This Most Momentous Day

The entirely predictable booing of Ed Miliband makes better television, but the real story is that the Glasgow and Belfast rallies were held at all.

It may or may not still be a matter for Westminster and Whitehall whether or not to cut at all in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. But what to cut in Scotland is now overwhelmingly a matter for Holyrood, which these days means for the SNP. And what to cut in Northern Ireland is now overwhelmingly a matter for Stormont, which at least primarily means for the DUP and for Sinn Féin. Anyone who doubts this should note the absence of any demonstration in Labour-run Wales. "Blame London" will not wash anywhere outside England. Least of all in Scotland, with the independent fiscal power of the devolved body there.

What we have seen today in Belfast has been a mass demonstration by the working class against its own two political parties, at least until such time as economic circumstances compel it to create another one or more. Meanwhile, what we have seen today in Glasgow has been a mass demonstration against the Irish-style bourgeois Nationalism of which, this very day, the SNP became the vehicle once and for all. It has been a long time coming, but at last it has arrived. By endorsing NATO membership, the SNP has finally become Fine Gael. Or the Establishment wing of Fianna Fáil, back when there was any other.

Although even those have always had the fig leaf that the blatantly obvious treaty was nominally a secret, in the way that MI5 and MI6 officially did not used to exist. Let's just say "Shannon Airport", and the point is made. There is no economic case for Shannon Airport. It is purely strategic. And we all know what that means. Like Prestwick Airport, in fact. So, has Alex Salmond, by securing a commitment to NATO membership, prevented the retention of Prestwick as a British sovereign base? Think about it.

Consider Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in the early Cold War years: rural, bourgeois, ultra-Catholic, with endless close family ties to the United States, and with no meaningful opposition to their duopoly except (if there was any) from what Attlee's and Bevin's Labour Party would have been like if its left wing had been cut off. As in Sweden, there were domestic political difficulties when it came to selling full NATO membership. As in Sweden, those were easily circumvented. Sweden, in fact, even co-operated in an attempt to obtain her own nuclear weapons. Will Scotland? I only ask.

Look at the number of demonstrations that there have been over the decades by Irish Communists and ultra-Leftists, and by those, sometimes the same people, who have continued to profess allegiance to the 32-County Republic of 1916. They themselves have never tired of pointing out the blatantly obvious true state of affairs that has for so very long given rise to so very, very many specific causes for demonstration, or on occasion for rather more than demonstration.

The SNP had always supported Scottish membership of Partnership for Peace, the only logical purpose of which is eventual accession to NATO. The monarchy, the pound (or else the euro), and now this: what does have to happen before much of that party secedes from what is as clearly a creature of British intelligence as ever was the 1926 secession from Sinn Féin, which duly went on to hang the IRA.

As clearly as ever was the 1933 merger of the Blueshirts, Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party, complete with a commitment to Commonwealth membership (which in those days necessitated retention of the monarchy, and a very high degree of integration in foreign policy and defence), albeit for a United Ireland as the ultimate aim.

And as clearly as ever was a party which has always been funded very largely, and of course entirely openly, by trade unions that exist throughout these Islands and are headquartered in England, usually in London.