I don’t feel much like writing about politics at the
moment. We all stopped campaigning. We did so for a good reason. How do we
start up again? There is only one thing on all our minds. But no-one wants to
score cheap points. Yet the alternative is to remain silent. That isn’t right
also. The country needs unity, but we are in the middle of a General Election
campaign and elections are about alternatives and making a choice. To make a
good choice you need to think clearly.
In the UK as a whole we have a close race. When we
began the campaign many people thought that the election was already over. But
this, of course, is not how democracy works. It doesn’t matter how far ahead
one party is in the polls, it is always possible that you get a surprise.
The latest poll I have seen puts the Conservatives
on 43% and Labour on 38% with the Lib Dems on 10%. What this means is that
Labour could well win the General Election. It is perfectly possible that we
will wake up on Friday June 9th to find that Jeremy Corbyn is the next Prime
Minister.
In Scotland we also have a two horse race. We know
from the local elections in May that Scottish Conservative support is rising.
Many Pro UK people are switching to the Conservatives as the best chance we
have of defeating the SNP. It is for this reason that I have been advising Pro
UK people to vote Conservative everywhere.
In my local constituency of Gordon I received a
leaflet from the Lib Dems which argued that only they could beat the SNP here.
But this was to ignore the fact that the Conservatives were the clear winners
in May. This illustrates the whole problem with tactical voting campaigns. Some
people will use one tactic, others will use another. The end result is a
confused message and a divided Pro UK vote.
In most constituencies in Scotland we simply do not
know about present voting intention. It may well be very different from the
General Election in 2015. What we do know however, is that the Scottish
Conservatives are in second place in Scotland. This was the case in the
Scottish Parliament elections last year and in the local elections. Support for
the Conservatives in Scotland is rising while it is falling for everyone else.
Support for Labour and the Lib Dems is such that they can only win two or three
seats between them. This will change nothing. On the other hand adding just a
few percentage points to the Conservative vote could lead to them winning a
large number of seats from the SNP.
Even so it is almost certain that the SNP will
comfortably win the majority of seats in Scotland. They won 56 last time. If we
could limit them to 40 this time it would still be an amazing result. But this
means that the electoral arithmetic at Westminster means that SNP votes will be
necessary if Jeremy Corbyn wants to form a government.
Until recently Labour routinely won nearly all the
seats in Scotland. This is not going to change any time soon, because left wing
Scots pretty much deserted Labour en masse. They preferred the idea of creating
“socialism in one country” (Scotland) despairing of creating it in the UK as a
whole. But for Labour to rule in the UK as a whole it still needs to replace
the Scottish MPs it lost. It can’t very well replace them from the other parts
of the UK. That would require Labour to win an overall majority in England and
Wales alone. This would require the equivalent of a Labour landslide. Simple
arithmetic therefore tells us that for Corbyn to be Prime Minister he needs the
votes of other parties. But which? The Lib Dems share of the vote nationally
suggests they are not going to win many more seats than last time. This leaves
the SNP.
We could wake up in two weeks’ time to the following
scenario. Labour could win around 300 seats, the Conservatives somewhat less.
You need 326 seats to form a majority. What is Corbyn going to do? He has a
choice. He could say I can’t form a government because I don’t have a majority,
or he could say I will make a deal with other parties. If he couldn’t form a
government we would have to have another election. But wait. For the first time we would have
the chance of a truly socialist Prime Minister. Is he really going to turn down
the chance?
It may or may not be the case that Corbyn would form
a coalition with the SNP and the Lib Dems. We just don’t know. Whatever parties
say now, you can be sure they would say something different if they were in
touching distance of power. But even if there were not a coalition there would
have to be a deal. What would the SNP and Lib Dems demand?
We know that the Lib Dems and the SNP are each
obsessed with one thing. The Lib Dems are obsessed with the EU and the SNP are
obsessed with Scottish independence. This then would be the price. Tim Farron
would want a second EU referendum while Nicola Sturgeon would want indyref2.
Corbyn would have to grant both of these.
Imagine if Jeremy Corbyn began negotiations with the
EU. He has already said that he wants the UK to pay whatever the EU demands.
Now he would be saying to our former EU partners, we will pay whatever you want
accept whatever you demand and then we’ll put the whole deal to the UK
electorate. The EU would far prefer it that the UK didn’t leave the EU at all.
It sets a bad example. Under these circumstances is it likely that they will
offer us a good deal or a bad deal? If the EU knows that the UK electorate will
vote on whether to accept a deal or alternatively to decide that we don’t
really want to leave the EU at all, they will make the deal as bad as possible.
They already want us to pay 100 billion Euros. Corbyn agrees with them. Why not
make it 200 billion Euros? Why not indeed make the whole process of leaving so
impossible that they force us to stay?
The only way to get a good deal from the EU is to be
willing to walk away without a deal. The EU must believe that Britain will
simply say goodbye if they try to punish us or if they make unreasonable
demands. There is only one leader who can credibly negotiate in this way and it’s
not the leader of the Labour party.
Can you imagine a team of Nicola Sturgeon, Jeremy
Corbyn and Tim Farron negotiating with the EU? You don’t have to imagine, you
just have to vote for Labour or the Lib Dems. Can you imagine having both
EUref2 and indyref2 at the same time? You don’t have to imagine. You just have
to vote for Labour or the Lib Dems.
Every Conservative vote in Scotland makes it less
likely that Nicola Sturgeon will have any political influence at all. On the
other hand every Labour or Lib Dem MP who is elected in Scotland might be the
MP that takes Jeremy Corbyn over the line so that he can form a government that
would be forced to give us not just a second referendum on Scottish
independence but a second referendum on the EU. Are you sick of referendums
yet? If you are then for goodness sake don’t vote for parties that make them
more likely.
Britain faces dangerous times. We are at a key
moment in our history. We are threatened by those who hate us. We are taking a
new historical direction. I saw a Union flag flying at half-mast on Union
Street in Aberdeen the other day. I thought of all the people who hate that
flag. Even as famous buildings around the world were lit up with the colours of
our union I thought of all the people who look at our flag and hate it. No
doubt some of them resented the fact that this flag was flying in Aberdeen. No
doubt some of these people are standing for election in Scotland.
Mr Corbyn thinks that we are to blame for terrorist
attacks. But then he has a long history of siding with our nation’s enemies.
Can you imagine such a man being Prime Minister?
Our country needs unity. We need to get through this
election and then have a period of stability where we all pull together rather
than pull apart. It is time above all to send a message to the SNP that our
country is threatened enough without them adding to it. We need to reject the
politics of division. Our enemies would love to see our country divided and
weakened. They would be delighted if our armed forces were split up. They would
above all be delighted if our Prime Minister was someone who counted Middle
Eastern terrorist organisations as his friends and who has long sympathised
with their aims.
I dread to think what would happen if Corbyn, Farron
and Sturgeon were running our country. If you vote for Labour or the Lib Dems
it will be you who is responsible for indyref2. It will be you who is
responsible for sending a pathetic message of weakness and disunity to the EU.
Our country needs strong and stable government and a leader who knows where she
wants to take us and is capable of doing so. A Corbyn Government would be a
three headed monster pulled in three different directions by Labour, the Lib
Dems and the SNP. Be careful that you don’t wake up to find it a reality.
