Vile bigots have made me ashamed to be Scottish
OVER THE long days of last year’s referendum, and certainly the last 38 days of this election, I have begun to feel a new emotion about my country and my people. We Scots have always taken pride in our nationality. And like pumped-up David Cameron — there’s a great Scottish name for you — we know all about passion, too. Yet all these positive feelings have been washed away in a sea of dread. For when I think about modern Scotland now, all I feel is despair.
What is happening to my wonderful country? Once upon a time, Scotland had an important place in the world on its own merits. Its success had nothing to do with being attached to England by history or by geography.
It was all about a quiet confidence in ourselves, our education system, our ability to stay at home and do well or go forth in the world and prosper.
From Argentina to Hong Kong, from Australia to Africa, you didn’t have to look far to find a Scot at the heart of things. Someone who had done something with his or her life, someone who had used their native intelligence to good and profitable conclusions.
TO THIS end, you could argue that Scotland and its people were more central to the success of the British Empire than England and the English ever were. But now, what? All that enterprise and industry, energy and intelligence seems to have been replaced by mindless hatred and deep feelings of national grievance. If this i s the f ace of nationalism, I don’t like it very much.
The rise of the SNP in Scotland is not, as Alex Salmond keeps saying, some lovely festival of democracy. From where I am standing, it looks very much like a forced march down the long road of grudge, fuelled by a political party which bases its entire creed on an inferiority complex and a determination to give the English a bloody nose. What for? Your guess is as good as mine.
The SNP are expert at using ancient enmities to stoke up support. In timehonoured tradition, the mob are encouraged to turn against the hated elite, the politicians of Westminster who are widely regarded as the enemy — even though Scots have been at the forefront at Westminster for decades.
Yet wee Nicola Sturgeon, in her neat frocks and helmet hair, is seen as the saviour who can lead the mob to revolution and a better life for all, free from the English yoke. Complete rubbish, of course, but thousands are falling for it.
Last month, when I was home in Scotland, the conversation turned to the state of the National Health Service, as it so often does. A friend who works in a Scottish hospital told of protracted periods of double shifts, of departments stretched to breaking point.
The SNP voter in our midst turned to me. ‘That’s five years of your Tory Government for you,’ he sneered.
Was he joking? Tragically, no. This low-lying belligerence, the belief that the Conservative Party in general and David Cameron in particular are to blame for a nation’s woes runs through the SNP girders l i ke the seam of corroded claptrap it is.
Never mind that the Conservatives have no say in what the Scots spend on healthcare. Like Northern Ireland and Wales, Scotland is given a block grant. It is up to the devolved administrations to decide how to spend it, and the SNP have been in charge of it for years.
That is an inconvenient truth for the SNP bullies. It is easier for them to blame the Tories — for everything. The poor boobies are still nursing perceived hurts from the Thatcher years, even though she was last in power a quarter of a century ago. It would be laughable were it not so utterly, utterly tragic.
Above all, it is the new hatreds I cannot stand. The vandalism, the jeering, the democracy-deniers, the cybernats who howl down those with opposing opinions. They make me ashamed to be Scottish, and I never thought I would say that.
ANOTHER friend of mine, a mild-mannered Edinburgh lawyer who has just retired, is still in a state of shock at being called a ‘Quisling’ by Neil Hay, a local SNP candidate who used an anonymous Twitter account to attack unionists. Any other party would have sacked him for using such an offensive term, but not the SNP, where anything goes so long as it goes in the direction of power.
If this is what it is like now, what fresh horror would separation bring?
Perhaps more people like Mhairi Black, the foul-mouthed 20-year- old SNP candidate in Paisley and Renfrewshire South. She was standing against Labour’s Douglas Alexander and his 16,000 majority.
Whatever you may think of his politics, Alexander is a fine and dedicated politician. His opponent is a party animal who said she wanted to ‘ nut’ Labour councillors during a postreferendum rally.
For this, she was not even chastised by her SNP bosses, whom one imagines sniggering behind their tartan hankies. Did she win last night? I can hardly bear to look. But, then again, these days I can hardly bear to look north of the Border.