A note to Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, from an English taxpayer.
Hello First Minister,
Congratulations! You have succeeded in converting this once-committed unionist to apathy and indifference. As an insignificant and alienated English voter, ignored except at election time, I am well used to being compared to a Neanderthal, thick, knuckle-dragger, incapable of understanding the finer economic and political nuances of keeping the most successful social, political and economic three-hundred-year-old union intact simply for the benefit for residents in Scotland.
I have had quite enough of funding perpetual politics of grievance, having a large part of my hard-earned cash subsidising your economic illiteracy, only to be continually insulted and asked for more.
We are led to believe that the majority of SNP supporters hate the English. Fine, and I can assure you the sentiment is reciprocated because of the inequity of the Barnett Formula, by which Scotland receives money raised from English taxpayers.
Incidentally, isn’t Scotland rather dependent on income from tourism? Who wants a trip north of the border for a nice holiday to be greeted by a bunch of woad-bedecked racists hurling abuse? What about the families that have been cut off from each other with your ridiculous tiers and travel bans? I find myself humming that annoying little ditty ‘Anything you can do, I can do better’ whenever you take to the airwaves with your latest Covid pronouncements, in your mania to deviate from Westminster no matter the ramifications for the economy during this insane incarceration.
Now here you are berating the Scottish secretary Alister Jack who echoed you and your predecessor’s pronouncement that the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum result was for once in a generation only. After all, your party signed the Edinburgh Agreement to abide by the outcome and now you are slamming President Trump for ‘raging against democracy’. Pot and kettle spring to mind.
Bad luck at losing a vote in the Scottish Parliament last Wednesday with the unmentionable problem of precisely what was the legal advice that your government received during the Alex Salmond affair. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, is it not?
What a master stroke in appointing Ian Blackford as leader of your 47 SNP MPs at Westminster, so adept at enraging English ears with his sanctimonious spluttering. Mr Blackford spent three years in Westminster trying to overturn the Brexit result. The blatant constitutional aberration of the West Lothian question is yet to be resolved, and English taxpayers were once again spectators at the SNP feast of voting on English laws that do not affect their own constituents.
Now that Mr Biden has the keys to the White House and once he’s been woken from his afternoon nap, I am sure he will appreciate your gushing message of congratulations. However, I wouldn’t bet that an independent Scotland is a particularly pressing issue for an incoming Democratic administration.
Keep up the good work and the English will simply not care and your lifetime’s political dream will be realised.
Cheerio,
Victoria Baillon
