{"id":24323,"date":"2021-02-03T08:56:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T08:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=132720"},"modified":"2021-02-03T08:56:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T08:56:46","slug":"what-bojos-done-for-the-cause-of-scottish-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/03\/what-bojos-done-for-the-cause-of-scottish-independence\/","title":{"rendered":"What BoJo\u2019s Done for the Cause of Scottish Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Bundesministerium f\u00fcr euro – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

If you are from Scotland and want independence for your country, then Boris \u201cBoJo\u201d Johnson, the UK prime minister, is just the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.<\/p>\n

BoJo made a recent \u201cessential\u201d visit to Scotland– ignoring pandemic travel restrictions in so doing– for one of his now de rigueur but palpably contrived photo ops (featuring hi-vis jackets, hard hats, lab coats, butchers\u2019 aprons, the works).<\/p>\n

While there he, in essence, blamed the Scottish for their ingratitude in not appreciating how much Scotland\u2019s union with the rest of the UK (and especially England) had done for them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of your economy\u201d, was the gist of his message.<\/p>\n

Thing is, thanks to Tory mismanagement of Covid and Brexit, resulting in the UK\u2019s worst recession in 300 years, the \u201cthink of your economy\u201d sound-bite was always likely to have a quite different resonance in Scotland.<\/p>\n

The last 20 opinion polls have shown a majority of Scots in favour of independence, and every time Boris visits Scotland, the poll ratings of the Scottish National Party (SNP) go up a few points.<\/p>\n

Boris Johnson is becoming to Scottish (and Irish) people what the blowhard sectarian Ulster Protestant Ian Paisley was for the cause of Irish reunification.<\/p>\n

Cynics have said the reason the IRA didn\u2019t assassinate the bull-frog-voiced Paisley during the Irish Troubles was because he was their biggest recruiting tool every time he opened his mouth.<\/p>\n

The tin-eared BoJo– albeit a \u201cshape-shifting creep\u201d (described thus by a member of Obama\u2019s administration) that the tribally-entombed Paisley never could be– is becoming a similarly effective recruiter for the cause of Scottish independence.<\/p>\n

The Tories and Labour are well behind the SNP in opinion polls– SNP are at present 56% in the polls, the Scottish Tories are 22%, Scottish Labour are 14%, Scottish Lib Dems 6% and others 2%.<\/p>\n

Support for the Scottish Tories is falling: under Theresa May it was 27%, the low point of support for the Scottish Tories under Boris Johnson has been 19%.<\/p>\n

Scottish Labour is not doing much better.<\/p>\n

At the 2015 general election Labour lost 40 MPs in Scotland in an SNP landslide. Scottish Labour is facing a fight for \u201csurvival\u201d, but Scottish voters, understandably, see the SNP as providing the real opposition to the Conservatives, and therefore view Scottish Labour as a “wasted vote”\u2014the invariable fate faced by 3rd<\/sup> or 4th<\/sup> position parties in a 2-party system without proportional representation.<\/p>\n

Political commentators say Scottish Labour\u2019s chances of recovering from that position, and supplanting the Tories as the main opposition to the SNP, is all but impossible.<\/p>\n

Since both the Scottish Tories and Lib Dems are opposed to independence, the only way for Scottish Labour to demarcate itself from this anti-independence alignment is to: (a) back independence (b) campaign to rejoin the EU (c) support the introduction of a proper federalism, and (d) abolish the anachronistic House of Lords, and commit itself to dealing with all the other long-ingrained interests associated with such political relics.<\/p>\n

Only in this way will Scottish Labour take the wind out of the SNP\u2019s sails, by robbing it of its key campaigning points against the now pro-Independence and anti-neoliberal Labour.<\/p>\n

But this will put Scottish Labour radically at odds with the Labour Party in England and Wales.<\/p>\n

The Labour leader Keir Starmer\u2019s strategy (so far) has been to hang on to BoJo Johnson\u2019s coat-tails, and hope he can convince voters in the lead-up to the next election that he\u2019ll give them everything they have with BoJo (with a bit of trimming here and there of course), all delivered more competently and without the Tories unending corruption and cronyism.<\/p>\n

Starmer is thus bent on delivering neoliberalism \u201cwith a human face\u201d (laughter may be permitted here), mimicking the strategy espoused by his mentor Tony Blair when he took on the Tories successfully in 1997.<\/p>\n

Starmer, apart from his lawyerly ability to trounce BoJo in parliamentary debate, is the quintessential \u201c\u201cempty suit\u201d. People who know him say he is fundamentally \u201capolitical\u201d, and that politics is simply an arena where he can take his personal ambitions to the next level.<\/p>\n

Starmer agrees with BoJo that a second referendum on Scottish independence should be prevented.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s ingratiation towards the Tories seems to have no limits\u2014he even agreed that BoJo\u2019s trip to Scotland was \u201cessential\u201d, even though it clearly breached the lockdown restrictions.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Scottish Labour is in disarray. It is currently undergoing a leadership contest, and the winner will be the 5th<\/sup> person, each one just as ineffectual as the other, to lead the Scottish Labour Party in just 5 years.<\/p>\n

The two candidates– one a Blairite multimillionaire, the other a wooly centrist\u2014are both opposed to Scottish independence and to a referendum on that independence. The winner will face a key electoral examination just 9 weeks later at elections for the Scottish parliament.<\/p>\n

The consensus among the commentariat is that Scottish Labour and the Scottish Tories will be demolished in these elections because of their opposition to a second referendum for Scottish independence.<\/p>\n

The Scottish parliamentary elections will therefore serve as a prolepsis to an actual referendum that neither the Tories nor Labour, at both the Scottish and Ukanian levels, will be able to prevent.<\/p>\n

The cause of Scottish independence is now a juggernaut.<\/p>\n

Scottish Labour\u2019s only avenue to survival is not to contest the SNP on the issue of independence (it\u2019s bound to lose on this one), but to say that since Scotland is the most socialist of the national components of the UK, only Labour can deliver on a full blown social-democratic agenda for Scotland.<\/p>\n

This will test the SNP\u2019s commitment to socialism, on which it has been fuzzy at times, on account of its nationalist-libertarian wing.<\/p>\n

But, but\u2014 Scottish Labour committing itself to independence and full-blown socialism to remain viable in Scotland?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s probably not going to go down well with Keir Starmer and his neoliberal Blairite cabal in London.<\/p>\n

The post What BoJo’s Done for the Cause of Scottish Independence<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are from Scotland and want independence for your country, then Boris \u201cBoJo\u201d Johnson, the UK prime minister, is just the proverbial gift that keeps on giving. BoJo made a recent \u201cessential\u201d visit to Scotland\u2013 ignoring pandemic travel restrictions in so doing\u2013 for one of his now de rigueur but palpably contrived photo ops More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post What BoJo\u2019s Done for the Cause of Scottish Independence<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24324,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24323\/revisions\/24324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}