IN the wake of the row over Boris Johnson’s Government telling civil servants and presumably their own ministers and MPs to stop talking about “the four nations of the UK”, The National can today reveal that some Scots Tories and their supporters are calling for the partition of Scotland, possibly into various nations.
They are led by Councillor Andrew Wood who defected from the Scottish National Party to sit as an independent and then joined the Scottish Conservatives last year. After 20 years of “strongly fighting for an independent Scotland” – his words in the press – he had a Damascene conversion, and is now trying to out-Tory the Tories.
Funnily enough all those Tories who want SNP and other politicians who defect to other parties to resign their seats quietly forget to mention the case of Cllr Wood ...
Or perhaps they just don’t want to be associated with the member for Mid and Upper Nithsdale at all, after this letter to the DnG Media Group.
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He wrote: “I do worry that the claim for such a referendum by Nicola Sturgeon is arguably based on the democratic right of the Scottish people and would challenge that if this is the base for holding yet another referendum, surely the democratic right of the people of the south of Scotland, Orkney, and Shetland, should equally be heard as all three parts of Scotland/UK rejected the SNP.
"With a very strong Conservative blue line across the south of Scotland I can see no reason if this is replicated at such a referendum on independence that the Scottish Border is moved north to accommodate the democratic principles set out by the SNP and present Scottish Government.
“Likewise with Orkney and Shetland clearly supporting the Liberals, surely they also have a democratic right to stay in the UK or go independent.”
So that’s a truncated Scotland and possibly six nations in the UK. Nuts.
He received support on the same letters page from NJ Cameron of Lockerbie: “It’s a great feeling looking at maps of Scotland and seeing the large blue area going from Stranraer in the west to Berwick in East. It makes me proud to be British.
“If in the future if anyone tries to break us away we can always move the Border a good bit further north.”
They want partition, just like Ireland 100 years ago said the Jouker’s southern source: “Like Edward Carson in Ireland they seem also to be prepared to gerrymander the boundaries of the South of Scotland to suit their aims, ignoring the majority across the South of Scotland electoral region for pro-independence parties.”
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