IT is fair to say that the greatest threat is, not Theresa May, but Jeremy Corbyn (A ‘dark day for democracy’ as Tory Great Repeal Bill breezes through the Commons, thenational.scot, September 12). Pretty much nobody in Scotland trusts May. All too many, however, continue to see Corbyn as some sort of saviour. Someone to rely on. Someone worthy of their trust.

Quite why they imagine such a thing is a bit of a mystery to those of us who are not susceptible to the siren song of vacuous sloganeering passing itself off as coherent policy.

Where those who crave the comfort of old partisan loyalties convince themselves they see principle and leadership, less credulous observers look at Corbyn absent the filter of desperate fascination and see only clumsy opportunism and a painfully contrived cult of anti-charisma.

Jeremy Corbyn stumbled on to the political stage with all the slapstick artlessness of Norman Wisdom. The media saw in his novelty some passing potential for titillation. Almost instinctively, the party spin-quacks applied the potions which lend ephemeral fame the more tractable substance of celebrity. Thus are British political leaders made. Carved from fog. Moulded from smoke. Blank sheets upon which can be sketched whatever character the moment requires.

People are fooled to the extent that they want to be fooled. And many of British Labour’s former camp followers in Scotland, stressed by the complexities of constitutional politics and fearful of progressive change, desperately want a friendly (grand)father figure who will lead them back to the fold of the British two-party system.

In common with the bulk of the mainstream media, they hunger for the easy comprehensibility of the faux rivalries between/among the British establishment parties and thirst for the reassuring simplicity of a politics which offers no meaningful choices.

Corbyn is the real threat because, where Theresa May threatens to bring Scotland into line with calculation and coercion, Corbyn tempts us with pretty promises and bids the biddable of Scotland follow as the fabled children of Hamelin followed the Pied Piper. But the destination is the same. Whether by lash or lure, we end up in the same place. We give ourselves over to the British parties and Scotland ceases to be a nation and becomes instead a mere adjunct of a “One Nation” Britain. A dark and dismal place where democracy cannot thrive and hope itself is suffocated.
Peter A Bell
via thenational.scot

THIS stinks to high heaven. The £1 billion deal struck by May with the DUP to gain a Commons majority on key votes will have to be approved by Parliament but already a vote has been passed to fast-track Brexit. The Treasury solicitor said in response to a legal letter from campaigner Gina Miller and a trade union that the investment package for Northern Ireland will have to have appropriate parliamentary authorisation through the normal budgetary process. Miller and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) have been seeking to challenge the deal, claiming the funding was improper and discriminatory.

An earlier legal action by Miller forced the UK Government to give MPs and peers a vote on triggering Article 50. She said yesterday she was stunned that the DUP cash required parliamentary approval. The PM, she said, should have made it clear at the time. It beggars belief that, neither at the time the Government sealed its dubious deal, nor at any point since, have they made this clear. When was parliamentary time going to be found to authorise this payment? This is just so wrong for many reasons.
Joseph Irving
via thenational.scot