The Unionist Blame Game

Benedict Brogan on why its all Labour's fault:

The word “Tory” became a contemptuous synonym for “English”; when John Smith, Gordon Brown, Donald Dewar or Robin Cook said “Tory government”, Scotland heard “English occupiers”. That willingness to demonise in the political interest created the unstoppable momentum that brought us first devolution, then Alex Salmond’s electoral triumph last year, which left him commanding the political landscape in Edinburgh, and now the first vote in 300 years on the future of the Union.

Of course, Labour’s strategy had another, more insidious consequence. By neglecting its Unionist traditions in favour of a tartan tinge, the party encouraged the process of delegitimisation that has excluded English politicians from any consideration of Scotland’s future. The SNP’s cod indignation when David Cameron presumed to raise the matter was predictable. But the trend was well under way when Labour, in power, allowed the subject of Scotland to become an issue reserved for Scots by Scots, with Gordon Brown as the ultimate arbiter of whose views could be heard in his fiefdom.

I think Mr Brogan may be onto something there. Take Robin Cook, a man of political integrity in many respects. Cook was converted to the cause of Scottish devolution by Thatcher, as he outlined in a speech to the Scottish Socialist Society in 1983:

"I have not been an extravagant supporter of the Scottish dimension but I have changed my mind. I don't give a bugger if Margaret Thatcher has a mandate or not - I will simply do all I can to stop her."

By the time Thatcher won the 1987 election this had become the common view of the Scottish Labour Party. Devolution was party-political: Socialist Scotland against Tory England. The Scottish Claim of Right did not explicitly mention the poll tax but there was a nod in its general direction:

"the Treaty of Union has been eroded almost to the point of extinction;...in which the wishes of the massive majority of the Scottish electorate are being disregarded...In such a situation one would expect to see breakdown of respect for law. They are beginning to appear."

In 1975 Gordon Brown, who went on to sign the Claim of Right, wrote:

We suggest that the rise of modern Scottish nationalism is less an assertion of Scotland’s permanence as a nation than a response to Scotland’s uneven development … the discontent is a measure of the failure of both Scottish and British socialists to advance far and fast enough in shifting the balance of wealth and power to working people.

Despite Salmond's recent claims that Scotland is a more progressive and socially liberal country than England, Gordon Brown was wrong; Scottish nationalism is about Scotland's permanence as a nation, and those Labour MPs who signed up to the Scottish Claim of Right were signing a statement of nationalist principle, even if their reasons for doing so were party political rather than nationalist. Canon Kenyon Wright believed that they had no idea what they were signing:

"Most of the MPs didn’t know what they were signing! Because they were signing something which was a direct contradiction of the claim of Westminster to absolute sovereignty, within our unwritten constitutional system. Because if the people are sovereign then Parliament still has an important role but it’s not an absolutist role."

Labour have attempted to out Scottish the SNP by wrapping themselves in the Saltire, but because the Labour Party is not a federal party and there is no similar exercise being conducted by an English Labour Party, it just looks like a cynical branding exercise by a British nationalist party to win Scottish hearts. Which is exactly what it is. Brogan is correct when he says that Labour allowed 'Scotland to become an issue reserved for Scots by Scots, with Gordon Brown as the ultimate arbiter of whose views could be heard in his fiefdom'

Brown and Tony Blair are faced with the very real danger of the 291-year-old Union between England and Scotland being dismembered. The Scottish Question remains unanswered and the forces of the Union are having to rethink, regroup and prepare to strike back. It has been a faltering response so far. Brown, deputed by Blair to sort it out, has been in the vanguard, struggling to come up with a coherent strategy…[…]… In the Treasury, and in Labour's Scottish headquarters in Glasgow, Delta House, the party's brightest have been struggling with ways of making the image of Britain more attractive for Scots. 'Cool Britannia had no resonance for most people,' said one of those formulating the new image of Britain. 'They all felt it was something happening somewhere else which they had no part in.' Many Scots never regarded themselves as British anyway. That view of identity has increased with each generation: Scots now present themselves as both Scottish and European, but not British. Why should they remain part of the United Kingdom any longer? Brown and his colleagues have been working on an answer. --- The Guardian; April 7, 1999

Unfortunately for Labour, and Unionists, all the Scottish Labour big hitters are now either dead or a laughing stock. There are signs that the new generation of English Labour politicians are willing to venture forth in the debate on Scotland (Miliband prepared to share a platform with Cameron). But the Nationalists now control the language and direction of debate, Scotland’s politicians are all Nationalists in the sense that they speak almost exclusively about whether Scottish self-interest is best served by inside or outside the Union. What effect this parochialism will have on the rest of the United Kingdom, in particular the English whose politicians never articulate a vision of England - but who now find their politicians venturing opinions on what is best for Scotland, remains to be seen. To this Englishman it seems increasingly clear that the Union, if not the World, revolves around Scotland.