THERE is increasingly little distinction between the established parties traditionally opposed to Scottish independence and the moon-howling extremists of way-out-there Anglo-British nationalism.

In response to the normalisation of Scottish independence as a mainstream political idea which regularly attracts the support of half the respondents in Scottish opinion polling, Labour and, above all, the Conservatives have doubled down on their support for British nationalism – which despite all evidence to the contrary they continue to insist is not nationalist at all – and find ever more spurious reasons for denying the fundamental political and democratic truths about the current Scottish Parliament.

Those truths are that this Scottish Parliament has the largest pro-independence majority of any Scottish Parliament since the establishment of devolution, and that majority was elected by the voters of Scotland in order to deliver on an explicit, unambiguous and unconditional commitment to hold a second independence referendum within the term of this Parliament.

We perhaps should not be surprised – although we should still be shocked and angry – that when avowedly mainstream democratic parties espouse a position which is fundamentally undemocratic, those parties start to become attractive to extremist individuals who more properly belong on the margins of democratic discourse and who are usually to be found hurling abuse on social media or projecting their own right-wing intolerance on to independence supporters on Twitter or in the cesspits that pass for the comments sections of anti-independence newspapers.

 

However, this starts to become particularly concerning when the support of these extremist individuals begins to drag the policies of supposedly mainstream parties even further to the intolerant right and when individuals espousing extremist views are deemed to be suitable as candidates for mainstream parties.

There is sadly now evidence that this is happening in the Labour Party in Scotland, which has recently seen fit to choose a former grand master of the Orange Order as a candidate in this year's local elections. However, there is even more evidence that this process of what we could term Orbánisation – after the authoritarian right-wing Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán – has become deeply entrenched in the Conservative Party, both in Scotland and in the UK as a whole.

There are now a number of Conservative candidates in May's local elections who have previously been involved in Ukip, appear to follow racist or far-right accounts on social media, have been accused of making racist comments or have been responsible for trolling abuse on social media. There are now far too many such instances of questionable candidates for the Conservatives to plausibly claim that they have merely slipped through vetting procedures. We are forced to conclude that the Conservatives are selecting these individuals as candidates because they really do reflect the views and values of the modern Conservative Party.

Further evidence comes from the fact that the Conservatives in Scotland are now stealing the policies and language of George Galloway's über-Unionist, frothing-at-the-mouth All For Unity Party, which was so successful at promoting unity that it couldn't even maintain unity within its own ranks, foundering on the jagged rocks of Galloway's ego and differences of opinion about Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

We have now learned that the Scottish Tories have stolen wholesale one of All for Unity's flagship policies, a supposed "Open The Books Bill", which according to Douglas Ross would "strengthen financial transparency and government accountability". The bill would require the Scottish Government to publish a quarterly update of the Budget and monthly data on the uptake and payouts from each fund it operates. It would also require the Scottish Government to publish a value-for-money statement ahead of taking ownership of any private enterprise.

This is breathtakingly hypocritical of the Conservatives as their bill would only apply to the Scottish Government, not to party-political funding or to the British Government. In office, the Conservatives have presided over rampant cronyism, corruption and handing lucrative government contracts to the families and friends of senior Conservatives. The Conservative Party is funded by a flow of dirty Russian money, secret donations from wealthy donors and "dark money" from unknown sources.

We might ask Douglas Ross why, if he thinks financial transparency is such a great idea, he is not also demanding it of his Westminster colleagues in that Parliament where he sits as an MP. I suspect we will not get an answer.

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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