Old Fear, Fresh Fear

‘Fresh fears over Scottish independence’ runs the headline in Common Space.

Following it, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg warn, the Tories are putting the Union under strain and Scotland could still opt to leave in the not too distant future.

So Scotland is now a stick for LibDem hands to beat the government with. Well and good. It’s really the EU Brexit stick, of course, but now the Tories are thirled to the in-out referendum, they’re the ones about to bring the Union down about our ears.

As I say, well and good.

But then, the old pre-independence-referendum niggle resurfaces. Fresh fears? For that matter… Fears?  Why does it matter if the Scots decide to throw their lot in with the EU, quit the Union and try to change the system from within? All the old Project Fear put-downs crowd in again. Wouldn’t they be well rid of us, as the put-downs always imply (too wee, too poor, too stupid)?  In any case, this in-out business has more resonance across the rUK. So, fine, take the fight to the government but please don’t wring hands and worry about us Scots.

But it’s not worry, is it? Not for us. Not after all the years of NO monstering and political shoulder-to-shouldering. If there’s any worry, I ask myself, isn’t it because they have something to lose. It can’t be altruism that makes it so. In establishment circles austerity is still the mantra of choice (despite the latest dissention in Labour’s ranks). It’s hardly altruistic.

It brings me back to the question, not what have we got to lose by our foolish pursuit of independence, but what do they have to lose?  That  brings me back to the UK’s spiralling debt (still in a flat spin despite Osbornomics). That brings me back in turn  to oil.

For all the yah-boo-sucks about how Scotland couldn’t stand on its own two feet with today's seriously reduced oil price, the truth is, even at this price, the UK can’t stand on it’s own two feet without it. Scotland is still a net contributor to the UK economy and our money is more needed than ever.

With that in mind, now deconstruct the papery promise they call the Scotland Bill. It’s not punishment, you know. That’s a by-product. Truth to tell, the real establishment goal is to favour anything that means Scotland can only spend or invest more only by putting up taxes. It's not about offering Scotland a fairer deal in the first place.

The same goes for the shelving of renewable subsidies. A successful renewables sector would make Scotland more economically buoyant, less likely to be forced to adopt unpopular tax regimes to its political detriment. Never mind if it has a knock-on effect for the UK economy. That’s an acceptable downside because the big hitters among the energy companies and financiers aren’t into renewables. The returns are in conventional generation or, Osborne's favourite, nuclear.

So, you see, the fears are far from fresh. They're just the same old establishment night-sweat rearing its ugly head again. What’s more telling, the YES analysis hasn’t even been looked at by these former ministers. Or any ministers, for that matter. It’s as if 56 SNP MPs in Westminster are just an aberration, as if the tide must surely ebb on all the Union’s misfortunes, back to same-as-it-ever-was. Their intransigence is a blind belief that politics-as-usual is still the only game. So they go on playing it.

For them, YES is just a blip, hiss on the tape. Never mind all the commentators who say austerity is wrong,  sabre-rattling global conflicts are wrong, flooding the world with refugees while their homes burn behind them is wrong, making money regardless while the climate collapses is wrong. No, the elite and their cronies just breenge on. They’re saving for their future never saving the future. They're putting by for a rainy day, ignoring the kind of rain their present actions will bring down.

They really, really just don’t get it.

The Notional Anthem

Some have said the Scotland effect has infected England. This, they say, has propelled Jeremy Corbyn to win the Labour leadership. Now, though, the media monstering has begun. Corbyn isn’t establishment material and, unlike Scots and the Yes movement, he can’t be written off in media diatribes as a cultural aberration. He must be written off some other way. So, here comes his ‘security threat’,  the 'national anthem disgrace' and a shabby re-run of the Michael Foot 1981 donkey jacket.

The only examination of Corbyn’s policy portfolio will be in the extreme spins with which it'll be savaged. Few in politics (politics-as-usual) or the media will look particularly carefully at it and every opportunity to brief against, exaggerate and blatantly mis-represent will come cascading out.

But, perhaps the biggest danger is from the party itself. Enemies within are usually behind you, stalking an opportunity to take you down. The PLP have plenty dissenters and conniving mis-calling is a practiced art.

And this in itself is a continuing sadness. Labour, in its twisted wisdom, has shied away from standing on its progressive record (minimum wage, winter fuel payments, 500,000 children lifted out of poverty, free nursery places, apprentices doubled, free bus travel for the elderly, the repeal of Section 28*). 

Labour has tried too hard to cast its record in terms of Tory comparisons. It fears making much of anything that would appear too leftish. Little wonder the Red Tory tag has been hung on them.

Corbyn has several circles to square. He must give a voice to left-leaning aspiration, forge a different political style, all in the face of a hostile media and a strident socio-political elite, importantly those in the Labour Party who bought into the establishment dream and refuse to let principle get in the way.

So the calumny. The latest. Corbyn's silence during the national anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration. His disgrace was widely trumpeted in the media with no mention of his praise for the fallen heroes; no concession of  respect for him, a republican, following his conscience and keeping silent so as not to cause offence.

In the establishment arena of public life, convention is made sacrosanct to the point of absurdity. You can’t be a political dignitary and a republican, it seems. Difference is only permitted within strict bounds.

I’d have been inclined to let all this go for the minor pomposity it is but the accompanying outrage caused me outrage in reverse. This is the suit and tie business. Apparently Corbyn’s suit didn’t quite match and his collar was a bit undone - jaw dropping nonsense at a time when the media comes under fire for commenting on female politicians' dress sense (mostly bad), weight (usually excess) and the like. Interesting that, when it’s a man and one not approved of, such a thing is OK. But then, it's the way the great and the good belittle any deemed unworthy of favour (like mad socialists and women).

It all harks back to Foot’s donkey jacket (which was actually a coat). He was described at the time, by a fellow Labour MP, as looking like ‘an out-of-work navvy’. So now, 34 years later, nothing learned, we’re hearing Corbyn criticised in a similar way. It reveals so much, not the least, how unacceptable it still is to look like a poor or unemployed person. Corbyn, looking too much like an ordinary man, is pilloried because he’s ‘not really one of us’. Pompous twaddle.

And in Scotland, almost Labour-Party-less, what of it? While those of us in the continuing YES movement have issues with Corbyn on the Union and Scottish independence, his position on social justice, austerity and Trident is refreshingly progressive. Of course, we would want to argue with his views on Scotland but I’m firmly with those who feel we must show solidarity. All the better that it would come laced with our difference.

The Corbyn show is about to be mauled by an unrelenting UK media. We’ve ridden that particular tiger already but I hae ma doots if Corbyn and the wider Labour Party left are prepared for it. The MSM onslaught will be devastating. Only a strong alternative and social media in opposition can help maintain the progressive perspective. It might, at the same time, be a forum to educate Corbynists in the niceties  of Scottish politics. Paradoxically, it could be an opportunity to put a new meaning to ‘Better Together’ and show that solidarity and togetherness needn’t exclude independence and civic nationalism.

*List cribbed from Derek Bateman