Much comment on how a great deal under discussion "does not apply to Scotland". No change there.
Scotland gets a sort of free pass because she allegedly suffered so much in the Eighties. But in fact Thatcherism hardly applied there. Readers elsewhere, brace yourselves for this one: there have never ceased to be council DLOs in Scotland, called DLOs and subject to no form of competitive tendering. That, which we are always told would be impossible to restore in England, has been the case continuously in Scotland.
Scotland was exempted from great tracts of the Thatcher and Major agenda on the grounds that she was "different". But that was hardly the case at all in 1979. It was they who made Scotland different. not least by continuing a spending formula whose own originator only intended it to last for a year, but which is now apparently Scotland's compensation for the Thatcherism to which she was barely subjected.
As for the Poll Tax, it designed specifically to address a very noisy grievance (there was a comparable one elsewhere, but it was neither as severe nor, therefore, as loudly expressed), it was introduced in Scotland a year early by popular demand, and it was never anything like as unpopular there as it was elsewhere, with no riot against it, and with Scotland delivering the Tories' only net gain in seats at the 1992 Election.
Mass benefit dependency is also wholly a creation of the Thatcher years.
All in all, hardly a history of pauperisation to justify the retention of an arrangement whereby spending in Scotland must match pound for pound that in somewhere with ten times as many people and which contains most of the areas that really did suffer horrendously under Thatcher and Major. But there will be such a retention, no matter how swingeing the coming cuts everywhere else. No wonder that people in Scotland feel that this Election does not really concern them.
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You must be feeling pretty stupid this morning.
ReplyDeleteYou had been claiming for the past two months that the SNP would get less votes and seats than the Conservatives in Scotland. I guess you have seen the Scottish result. Can you count?
Labour now in talks with the SNP to prop him up if the Con-Lib talks break down. Where is the roar of fury from Scottish Labour MPs on this?
DL - They "Mystic Mog" of Scottish political analysis!
I do not make predications, I say what I think ought to happen. Something quite different.
ReplyDeleteNothing will come of these talks with the SNP, although it is notable that they are controlled completely on the SNP side by a man who is not a member of the House of Commons and made no attempt to remain one. The SNP is a one-man band.
Like Plaid Cymru and all the parties in Northern Ireland, the SNP is interested in nothing except maintaining central government spending regardless of the cuts in England. That way lies Greek-style civil unrest in England. It won't be allowed to happen.
Enjoying those 20 seats, are you? You lost Glasgow East back to Labour, and couldn't even take the most marginal seat in Scotland.
Good luck to Salmond selling a deal with Labour to his supporters.
ReplyDelete"Nothing will come of these talks with the SNP, although it is notable that they are controlled completely on the SNP side by a man who is not a member of the House of Commons and made no attempt to remain one. The SNP is a one-man band."
ReplyDeleteYou could be describing the DUP there. Except that its leader lost his seat. Salmond gave his up and his party retained it.
Your Scottish political predictions are hilarious. You claimed the SNP would not become the largest party in Holyrood and when it did you claimed it would not be allowed to form an administration.
You then claimed there would be no more devolution when all the UK parties stood on a platform of extending it.
Keep it up!!!!
Oh, don't worry, I will.
ReplyDeleteAdd to his general non-record the ongoing failure of the Scottish Nationalist Person (so far as anyone can tell, there is only one who is permitted to be seen in public) to attract any attention whatever in the course of present events, except from what are now the terrifyingly parochial Scottish media, and his likelihood of remaining First Minister seems distinctly remote.
And the end of him is the end of fan club. Something called the SNP might re-emerge in a generation's time, because that is what the SNP does: it makes a lot of noise for a while and then goes away for a generation. But it never really amounts to anything.
Alex Salmond was very close to Ian Paisley.
ReplyDeleteOf course. Although I don't know how Paisey put with the SNP's Thatcherism.
ReplyDeleteBut one all-white, at least culturally all-Protestant nation, descended from common stock, across the Irish Sea. Provided that each side pretty much allowed the other to run itself, then this is right up both of their streets.
The only problem is that the SNP is at least vaguely pro-Gaelic. But that language's Protestant speakers (it does also have Catholic speakers) are very, very Protestant indeed.
He is also very close to Michael Martin - are you saying he is a middle-class Orangeman. Grow up!
ReplyDeleteI love this. Your closet Scotophobia is really getting going. Bet your family is proud.
I am extremely proud of my background among the people who have just consigned the SNP to barely more electoral importance than the Tories or the Lib Dems, making it practically certain that the SNP will be out of office soon enough.
ReplyDelete