Why Nicola may be too nationalist ...even for Nigel
WE found out three things about Nicola Sturgeon this week. One, she doesn’t like Benny Hill. Two, in her world Alex Salmond can never be a sexist even when he makes sexist jokes. And three, she doesn’t do ‘irony’.
Boy – if that is not a sexist word to use – does she not do irony.
The Scottish Nationalist leader – who addresses her party conference as ‘fellow Nationalists’ – who puts out propaganda films asking us all to be ‘Nats’, says she doesn’t like the word ‘nationalism’ although she has used it for decades.
It would be like Theresa May saying she’s doesn’t like ‘Conservatism’, Jeremy Corbyn ‘socialism’ or George Galloway ‘publicity’.
But the reason Miss Sturgeon apparently doesn’t like the word ‘Nationalist’ really proves the irony point.
Other nationalisms abroad have given it a bad reputation. Scottish nationalism is better than them. Johnny Foreigner’s interpretation of it has been a slur on its good name.
Perhaps the sight of fascists and white supremacists marching through Charlottesville with pitchforks influenced her. If so, I would ask her what was the connection she saw.
HERE in Scotland, for example, we have never seen an angry flagwaving crowd of Nationalists march through the streets. Maybe one with a banner vilifying an independent journalist. Well, apart from outside BBC Scotland during the referendum campaign.
Yet still she would like to see the word ‘nationalism’ retired. To spend more time with its family. Pine for the fjords. As she seeks another euphemism for her creed.
Doubtless she does not like being regarded as sharing a similar philosophy as, say, a British nationalist such as Nigel Farage. Fair point.
Let’s compare and contrast. Mr Farage believes the UK is being held back by a union with other nations – the EU. He vilifies its seat of power – Brussels. And he believes an independent Britain can play a bigger part in the world as other nations spoil it like it was the Earth’s only child.
Miss Sturgeon believes Scotland is being held back by a union with other nations – the UK. She vilifies its seat of power – Westminster.
And she believes an independent Scotland can play a bigger part in the world as other nations spoil it like it was the Earth’s only child.
But the startling difference is this. Nigel Farage doesn’t think the UK should share sovereignty with anyone. Nicola Sturgeon is prepared to share sovereignty with anyone – as long as it is not England.
For example, she doesn’t want any powers over fishing or agriculture repatriated to Westminster if Brexit happens – they must come to Holyrood so she can ultimately hand them back to Brussels. The English can keep their dirty hands off them.
Nigel might well believe Nicola has taken nationalism a shade too far even for him. It certainly suggests she suffers from torches and pitchforks of the mind. Nationalism has one aim and is motivated by just one thing – grievance.
You don’t need to come up with any solutions to your country’s problems, you just need a neighbour to blame. They make you a victim.
That is one reason the SNP has campaigned for independence for a decade rather than governing.
Then nationalism depends on the art of the pivot. Turning any situation into a wrong.
For years Alex Salmond argued the pound was a ‘millstone around Scotland’s neck’. Being part of the UK was stopping us from joining the euro. After the euro’s difficulties in the 2014 referendum campaign that changed. The pound was Scotland’s pound and it would be an outrage if we couldn’t keep it. Grievance is the only consistency in nationalism. It is hard to find a successful domestic policy the SNP has pursued in the past ten years but for argument’s sake let’s say they have one. The Baby Box.
One of the things that recommends it, according to Nationalist ministers, is it is a Finnish idea. Anywhere but England.
Now let’s imagine this. The Baby Box had been dreamt up by Theresa May and she tried to pilot it in Scotland.
It doesn’t take much to see the image of Miss Sturgeon and Mr Salmond’s faces contort in faux anger and disgust.
‘If Theresa May thinks Scots bairns should sleep in a cardboard box, she has another think coming. It is a sign of the contempt Westminster has for Scotland that she thinks all our children are worth is to sleep in paper,’ they might chorus.
‘Rocks will melt in the sun before any Scots bairn sleeps in a Conservative carton.’
PIVOTING can lead you to even greater difficulty. Adopting the principle your ‘enemy’s enemy is your friend’, the SNP advocated neutrality during the Second World War. Its preference was to see England defeated. Arthur Donaldson, who became SNP leader in 1960, was jailed in 1941 for colluding with Germans.
Now that could all be dismissed as being a long time ago. A view of its time, like a Benny Hill joke.
Every party has had unpleasant mavericks – Oswald Mosley was once a Labour MP and then there is Enoch Powell. Yet to this day a highlight of the SNP conference is the Arthur Donaldson Memorial Lecture. If Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t like the unpleasant aspects of nationalism why do she and her party still celebrate them?
Perhaps she is sincere and this will lead to change in Scottish nationalism. She could rename the SNP for the modern age. Call it ‘Sovereignty Solutions’.
But what would that abbreviated to? Can’t have that. Bloody foreigners holding back decent Scottish Nationalists again.