Scotland inches towards freeing the English

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, 28 February 2007 01:22.

In the Scotsman an ICM poll has revealed the continuing hardening of SNP support and the softening of Labour’s. The speculative scenario I suggested on January 13th - an SNP government in May, a carried vote on independence in 2010, followed by the grisly death of the Labour Party nationally - is coming ever closer to fruition.

From the Scotsman:-

Under the poll results, Labour would have too few MSPs to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats and would have to try to rule as a minority government or patch together an unlikely coalition with the smaller parties to get into government again.

Translated into seats, the poll would give the SNP 44 to Labour’s 41 - a major turnaround on 2003, giving the SNP 17 more seats than they won then and Labour nine fewer.

The Liberal Democrats would also see a big improvement, with 23 MSPs gaining an extra six seats on the 17 they won in 2003, while the Conservatives would be down slightly, with 17 seats, not the 18 they won in 2003.

According to the poll, the SNP is in line to win 34 per cent on the constituency vote, up 1 per cent on last month, and 32 per cent on the regional vote, down 1 per cent.

The Scotsman still predicts a minority Labour administration. But there is a grim 70-day slog ahead of Blair and McConnell, in which they can only lose more ground. The potential for a highly significant moment in Britain’s political history is decidedly there.

Tags: British Politics

Comments:

Posted by JD on Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:50 | #

The SNP’s stance on freedom from England may or may not be right, but the party it quite leftist in nature and do not oppose a multicultural multiracial Scotland. Indeed they tend to oppose the BNP.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:21 | #

JD,

I did not write that they would free the Scots. They will not.

Personally, I am interested in anything that breaks down the current dispensation of political power among the main parties, because it provides an opportunity for something new to fill the void. At the present time, of course, the BNP is growing rather quickly in Labour’s heartland, at least at the level of council politics.

I do believe that Labour in England could not survive Scottish independence - I also think that the party will collapse north of the border, but that would be because half or so of its supporters will follow the gravitiational pull of SNP power. However, let’s keep looking at England. If Labour decays because of its electoral and financial woes, the resultant vacuum cannot be filled from further left. It can only be filled by the LibDems and/or the BNP.

At this juncture something else enters the equation, namely the question of whether simple racial nationalism will ever be enough to take the BNP all the way electorally. This is when the shoe really should drop among even ordinary nationalists, and they begin to grasp the full metapolitical extent of lasting change, if it is to be secured.

Posted by FP on Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:21 | #

Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Is there perhaps a real danger New Labor will go the Belgian/Swedish/Canadian treadmill to hell of unlimited immigration and heavy welfare bribes to the new voters? They’re already halfway there by complete failure to regulate EU internal immigration.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:17 | #

FP,

I don’t think Labour has enough time in government left to it to achieve much in that direction. Already, it is having to respect the electoral realities and make (very superficial) gestures accordingly. It does not mean them, of course. The real character of a government is revealed in the two years after it takes power and runs unmodified, as it has with Labour, until such time as unpopularity sets in.

Obviously, one cannot expect anything from Cameron, after he has humiliated Brown. Liberalism is what it is, and there are only liberal politicians at Westminster.

Longer-term, the danger I see is of government generally, be it under the nominal control of right or left, morphing into Leviathan. As in America and Canada we are seeing a clear outline of that with all the highly oppressive measures enacted or proposed in the name of anti-terrorism. We already have the Civil Contingencies Bill, which is a very dark piece of legislation fully capable of ushering in dictatoship in the most literal sense. How will the advances of biometric identification technology and the panopticon state not tend further - perhaps much further - in that direction as the racial breaking-point nears?