IT’S like we’re all trapped in a never ending episode of Mr Bean, in which he’s joined the Orange Order and keeps marching repeatedly into a glass door. This is a government whose sole achievement is the ability to be both creepily threatening and unintentionally hilarious at the same time.
Reports over the weekend claimed that the government have emergency plans to relocate the Royal Family in the case of civil unrest because of Brexit. It’s just a shame that they don’t have the same consideration about the personal welfare of everyone else. The UK that the British nationalists promised Scotland in 2014 that it was going to be an equal and valued partner in has turned out to be a unitary state in which Scotland is sidelined and marginalised and where there are plans to put the army on the streets in order to subdue the people.
We have the most calamitous and incompetent British government in modern history. We have over the past few months witnessed the Conservatives risk pauperising much of the UK in pursuit of the English nationalist fantasy of the Brexit unicorn. Despite claiming that the point of Brexit is to restore the sovereignty of the British parliament, Theresa May’s government has at every turn sought to sideline parliament and avoid the scrutiny of MPs. It has been determined to avoid being held to account. It has trashed what passes for a British constitution, it has wrecked the devolution settlement, but even worse it has cynically risked the Good Friday Agreement with its venal pandering to the DUP.
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It seems that to this British government, the only views in Northern Ireland which matter are those of the most intransigent and backward hardline Ulster unionism.
The only views in Scotland which count are those which tug a forelock and subordinate themselves to Greater Englandshire. This is a British government which is more willing to meet with an Orange Lodge than it is with the Scottish Government. Yet despite its insistence on protecting Theresa May’s favourite fairy story, her so-called Precious Union, a united Ireland and an independent Scotland are closer than ever.
It strategy for keeping Scotland and Northern Ireland within the UK is to stick its fingers in its ears and chant the Sash. This is a historic failure for a government and a party which prides itself on protecting the unity of the UK. If Theresa May wants to protect and defend her preciousssssss, she’s doing a spectacularly poor job of it. Even on their own terms, British nationalists are a failure.
On any rational measure, this is a British government which is failing. And yet according to the latest opinion poll for The Observer newspaper, the Labour party trails them in the polls and support for the official opposition has crashed by 6%. The latest poll puts the Conservatives on 41% and Labour on 34%. If by some miracle Jeremy Corbyn did succeed in getting his snap General Election, on current polling figures he’d lose it. It’s not just Theresa May which is failing, it’s also the Labour party and the British political system.
It is clear now to anyone who has been paying attention that the strategy of the Labour leadership is to allow Brexit to happen, and then because things are so dreadful, the people will vote against a Conservative government and return a Labour one. Jeremy Corbyn will then have the Brexit that he wants, and he’ll be able to blame the Tories for it even though he’s done precious little in order to stop it happening. Jeremy will be Prime Minister of the ruins of Britain. It’s obvious where his sympathies lie. This is a Labour leader who last year sacked those Labour MPs on his front bench who campaigned for another EU referendum, but who has given a knowing wink to those front benchers who voted last week against the Cooper amendment which attempted to delay Brexit.
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But hey, there might be a Labour government amidst the rubble if he can turn round the opinion polls and get his message through despite the right wing press. Never mind that jobs will be lost, opportunities squandered, and futures trashed.
It’s breathtakingly cynical, even from a party for which triangulation and abstention substitute for principle. Jeremy was elected because he promised to be the Labour leader who would listen to the grassroots of his party, but we’ve now discovered that only applies as long as the grassroots agrees with Jeremy.
It’s so bad that the Labour party in Scotland is losing members more quickly than a zombie horde being mown down by a combine harvester. It’s so bad that, according to a report over the weekend, some of the party’s own MPs are plotting to leave the Labour party and found a new party of their own.
When a party’s own membership and elected representatives have lost faith in it, it’s going to be very difficult for that party to persuade the rest of us to believe in it.
Welcome to Ukania, where there’s nothing to believe in except unicorns, the magic pot of gold at the end of the Brexit rainbow, and a sunlounger that’s draped in a union flag so the Germans can’t get it.
Throughout all of this, the Labour leadership is showing exactly the same consideration of the needs and wants of Scotland as the Tories. It’s not often in politics that something can be exactly quantified, but zero is as exact as you can get.
Labour isn’t acting in the interests of Scotland. It’s acting as the enablers of the worst face of British nationalism. It preaches internationalism, and practises immigration controls and the end to freedom of movement.
Remember what your mammy told you. Remember what ought to be the motto for the Scottish independence movement.
If you want something done, you need to do it yourself. If Scotland wants to get out of this mess that has been created by the British political establishment, we need to do it ourselves. The Labour party sure as hell isn’t going to do it for us.
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