Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
The Tartan Tories
Trouble from the Tories' London HQ over their Scottish section's support for further devolution, and general cosying up to the SNP. I can't see why anyone is remotely surprised. The SNP are Tories who happen to believe that the Tory subcultural interest would be better served by independence, and the Scottish Tories are Nationalists who happen to believe that the Nationalist interest is best served (for now) within the Union. The alliance is natural. The SNP is where the Tories went when they no longer wished to be seen as such, the way they become Lib Dems in England. But they are still the Tories. Who knew? Who didn't!
David,
ReplyDeleteYou are about thirty years behind the times. The 'Tartan Tories' tag was a tactic used by the Labour Party against the SNP in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
They were right then and they're right now. Everyone knows that the SNP is the Tory subculture's front organisation. There is not a cigarette paper's difference between them.
ReplyDeleteLike the Lib Dems in the North of England or in inner London, the SNP are more right-wing than the Tories would ever dare be or even want to be. They are the party that the most hardline middle-class Tory voters would really want. Again just like the Lib Dems in the North of England or in inner London.
ReplyDeleteQuite so, Anonymous. And the SNP's old "no co-operation with the Tories" rule is now the deadest of dead letters, along with its commitment to a referendum on independence, and thus to independence itself, a cause no longer espoused by any party worth speaking of other than the Greens.
ReplyDeleteThe SNP now needs the Tories a lot more than the Tories need the SNP. The SNP has peaked. People must have realised by now that those running it do not believe for one moment in its one and only policy.
Whereas rumour has it that the Tories are on course to do rather well in Scotland at the next General Election. So well, in fact, that even Alistair Darling might lose his seat to a Tory, I'm told.
You are probably right, David. Now that Tories no longer feel embarrassed about being Tories, there is no need for the SNP. Meanwhile Salmond certainly wants an independence referendum like a hole in the head. But what else are they for?
ReplyDelete