Jings, that was a hard read!
Clever work though, blaming the candidates for not focussing on local issues while suggesting that Scotland tax American billionaires activities in space.
The rest was pretty much Scottish nationalism 101. It’s all someone else’s fault, England hates us and it’s ok to heavily tax the rich. In Scotland, of course the rich includes mid career nurses and teachers, self employed, anyone with the temerity to run a successful small business and, of course they b@st@rds that bought their own home.
I’m sure that McGarvey feels better for getting it out of his system so that’s nice.
Exactly. McGarvey sometimes makes some good points, but they’re always couched in terms of Scottish exceptionalism with regard to industrial decline and deprivation. This is twaddle. Recently visited the town in England where I grew up and the shopping precinct, once bustling and lively, was like Dawn of the Dead.
While the SNP like to portray little difference between Labour and Tories, in Scotland there’s not much to separate SNP and Labour bar independence. Rutherglen has elected an MP who is in favour of self ID. How many working class voters in the post-industrial towns of Lanarkshire are in favour of that?
He is committed to Scottish independence. Wouldn’t it be strange if he didn’t use Scottish contexts? Not everything’s about England, you know and a great many of us ‘up here’ focus first on the good, bad and ugly of politics in our own country as I’m sure the majority of English people rightly do.
That’s not really what I was trying to get at. I live ‘up here’ and have done for most of my adult life. I also have Scottish family. My point is that he comes across as if all social problems are uniquely appalling in Scotland, which they’re not. There’s also the familiar rhetoric of blaming London politicians, when devolved UK regions get to participate far more in democratic processes than England. Scotland has The Western Isles constituency which is close to a rotten borough.
Another criticism I have is that his only solutions are big state interventions, which assume that the taxes to pay for them can be collected. How does this solve unemployment in a former mining town in Lanarkshire, for example? But he often raises relevant points and for that deserves some credit. Of course, he will report on the situation in Scotland and from a nationalist perspective due to his political views, but I can’t help feeling that he misses the deeper and more universal causes of the malaise.
Most shopping malls, even some of the posh ones, are like dawn of the Dead. That’s because most shopping is done on-line. It will only get worse, and the average local planning department will do nothing to help the unfortunate owners repurpose them.
(I use “unfortunate” in the sense that those of us on here with pensions and insurance will tend to be the ultimate owners, like it or not.)
It was really just a huge shock as I had not visited since before COVID. This was the whole town centre now vape shops, phone unlocking or boarded up. Former large stores now giant charity shops and I was into double figures counting junkies within 200 yards. Utterly grim.
As I see it those who do well from any form of political activity are those who are either part of the activity, or who fund it. The rest of come nowhere near, reagrdless of where we live. We exist only to pay tax for benefits, not welfare benefits, but good outcomes of any kind that never come our way,as apart from paying our taxes we are not important enough.
Malcolm Webb
7 months ago
Over many decades the policies of the Left (including those of the “ middle of the road” Tories) has utterly failed Scotland and yet the author’s prescription for recovery seems to be yet more of the same ( tax the “ rich” nationalise industry etc etc). Truly bonkers – but also very sad – as I have to agree that the solution to Scotland’s ( and UK’s) political illness is nowhere in sight.
Is that because we look lazily to “same ‘ol, same ‘ol” lacklustre loyalty ?
Maybe start a party that focuses on best economic outcomes for all – worldwide ? Drop the narrow vested interests, lies and corruption.
The ‘policies of the left’ have not been instituted in Scotland. You say the SNP ‘tax the rich’ but the tax rates in Scotland are not dissimilar to those in England and the top rate is well below Thatchers first 9 years of 60%! Which went down to 40%. Scotland is 41%. Left Wing??? And sure Scotland has ‘nationalised’ ScotRail, but the Tory govt in England has ‘nationalised’ several ‘franchises’ or lines; TransPennineExpress, LNER and Southerneastern so this is not particularly radical.
Walter Marvell
7 months ago
Grim. His argument that Labour and SNP share the same corrupted Progressive ideology – the same cultish failed luxury credos embraced by half the Fake Tories and the whole of the Civil Service, Law, Media and public sector makes clear our united fate. Either the Tories under Rishi reject Rule by Diktat & the bossy tyranny of the Eco, DEI and Progressives now – fast – or all the UK will suffer the immiseration of those poor Scots in grey sick towns. But they do not yet get it. Smoking ban??? Pure NHS First nannyism. A Levels, Rosebank and a White Elephant are not enough. Any failure in the war against illegal border entry will seal their fate. Watch next week to see how vapid and hollow, how cynical and dangerous the braindead progressive Labour is.
Not sure what your utopia would be like – Singapore on Thames? (Made me laugh when I read to own a car in Singapore costs an absolute fortune- ULEZ on steroids.) But sure as hell I wouldn’t want to live there, and I don’t think many would. Give me the blob and brain dead progressives any day!
How very odd. So its just Singapore or this? Its not utopian to wish to escape the horrors of your Blob – its lockdown lies and tyranny, its eco fanaticism and bullying, its magic money and high tax misery, its toxic race baiting and gender confusion, its contempt for democracy (2 Ref) and calamitous uncontrolled unplanned population growth. Sounds like you should head north and enjoy a proper battering.
Singapore has the Circle Line, and it goes around the whole country.
Who needs a car there?
Peter Lucey
7 months ago
[Edit]An interesting piece.
Many of us up here are not only resigned to our junior status in this dysfunctional constitutional family, but we lean into it, like a sunburnt drunk leans in to embrace a cactus.”
Some of us in England would like the same public spending formula that Scotland enjoys.
Cut them loose while the body politic has change on their minds (as in Brexit).
Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with them for another 1000 years.
Andrew Buckley
7 months ago
Everywhere deserves better than this! Your description of life on the ground in this constituency could be written about far too many parts of not just Scotland but the whole UK.
Sad, depressing.
All political parties have failed, and will continue to. Labour seem to have given up on the idea of using taxation as a way to redistribute money to deprived areas. Tories appear happy to ignore these places where no one will vote for them. SNP? I don’t know enough to comment.
Years and years and years of a widening gap between the haves and have nots have ended up with too many areas where the standard of living is close to third world standards. Is it simply that the “haves” really want an underclass to use/abuse and feed off?
But now Labour seem to have given up on taxing investment income in the same way that we tax PAYE the outlook is not great – I agree. What is depressing is that far to many – although less so in Scotland – have fallen for the myth that if you are in poverty then, one way or another, it must be your fault. Personal responsibility is important but if you have a job but still need benefits something is wrong.
Yep, this. So much of what is going wrong now boils down to an unfair sharing out of the profits generated by actual work. There’s plenty of money about. It’s just that the wrong people have got it. Why would any young person, not born rich, feel like they have a stake in such a society?
It isn’t surprising that Labour are no longer a labour party. Have you forgotten how the Guardian reacted to Theresa May’s timid suggestion that perhaps some of the billions in unearned property wealth that its readers have accumulated over the past twenty years might be used to pay for their social care? Nowadays leftist ideology among the middle class voters who decide elections is a fashion statement, not a guide to voting intentions.
London’s leftists love Labour (so long as they’re talking about socialism and not threatening to do it). They’re very much in favour of the race hatred and gender weirdness, but asking them to cough up for socialism is a step too far, comrade.
They want socialism, but only the type that benefits the globalist Lords and their professional manageral courtiers. A socialism that allows them to keep their dubiously productive jobs in the government and the corporations, inflates their housing values, distributes taxpayer money to favorite groups and luxury causes that give them moral authority and social legitimacy, as well as keep the Patronage system that maintains the power networks of their favor. As well as regulates potential economic competition to the established powers out of existence. And finally to keep the underclass contented as a vote Bank through the welfare state, as well as prevent the possibility of revolt through the welfare system by buying them off. Not the type of socialism that benefits the common Man, who they hate and fear. And they want You to pay for it, not themselves.
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Dougie Undersub
7 months ago
It’s a protest vote against the incumbents – just like we are seeing across Europe. And don’t read too much into a by-election with a turnout of 37%.
Dominic A
7 months ago
“Swathes of South Lanarkshire…..unglamorous, grey-washed urban purgatories rendered nondescript by post-industrial malaise”
Swathes of Scotland in fact. Almost every Scottish town or city consists of a resaonably attractive period core ringed by such purg-a-tories. In fifty years of visiting/living in Scotland, it never ceases to amaze me that almost no-one, and no local planners/council, have bothered to add a lick of paint to these grey homes – as they so often do in the beloved Ireland & Nordic countries.
Frank McCusker
7 months ago
“You can really see the draw of becoming a political diehard. Of nailing your colours to the mast and warring till the bitter end. It’s a far simpler existence. You train your eyes and ears for the errors of others, while remaining blind to your own.”
Excellent article.
And I’m sure the SNP now considers that posturing on wokery – instead of real issues – was worth it, lol.
Let’s face it, the SNP blew their mission on wokery.
Arkadian X
7 months ago
“It suits both the SNP and Labour to portray themselves as diametrically opposed, but they’re two flaps of the same fanny.”
Well, considering that neither labour, nor the SNP know what a woman is, I wonder what kind of fanny the author is referring to. A memorable sentence in any case!
M Doors
7 months ago
“..shambles of leaving the EU in the hardest possible fashion …”
You what now ?
AC Harper
7 months ago
…Labour and the SNP will return to their comfort zones, taking their loyal bases for granted, pricing-in working class apathy, and targeting middle-class moderates whose political convictions could be written on the back of a fag packet…
Two political machines battling it out to determine the survivor. Like ‘Robot Wars’ but less entertaining.
Naren Savani
7 months ago
This chap could have conveyed his sentiments in four sentences.Verbosity thou name is McGarvey.
Citizen Diversity
7 months ago
What’s the point of all this exasperation if you continue to vote for these parties that have shown time and again that they are not your friends?
JR Stoker
7 months ago
That’s a good old fashioned rant. And, like all the best rants, any touching of reality is entirely accidental
Three quarters of the SNP voters from 2019 stayed at home, so Labour easily gained the seat with 17,845 votes. In 2017, also from the SNP, Labour narrowly gained the same seat with 19,101 votes. On both sides of the Border, an abysmal ruling party is collapsing, to the benefit by default of a politically identical Opposition (the SNP has not seriously pursued independence in nine years), with more and more people simply finding better things to do. Their votes are up for grabs.
David Wildgoose
7 months ago
Never mind “Scotland deserves better than this”, England deserves better than Scotland!
Labour claimed this was a “mini-referendum on two failed governments at Holyrood and Westminster” while neglecting to point out that thanks to them we English only have one Parliament, and that Parliament has large numbers of Scots/Irish/Welsh nationalists who out of general antipathy towards England and the English deliberately vote against our interests.
The sooner this so-called “Union” breaks up, the better off we English will be.
Gerry Quinn
7 months ago
If nothing else, I like his writing style!
Bret Larson
7 months ago
“There were no big ideas here. No grand visions.”
The grand vision is that the slaves should sell their vote to the highest bidder. And they did.
Hugh Bryant
7 months ago
Scotland deserves better than this circus
Why?
Travis Cooper
7 months ago
Well, welcome to the shit show (from across the pond). What took you so damn long? We’ve been waiting decades.
James Kirk
7 months ago
‘unglamorous, grey-washed urban purgatories rendered nondescript by post-industrial malaise’. Stealing that if only to hug it. I suppose hiphop can be witty with words but closer analysis renders it contradictory. Was it ‘descript’ before and during industry?
Change progressive to regressive. Litmus? going from yellow to red on a gauge is cause for an engineer’s alarm, even post industrials watch the movies. Flaps, makes a change from cheeks but vuukle, disqus? The prim and pious won’t read further.
I like his writing style but is he speaking to Mrs Obese-Alcoholic-Foodbank? Where Unherd is truly unheard, in such a herd.
odd taff
7 months ago
I’ve just returned from the north. Not quite as far as Scotland but far enough to be colder and wetter than we’ve used to here in the sunny South East. As I drove home yesterday into sunshine and noticed the roadside difference in the colour of the fields which here are turning to straw my mood lifted. No wonder the Scots are a miserable lot. They don’t get enough sunshine.
John Scott
7 months ago
Great commentary: This paragraph sums up politics everywhere:
“The only people actually buying what the politicians are selling are devout party activists, students yet to be disabused of their naivety, partisan hacks who study politics the way your Auntie Betty studies Emmerdale, and middle-class moderates who’ll swallow any old, reheated pish for stable house prices and a quiet two-driveway life. Nobody else gives a shit. If we can be bothered, we turn up on polling day, we hold our noses, and we vote for whichever party we believe is the least terrible option that year.”
David McKee
7 months ago
The basic problem here, is that Labour and the SNP define themselves principally by what they’re against, not what they’re for – the Tories and the English, respectively. Hence the weird political vacuum of the by-election campaign.
Poor old Rutherglen voters. Poor old us, this time next year, when Labour and the Tories, heavy on gimmicks (eg banning smoking, or regurgitating trans activists’ lunacies), but light on considered analysis of the country’s problems and plausible plans for addressing them, battle for our votes.
History suggests that Scottish independence is almost inevitable in the long run. I do not say this with any enthusiasm. It is just if you look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand or even South Africa, there is a pattern. If London grants a degree of autonomy to a regional group of English speaking politicians then over time it concedes more and more until the region acquires de facto independence. The regional politicians are absorbed by the process; Westminster barely notices it is going on. The only time the London government focuses on the issue is during a crisis; in between policy just drifts. I doubt Scotland will be any different. The moment Donald Dewar persuaded his colleagues that devolution was the antidote to independence, I fear he made the latter inevitable … in the long run.
History suggests, nay, history records, that Scotland went broke last time it was independent and as a result pleaded for union with England.
Given that both SNP and Labour are hooked on spending for votes, it’s now simply a competition to see who can provide more free stuff.
Scotland used to be a great and innovative engineering country but now the remaining engineering and innovation, concentrated in northeast Scotland, is under near constant attack from both Westminster and Holyrood
It’s a category error to examples of something and ignore examples because they aren’t that something. Bavaria, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Piedmont, Texas, Burgundy, Aragon, even Quebec, where separatist sentiment is lessening.
Brendan O'Leary
7 months ago
If you look at where the SNP are strongest, it’s clear that their supporters prefer dependence – on welfare, drugs, government cash – to independence. During this period of SNP instability, Labour’s taking the chance to regain that constituency.
That’s what we are stuck with in Scotland. Squabbling over handouts.
Steve Farrell
7 months ago
2 weeks for a GP appointment sounds pretty good to me
UnHerd Reader
7 months ago
TL; DR.
Irvine Welsh with fewer f**ks.
Last edited 7 months ago by UnHerd Reader
Martin Butler
7 months ago
Politicians in Scotland are always in a very difficult position. Unless you visit Scotland, look at the different newspaper headlines to south of the border, hear the pub conversations, and so on, you wouldn’t be aware of how different the political culture is. Remember every single constituency in Scotland Voted remain, and there just isn’t the anti-immigrant, ‘benefit- scroungers’ rhetoric that you get from the Sun and Mail in the South. For example, the two children benefit cap has little support in Scotland – unlike in England. So the kind of message politicians can send in Scotland is utterly at odds with what would work in England. Both Tories and Labour have to say one thing in England and something quite different in Scotland. That’s why they can seem meally mouthed. But then on the other hand an independent Scotland is not really going to work. So the SNP is trying to sell something it can never deliver. Anyway pleased Labour won. Tories lost their deposit! Wonderful! Imagine that in England.
Why wouldn’t an independent Scotland work? Independent Ireland works. Independent Iceland and Norway work.
Of course, if Scotland had to fund it’s own benefits system then the people might change their attitude to welfare scroungers. Of course one thing they won’t ever have to deal with is boatloads of illegal immigrants.
Independent Scotland would cope (although I would be sorry to see them go). They’d be fast tracked into the EU (to spite England) and get plenty of funding. It does feel like the whole issue is off the table now, though.
Are you sure? I would like to observe the meeting between Scottish PM and EU officials in Brussels, cheerfully requesting the same subsidies from the EU budget that the Scots get from the UK!
Scotland wouldn’t be fast-tracked into the EU because Spain will not agree to a precedent which would further encourage Basque and Catalonian separatism.
No, you’re wrong. That would certainly have been the case before Brexit. But Britain is no longer a member of the EU, so all bets are off. I suspect the EU wold be quite amused to admit Scotland.
Yes I’m in two minds about that. Like you I would be sorry to see them go. At the moment I just think we have to accept that it’s not a live issue, which is why Labour have the momentum. Selfish reasons also. If Scotland got independence, in England we would be condemned to years of Tory hell. A kind in government opposition. Endlessly telling us that they couldn’t do anything because of ‘economic orodoxy’ or the ‘blob’ or something.
Independent Ireland did not work for 50 years. While the UK built a welfare state for the disadvantaged, Irish people had to endure a farewell state from which disadvantaged people with aspirations had no option but to flee for work to the the UK and US. All while the malnourished corpses of 1000 orphans were gradually being flushed into the cesspit at Tuam. Levelling up to western European standards of prosperity only came with another 50 years of handouts from the EU, which co-incidentally equated at the beginning to the amount the UK was paying in.
Yes, both my parents came over during WW2. My mother and her sister did their nursing training in London between visits from the Luftwaffe, which gives you an idea of how appealing the west of Ireland was for young people. And my father’s sister moved from County Mayo to New York in 1932…..
A trade war with Britain didn’t help. But if you’d asked ordinary people on the ground, they were still happier than being hassled by your army on a daily basis.
I’m pretty much ambivalent on Scottish independence. I would probably have voted No if I was Scottish. But I’m not and if Yes is what a majority had chosen then fair enough.
What I don’t really understand is what is meant by statements like an independent Scotland “won’t work”? Scotland is a developed country of 5.5M people (same as Norway and Finland), with lots of natural resources. Its not a TV remote with the batteries taken out.
Like any other large constitutional change there would be transition costs and choices to be made – passports at the border with England perhaps – but it won’t just suddenly stop working.
The choice before the Scottish people should be an honest one allowing them to weigh up the perceived benefits against the perceived costs. At the referendum it was the nationalists “rainbows and unicorns” against the unionists “cliff edge plummet into hell”.
It wouldnt work because Scotland’s people have become punch drunk on handouts. We would plummet. Brexit went badly, partly, in my view, because the electorate and political class were so evenly devided on the issue, and few in public positions of the remain camp would help to foster cohesion and unity of purpose post brexit. Scotland’s independence would be an even damper squib than brexit and a collossal risk to the future wellbeing of our people.
glyn harries
7 months ago
Yup! Excellent summary!
Dumetrius
7 months ago
Summary, anyone?
Paul T
2 months ago
What does the “Loki” have to do with any of this? So what; he has a football terrace nick-name used when he is screaming nationalism at “another” team. That “taxing foreign billionaires” though; I cant even imagine what that was aimed at suggesting…or arousing? Well…a weird envy remixed by crisis-nationalism?
Tyler Durden
7 months ago
The project for the SNP must now be rejoining the EU if not campaigning directly for Eurozone membership. That might take some of the middle-class vote away from Labour.
Jings, that was a hard read!
Clever work though, blaming the candidates for not focussing on local issues while suggesting that Scotland tax American billionaires activities in space.
The rest was pretty much Scottish nationalism 101. It’s all someone else’s fault, England hates us and it’s ok to heavily tax the rich. In Scotland, of course the rich includes mid career nurses and teachers, self employed, anyone with the temerity to run a successful small business and, of course they b@st@rds that bought their own home.
I’m sure that McGarvey feels better for getting it out of his system so that’s nice.
and like another famous blood-sucker, he avoids looking in the mirror.
Not sure that’s fair. Minus a few Scottish specifics, the arguments in this piece could be said of voters throughout the UK.
You don’t vote yourself prosperity by allowing government to spend more of everybody’s labour then they already do.
It’s not just Scotland that get treated like this by the London media-political class, it’s anywhere outside of the home counties.
Exactly. McGarvey sometimes makes some good points, but they’re always couched in terms of Scottish exceptionalism with regard to industrial decline and deprivation. This is twaddle. Recently visited the town in England where I grew up and the shopping precinct, once bustling and lively, was like Dawn of the Dead.
While the SNP like to portray little difference between Labour and Tories, in Scotland there’s not much to separate SNP and Labour bar independence. Rutherglen has elected an MP who is in favour of self ID. How many working class voters in the post-industrial towns of Lanarkshire are in favour of that?
He is committed to Scottish independence. Wouldn’t it be strange if he didn’t use Scottish contexts? Not everything’s about England, you know and a great many of us ‘up here’ focus first on the good, bad and ugly of politics in our own country as I’m sure the majority of English people rightly do.
That’s not really what I was trying to get at. I live ‘up here’ and have done for most of my adult life. I also have Scottish family. My point is that he comes across as if all social problems are uniquely appalling in Scotland, which they’re not. There’s also the familiar rhetoric of blaming London politicians, when devolved UK regions get to participate far more in democratic processes than England. Scotland has The Western Isles constituency which is close to a rotten borough.
Another criticism I have is that his only solutions are big state interventions, which assume that the taxes to pay for them can be collected. How does this solve unemployment in a former mining town in Lanarkshire, for example? But he often raises relevant points and for that deserves some credit. Of course, he will report on the situation in Scotland and from a nationalist perspective due to his political views, but I can’t help feeling that he misses the deeper and more universal causes of the malaise.
Most shopping malls, even some of the posh ones, are like dawn of the Dead. That’s because most shopping is done on-line. It will only get worse, and the average local planning department will do nothing to help the unfortunate owners repurpose them.
(I use “unfortunate” in the sense that those of us on here with pensions and insurance will tend to be the ultimate owners, like it or not.)
It was really just a huge shock as I had not visited since before COVID. This was the whole town centre now vape shops, phone unlocking or boarded up. Former large stores now giant charity shops and I was into double figures counting junkies within 200 yards. Utterly grim.
As I see it those who do well from any form of political activity are those who are either part of the activity, or who fund it. The rest of come nowhere near, reagrdless of where we live. We exist only to pay tax for benefits, not welfare benefits, but good outcomes of any kind that never come our way,as apart from paying our taxes we are not important enough.
Over many decades the policies of the Left (including those of the “ middle of the road” Tories) has utterly failed Scotland and yet the author’s prescription for recovery seems to be yet more of the same ( tax the “ rich” nationalise industry etc etc). Truly bonkers – but also very sad – as I have to agree that the solution to Scotland’s ( and UK’s) political illness is nowhere in sight.
Is that because we look lazily to “same ‘ol, same ‘ol” lacklustre loyalty ?
Maybe start a party that focuses on best economic outcomes for all – worldwide ? Drop the narrow vested interests, lies and corruption.
The ‘policies of the left’ have not been instituted in Scotland. You say the SNP ‘tax the rich’ but the tax rates in Scotland are not dissimilar to those in England and the top rate is well below Thatchers first 9 years of 60%! Which went down to 40%. Scotland is 41%. Left Wing??? And sure Scotland has ‘nationalised’ ScotRail, but the Tory govt in England has ‘nationalised’ several ‘franchises’ or lines; TransPennineExpress, LNER and Southerneastern so this is not particularly radical.
Grim. His argument that Labour and SNP share the same corrupted Progressive ideology – the same cultish failed luxury credos embraced by half the Fake Tories and the whole of the Civil Service, Law, Media and public sector makes clear our united fate. Either the Tories under Rishi reject Rule by Diktat & the bossy tyranny of the Eco, DEI and Progressives now – fast – or all the UK will suffer the immiseration of those poor Scots in grey sick towns. But they do not yet get it. Smoking ban??? Pure NHS First nannyism. A Levels, Rosebank and a White Elephant are not enough. Any failure in the war against illegal border entry will seal their fate. Watch next week to see how vapid and hollow, how cynical and dangerous the braindead progressive Labour is.
Not sure what your utopia would be like – Singapore on Thames? (Made me laugh when I read to own a car in Singapore costs an absolute fortune- ULEZ on steroids.) But sure as hell I wouldn’t want to live there, and I don’t think many would. Give me the blob and brain dead progressives any day!
How very odd. So its just Singapore or this? Its not utopian to wish to escape the horrors of your Blob – its lockdown lies and tyranny, its eco fanaticism and bullying, its magic money and high tax misery, its toxic race baiting and gender confusion, its contempt for democracy (2 Ref) and calamitous uncontrolled unplanned population growth. Sounds like you should head north and enjoy a proper battering.
There’s no point to owning a car in Singapore – there’s nowhere to drive to.
Singapore has the Circle Line, and it goes around the whole country.
Who needs a car there?
[Edit]An interesting piece.
Many of us up here are not only resigned to our junior status in this dysfunctional constitutional family, but we lean into it, like a sunburnt drunk leans in to embrace a cactus.”
Some of us in England would like the same public spending formula that Scotland enjoys.
Cut them loose while the body politic has change on their minds (as in Brexit).
Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with them for another 1000 years.
Everywhere deserves better than this! Your description of life on the ground in this constituency could be written about far too many parts of not just Scotland but the whole UK.
Sad, depressing.
All political parties have failed, and will continue to. Labour seem to have given up on the idea of using taxation as a way to redistribute money to deprived areas. Tories appear happy to ignore these places where no one will vote for them. SNP? I don’t know enough to comment.
Years and years and years of a widening gap between the haves and have nots have ended up with too many areas where the standard of living is close to third world standards. Is it simply that the “haves” really want an underclass to use/abuse and feed off?
But now Labour seem to have given up on taxing investment income in the same way that we tax PAYE the outlook is not great – I agree. What is depressing is that far to many – although less so in Scotland – have fallen for the myth that if you are in poverty then, one way or another, it must be your fault. Personal responsibility is important but if you have a job but still need benefits something is wrong.
Yep, this. So much of what is going wrong now boils down to an unfair sharing out of the profits generated by actual work. There’s plenty of money about. It’s just that the wrong people have got it. Why would any young person, not born rich, feel like they have a stake in such a society?
It isn’t surprising that Labour are no longer a labour party. Have you forgotten how the Guardian reacted to Theresa May’s timid suggestion that perhaps some of the billions in unearned property wealth that its readers have accumulated over the past twenty years might be used to pay for their social care? Nowadays leftist ideology among the middle class voters who decide elections is a fashion statement, not a guide to voting intentions.
London’s leftists love Labour (so long as they’re talking about socialism and not threatening to do it). They’re very much in favour of the race hatred and gender weirdness, but asking them to cough up for socialism is a step too far, comrade.
I think ‘the race hatred and gender weirdness’ is basically a way to avoid talking about money.
They want socialism, but only the type that benefits the globalist Lords and their professional manageral courtiers. A socialism that allows them to keep their dubiously productive jobs in the government and the corporations, inflates their housing values, distributes taxpayer money to favorite groups and luxury causes that give them moral authority and social legitimacy, as well as keep the Patronage system that maintains the power networks of their favor. As well as regulates potential economic competition to the established powers out of existence. And finally to keep the underclass contented as a vote Bank through the welfare state, as well as prevent the possibility of revolt through the welfare system by buying them off. Not the type of socialism that benefits the common Man, who they hate and fear. And they want You to pay for it, not themselves.
It’s a protest vote against the incumbents – just like we are seeing across Europe. And don’t read too much into a by-election with a turnout of 37%.
“Swathes of South Lanarkshire…..unglamorous, grey-washed urban purgatories rendered nondescript by post-industrial malaise”
Swathes of Scotland in fact. Almost every Scottish town or city consists of a resaonably attractive period core ringed by such purg-a-tories. In fifty years of visiting/living in Scotland, it never ceases to amaze me that almost no-one, and no local planners/council, have bothered to add a lick of paint to these grey homes – as they so often do in the beloved Ireland & Nordic countries.
“You can really see the draw of becoming a political diehard. Of nailing your colours to the mast and warring till the bitter end. It’s a far simpler existence. You train your eyes and ears for the errors of others, while remaining blind to your own.”
Excellent article.
And I’m sure the SNP now considers that posturing on wokery – instead of real issues – was worth it, lol.
Let’s face it, the SNP blew their mission on wokery.
“It suits both the SNP and Labour to portray themselves as diametrically opposed, but they’re two flaps of the same fanny.”
Well, considering that neither labour, nor the SNP know what a woman is, I wonder what kind of fanny the author is referring to. A memorable sentence in any case!
“..shambles of leaving the EU in the hardest possible fashion …”
You what now ?
Two political machines battling it out to determine the survivor. Like ‘Robot Wars’ but less entertaining.
This chap could have conveyed his sentiments in four sentences.Verbosity thou name is McGarvey.
What’s the point of all this exasperation if you continue to vote for these parties that have shown time and again that they are not your friends?
That’s a good old fashioned rant. And, like all the best rants, any touching of reality is entirely accidental
He’s a bit of a miserabilist I’d like to know what he considers the Golden Age or whatever.
In a very long essay he still doesn’t tell us why Labour dumped their previous MP for a candidate who had recently left the party. Omerta rules?.
Because the essay wasn’t about the candidates.
Three quarters of the SNP voters from 2019 stayed at home, so Labour easily gained the seat with 17,845 votes. In 2017, also from the SNP, Labour narrowly gained the same seat with 19,101 votes. On both sides of the Border, an abysmal ruling party is collapsing, to the benefit by default of a politically identical Opposition (the SNP has not seriously pursued independence in nine years), with more and more people simply finding better things to do. Their votes are up for grabs.
Never mind “Scotland deserves better than this”, England deserves better than Scotland!
Labour claimed this was a “mini-referendum on two failed governments at Holyrood and Westminster” while neglecting to point out that thanks to them we English only have one Parliament, and that Parliament has large numbers of Scots/Irish/Welsh nationalists who out of general antipathy towards England and the English deliberately vote against our interests.
The sooner this so-called “Union” breaks up, the better off we English will be.
If nothing else, I like his writing style!
“There were no big ideas here. No grand visions.”
The grand vision is that the slaves should sell their vote to the highest bidder. And they did.
Why?
Well, welcome to the shit show (from across the pond). What took you so damn long? We’ve been waiting decades.
‘unglamorous, grey-washed urban purgatories rendered nondescript by post-industrial malaise’. Stealing that if only to hug it. I suppose hiphop can be witty with words but closer analysis renders it contradictory. Was it ‘descript’ before and during industry?
Change progressive to regressive. Litmus? going from yellow to red on a gauge is cause for an engineer’s alarm, even post industrials watch the movies. Flaps, makes a change from cheeks but vuukle, disqus? The prim and pious won’t read further.
I like his writing style but is he speaking to Mrs Obese-Alcoholic-Foodbank? Where Unherd is truly unheard, in such a herd.
I’ve just returned from the north. Not quite as far as Scotland but far enough to be colder and wetter than we’ve used to here in the sunny South East. As I drove home yesterday into sunshine and noticed the roadside difference in the colour of the fields which here are turning to straw my mood lifted. No wonder the Scots are a miserable lot. They don’t get enough sunshine.
Great commentary: This paragraph sums up politics everywhere:
“The only people actually buying what the politicians are selling are devout party activists, students yet to be disabused of their naivety, partisan hacks who study politics the way your Auntie Betty studies Emmerdale, and middle-class moderates who’ll swallow any old, reheated pish for stable house prices and a quiet two-driveway life. Nobody else gives a shit. If we can be bothered, we turn up on polling day, we hold our noses, and we vote for whichever party we believe is the least terrible option that year.”
The basic problem here, is that Labour and the SNP define themselves principally by what they’re against, not what they’re for – the Tories and the English, respectively. Hence the weird political vacuum of the by-election campaign.
Poor old Rutherglen voters. Poor old us, this time next year, when Labour and the Tories, heavy on gimmicks (eg banning smoking, or regurgitating trans activists’ lunacies), but light on considered analysis of the country’s problems and plausible plans for addressing them, battle for our votes.
You should write articles.
Flaps?!
History suggests that Scottish independence is almost inevitable in the long run. I do not say this with any enthusiasm. It is just if you look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand or even South Africa, there is a pattern. If London grants a degree of autonomy to a regional group of English speaking politicians then over time it concedes more and more until the region acquires de facto independence. The regional politicians are absorbed by the process; Westminster barely notices it is going on. The only time the London government focuses on the issue is during a crisis; in between policy just drifts. I doubt Scotland will be any different. The moment Donald Dewar persuaded his colleagues that devolution was the antidote to independence, I fear he made the latter inevitable … in the long run.
Nonsense. Scotland is not a colony and it is not 5k or 10k miles away. The comparisons provided are not applicable.
History suggests, nay, history records, that Scotland went broke last time it was independent and as a result pleaded for union with England.
Given that both SNP and Labour are hooked on spending for votes, it’s now simply a competition to see who can provide more free stuff.
Scotland used to be a great and innovative engineering country but now the remaining engineering and innovation, concentrated in northeast Scotland, is under near constant attack from both Westminster and Holyrood
It’s a category error to examples of something and ignore examples because they aren’t that something. Bavaria, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Piedmont, Texas, Burgundy, Aragon, even Quebec, where separatist sentiment is lessening.
If you look at where the SNP are strongest, it’s clear that their supporters prefer dependence – on welfare, drugs, government cash – to independence. During this period of SNP instability, Labour’s taking the chance to regain that constituency.
That’s what we are stuck with in Scotland. Squabbling over handouts.
2 weeks for a GP appointment sounds pretty good to me
TL; DR.
Irvine Welsh with fewer f**ks.
Politicians in Scotland are always in a very difficult position. Unless you visit Scotland, look at the different newspaper headlines to south of the border, hear the pub conversations, and so on, you wouldn’t be aware of how different the political culture is. Remember every single constituency in Scotland Voted remain, and there just isn’t the anti-immigrant, ‘benefit- scroungers’ rhetoric that you get from the Sun and Mail in the South. For example, the two children benefit cap has little support in Scotland – unlike in England. So the kind of message politicians can send in Scotland is utterly at odds with what would work in England. Both Tories and Labour have to say one thing in England and something quite different in Scotland. That’s why they can seem meally mouthed. But then on the other hand an independent Scotland is not really going to work. So the SNP is trying to sell something it can never deliver. Anyway pleased Labour won. Tories lost their deposit! Wonderful! Imagine that in England.
Why wouldn’t an independent Scotland work? Independent Ireland works. Independent Iceland and Norway work.
Of course, if Scotland had to fund it’s own benefits system then the people might change their attitude to welfare scroungers. Of course one thing they won’t ever have to deal with is boatloads of illegal immigrants.
Independent Scotland would cope (although I would be sorry to see them go). They’d be fast tracked into the EU (to spite England) and get plenty of funding. It does feel like the whole issue is off the table now, though.
Are you sure? I would like to observe the meeting between Scottish PM and EU officials in Brussels, cheerfully requesting the same subsidies from the EU budget that the Scots get from the UK!
Scotland wouldn’t be fast-tracked into the EU because Spain will not agree to a precedent which would further encourage Basque and Catalonian separatism.
No, you’re wrong. That would certainly have been the case before Brexit. But Britain is no longer a member of the EU, so all bets are off. I suspect the EU wold be quite amused to admit Scotland.
Yes I’m in two minds about that. Like you I would be sorry to see them go. At the moment I just think we have to accept that it’s not a live issue, which is why Labour have the momentum. Selfish reasons also. If Scotland got independence, in England we would be condemned to years of Tory hell. A kind in government opposition. Endlessly telling us that they couldn’t do anything because of ‘economic orodoxy’ or the ‘blob’ or something.
Independent Ireland did not work for 50 years. While the UK built a welfare state for the disadvantaged, Irish people had to endure a farewell state from which disadvantaged people with aspirations had no option but to flee for work to the the UK and US. All while the malnourished corpses of 1000 orphans were gradually being flushed into the cesspit at Tuam. Levelling up to western European standards of prosperity only came with another 50 years of handouts from the EU, which co-incidentally equated at the beginning to the amount the UK was paying in.
Yes, both my parents came over during WW2. My mother and her sister did their nursing training in London between visits from the Luftwaffe, which gives you an idea of how appealing the west of Ireland was for young people. And my father’s sister moved from County Mayo to New York in 1932…..
A trade war with Britain didn’t help. But if you’d asked ordinary people on the ground, they were still happier than being hassled by your army on a daily basis.
The latter can be arranged.
I’m pretty much ambivalent on Scottish independence. I would probably have voted No if I was Scottish. But I’m not and if Yes is what a majority had chosen then fair enough.
What I don’t really understand is what is meant by statements like an independent Scotland “won’t work”? Scotland is a developed country of 5.5M people (same as Norway and Finland), with lots of natural resources. Its not a TV remote with the batteries taken out.
Like any other large constitutional change there would be transition costs and choices to be made – passports at the border with England perhaps – but it won’t just suddenly stop working.
The choice before the Scottish people should be an honest one allowing them to weigh up the perceived benefits against the perceived costs. At the referendum it was the nationalists “rainbows and unicorns” against the unionists “cliff edge plummet into hell”.
It wouldnt work because Scotland’s people have become punch drunk on handouts. We would plummet. Brexit went badly, partly, in my view, because the electorate and political class were so evenly devided on the issue, and few in public positions of the remain camp would help to foster cohesion and unity of purpose post brexit. Scotland’s independence would be an even damper squib than brexit and a collossal risk to the future wellbeing of our people.
Yup! Excellent summary!
Summary, anyone?
What does the “Loki” have to do with any of this? So what; he has a football terrace nick-name used when he is screaming nationalism at “another” team. That “taxing foreign billionaires” though; I cant even imagine what that was aimed at suggesting…or arousing? Well…a weird envy remixed by crisis-nationalism?
The project for the SNP must now be rejoining the EU if not campaigning directly for Eurozone membership. That might take some of the middle-class vote away from Labour.