Aims and Objectives

I have already said that I am going to continue blogging. I like writing and I like communicating ideas. We have important battles to fight in the future and indeed in the present.

This blog has a number of purposes.

1 To help protect and defend the UK

2 To defeat the aims and objectives of the Scottish National Party (SNP)

3 To provide a place where people from all sides can debate in a courteous and reasonable way.

I don’t have anything against people who support the SNP. I have no hatred in me at all for anyone, least of all for my fellow Scots. I disagree with them that is all. I use forceful argument and I attack ideas and assumptions, but I don’t attack people.

In the past few weeks I’ve been subjected to relentless personal attack. This has been quite hard. People who read this blog can help. You can leave supportive comments. You can tweet or retweet this blog. You can share it with friends and colleagues. This blog has grown from tiny beginnings and now is read by thousands every week. Help me to grow it and we will have a platform for putting forward our ideas.

If you would like to grow your own blog, do not hesitate to contact me. I will nearly always at the very least give you a tweet. I'm happy to give advice and help too. Maybe you have good ideas for me too. Let's share them. There is the possibility of going further. You could let me include one of my articles on your site, while I would consider letting you include one on mine. This helps both you and me by giving us back-links and additional ways to share what we are writing.

I have put in a huge amount of effort in writing this blog every week. You could support me by reading a few pages of one of my books. There are free preview pages. This might enable you to help me combat the negative trolling reviews I receive on Amazon because of my political opinions. A few positive, honest reviews would really be appreciated. Receiving just a little back makes a huge difference to my morale and contributes to my feeling that this blog is valued.  

As you no doubt have noticed this blog now has Adsense Google Ads plus Amazon Associates ads. I don't blog for money, I blog because I like writing and like people to read, but it is nice to earn just a little bit because of my writing. I hope you don't find the ads too intrusive. Who knows just like television maybe they are sometimes more interesting than the blog! 

I will occasionally include a non-political blog. This is partly because I want to write about more important things than Scottish nationalism. But also it is a way of growing the readership of the blog. Not everyone in the world is interested in Scottish politics. These articles will not be of interest to everyone. Sometimes they may get a bit technical. But please do have a look. Often they are more relevant than they might appear as they deal with ways of arguing.

Our battle is going to be difficult, but we can win if we are strong and united. I follow these principles.

1 Always do what your opponent least wants.

2 Don’t make concessions to nationalism.

3 Try to reverse the direction in which nationalism is taking us by making the UK more united.

We have a Pro UK government with an absolute majority. We can block the SNP for the next five years. There is nothing they can do about this.

We must do all we can to prevent the SNP gaining an overall majority at Holyrood.  

We must work towards reversing the gains the SNP made at the UK parliament.

The SNP will do all they can to win concessions that will gradually lead them towards independence. Resist these.

It is crucial that we understand the mentality of our opponent. They now want independence at any cost. No concession will make them cease to want their goal, but they will be content to accept such concessions as a step along the way. Even if we could show that something like Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) or indeed independence would make Scotland poorer, they would still want it and see it as well worth it. But unfortunately many independence supporters would continue to believe that FFA or independence would make them wealthier. They only believe their own sources of information now. So please don't even think of offering FFA, it would lead almost immediately to independence. I have thought very hard about this point. The only thing I fear now is FFA. 

We need to put forward a positive view of Britain and we need to come up with a fair, equal and lasting constitutional settlement that will secure the unity of our country forever. There are many possibilities. Personally I like the idea of devolving power to county level and beyond. This bypasses nationalism by bypassing national parliaments. Let the real power lie with Aberdeenshire not Edinburgh. But just as we devolve so must we unite. No country can survive long if its people lose their sense of unity. The encouragement of people from other parts of the UK will be decisive in securing Scotland remains a part of our country. If our fellow Brits turn against us because of the SNP, the SNP will have already won its battle. Don't let that happen. 

There is likely to be a referendum on the EU. This must not be allowed to undermine the UK still further. I intend to show soon how we can make this issue work to our advantage.

Be optimistic. Morale must be high as we have a long difficult battle ahead. Help me to develop our social media presence and we will have a better chance of seeing off those who want to destroy our country.

Best wishes,

Effie Deans

What we achieved twice running

My political views insofar as I have any are pretty much in the centre. I favour free market economics, but I also favour fairness, equality of opportunity and a society where no-one is left behind. I want to reduce poverty everywhere, but my solution to doing so is for our country to become more prosperous. I can see merit in each of the three main parties. There are good and sensible people in Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. There are people I agree with in each of these parties and people I disagree with.

I didn’t even stay up for the exit poll on the night of the General Election, but because I had voted Liberal Democrat I went to bed hoping beyond hope for a Liberal Democrat overall majority. You see I believe in miracles. The party I voted for did very badly. This is most unjust. The Lib Dems put country before party in 2010 and have been punished for it. This hardly encourages other parties to do the same. The UK is in a better situation because the Lib Dems were in Government. But they have nearly been wiped out.  Oh well the Centre ground looks rather vacant. No doubt it soon will be filled again.

My second favourite result would have been a Grand coalition of all the pro UK parties. The UK faces an existential threat from the SNP and we should act towards it accordingly. It is of course a democratic, political threat. The people who are trying to break up the UK are sincere and some of those I have met online are very nice indeed. Even those who are aggressive or abusive are so mainly because of an excess of enthusiasm for their goal. This is forgivable as passions are bound to run high about existential issues. But I try always to think clearly and it is simply a fact that the existence of the UK in its present form has never been more threatened that in the past few years and in the next few. Our opponents are peaceful, but recognise them for what they are. If you are in favour of the UK, if you have any love of our shared country that has existed for centuries through thick and thin, then you have a duty to oppose the SNP with everything that you have. When your country is threatened it is normal to put aside party politics for the duration. Our country is threatened. So take that seriously and act accordingly.

My third favourite result would have been either a Labour or a Conservative majority. I probably narrowly favoured the former as I believe the SNP prefer the fact that we now have a Conservative Government and I always follow the maxim of  doing what your opponent least wants. But no matter, the fact that we have a pro UK party with an absolute majority is massively beneficial to the cause of keeping the UK intact. The one result I feared was a Government that dependent in any way on SNP votes. With this they could have used such dependence to undermine the UK.

I am of course disappointed that so many pro UK MPs lost their seats in Scotland. I would like to congratulate the SNP on their achievement. Yours really is a remarkable party. You campaign very well indeed and have some remarkably effective politicians. You have been very lucky to have had a leader of the stature of Alex Salmond who brought you to this point. But if anything Nicola Sturgeon is still more effective as she campaigns with a smile and with friendly words. I don’t try to portray opponents in ways that are false or abusive. I’m quite sure that the vast majority of SNP MPs and supporters are people who would make pleasant dinner party companions. I don’t hate anyone not even those who delight in abusing me. Hatred only damages the person who hates. It need not even touch the person who receives it.

I took part in a tactical voting campaign in Scotland with the hashtag #SNPout. In one sense it failed. We did not prevent the SNP landslide as we had hoped. The pity is that in huge numbers of seats our analysis was correct. If pro UK people had put country before party, we would have limited the damage. But I suspect more people in Scotland voted tactically than ever before and we can build on this in future elections especially where some sort of proportional representation will favour the #SNPout cause. But in another sense our campaign succeeded massively. Our task was to keep the SNP out of government. We have succeeded. They are not in Government. Our campaign in part contributed to the mood that saw huge numbers of people in the UK vote so that the SNP would have no influence on a UK government. Job done.

The SNP are a party of Left, Right and Centre. They have supporters from across the political spectrum.  They only really have one goal, independence and say and do everything in order to achieve that goal. They have destroyed the Left in Scotland for the sake of independence. There are now equal numbers of Conservative and Labour MPs in Scotland. When was the last time that happened? Not only have the SNP destroyed the Left in Scotland they have pretty much destroyed it in England too. The SNP campaign of promising to rule both England and Scotland and propping up a Labour government has spectacularly backfired. English voters faced with this campaign preferred to vote Conservative rather than have Alex Salmond pulling the strings. The trouble is that having destroyed the Left in Scotland it is very difficult now for Labour to win an overall majority again without being dependent on the SNP. The same logic will apply next time. Look where nationalism leads.

Labour committed suicide in 1997 when it implemented unequal devolution. It just took 18 years for them to expire. By offering inequality of devolution they undermined the principle of equality of opportunity. With hindsight and with the opportunity to do things differently I’m quite sure Labour people would revisit 1997 and think again. All parties make mistakes. No-one can predict the future, but the root of the constitutional mess facing the UK today is what happened in 1997.

I am in favour of devolution. But it must be done fairly. This is the task now facing the UK. We need people from all parties to come up with a plan that both devolves and unites. The SNP only want independence. They are happy to make little steps towards the line and then fall over. That way lies the breakup of our country. We must find another path.

The UK constitutional settlement at the moment is tends towards disunity and  is also completely unfair. However, it will only make the situation even worse if we come up with a short term fix. What we need to do is to go right back to 1997 and start all over again. The solution is that we have one parliament that deals with all issues that we share and local democracy that deals with all other issues. This solves the West Lothian question by bypassing it.  Call this federalism if you like. But we must understand federalism in the correct way. Each state in the USA has equal devolution, indeed each county has a great deal of local power, if not each town. But there is a strong central government that unites the whole.

So let us devolve even further but let us at the same time unite. The key to this is to recognise that we are one country. By a quirk of history we call the parts of the UK countries, but we are not a union in the sense that the European Union is a union. There is only one sovereign and that is indivisible. If you think of the UK as a union of sovereign nation states, you have already conceded the argument to the SNP. Of course I am Scottish and I come from a country called Scotland. But this is just a manner of speaking. I could equally well come from Wessex or Strathclyde. They have just as good claims to independence as Scotland does. Anyway that argument is finished. The issue has been decided. I expect Mr Cameron to react to any demand for a further referendum with the answer “Sorry Nicola, you have already had your once in a lifetime opportunity. You lost”

Scotland has not got the government that it voted for. To be frank if you vote for a party that only stands in Scotland it is impossible that you will get the government that you vote for. Scotland only has 59 seats while a majority requires 325.  In every democratic country parts frequently vote differently to the whole. The UK is such a country too.  For that reason it matters not one little bit to me if the SNP win every seat in Scotland. Of course I would prefer that they didn’t, but it doesn’t actually change anything.

The only thing that I am scared of now is that David Cameron offers Scotland Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA). He surely has learned his lesson by now. Don’t make concessions to nationalism. FFA fatally undermines the UK. It turns us into something resembling the Eurozone if not the Austro-Hungarian Empire and puts us firmly on the path to breakup. It amounts to independence, not now, but very soon. Out of self-interest English voters should realise such an arrangement, that exists nowhere else in the world, would damage their interests as much as Scotland’s. The UK is our country. We have defended it together for centuries. Don’t give up on it now.

No other country in the world is so blithe about the prospect of their nation state ceasing to exist. This is the problem with Scottish nationalism it undermines the centuries old ties that bind us. The SNP would be delighted if in England there were a rise in nationalism. Thus far there hasn’t been. Despite all the provocation, English nationalism was overwhelmingly rejected at the election. It won one seat. Be proud of that fact.

Frankly I am delighted by the General Election result. I didn’t get everything I wanted. But there is a government that has the power to defeat Scottish nationalism, by putting forward an alternative of devolution plus unity. Above all there is a government that morally and legally can simply say No to any further attempts to break up our country. This is what #SNPout campaigned for. This is what we achieved. 

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

9th May

As a little girl I was curious and would hunt through places I ought not. Once I found a little brown cardboard box in a drawer in my parents’ room. In it were some medals and piece of paper with a name that was unfamiliar to me. I asked my mother, but she was rather coy. She said something about the medals being my grandfather’s and that he’d died in the war. I asked why he had such a funny name. She explained that he was my grandpa Alex. That he had been her father, but that she’d been too young to remember him. I pointed to the strange name on the paper. She explained that he was also called Alexei and then I was told firmly to put the medals away and not to speak about them to my grandmother who would only be upset.

It wasn’t until years later and then only gradually that I heard the whole story and then only after my grandmother had died. Her mother had been a governess in Russia prior to and during the First World War. The family she lived with were part of the nobility living in the provinces a long way from Moscow. As this world collapsed into revolution, she found herself along with what was left of the family attached to the White Army. However, sometime around 1920 as the defeat of the Whites became clear, she escaped on a British ship that was evacuating Whites from Novorossiysk. With her was an infant.

The story that she told was that a young couple from the family with whom she had lived for so long, pleaded with her to take their child hoping to be able to join him later. There were however, of course, always whispers that, in fact, the child was hers. Perhaps, she had married someone from that family, or someone else entirely, then again perhaps not. These were difficult times. Perhaps, really the child had been the child of the young couple desperate to at least save their baby. I have never been sure and there is no way of finding out now. So I don’t even know if my great grandmother was really my great grandmother. These things were kept hidden for a reason. Alexei grew up with her, but had a different surname to hers, but neither was it the name of the family in which she had been a governess, the family which might or might not have been his family in Russia. There was a reason for this, too. It would not have been safe.

Alexei died when my mother was very young. It was in 1940 or thereabout and he was a pilot in the RAF. That is almost all I know about my grandfather. I don’t even know what his “real” surname was. But does it matter? It certainly doesn’t matter to me.

My husband has a similar story to tell. His grandfather also came from the nobility.  He too changed his surname. He was lucky, for by accident or by design, the regional archive where his family had their estate had been burned down. This was a common practice in those days as the ability or not to search through an archive was frequently a matter of life and death. The wrong sort of ancestors could get you killed.  Because of the lack of information that could be hunted through, he could successfully portray himself as from a working family. It is whispered now that he may have been a prince. There are family rumours, but no-one even knows what his real name was. It was never mentioned, not even to his wife. The risks were just too great.

Relations who were unable to disguise their origins ended up being described as enemies of the people, simply because of who their parents had been. Some of them spent long periods in the Gulag, many died there. Whether or not you could arrange to burn down an archive or whether it happened fortuitously made quite a difference. People died because they had the wrong name.

My husband’s grandfather died in one of the greatest battles in history. The  Red Army in 1944 crushed the German Army Group Centre in an enormous battle of pincer movements and a huge double envelopment. In many ways here was the Red Army’s greatest triumph where they used the concepts of Deep battle and Маскировка [Maskirovka or military deception] to the greatest effect. My husband’s grandfather died somewhere in Belarus in a battle that few in the West have heard of. It was called Operation Bagration. And he died a Hero of the Soviet Union.

But just as you have no doubt never heard of the battle, so no-one even knows his real name. He is listed on a monument to all the Heroes of the Soviet Union in Moscow. I have seen it. He has a name that sounds in Russian rather like Smith does in English. He was from a family who we think  could trace its origins back to the early rulers of Russia, but that name is lost now because he dared not whisper it.

I am the child of both these men, Russians with unknown names who died a few years apart and many miles apart, but for the same cause. I have a common enough surname, Deans, and I was named after a character in a novel. Is that really so very unusual? I have a married name and a first name that works better in Russia. I keep these private for a reason.  If you really want to go digging in the archive, read my books. There are lots of clues. But these same clues might also suggest that it would be better not to dig. 

My husband’s grandfather did not agree with the regime he fought for. But then he didn’t fight for that regime, neither did millions of others. They fought for the Motherland. So too many of us don’t agree with the present regime in Russia. But Russia goes back centuries, it is not the present regime, nor the regime under Stalin, nor that under the Tsar. Russia is an ideal. It is called Святая Русь [Holy Rus’]. It is this that we fight for. It is this which enabled Russians to defeat Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1945.  

The Soviet Union should have been defeated in 1941. No other army in history could have survived the scale of that disaster and the disasters that followed. No other army in history could have stopped the Germans at Stalingrad. It required a level of sacrifice that few in Britain can contemplate. It required something more. It required a miracle, a continuous four year miracle that eventually brought victory.

I may hope for more democracy in Russia. I may hope for greater prosperity, less corruption and more enlightened rulers. I may even do what I can to bring about these things.  You don’t know me, nor how much I am involved. But whatever I think of the present regime I today commemorate what the Soviet people achieved. Their sacrifice isn’t lessened by the fact that their leader was Stalin, nor is it lessened by the name of the present leader of the Russian Federation. Their sacrifice has nothing whatsoever to do with these transitory things.

The allies made the decision not to invade Western Europe in 1943, partly because they feared it would not succeed, but also because they hoped that the Red Army would sufficiently wear down the Germans so that by the time they did invade, the task would be easier. Soviet soldiers died so that British soldiers might live. Their sacrifice meant that we have fewer names on our memorials, while they have more. The British and American Armies would quite simply have been incapable of liberating Europe on their own without using nuclear weapons.  So whatever the faults of the Soviet Union, whatever the faults of present day Russia, let us be thankful that 70 years ago so many Soviet Citizens fought and died for their Motherland and for us, too.

It is a disgrace that Western leaders have chosen not to come to Moscow to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Short term political calculation and disapproval has trumped a long term debt to the people of the Soviet Union that can never be repaid.

These same Western leaders are happy to pay court to the Chinese leadership no matter what their disagreements over recent history and present policy. But then that relationship is founded on money. The smell of hypocrisy becomes rather strong sometimes.

Today I remember two dead heroes who were my relatives. One fought and died for Britain though he was born in Russia. The other fought for the Soviet Union, though the authorities there might have killed him if they had known his name.   

People in the West think of Russia as rather mysterious and sometimes rather threatening. They know very little and understand less. How many Russian cities can you name? There is a lot of prejudice and recently even quite a bit of hostility. Some of this may even be justified. But now is not the time to focus on present day disagreement. Now is the time to remember that it was only because of the help of the Soviet Union that together we could defeat the greatest evil in history. Remember this as you think briefly of the scale of the sacrifice that the Soviet people made. Remember too those whose names are lost to history. These are soldiers of the Great Patriotic war whose names are known unto God.

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

Throwing away the ladder

There’s an important little passage in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov which has in it the seed of an important argument. The great thing about this book, however, is that it is possible to pick any number of little passages that say something profound and important.

Alyosha, who has been living in a monastery, has the following conversation with his brother Ivan who tends towards atheism:

“I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to love with your insides, your guts—you said it beautifully, and I’m terribly glad that you want so much to live,” Alyosha exclaimed, “I think everyone should love life before everything else in the world.”

“Love life more than its meaning?”

“Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will I also understand its meaning. That is how I’ve long imagined it. Half of your work is done and acquired, Ivan: you love life. Now you only need to apply yourself to the second half, and you are saved.” (pp. 230-231, Pevear translation)

Alyosha is above all trying to save his brother. Ivan through the course of the novel makes a subtle, but penetrating attack on Christianity. For Ivan there is no God and no immortality. Dostoevsky puts forward one of the most powerful attacks on Christianity, but he also puts forward a very profound defence. In this little passage and others there is put forward the essence of Christian existentialism. It is from life and individual experience that it is possible to become convinced of the truth and to obtain faith.

I watched a film recently about the great scientist Stephen Hawking. It was called the Theory of Everything. At one point Hawking at a press conference says something along the lines of that he has explained everything in the universe. There was no need for God, there was no room for God. By explaining everything he had as it were left no room for God and, indeed, explained Him away. Everything that modern physics puts forward is, no doubt, true or as true as anything can be considering the present state of our knowledge. It is folly to question what great minds have discovered about the universe. But if physics describes everything and there is no room for God, it would appear that faith can no longer be possible. Where is God if Mr Hawking can explain everything?

Mr Hawking journeys outwards and his great mind travels outwards into the universe and backwards in time to the beginning of time. But his journey is in the wrong direction if he wants to find God. God is not in the journey outward. Rather God is found within. This does not, of course, mean that God is in me, or that I am God. That is nonsense and blasphemy, but the way to become acquainted with God is through a different way of reflecting than that which journeys outwards to the beginning of time.

What is it to love life? It is to love each second of life. But what is the experience of life? It is what I do on a day to day basis.  This morning I lay in bed and at some point I chose to get up. I could have lain there a little longer. I chose to make some coffee, I could have chosen to make tea. My basic fundamental experience of life and what I love about it is my ability to choose. My basic experience just like my experience that grass is green is that I have absolute freedom of will. Of course, I may be deceived in my experience. But then again since Descartes we know that I may be deceived in my experience of the external world. The route of scepticism ends in a cul-de-sac. But my sense of freedom is as real to me as anything else in the world if not more so. I would less readily doubt my freedom than anything else apart from my existence. I am free, therefore I am.

But my freedom is such that I am an uncaused cause. Every choice I make is uncaused apart from the fact that I choose. There is nothing or there need be nothing that compels me to choose to drink tea or coffee. I can do either. But Mr Hawking’s universe has no uncaused cause, at least not after the Big Bang. Physics amounts to billiard balls hitting against each other. Perhaps, they are complicated little billiard balls that behave in complicated ways, but still this is all materialism, for all there is, is matter.  Every action has a cause. A neuron hits against an electron, a quark flutters and I choose to drink coffee.

Science would like to explain my uncaused cause as biology. The brain is just a collection of atoms and through a complex series of reactions I choose to drink coffee. But why should I doubt the basic experience of choice for the sake of a theory about atoms and sub atomic particles that I cannot see? Why should not my fundamental feeling of freedom trump whatever science tries to do in order to explain that my feeling of freedom is illusory? If science could prove to me that the world I see was in fact an illusion, I would still believe in the world. Well, by the same token I still believe in my freedom despite whatever science can attempt to do that proves that I am really a complex automaton. I do not feel myself to be an automaton. Nor do you.

The rest follows of itself. My sense of freedom is my sense of something that is not controlled by the laws of physics. Every step I make is its own little miracle. It is an uncaused cause. It is this that makes me love life. If everything I did was caused by instinct, by need, by atoms, I would hate life and would consider it not worth living.

Alyosha is saying to Ivan ‘reflect on your own individual experience, the fact that you love life.’ “Love it before logic.” There is a mystery at the heart of life and that mystery is that we are free in a way that cannot be properly explained.

Here again is the key to Christian existentialism. We must go beyond logic. When Wittgenstein wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he set out the logic in pages of brilliance that staggered his examiners in Cambridge. They said they didn’t understand it, but it was clearly a work of genius, so despite there being no footnotes, he got his Ph.d. After the most brilliant logical demonstrations, however, Wittgenstein concluded his work in the following way:

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognises them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them (He must so to speak throw away the ladder after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. (6.54-7)

The ultimate truth of the universe is beyond logic and beyond the ability of man to understand. It can therefore only be expressed in literature in art and in music. It can, however, be experienced and, indeed, is experienced by us every day in the miracle of our freedom.

From my freedom I know that I am not dependent on atoms and from this I know that I am something other in my essence from rocks and trees. What I am is not something I am ever going to understand for it is beyond the wit of man to explain. Mr Hawking is trying to storm the gates of heaven with his reason and finding nothing there, declares there is no heaven and no God. But his efforts are as vain as medieval monks who tried to come up with ingenious logical proofs of the existence of God. You cannot get there with logic, so don’t try.

If what I am is not dependent on physics, then why should my existence not survive the death of what I am physically. If truth ultimately is beyond logic, then why should not a virgin give birth, why should not God be both God and man or God and not God? Why indeed should not there be resurrection, death and not death.

We are not there yet. Alyosha tells us that Ivan’s love of life is such that he is halfway there. He still has to recognise that he has reached the top of the ladder and must then throw it away. He has to leap. As Kierkegaard taught us, he has to embrace contradiction.

Of course, once you have done that, theology and philosophy are finished, for which reason Wittgenstein recommended working on a farm. But what is left is the ability to experience God from within, from the miracle of freedom and existence, and to express this feeling in art. The greatest composer of all, I think, is Olivier Messiaen because he spent his life trying to express what was beyond the ladder and for brief moments as with, for example, his Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps he succeeds. We glimpse it. Or at least we can if we choose to do so.

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

It’s hatred of Tories that is destroying Labour in Scotland

I used to have a Conservative MP. It’s hard to believe now, but there used to lots of Conservative MPs in Scotland. Elections in Scotland used to be much the same as elections in other parts of the UK. Sometimes Labour would do rather better, sometimes the Conservatives. The Liberals had a few seats and by the 1970s so did the SNP, but the electoral map of Scotland was overwhelmingly either blue or red. What changed this?  It was the long period of Conservative government from 1979 to 1997.

In Scotland there is one insult worse than all others. It’s the word ‘Tory’. Britain went through great changes in the 1980s. This was especially the case in the industrial areas of the North of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Change was no doubt necessary. There was a lot of industry that simply was not making a profit. But great suffering was caused by the changes that took place. In Scotland it has led to a lasting resentment. Thatcher is now viewed like Cromwell in Ireland.

Faced with continual Conservative Government, people on the left in Scotland decided to gang up on the Tories. There was a twofold plan. Everyone voted tactically against Conservative candidates in an attempt to get their numbers down as low as possible. Labour people voted in this way, so did Lib Dems and so did the SNP. The plan succeeded magnificently. The Conservatives ended up in one election with no seats and now have only one.  They were once the dominant party in much of Scotland, but they were effectively wiped out. Lots of people still voted Conservative of course, but when your party is hated and ganged up on, it is fairly hard to win many seats. The other part of the plan was the Scottish Assembly. This would mean that even if the other parts of the UK voted Conservative, Scotland to at least a great extent would still be ruled by the left. There would of course, always be a permanent Labour/Lib Dem majority in the Scottish Assembly.

It was a very cunning plan. I remember the delight at the time of those who had come up with it. Not only had they wiped out the Conservatives in Scotland, not only had they made an assembly that would always have a Labour/Lib Dem majority, they had done what was necessary to stop the rise of nationalism in Scotland. The SNP would never have any power. They would be crushed by the Scottish Assembly.

The hatred of Tories continued in Scotland even when Tony Blair created New Labour, which implicitly accepted that much of what had been done between 1979 and 1997 had been necessary. Labour’s process of modernisation from Kinnock through Smith to Blair was necessary in order that Labour would have a chance of winning elections in the modern world.  Economics has often been seen as Labour’s Achilles’ heel. One reason the Conservatives were in power for so long was memories of 1979. It was this process of modernisation which again enabled Labour to put forward a credible economic plan in 1997. It’s what got them elected. For a time that plan worked well. In the early years the UK economy did well under Blair and Brown. But again in 2008 the UK economy faced a crisis. This time it was far worse than 1979. It wouldn’t have mattered which party had been in power in 2008, there still would have been a catastrophe. Alistair Darling handled the catastrophe as well as anyone could. Nevertheless, it was primarily because of the economic crisis that Labour lost in 2010. This meant that Labour in opposition had, once more, to put forward a credible economic plan in order to become electable. This is how sensible parties respond to defeat at the polls.

The trouble is that in Scotland throughout the time since 1997 and the beginning of the Blair government the hatred of Tories has continued unabated. But now it has become the hatred of the economic consensus held by Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems that Britain must live within its means. Labour are now called Red Tories in Scotland, while the Lib Dems are yellow Tories.

The destruction of the Conservative party in Scotland and the hatred of Tories is directly responsible for the rise of the SNP. It is because Tories rule in Westminster that SNP supporters hate Westminster. It is because Tories rule Britain that Nationalists hate Britain. But it is because Labour modernised and accepted that there is an economic consensus shared by all mainstream parties that Labour is hated in Scotland, too. Because Labour no longer wants to overthrow capitalism, they are Tories.

The trouble with the Labour party’s strategy in Scotland is that it rebounds on them. They still campaign as the hate the Tory party. But they are immediately faced with the problem that if they hate the Tories so much, why do they more or less share Tory economic assumptions? Labour economics since 1997 are real world modern economics that have a chance of leading Britain to prosperity. They are economics that have a good chance of leading us to a balanced budget soon. They are sensible economics that will give us growth as well as a chance of making life a little fairer for everyone. But they are not socialism. Labour has become a social democratic party and for this reason Labour has a chance of ruling in a modern globalised Europe where social democratic parties frequently oversee economic success stories. But the nationalists in Scotland just see the Labour party taking on the Conservative party’s clothes.

By creating a bogeyman called the Tory, the left in Scotland has sowed the seeds for its own destruction.  It was wiping out the Conservatives in Scotland which legitimised the SNP narrative that Scotland voted fundamentally differently from the UK. It is the blind hatred of the Tories that is behind the hatred of Westminster and any Westminster party. The Scottish Assembly/Parliament far from nullifying nationalism has fuelled it. But still Labour campaigns in Scotland as the Tory hating party. It still tries to appease the nationalists. But all of this is simply turned back on Labour. The SNP pretend that they are Old Labour, the Labour of your youth. Labour can either try to outflank them on the left which would make them unelectable elsewhere or continue on the sensible moderate line which is making them unelectable in Scotland. It’s the fact that Labour has credible economic policies that is turning them into Red Tories in the eyes of the nationalists.

Finally, we must all learn the lesson of the past twenty years. Don’t work with nationalists. They will destroy you. Don’t appease or make concessions to nationalism, it will only increase. Labour’s greatest enemy in Scotland is the SNP. The only defence is not to work with them in any way.  The SNP also have the power to destroy Labour in the rest of the UK. A Labour government that helps the UK economy to recover still further over the next 5 years while making life a little fairer for everyone will do wonders for Labour reputation of handling the economy. On the other hand working with the SNP will create another 1979 or another 2008. Don’t let the SNP wreck Labour's economic reputation by demanding ever more spending that we can’t afford.  By all means disagree with Conservatives, but, above all, change the record. It is the hatred of Tories in Scotland that is destroying Labour.

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

What's so great about Britain?

I’ve been away for the past few months doing research and trying to help with a family crisis. The crisis consists in people losing their jobs or having their salaries drastically cut. It consists in prices rising and food being too expensive to buy.  There are no food-banks here, but nobody starves. There’s a tradition in Russia of friends and family rallying round in times of trouble. Anyway we’ve been through much worse and we’ll come through this too. No doubt some people in Britain think this is all richly deserved. But ordinary people have little say in what their governments do and it’s ordinary people who suffer not those in government. I tell people here in Russia sometimes about the election campaign in Britain. I tell them about the complaints that some people in Scotland have about the UK. It’s all met with utter bemusement. But what’s wrong with Britain they say? What indeed?

There are few countries in the world doing as well as Britain. There’s a simple reason for this. In order for a country to be successful you need three things: Democracy, free markets and the rule of law. Look around the world at countries which are doing poorly in nearly every case you will find that one or more of these things is lacking. Of course there are some rich tyrannies which happen to have been lucky enough to be sitting on an expensive resource, but without the resource they would soon be reduced to poverty. The solution to poverty around the world is to introduce the three things that they lack. If every poor country in the world could introduce democracy, free markets and the rule of law they would rapidly cease to be poor. But that’s easy. Why don’t we do it tomorrow?  

Have you any idea how few full democracies there are in the world? There are 24.

The trouble is that it’s not easy setting up a democracy. Most people think that it’s about achieving power. It isn’t. It’s about being defeated and accepting that defeat without a murmur. In most countries democracy is rigged so that only one person or party really has a chance. It took Britain hundreds of years to develop democracy. It is a very fragile thing that can easily be lost, but it is a very difficult thing to create. Many countries in the past 50 years have tried to create a democracy from tyranny, nearly all have failed. By the way in every country there are parts that habitually vote differently to the whole. That is not flaw in a democracy, it’s a feature. It therefore matters no more that Scotland sometimes votes differently to the UK as a whole than that Aberdeenshire sometimes votes differently to Scotland as a whole. There is no democratic deficit in Scotland. In each case the majority rules. That’s democracy.

Some people in Britain complain about the undemocratic House of Lords. I’m not a great fan either, but it actually does work as an effective check on the UK government. I’m far more concerned that the Scottish government has no check on what it can do at all as it has a committee system that works like the Supreme Soviet doing its master’s bidding. But anyway the answer if you are concerned about the House of Lords is to seek to replace it with some form of elected upper chamber. That too might be useful in Scotland.

The UK economy is one of the most successful in the world. The average standard of living here is very high compared to the vast majority of countries in the world. Even compared to Europe, Britain is doing extraordinarily well. How do we know this? One way we know that the UK is doing well is that people in their hundreds of thousands want to come to live and work here. This is in part because we have the lucky advantage of speaking a language that they too can speak, but also because on the whole we are welcoming. People are voting with their feet to come to Britain. We should thank each of them who compliments us by doing this. We should also reflect on the peculiarity of some contrarians who want to leave.

If you travel around Europe at the moment you will find economies in crisis. If you go further afield you will find a situation that is still worse. In every case the solution is to introduce freer markets.  North and South Korea started from the same point when they were tragically divided. One is now poor the other is wealthy. The difference is quite simple. In North Korea there are not free markets, in South Korea there are.  This experiment has been tested to destruction. There are only two models of economy that work. You can have free markets with social democracy or you can have free markets which are a little bit freer tending towards laissez faire capitalism. There is a degree of political choice here. In the end it’s a decision about public spending. Do you want the Government to spend around 30% of GDP or do you want them to spend between 40 and 50% of GDP. There’s a balance. The less the state spends the more the economy will grow, but lots of the things we want in society depend on government spending.  There is a balance also between growing the economy and trying to make a pleasant inclusive society where everyone has a chance and no-one is left behind. In Britain there is actually very little substantial difference between the economic views of the main parties.  This is because any other view would demonstrably make us all poorer. Unfortunately some people on the fringes have yet to realise this.

Social democracy can work, there are lots of countries which have a social democratic model. But socialism does not work. It will make you poorer. It is therefore senseless when people in Scotland complain that Labour isn’t left wing enough. Labour reacted to events in the modern economy by adapting its ideas so that they could work. People who complain about Labour not being left wing enough are really trying to go back to a model that would make the economy worse and people poorer. I frequently come across SNP supporters who say they want Labour to go back to how it used to be. I get the impression sometimes that this means going back to Michael Foot. But it is precisely because Labour moved with the times that they have remained a party with a plan to run the UK economy that could work. I’m not making a political point here. There is a legitimate debate about Labour and Conservative economic policies. But each has a credible plan that involves us living within our means. Not living within our means leads to poverty. It’s only the SNP that lacks a credible economic plan, partly because they would do or say anything to break up Britain, partly because breaking up Britain is in itself economically incoherent. Why break up one of the few countries that is actually recovering from the 2008 economic crisis?

There is inequality in the UK. But perfect equality is neither possible nor desirable economically. In every successful economy there are rich people and poor people. How much you even this out is a matter of political choice. But poor people in Britain are doing hugely better than poor people in nearly every country in the world. It is because we have a successful economy that we can afford healthcare, benefits, pensions and all the other things we want. The best way to help poor people is to create an economy where there are jobs and which can afford to pay ever higher wages. Britain is creating jobs. This is why people from all over Europe and indeed the world are coming here.

Like democracy, the rule of law is something that takes centuries to develop. The enemy of the rule of law is corruption. Many SNP supporters complain about Britain being corrupt. There are in fact very few countries in the world that are less corrupt that the UK. I wouldn’t try to bribe a policeman in Britain for I know that it will only get me into still more trouble. I don’t have to pay a doctor a back hander in order to get treatment. Students don't have to bribe academics to so that they don't fail their courses. Some people think that our politicians are corrupt. In fact we have some of the most honest politicians in the world. The whole parliamentary expenses scandal was in fact a lot of nonsense. How much did these expenses cost the government? At most a few million. In an economy the size of the UK, this is a quite trivial sum. The whole problem stems from the fact that MPs are grossly underpaid. Someone involved in running a country should be paid a competitive amount, yet they don’t even earn what a GP earns. This is silly. Pay MPs an index linked sum that is the equivalent of a director of a small company and then say they must have no expenses whatsoever. Problem solved.

Some SNP supporters complain about paedophilia in Westminster. I find it morally degenerate to try to use child abuse for political purposes. Child abuse exists everywhere in every country including in Scotland. There have been cover ups in Britain. People have been protected who ought not to have been protected. But the fact that we know about these things, the fact that the police are investigating is a demonstration of how little we are corrupt. In a country that is really corrupt you never hear about corruption and no-one dares mention it anyway.

By any normal standard of judgment Britain is a great country. We have problems like everyone else, but the solution is to face them together rather than splitting up and trying to face them apart.

Nationalists assume that everything that’s great about Britain would continue even if there were no Britain. But it is the fact that we have worked together for centuries that has given us free markets, democracy and the rule of law. Everything I love about Scotland except the mountains came into existence during and because of the union. None of these things existed in a proper way prior to the formation of our country.

The glue that holds us together is that we are British. Many SNP supporters hate the word British. They reject it. I wonder if they know what they are rejecting. British is the identity of choice of most people who have come to the UK from overseas. Many people who were not born in the UK or whose parents do not come from the UK feel unable to describe themselves as English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish. Those identities tend to be available most to those who can trace their ancestry back centuries. I wish that this were not so. But it is so. British is the far more inclusive identity that is shared by all of us equally. I don’t care where your parents come from, if you are a citizen you are as British as I am.

Too many British citizens at the moment are focussing on what divides us rather than what unites us. It is making Britain a very unpleasant place to live. We should all recognise how lucky we are to be here. There are countries that do things better than us perhaps, but there are far, far more that do things worse. What we have, what we share would not necessarily survive divorce. The danger of turning against each other is that we turn against anyone who does not share one of our identities. This frequently is where nationalism leads. I have seen levels of hatred in Scotland that shock me. Simply for putting forward a political view using reasoned argument I have been shouted down and abused in the most despicable way. This is not civic nationalism, it is not even civil nationalism it is hatred against those who think differently. Nationalism is dividing Scotland in a deeply unpleasant way. It is not founded on reason, for it is an attack on Britain and the British which looks faintly ludicrous from a perspective of overseas. Everyone I know in Russia thinks Britain is a great country. One of the best. Everyone I meet admires British history and culture. They find the hatred of Britain and the British by the British simply incomprehensible. I do too. It’s a form of self-hatred and it’s poisoning our country. 

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

This campaign of hatred must be turned off

As many of you will be aware I’ve been getting quite a lot of stick recently. It all started a couple of weeks ago. Firstly I said in a tweet something on the lines that I was one the more prominent Scottish bloggers. This is obviously true. I’m not as well-known as Wings and naturally people who only read Wings haven’t heard of me, but on our side I am one of the more prominent bloggers. I may not have as many readers as Wings does, but I get thousands every week, sometimes thousands every day. For their own peculiar reasons however the Nats went ballistic.

Secondly a Labour MP kindly tweeted one of my blogs where I argue that the UK is one nation and it’s indivisible. I made some comparisons with the USA and argued that the UK like that country was becoming a nation of immigrants and that this was a good thing. I made the point however, that any country requires those who choose to come to it to have a degree of loyalty and that I was always disappointed to find people, who would not like their own country to be broken up, to come here and try to break up mine.  This was twisted by my opponents who accused me of some sort of racism, when in fact there is not one racist sentence in my article. This once more set off a storm.

Finally I wrote an article that questioned the SNP’s assumptions and put forward a plan by which they could be contained. Everything I wrote was reasoned, logical and legal. But from that day a mass wave of attacks began.

It’s no good trying to relativise what is happening. Firstly it is a poor moral argument. Something is not less wrong because something else is wrong too. Secondly explaining to, for example, a rape victim that others have been raped too is not exactly sympathetic. Would you do that? I condemn all abuse and urge everyone to campaign politely and by using reason. I find it hard to believe that in the place where I was born and grew up such abuse occurs. I find it hard to believe that so many Scots are intending to vote for a party supported by people such as these. I don’t know where the responsibility lies. But this is clearly organised.  Here are some examples, with brief commentary. Judge for yourself!

This person is admitting to theft, but wants a refund. In fact he hasn’t read any of my books. He is simply criticising me because my politics differ to his. Would you want your children taught by someone who admits to being a thief? Of course he may just be joking. I’ve never met him. I have no idea why he is so offended by me. 

I have studied to post-doctoral level. I speak a number of foreign languages and can read a number of alphabets. Yet because I disagree with this person I am mentally subnormal. 

These people think I am either someone who has rabies or someone who indulges in glue sniffing. I would suggest that their tweets make them look rather worse than me. My arguments are abuse but their insults are not. This is odd logic.

This journalist thought it was funny to make a joke about me being a sock puppet to his cybernat friends. Odd that someone who is not prominent is mentioned by such a well-known journalist. 

Shortly afterwards I received this sort of abuse, that is similar in level and tone to that received by Ruth Davidson. The joke of the journalist obviously led to the tweet from his colleague.

For criticising the assumptions of this nationalist I am told to go first to England and secondly told that I a racist. There’s a contradiction here somewhere.

This nationalist thinks it’s fun to use mental health as a way to abuse people he doesn’t know. Many people in Scotland suffer from depression or other forms of mental illness. He doesn’t know if I do. But he and we’ll find others are happy to use mental illness as a way of abusing and insulting. This sort of abuse is such that it could cause mental illness. I’ve faced much worse in my life, but everyone has a breaking point. The abusers must realise that there is a person who they are attacking who may be damaged. It would be their responsibility. 

This nationalist likes to change my first name into a common swear word.

Despite having nothing against English people, many nationalists are desperate to find out if I am English. It seems anyone who criticises the SNP by definition must be English. Alternatively we must be mass murderers.

More insults about mental illness.

A common form of argument among nationalists is to make an assertion accompanied with a swear word. This is known in philosophy as the argument from the expletive.

This nationalist thinks that any criticism of the SNP is a criticism of Scotland and the Scots. She thinks I’m an enemy of the people. If Scotland became independent no doubt that’s just what I would be.

This nationalist is offensive in so many ways it is hard to count them.

More variations on the theme that I am insane.

This nationalist thinks I’m a crazed drug addict.

We’re back to the theme of mental illness. Anyone who disagrees with this nationalist is obviously insane.

This nationalist doesn’t think the abuse is orchestrated but that I did come onto their radar. There’s a contradiction here somewhere.

This nationalist wants to send some sort of threatening message from his friend. He apparently thinks there’s a problem with my grammar. I would call him a pot but I'm not sure he would get the reference.

This nationalist thinks that anyone who does not associate with nationalists is clearly a fascist and a lunatic.

Whenever a nationalist disagrees with me he immediately accuses me of being thick and my husband of not being a Scotsman. Sometimes I’m told that I’m not a Scotswoman.

This nationalist who appears unable to spell the word teacher claims to be educated, but his disagreement with me is not about literature it’s about politics. People like him think it is funny to leave negative reviews about my books just because they disagree with me. People who have actually read my books rather like them. This includes people rather more qualified than this teacher. 

This nationalist claims not to be abusing me while swearing at me.

This nationalist like so many others thinks I should leave. They’re friendly these civic nationalists, don’t you think?

This nationalist wants to proclaim that he is not a troll because he was swearing at me rather than someone else.

Here we have another nationalist desperate to prove that I am English. I wonder why.

This nationalist is quite original in in his insults. What does vinegar veined mean?

This nationalist does not appear to be able to ascertain that it was I that wrote this steaming pile of etc.

These nationalists think because I disagree with them I hate Scotland, that I am English and finally that I need re-educating. All the while they maintain their love of England. Yet it seems English is their worst insult. In fact lots of Scots support the UK. The majority of us voted No remember.

This nationalist thinks that because I criticise nationalism I am as bad as a prominent national socialist. 

This nationalist thinks I’m a witch. Perhaps he favours witch trials too. Again he criticises my books. How would he feel if I criticised his job because I disliked his politics?

This nationalist objects quite violently to the word prominent. But if I am so unknown how is that these people all fling abuse at me. There’s a contradiction here somewhere.

This nationalist again accuses me of the worst possible of crimes that of being English.

This nationalist may be more polite than the others but appears to  want a one party state. I lived in a one party state. I actually feel more offended by this one than all the others. Moreover, I begin to feel that I’m living in one again. 

This is what happens when you write articles criticising the SNP in modern Scotland. Waves and waves of nationalists attack in the vilest possible way. This is just a small sample. One evening I found hundreds of tweets from nationalists all saying exactly the same thing. They had filled up my timeline with their spam. It prevented me from campaigning. This is really an attack on democracy. To these people it is simply impermissible to criticise the SNP, but it is especially impermissible to do it well using argument.  These people think there is nothing worse than to do that. I am always as polite as it is possible to be on twitter. I write articles that are reasoned, that contain no foul language, that are praised by academics. I am followed by people I respect, journalists, politicians, academics. Some of these really are prominent well known people. Yet in Scotland even to dare to criticise the SNP is a dangerous thing. I have been subjected to abuse that could drive a weaker person than me to despair or worse. It is clearly orchestrated. It is turn on and turn-offable. Who controls the switch? This is a national disgrace and must stop. It shames Scotland. 

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.