I’M just wondering when I’ll be arrested. When I’m out on a march, or leafleting, standing behind a stall, or will our country deteriorate to the degree that I can expect a knock on the door in the night? And I haven’t even yet identified which march, whose stall and what those leaflets say!
Without making light of this in any way, I was astonished to realise the proposal to redefine “extremism” as “being the ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s democracy, its institutions and values” isn’t primarily emanating from the Home Secretary Suella Braverman, but from Michael Gove and his Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. However, in discussions with the Home Office and Ms Braverman, I'm fairly sure this will run: red meat being offered in an effort to stem electoral Tory failure at the next General Election.
READ MORE: UK Government to brand those 'undermining' Britain as 'extremists'
It is almost inevitable that Sunak will not achieve his five goals. If you don’t remember them, don’t worry, we won’t hear about them unless he’s close to target. But naturally Labour would flaunt failures! So, faced with Covid exposé and Tory sex scandals, what will the Tories fight on?
Not much of a 13-year record is there, so how about fear and loathing? Creating a fear around Labour and their calls for change as opening the door to the “country” becoming too soft, pandering to the left, becoming “woke”, and worst of all, some alliances being forged with the EU. Anything, everything to create the idea that only the Tories are sufficiently strong for the benefit of the “country” and its people. And a loathing of anyone who doesn’t share Tory values equated as “British”’ values.
Sunak has already pre-announced that the imminent King’s Speech, always a platform of the government’s future legalisation, would have “crime” at its core. The implications being: we need to fight crime and criminals. Will that be sufficient to sway voters?
And in the meantime, what of Labour? They’ve definitely taken a hit following Starmer’s LBC pronouncements regarding “siege, power, water” and the horrors in Palestine. They don’t know how to deal with public outrage, calls for a ceasefire and not a pause. What is their foreign policy? Never heard them mention Palestine, two-state, til now, did we? Should he and Labour be believed when they claim they support and will work for a two-state solution? Flip flop anyone? So will this lose votes? Lose the election for Labour?
READ MORE: Independence documentary rejected from 'all' Scottish film festivals
This is Braverman setting out her stall as the next Tory (wannabe) PM and Gove seeking right-wing voter approval with an eye to his own political future.
And Scotland? A plague on all their pro-Union houses since no party recognises that ultimately there will have to be a reckoning regarding independence. Scotland will be swept up in the binary diatribe: holier than thou, we’re better than them; we can address climate change, they can’t; we know what’s best; we’ll take your wind power and water; and worse, the ghost of federalism coming from Labour. In all of this clamour and now breast-beating over civilian “casualties” and not war crimes, we are discussing words, who has spoken them, and not the inherent issues, local, national, international, or how to tackle them.
No Unionist party is a friend to Scotland, none will get my vote. But in the meantime, I will continue to undermine the UK by seeking to dismantle the current state as is. Who knows where that will lead me if over-arching UK law is redefined.
Selma Rahman
Edinburgh
COVID inquiry evidence revealed Dominic Cummings calling a lot of people “f***pigs”. Presumably he included David Cameron?
Watson Crawford
Melrose
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