Comments on Scottish Unionist: Featured CyberNat: “Jay Kay”

>>I'm going to let your Labour Party com...

2008-08-06T22:05:00.000+01:00

>>I'm going to let your Labour Party comments slide, because I hold no candle for any party.

I'd content that this is relevant to you though as the future of the union is linked to the future of the Labour Party... We know which side the SNP are on. The Tories are the great adapters - don't be at all shocked if they change course or at least embrace a "home rule" concept. The LibDems are really nowhere in the argument and are going to be irrelevant in the debate. Its the Labour Party that has the most to lose....

I'm going to let your Labour Party comments slide,...

2008-08-06T21:32:00.000+01:00

I'm going to let your Labour Party comments slide, because I hold no candle for any party. Just a few other quick points...

The Iraq war may indeed not have been legal. It's a highly technical argument and expert opinion is mixed.

But leaving that aside, here's Rob Gibson's full sentence, in all its opportunistic glory:

"The Blair regime must be indicted for war crimes and the writ of British rule removed from our way of life."

"Our" way of life. Not the English, Welsh or N.Irish. No no, that's not "our" way of life. "We" are different. It's all in the subtext, don't you see?

I can't agree with your attempt to excuse the "great Satan" comment, especially given its connotations.

Nor do I accept your "tu quoque" argument when it comes to English nationalism etc.

Good to have achieved some degree of consensus though. A pleasant change from the Scotsman/Herald boards!

OK.. So I half accept some of your points and half...

2008-08-06T19:50:00.000+01:00

OK.. So I half accept some of your points and half disagree .. see how reasonable some of us Nats are ;-)

I think we all know some langauge however well intentioned is dangerous and likely to used by those at the extremities: Whilst that is a problem elsewhere - for instance the immigration debate is hijacked by the BNP etc. - I simply don't see any evidence of real tangible extremism in Scotland latching onto language, save for a few scotsman.com nutcases. Point taken though and I know that we can never be to careful etc etc..

Other comments you make are however missing/stretching a point or deliberately po-faced and humourless: Rob Gibson and the SNP were definitely not alone in the view that the Iraq war was illegal. With regards to Kenny MacAskill's football quote, it was simply that - a football quote! Across the land people could joke that a sporting rival is the "great Satan" ... and worse!! Does it mean anything more than that? Absolutely not - c'mon... As for "anti-Scottish prejudices", Tories and a few fringe English "independence" parties are indeed starting make hay by painting the Scots as subsidy junkies - it came out as an issue during the London mayoral elections. I'm sure as you don't agree with that?

Instead of constantly addressing the independence question at a high-level it would be interesting for a change to examine trends in Scottish politics: For instance, with or without independence how can the Labour Party recover from the current position? See Robbie Dinwoodie today: http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/politicalblogs/index.php?act=userlist&id=2763

What are they going to do about the very real lack of talent in the Labour Party in Holyrood? When will they start investing in talented people that want to bring progressive politics to Scotland instead of those that just want a safe seat? The elected Scottish Labour Party is too full of career policy wonks (the Alexanders), those that got there because it was Buggins turn (much of the rest of the West Coast lot), those who felt that the Labour Party was the only place to have a political career, those that are just plain embarrasing baffoons (Foulkes and Baillie) and even those that are perfectly capable of arguing a point - such as Cairns and Curran - seem to prefer to define themselves by how much they publicly hate the SNP rather than what they would like to do for Scotland. How should or can the Labour Party change in order to bring people back to the fold...? The negative campaigning isn't working - the Labour Party simply must be willing to understand why people are moving directly across to the SNP, acknowledge the policy differences that are needed for their Scottish electorate and then start to offer positive reasons for moving back...

Great blog!

Stumbled on it through a link ...

2008-08-06T13:52:00.000+01:00

Great blog!

Stumbled on it through a link on SNPtacticalvoting, and its good to see both sides having their say.

Mind you, I fear you're going to get a lot of abuse, if what appears on the Scotsman/Herald websites is the norm.

But keep it up - if only to spite them!

Company Law

Thanks for your comment. But yo...

2008-08-06T11:31:00.000+01:00

Company Law

Thanks for your comment. But you’re misconstruing my motives. I made it plain in my post that comments such as Jay Kay’s represent a “fringe”.

I accept that a unionist fringe exists, that people on both sides of the debate can get shirty and that it hampers anything approximating constructive debate.

But the key difference is that some - not all - of Jay Kay’s views may be fed by official SNP positions and/or statements which SNP politicians have made. To my knowledge, none of the unionist parties do likewise.

Take his idea that nationalists are “true scots”, for example. Winnie Ewing once described the unionist parties as only “claiming to be Scottish”. See the link?

Or consider his reference to the Saltire as “our flag and no other”. That mirrors the headline of an article by Christine Grahame, which claimed that the Saltire is the “only flag for us”.

His view that Gordon Brown should be “facing criminal charges” has parallels with Rob Gibson’s call for the “Blair regime” to be “indicted for war crimes”. That’s the vilification agenda again.

His seemingly anti-English comments may have no direct parallels, although I do recall Kenny MacAskill’s remark that “the great Satan has been slain” when England lost to Sweden in the Euro 2000 qualifiers, Alex Salmond’s remark about the “anti-Scottish prejudices” of English MPs, Stewart Hosie’s reference to “anti-Scottish voices south of the border” and SNP councillor Ross Vettraino’s reported remark that the English are “so bloody arrogant”. Perhaps even Alex Salmond’s tacit agreement last year with Hardeep Singh Kohli's remark that Scotland has been the victim of “300 years of subjugation”. Implicit – yes. But there are connections.

So while I’m certainly not saying that the SNP are “extreme” in any institutional sense, some of their positions and rhetoric – eg. “London parties”, “anti-Scottish”, “parcel o' rogues”, “democratic struggle”, “Scotland as a colonial property” – can give succour to extreme views.

The more general point here is that while the SNP talks of “civic nationalism”, in fact it’s more than that. They exhibit a large degree of “cultural nationalism”, which has as one strand of its focus the history of Scotland in the thousand years prior to 1707 when Scotland was on-off at war with England.

Ironically, perhaps, Kenny MacAskill is one SNP politician who now appears to recognise this. In 2003 he wrote: “Bannockburn’s position in the psyche of the party and the people must change. We must advance — both as a party and as a nation — and stop defining ourselves in terms of a victory over the English.”

Some supporters of Scottish independence reject this kind of nationalism. They say they are not “nationalists” at all but that they simply would prefer for Scotland to become an independent country, for some practical reason or another. That I can respect. But the SNP is undoubtedly nationalistic. There is a flavour of “orthodoxy” about their belief system that is capable of being twisted into something very unpleasant indeed. It is that which I am seeking to expose.

AM2.... you decided to set up this blog as an alte...

2008-08-06T10:18:00.000+01:00

AM2.... you decided to set up this blog as an alternative to the all-heat-and-no-light approach found on those much unbeloved Scotsman comment boards...
So - replaying saved comments from either people on the extremities or people wound up by those on the extremeties on the other side is hardly helping you in your objective. As I've commented to you before, there's nutters on both sides... Gramski, Highland Mighty, PTBS etc can all get pretty unpleasant too. Do they add to constructive debate? No. Do blog posts like this help us all to move away from that style of debate? No.
More worryingly - you seem determined to focus on lines of argument that portray SNP supporters as somehow inherently "extreme" - I find that to be self-deluding position: Many like me are ex-Labour supporters that felt the party had totally moved away from the politics that we identified with. Many members, also like me, are actually English and within the party simply have never come across and hint of extremism, racism or anti-English sentiment that you regularly imply...

For the Labour Party to progress, or indeed recover, in Scotland it must realise that the move towards the SNP is deeper than just the independence question - trying to paint a picture of SNP = single issue politics = extremist politics is like I say, totally self-delusional and prevents the party from making that recovery...

Mono

I'm sure Jay Kay loves his kids just a...

2008-08-05T23:44:00.000+01:00

Mono

I'm sure Jay Kay loves his kids just as much as the rest of us.

There. Happy now? ;-)

moan moan moan moan, instead of looking for flaws ...

2008-08-05T23:42:00.000+01:00

moan moan moan moan, instead of looking for flaws in the nationalist why not see the good side too? You have to find a balance somewhere.

The reason nats like Jay kay make comments which p...

2008-08-05T15:03:00.000+01:00

The reason nats like Jay kay make comments which plumb the depths of inhumanity is simple 'it is in their nature'.

God help 'Unionist's' in a Independent Scotland with 'Nationalists' like jay kay prowling about.