‘Tory-free Scotland’ is neither achievable nor desirable
I can well remember from distant childhood how my brothers and I, as we passed the sign when returning from an expedition in the family car, invariably sang in unison “Now we’re in the Royal Burgh of AYR!” And that great loose cannon of the mid-century literary scene, Fionn Mac Colla, saw clearly what their abolition was: a deliberate Unionist ploy to weaken the sense of local identity and pride in our history. As he put it in Too Long in This Condition, “The Act will have the effect of eradicating the entire element of local patriotism, the substratum and support of patriotism at the national level.”
Nobody, surely, imagines that by restoring the Royal Burghs we would be returning to the days of David I and William the Lion, or even giving tacit support to the ideas of monarchy and the feudal system: Mr Taylor’s fears on that score are groundless. What their re-establishment – and not only in name, but as entities with a
The SNP need to be gunning for Labour
political definition and a strong measure of self-government – would do is bolster our civic pride and improve the running of the country at community level. Give it some thought, Holyrood.
Derrick McClure Aberdeen
I JUST do not understand why the SNP government doesn’t pursue RADICAL land reform as well as implementing, or at least telling the public they are seriously reviewing, a land tax. The public are desperate for some radical policies to stop the rich getting richer and the poor being unable to afford to put their heating on. Certainly not the same old tired tropes about driving Tories out of Scotland!! The Tories are shooting themselves in the foot, the SNP need to be gunning for Labour. It’s almost as if the SNP have accepted they might lose 20 or so seats in upcoming General Election! C Tait
Largs
‘YOU campaign in poetry, you govern in prose”. I forget the name of the New York mayor who said this, but the line came to mind during the minor stooshie that developed after First Minister Humza Yousaf used the phrase “Tory-free Scotland” at the weekend in a speech ahead of the General Election.
The phrase has been used many times in campaigns in a country – Scotland – that hasn’t voted in a Conservative majority since 1955. The phrase has always been taken to mean that Scotland simply doesn’t return any Tory MPs. And with the party polling at 18%, reeling from a racism scandal and with rumours of Rishi Sunak’s jaiket being on a shoogly nail, the scenario may well come to pass.
But the phrase became controversial because some people chose to see the phrase as a desire to remove all Tory ideology north of Gretna.
So let’s try to unpack some of this, starting with some recent history.
In 1997, the year of the Labour landslide, the Conservatives returned no MPs in Scotland. Nada. Zip. So it’s been done before. But what makes it fascinating is that 1997 was also the year of the devolution referendum in which Scotland voted overwhelmingly to reconvene its parliament. The Tories campaigned against it, but in every election since, the d’Hondt voting system we chose to use meant that the Conservatives won a significant minority of seats – and quite rightly so. So the irony is that the thing that they campaigned so vociferously against turned out to be the very thing that gave them relevance.
Secondly, in a sense a “Toryfree Scotland” is neither achievable nor desirable. There has always been a fairly strong strand of right-of-centre political thought here. It’s perfectly possibly to see the benefits of an independent Scotland while at the same time holding some centre-right beliefs. These things are not mutually exclusive, and with the constitutional needle struggling to move much above 50%, we can ill afford to alienate folk whose different political outlook does not equate to support for the Union.
And thirdly, there will be right-of-centre parties in a self-governing Scotland. The difference will be that they will be genuinely Scottish ones. In the absence of a Union, there will be no Unionist parties, just as in the absence of an independence campaign – because we’ll be independent – there will be no pro-independence parties. We’ll be living in a normal democracy. Thank goodness. And who an independent Scotland chooses to elect will be fascinating – and possibly surprising.
So personally I’d change the message. Not a Tory-free Scotland – that’s just vacuous, grandstanding nonsense – but one that is free from Westminster governments of whatever political hue that we didn’t elect.
In other words, let Scotland, for better or worse, be Scotland. Alec Ross
Stranraer
ALL the arguments about strategy, complaints of no progress, and interpersonal squabbles count for nothing in the cause of independence.
Whatever “strategy” is pursued and all the alternatives – feasible and practicable or not – have a common base which we cannot afford to forget: and that is to win the hearts and minds of a majority of the wider public. Arguing about who is more active or trying to be seen as the prime mover are unhelpful and divisive. The Unionists strive to do that, so why help them? The first goal is to achieve independence.
All the other navel-gazing desires are pointless without being free to implement them or whatever else we decide, and in the interim are diversions away from the primary goal.
Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire