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bronxiteforever

(9,503 posts)
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 08:29 AM Jun 2019

The Tories would now rather face Scottish independence than lose Brexit

New Statesman
By Chris Deerin
June 17, 2019

...Westminster itself is more Anglicised than at any time in living memory. The only Scots MPs on the frontbench of either main party hold the relatively junior posts of Scottish secretary and his shadow...Even the teams of advisers around the leadership lack that familiar, salty, Tuckerish tang. This contrasts with the tartan spine of the Blair government and the historic Labour Party, and even the Thatcher and Major years, with their Youngers, Langs, Rifkinds and Forsyths. The Brexit debate is England talking to itself. Screw the French and the Germans. Screw Belgium and Luxembourg. Screw Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic. Wales will do what it’s told. Hello there, Mr Trump.

Tiny Scotland voted 62-38 to remain in the EU, an overwhelming majority in modern British democratic terms. Every one of its 32 local authority areas had a majority for Remain. In contrast, big England voted by the narrowest of margins to leave, and that’s what counts.Subsequent Scottish suggestions about single market membership and a customs union, about immigration needs, about global reputation and alliances, have been given short shrift. The English half-decision is being interpreted in the most extreme fashion possible.

The Tories would anyway rather leave the EU and lose Scotland than the opposite. They would sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. Nothing, not even the integrity of the country itself, can stand in the way of English exceptionalism...

This is not intended as a clarion call for Scottish independence. It is, I suppose, a statement of accounts from a frustrated and baffled and somewhat distressed section of north Britain. It is based on many months of conversations with Scots in politics and business and elsewhere. The bonds are coming loose, and in the unlikeliest of places. Are you listening, England? Do you care? What, in any event, can you do about it? After 300 years or so, is the United Kingdom to die of neglect?

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/06/tories-would-now-rather-face-scottish-independence-lose-brexit

11 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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hlthe2b

(106,590 posts)
1. Won't just be Scotland. Are they really ready for a return to the N. Ireland "troubles"?
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 08:37 AM
Jun 2019

How they could be the descendants of those who held the lands of the UK (as well as much of the world) for so long, yet be so blindered, is beyond me.

Doodley

(10,452 posts)
6. The article is BS. Why do you think Brexit hasn't happened after two years and Theresa May had to
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 09:42 AM
Jun 2019

Resign? Because the Tories are in disarray over Europe and have been for decades. The idea that Tories want dump Scotland or NI is BS. Not that I would defend them, but these kind of stories are about creating division.

hlthe2b

(106,590 posts)
7. "Want to?" I never said that. But their stubborness on BREXIT will have unintentional consequences
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 09:48 AM
Jun 2019

and further breaking up the UK is quite likely to be one of them

Denzil_DC

(8,009 posts)
3. For background, Deerin has long been a major opponent of Scottish independence.
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 08:54 AM
Jun 2019

For further background, a number of polls over the last year or so have shown that a majority in England, not just Tories, would accept Scottish independence and Irish reunification as the price of Brexit.

bronxiteforever

(9,503 posts)
4. Thanks! I did not know either fact.
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 09:09 AM
Jun 2019

I found Deerin’s last paragraph in the article a cry from the heart and very moving.
I find it incredible that people would be willing to sacrifice the United Kingdom for a Little Britain. It feels like an alternative universe.

Denzil_DC

(8,009 posts)
11. Most recent YouGov polling of Tory members on this:
Tue Jun 18, 2019, 05:13 AM
Jun 2019

Many are willing to go full kamikaze Brexit.

Now a new YouGov survey of Conservative Party members reveals just how much Brexit has changed the mood of the membership, subverting traditional loyalties and reshaping political priorities.

So dedicated to accomplishing Brexit are Tory members that a majority (54%) would be willing to countenance the destruction of their own party if necessary. Only a third (36%) put the party’s preservation above steering Britain out of the EU.

Party members are also willing to sacrifice another fundamental tenant of Conservative belief in order to bring about Brexit: unionism.* Asked whether they would rather avert Brexit if it would lead to Scotland or Northern Ireland breaking away from the UK, respectively 63% and 59% of party members would be willing to pay for Brexit with the breakup of the United Kingdom.



* Even outside the issue of Brexit, it is notable that a sizeable minority of members of what is officially called the Conservative and Unionist Party would be happy to see the United Kingdom broken up. As many as a quarter (26%) of party members would be happy to see Scotland split from the UK, while a further 20% would be happy to let Northern Ireland go.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/06/18/most-conservative-members-would-see-party-destroye

Doodley

(10,452 posts)
5. Wales also voted to leave, and with than the argument that the English only are to blame falls down.
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 09:26 AM
Jun 2019

hlthe2b

(106,590 posts)
9. Who said the English ONLY are to blame. Are you pro-BREXIT, btw?
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 12:22 PM
Jun 2019
Just sayin, I can't really tell.

T_i_B

(14,805 posts)
10. Boris Johnson: Scottish people should not be allowed to be prime minister
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 04:37 PM
Jun 2019

Difficult to know where to begin with this idiocy.

https://www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-ban-scottish-people-from-being-prime-minister-2019-6?r=US&IR=T

LONDON — Boris Johnson once called for Scottish people to be blocked from becoming prime minister because "government by a Scot is just not conceivable."

Johnson, the strong favourite to be Britain's next prime minister, also authorised publication of a poem describing Scottish people as vermin who should be exterminated.

Writing in the Spectator in 2005, Johnson said that it would be "utterly outrageous" if the then Chancellor Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister on the grounds that he is Scottish.

"The Labour machine will try, at some point in the next few years, to insert Gordon Brown," Johnson wrote, in comments unearthed by the Scotsman newspaper on Monday. "That would be utterly outrageous, not just because he is a gloomadon-popping, interfering, high-taxing complicator of life, but mainly because he is a Scot, and government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context." Johnson claimed that Brown was "not really interested in British values" but instead in "his personal political disability as a Scottish MP."
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