It’s easy to mock those Scottish nationalists who spend their time looking around supermarkets for Scottish produce labelled as coming from Britain. There are other Scottish nationalists who want various vegetables to be called by their Scottish rather than by their English name. I imagine some want to go round Tesco and have everything labelled in triplicate and translated into both Scots and Gaelic. Quite what would happen when the cost of all this translating was passed onto Scottish consumers is not mentioned, but perhaps English consumers could be forced to pay for the translations on the grounds that they had oppressed Scots and the various languages we tend not to speak that much unless we are particularly desperate to show that we are not English.
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| Taigeis, sneap is buntàta or Haggis neeps and tatties |
It is of course incorrect to describe Scottish
products as coming from England, Wales or Northern Ireland. No doubt mistakes
are sometimes made. A carrot grown in England does not have a kilt round it and
so might just be mistaken for a carrot grown in Scotland. There is not a red
hand telling me that this potato is from Northern Ireland and so it might get
mixed up with a Welsh potato which likewise is unable to breathe fire like a
dragon.
Some products though are associated with certain
places, but I find it hard to imagine that people from Melton Mowbray spend
their time going round supermarkets hunting for mislabelled pork pies. They
certainly wouldn’t object to the pork pies being described as British, for the
simple reason that they are of course British.
Scottish nationalists do not like the truth that we
voted to remain a part of the UK in 2014, but we did. The UK is a unitary sovereign
nation state with powers devolved to some places but not others. But these
powers are delegated and could be withdrawn. It would not require a referendum
in Scotland or anywhere else to do this. That is merely a political convention.
It would require an Act of Parliament and a majority of MPs. Scotland’s
position in the UK is therefore not analogous to Luxembourg’s position in the
EU. To suppose that Scotland is not a part of the UK as some Scottish
nationalists do is to oddly suppose that we are already independent. But this
is to fail to recognise that the words “country” and “nation” that are
correctly used to describe Scotland can be used in different senses. They can
be used to describe independent sovereign nation states. This is the typical
usage. But they can also be used to describe places like Scotland. You cannot
conflate these meanings and use them to deduce that Scotland is or ought to be
an independent nation state, any more than you can deduce that Fife ought to have
a king, the “Black Country” ought to have a seat at the United Nations and that
you ought to be able to sail all the way round the Black Isle.
The national flag of the UK is the Union Flag and
the adjective that is most typically used to describe people and things from
the UK is “British”. So while it is incorrect to describe Malt whisky from
Scotland as Welsh or to put a Northern Irish flag on the box, it is perfectly
correct to describe it as British and to use a Union Flag.
There is however a deliberate SNP tactic to change
the reality that Scotland is part of the UK by pretending that we are not. It
is for this reason that the pettiness over food labelling is both silly and
slightly sinister.
There are two sorts of Scottish nationalists, the
patient and the impatient. We all recognise the impatient. They want
independence now. They want to repeat the independence referendum even when
polls suggest they would lose. They reason that they were way behind the last
time, but caught up and might have won. Maybe next time they could win by a
neck. Maybe they could. I lack a crystal ball and politics is even more
difficult to predict than it was a few years ago. But I like the Pro UK
argument even better now than I did in 2014.
Impatience is rarely a good strategy. I worry far
more about the patient Scottish nationalists. In the great scheme of things
these people reason that it doesn’t much matter whether Scotland achieves
independence soon. They are right of course. If an independence supporter is
concerned only about himself, then he will worry that he won’t get to see the
Promised Land. But an unselfish nationalist will not worry about what happens
to him, but rather what happens to Scotland. Unselfish strategies tend to
involve better planning than selfish ones. They also have more chance of
success.
The impatient nationalist might lose a second
independence referendum and set back the cause of independence for decades,
perhaps forever. The SNP gradualist sees this and focusses instead on making
little steps towards the eventual goal.
What are these little steps? First set up a Scottish
Executive. Thanks Labour. Thanks Lib Dems. Next become the biggest party in
that Parliament and immediately rename yourself the Scottish Government. Next
centralise everything in Scotland so that it is under the control of that
Government. Next take control of education in Scotland so that everything is
taught in such a way that it helps the cause of Scottish independence and
hinders the cause of the UK remaining intact. Next do everything you can to emphasise
the distinction between Scotland and the other parts of the UK and do nothing
to emphasise that we are all actually part of a single unitary and united nation
state. Gaelic road signs are one more step along the road to the Promised Land.
Removing Union Flags and the words United Kingdom and British from food stuffs
in Tesco may seem petty and trivial, but it chips away at the idea that
Scotland shares something with our fellow British citizens.
Each of these little steps may seem unimportant, but
taken together the SNP hopes that in time children will grow up in Scotland
with no sense of having a shared identity with people in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland. When that happens then independence happens as a matter of
course.
Most countries that become independent don’t worry
at all about what currency they will use or whether they will be financially
better off after independence or worse off. They choose independence because of
their identity and frequently their language. No-one
in Latvia or Ukraine worried about giving up the Rouble. They simply don’t care
about the details.
The Pro UK task is therefore first to take back
control of the Scottish Parliament from those who wish to break up the UK.
Secondly we must with the help of the UK Government emphasise all that we share
with our fellow British citizens. Then we must point out all the things that
are truly great about British history, about life in the UK today and how we
have a wonderful future to look forward to. Over time we too must make gradual
steps to enhancing our shared identity.
In the end the argument is not about currency. Nor
is it about what might or might not happen to the Scottish economy if we ever
became independent. We are allowed to point out the disadvantages, but they
were not decisive for other independence movements in the past and they
ultimately will not prove decisive here. We are a family in the UK and over the
centuries we have intermingled. It is perfectly reasonable that we have a
shared identity and live in a single nation state. Scottish nationalism wants
to destroy what we share and create a single Scottish identity that rejects our
fellow citizens in England Wales and Northern Ireland. We must be wary of the
impatient nationalists, but by far the greater threat comes from the patient
ones. We too must be patient and fight
for the long term. Only in this way can
we defeat Scottish nationalism forever.
