Scottish independence: A decoy

Independence: An EU decoy.

The question of Scottish independence is problematic.  It is a decoy.  Devolution is a political mirage. Strings are being pulled from afar.

It started long before the question of Scottish independence with the wholly divisive EU promotion of minority languages and identities, culminating in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages - as part of a range of measures to weaken national identities to bring about "ever closer union" in the EU. 

In the closing words of Jean Monnet's memoirs he states "The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to an organised world of tomorrow."

To this end we have seen EU funding for special protection and recognition of obscure and arcane identities across Europe, most notably Wales, with state funding of S4C, the Welsh language TV station. But it is a fiction.

Culturally, Anglesey has more in common with Manchester and Dublin than Cardiff.  At one time the regional capital for North Wales was Liverpool (much to my surprise).  And while the Welsh language thrives in North Wales, it is not widely spoken in the South.  To assert Cardiff as the capital of the region we now know as Wales is to completely disregard history and culture. Similarly Gaelic is not a wholly Scottish language, yet Scotland has received EU funding to erect dual language roadsigns even in the regions of Scotland where Gaelic was never spoken. There is an agenda to create uniform national identities where none have previously existed.

The British Isles have a history of trading by sea.  Transporting goods overland was expensive, slow and dangerous. Thus, the North East of Scotland was part of a Nordic trade circle and to the West, the Gaelic circle encompassed parts of Northern England and Ulster.  To a large extent, this is still the case. Consequently, the idea of a blood and soil unified history and culture in Scotland is a wholly false one. Were we looking at an accurate map of devolution, then Scottish independence would include Northern Ireland.  So we have to ask, who benefits from Scottish independence?

The EU could never persuade the United Kingdom to fully surrender to the supranationalist agenda, but a broken and divided one just might.  Thus the Scottish National Party are puppets. If  the SNP did not exist, Brussels would have to invent it. Just recently the EU has granted minority status to Cornwall - which has in recent history attempted breakaway independence itself. There is a reason for this.

Whenever there is an attempt to promote a national identity, it often bears little relation to the facts. It is always part of an agenda. The creation and promotion of a Palestinian national identity was done purely to perpetuate hostilities in the Middle East in order to undermine Israel. There has never been a nation of Palestine, nor a uniting ethnicity. This same dynamic is at play in Scotland. Some of the brighter Yes campaigners acknowledge this notion of Scotland is a false one - but freely admit they don't care.  Thus, there is something dishonest about this whole independence jamboree - and something quite a bit sinister.

The referendum debate has revealed a vicious side of Scottish politics.  There have been reports of intimidation and corruption that would make Chicago blush.  Underlying the blood and soil nationalism there is more than a whiff of plain old Mugabe-esque racism.  I'm quite sure if the whole thing were left up to the SNP hardcore, we would see land seizures and expulsions of English families. Quite why Ukip attracts the ire of Unite Against Fascism and not the SNP is something of a mystery.  (Though such organisations are largely comprised of white middle-class Londoners who pay little attention to the grubby shenanigans North of the border.)

My own experience of the Scottish legal system demonstrated that Scotland is authoritarian in such a way that even the bovine English would not tolerate it.  As much as Scots drunkenly cry "Freedom", Scotland is even worse than England for nanny-statism and command and control economics. Were there ever a fully independent Scotland, it would be the last place on Earth I would choose to live.

Of course the big joke is that national recognition does not equate with independence or self rule.  Ask two Scots whether an independent Scotland will be part of the EU and you'll get three opinions. The SNP would have Scotland remain a full member. It is likely that the EU will then be keen to push further integration of Scotland with vast electoral bribes in order to bounce England and Wales into the Euro.

Should Scotland gain independence but stay in the EU, the chances are that North Sea oil would become a common European resource, and Scotland would have no greater sovereignty over its fishing than it does now. So as much as there is little independence to be gained, it doesn't look much like devolution either.

To look at Scotland on a map, it is a small place, but the far reaches are further away by road from Edinburgh than Leeds is from Edinburgh.  In fact, I can drive from Manchester to Edinburgh faster than I can drive from Edinburgh to Thurso. To much of Scotland, they would still be ruled by a bunch of remote politicians, hundreds of miles away, exchanging one self-interested and remote elite for another.

Swapping London for Edinburgh doesn't seem much more than a side-step.  A nationalist Glaswegian has little more regard for Edinburgh than London, seeing them as pretty much the same. I would not disagree. For a Yorkshireman, it would be like passing administrative control of Leeds to Manchester. I would find that more offensive than a London government.  And we would not be looking at devolved powers - merely a power grab from councils to the centre.

So insomuch as Scottish independence is neither independence nor devolution, it is divisive and agenda driven.  Curiously, the EUs dirty work is being done by nationalist bully-boys who are unwittingly picking at the fabric of the UK to bring about a European superstate - which has precisely zero interest in making any special concessions for Scotland.

I would like to see the Scottish living as free, autonomous people as much as I would the English and Welsh, but smashing the union and weakening our position in the world - so that we become provinces of a Greater Europe - is not constructive or helpful to that end.  What we need is real devolution. That is why we need The Harrogate Agenda.