IF three people make a left turn and one person makes a right turn, who has gone off in a direction by themselves?

You might think that it was the one person who had turned right when everyone else has turned left, but you would of course be wrong – at least according to what passes for logic from Conservative MP and gammonista in chief of the Conservatives' 1922 Committee, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown. No, I'd never heard of him either. The 1922 Committee is the House of Commons grouping for backbench Conservative MPs. It's so called because 1922 is the last time that any of them had an original thought.

When you are a Tory MP – I would say of the dinosaur variety, but that would imply there is some other kind – it is in fact the three who turned left who have struck off by themselves and diverged from the majority opinion. This is because the one who turned right in this instance is England, and the other three are Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. What England does is the settled majority will in the Anglo-centric universe of a Conservative MP.

England can't possibly be out of step, even when it's outnumbered three to one, because when you are an English nationalist MP, the whole of the UK is England's ball, England's pitch, England's game and England's rules. In the mindset of the Anglo-British nationalists who dominate the Conservative party, It can only ever be Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who are out of step with England, because England not only sets the step, it is the step.

Clifton-Brown, who sounds and looks as though he's the villain in a Bertie Wooster novel, was asked in an interview whether he was concerned that England was out of step with the rest of the UK in terms of refusing to reimpose restrictions in order to brake the spread of the omicron variant. All the other nations have introduced restrictions in recent days, only England has held out, because Johnson fears that he couldn't get new measures passed by the likes of Clifton-Brown.

"I think it's the other way around," he replied, "I think the principalities are out of step with England." In the process he not only displayed a shocking Anglo-centrism, he also demoted Scotland to the status of a "principality”, because when you are a member of this English nationalist Conservative government, England is the only proper kingdom in the UK, it's the only proper nation and the only proper country. The rest are essentially just colonial appendages.

The Tory relegation of the other nations in the UK to subordinate status was made clear in a tweet in September by Conservative trade minister Penny Mordaunt, who greeted the reappointment of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish secretaries following a Cabinet reshuffle with: "Important continuity in the territorial offices."

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are mere "territories" of Greater Englandshire. It was also revealed by Scotland Secretary Alister Jack's comment that he dislikes referring to the four nations of the UK, but rather prefers to talk about regions of a single British nation.

The so-called "muscular unionism" of the modern Conservatives is nothing more than the absorption of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into a single "British" nation which is indistinguishable from England. The Conservatives do not just pose a threat to the devolution settlement and the Scottish Parliament, but to the continuing existence of Scotland as a nation and a country.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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