Posts Tagged ‘nationalism’

The Tories are within 4 points of Scottish Labour. What a time to try to “outflank the SNP from the left”

04/02/2016, 05:03:37 PM

by Rob Marchant

Uncut has not spoken much about Scotland recently but, as the gaze of Britain’s political machine turns briefly northwards, as it does every four years, that will change.

It is right that it will, and this time it should not be brief. This is not just because the Holyrood elections are almost upon us. It is because Labour’s short-to-medium-term success, and perhaps its very survival, depends on a Scottish turnaround.

Why? Let’s just look at the basic electoral arithmetic. As Lewis Baston pointed out in an outstanding analysis at LabourList, because of its wipeout in Scotland, Labour needs a bigger swing than it had in the 1997 general election to win in 2020.

That is, a bigger swing even than its best-ever post-war result.

It would be a tall order for a party even at the height of its popularity and which had not for the last five years neglected swing seats in the South East which it had won in 1997 and needed to win again.

And this was all chasing the frankly imbecilic notion that it could squeeze into power on the back of a leftish “progressive majority”, consisting of discontented Lib Dem and Green voters turning towards Labour.

Now consider a party which, on top of that, has its most unpopular leader since records began.

It is not merely a tall order. It is impossible. It is difficult to overestimate the extent to which Labour’s comfortable hegemony in Scotland has provided Labour’s electoral safety net during its postwar opposition years. We are now living a historical anomaly for Labour.

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The entwined challenges that the SNP and UKIP may pose PM Miliband

21/04/2015, 10:59:14 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Scotland is diminished inside the UK, argues Alex Salmond. The UK is diminished inside the EU, says Nigel Farage. Scotland did not vote for David Cameron, insists Salmond. The UK didn’t vote for Jean-Claude Juncker, maintains Farage. It would be “nae bother” for Scotland to break up the UK, asserts Salmond. It would be “no problem” for the UK to leave the UK, claims Farage.

Salmond briefly seemed a broken man after the defeat of Yes last September. Having promised to resign the leadership of UKIP if he doesn’t win South Thanet, defeat for Farage on 7 May would also leave him broken. But Salmond has been reborn, as support for Yes has wholly transferred to the SNP. Farage might be reborn too.

Salmond’s rebirth has been enabled by glacial shifts in Scottish opinion that now appear to have unstoppable momentum but which built up over a long period, going undetected by those focused on Westminster. No Scottish seats in the UK parliament changed hands in 2010. The SNP gained two seats at the 2005 general election and lost one at the 2001 general election. The churn over the same period in elections to the Scottish Parliament, however, was much more dramatic. The SNP gained 20 additional seats in 2007, 23 in 2011.

If we look only at the lack of 2010 seat change in Scotland, the SNP’s rise appears inexplicable. If we look instead at recent elections to the Scottish parliament, it seems less so. Perhaps for reasons wrapped up with the referendum, decisive numbers of Scots are now prepared to entrust the SNP with their support in the UK Parliament, as well as in the Scottish Parliament. The decision factor for voters may have migrated from “who is best to lead the UK?” to “who will get the best deal for Scotland?”

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Blair is wrong. There should be a referendum on the EU – and pro-Europeans can win it

09/04/2015, 11:40:55 AM

“Nationalism is a powerful sentiment” warned Tony Blair on Tuesday. “Let that genie out of the bottle and it is a Herculean task to put it back. Reason alone struggles.”

Thus, the great communicator joins a long line of patrician pro-Europeans in British politics who have baulked at the prospect of holding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, ever fearful of relying on the critical faculties of the British public in case they arrive at the ‘wrong’ answer and vote to leave.

It is a dispiriting and reductive view of the electorate’s judgment.

It is also the most glaring example of where a narrow political class has decided what is best for us and cannot – will not – brook further discussion.

But a debate needs to be had. Most obviously, the EU we have today is not the “common market” the public voted for forty years ago in our one and only referendum on the subject. It is not even the EU we had when Blair was Prime Minister.

More recently, the failings of the Eurozone and the unintended consequences from the uncontrolled free movement of people have poisoned the political debate across much of the continent and seen the flames of real nationalism rise amid endless economic gloom and the impact of low-skilled immigration.

In response, the battered consensus in British politics that our membership of the EU is A Good Thing needs refounding from first principles. Europe is still a cause worth fighting for and Blair was spot-on when he said “the objective case for Europe has actually never been stronger”.

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