for an independent Scotland.
So those of us who want both independence and to remain in the EU are faced with a situation where we have to prioritise either the fight for independence – which achieves BOTH things – or putting our energies towards a second EUref, which might achieve one but only at the cost of actively harming the other.
What the liberal left is demanding, then, is that Yes supporters and the SNP should meekly drop the thing they’ve campaigned for all their lives in order to help the liberal left, who will then turn round and say “Shut up and eat your cereal you Nazis, you voted No, now is not the time“ when the Yes movement wants their backing in return.
And yet despite this treatment, Yes supporters ARE – perhaps foolishly – still willing to offer their assistance. Our recent poll found that it wasn’t Yes supporters who were the problem. By marginally over two to one they back a second EU vote, while No voters are opposed to one by a significant margin.
But as far as we’re aware, nobody on the Edinburgh platform yesterday opened their demands for support by apologising to Scots for having told them to vote No to stay in the EU, and therefore causing them to be dragged out of it. And nobody (that we’ve seen) has apologised for it afterwards either. A little humility might have been in order.
Because we all know that if Brexit is somehow averted, the UK will return to business as usual. Scotland – which has been entirely excluded from Brexit negotiations – will be told to get back into its box again. The UK will continue to get whatever England wants, and if the wee diddy nations don’t like it, well, they can just get stuffed.
There will be no quid pro quo. Having helped the UK stay in the EU – which doesn’t impose governments on one member state because they were voted for by another, and which allows member states to leave any time they like – Scotland will be ordered to remain as the ignored junior partner in a union which DOES impose unelected governments and DOESN’T grant Scotland the freedom to leave if it wants.
None of the Unionist parties have said “Okay, support us in getting in a second EUref and fair’s fair, we’ll let you have your second indyref, because we’re not afraid of democracy”. They continue to simply brazen out the massive hypocrisy and demand that Scotland – whose Parliament has already exercised its democratic mandate from its people to rule in favour of a new independence vote – can just bloody well lump it.
(Bremner and some others, we should note, have said that they personally wouldn’t object to another indyref, but since none of them have any power to actually deliver it that doesn’t count for a whole lot.)
“People’s Vote” Unionists are allowed to be hypocrites if they want. It’s a free-ish country. But to then whine like a bunch of hurt babies when a few folk tell them to ram their one-sided demands up their hoop is really pushing their luck.
