WHEN it comes to finding candidates for May's local elections, it appears that the anti- independence parties are increasingly scraping the bottom of an already very scraped barrel.

In fact, they have not so much scraped the bottom of the barrel as broken right through it and excavated beneath all the way down to that lower circle of Hades to which certain politicians are consigned after they shuffle off this mortal coil. That would be those politicians who defend the rape clause and clawing back a paltry £20 per week in Universal credit from the poorest families in the country while they themselves can forget about receiving almost £30,000 a year in income.

In fact it would seem that the parties who are apologists for British nationalism are not content with that low level, but are bent on ploughing on even lower. Just in the past couple of weeks, we have had the self-proclaimed people's party – the party which claims to be the true heirs to the republican socialist firebrands of Red Clydeside – deciding that the best guy to represent the values of the Labour Party in 21st-century Scotland is a man who was formerly a Grand Master in the Orange Order, an avowedly monarchist and royal fetishist organisation which views the 19th-century values which led to Catholic emancipation as being suspiciously modern and liberal.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have begun looking to the dregs of Ukip for their council candidates. They have already selected Paul Henke, a former chairman of Ukip in Scotland, as one of their candidates in Stirling. Henke was expelled from Ukip after being accused of bringing the party into disrepute. Yes, you read that right. Bringing your actual Ukip into disrepute. The Tories in Fife have chosen as a candidate a notorious social media troll who called the First Minister a "drooling hag”.

Not to be outdone, the Tories in Glasgow have chosen as their candidate in the Dennistoun ward in the East End of the city Jamie Robertson, a former Ukip candidate who follows far-right extremist channels on YouTube. You know the sort of thing, beauty vloggers who demonstrate the best methods of covering up your fascist face tattoos for a job interview, or middle-aged incels who sit in their mothers’ basements with crumbs of fast-food embedded in their face mullets bewailing the "feminazis" who prevent them from finding a girlfriend.

In Robertson's case, he follows the vlogger Carl Benjamin, whom YouTube sanctioned with demonetisation – the loss of the ability to make money from videos – after Benjamin made a number of jokes about raping Labour MP Jess Phillips in response to her tweeting about violence against women. In 2020, Benjamin launched the group Hearts of Oak with British far-right activist Stephen Yaxley Lennon and former Ukip members, a supposed attempt to unite the British nationalist far-right behind Islamophobia, anti-feminism, opposition to Black Lives Matter and Covid conspiracy theories.

Jamie Robertson (right) has an interest in far-right commentators like David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan Robertson also follows a YouTube account dedicated exclusively to posting clips of interviews with David Duke, a former leader of the racist white supremacist organisation the Ku Klux Klan. Duke has been described as "America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite”. Robertson also approvingly called "an interesting discussion" a panel discussion on "wokeness" which featured a man who was filmed brandishing a Union flag and calling an anti-Brexit campaigner "a f*****g traitor”.

When asked why he was following the accounts of far-right extremists, racists, misogynists and the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Robertson insisted that he had followed the accounts "by mistake". After all, it's an easy mistake to make. Who can put their hand up and say that they haven't looked at a video of the KKK in their white robes with their burning crosses and thought that they were really looking at images of a family friendly barbecue for cartoon fans cosplaying Casper the friendly ghost? Why, just about everyone, that is.

Even if Robertson's explanation were true, it doesn't say much for either his powers of observation or his political acumen. But then for the Tories it doesn't really matter what you've done or what position you take, as long as you're prepared to stand as a Tory candidate and wrap yourself in a Union flag.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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