The only UK nation with a fully functioning democracy is Scotland

Of the four countries which make up the United Kingdom, the only one with a fully functioning democracy right now is Scotland. That may be at least a partial explanation of the deep-seated fear and defensiveness of the Westminster regime toward us, which manifests itself in the House of Commons as verbal abuse of an extreme and ad hominem nature. 

READ MORE: David Pratt: Gripped by Brexit and dysfunctional, the UK is nearing failed-state status

In Wales, the Welsh Marches now extend well into the country, and are very conservative, very Conservative, and very Little England, like the counties on the English side of – let's call it Offa's Dyke, the same way that to us Scots, England lies on the other side of Hadrian's Wall.

In Wales, the predominantly Welsh-speaking areas vote Plaid, and the rest is split between (minority) Conservatives and entrenched Labourites in the way that Labour used to be entrenched in Scotland. The difference is that Welsh Labourites seem a bit more open than the BLiS branch office is to the idea of independence as a way to save themselves and their country from interminable Tory dominance at Westminster.

Northern Ireland really is a failed state: it has no functioning democracy, and thank all our lucky stars that intercommunal violence has not broken out again as a result – yet. And the central government, the Westminster regime, seems hell-bent on making a bad situation worse, awarding power and influence to a pretty much generally despised minority, sectarian political party with deplorable, antediluvian ideas. We can't expect rational or liberal social policy or liberal democracy from a bunch of bible-thumping, false-history-espousing, dinosaur-denying, young-Earth climate-change deniers. About the only sensible intervention the current Westminster regime has made in the province's internal affairs is the legalisation of abortion and equal marriage: moves which are, I assume, welcomed by the majority in the province on both sides of the sectarian divide as they have been in the Republic.

The Westminster regime's incompetence generally, coupled with its bone-headed insistence on regarding and treating the other three countries in today's Union as parts of Greater England rather than parties to the Union, together with its incompetence and deplorable behaviour toward the wider population of England itself, are symptoms of a general malaise. Another sign of deep-rooted dysfunction is the regime's outright contempt, founded on fear, of democracy in general and Scottish democracy in particular. That too bolsters the concept of the UK as a failed state.

The approaching end of the Union between the two original parties, a break-up which is clearly the responsibility of the Unionist regime itself, is yet another sign that the UK's core institutions have failed. I am sure that most supporters of independence would agree that if Scotland had had its proper place within a true Union these past 300 years rather than being treated as a possession, a colony, a province of Greater England, if our views had been taken into account in the overall policies and politics of the UK, if we had not been ignored or treated with constant contempt and high-handed disdain, the argument and the appetite for Scottish independence would have remained purely romantic rather than the existential questions which they have become today.

With any luck, Scottish independence will serve also as the proximate cause of and catalyst for the radical reform which England so badly needs if it is ever to get along properly with its neighbours, and achieve a decent level of social and economic justice at home. With any luck, it will have the same sort of salutary effect on England which the Spanish-American war of 1898 and the consequent loss of its empire had on Spain. However, it is not something that is within our gift, nor should it be; the governance of any country is the responsibility of the people who live there. The English polity as a whole would be well advised to sort out the affairs of its own house before trying to impose its will on others.

It is clear that Scotland will find its continued membership of, or reaccession to, the EU unproblematic. Despite the assurances of European politicians now, and absent radical – actually root-and-branch – reform, further down the line England/the rUK, after a few years of Johnson, with Farage baying in the wings – or vice versa – will find it much more of a challenge to bring itself back up to recognised European standards.

In short, Scotland is the sanest polity in the UK and an example to it, and for that I at least am profoundly grateful."

Ed Freeman
via email

IN an interesting article (Gripped by Brexit and dysfunctional the UK is nearing failed-state status, July 12) the always incisive David Pratt makes a number of points when describing what a failed state is. 

If one definition of a failed state is a state that still exists but whose central government is so powerless that it loses control of its territory, fails to deliver public services and allows non-state actors to increasingly influence, if not take control, then Britain is well on its way. I agree with all of those statements but what he fails to debate – probably due to time and print constraints – are the ideological elements that lead to failed state status (or should it be non-status).

Britain as we know achieved its apogee through slavery, rapacious empire-building including genocidal tendencies, not unlike other empires back through the mists of time. If one takes just a few elements of what we call liberal and economic democracy rooted historically in the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hayek, Friedman, Thatcher, Reagan et al, and then juxtapose those with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights followed by Harry Truman’s statements that freedom and human rights were under threat and it was a duty to  assist people around the planet by assisting in economic recovery, they all seem, on the surface, to be a no-brainer for the good of all people. However, when we begin to take apart the reasoning and ideology behind these apparently humane sentiments, something far darker begins to emerge.

Colonisation and imperialism developed its own form of morality and reasoning when it subjugated the colonised, and Britain like many other countries invoked the name of god, bringing backward people into the fold, making them as European as possible while denying indigenous people their rights to land, water, culture, self-determination etc. They caused states to fail which hitherto had been flourishing within their own cultural parameters.

Jacques Derrida, the Algerian French philosopher, said the idea that we are progressing out of a dark age denies the fact that “never before in absolute figures have so many men, women and children been subjected, starved or exterminated to death”. Right now we have the largest forced movement of people since World War Two – around 70 million people and predictions of up to a billion by 2050.

Some may now be asking: what has all of the above got to do with failed states? Well, let's take development strategy as another element which in modern times began with Harry Truman’s sentiments mentioned above, which at a very basic level was an attempt to drag the poor countries into the economic world order, the reality of which was a ploy to force all the peoples of the world into a consumer-driven frenzy.

I’m not talking here about all of those good and generous people who regularly donate cash or goods to alleviate suffering caused by famine or natural disasters. Rather I’m discussing the very cynical giving of aid given by rich countries’ governments to the poor countries, which on the surface appears altruistic but which actually benefits the rich far more than the poor and in fact defines traditional societies in relation to what they don’t have as viewed through the prism of Western societies.

In essence it means the destruction of the natural environment and social relations in order for more commodities to be produced. So development therefore is seen by capitalism as an abstract concept, reducing cultures and people to statistics. And here is the point: it matters not a jot to many international companies whether they deal with governments or war lords as long as they continue to make vast profits and which never seem to make their way to the people of these lands. It comes as no surprise to me that in 2012 (the last full figures available) $1.2 trillion was given in aid by rich countries to poor countries but in the same year $3.3 trillion of wealth found its way back to the rich countries, all caused deliberately by tied aid or/and the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and World Bank. In that year more than 65% of US aid was tied. In other words it has to be spent in the donor country.

It is no wonder that countries fail, as the wealth is systematically stripped through privatisation policies. It is the undermining of states through corporation greed that causes in the main countries to becomed failed states.

Two small addendums.

Some years ago the Western powers resolved to stop piracy off the horn of Africa by sending warships into those waters to ensure that free trade was allowed to progress through those shipping lanes. Unfortunately those powers ignored the fact that 250,000 people were starving to death in a failed state.

The Highland Clearances were seen by the rich as a form of development and which led to the dissolution of years and years of cultural indigenous development, portrayed as an inevitability in the march to progress but in reality the cause of a failed Highland culture.

Alan Hind
Old Kilpatrick