‘Nationalism? It’s not new, simply the politics of the caveman council’
TONY Blair launched an excoriating attack on nationalism yesterday, branding it the ‘politics of the caveman’.
Speaking at an event i n London, Labour’s most successful leader said the answer to Scotland’s problems does not lie in attacking the English. He also urged his party to take the SNP head-on.
The former Prime Minister’s remarks infuriated the SNP, who immediately hit back, accusing him of ‘primitive policies’ over the war in Iraq.
Mr Blair said: ‘Nationalism is not a new phenomenon. When they talk about it being new politics, it is the oldest politics in the world. It’s the politics of the first caveman council, when the caveman came out from a council where there were difficult decisions and pointed with his club across the forest and said, “They’re the problem, over there, that’s the problem”. ‘It’s blaming someone else.’ With Labour leaderless and in disarray north and south of the Border, the SNP’s mercurial rise to 60 per cent in the polls has gone almost unchallenged.
However, Mr Blair – whose mantra when becoming Prime Minister in 1997 was ‘education, education, education’ – homed in on the Nationalists’ weakness on the NHS and schools. He said literacy rates were going backwards, while health outcomes were getting worse.
The SNP’s success, he claimed, was down to being ‘a government that’s allowed to behave like an opposition’.
He urged Scottish Labour to take the fight to the SNP as the party seeks to claw back support ahead of next year’s elections. Mr Blair said: ‘The SNP and Ukip have clouded our sense of direction because they seem to point away from the centre.
‘But our response should be likewise based on principle. The answer to the problems of Scotland is no more about being more Scottish and leaving the UK, than the answer to the problems of England is being more English and getting out of Europe or blaming immigrants.
‘So take them head- on. I don’t know whether this is a winning strategy, but at least it’s one I believe in.’
Mhairi Black, Nationalist MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, said: ‘Tony Blair must still be smarting from Labour losing the Scottish parliament election to the SNP in 2007 when he was Prime Minister, and had dragged Labour so far to the Right that it was barely recognisable.
‘Tony Blair’s legacy still haunts and damages Labour today, and led them into the sorry position of not even voting against the Tories’ welfare cuts and budget bills this week – leaving the SNP as the real and effective opposition to the Tory government.
‘On any reading of his record, Tony Blair was the one with the primitive policy – dragging the country into an illegal war in Iraq, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and causing massive instability to the region, the ramifications of which we continue to l i ve with.’
In defending her party against Mr Blair’s attack, the 20-yearold reeled off a series of Scottish Government accomplishments, ironically many of which have their roots in the populist centre ground, to which the former Prime Minister is urging his own party to stick.
Miss Black said: ‘Since 2007 the SNP have frozen council tax, delivered free higher education, scrapped prescription charges, boosted apprenticeship numbers by almost 60 per cent, protected free personal care, maintained the concessionary travel scheme, increased Scotland’s health budget to record levels and protected those hardest hit by unfair Tory welfare cuts.
‘All this has been in the face of massive Westminster cuts to Scotland’s budget.’
‘Clouded our sense of direction’