George Osborne dropped an absolute clanger in The Evening Standard yesterday, when he wrote on Scottish independence.
Having lamented that Northern Ireland's departure from the UK is now inevitable he went on to say this:
Scotland is an altogether different matter. Its history is our history. Its contribution to the world through its literature and philosophy, exploration and art, is our contribution. Its departure – with no disrespect to the Welsh – would represent the end of the United Kingdom. The rest of the world would instantly see that we were no longer a front-rank power, or even in the second row. We would instead be one of the great majority of countries who are on the receiving end of the decisions made by a few, subject to the values of others. We would become another historically interesting case study in how successful nations can perform unexpected acts of national suicide.
Where to start with that? That it's the colonialist's lament? That it's cultural appropriation? That it's deeply patronising? Or that it reveals that Scotland's opinion does not matter, and only London's does? The list could go on, and on, and on.
And if the fact that Scottish opinion does not matter was ever in doubt (as opposed to the physical possession of Scotland), note what Osborne advises Johnson should do in response to the demand for independence:
Simple. Refuse to hold a referendum. It's the only sure way you won't lose one. Yes, the SNP will be in full cry – but so what? Domestic opposition has already evaporated, with the Labour leader there resigning last week.
In other words, hold the people of Scotland in contempt whilst claiming them to quite literally be 'ours'.
Such staggering attitudes can only drive the demand for independence. I am certain that this Union is dead, and deservedly so in the face of such attitudes. The so-called Unionists are killing the very thing they supposedly cherish.
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It seems to me that Osborne has learned from what many would see as his mistake of calling the referendum on EU membership. He has forseen his and Cameron’s obituaries as the men who put the UK on the path to destruction and he doesn’t like it. No surprise there, he was supposed to be a Tory after all. As one of Johnson’s Oxford gang he knows better than most the likely future follies Johnson will perpetrate on the unfortunate citizens of the UK
They can’t help whats in their nature, every single one of them are true English nationalist they just use the word Britain to give the illusion that these other nation are part of the UK and are equals, which is total bull.
PWR’s spy service was able to obtain an earlier draft:
Scotland is an altogether different matter. Its history is our history,well… after England put the kilted ones in their place.. Its contribution to the expanding the British Empire through the provision of cannon-fodder was very useful and Adam Smith provided useful cover for assorted right wing ideologies.
Scotlands’s departure – with no disrespect to the Welsh (who have never counted, is it even a country?) – would represent the end of the United Kingdom. The rest of the world would instantly see that we were no longer a front-rank power (that’s so unfair) and where would we put our nuclear subs. Christ! We would not even be in the second row. The bloody Germans would be ahead of us.
We would instead be one of the great majority of countries who are on the receiving end of the decisions made by a few, subject to the values of others. In fairness that has been the position of Scotland pretty much since the mid 1200s and it is a profoundly shitty position — hmm maybe that’s why they want to leave.
We would become another historically interesting case study in how successful nations can perform unexpected acts of national suicide.
MP Comment:
the original comment could only have been written by a person born to privilege, with little in the way of either empathy (120,000 dead due to “austerity) or intuition. Not for nothing was he known as Gidiot — Gideon the idiot. The only thing Gidiot cherishes is the continuation of his priviledged lifestyle.
🙂
Ha ha Mike, excellently put. You’ve summed up George ‘nine jobs’ Osborne perfectly. For him, there’s the inconvenient truth that his disastrous austerity helped pave the way for the Brexit disaster, especially as him and his useless fellow over privileged idiot Cameron fronted the official Remain campaign. Their presence undoubtedly helped the other side by encouraging voters to vote Leave as a way of giving two fingers to his austerity.
I can absolutely assure you that the few ruled the many in Scotland before the mid-1200s. There was a considerable period of cross-class cooperation from the closing years of the 13th C and the first half of the 14th C when there was a clear existential military threat, but what medievalists call the ‘political community’ did not really extend much beyond burgesses and parish gentry and was very much under the direction of the most powerful lords and clergy. OTH that was also the period in which servile status disappeared in Scotland – long before anywhere else. Why that should be Is hard to say….I’ve been looking at it off and on for the better part of 30 years and I’m not really any better off.
Osborne’s attitude is remarkably similar to that of Jeremy Corbyn or Waffle Johnson or Ed Davey. Starmer’s view is a little more liberal. If the SNP get yet another mandate he might consider thinking about maybe allowing (how gracious of him) a referendum at some point in the later part of a future Labour government. Perhaps…possibly….in the fullness of time…as and when he feels like it.
They all share the view that it is a decision for Westminster alone, but it may not be a decision for Westminster at all. There’s that inconvenient U.N. Charter stuff about the right to self-determination.
Precisely
The Plan B team are right on this…
May you live in interesting times, one of my favourite Chinese curses. The moving cogs within the “United” Kingdom are fascinating to watch.
The DUP in Northern Ireland are proving to be a wonderful recruiting sergeant for unification, as Northern Ireland becomes ever more economically integrated with the south. My conversations with businesses in Northern Ireland suggest growing support for Alliance, stable support for Sin Fein, and decline for the DUP. My feeling is that the emphasis in NI will be towards de facto rather than de uire unification because of the long history of violence.
Scotland is likely to be far more confrontational in my opinion. There is growing anger locally towards Westminster driven by Brexit, Covid, and the failure to deliver on promises made at the last referendum. What form any action will take depends on the internal war within the SNP (aided by substantial disquiet over l’affaire Salmond, and other mis-steps by the current administration) and the May vote. There would appear to be four possible permutations – Sturgeon survives with big SNP majority, Sturgeon falls with big SNP majority, Sturgeon survives with no electoral mandate, Sturgeon falls with no electoral mandate. The betting odds at the moment seem as wide open as deciding on the winner of the Premier League.
And there is also the Keatings peoples action taking place at the moment in the court of session. Totally missed by the MSM I think.
As Napoleon said, never interrupt an opponent when he is making a mistake; especially if he is suffering a bad breakdown. This is a blind panic response by Osborne, I do not see the colonialism, I see hapless vulnerability. Osborne starts in terror of the Lord North blunder: doing nothing is not an option. He ends with a brilliant Osborne solution: do nothing. I do not see arrogance, I see a crumpled wreck; which in some ways makes it dangerous.
Here is the nub. Scots have generally failed to look at independence from an rUK perspective. They continually look at it from a Scottish perspective, but informed by an agenda fed by rUK. That will never work. What is the rUK perspective, that really, really worries them? This is how to observe the break-up of the Union, and the sad wretchedness of Mr Osborne’s predicament. What worries rUK is incidental to Scotland as a participant in the Union, but is a consequence of the deeper implications of departure for rUK, which has already announced it will wear the clothes of Great Britain, but the world knows the substance of the entity has changed forever? What worries the rUK, as a specific list of potenital risks it depply fears?
Its UN Security Council place; its present prestige in the IMF; in the G7 – Britain’s; in sum (rUK) ‘place in the world as a major power’, and all the ‘soft power’ authority it both claims and wants. rUK’s capacity to be taken seriously as a ‘major player’ is at stake, and perhaps is lost. It is all at stake. That is how desperate Mr Osborne and has ilk have become. I could go on, drilling into the monumental, unstable scale of this. Let me sum it up fast.
rUK with no EU, no Scotland? In terms of rUK’s pretensions and expectations, it knows that post the end of the Union it is probably a geoploitical busted flush. That is Osborne’s real, unconsciously presented fear. Scotland is in a strong position – it just does not realise how badly rUK needs Scotland. It isn’t Scotland’s size that matters, it isn’t big enough; but its ‘core’ nature to Great Britain (which Osborne agonises over) in just so many ways, which transforms into critical issues in defence, through energy to geopolitics, to law and constitutional certainty and the whole conception and status of rUK in the world.
Scotland’s contemplation of departing Great Britain, quite accidentally discovers that Scotland is the final “tipping point” into the abyss, for all rUK’s fantastical expectations of a world that it also knows has moved on, and will draw inevitable conclusions about rUK’s reduced significance post the end of Union, in the 21st century. Scots haven’t properly worked this out yet; and when they do, they need to handle it carefully and responsibly, because rUK will not take kindly to the consequences.
From John Warren, ‘Scotland is in a strong position — it just does not realise how badly rUK needs Scotland. It isn’t Scotland’s size that matters, it isn’t big enough; but its ‘core’ nature to Great Britain (which Osborne agonises over) in just so many ways, which transforms into critical issues in defence, through energy to geopolitics, to law and constitutional certainty and the whole conception and status of rUK in the world’
This nails it for me and Osborne’s article is very helpful in that respect. Scotland’s reputation around the world is disproportionately greater than it’s size (see Churchill’s comment about Scotland’s global contribution). For the Scottish people to no longer wish to be part of the UK therefore would send a powerful signal around the world. We need to take confidence from this truth and stop going ‘cap in hand’ to the UK Government for permission to chart our own future.
That is implicit in what Osborne said, I agree
John,
It seems to me that you are referring to the real clanger, amongst all the others referred to by Richard and others, namely that Scotland is rUK’s figleaf, covering its privates, allegedly for decency’s sake, but actually to hide the fact that rUK lacks “cojones”, lacks balls, in other words.
With Scotland gone, that fact would be plain for the world to see, with all the downgrading effects referred – rUK with a veto on the Security Council? I think not. More likely Germany or Japan would replace it.
On which point, I’ve observed elsewhere that rUK might even suffer the indignity of being dismissively referred to (as were the constituent Republics of Yugoslavia referred to as eg FYROM, or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) as the Former United Kingdom.
In which case, it would be called FUK, and its inhabitants as Fukkers.
Or even as little Fukkers, since, despite comments elsewhere in this post, if Scotland leaves the Union – as it undoubtedly will in less than a decade, maybe before the next GE, then Wales will follow – the voices in that direction are growing.
In which case, rUK, or FUK, would consist only of England, thus allowing people to refer, decisively, to its inhabitants as Little Fukkers.
Brilliant
Now a tweet, I admit….
Perhaps Scottish Independence is being thwarted in other ways according to this podcast interview with Gordon Dangerfield .
https://gordondangerfield.com/
Osborne – yet another high-ranking Tory educated beyond his intelligence – says “We (rUK) would instead be one of the great majority of countries who are on the receiving end of the decisions made by a few, subject to the values of others.”
Welcome to Scotland’s (and Wales’ and NI’s) world. His lack of understanding, his hypocrisy and his overweening sense of privilege is truly nauseating. In response to his patronising statement I offer a simple question from Scotland: If the UK Gov won’t recognise our right to democracy, why should we recognise its authority to govern us?
It is quite staggering that he cannot see that….
English nationalists have an incurable illness called “arrogance”.
Psychologist Stephen Greenspan, Ph.D. argues that “excessive self-regard” or “arrogance” leads people to disregard important facts and make decisions that are destructive to themselves and others.
Arrogant people act as if they know everything, and anything that contradicts what they believe is either evaded or rejected out of hand. They’re not interested in facts that contradict what they feel or want to be true, because that would be admitting (in their minds) they aren’t as good or worthy as the person who knows something they don’t.
Unfortunately these are the dire consequences of where we are today…
It’s not hard to find it among Scottish nationalists either, and even easier to find aming Scottish unionists.
Andy MacIver, a former Scottish Tory communications chief, put it rather nicely…
“It’s like volunteering to go on death row because you’re too scared you might lose the trial.”
I’d breath more easily if I could agree with the general trend here, but, however counter-union Unionist behaviour has become, there still needs to be a Scottish political party that is capable and intent on taking advantage. That is not currently an assured condition.
One could argue that the right of Independence is where the arrogance lies. If I recall there was a vote in 2014. Scotland had its say. After the Brexit referendum, and issues around Covide the whole of the UK needs stability.
Do us all a favour and park Indy2 until the next generation, try again after 2040!
We will have to disagree, very strongly, on that
Mr Stuart,
I have heard this argument so often, but here is the problem. I will be surprised if I ever discover that whatever patronage you may control includes this remarkable gift. I suspect you are over-reaching your capacity to insist, or even safely rely on others to deliver for you. The wish is father of the assertion. The fishermen are discovering what a British Government promise is really worth, even as we discuss this matter. It was ever thus; it is not even the first time the fishermen have been erroneously seduced. It goes with the territory. The Home Secretary now claims she wanted to close Britains borders around March, 2020. Nothing is ever what it seems, I’m afraid. What does this tell us?
Where is the patronage that guarantees the outcome you want? Nowhere. Boris Johnson has a piece of paper (S.30 order). Politics in the real world, however operates according to its own rules, and close inspection throughout histor invariably discovers that such protocols are made up, changed or transformed, on the hoof as we toddle along.
You can dream; that you can do, but eventually you have to wake up. If the Scottish people choose independence – it will happen. Think of Lord North; even poor old George Osborne cannot forget him.
Yes, because that’s the way democracy works, right, Alex – everyone gets one vote once and then we all have to shut up for a generation.
For some reason, that was not how any of the following were achieved: abolition of the slave trade and then slavery, reform of parliamentary representation, votes for women, the independence of (most of) Ireland, labour rights, and rules against discrimination on grounds of race, sex, disability, etc. Each was a struggle to achieve, by people rejecting “no” as an answer.
Well said
Correct.
When the facts change, it is not only politicians who are allowed to change their minds Alex.
Being out of the EU whilst tied to England and the chaos that has been unleashed as a result of BREXIT for example is such a change of facts Alex.
Some excellent points here on Osborne and the arrogant stupidity which seems endemic amongst the current crop of those “born” and “educated” to “rule” and on the wider issues of UK internal relationships and future standing of and problems facing the rump when this political entity starts to dissolve.
Some of the more perceptive commentators from south of the border, such as Anthony Barnett have correctly (in my view) identified the problem as residing in England, some of the English and many of the English politicians and their attitudes, England’s self-perception, its place in the Union and the world.
We have touched on this point before, but it is still highly relevant, namely that the UK Parliament cannot prevent Scotland’s Independence because independence is not a matter of domestic law, but of International Law. Craig Murray reiterated this last year, pointed out that the UK had argued in the case of Kosovo before the ICJ that the permission of the state being seceded from was not necessary and then he argued how “a plan B” could be put into action. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/01/westminster-cannot-block-scottish-independence/comment-page-1/
Osborne (and perhaps Nicola Sturgeon?) need to understand that a referendum is not the only “legal” means for gaining independence. There are other ways.
I have read that Kosovo opinion, several times, and am baffled as to why it us not referred to more often. It seems to me to make a notice of Art 30.
I expect it’s part of the SNP general approach of ‘don’t frighten the horses’ and ‘everything will be the same’ which – to me – would rather defeat the object of the exercise. Wobbling about having a new currency is, I think, in the same category. I fear this applies more widely. My interest is defence and the SNPs recent defence thinking is A) ludicrously grandiose, B) Ludicrously expensive, C) a good 40 years behind the times, D) cannot possibly be realised and E) …worst of all…a massive opportunity thrown away. On the ‘plus’ side, it is marginally less useless than what’s in the minds of the other parties, but that’s not saying much.
This is not relevant to this thread
Please do not repeat it
After Brexit it may be to late, BUT surely Osbourne and Co seem to ignore the idea of renegotiation of the Union and how it works.
There was a suggestion that Scotland could be offered ‘Devo Max’ in 2014, that idea could be revived – a sort of ‘Independence Lite’ but the Unionists seem to lack the insight needed to do it.
John, that idea was part of the infamous vow made by the leaders of the main Unionist parties in Westminster on the cusp of the 2014 referendum (during the period of purdah, but who gives a toss about electoral rules and regulations when it suits the Union’s cause?). It was promptly ditched on the day after the referendum and in its place Cameron inserted EVEL – English Votes for English Laws (but retaining the right of English MPs to vote on Scottish matters) – a manoeuvre which effectively debars any Scottish MP from the office of PM and enables Westminster to pack Scottish committees with English MPs thereby interfering with Scottish affairs.
Devo max is regularly trotted out by Labour and Lib Dem politicians as a means of distraction whenever public opinion in Scotland lurches further towards independence and as a means of getting personal publicity that they would otherwise not get. The MSM generally don’t point out that they have no power to implement these proposals, while it’s transparently clear that that the Tories have no interest in it, so Devo Max goes back in its box until the next poll showing Scottish public opinion in favour of independence. Back in the 1970s, it might have got some support as it was clearly a better option for the Scottish people than the then status quo. Events have moved on in the interim and Devo Max’s time is long gone. There is now only one direction of travel and each Tory refusal to engage and each insulting/patronising pronouncement by UK Gov ministers just hastens its pace.
The National Question and the history of National Liberation Struggles in the Global South after 1945, has been well documented. Irish unification and demands for Scottish Independence have been catalysed by referendum on British sovereignty from EU. Without delineation of the roots of English Nationalism, United Kingdom will reinvent it’s historical ‘glory’ captured during the days of the Empire.
The UK’s status as a front-rank country is a moot point after a disastrous Brexit and and a woeful (criminal?) response to Covid.
George Osborne’s suggestion that, in order to prevent England plunging into the third (or lower) rank , Scotland should be held captive like a colony says much about our contribution.
So much for this voluntary union. So much for democracy. The alternative to Scottish Independence is enforced inclusion in the Greater English Co-Prosperity scam.
“Britishness is just a political synonym for Englishness. Which extends English culture over the Welsh, Scots & Irish”. Gwynfor Evans.
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