Scottish aversion to the United Kingdom is entirely a product of the implementation of Margaret Thatcher's Single European Act.
That issued in Britain's adherence to the Maastricht convergence criteria with a view to joining the euro in the event of Kenneth Clarke's defeat of Gordon Brown in the 1997 referendum on that matter (which way did you vote?).
Scotland would be hit particularly hard by the Eurozone Austerity Pact, to which, again, a Conservative Government is largely adhering anyway. It is not hard to work out why. Some dreams, no matter how nightmarish, never die.
Scotland would be hit particularly hard by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, from which Labour's insistence on exempting the NHS amounts to a guarantee to veto the wretched thing altogether, since no such exemption would ever be conceded.
Scotland has of course always been hit very hard indeed by the Common Fisheries Policy.
All in all, it is no surprise that of the 66 Labour MPs who comprised the great majority of those voting against Maastricht, despite the far greater number of Conservative than Labour MPs at the time, at least three are now active in the campaign for Scottish independence, with one of them, Dennis Canavan, chairing it.
They are wrong. But they give some context to the strange notion that Scottish separatism, or at least the present form of Scottish separatism, is a direct product or an expression of European federalism. It is not. It is very much a reaction against it.
Much of the SNP doesn't like the EU. The Greens are pro-Europe in a purely theoretical sense, they hate most things about it in practice. The various far left factions are as anti-Europe as ever. Including John McAllion, anti-Maastricht Labour MP turned SSP campaigner.
ReplyDelete