We are about to enter what can only be described as a 'Scots Week' of a different kind than that which happens every year in Blackpool .... Yes is the moment when 'destiny calls' (as Alex Salmond would say), or the British Isles is politically dead, which is what the Labour Party must fear. For make no mistake, the 'Devolution', which has led to this potentially epoch making moment was Labours bastard child .... one that was never meant to be born, or if it was, would be stillborn.
Labour's Scottish grandees were so overtaken with the hubris of an almost unbroken series of decades of absolute power in Scotland, that they dismissed any fears of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), ever being in the position to take that power off them, as nonsense. When Tony Blair questioned them over this, they described the nationalists as wild eyed dreamers, or hairy wild-men from the highlands who would never be more than a fringe group.
There were warnings of course, the Scottish Labour MP Tam Dalyell for one. He had held the view in 1997 - that a devolved Scottish parliament would be the first step on the road to independence ... he was of course ignored by the grandees of the Scottish Labour party. Now he is entitled to say ‘I told you so’, certainly there will be no apologies from those now very quiet grandees. But of course the majority Labour party view was that a strong Scottish parliament within the UK, would see off the SNP as an electoral threat. The late Labour Party leader John Smith, said that devolution would represent the “settled will” of the Scottish people, and George Robertson, later defence secretary and secretary general of Nato, said it would “kill nationalism stone dead”.
Yet here we are less than 20 years after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, and not only have the SNP solely ruled Scotland since 2007 (The Labour Party couldn't ever muster single party rule, from the beginning, they had to be in coalition with the Liberals) ... but on the18th of September 2014, the Referendum on Scottish Independence will take place, with pollsters saying that it could be too tight to call. This could well be the latest and most devastating legacy of Tony Blair's 'New Labour Party' .... the destruction of the political union that forms Great Britain.
Fittingly, if this happens, the Labour Party will probably never rule what's left of the rump UK on their own again after Scotland has gone, as they have never won the majority of English seats since the landslide 1945 elections, and will surely be blamed by very many for embarking on the unwanted political course that has led to this moment, without ever really understanding that it was political Russian roulette ..... the gun fires just once and its all over.
So the SNP only ever have to win once, and its all over, broken never to be mended again .... they can and will come back to the Scottish people with referendums time, and time again, and sooner or later they will win. So now to quote the poet 'what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'
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| Labour's Scottish Grandees Got It Very Wrong ...... |
Labour's Scottish grandees were so overtaken with the hubris of an almost unbroken series of decades of absolute power in Scotland, that they dismissed any fears of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), ever being in the position to take that power off them, as nonsense. When Tony Blair questioned them over this, they described the nationalists as wild eyed dreamers, or hairy wild-men from the highlands who would never be more than a fringe group.
There were warnings of course, the Scottish Labour MP Tam Dalyell for one. He had held the view in 1997 - that a devolved Scottish parliament would be the first step on the road to independence ... he was of course ignored by the grandees of the Scottish Labour party. Now he is entitled to say ‘I told you so’, certainly there will be no apologies from those now very quiet grandees. But of course the majority Labour party view was that a strong Scottish parliament within the UK, would see off the SNP as an electoral threat. The late Labour Party leader John Smith, said that devolution would represent the “settled will” of the Scottish people, and George Robertson, later defence secretary and secretary general of Nato, said it would “kill nationalism stone dead”.
Yet here we are less than 20 years after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, and not only have the SNP solely ruled Scotland since 2007 (The Labour Party couldn't ever muster single party rule, from the beginning, they had to be in coalition with the Liberals) ... but on the18th of September 2014, the Referendum on Scottish Independence will take place, with pollsters saying that it could be too tight to call. This could well be the latest and most devastating legacy of Tony Blair's 'New Labour Party' .... the destruction of the political union that forms Great Britain.
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| The Arguments Are Pulling Voters Both Ways |
So the SNP only ever have to win once, and its all over, broken never to be mended again .... they can and will come back to the Scottish people with referendums time, and time again, and sooner or later they will win. So now to quote the poet 'what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'
Playing politics with the constitution was both stupid and always going to end badly. So it will prove. The Labour Party couldn't run a brothel.
ReplyDeleteGood Luck to my fellow Scots if they have taken the plunge.
Well a brink was looked down, and stepped away from ... the fall out has started (of which more no doubt later in this blog), noticeably with Alex Salmond resigning. I suspect that this may be some sort of high-water mark in the nationalist tide ... so maybe he goes out on his shield. To join other Scottish romantic heroes, like 'the man who was born to be king' as another tragic hero who didn't achieve his dream, was described.
DeleteThanks for the only comment on the Scottish posts ...