There is a curious phenomenon in Scotland of people
pretending to be something that they are not and pretending not to be something
that they are. We have had this before from Nicola Sturgeon wishing that that
the SNP did not include the N word and we have had it again from Humza Yousaf.
He has
Never really been
comfortable with the fact we have national in our party’s name. Not because the
founding members of the SNP had any far-right inclination, they certainly
didn’t, or any nationalist inclination the way you expressed there but because
it can be misinterpreted.
So, what would happen if we removed “National” from
the name. Well, we would get “The Scottish Party”, but if anything, that would
be even more nationalistic than “The Scottish National Party” as it would imply
a still further identification of Party and Scotland that is already a tendency
with the SNP and still more so with
Alba.
But the mistake of both Yousaf and Sturgeon is a
failure to understand that the word “Nationalist” precisely describes what they
are. The Oxford English dictionary defines Nationalist as
An adherent or advocate
of nationalism (nationalism n. 1a); an advocate of national independence or
self-determination. With capital initial: a member of a particular nationalist
political party (see sense B.1).
There are other definitions of nationalist, but any
reasonable understanding of the word means that it certainly applies to the SNP.
That is if it is still pursuing national independence for Scotland. If it is not,
then it might care to be honest and open about this.
But the root of Scottish nationalism in a pretence
that is peculiar to the United Kingdom. If you look at European history, you
will find typically that sometime in the Middle Ages various kingdoms were
either conquered or formed unions with other kingdoms. These involved acts of
union.
Sometimes this was because a king married a queen,
sometimes because someone won a war. This process continued right up to 1860s and
1870s with the unification of Italy and Germany. Arguably it is continuing now with
the beginnings of federalism in the EU.
But no one in Europe thinks that their country is made
up of countries even though the parts of France and Germany have at least as good
a claim on being countries as England and Scotland.
This is where our whole language is problematic.
1 We talk of north of the border, when there is no border.
2 We talk of the Auld enemy, when our fellow citizens
are not enemies, and we last fought against England in 1547.
3 We talk of four nations, when there is only one.
4 We talk as if the union of 1707 still exists, when in
fact the kingdoms of Scotland and England merged to form the kingdom of Great
Britain.
5 We talk of countries where everyone else in Europe
accepts the equivalents of Scotland and England are no longer countries.
6 We think that it matters that Scotland has its own
laws, when every state in the USA also has its own laws.
7 We base our argument for independence on the anomaly
that Scotland plays international football because the game was invented in the
UK.
8 People claim that the UK is not a country, because it
has the word United in it, which would mean the Unite States was not a country
either.
It’s all pretence and self-deception, but it is ludicrously
carried on by both sides of the argument.
Theresa May thought she was helping by calling herself
a unionist, not realising that it concedes the argument to the SNP. If the UK
is a union like the EU as Scottish nationalists think, then it must be a sort
of confederation made up of sovereign nations. But in that case Scotland would
already be independent.
The UK government talks of a four-nation approach, or
the UK being a union of equals, which again concedes the argument. If the UK is
really made up of four sovereign nation states, then each clearly has the right
to depart not merely after a referendum, but whenever it wants.
You cannot have a nation state made up of nation
states and to pretend that you can is a delusion. You have to accept either
that the UK is not a nation state in which case what on earth is this
historical entity that has been acting as a nation state for the past centuries
(running an empire, fighting in world wars etc), or you have to accept that the
parts of the UK are not nation states, in which case it would be better to call
them something else for the sake of clarity.
But we mustn’t upset the Scots, let’s go along with
their pretence that they are still a nation it will stop them actually becoming
one. This is the pretence at the heart of UK government, but it is also the
pretence at the heart of Scottish politics.
If you ask Scottish voters if they want independence
around half will say that they do. They say
this for a variety of reasons. One is that they support Scotland at
international football and feel patriotic when they wear rather atypical
clothing when meeting other football fans from abroad. The second reason is
that they hate Tories and rather associate being Tory with being English. The
third reason is that they enjoy pretending not to like England and feeling the
grievance of a small place in relation to a large neighbour.
Meanwhile they are happy to live in England and marry
English people. So, it is a pretend enmity.
But none of these are serious reasons for seeking
independence, not when we are fortunate enough to live in one of the more prosperous
nation states in the world. It rapidly becomes like California seeking to leave
the USA or Bavaria trying to leave Germany. It’s joke politics. But here we
have to pretend that it’s serious.
So Scottish nationalists pretend that they want
independence. They dress up in the same sort of clothes as the Tartan army,
which no one wears in ordinary life and go on marches and then they vote No
when they have a referendum and then they vote Labour rather than the SNP.
Now you can respond to this as has been suggested by
giving Scotland even more powers otherwise these Scottish nationalists will go
back to voting for the SNP. But all you are doing in that case is emphasising
the pretence.
It was only on the basis that Scotland was a nation
state within a nation state that it was concluded that it was unjust that
Scotland voted Labour and got a Tory government and so needed a parliament of
its own.
Naturally enough a nationalist argument from Labour
and the Lib Dems began to fuel Scottish nationalism and led to power for the
SNP.
The threat to the UK is more from devolution than from
independence, because Scotland keeps getting ever more powers paid for in the
main by English taxpayers while England has no devolved power at all.
Eventually the English rebel against this and English nationalism which did not
exist thirty years ago begins to grow.
It is more likely that England leaves the UK than Scotland,
for which reason it will never be given a vote.
So, Humza Yousaf pretends that he is not a nationalist
because he doesn’t understand, perhaps because he is so Scottish that he failed
to properly learn English. Other Scottish nationalists pretend to support
independence while their goal actually is to defeat Tories, in which case
voting Labour is more rational than voting for the SNP. There is no need to
appease them with more powers. They are as uninterested in the Scottish parliament
as the rest of us. They are happy with the pretence of a parliament so long as it
exists.
But all of this pretending unfortunately has serious
consequences. Scotland has lost a decade thinking only about independence and
we are falling behind in health and education standards.
Worse than that we have ended up with an authoritarian
and corrupt SNP and with a UK government that was unwilling to have a national
policy during the pandemic because of the folly of treating the other parts of
the UK as nations. This led not merely to attempts to treat the border between
England and Scotland as an international border that could be closed, it led to
the absurdity of UK money paying Scots to stay at home while the SNP took the
credit for things it did not do like develop vaccines.
It was bad enough having Nicola Sturgeon and Peter
Murrell running the SNP like a family business in which they had absolute power
and patronage. But it is worse now.
If Humza Yousaf is not a nationalist, what is he? What
motivates him and how did he reach the top? It’s not just a matter of cruelly
playing with his name, the past year has shown that he is shockingly talentless
as a politician. It’s one disaster after another as if he became leader only
after making a pact like Faust and has ended up being cursed.
Like Sturgeon too it looks rather as if Humza Yousaf
is running a family business and it means now that voting for the SNP turns out
to involve Scotland more than it might like in Gaza, Turkey and the worst parts
of Dundee.
Pretendy Scottish nationalists who only ever wanted
independence if they thought life would go on just like it does in the UK but, they’d
all get gold bars for voting SNP are as disgusted with Humza Yousaf as the rest
of us. They are not going to get independence, nor gold bars, nor £10,000 and
they don’t much like the SNP being associated with the dregs of society.
Expect support for the SNP to fall still further. It
matters very little indeed what you call it. What matters is what it is.
If Humza Yousaf is not a nationalist it’s because he’s
something worse. He's just pretending to be one.
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