The Scottish Tories Are Deservedly Unpopulat Because Of The Callous PM who Deliberately Destroyed Our Industry And Killed Communities

     This is to prove some ideas I have about the fall of the Conservative Party in Scotland (and thus of the apparent fall in support for market freedom so long as there was no other credible free market party here).

   At the start of this Scotland gave the Tories just over 50% of the vote, more than Labour has ever achieved. By comparison Wales was always dodgy ground for them and in fact if you bear in nmind that neither main party hopes to get above 40% of the UK vote now a Tory drop of 4% from 30% to 26% there proportionately counts as a gain - certainly so compared to Labour.

    The first Tory drop here is from 50% to just under 40% over the 15 years between 1955 and 1970. That loss is serious. It covers the period of the Conservative councillors, who used to fight under the name Progressives (a title the left now claim so I assume they think it is attractive) largely dropped that name and became Conservative. This was the end of a particularly Scottish, anti-socialist, political institution which didn't suit the vision of Tory "modernisers" of the time and which incidentally suited the Unionist vote - basically the group of, mainly protestant Liberals who at the end of the 19thC or later, split from them over Irish home rule. They were willing to work with the Tories but were never really were comfortable being them. The protestant unionist vote was a group Tory "modernisers" were embarrassed to have supporting them. Even so, while losing 12% of the vote is a bad fall, remember that this was the period when the SNP first won Hamilton and became something more than a fringe and when the Liberals were rising from the edge of non-existence to 7.5% in 1970 so probably half of this drop can be put down to these factors.

     The 36 years from late 1974 to 2010 shows a drop from 24% to 17%. Again bad but not a disaster, at least as counts the amount of change. There was a UK wide drop up to 2005 of 4% (though they recovered elsewhere in 2010 - Gordon Brown was not as unpopular here  as elsewhere). There was a greater fall here during Thatcher's 2nd and 3rd elections but it was certainly not the "electoral poison" she is claimed to have been. I think some of that can be blamed on their opposition to devolution and some (though the better than UK recovery in 1992 suggests not much) to the coal industry being bigger here.

       The real disaster in Scottish Conservative voting was from 1970 to late 1974. A 4 year period that saw them fall from 38% to 24%. 37% of their voters gone. Now that is the definition of electoral disaster.

      So what was the cause of this. I am going to say it was Ted Heath's selling out of the fishing industry to join the EU. The EU's common fisheries policy, that the fish belonged to the whole EU not the countries in whose waters they were, was cynically cobbled together hours before negotiations with would be new members started. Heath and his supporters made it absolutely clear that they were willing to sell out our industry. It was, after all, an industry concentrated in far away Scotland, in small towns and villages where the metropolitan media never go. In his calculation of the political balance of power these people, their livelihoods and homes were expendable to achieve Heath's dream of membership of the EEC.

      Since fishing was a largely a small business, with captains owning their ships, it was not unionised. These towns and villages, didn't have the support of massive union power (much more massive then than now) and their PR and machines and flying picket thugs. Their fate has barely stirred the surface of the UK political and media class. While media pundits still lament how Thatcher destroyed mining communities (she didn't, economics did) they are simply ignorant of how Heath, quite deliberately and with no economic justification at all, murdered (murder being deliberate planned killing) Scottish fishing communities. But it stirred Scotland into considering that not only were we being ignored by London (we always knew that and being ignored by Westminster is not so bad) but that we were actively expendable and betrayable.

      It may be 40 years on and the party may, or may claim to be, offering us the chance to leave, but the Scottish Tories deserve every single lost vote.

      But the SNP don't deserve any better. The Tories may have murdered the industry but the self styled "Scottish National Party" have kept on mutilating the body. Nobody, not even the LibDems, are more enthusiastic for us staying in the EU. Nobody, certainly not the present Tories, are as keen to pay our membership of the EU in Scotland's fish. Though it is certain the terms of membership of a their "independent" Scotland would involve far more than what the EU already have from Britain. The SNP know the people of Scotland would never support another such sell out - that is why this most unpatriotic of parties has said it would not allow us a vote on rejoining the EU.

       Yet the fishing fields are still there. A fair proportion of the fish are too, despite EU overfishing and they should recover if there were a few years of only the current UK landings taking place. If there were the political will to do so.

       What the people of Scotland, and particularly the coastal fishing regions, need is a genuinely patriotic Scottish party (Scottish and British patriotism being entirely compatible) putting forward a Scottish programme which would include quitting the EU and allowing the British fishing industry to be as good as ever. Or better.

       

Christopher Booker Takes Me As A Source

   The above estimable Christopher Booker has a Telegraph blog discussing Anne Glover's criticism of the EU making scientific policy on political rather than scientific grounds.

   In it I am flattered to say he mentions this blog as his source. I assume he got it from his regular co-writer Dr Richard North of EU Referendum, where I mentioned it a few days ago:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/10882714/EU-science-is-twisted-says-its-top-expert.html

she launched into a trenchant attack on how the Commission routinely ignores scientific evidence when this contradicts some “political imperative” it has decided on for other reasons, such as pressure from lobby groups. On a whole range of issues, it has then hired reports from lavishly paid consultants to come up with the arguments it needs to support its political agenda.

There may be little new about this to hardened Brussels-watchers, but what was surprising was its source.
 

The only thing that rather weakened Prof Glover’s case was pointed out by her fellow-Scot, Neil Craig, who had reported on his blog (A Place To Stand) a speech he heard her make a while back on climate change. On this she had clearly bought the official groupthink line, lock, stock and barrel, explaining how rising CO₂ levels must inexorably lead to warming (even though world temperatures themselves have now managed to ignore this thesis for 17 years).

She even suggested that global warming might lengthen the hours of daylight in Scotland. When it comes to brushing aside evidence, it seems, this biologist can be just as wonky as those she criticises in Brussels.

   This is the 2nd time something I blogged has been taken up by the Telegraph blogsphere. A few years ago James Delingpole followed up my interpretation of Sir Paul Nurse's BBC lecture on "climate change" as showing him trying to redefine his position as the one the sceptics have always held - that something may be happening but it isn't remotely catastrophic.

Sunday Telegraph today, p 26

Ukraine - NATO/EU Anti-Democratic & Pushing For A Fight

  

Ukraine: this isn’t a revolution – it’s regime change Let’s call a spade a spade: Western politicians have usurped an elected leader.

 

Even in this era of rampant political spin and platitudes, where George Orwell’s claim that political language is used and abused to ‘make lies sound truthful and murder respectable’ has never been truer, the commentary on Ukraine stands out for its dishonesty. Western observers tell us there has been a revolution in that benighted nation. They claim revolutionaries have overthrown a dictator. They say the people of Ukraine have risen up and deposed their despot, and are now ‘experiencing the intense emotions expressed so eloquently by Thomas Paine in 1776 [in his writings on the American War of Independence]’. It is hard to remember the last time political language was so thoroughly used to obfuscate reality, to impose inappropriate historical narratives on to a messy modern-day event. For what we have in Ukraine is not revolution, but regime change, set in motion far more by the machinations of Western politicians than by the stone-throwing of Ukrainians.

   Says Brendan O'Neill on Spiked  I commented and got supportive comments

neilcraig • 4 days ago

It isn't just, or even primarily, western "mediation" in terms of verbal pressure.

It is $5 bn admitted by the US government to have been spent by them on funding hooligans, thugs, rioters and terrorists or "democracy awareness raising programmes" and presumably at least the same again from the assorted EU countries

If somebody gave Millwall supporters $1 million to occupy Parliament square it would get occupied. Why should Ukrainians be different?

 

Miriam Fraser    

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine may well be the geopolitical prize nobody can afford to win http://www.mail.com/int/news/us/2677510-facing-collapse-ukraine-costly-prize-west.html#.1258-stage-hero1-10

• neilcraig - Marvellous comment by you exposing a truly chilling possible reality - scary

 
 And she is right, at least in the first part. This is not being done because our leaders are remotely interested in democracy (here or in Ukraine or Syria or Saudi Arabia), nor because there is anything to be gained by NATO owning Ukraine, which there obviously isn't, but because they can. And because it is always useful to have an external enemy to concentrate the people's minds on.

   But these idiots are playing with fire. This has all the feel of drawing lines in the sand, that intersect, that led to WW1 fought over the right to decide the fate of Serbia. Nobody expected that would devolve into such a destructive European war and everybody wanted to make the other guy back down.

    The only good news is that, despite the militaristic propaganda and censorship of the BBC & the rest of the media that follow them, online comments, both here and in the US, show a significant majority aren't buying any more.

Unionist Tactical Voting

      This suggestion that unionists of all parties vote UKIP in the EU election to spike the SNP possibility of taking the LibDem seat, in Brian Monteith's Scotsman column recently:

Meanwhile a Scotsman ICM poll for the European elections put SNP on 43 per cent, Labour 24 per cent, Tories 14 per cent, Ukip 7 per cent and Lib Dems 5 per cent.

The impact of such a demise for Lib Dems will first be tested in the elections for the European parliament at the end of this May. If the polling is sustained and Ukip remains ahead then there is every likelihood that the SNP and Labour will both win two seats and the Conservatives one. The remaining European seat, currently held by Liberal Democrat George Lyon, will be up for grabs – with specific European polling suggesting the SNP most likely to seize it.

Ukip needs to break the threshold of 11-12 per cent to have a chance of taking the Liberal Democrat’s place, but with some recent in-fighting and, as yet, no significant inroads into the Scottish political psyche, the party looks set to fall short. Competing parties might well welcome any failure by Ukip to establish a bridgehead in Scotland but there is of course another way to look at such an outcome – through the prism of the current nationalist versus unionist debate as we approach the independence referendum.

If the SNP gains the Liberal Democrat European seat we can expect the bragging knob to be turned up to full volume; we will be told it is the SNP gathering momentum before the referendum and that the unionist parties have been dealt a mortal blow by the Scottish people. The fact that unionist parties will still have polled, jointly, a likely 50-plus per cent will be brushed aside.

It will also be said that the repudiation of Ukip by the Scottish electorate – in contrast to what is expected to be a triumph for the party in England – is confirmation that Scotland is different from the rest of the United Kingdom and further evidence that the country would be far better severing its 307-year-old political partnership.

In other words, any demise of the Liberal Democrats that does not result in a corresponding gain by Ukip will greatly assist the nationalist campaign with only three and a half months to go before the 18 September ballot.

It would not be unreasonable to expect that as the European elections approach that voters begin to think what they would like to do and – in that context only – the support for Ukip in Scotland increases, possibly by enough to win one of the six seats. The Scottish electorate has a habit of thinking about the destination of the politicians it elects by either voting for different parties for different institutions – or staying at home and not bothering to vote at all.

Thus we find that in 2010 the Scottish voters not only voted to keep Labour in power but did so in greater numbers than they had in 2005 – but by the following summer had not only voted for the SNP to stay in government but to give it an unprecedented overall majority.

Likewise the Scottish Conservatives’ supporters have traditionally turned out disproportionately well
for the European elections. So this year’s could be a close-run thing. On current polling the SNP and Labour should be certain of two seats each, the Conservatives should manage to hold their single seat and then we have a three-way fight for the remaining place – with the Liberal Democrats in free-fall, Ukip on the up and the next best party in proportional share, because of traditionally poor Labour turn out, likely to be the SNP.

I therefore wish to posit this thought and maybe start a few hares running: if it was right to vote tactically in the 1997 general election to help wipe out the Tories, would it not be right for unionists to vote tactically this May to ensure the SNP does not gain a third MEP and thus land a blow against its independence campaign? If Labour voters need an excuse to go to the polls, could voting Ukip give them one?

In other words, should uncommitted unionists, Labour and Conservative supporters and yes, even Liberal Democrats, loan their vote to Ukip so that they win one seat to go with those won by Labour and the Conservatives?

Cunning and cynical? Certainly, but no more so than the tactical voting that deprived the 493,059 Conservative supporters in Scotland of any parliamentary representation in 1997
----------------------------------------
PS No response from any "LibDem" to my acceptance of Clegg's (& previously Kennedy's) challenge to a serious debate on EU membership. I assume they have decided they would lose in any debate where both sides were allowed to speak, and will stick with the BBC, where no such risk exists.

Bluff, Bluster and Bullying

   So Alex Salmond has described the decision that it would not be economically sensible of a separated UK to saddle itself as a guarantor of an SNP £.

    And he should know since bluff and bluster are his stock in trade and his enthusiasm for violence to suppress political debate by UKIP is well known, shows bullying is too.

    However the hysteria does seem to be getting near the surface as he keeps pounding the obviously ludicrous line that we can be in a £ club, and if Mr Baroso knows anything about it, the EU club too, which doesn't want us in.

    The sensible thing would be to change their line and say they now really do believe in separation from both £ & EU. The Scottish case for being out of the EU is even better than for the UK as a whole because Ted Heath deliberately sold our fishing industry down the river to get in and leaving would allow us to rebuild it.

     Sturgeon today, while sticking to the party line, did say that nobody could prevent us continuing to use the £ as some use the $. Clearly she has been reading this blog from a few days ago.

      But in bluffing and blustering Salmond today said that England will indeed want to share liability for the £ with us because otherwise it will cost English business £500 million a year in transaction costs.

      That is an admission that, if so, the same must be true for us (£100 per person per year). Probably considerably more because ours will be the less internationally traded currency. And presumably there are many other instances where moving out of the global network will cost us more which he has not yet blurted out on this fit of annoyance.

EU Costs Scots £8,000 Per Family - £336 billion a year by 2035 - No news In Scottish Media

The average Dutch household could be better off by over £8,000 a year and national income will grow by over £1 trillion [by 2035] if the Netherlands leaves the euro and the EU, according to a new study.
 

The study by the respected British Capital Economics research consultancy into "Nexit" - as a potential exit by the Netherlands has been termed - finds significant benefits over the next two decades if the country swaps its EU membership for a status similar to Switzerland or Norway.

 

I commented:

 

neilcraig 

The £8,000 per household fits fairly well with Tim Congdon's assessment that EU membership costs us £170 bn (about £6K per household) but I am pleased they also include the effect on long term growth which is the main effect. The EU is the only world zone in recession - the rest is growing at an average of 6% a year. This is not something that our media mention - they keep blaming our problems on what they know to be a non-existent "world recession".

The important thing is not whether this report is more or less authoritative than Professor Congdon's but that there are a whole series of such, virtually all of which come to broadly similar conclusions.

Also that our own beloved government have always refused to authorise their own investigation.

   The Netherland's population is 16.8 million - 3 1/3rd Scotland's so that would be £336 billion more in the Scottish economy or £3.7 trillion for the UK by 2035. Do not expect to hear this getting BBC coverage or indeed mentioned by any of the cartel of parties in Holyrood who, whether they want "independence" from the UK or not are agreed in opposing independence from Brussels.

    Bear in mind that several polls have shown that most people would be persuadable on Salmond's pretend "independence" if it could be shown they would be either £500 a year better or worse off after separation. Yet we are being prevented, not least by the nominally independence supporting SNP, from having a referendum on the entity that creates 75% of our legislation.

     I have sent this as a letter to most of the Scottish press. We will, as normal, see if this is another of these things you may not say in Scottish politics.