HAVING tried in recent days to think like a Tory, I believe a clearer picture is emerging of the immediate future.
By mid-October at the earliest and probably end of January at the latest, we will see the Tories act in whatever way they scheme to make next year’s Scottish elections sterile. The withholding of vital information about the budget at a crucial time tells us everything about their intentions, I think.
This cements the disrespect and contempt shown to Scottish MPs at Westminster and their greater hatred of and for the Scottish people. We’re the political equivalent of Alex Ferguson’s “noisy neighbours”.
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I believe they plan to fund the new branch office in Edinburgh and its rumoured 3,000 staff out of the money that would otherwise have come to the Scottish Government. The purpose of the new branch office will be to render the Scottish Parliament impotent and therefore superfluous.
This will allow Gove and Johnson to say that their claims that the 111 powers said to be returning to Scotland were bang-on accurate. What they didn’t say is that they’d be discharged from the new branch office, that is London via the new ivory tower and not Holyrood. If there is any bleating about an absence of or serious reduction in budget to Scotland, the answer will be “well close down the Scottish Parliament”.
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In the very near future Johnson will be able to have a zany idea over breakfast and it will be on the statute books by teatime. A party that not only openly and brazenly defies international and domestic law will have no problem making everything up on the hoof.
The silence of the Unionist parties about next May’s election would seem to bear this out. I think the Scottish Government and the SNP need to have an “oven-ready” answer for this. We’re under callously deliberate and sustained attack and we need to start robustly defending.
Jim Finnie
Pitlochry
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