Dear All
When Nigel Farage left UKIP, and setup his
new party, he effectively sucked the life out of Ukip, election results and
voter share was dire. In the wake of Farage’s departure, UKIP couldn’t steady
their ship via new leaders. It seemed the party has in a relatively short time
gone through leaders like a bushfire in the Oz outback. Post Farage, the
leadership has been held by Diane James, Paul Nuttall, Henry Bolton, Gerrad
Batten, Richard Braine, and now has Patricia Mountain as the acting leader according
to wiki.
Post Farage, the only real chance of moving
on was via Diane James. Her leadership started and ended very quickly, a pity
because she had presentational skills and presence that others didn’t have.
The only other person who came close was
Gerrad Batten who was attacked when he appointed Tommy Robinson as an advisor.
The press takes a running interest in Robinson because of his previous EDL
links, his reporting of Muslim rape gangs which they mostly ignored in
reporting until forced and his background, when the press decide to target you,
you can either disappear or take the hits and move on, Robinson hasn’t gone
away.
In the upcoming Holyrood 2021, we could see
various groups of pro Uk parties take the stage especially vying for the list
seats. Whether these groups get organize and split the vote remains to be seen.
Already there is talk about one of the pro Uk parties having a revamp to field
candidates for Holyrood.
The main interest in Holyrood 2021 is
denying the SNP a majority. Majority or not however there will be no indyref 2
post that election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said no, not while he is
PM. I think, we can expect a crowded but will that have a ripple effect. If you
look at Scottish Labour in Glasgow, they probably don’t think they can win a
first past the post seat, so are banking on getting 4 on the list. But what if
a pro UK party can upset their apple cart and they only return 3 seats? I get
no sense of urgency about Scottish Labour in terms of being motivated because
at present there is a deputy leadership contest between ‘the left’ and ‘the
right’, Corbynista Vs Blairite.
In the wake of Brexit, the Scottish
Landscape will change; Brexit is coming, and with it seems that Ukip in
Scotland has a new mission, abolish Holyrood. 20 years of devolution hasn’t
brought forward a better nation, it has been made worse under the SNP. The
Parliament at Holyrood is described as a second rate parliament with third rate
politicians running it, there is a lot of mileage in that description that
people can recognise.
The first question is what chance has UKIP
of breaking into the private club?
None in 2021!
They didn’t stand in the Westminster 2019
election in Scotland, they are effectively dead in the water, and the other
mainstream pro Uk parties such as the Labour Party, Conservatives, and Lib Dems
will not support their view or their mission. Add in no backing from the SNP
obviously and the Scottish Greens, or any widespread public support or civic
public campaign and you get the picture of them reaching for something well out
of reach.
Holyrood is here to stay a shining beacon
of failure to deliver, a farce where democracy, the little version is played
out in a private club atmosphere, and where the majority of the MSPs are middle
class university graduates. The reason that Holyrood won’t get abolished even
if UKIP can make a “proper Unionist case” for reverting to the pre-devolution
status is greed, Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas and neither do middle class
university graduates for unemployment.
UKIP will probably find little support for
their cause, a recent Survation poll showing 16 per cent of Scots favour
scrapping Holyrood and 13% think it should have fewer powers. And the crucial question
was how many of the 16% were Ukip voters. The mentality now in Scotland is how
to make devolution work; this is more or less right across the board. When starting
a campaign, you must consider what people want, and also temper what you want
in some respects; UKIP’s leadership has obviously been carried away with what
they want to the exclusion of everything else.
They are in one policy
effectively killing off any chance of winning a single seat.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow
University
3 comments:
UKIP have been a joke since the Euro elections last year, if they weren't before.
[1/2] Makes a change, but I could hardly disagree with your post more, George.
wrt polls, how often do they have to be wrong before it is acknowledged they are the very crudest of guides to how people feel?
You write: ‘The mentality now in Scotland is how to make devolution work’. And the SNP insist that ‘the people of Scotland’ don’t want to leave the EU (even though 1,018,322 of us voted to do exactly that) and want to be independent (even though 2,001,926 of us rejected that).
Clearly none of us have any idea what the Scottish electorate feel about ending devolution, and we won’t know unless we get a second Devolution referendum.
It is impossible to make this irredeemably flawed devolution model work. It is too remote geographically from the communities it rules, and MSPs lack the varied knowledge to rule those disparate communities—which is also true of Westminster but the latter has advantages that Holyrood never will in respect of being able to treat with other nations, and unite the energies and capabilities of our entire nation.
Holyrood was created with two specific aims:
1) To settle nationalist aspirations, with the 1997 White Paper on Scottish devolution stating: ‘The Union will be strengthened by recognising the claims of Scotland, Wales and the regions with strong identities of their own. The Government’s devolution proposals, by meeting these aspirations, will not only safeguard but also enhance the Union.’
It could not have failed more in that, only encouraging petty-nationalisms across our Kingdom, and was allowed to get far too close to ending our ‘long island story’ in 2014.
2) To devolve power to a more localised level. And it has manifestly failed to do that, as the SNP build their little empire by (quasi-)nationalising everything they can under their political control: quasi-national police and fire service, pushing to grab Scottish components of the British Transport Police, etc.
Political power should be at two levels. As much power as possible should be in the hands of the burghs—not in faraway Westminster, not in almost as faraway Holyrood, not even in remote counties, but on the spot: the burghs. What burghs cannot do for themselves—defence, foreign policy, etc.—is for Westminster, who can best utilise and deploy national assets as required. E.g. on behalf of fishing communities, Westminster can negotiate treaties, agree fishing grounds and deploy our navy to protect those fishing grounds.
The advantage of burgh autonomous local government—this being the kind of government that we evolved and enjoyed for centuries, until powers were gradually removed over the course of the 20th Century with the final nail in the coffin of local government being Heath’s 1974 Act—is that it allows communities to run themselves according to their character. Britons obviously have much in common, but there are differences in temperament and attitude—and not just between Scots and English, but between Geordies and Londoners, Glaswegians and Aberdonians, etc. So, e.g. the kind of hard men needed to police the Gorbals are not desirable for bucolic Inverness; so Inverness Burgh Police (1847–1968) could recruit more of a ‘Dickson of Dock Green’ constable while City of Glasgow Police (1800–1975) would recruit more of a Jack Regan/Gene Hunt type. The problem with the regional constabularies replacing the burgh, made even worse with Police Scotland, is that they are too much of a one-size-fits-all solution—we end up with the Gene Hunts bullying their way down Inverness High Street while Dickson nervously makes his way through the Gorbals.
The notion that we must make this unnecessary layer of government work is equivalent to handing an injured person a leaflet, ‘Living With Gangrene’ and giving him some air-freshener. No. Cure it. And demand its cure if no-one is trying.
[2/2] Granted, UKIP is probably finished as a political party; but that is separate from trying to make our country better by getting rid of the abortion that is Holyrood.
Can we do so? The means are there. Sovereignty resides in our Parliament in Westminster (and never mind folderol like it being ‘a permanent part of the United Kingdom's constitutional arrangements’—it is a fundamental principle of Parliamentary sovereignty that one parliament may not bind another). If the SNP do something stupid like calling an illegal referendum or declaring UDI, Parliament has the legal power and duty to immediately suspend the rogue (treasonous in the case of UDI) assembly pending formal abolition. Note that we suspended Stormont in 1972, abolished it in 1973, and since its re-establishment in 1998, it has been suspended four times so far. If we can do that in NI in the face of multiple well-armed, murderous terrorist groups, it will be a peace of p*ss in pacific Scotland (most we have to fear is enraged SNP’ers going on a teacake-smashing frenzy).
We can push for a second Devolution referendum, as provided for by Part 2A, Section 63A(3) of the Scotland Act 1998 c.46. This has none of the constitutional implications of a second independence referendum: it’s been 23 years, a respectable interval; and, unlike independence and EU referendums, it is harmless regardless of result. If nothing else, it will keep the SNP busy for a while protecting their phoney-baloney jobs.
The simplest way to end the Devolution fiasco is to include it in a party manifesto. The Tory government need only stonewall the SNP until the next election while committing in their manifesto to replacing the current Devolution model. Job done.
‘Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage’ and close that damned assembly.
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