Labour’s apparent collapse in support in Scotland, fuelled by the bitter revanchism of defeated nationalists in last year’s Scottish independence referendum, means that they may not be able to gain a majority due to the migration of the now-institutionalised anti-Tory vote to the anti-unionist SNP. This appears to be because Labour is tarred with the unionist brush as the party that led the ‘Better Together’ campaign.
Labour’s support in England alone is likely not to be enough to give them the seats they need for a majority. The SNP are set to eject UK-wide parties from Scotland as being not Scottish enough. Labour have already acknowledged this as their leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, is campaigning on the basis of how much tax revenue levied on English people will be spent solely on the Scottish.
The consequence for the UK is grave. The SNP will exact a heavy price for propping up a minority Labour government. For their part, despite needing SNP votes to govern, Labour has no choice but to distance itself from the SNP as much as possible or face completely alienating English voters, instead of just partially.
So far, so very much like almost every other article discussing the outcome of the election. However, I do believe that this election has an additional dimension to it.
The 2015 election has become, in effect, no more than another referendum on Scottish independence. The crucial difference is that this is a poll that every voter in the United Kingdom can participate in. None of the parties’ policies actually matter, since they will only pass into law in a hung parliament if they meet with the approval of the SNP, a party that is, not surprisingly, only interested in Scottish votes.
Referendums are about a proposition and the electorate are offered a straight choice to approve or decline. This is also the case in 2015. If English people want Scotland to become independent, all they have to do is to vote for any party but the Conservatives. If the English want the United Kingdom to remain as it is, they must vote Conservative. It is as simple and as stark as that. In 2015, policy is effectively all but irrelevant, especially if it is to be subject to an SNP veto with no reference to the consequences for the wider UK should the Conservatives fail to gain a parliamentary majority with or without the Lib-Dems.
It is paradoxical that while Labour has been only too happy to grant Welsh and Scottish nationalists enhanced autonomy, they positively hate English nationalism and appear to despise the triumph and progress of English history, unless, of course, it is about the plight of the English working classes. Even then, they actually seem to despise certain sections of them. While they may look with approval on a trades union banner displayed at a rally in County Durham, they sneer at the St George’s cross on a terraced house in Kent. While doing so in public is a sacking offence for a socialist shadow minister, it is obvious that among themselves, Labour hates England.
This explains why Labour made such great efforts to dismember England into regions under Blair until this was stopped in its tracks by English voters. It also explains why the left-leaning media almost exclusively depict the cross of St George as the emblem of shaven-headed soccer hooligans and racists and suppress any other form of English patriotic sentiment. Were England to have its own parliament, as the Scottish, Welsh and Irish do, it would be Conservative-dominated.
England has no national victim culture for socialism to latch on to. So Labour have no interest in England as a nation. And neither do their ideological brethren, the SNP, except as a docile cash-cow for their schemes. Otherwise they regard their southern cousins with open contempt. The conduct of independence supporters towards their opponents in the referendum campaign was nothing short of disgusting and their mindless physical and online abuse represented the darker side of nationalism. And this kind of nihilism and brutality is what we have to expect in a hung parliament.
Nationalism is not about policy, as Alex Salmond’s door-stop of a white paper ‘Scotland’s Future’ suggested last year. At 650 pages, it was too long by 649. What is the point of policy if independence lasts centuries? Pure nationalism is about sentiment, which flag you salute, which country you are willing to die for, which anthem you want to sing. It is not about next year’s taxation, next decade’s welfare budget or next century’s oil reserves.
Nations are for ever. Starving populations would rather fight to the death than be dominated by a foreign power even if this means they will be looked after better than they could look after themselves. Unthinking nationalism has also been responsible for the worst atrocities of modern times as this sentiment depicts other peoples as somehow lesser and not to be considered. Salmond did not care if Scotland was isolated by being outside the EU due to a Spanish veto, bankrupted by capital flight or impoverished by the current collapse in oil prices had he won last year. He wanted Scotland for the Scottish and to hell with England and the English. To the SNP, naked nationalism is more important than genuine national interest.
This also means that the SNP is perfectly willing to trigger constitutional and economic crises in the UK to get their way. It is the method of the Leninist, encapsulated in the saying, ‘the worse, the better’, to debase and degrade existing institutions in the hope that the wreckers may occupy the consequent vacuum following a collapse of authority. Since the SNP has no interest in the United Kingdom, they have no interest in preserving the Union and would see it shattered, no matter how. The SNP would be happy to impose punitive taxation on English wealth-creators, to bloat the State by creating thousands of non-jobs and to drive away foreign investment so long as more power and English tax money is transferred to Edinburgh, Westminster is weakened and England impoverished.
At present there is only one way to stop this impending national disaster and that is a Conservative majority in the UK Parliament capable of passing legislation securing English Votes for English Laws. Confirmed Labour voters may not care as they believe the ends justifies the means, even if this results in the end of the UK as we know it. But every English voter will end up paying through the nose for an independent Scotland as the price of a Labour government.
The patron saint of England is St George who is depicted as the slayer of a dragon, a beast known in legend for terrorising and destroying vulnerable communities. It is time that this tartan dragon is laid low in our generation by the heroic voters of England, this happy breed of men and woman, defending their little world against the envy of less happier lands to save this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
The only party that can halt Salmond and his unthinking and destructive nationalist socialism in its tracks is the Conservative Party. Voters in England did not have that choice in last year’s referendum. They can now vote Conservative to reject the SNP and Salmond and his proxies or face a Very Scottish Coup.
