It is as plain as daylight that the intention of the Conservatives, post-Brexit, is to abolish Scotland altogether. They are not Unionists in the old sense of the word, and they have no respect whatsoever – not even notional – for the legal foundations on which the UK has always rested and on which it was founded. Immediately Brexit takes place the abolitionists will be in full swing. Believing their goal to be in sight, they will not hesitate to swing the axe. They will set to work with a vengeance. Indeed, with mighty vengeance.
They have been at it for quite some time. When the present Secretary of State for Scotland (or whatever his title now is) said that Scotland had been abolished by the Act of Union, he meant it. And he wasn’t just speaking on his account – he was stating the confirmed view of his leader and his cabinet colleagues, indeed of the Tory Party generally. Doing their bidding, as he always does, lapdog that he is.
The intention is not just to pretend that Scotland has been incorporated into England in the way that Wales was – and not just to act as if that untruth was a reality. The intention is actually to sign, seal and deliver that giant fib by putting it as fast as possible onto the statute book, in a way that they think can never be revoked.
They won’t even have the decency to bide their time. Seeing the prize within their grasp they will go for it immediately. Like a hungry lion pouncing on its prey. Their lips already slavering at the sight of the spoil, they won’t be able to wait. Exactly as happened with EVEL immediately after they squeaked their deceit-ridden victory 2014, in the independence referendum.
It has often been said that the people really driving the demand for Brexit, moreover in the most unscrupulous ways, are those with millions and even billions stashed away in off-shore tax havens. If so, Brexit surely isn’t enough for them. With the money involved around Scotland’s shores, don’t you think the abolition of Scotland is just as important to them? If they have their hands anywhere near that till, they are not going to let the till be taken off them by some namby-pamby democratic process or other. They’ll be in for the kill right away, to kill that posibility off once and for all.
The abolition of Scotland is not a sideline for these people. It is a central plank in the hull of the good ship Brexit. It is one of the key things Brexit is all about, and it always has been. If we think otherwise we are being naive, and underestimating the ferocity of the enemy.
Even if we had won in 2014. don’t think for a minute that the opponents of independence woul just have rolled over. The negotiations would have been very hard indeed. Still more so now.
Within the European Union the strategy was to control Scotland – and undermine the original UK Union – by pretending that not only Northern Ireland and Wales but also Scotland were simply ‘regions’ of the UK. And, of course, to continue pumping the old propaganda line according to which the EU, like the rest of the world, was supposed to believe that the UK and England were synonyms. As if the two terms meant exactly the same thing.
For the last two years we have not sufficiently emphasised the integral European-ness of the Scottish nation. Nor have we sufficiently emphasised the enormous benefits we obtain from being members of the EU. Or the positive role we could and should be playing in it, as many of its smaller membr states do, not least Ireland. We have not done enough to educate people about how the EU actually works as a political entity, and allowed it to be seen only in economic terms. That, to my mind, was a typically British / English rather than Scottish way of looking at the matter.
The abolitionists don’t just hate Scotland as a political entity, they also hate her very European-ness, and the potential which that European-ness carries with it. Instead of looking at the EU only in economic terms, concentrating on its economic effects on us, we should also be playing up its importance and potential as a political entity. This is a stage on which we want to be real players.
The purely economic approach has always been that of British-English-UK politicians. Especially on the Tory benches. Even most of those of them who were in favour of EU membership tended to see the EU only in terms of a profit and loss account. They thought only in terms of trade, not political benefits. The kind of cash register view of politics that the USA is now manifesting more blatantly than ever, with the supposed Master of the Art of the Deal commanding the ship.
This is the approach which combined with visceral English nationalism and an outdated mis-perception of economic realities in the modern world to create the madness that is Brexit. In no way should Scotland be imitating it. We should be very aware – and very wary – of the fact that the English-inspired attack on Europe, the rejection of membership of the EU and the abolition of Scotland are all of a piece. They belong to the same matrix of ideas and, underneath, as a political movement, they are inspired by the same unnamed and unscrupulous gangsters whose only concern is for the spoils. Both the spoils they have already accumulated, and the further spoils they seek to gain.
It is time to play up our European-ness, our ‘Scotland-in-Europe’ identity and policy, and our radical difference from a UK that is now defunct because the abolitionists have themselves abolished it. Every time they talk about ‘our precious Union’ they do not mean the old UK which people of my generation were brought up in. They have either deliberately abolished that one in their minds and banished it from their imagination, or else they never knew it. What they are referring to is a ‘new UK’ which they have conjured up out of nothing, which has no legal or constitutional basis, has never existed before, is on the verge of being freed from any European control … and is about to be unleashed in tooth and claw on an unsuspecting Scotland immediately Brexit is accomplished. With a vengeance.
And with vengeance.
Let’s not be naive. Time for us all to wake up. And also to realise that the attack on our European identity is also an attack on the reality of Scotland, and on our eventual and coming independence.
