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Samizdata quote of the day

What looks like a contradiction – being anti-Brexit, but pro-Sexit – makes perfect sense: underpinning both positions is a loathing of the largely English demos. That’s why the cause of Scottish independence feeds into, and reinforces, the anti-democratic tendency of our present moment. Scotland is being turned into a utopia for those seeking refuge from the people.

The irony to all this, of course, is that Scottish independence is itself now being shown to be a misnomer. There is no real talk of going it alone, of ensuring that the Scottish people have control of their own affairs. Because those arguing for freedom from the UK want nothing more than to immerse Scotland in the even greater union of the EU. Which is no kind of independence at all.

Tim Black

21 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • rxc

    What they really want is to be part of an organization that has the same shared sense of a glorious socialist future.

  • Laird

    By all means, let them have their faux independence, their “liberal utopia just north of Hadrian’s Wall”. I supported the Scottish independence movement in 2014 and would do so again (for whatever that’s worth). They couldn’t have made a go of it when oil (their only export of consequence) was $100+ per barrel; what are they going to do now that it’s $40? But I guess that’s one of those lessons which has to be learned through painful experience.

    Over here in the States, we celebrate Halloween by permitting our kids to descend upon the neighbors and extort large quantities of candy from them. Inevitably, the kids want to eat it all that night, but most parents only permit it to be doled out over time. The wise ones, however, allow the kids to gorge in one sitting. The resulting stomachache does far more to deter future such excesses than any amount of parental hectoring. The Scots need a dose of that same medicine.

    Black avers: “And if the Nats don’t win a second referendum, then that’s them done for politically.” Is that really true? The loss of the 2014 referendum doesn’t seem to have hurt them politically. Why would another be any different?

    [A sidebar comment: One of the commenters Black quoted claimed that an independent Scotland would be more “respectful” of, among others, “the LGBTQ+ community.” Where did that “+” come from? Have they run out of letters, or simply can’t remember the latest group of whiners demanding special treatment? Is this idiocy never going to end? This has degenerated into self-parody.]

  • The Jannie

    “The loss of the 2014 referendum doesn’t seem to have hurt them politically.”

    What Scotland needs so desperately is an alternative to fishwoman and her closet socialists. They haven’t got one because Liebour, the Toerags and the LibDums shot themselves in the feet by not delivering one. Mind you, I have to wonder about the electorate; here in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire, despite Rotherham and the Miners’ strike and other such betrayals they continue to vote in droves for the red flag.

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Laird asks, “The loss of the 2014 referendum doesn’t seem to have hurt them politically. Why would another be any different?” I am not sure. At least, I cannot express why I am sure. It would just be too big an insult, I suppose.

    In some ways, despite the SNP having a level of political success that is the envy of every other party in Europe, Nicola Sturgeon’s position is not a happy one. She must feel the pressure that she might go down in history as the SNP leader who was gifted conditions as good as it gets for gaining independence, yet did not do so. At Holyrood the SNP is still by far the strongest party but has lost its majority. At Westminster, having won all but three of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats, the only way to move from here is down.

    It’s not a great time to launch a second referendum but conditions show little sign of getting better. The oil price has gone down drastically, messing up the finances of a prospective independent Scotland. Yes, a majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU, but on a reduced turnout. I don’t think that many of those who voted Remain in the EU referendum are willing to sacrifice on behalf of that particular cause. In addition Niall Kilmartin has argued here in Samizdata, that “Remain” vote includes Tory and Labour voters who voted that way specifically to avoid a second independence referendum, in the mistaken belief that Remain would win overall. A poll after the EU referendum suggested that 36% of SNP supporters voted Leave, too.

    The day after the EU referendum Sam Duncan asked us to imagine some of the slogans for indyref2:

    “The UK gave Holyrood its powers; Brussels will take them away”. Hell, simply the Union’s own “Ever Closer Union” itself. And with an independent UK, many of the biggest questions of the 2014 campaign are much clearer: there would be an external EU border at Gretna. A Scottish EU state would have to use the Euro. The Colleagues are quite content – for the time being – for the EU to have several internal currencies, but there’s no way they’re going to allow one of their states to use a foreign one.

    Clearly, what Sturgeon actually wants is for May to refuse her a second independence referendum in such a way that Scottish Nationalists can convince themselves and others that they have been robbed of a likely victory, without having to put it to the test.

  • Laird

    “Clearly, what Sturgeon actually wants is for May to refuse her a second independence referendum in such a way that Scottish Nationalists can convince themselves and others that they have been robbed of a likely victory, without having to put it to the test.”

    That sounds about right. Which is why May should give Sturgeon what she allegedly, but not actually, wants: Indyref2. Call her bluff. I suspect that would be the end of Sturgeon’s political career (but not, I think, of the SNP itself).

  • Mr Ed

    The SNP hates and loathes England because they know that their régime could be dismantled in an afternoon by the UK Parliament passing an Act to that effect. The sickening knowledge of the closeness of their socialist tyranny, seemingly touchable, yet which might be pulled from their grasp should they go the whole hog and seek to go ‘supersized’, is what feeds their resentment.

    England, the land of Magna Carta and once, of liberty, still a reproach to their socialist dreams. They gaze in fear, disgust and loathing, like Orcs contemplating their Elvish cousins, on what they might have been, had the flower of liberty taken root in their souls.

  • Alisa

    How did Scotland turn out so socialist compared to England?

  • bobby b

    Here in the US, a minor child may go to court and ask that she be emancipated from the control of her parents upon showing that certain conditions are met. (Parents are louts, etc.)

    If emancipation is granted, the parents might be required to continue to pay support to the child. Or, the child might qualify for welfare payments.

    Seems to me that what Scotland wants isn’t so much independence as emancipation with support.

  • What Scotland needs so desperately is an alternative to fishwoman and her closet socialists

    Closet? They seem pretty out of the closet to me!

  • Natalie Solent (Essex)

    Alisa asked, How did Scotland turn out so socialist compared to England?

    In polls about actual issues, Scots don’t give answers that much different from the rest of the UK, just a little more left wing.

    I think it goes back to the 1980’s when there was a big mutually reinforcing hate circle for Margaret Thatcher which the first past the post electoral system turned into Labour seats, almost destroying Conservative representation in Scotland (the SNP was much smaller then), but the great unmentioned fact of Scottish politics was that a not-so-small minority continued to vote Conservative despite having little hope of ever seeing their vote turned into a seat. In those days the SNP were more centrist. In fact they were often reviled as “Tartan Tories” from the left.

  • Phil B

    The Scots Nats etc. do not want independence. if they did, then they would have said something along the lines of “Breaking up the United Kingdom will affect the whole Kingdom, so everyone should have a vote”. I suspect that the vast majority of the English would have voted to get shot of the whining faced lot.

    No – they want the threat of independence to bludgeon more cash, special status and concessions out of the English, all the while nurturing a seething resentment of being tied into the UK.

    Hating the English is the only thing that gets them out of bed in the mornings …

  • Chip

    And perhaps the innovators and risk-takers emigrated, taking their genetic predisposition with them.

  • James Hargrave

    It sounds a lot like Quebec, which seems since to have grown up: we want all the supposed advantages of independence with none of the consequences/obligations/burdens, and we want you (the rest of Canada, the rest of the UK) to pay for it.

    Politically impossible, alas though it seems to be: the SNP is pushing repeatedly at the limits of what is within its legal competence. A very strict interpretation of that should be established and the whole tawdry end-of-the-pier show suspended the moment it treads a fraction over the line (preferably, under collective responsibility, with the whole pseudo-ministerial crew prosecuted for acting ultra vires).

    As far as I can tell, the terms of the Act of Union were kept to more rigorously for the best part of three centuries than the terms of the ‘devolution settlement’ have been in a decade and a half.

    I am ancestrally part Scotch (as they would have termed it).

  • Alisa

    Thanks, Natalie.

  • A bit more on what Natalie said.

    Because of how unevenly population is distributed over Scoland’s geography, Labour’s vote became very efficient in the 80s, delivering a high ratio of Scottish seats to votes. (in 2015 it did the same for natz). Helping them reach the minima at which this happened was that Margaret Thatcher played strongly to an English archetype but not to those Scots that partake little of English culture. Labour thought they owned Scotland. Using their friends in the media, they played up strongly the idea that Tories were not true Scots, pouring a nationalist flavour into their socialism as hard as they could, while assuming that they themselves would be ever exempt from this reasoning.

    It has all in the end worked out rather badly for Labour. Sadly, we have to deal with the mess they have left. I think we will; some of the absurdities in the natz current position might reflect an uneasy feeling that their moment is passing and they must seize any chance they see. Meanwhile, Scotland’s political geography remains unbalanced, much needing to be part of a larger polity.

    A side point: along the Moray coast, where my family come from, the Brexit vote was 49.9% leave, 50.1% remain. Elsewhere, a significant part of the Scottish remain vote was from people OK with leaving but told by all the major parties that remain would keep the natz quiet, and foolish enough to believe it. We can all now see what was obvious then: the exact opposite was what would have kept them quiet. With finger in air, I’d guess a 48:52 Scots vote if that absurdity had not been so widely pushed, and if the opposite idea had been effectively promoted then Scotland would have voted leave (possibly without an actual majority truly wishing to do so).

  • Alisa

    Thanks to Niall as well.

  • [A sidebar comment: One of the commenters Black quoted claimed that an independent Scotland would be more “respectful” of, among others, “the LGBTQ+ community.” Where did that “+” come from? Have they run out of letters, or simply can’t remember the latest group of whiners demanding special treatment? Is this idiocy never going to end? This has degenerated into self-parody.]

    It’s part of the idiotic narrative of the radical feminists that “gender is a social construct” and along with that goes the belief that there are states of sexuality that exist beyond the current confines of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

    Mostly its “I’m a special snowflake”-ism, but if you’re part of the SJW sect you have to know and understand this bullshit.

    It’s just another aspect of the left’s attempt at divide and conquer.

  • Paul Marks

    Agreed – the “Scottish Nationalists” do not want independence, they want rule by the E.U.

    Endless subsidies and regulations controlling every aspect of life.

    Totally evil.

  • Andrew Duffin

    Good grief the comments on that Spiked article take me back.

    A few people trying to have a sensible discussion and the Cybernats shouting abuse at all and sundry, throwing unsupported assertions around, and generally poisoning the well. It’s 2014 all over again.

    Please God or someone fix it so that we don’t have to go through that all over again.

  • Julie near Chicago

    bobby b,

    I thought that male minors also could request emancipation…?

    ;>)

  • Fortunately, Andrew, I think your reaction is that of a great many Scots.

    The good news is that ‘No’ would simply boycott any such pretended referendum, forcing its sponsors to get ‘Yes’ from an majority of the electorate to “win” their “large-scale opinion poll with delusions of grandeur”. They would lose anyway, but the need to clear that hurdle may discourage those of them taking occasional visits back to reality. “Don’t vote; it only encourages them” would suddenly be a practical and pertinent slogan. 🙂

    The bad news is that spoof votes are a lot easier when turnout is way down so the voters being spoofed can be relied on to stay away. If (which I still think unlikely), this ever gets past the “belly talk” stage, some Scottsh equivalent of “True the Vote” may need to get organised. (There were a few cases in the indyref, but the numbers were tiny.) So there would be not quite nothing for the “No” camp to do.

    I continue to think that “suddenly nothing happened” is the most likely outcome in the short rem, but no harm thinking ahead.