FM for Glasgow? Go federal
Perhaps I have a suspicious mind – if I do it is with good reason – but it is difficult not t o f e e l Fi r s t Mi n i s t e r Ni o l a Sturgeon’s latest and baffling Covid rules and change from numbers to letters is a form of smokescreen.
However, one thing remains constant. Her choice of areas to be hardest hit or to be left untouched seems to have a continuing and ver y disturbing pattern.
Strongly SNP voting regions, such as Glasgow, with more than its fair share of nationalist zealots, are treated with kid gloves, while those areas
Unionists make great play of t h e B a r n e t t Fo r mul a “s u b - sidy” to S cotland. This is, at best misleading and at worst patronising. I think it is more accurate to descri b e it as a bribe to keep Scotland in the U K . S i n c e p e o p l e wh o p ay b r i b e s a l ways wa n t s o me - thing in return, the question arises as to what this is.
This week's Economist provides an answer – it is S cotland's strategic northern position, which enables the UK to control the choke point of the Greenland- Iceland-uk gap in the face of a resurgent Russian n ava l a n d a i r b o r n e t h r e a t . Since S cotland contributes something of great strategic value to the UK, it is time that Unionists afforded Scotland greater respect and stopped their narrative of Scotland as a “subsidy junkie”.
It seems to me that there is a mi d d l e way b e t we e n t h e extremes of Nationalism and Unionism, and that is Federalism. Only in this way will Scotland be treated as a partner of equals.
O t h e r w i s e E n g l a n d w i l l lose Scotland unnecessarily, just as it lost most of Ireland a centur y ago. The eviction of the Royal Navy from Irish ports in 1938 was keenly felt in the Second World War. The loss of S cottish militar y and n ava l b a s es woul d b e e ve n more devastating, especially if Northern Ireland joined the Republic of Ireland.
H o m e R u l e f o r S c o t l a n d would be a part of a long overdue decentralisation of the whole of the UK to everyone's benefits.
COLIN MCALLISTER South Street, St Andrews