Mike Small: Scotland stalls as Brexit Britain hurtles backwards

The fantasy has coughed up various ­miscreants: Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, Dominic Cummings (making a comeback this week), ­Priti Patel and the incomparable ­wobbling priapic buffoon of a Prime Minister. The pantomime operates at a level of absurdity that its comical nature masks the reality of it as a regime that is both radical and venal.

English popular and political culture has both driven this fantasy and become absorbed in it as “CoronaBrexit” has boosted and amplified the worst aspects of a new reactionary movement. The window of “accepted” language ­understanding and narrative has shifted as forces of the far-right have become mainstream. Now, today the realities of treatment of ­immigrants and asylum-seekers, of peaceful protesters and activists, and of police and state violence has become normalised.

Up until now Scotland was seen to be ­largely immune from Brexitification – defending a commitment to values of civic nationalism: ­internationalism, openness and a broad consensus to aspire to be a progressive society and a progressive country. The extent to which that was true in reality can be debated, but this was an aspiration, and aspiring helps. Added to this, the emergence of Boris & Co out of the Brexit ­fiasco has fueled a longing for independence and gave for most of 2020 a boost to Yes in the polls. Clearly the fact that Scotland was dragged out of Europe against our wishes was a huge part of this but also was the perception of Boris’s incompetence and Sturgeon’s quiet integrity. If anyone managed to articulate the need for independence it was Johnson. Sure we somehow managed to elect David Coburn, but until now we have somehow managed to avoid the worst expressions of Brexitmania.

Until now.

Watching George Galloway’s All for Unity election broadcast on Friday induced a collective jaw-drop moment across the country, but the laughter also turned to anger at the realisation that Galloway’s party represents a sliver of Scottish society. The permanent hat, the carefully-placed Churchill photograph, the RAF insignia were all symbols that evoked a bygone era. Galloway’s strange contorted ­delivery ­referenced Britain’s glorious past, and ­Scotland’s shipbuilding era, before the strange assortment of candidates were paraded before us. The All for Unity tactic, of attempting to unite all of the Unionist voters together will flop and fail, but it’s a tactic that is taking a leaf from the Farage playbook.

This most dismal election campaign is manifesting strange new forces, a rash of brand new parties and oddball candidates.

But if the Unionist Right emerges like a caricature of itself with its Spitfire Nationalism, union flags and rhetoric that hovers somewhere between Dad’s Army and Fawlty Towers, the Nationalist Right is its mirror.

The Alba Party’s ascent into a bundle of cliche’s regurgitated from Project Fear is unfortunate, but entirely predictable. With a party political broadcast “featuring” Robert the Bruce it evoked an ethno-nationalism not seen in the Scottish independence movement for decades. The idea of the “sma-folk” was pure theft from the Brexit campaign.

IF watching England “hurtling backwards” over the last few years has been a mixture of horror and comedy, it’s certainly not funny when it’s closer to home.

Maybe Galloway and Salmond’s parties will flop and fail, who knows in this strangest election with polls all over the place and turnout uncertain?

READ MORE: Alex Salmond will not meet George Galloway in debate, former FM confirms

But they do emerge out of the political landscape that seems moribund, locked in a battle between the ruling SNP’s tepid supremacy and inertia – and the opposition’s dismal one-note constitutional nihilism.

Both the Unionist Right and the ­Nationalist Right emerge out of the political gloop of post-Brexit, mid-pandemic, pre-independence ­Scotland, and for me speak to the descent in standards and tone of public life. The idealism and dreamy-positivity that infected so many around 2014 seems to have evaporated.

Celebrating the SNP’s momentous victory in 2011 the Irish writer Peter Geoghegan wrote: “Here are a few chaotic impressions from the worse kind of emigrant, the indolent hack, on what yesterday – and tomorrow – might mean. First off, this could be a start – but not the end – of a victory for what Hardt and Negri would call ‘subaltern nationalism’ in Scotland, a vision of a society based not on exclusive notions of belonging and identity but on open-ended dialogues. A future Scotland based not on ethnicity, on romantic notions of Braveheart and Bannockburn, but on social justice and sustainability. A Scotland not of rabid Anti-Englishness but of myriad cultures and creeds.

The ‘could’ at the start of this paragraph is intentional – yesterday’s stunning result, and even a successful independence referendum, are a sine qua non but not necessary and sufficient, to borrow the language of logic. This future Scotland is in no way inevitable, it will have to be fought for against the forces of conservatism, both within the SNP itself and across the Scottish political system.

“It will also need a credible, coherent vision that can unite all those who live in Scotland – and not just all Scots (again that’s the émigré talking) – to create a genuinely democratic, post-national space, separate and distinct from the increasingly lopsided pull of ­Westminster.”

Ten years on and everyone has fallen.

The Conservatives have swapped love-bombing for threats of constitutional imprisonment. Nationalists have switched from scoffing at ideas of woad and Bannockburn to smearing themselves in the stuff.

The offer from Britain then was “stay in a progressive Union – a cosmopolitan multi-cultural polity at the heart of Europe”. The offer from Britain now is “stay in a Union that has ejected foreigners and withdrawn from Europe” (or else).

As a society we face challenges we can ­barely imagine yet are offered a political class that seems broken. If we are to recover let alone thrive we will need to build new and better ­institutions and systems as part of building towards self-determination.

We will need to be future-focused and pay ­attention to our young people, our ecology and the way we conduct ourselves. We will need to amplify empathy and solidarity and delve deep into our collective creative imagination.

Ten years on the “indolent hack’s” words echo:

“This future Scotland is in no way inevitable, it will have to be fought for against the forces of conservatism, both within the SNP itself and across the Scottish political system.

“It will also need a credible, coherent vision that can unite all those who live in  Scotland.”