One of the most divisive aspects of the SNP is how it
has politicised the use of flags. The saltire used to be the flag of all Scots.
It was completely uncontroversial. Now it is the flag of independence
supporters. Likewise, the Union Flag used to be completely uncontroversial in
Scotland. No one objected, no one much noticed. Now the Union Flag has become a
political statement in Scotland in the same way that it makes a political
statement in Northern Ireland. It is no longer the flag of every British citizen
living in Scotland but is rejected by independence supporters as something
alien in just the same way Irish nationalists reject the British flag in
Northern Ireland.
In most countries a flag says nothing about politics.
It is used at sporting events and flies mostly unnoticed on public buildings.
These countries are fortunate because they don’t have nationalism. People don’t
have to take sides about flags and so flags fade into the background. This is
how we used to be in Scotland before the SNP came into power. We would fly
Scottish flags at football or rugby matches, but we were happy to fly the Union
Flag at the Olympics and didn’t notice if it appeared on public buildings. It
simply reflected the truth that Scotland was part of the United Kingdom. There
was no need to notice, because this simply a fact rather than something to
disagree about.
The SNP don’t want Scotland to be part of the United
Kingdom, but they also don’t want to acknowledge even that we are a part of the
United Kingdom. Somehow, they hope that politicising the Union Flag will make
it more likely that one day their wish will come true. By delegitimising the
Union Flag in Scotland, they hope to delegitimatize the idea that we can be
both Scottish and British, which again merely expresses the truth that Scots
are also British citizens. If we are not, what are we? Stateless.
The hypocrisy of the SNP however is that it wishes
Scotland to receive all of the advantages of being part of the UK while denying
that we are a part. If any UK wide initiative did not apply to Scotland, the
SNP would be the first to complain, but it is unwilling to give any credit to
the UK for what it does, but only blame for the fact that it exists at all.
The truth is that nearly all Scottish voters including
Scottish nationalists hope that various features of the UK would continue after
independence. They want there to be open borders and they would prefer that
there was a continued currency union. No one actually prefers to use the pound unofficially.
They want to be able to live and work
anywhere in the UK and receive exactly the same benefits as they do at present.
They would like the BBC to continue broadcasting in Scotland and the British
Army and intelligence services to continue to keep them safe. There is rather a
lot in fact that independence supporters like about the UK while at the same
time rejecting the flag that indicates the unity of our country that made all
of these things happen.
While being unwilling to fly the flag of the United
Kingdom that we are a part of Nicola Sturgeon has decided to fly the flag of
the EU which Scotland was never a member of. A SNP spokesman said
The EU flag is flown to
reflect the overwhelming vote of the people of Scotland to remain in Europe,
and as a mark of solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of EU citizens who
continue to call Scotland home despite Brexit.
But by the same logic the Union Flag should be flown
as a mark of solidarity with the 55% who voted No in 2014 who expressed their
wish to continue to be British citizens. By doing so we explicitly voted to
accept the will of the UK majority. We could instead have voted to leave the EU
in 2014, which would have deprived every EU citizen of their leave to remain
which they obtained from the UK.
Scotland’s geographical position has not changed. We
are still in Europe. Every single EU citizen living in Scotland who wanted to
stay after Brexit was given that right not by the Scottish Government but by
the UK Government. Why anyway do EU citizens need any more solidarity than
people from Africa or Asia who also live in Scotland. Everyone who has the
right to live in Scotland has the same rights as everyone else.
Nicola Sturgeon likes to give the impression that she
is a Europhile but dig a little deeper and it turns out that she is not. The
two main ways in the which the EU seeks to bring its people closer together are
Schengen and the Euro, but Sturgeon wants Scotland to continue using the pound unofficially
for the foreseeable future after independence and wants Scotland to remain part
of the Common Travel Area which is incompatible with being part of Schengen.
It is reasonable to assume that she would oppose
Scotland becoming a region in a United States of Europe so the relationship she
would want Scotland to have would be as semi-detached as the UK used to have
with the EU. Whatever new initiative the EU proposed to bring about ever close
union would doubtless be opposed by “Europhile” Sturgeon and indeed most of the
Scottish electorate. Support for the EU is at best conditional because
precisely the same arguments that the SNP use about the UK can equally well be
applied to the EU. No wonder the EU is wary of secessionists.
If you insist that Scotland is country rather than a
region then it makes no sense to leave the UK in order to gradually be drawn
into a European super state. If you dislike being outvoted by your fellow
citizens in the UK, why put yourself in the position where qualified majority
voting will outvote you in the EU?
Many Scots think of the EU as benign, liberal and
generally preferable to the UK. It is this that is reflected in Sturgeon’s
decision to fly the EU flag while apart from one day a year rejecting the flag
of the sovereign nation state that we are a part of whether we like it or not.
But it the UK that has provided Scots with furlough and business support. More
importantly it is decisions made by the UK that has led to 25% of British
citizens being vaccinated as opposed to 5% in the EU.
A reasonable response to the debate about the EU is to
accept that there are plusses and minuses to membership and that Brexit may
involve gains as well as losses. This means accepting that Britain’s decision
to not take part in the EU’s vaccine programme (despite the opposition of the SNP)
was correct and that this was politically only possible because we had left the
EU. If we’d followed Sturgeon’s advice, we would have vaccinated hardly anyone
and would be looking at lockdown continuing for most of this year.
If Scotland had not been part of the UK during the
past year but instead was part of the EU, we would not have received furlough
and business support from the EU and we would now be 20% behind the former UK in
protecting our elderly people from Covid. So, the UK not only provides us with
currency union, free movement and benefits across the UK it also provides us
with free vaccines and free furlough while the EU would provide neither.
Scotland will gain the economic benefit of being able
to open sooner because of the UK’s vaccination programme. Many Scottish jobs
and businesses will have been saved by the Treasury. To wish to leave the UK
under these circumstances would be the most perverse form of nationalism,
because our recovery would be due to Union Flag that we reject even though it
contains a saltire in favour of an EU flag that never had a star for Scotland
because we neither joined nor left, because only independent nation states can
be members of the EU.
