Friday , March 29 2024

Tag Archives: Scottish National Party

Check hers

September 2014 The Yes side win a vote for Scottish independence by 53.4% to 46.6% November 2014 Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon begin negotiations with the UK Government led by Michael Gove. December 2014 Michael Gove announces that the UK will only support a free trade agreement with Scotland under …

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Indyref; or, ’tis four years since

It’s nearly four years ago since we had the Scottish independence referendum. Some of us are still fighting it, but most of us have moved on. Four years is rather a long time. The First World War only lasted a little longer than four years. A baby learns to speak …

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The fourth horseman

The two issues that dominate Scottish and UK politics both involve a choice of whether to Leave or Remain. There are four variants. Let’s embrace the current apocalyptic metaphors and call them horsemen.           EU              UK 1.       Leave         Leave    Independent Scotland out of the …

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Beware Shops Selling Swedes

It’s easy to mock those Scottish nationalists who spend their time looking around supermarkets for Scottish produce labelled as coming from Britain. There are other Scottish nationalists who want various vegetables to be called by their Scottish rather than by their English name. I imagine some want to go round …

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And there’s another country

I supported Brexit for these reasons. I thought the UK could in the long term be more prosperous if we could trade freely with whomsoever we chose. The EU runs a club that allows us to trade freely with other members of the club but imposes a common external tariff …

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Fighting on the ice

In 2014 when I was campaigning for Scotland to remain a part of the UK it never occurred to me that the result of the referendum might be ignored or obstructed. If the Yes side had won, I fully expected that in a short time Scotland would become a fully …

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Realms of Gold

I imagine sometime back in the late 1690s there were broadsheets handed out in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland promising “realms of gold”. Perhaps our ancestors studied all 354 pages of the scheme. Maybe they studied in detail the cunning plan to turn Scotland into a great economic power. The …

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It’s only the SNP that holds Scotland back.

I have long held the view that Better Together ran a terrible negative campaign that nearly cost us the referendum in 2014. For this reason my response to the SNP’s latest attempt to encourage more Scots to support independence is not going to be to explain why Scottish independence is …

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Pommes frites à l’écossaise

Apparently the Scottish Parliament has just refused to consent to Brexit. The Lib Dems, Labour, Greens and SNP all joined together to thwart the plans of those wicked Tories to undermine the powers of the Scottish Parliament. There is a peculiar logic going on here. There are various issues that …

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Bought and sold for RT gold

Does it matter very much that Alex Salmond has chosen to appear on Russia Today (RT)? No. I sometimes glance at this site. It has a perspective, but then again so does the BBC, CNN and the New York Times. RT has a Russian perspective. It’s not a perspective we …

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The Catalan handkerchief

Spain isn’t greatly liked in Britain. This has been particularly noticeable in the past few weeks as the crisis in Catalonia has developed. Quite a few writers have indulged in the pleasures of Spain bashing and for a variety of reasons. Some Eurosceptic Brexiteers have sympathised with the Catalans and …

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A senseless struggle about nothing

There are two forces going on in human nature, the desire to unify and the desire to separate. The reason that we have nation states at all is because people have felt the need to unify with others who are similar to them.  In antiquity each small village had its …

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Indyref; or, ’tis three years since

It’s a pity Walter Scott is so little read nowadays. Waverley (or ’tis sixty years since) is not merely a station in Edinburgh it is the key to understanding everything in Scottish history and if you understand the past you understand the present, for history is not about what was, …

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The Left is winning

Until recently I thought that the Right had won the economic battle decisively, but were gradually losing the cultural war. Now I am not so optimistic. Conservative economics suffered a set-back at the last election and now Conservatives are actually helping the Left to still more decisively destroy Conservative values. …

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Ireland shows why Scotland will never leave

Apparently the Irish Taoiseach wants the UK to remain in the EU. He is trying to keep the door open to the European Union and if that door fails, then he wants Britain to at least remain in the European Single Market and Customs Union. The Republic of Ireland is …

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The Pillars of Scottish Nationalism have crumbled

The SNP’s remarkable electoral ascent over the past decade has been driven by an ever increasing sense of political momentum. Far from diminishing after the 2014 independence referendum, the SNP’s momentum only gained in strength, and the 2015 election result that returned 56 nationalist MPs, wiping out Scottish Labour and …

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The SNP goal is receding into the distance

Did anything happen this week of consequence? Nicola Sturgeon turned up in the Scottish Parliament and said something about delaying indyref2. If this meant that we would have this referendum in a couple of years’ time, then what she said would have been of small consequence. What does it fundamentally …

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The frostbite of her hopes

In the aftermath of an election emotions are high, levels of spin even higher and judgement barely there at all. Politics in Britain has become uncertain. This is the third election in a row in which we have woken up to a surprise and not only one surprise but sometimes …

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Bursting the SNP bubble

A few months ago there were two main strategic challenges facing Britain. How to leave the EU successfully and how to keep our country intact? There are in addition, of course, the usual challenges facing any government. How to keep the economy growing? How to earn more than we spend? …

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