THE Scottish Conservative party conference due to be held this weekend in Aberdeen has been postponed, because the weather is so bad that the lorries can’t get through to deliver the supplies for Bake Off. The snowflakes have finally defeated the hard right, and the Conservatives have called something off because experts advised that it was a bad idea. Imagine that, no one saw that one coming.
The telly is full of irate people on snowy train platforms complaining that the Scottish government should run the country like Norway, yet when the Scottish Government suggests an independent Scotland could be run like Norway, the telly is full of Tories saying what a terrible thing that would be.
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The party conference of the British nationalist party in Scotland has been taken over by people who really ought to be kept well away from politics because they’re better suited as traffic wardens nursing a grudge. Despite the fact that the unique selling point of this all new and entirely different Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives™ party was that it had sloughed off the old nastiness and prejudices of the past, the party’s Aberdeen conference this year looked set to be full of exactly the same kind of reactionaries who destroyed the Tories electorally in the late 1990s. The conference was going to become a platform for precisely the kind of hard Brexit right wing British nationalism which Ruth Davidson has spent the past couple of years pretending no longer characterises the Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives™ party.
Ruth Davidson is probably very relieved that the conference has been postponed, because it means she won’t have to spend the weekend avoiding questions about Brexit and how the Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives™ party seems to be full of swivel eyed Brexiteers who most definitely don’t say or do what Ruth might want them to do on the subject of the UK leaving the EU.
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Well, I say ‘avoiding’, it’s not like the Scottish press hounds her or her party when the Conservatives are in a spot of political difficulty. Once you’ve spent months building up someone as the Saviour of the Union, it’s terribly inconvenient when they fail to live up to expectations. Far better to divert attention elsewhere and hope that no one notices. Oh look. It’s snowing. Humza Yousaf must resign.
A couple of years ago in Guatemala City in Central America, a sinkhole appeared which is over 20 metres across and up to 100 metres deep and which threatened to devour an entire district of the city. That’s a much smaller hole than the one that the Conservatives have dug for themselves, but it’s not like Ruth will be held to account for her party’s failures. The worst Ruth is likely to face is a spot of drive by interviewing as she rushes between gigs for terribly important light entertainment telly shows. Which is just as well because she’s not very good at anything that doesn’t involve either cheesy photo opportunities, chat shows, Bake Off, or demanding that the Scottish government gets on with the day job.
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Meanwhile Richard Leonard, the branch office manager of Labour in Scotland, gave an interview to the Times in which he decided to reach out to Yes voters and independence supporters by implying that they’re a bunch of anti-English racists. Richard thinks that one of the big political obstacles that he faces is anti-English racism. Apparently the fact that he’s failed to make a breakthrough in the polls is because Scottish people are congenitally incapable of listening to an English person without painting their faces blue, screaming FREEEDOMMM, and mounting an armed assault on Stirling Castle.
Many observers of Scottish politics used to think that the Labour party couldn’t possibly contain anyone more lacking in charm, charisma, and wit than James Kelly, but then Richard Leonard came along to prove us wrong. Richard Leonard is so lacking in public appeal that not even the desperate Messiah seekers of the British nationalist press in Scotland have ever hailed him as the next Saviour of the Union.
So he’s decided to play the anti-English racism card instead, because that’s always guaranteed to find an audience amongst the victimhood hunters of Scottish Unionism. If you’re a politician in Scotland who is English and a balloon, the reason people disrespect you isn’t beause you’re a balloon.
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It’s because you are English and are beset by racism. Glad that’s been cleared up then. But we should be charitable here, it’s entirely possible that Richard was referring to racists within his own party.
But the big news this week was that the Scottish Parliament debated and passed a bill which seeks to prevent the British government from engaging in a power grab and undermining the very foundations of the devolution settlement.
Despite the promises of the anti-independence parties in 2014 that devolution would be strengthened and the powers and permanence of the Scottish Parliament would be entrenched, the Conservatives are using Brexit as an excuse to weaken Holyrood and the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament doesn’t want the Scottish Government to take action to protect the parliament he presides over because, allegedly, he’s a Unionist who is worried about encouraging independence.
The tattered remnants of the infamous Vow are being ripped up and flushed away, the Tories have surrendered to hard Brexit, Labour is irrelevant and impotent, but the Scottish media which made such a play of the Vow back in 2014 are strangely silent about defending Scotland’s interests. If they won’t do it, it’s up to the people of Scotland to do it for ourselves.
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