In response to Paul T Horgan: Want to slay Salmond’s tartan dragon? Want to preserve the UK? Vote Conservative, Oliver J.S McMullen wrote:
“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.”
No! Voting Tory will not save the union. This article is a good example of the self-interested electoral scare tactics the Tories typically employ. It is the Tories as much as Labour who, for a very long time now, took Scotland for granted. And when the Tories were wiped out in Scotland they didn’t seem to care. Their cavalier attitude to Scotland enabled the rise of the likes of Salmond and it is they who have wrecked the Union. Indeed it is now more obvious than ever that it is in the Tory party’s interests for Scotland to leave the Union. How many times must it be said that the only thing they care about is being in office? If the SNP do as well as expected there will have to be another referendum within the next five or ten years whoever gains office. And the next time Scotland will leave.
I believed in the Union as much as anyone, and was glad when the Scots voted “No” – unfortunately both the main parties have seen to it that the Union is now effectively dead. Both main parties are moribund and finished; voting for any of them is pointless. If Labour try to cling on with SNP votes that will be the end of them. They would in any case be a lame duck administration from the very start. The Tories cannot get an overall majority without Scotland leaving and they would still be a moral and intellectual corpse even if that happened. They would still govern pretty much as the democratic socialist party they really are, and we would still be firmly stuck in the European Union.
It seems to me we must now look to England’s future since we have effectively lost any say over Scotland’s. And a crucial part of that must be a decisive rejection of the useless old parties. We cannot save the Union by voting Tory, but England can only be saved when the Tory party finally splits and dies.
