Oliver Mundell doesn’t have a job in politics because of who his da is, he got it entirely on his own merits. No. Really. And that speaks volumes about the utter dearth of talent or ability in the Scottish Conservatives. If Oliver Mundell didn’t exist, no one would feel the need to invent him.
On Sunday Oliver was straining to produce a coherent sentence again, and tweeted in response to reports that the First Minister was willing to consider imposing quarantine restrictions on people crossing into Scotland from England if the advice from public health experts was that the measure was warranted. The tweet from STV which he was replying to said quarantine might be considered for “English visitors to Scotland”, however what the First Minister had actually said was “visitors from England” – a small but semantically important distinction which went straight over Oliver’s head. Although since like the rest of the Tories he operates in the political gutter that’s not saying a great deal. Oliver just saw the phrase “English visitors” and stamped his lickle footsy wootsy and scweamed and scweamed, “Nationalism at work. Spreading lies, whipping up fear and stoking division. We are one United Kingdom. It is not in our interest to pull up the drawbridge.” There’s Thatessempee hating on the poor defenceless English again.
Oliver has clearly missed that whole Brexit thing that’s going on. Easy to miss, what with the apocalypse and everything, but the whole of Europe – and a large majority in Scotland – agrees that Brexit came about because of nationalism at work, spreading lies, whipping up fear and stoking division. Although it would be easy to miss were it not for the fact that Oliver was one of those Scottish Tories who actively campaigned for Brexit. It’s not in our interest to pull up the drawbridge to Europe, but the Tories are doing it anyway, because Spitfires, two world wars and one world cup, Vera Lynn, bunting, and not being nationalist at all because they’re British. All to show how Britain is separate. Seems pretty nationalist to me, but it’s not to Oliver, because he’s British and that makes him better than petty nationalists.
It is entirely normal in other parts of the world for quarantine restrictions to be put on visitors travelling from an area – even within the same country – where there is a high incidence of coronavirus infections to an area with a lower rate. If you travel into the US states of Connecticut, New Jersey, or New York from a range of states mostly in the south and west of the USA, you have to go into quarantine for two weeks. If you travel into the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island from another Canadian province you have to quarantine. Similar regulations apply within certain other independent states all over the globe. Nowhere are they politicised as “racism” against people from other regions or constituent countries the way that the Scottish Tories are desperately trying to make out that public health measures in Scotland are motivated by anti-English racism. No one in Prince Edward Island is claiming that their quarantine regulations are motivated by bigotry against Francophone Canadians.
It’s only in Scotland that there’s a major political party which is determined to put the public at risk of infection and death in order to prove a political point. That would be the Tories. Moreover they have the utter gall to insist that it’s other people who are politicising the epidemic, not them. Oh no. There’s one disease which the Tories have for which there is no cure, and that’s the instinctive reflex to accuse everyone else of the Tories’ own sins. There is no victimhood like British nationalist victimhood. It’s the victimhood which allows them to risk the health and lives of thousands of people in Scotland in pursuit of a political point, and yet to claim at the very same time that they’re the ones who are the real victims here. Oliver and his pals would prefer Scots to die rather than upset Westminster. You could call this shameful behaviour, if it were not for the fact that the Scottish Tories are genetically immune to shame.
It is pathetic in the extreme for anyone to assert that quarantine is a political issue rather than a matter of public health. England has a far higher prevalence of coronavirus than Scotland, thanks to the better management of the epidemic in Scotland and the woeful mishandling of it in England by the Conservatives. There have been six deaths in Scotland over the past week from the virus. There have been 632 in England over the same period. On 11 July there were again zero deaths reported in Scotland, but 147 deaths in England. Scotland reported 7 new cases of infection, England reported 806. Despite there being a higher prevalence of the virus in England, it is coming out of lockdown more quickly than Scotland is, leading to very real fears that there may be a second wave of infections. Susan Michie, professor of health psychology at University College London, warned that Johnson’s decision to allow pubs to reopen in England was a “disaster waiting to happen” and added that it was “exactly what we should not be doing”. She went on to praise the Scottish policy of a more careful and gradual reopening. (Source Here) Yet Oliver and his cronies want Scotland to exactly what the Conservative Government is doing in England. The Scottish Tories are perfectly happy to put your life in danger in order to save their preciousssssss union.
The Scottish Government has not decided to impose quarantine measures on people crossing into Scotland from England, but it reserves the right to should public health experts advise that it’s necessary. This is what Oliver is bumping his gums about. Public health measures become “divisive nationalism” when they’re about protecting Scotland from the incompetence of a Conservative government in England.
What Nicola Sturgeon actually said on the Marr Show on BBC1 was very different from how it was being portrayed by an Oliver Mundell complaining about lies. What the First Minister actually said was that there are no current plans to quarantine visitors from England, but she stressed the importance of the Scottish and British Governments working together to manage the epidemic. Scotland is pursuing a strategy which aims to eliminate the virus, and she wants the British Government to be more explicit in pursuing that strategy too. It’s clear from those remarks who the divisive scare mongering nationalists really are, and they would be the ones in the Conservative party.
There are several reasons why the Scottish Tories are so fearful of border restrictions. The only reason why imposing quarantine on visitors from England might prove necessary is because the Johnson administration of which Oliver is such a big fan has royally screwed up in its efforts to deal with the virus in England. If public health experts advise that quarantine is needed, it means that Oliver and his pals can’t so easily lie about how the virus is just as bad in Scotland. It means that the British Government is failing in its basic duty to keep British citizens safe, but the Scottish Government is not. It means that people in Scotland will see checks on the Scottish-English border and realise that the sky has not fallen in. And all those things may make people more likely to support independence. That’s what Oliver is really afraid of. He’s seeing his precious UK dissolving before his eyes, and it’s all the fault of his own miserable party. Covid 19 is a lethal disease, and it’s proving politically lethal for the Conservatives and the British state.
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