SCOTLAND has a big choice to make. We’re not used to that in this most perfect union of nations the multiverse has ever seen. The UK only wants Scotland to have choices like deciding which of the celebrities you’ve never heard of that you want to vote out of I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here, but we have a much bigger choice to make than that. Scotland has to decide how it’s going to vote in the forthcoming episode of I’m Not a Right Wing Extremist ... Get Me Out of Here.

The politics of the UK have been on a right-wing course for a long time. Thatcher famously broke the mould and ensured that the only way Labour could get elected was for it to become a creature in her own image – without the hairspray, but with Blair’s permatan and white tombstone teeth. Ever since the utter debacle of Brown’s term in office, after it became clear he’d spent the previous 10 years plotting and backstabbing his way into power but never had the foggiest idea of what he was going to do with it once he achieved it, British politics has continued on its right-wing trajectory. Now we’re governed by the sort of people that you’ve blocked on social media.

Privatisation has gone from being an appalling aberration to an accepted truth. A regime of cruelty directed against those dependent on the safety net of the social security system has become normalised. We’ve become so used to the wholesale deprivation of human dignity under the Tories that we’re no longer surprised by food banks and homeless beggars in the cities and towns of what we’re always being told is one of the richest countries in the world.

When I was a wean I never expected any of this. A child in the 1960s looked forward to a shiny new millennium of progress. The ills of the past would be cured. Our lives would be better than those of our parents. The only way was up – up towards a bright future where evil was vanquished and inequality and injustice were things to be found only on the pages of history books. It never occurred to us that things could get worse, that the victories made by the blood and sweat of our grandparents and parents, civil rights, women’s rights, racial equality, a narrowing of the gap between rich and poor, could be diminished and destroyed.

Yet here we are, fighting for breath in a pool of social progress that’s evaporating away in the harsh heat of a resurgent far-right. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

It hasn’t happened because of any choices Scotland has made. It’s happening because of choices foisted upon us by politicians we didn’t choose or elect. Scotland has no powerful right-wing extremist party of its own, no significant force demanding that the blame for the financial crisis be placed on those worst affected by it. But we do have a right-wing party that’s becoming increasingly extremist and intolerant, and it’s in power despite the fact few in Scotland voted for it.

Scottish people are not morally superior to anyone else. We’re not better people or inherently kinder human beings. But so far we’ve avoided the rise of right-wing extremism that is responsible for Ukip and the Brexit vote in the rest of the UK, Donald Trump’s victory, and the emergence of the neo-fascism of the Front National into one of the main challengers for the French presidency.

The reason we’ve avoided it is because of the Scottish independence movement. It has defined itself in opposition to the right-wing trajectory of the UK. In Scotland, our protest against the unaccountable and out-of-touch elites who have turned themselves into a gilded political class unaffected by the havoc they wreak upon society has defined itself as an appeal to Scotland’s social democratic tradition, because it’s that tradition which is threatened by the rise of the brutish British extreme right.

The Tories have responded to the rise of neo-fascism by making an accommodation to it. Their party conference was a shameful exercise in xenophobia and a parochial divisive nationalism that wouldn’t have been out of place at a meeting of the Nigel Farage fan club. They’re dragging the UK with them on a fleg-bedecked road that ends in a fascist rally. They’re not trying to make a principled and moral stand against the politics of exclusion, hatred and fear, they’re revelling in it and making it their own. The unprincipled English nationalist opportunists who control the Tory Party are not going to defend Scotland’s interests in Brexit negotiations.

In the pageant of right-wing British extremism that’s nakedly English nationalist, Scots are already playing the role of the demonised other along with migrants, Muslims and foreigners. They’ll cheerfully ruin us for no other reason than that it will make independence more difficult. They’ll impoverish us even more than they have already done so, and will blame us for the poverty and deprivation that they have created.

Every time a Tory asks how Scotland will cope with its supposed £15 billion deficit, they’re asking how Scotland will deal with the ruination that Westminster has created for us. They cut off our legs and then blame us for not being able to stand on our own two feet. That’s the future facing Scotland if we remain a part of this vicious and vainglorious Britain.

For most Scots, our Britishness was always utilitarian, it suited our interests to be a part of a larger state. It’s clear now that Scotland’s interests are best served by becoming an independent member of a looser union of European nations instead of the asphyxiating incorporating union of the UK.

Or we can choose something else. No-one is pretending independence will be easy. No-one is claiming it won’t be challenging. But there is no doubt at all that it’s only with independence that Scotland can ensure its interests are protected and defended, that its social democratic traditions, our tolerance, our desire to engage with the world, will be protected and defended. That will be the rallying cry of the next Scottish independence referendum. I’m a Scottish Social Democrat, Get Me Out of Here.


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