No.163 - Welcome to the Disunited Kingdom!
Dear James,
Boris, once self-proclaimed as the ‘Minister for the Union’, high footed it to Scotland last week. Or rather he flew over Scotland and landed briefly in Orkney. It was the kind of cowardly gesture for which he is well known. The first time he came the protestors were outside Nicola Sturgeon’s offices and poor Boris had to leave through the back door. This time, with only 24 hours notice to avoid protestors and Nicola, the television showed him with his usual boyish smirk ‘glad elbowing’ locals and announcing that, ‘The Union is a fantastically strong institution!’ What the cameras did not show as he high tailed it back to the safety of Westminster, were the demonstrators holding saltire flags and booing him on the road from the airport. No wonder he kept it short. Boris had read the polls. Fifty four per cent of Scots now favour independence. Only forty six per cent say No. Professor John Curtis of Glasgow University, said that the Yes side ‘are narrow favourites’ for the first time ever. The writing is on the wall.
Your party doesn’t get it, does it James? The Scots are a proud nation and they know a scoundrel when they see one. Presbyterians like to see it and say it how it is. Truth cannot be hidden and yet both Mrs May and Mr Johnson project a form of Englishness so alien to the Scots who automatically recoil from the hypocrisy of the Tory ‘born-to-rule’ culture. They know, like the discerning English, that behind the smiles, lies an ancient and dismissive superiority. Behind the confidence lies haughty disdain. But, this time, to add salt to the wound, Boris had the audacity to use the old line of pretending to speak for everyone, ‘I think what people really want to see is our whole country coming together.’ Think again Boris. That moonshine no longer works. The cracks are already there and they are deepening every time you appear before them. The Scots want to work with people free from out dated ideology, willing to work together as a group of sane nations dedicated to compromise through open, honest and frank debate. Not through the fog of some half-baked and alien English fantasy of a nation reborn. The more the kingdom becomes ‘English’, the more the Scots become Scots.
And why did Boris not dare visit real Scotland? Because he has already been compared and contrasted with the guts and steely determination of Nicola Sturgeon. Every day during the pandemic she has appeared before the Scots in her low-key, open minded demeanour to explain in simple and straightforward terms, her no nonsense approach to the pandemic. There has been none of the awkward tension and forced bluster of the Downing Street Press Conferences where the main result has been mixed messages, scarcely disguised mutual recrimination and the gloom of pervading hopelessness. No wonder a recent Ipsos-Mori poll found that 82% of Scots thought Sturgeon had handled the pandemic ‘’well’ or very well’ while only 30% thought Boris had done ‘well’ or ‘fairly well’. 55% thought he had handled it ‘badly’ or ‘fairly badly’.
The same pressures are evident in Wales. Support for independence has grown to 25% and their First Minister Mark Drakeford, a Professor of Social Policy at Cardiff University, complains about a lack of contact from Johnson over the crisis. As in Scotland, Wales has set local rules in areas such as physical distancing and masks, thus highlighting Wales’s separation from London.
And finally, there is Northern Ireland. Boris got his deal with the EU last year by agreeing a border in the North Sea, thus breaking the long-held Tory promise to keep the province in the Union. At first he denied there would be customs barriers only later being forced to admit to this very fact. No wonder that the province’s young people are now showing increasing approval for uniting with the rest of Ireland.
James, the United Kingdom was forged over centuries of often bloody history and yet in the last few centuries, pulling together, we all became ‘British’, contributing to the wealth and power of our small island. Brexit was a massive mistake but more to the point, a misnomer. It should have been ‘Engxit’. This largely English fuelled phenomenon is why the other nations are more and more likely to rebel. They don’t want to be swamped by a centralized ‘English’ government. They want more devolution and if that is not available, freedom to be their own people. Boris, you may soon achieve your life aim of going down in history. But do you really want it to be as the Minister for the Disunion. The man who broke up the United Kingdom?
Kind regards,
BH – Your Concerned Constituent