Cat escapes from bag
Scotland Tonight and Newsnight Scotland both ran fairly decent shows last night leading with the issue of Trident and its replacement, but the most telling contribution to the debate came from the long-standing Labour columnist Polly Toynbee. In a frank and direct piece for the Guardian, Toynbee analysed the politics rather than the economic or defence arguments, and concurred with something this site and others have been saying for almost a year:
“We know where everyone stands – except Labour.”
But it’s just after that line where Toynbee drops the real bomb:
“Some in Labour are nuclear-heads because they occupy seats such as John Woodcock’s Barrow, a one-industry town dependent on defence. Others are nuclear out of strong conviction a unilateralist Labour would be dead at the polls. Probably no one in Labour actually believes we need a Trident replacement for national defence – only for political defence of Labour.“
It’s become fashionable in recent months to put forward the argument that the Scottish electorate isn’t as different to the English one as we often like to portray. There’s certainly a core sliver of truth to that, with the Scottish political spectrum slightly distorted by votes for the left-of-centre SNP that may be at least partly more to do with their competence – compared to an embarrassingly useless opposition – than with Scots being ragingly socialist.
But there are still specific issues where Scots consistently poll to the left of England and the rest of the UK. Welfare is one, and Trident is another. Whether that’s based on a deep moral opposition to the concept of nuclear weapons or merely the fact that it’s our backyard they’re parked in is a matter for conjecture. But the SNP can’t be accused of populist opportunism on the issue, because they’ve been solidly committed to an anti-nuclear platform since the day the first Polaris submarine sailed up the Clyde over 50 years ago.
Labour, on the other hand, are so dizzy from trying to face in every direction at once on the issue that their Scottish “leader” refuses to even say what her personal position is, let alone what she’d do were she to somehow, God forbid, find herself the First Minister of an independent Scotland.
Toynbee’s explosive column openly acknowledges the truth: the £83bn cost of Trident (and the reality, demonstrated over decades, is that it will in fact be several times that) is, as far as Labour are concerned, an expenditure primarily aimed at getting themselves elected. Not that they’ll pay for it – you and I, the gullible taxpayer – will pick up the tab, and the sick and the poor and the vulnerable will be the ones to suffer from the huge hole it’ll leave in the budget.
Labour don’t want Trident because they think it protects the people of the UK, because even Tony Blair admitted it was worthless for that. They want it to protect themselves.
@Rev,
You forgot to mention that all that money doesnt even include the missiles as they will be buying those off the Americans at a further £3 Billion.
No wonder they are so scared that they are resorting to false claims over jobs and Trident…
“Faslane is the administrative headquarters for Royal Navy Scotland, Northern England and Northern Ireland. It is the base for eight Sandown class mine hunters and for all Royal Navy submarines including Swiftsure, Trafalgar and from 2011 Astute as well as the four Vanguard Trident submarines. The majority of MoD and civilian staff at the base are not therefore related to Trident work. In 2008 a statement from Defence Secretary, Des Browne, said that at that point only 589 jobs at the Clyde Naval base were directly dependent on Trident and of these 541 were in Coulport. It is likely that many of these are in the MoD Police. This indicates that most of the jobs at Faslane are not unique to Trident and could be sustained so long as there are other vessels, such as conventionally-armed submarines, operating from the base.” CND – Trident, Jobs and the UK economy
Definitely the truth that dare not be spoken by Labour.
Labour simply has no idea, as a party, what to do about Trident.
Whatever else can be said about the SNPs conference, the NATO debate made one thing absolutely clear – Vote YES to independence, vote for the SNP as your first independent Scottish government and you lose the nukes. No ifs or buts, the SNP proved beyond doubt in that debate, they’re not a one man band on everything, but on removing the nukes and using the cash elsewhere, utterly committed.
Johann Lamont will be unavailable for comment.
Joan McAlpine will no doubt get a few angry comments from the Unionist today.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/joan-mcalpine-bbcs-more-sleazy-1407311
Trident and Welfare are certainly the Achilles heels of the NO campaign. I am sure that these weaknesses will be fully exploited as the debate on Scotland’s future develops over the next two years. Somewhere, somehow, Johann Lamont has to be pinned down on Trident. She is the leader of the opposition at Holyrood and a key figure in the anti-independence campaign. The public require to hear her views. A question from an honest, unbiased journalist would be helpful (lol), but personally I would like to see another hilarious, Subway type ambush by CND supporters when she finally ventures out of the bunker to campaign for a NO vote.
Marcia,
An excellent article by Joan. In the Daily Record? Wow, I’m surprised it got passed the editor. “Auntie BBC becomes sleazy uncle” – couldn’t be put better. There is going to be a massive shake-up in this organization. They may drag their feet and delay it as much as possible, but the public have lost faith completely and big changes are inevitable. The coalition government will waste no time exploitung the situation. There in lies an opportunity – for example, a campaign for a autonomous, Scottish BC would be very awkward for them to ignore. Jam tomorrow! And who knows? It may deflect the vast energies currently spent supporting Labour against the YES campaign (at taxpayers’ expense).
The history of Trident is also worth looking at – announced in 1980, it took 14 years before the first vanguard submarine went on patrol, the full compliment of 4 submarines would not enter service until the launch of HMS Vengence in 1998.
The delays were partly down to development problems on the US side with the missile not becoming availlable to the UK until the 90s. A national audit report in 2008 stated that annual expenditure costs for the system account for 5.5% of the defence budget.
As for the Job situation most reports state that the actual position is around 540 jobs dependent on this system. But the subs also operate and are serviced at devonport, I suspect the bulk of the Jobs are there, not here in Scotland as stated by Slab.
Something intrigued me about the comments on the Toynbee article. (By the way, Toynbee is such a rabid unionist from way back I can usually scarcely bear to read her.) Anyway, in the comments there is a poster called “GreyEminence” who is posting absolutely fascist right-wing stuff, complete red rag to a bull. Except. In another forum I frequent, a poster called “Little Grey Rabbit” was well-known for posting inflammatory rubbish he didn’t believe for a moment, just to get a reaction. He specialised in Holocaust denial, and it worked every time. I’ve never seen such effective trolling. He was eventually banned, but reappeared with the handle “Her Grey Eminence”. He’s English, too. I just wonder if this is the same character, now trolling the Grauniad threads.
If so, he has supporters. Over 100 likes for one of his early posts about cancelling all benifits before cutting a penny of Trident funding.
Deewal, over at my blog, has written an interesting piece on Trident, including the following, which I hope he won’t mind my quoting here.
The absorption of the UK into the US nuclear force was made explicit only this year. Stephen Johnson, the American admiral in charge of the US Trident programme, gave his annual progress report to Congress. Among his top accomplishments for “sustainment of our [ie the US] sea-based deterrent” was sending HMS Victorious to sea after a refit. He does not list the British Trident submarine separately. No, the British Trident submarine is simply listed with the American ones under the heading “Today’s Force”.
Hammond can’t remove the WMD’s at Faslane because they belong to the US and are part of the US Nuclear deterrent. The software for the targeting of the missiles is locked to the Targets that have and will be chosen by the Pentagon.
Regarding the numbers of people employed by Trident this will be nothing compared to all the work that will be available in the event of a nuclear war…just think of all those bodies that will need burying.
There is a poetic justice in Labour today being hung out to dry on its ‘support’ for Trident. After all, it was a Labour government, under Attlee, that first developed the secret plans for Britain’s first atomic bomb. The policy developed further when the Tories got back in to power in 1951 (codenamed ‘Hurricane’) with the first test (codenamed ‘Grapple’), in 1957.
The British had hoped that if they had their own atomic bomb, it would give them more leverage with the Americans, they also believed that it would conduce to defence cuts – nuclear weapons were so much more ‘efficient’ than conventional weapons. Both of these hopes demonstrated not only the naivety of the British but also the hubris of a declining former world power that still believed it could reverse its increasing irrelevance in the world.
In 1946, The US had passed the controversial McMahon Act, which, among other things, prohibited the sharing of America’s atomic secrets with any foreign power. And as late as the 1960s, the British were still spending more on ‘defence’ than they were on either health or education, in spite of two decades of decolonization. But before 1957, the British had to seek technical help from the US and, by the end of the decade, the British had to accept that they could only use American designs and so, by 1960, the myth of an independent British deterrent was already consigned to the dustbin of history.
The Americans realised, after 1945, the real action was not in Britain, but in continental Europe. The US, under Eisenhower (as Supreme Commander of NATO) and Truman (President from 1945-53) despaired of Churchill, who wanted to relive the glory of the Second World War. Eventually, after Churchill promoted to Truman the prospect of a British-American co-operation in global affairs, Truman saw him off with a patronising pat on the head, telling Churchill: “Thank you Mr Prime Minister. We might pass that to be worked out by our advisers”.
After the formation of NATO in 1949, the US pushed on with their agenda of encouraging (continental) European unification – culminating in the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1958, creating what we now call the EU (the British, as ever, were left heckling from the sidelines). By the 1960s, when the British, under American pressure, finally lost their empire, the British also finally realised that it might be in their interests to have closer ties with Europe. But it was too late, as ever, the British had missed the boat.
When the British did make more concerted efforts to join the EU, it was General De Gaulle, who spoke for many people in Europe, when he justified his opposition to British membership by saying:
“Britain is America’s trojan horse in Europe”.
Those words were true in the 1960s, and they’re still true today.
Well, swords into ploughshares kind of encapsulates it. Not a bunch of weapons-makers sitting around with no work, but a bunch of smiths making agricultural tools instead of weapons.
I remember an episode of Quantum Leap. Our hero jumped back in time to the Cuban Missile Crisis, where a smart entrepreneur was making a (I nearly said “bomb” or “killing”) selling expensive in-home nuclear shelter bunkers. He was terrifying elderly people into spending their lives’ savings on the things, and generally spreading gloom and despondency. No doubt he was keeping builders in work though.
Our hero, knowing there had never been a nuclear strike, got hold of the salesman and talked him round. He switched markets, and started selling swimming pools. Same technology, same digging holes in people’s yards and filling them with concrete, but the outcome was general happiness and contentment.
And the builders all still had jobs.
Philip Hammond did a dreadful job yesterday on Radio Scotland answering the question, “Who are we deterring?”
The bluster quickly gave way to a claim that we don’t know what threats we might face in the distant future so we must have Trident as the final deterrent. He claimed that it would deter terrorists but failed to explain why America got nailed by a 14 man strong team of die hards from Saudi/Yemen in 2001 despite the USA having the largest nuclear weapons cache of all. He also failed to explain why the terrorists successfully attacked trains in Madrid and in London when both country’s are members of NATO, armed to the teeth with nuclear ballistic missiles.
The reality of course is that it is not a deterrant at all because we all know, including militants in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Southern Yemen/Somalia/North Korea (take yer pick) that they would never be used.
But Hammond’s greatest illogical argument is over the reduction in regular armed forces. Using the same reasons for Trident, why then don’t we have an army of over 1/2 million men/women just in case some oil thirsty dictator decides it wants to invade London or Edinburgh or Aberdeen?
He can’t argue facing in two different directions at the same time. Well actually he can and he does which is wny his reasoning is two faced and flawed.
OT. I thought it was illegal for the ‘original’ state to interfere in the referendum process? Surely some of the recent actions by Westminster must be illegal, especially Camerons statement about using all the powers of the civil service to fight against independence.
@Juteman
I tend to agree, but the contra position being put is the the “UK” is the one country, and so is not in fact interfering with itself (Erm …!)
My argument is that isf that was the case, why did the UK government support the referendum and UDI for Kosovo, which was legally, and internationally accepted (at that time) as being past of Serbia? (Note for any rabid pro-USA Balkan position, I am not here arguing FOR the Serbs, just making a comparison. THAT argument is for a different time ).
The same “independence” supporting UK government position can be seen throughout history EXCEPT when it comes to its own ‘colonies’ seeking independence. Then, somehow it mutates into a terrorist, criminal, ungrateful … you can supply the rest
We need to make more of the issue of where Trident will be rehoused after independence. The reality is that there are only a couple of suitable sites in rUK and we hear from Unionists that these weapons and the resultant jobs would be a welcome addition to any local economy.
Plymouth is often mentioned, though I believe that it has the wrong geology for the storage facilities, but we never hear the views of ordinary residents as to the presence of WMD in their city. It wouldn’t take much for the Scottish press to do a vox pop.
@ GH Graham
Deter terrorists? Bit like swatting a fly with a bulldozer.
I don’t think he thought that argument through you know. 🙂
Just one simple question to Johann Lamont… are you, as the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland for or against nuclear weapons based in Scotland..yes or no? The answer whatever it is either way will destroy and will be the end of the labour party in Scotland. They know this and that is why she will not answer this simple question. Knife edge for the labour party in Scotland.
I wonder how many of the House of Lords (ermine vermin) have pension plans or any other financial connections with the American weapons industry ? As well as that I also wonder hhow many of the millionaires in both the cabinet and the shadow cabinet have investments in that area too. Conflict of interest anybody ? ? ?
Trident is the no campaigns achilles heel . Joan McCalpine put it into figures that the public can understand with hammond,s £350 million which is a fraction of the total cost we would be able to employ 8,333 nurses and upto 9,700 teachers .
The yes campaign should be hammering home to the Scottish people that we could with Scotland,s share off the total bill of £92 billion + , we could build x amount of roads , hospitals , eradicate fuel poverty an still find money to create thousands of jobs to replace any lost with trident .
As for the labour party , cameron has played them for the fools that they are ! by being the front for the tory,s no campaign he has ensured that they will go the same way as the lib/dems in Scotland .
Labour are now caught in a trap of their own making , they are now finding that they are being sidelined with no input into the debate apart from being a front for the tory,s .
This is why they are reacting like a wounded animal and are lashing out in all directions with a bit of help from their friends in the biased b.b.c .
They thought that 2007 was an accident and that in 2011 they would be back to ruling their personal fiefdom , the thought that Scotland would not return to the fold never entered their heads until now .
RevStu, sorry to go O/T but I thought you may be interested to hear that one of the five rebel LibDems is actively campaigning for a YES: http://my.mutterings.co.uk/politics/yes-highland-inaugural-meeting
Lamont is said to be privately against nuclear weapons by journalists. However, like many in unionist Scottish Labour, Lamont appears to hate the SNP more than any rumoured rejection of Trident. Last week was a prime example of this.
I wonder how many Scottish Labour politicians who are against nuclear weapons will now resign from the party on principle?
Apparently SCND wouldn’t mind hearing from Ms Lamont either.
http://www.banthebomb.org/ne/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1406:lamont-silence-on-trident&catid=63:trident&Itemid=95
Still unavailable for comment.
@Luigi
“I wonder how many Scottish Labour politicians who are against nuclear weapons will now resign from the party on principle?”
This is the defining thing about New Labour/’Scottish’ Labour. Over the last 15 years the hierarchy of the party has largely been cleansed of any people showing the remotest trace of principle, these folk having been replaced with aspirants/careerists who will espouse any notion they have been told to by HQ, no matter how absurd, contradictory or difficult.
I genuinely believe that a good number of Labour politicians don’t know why they are campaigning for the Union, but simply do so because they ‘huv been tellt’ to do so. Check out the following MSP who apparently thinks we should ‘keep Britain in the Union’. Does she come across as having the foggiest idea why she’s campaigning for ‘Better Together’?
http://www.annemctaggart.co.uk/anne-mctaggart-msp-hosts-better-together-campaign-day-in-drumcha
Luigi
At £83 billion, the UK could employ 110666 people at £25000 a year for 30 years. More jobs than Trident by quite a long way…
Bastiat’s original parable of the broken window from Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (1850):
@Training Day
I had to laugh at that link. She claims to have “hosted an incredibly successful better together campaign day in Drumchapel last week” where she “was joined by local residents as well as those from across the country” yet the only photo available is of her and six minions.
“Whence we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: “Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed;” and we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end—To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, “destruction is not profit.”
What will you say, Moniteur Industrie what will you say, disciples of good M. F. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?”
Sounds a familiar argument, no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
O/T Speaking of wasted cash.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20129783
Seein’ as how Labour instigated both the FOI and the subsequent ministerial code investigation (you know, the one they are now backing away from rapidly), just who should be fitting the bill for what here?
[Anne McTaggart] claims to have “hosted an incredibly successful better together campaign day in Drumchapel last week” […] yet the only photo available is of her and six minions.
I think it’s BetterTogether policy not to display photographs of supporters. Therefore you will never see pictures of the No Campaign in action.
That’s the thing that the BBC never mentions – WHO it was that instigated the FOI request in the first place and the fact that it was entirely politically motivated. This is always coyly glossed over in their reports.
As you say, surely if anyone should foot the bill it should be Labour who set this contrivance up, particularly when the MEP in question could have just asked the European Commission directly if the SG had asked for advice – which is what the pragmatic Tories appear to have done.
They’re just trying to flog this dead horse when the horse never really existed and the stick they’re using is made of wet spaghetti. And no doubt we’ll be hearing yet more drivel from this lot at FMQ this week… keep up the good work say I.
@mutterings
I assume that this policy is based on the same principle which will not allow me to release photographs of me being fellated by famous models.
The stick they’re using MB is the usual one, an overly compliant BBC. Still for sheer brass neck it takes the biscuit.
I’ll start not one but two fights, lose both, blame someone else and drop a bill in their lap. Does sound like a typical Westminster night out though. Wonder how Mr Joyce is gettin’ on the days? 🙂
Johann will remain unavailable for comment.
20 billion for 500+ jobs. That’s almost 4 million per head. A rather expensive job creation scheme!
Better Together said they are too busy to take photos at their events but have the time to create a Political Pumpkin Pack so one can carve UK OK on a pumpkin.
Yes TYRAN,
I, for instance, am far too busy arranging these MASSIVE Pro Independence Rallies in Aberdeen so have not been able to photograph the 32 million people who attended… but even if I had, my own policy prevents me from displaying their faces and my dislike of the TV Program Cops put be off blurring and crowd shots… honest…
You will just have to trust me and accept that the 32 million did attend while looking at pictures of me and my cat…
Ok, Ok, I exxaggerate… I dont have a cat
@RevStu
Might be another candidate for zany comic relief section here. BBC Scotlandshire has a rival!
http://newsthump.com/2012/10/30/romney-blames-defenceless-oil-rich-state-of-scotland-for-hurricane-sandy-outrage/
O/T but it really is pertinent
Kenneth Roy on his Scottish Review e-mag takes the culture of the BBC upper echelons to task with respect to the Jimmy Savile debauchle. He starts with a knife, works his way up to a hatchet and finishes off with a chain saw.
http://tinyurl.com/9yoe45k
It does reveal to me a complete lack of a working and effective managerial structure.
Above a certain level the “management” culture is that of “don’t tell me, I don’t want to know and there is a layer of people to filter out what I need to know.“
They make no attempt to find out what is happening down in the boiler house heaven forfend that they might even have to meet some of the people who pay their TV tax. That is what soundings and surveys are all about, Old Chap.
I suggest that this culture is the why the Wombats who run the Scottish BBC News Directorate can do what they do without any chance of recourse. There seem to be a fair sprinkling of commentariat who are intellectually wedded to the Labour Party and, whatever they need, it is their job to work towards that end. These people seem to move between the BBC, the Inky Press and the Government’s, of the day, army of Press Officers and news manipulators.
Labour need Scotland to survive and the Labour MPs need their seats to continue in the financial lifestyle to which they have been accustomed. So in the bars, clubs and other places the SPADS, Spin Doctors and BBC fellow travellers meet and interact with their Labour counterparts, they are beavering away cooking up all the ordure they can on Salmond and the SNP, and introducing it as fact in the inky press and the BBC.
The Toffs at the top don’t give a monkey’s as they don’t know about or want to know about the subversion of the BBC’s Charter. They will only react to hit when it hits then between the eyes, just like JS is doing from beyond the grave.
We can only get this lot shifted, the lower order liars and other malcreants if pressure is put right on the top level of management to do it. Cameron could, if he thought it was in his benefit to do so.
Panda Paws
I wonder if that is Conan the Librarian. He did say to me that he had another project in mind.
@James McLaren,
Agree with you about Roy’s perspective on the BBC, a well-written piece.
It’s unfortunate, though, that the cheap and pretty tasteless joke has not been edited out yet:
“(although at the time of writing Sandy looks a bit like a storm in a tea party)”.
Ten people have now died in New York, and numbers are expected to increase, and the storm-damage is, rightly, being described as unprecedented in New York’s history. I don’t think that the qualification “at the time of writing” saves face for Roy here. For, at the time he wrote the piece, the full force of Sandy hadn’t yet been felt and he should have exercised better judgement here, in light of the warnings that city and state authorities have been issuing over the last three days, many of which have been broadcast in the British media. It’s unfortunate that Scottish Review doesn’t allow comments and that Roy’s inner voice failed him here, as it detracts from an otherwise excellent piece.
Roy will accept comments by letter, and possibly by email. You could give it a try.
“I think it’s BetterTogether policy not to display photographs of supporters.”
Similarly, it’s my policy not to display photographs of the sixteen French lingerie models I live with.
Surprisingly enough I am more likely to believe that Rev Stu lives with sixteen French lingerie models than I am that the Better together mob get any audience whatsoever.
In a moment of complete madness I wondered if someone could arrange a Better Together demonstration, say in Edinburgh? Surely there would be no problem with that! We could see the enormous support that they have amongst their committed activist base. Duncan Hothersall could make a speech and so could Ian Smart. That’d get the bums on seats.
Better together.
UK OK.
U KOK.
I hope they’re not talking to me.
http://bettertogether.net/blog/entry/show-your-support-this-halloween
@Richie,
Once Better Together’s buddies in the BNP and the EDL see this, they’ll be complaining that Mary has missed out a ‘K’.
Just clicked on Richie’s Better Together link above – I have this thing about pumpkins, I hate them. If Neep lanterns were good enough for me and my kids, they are good enough for todays generation. In fact when we are independent I’d petition to have pumpkins banned. Worse than bloody Trident missiles……
Anyway, glad I got that off my chest. Back the to the Better Together website. Anyone else notice that their map of Scotland does not include Orkney and Shetland? Do they assume that they have already re-joined Norway, or is the more prosaic fact that their are no Better Together local campaigns in these islands? And what does that say about the widely held assumption that the Northern Isles will vote No…..
Tearlach,
Do you think it was supposed to look a bit scary? It certainly looked like the opening scene in a horror movie, y’know before the credits, the scene setting bit.
Tearlach, I find butternut squash and neeps far tastier but I suppose they have plenty of pumpkins at BetterTogether.
I notice WoS is still on British Summertime!
Back on topic, maybe this is the return of real Labour.
Perhaps if Better Together are too busy to photograph the crowds at their events we could do it for them. It would be interesting to compare the reality to their description.
I notice that their student event in Edinburgh on 3rd November has one attendee so far: it won’t take a wide lens to capture that crowd.
Henry McLeish says First Minister did not mislead voters on EU advice
Westminster discussion paper says Scotland would just automatically inherit EU membership, just like Salmond opined.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmfaff/writev/643/m05.htm
@Cuphook
Very interesting interview with Henry McLeish, particularly his comments on what Labour is doing wrong plus some diplomatic but very clear criticism of Lamont. He is obviously a very smart guy with a hankering for principled and intelligent debate. No wonder Labour thought he was dangerous and ensured his political downfall.
I commentated thusly on Labour Hame, to the indefatigable Ian Smart:
Ian,
There are so few commenting on your nonsense here because it is Tom Harris’s pet project. Y’know, the guy that was dropped as the Labour Party’s ‘media advisor’? No doubt, a close, personal friend.
I should be fascinated to see any evidence whatsoever that the ‘Better Together’ campaign, Tory led, can get anyone whatsoever onto the streets. Unless you see an Orange Order march as vindification.
I record it here merely for posterity. It is currently ‘awaiting moderation’.
@James MacLaren,
Excellent reference and great work on fishing this out.
I particularly like the phrase:
“For practical and political reasons they [Scotland] could not be asked to leave the EU and asked to apply for readmission”.
Doesn’t this make so much sense? To repeat a previous question: can anyone provide one good reason why the EU would not do everything in its power to keep Scotland in the EU after a Yes vote in 2014?
As Avery points out, we’ve been members of the EU for 40 years, we’re long-standing EU citizens, we’re already subject to EU law and, on top of that, we have a great deal to offer the EU both now and in the future. This is the debate that we should be having, not Scottish Labour’s ‘I demand an enquiry though I’m not sure what I want it for but I’ll think of something soon’ debate.
He actually turns the argument about the EU countries not wanting to encourage separatist groups of their own on its head. He says, the EU is not going to want to create a precedent whereby a huge complicated fuss is created whenever any state undergoes mitosis. Imagine if Belgium split in half – would they have to throw out the entire country and make them reapply?
I note he doesn’t address the possibility that England would be equally regarded as a new state in the event of an ending of the Union. A topic for another day, perhaps.
@Morag,
Agreed and well observed. This whole issue has never made any sense. Scottish Labour has consistently raised the absurd spectre of independence allegedly threatening Scotland’s membership of the EU whilst staying silent on the very real threat that the Tories at Westminster could take us out of the EU, even if we were to vote to stay in (in a UK-wide referendum).
While we’re on the subject, remember when, in the summer, Scottish Labour were also criticising the Scottish government for prolonging the ‘process’ and ‘running scared’ of debate? Now, it turns out, that Scottish Labour can’t get enough of the process and the last thing they want (particularly now) is to have a debate because they understand that, on this as on so many other issues, the best arguments are on the side of the Yes campaign.
It’s also obvious why we needed the three-year lead-in time and couldn’t have had the vote within a few months as some originally demanded.
There is a lot of work to get through. So many questions to settle that the unionists hadn’t even thought about. But the Scottish government had thought about them.
@Morag,
Precisely. In fact what the next two years will demonstrate, once again, is just how much contempt Scottish Labour had for voters in demanding an early referendum. They didn’t want the EU and other issues to be fully aired in the public domain (that’s the ‘British’ way). A quick debate, with little opportunity for reflection, and a generous helping of scattergun Fud. You can understand why, at the time, they were so confident of a No vote.
@MajorBloodnok
I actually do have some sympathy for Henry McLeish. It must be dispiriting to see an organisation which you invested so much in being brought to ruin by purblind and incapable careerists. I really don’t know why he doesn’t resign the party whip and sit as an independent. He seems too dignified to be sitting with the Labour chimps.
YesYesYes
Thanks but, I lifted it from Facebook thinking it was a very important analysis, available to the No campaign, if any of them could read.
It almost identically lays out Salmond’s assertions about the EU and a common currency agreement.
I like this bit in Henry McLeish’s wikipedia page.
…he was embarrassed when an open microphone recorded him with Helen Liddell in a TV studio, describing Scottish Secretary John Reid as “a patronising bastard” and said of his colleague, Brian Wilson, “Brian is supposed to be in charge of Africa but he spends most of his time in bloody Dublin. He is a liability”
Trident such a waste of money! whatever next? paying £10,000 just to repair a dead snake?