Dear Gordon

I see you are seriously worried now about losing the Scottish Parliamentary Election on 3rd May.  Very percipient.  Even if Scottish Labour is still the largest Party you will certainly lose your majority at Holyrood.  That will leave you depending on the LibDem’s electoral performance.  The SNP, of course, will make whoopey with the Conservatives.

Who, then, will have the numbers?

Well, happily your party is in decline - and it’s an historical decline, rooted in the poorly performing Scottish economy and a leader at Holyrood who is thoroughly despised.  The SNP is already neck-and-neck with you in the polls, and Alex Salmond is more popular than ever.  Your one ace might have been the 2004 boundary changes that saw you, Gordon, switch constituencies from the now defunct Dunfermline East.  And it’s true, they could hit the Tories very hard.  But, amazingly, the same projection reveals a potential cost to Scottish Labour of 10 seats.

All-in-all, it’s just too tight to call.  But let’s not let that stop us.

Let’s assume instead that the months between here and 3rd May go badly for you.  You drop to 30% on the day.  Your old Socialist pals nick a seat off you.  Salmond and the SNP, meanwhile, have continued their climb and register 35%.  The LibDem mouse roars like a ... mouse.  Dave manages to smooth his way out of the Eton boy image and appeal to more Scottish voters than anticipated - he is a Cameron, after all.

You lose.

And then, after a doomed two-, maybe three-year struggle to stop Salmond getting his Referendum Bill through Parliament you find yourself fighting for survival and the Union.  And, boy, if you lose that one too - and you can - what happens then?  In particular, what happens to the new British Prime Minister, the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath?

No wonder you dashed off to the Fabian Society last night and got yourself into the press telling Oonagh King:-

It is very important to recognise that Britishness and Britain itself is not based on ethnicity and race.  It is founded on shared values that we hold in common: a commitment to liberty for all, a commitment to social responsibility shown by all, and a commitment to fairness to all.

Oonagh is half black and half Jewish, so you won’t get much argument from her.  But, Gordon, you are wrong.  My Englishness, your Scottishness and Rhodri’s Welshness ARE based on ethnicity and race.  England, Scotland and Wales are the lands of our three peoples, for whom each respective land is uniquely sacred.  An African in Brixton, a Pakistani in south Glasgow, a Gypsy in Gwent does not and cannot feel as we do.

And there’ something else.  Since our lands are sacred to us, we have every right to expect those we elect as our representatives to treat them as sacrosanct ... above and beyond any suggestion of loss, in part or in whole.  It had been so for well over a thousand years before you and I were born (in the same year, as a matter of fact).  But you are not like me.  You do not have a healthy political mind, Gordon.  What’s dear to me is dirty and shameful to you.  You talk of the sanctity of values.  You say that completely alien, unassimilable peoples enjoy an equal right to our lands.  You say we owe them a committment to their liberty and welfare, and to be fair to them.

Fair?  What’s fair about dispossession and deracination?  But I suppose you mean that we must all close our eyes to difference and then, being devoid of ethnic interests ourselves and blind to theirs, we must trust in and treat them as we trust in and treat our own.

And this is your argument to convince Scots voters to stick with the Union, Gordon.  Well, look at it this way.  Suppose you had told Oonagh:-

It is very important to recognise that Scottishness and Scotland itself is not based on ethnicity and race.  It is founded on shared values that we hold in common with the English: a commitment to liberty for all Englishmen in Scotland, a commitment to social responsibility shown by all Scots towards Englishmen, and a commitment to fairness to Englishmen.

That would have got you lynched in Auchtermuchty, surely?

So, here’s my prediction.  Sans arguments, Scottish Labour will lose power in Holyrood on 3rd May.  Declaring Independence to be the settled will of the Scottish people, First Minister Alex Salmond finally succeeds in taking his referendum question to the country - his country but not, apparently, yours - in 2010.  The Labour government at Westminster is at its fag-end.  The tide of history is flowing with Independence.  Your “values” cannot change that, of course.

Scotland wins.  Self-confidence wins.  In England, self-awareness wins.  Honourably, you announce an immediate general election in England and Wales so a new government can convene a constitutional conference.  Dave can’t lose.  You do not contest the election, but retire from active politics to capitalise on the fading glory of the Iron Chancellor.  The Labour Party begins to die in the country, nationalism already reaching for its throat everywhere.

Of course, you might find some way out of all this.  You could try holding the 300th anniversary celebrations of the Act of Union in the Millenium Dome.  That ought to do the trick.

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 02:23 PM in Political analysis
Comments (3) | Tell a friend

Comments:

Next entry: Here we go!

Previous entry: Frontierist News Roundup 20070112