Read on Twitter
1/ A thread about being in Scotland, and why Gordon Brown is wrong
I’m an Englishwoman married to a NI/Scot, and a Fifer now for almost 25 years.
I’m an Englishwoman married to a NI/Scot, and a Fifer now for almost 25 years.
2/ Raised in Brussels and London with all the entitled & utterly unwarranted arrogance that rightly infuriates the Scots, Welsh and N. Irish, I used ‘England’ when I meant ‘Britain’ or ‘the UK’, and ‘the English’ when I meant ‘the British’.
I thought it didn't matter. It does.
I thought it didn't matter. It does.
3/ For decades, Scotland had been overlooked, taken for granted and disparaged by Westminster politicians - even the ones supposed to represent her interests, as they bartered & horse-traded along old Con/Labour party lines.
4/ Yes, we are but 5 million to England’s 56m, but it's easy to forget that for many years throughout the 1980s, oil-rich Scotland was a net contributor to the UK balance sheet.
5/ As such it genuinely rankles, being merely an afterthought to the London-centric Westminster parliament - a complaint shared by many in the north of England, too.
6/ Nonetheless, in the years until the run up to the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, I never once personally encountered anti-English feeling. Banter, lots - and pretty high grade stuff, often bitingly pointed. Disagreement, yes, sometimes.
7/ But nothing prepared me for the dehumanising wave of manufactured hate and bile that washed through my beloved adopted country in the run up to Indyref. The First Minister would like it to be recorded by history as ‘civic and joyous’. The hell it was.
It was vitriolic.
It was vitriolic.
8/ I was naive not to have realised that for the proponents of separatism, the image of romantic dreams wasn't convincing enough to blur the inconvenient truths of what they proposed, and the only other tool at their disposal was a mallet of hate, and by God they hammered away.
9/ The only argument left for Indyref was a nationalist one that stoked the flames of resentment against the English, blaming them - and ‘Westmonster’ - for all of Scotland's ills, and we live with the poisonous fallout to this day.
10/ The resultant bitterness and division wasn’t quite enough to swing the vote in Scotland, so now hate is being fomented elsewhere: the SNP tactic appears to be to behave so repulsively to the English that the English themselves want to be shot of us.
11/ Look at the behaviour of our SNP MPs and MSPs. No area is out of bounds to sow division, to give and take offense, to childishly posture, to provoke. Even our joint fight against COVID takes a poor second place to the optics of SNP against the English.
12/ It makes absolutely no sense that SNP politicians and supporters clamour to rejoin the EU and it baffles me that no media calls them out on the impossible, un-credible position they are taking:
13/ regardless of the savage cliffs of austerity that we would have to scale to meet EU criteria, if what you truly want is independence then why on earth would you give your power of self determination away, to become an irrelevant minor satellite to a vast federal project?
14/ The bare bones economic difference between Brexit and Scexit, and why the UK stands a good chance of thriving outside the EU while Scotland would suffer outside the UK?
15/ It's this:
The UK was a net contributor to the EU, and imports more from the EU than we export to them.
Not only is Scotland a net beneficiary of the UK, a full 60% of Scottish exports go to RoUK.
(and only 19% to the EU)
The UK was a net contributor to the EU, and imports more from the EU than we export to them.
Not only is Scotland a net beneficiary of the UK, a full 60% of Scottish exports go to RoUK.
(and only 19% to the EU)
16/ No matter how energetically separatists might squirm in wishful hypothetical financial projections, they cannot escape that brutal reality.
17/ My family is practically an embodiment of the Union (minus Wales), yet if I believed that the people of Scotland would best be served by separating from the UK, then I would not - could not - cast my vote against it, though it would break my heart.
18/ There are many honourable people who wish for an independent Scotland, and not on the basis of hatred for the English - I don’t share their hopes, but I do respect them and their views.
19/ They tend to be the ones advocating getting our own house in order first, in order to lessen the inevitable impact of the split, and counsel remaining outside the EU. They stand by their principles and they are committed to the long game.
20/ Anyone agitating for a Scottish referendum anytime soon is either a fool who doesn’t know the damage it will cause or a knave who doesn’t care.
To wish for independence now is an act of such wanton self harm it chills the blood.
To wish for independence now is an act of such wanton self harm it chills the blood.
21/ The financial devastation that would descend on pensions, state services, investment, healthcare, education, the arts - it is insane.
There is NO current economic argument for separation - it would be state suicide, with the poorest paying the highest price.
There is NO current economic argument for separation - it would be state suicide, with the poorest paying the highest price.
22/ The leading proponents of separatism are too smart not to know this full well, and I wonder how they sleep at night.
And devolution?
And devolution?
23/ As long as a separatist, nationalist party is in power with the voters that it inflamed baying for an immediate referendum, devolution will never be given a chance to work.
24/ The SNP has an actual DIS-incentive to make use of its many powers and levers - after all, if they were running the country effectively and all were seeing the benefits, who would risk the danger of voting for separation?
25/ At the current vicious and emotive level of debate, devolution has to be made to fail in order for the argument ‘this appalling situation is Westminster’s fault and the only answer is independence’ to hold.
26/ So our schools tank, our drug deaths rise, our hospitals stay shut, our ferries unbuilt, our investment halted, our communities divided, our future squandered, all for a poisoned nationalist mirage.
27/ If fellow Fifer @OfficeGSBrown thinks more devolution is the answer, I fear he hasn’t been paying attention.
I honestly don’t know where we go from here.
I honestly don’t know where we go from here.
28/ But I do have a request. Stop equating the SNP with Scotland, and with all Scots.
You English can be bloody annoying but the quiet majority of us value our Union and are proud of being Scottish and British.
Don’t let the SNP divide us.
You English can be bloody annoying but the quiet majority of us value our Union and are proud of being Scottish and British.
Don’t let the SNP divide us.
