Thursday 9 April 2015

Rocket Fool

The BBC spent yesterday broadcasting a Guido Fawkes version of some of its own footage in order to make the Conservatives' "response" to Ed Miliband's non-dom policy the story, instead of that policy itself.

Just another tabloid of the populist Right ought to be made to compete for revenue like, and against, The Sun and the Daily Mail.

Today, no doubt, the "main news" will be Michael Fallon's fairytale about a Labour deal with the SNP over Trident.

There is no more truth in that than there was in yesterday's claim by the English Democrats, broadcast in Radio Four from the horse's mouth and without further comment, that Labour was planning a coalition with Sinn Féin.

Do Scottish Nationalists think that those British sovereign bases remain on, yet not in, Cyprus because that was the preference of Archbishop Makarios?

Scottish independence would not just happen on the day after a Yes vote in the umpteenth referendum, nor would it happen purely on the SNP's terms. There would have to be a treaty.

And that treaty would guarantee a British nuclear base exactly where it is now for as long as the United Kingdom wanted one, even if that base therefore had to remain under British sovereignty and cease to be legally part of Scotland.

Or else there would be no treaty, thus no independence, and thus, as much as anything else, no more SNP and no more Alex Salmond or Nicola Sturgeon.

Backed by Sturgeon, Salmond is the only politician who could sell such a deal, the only deal that would be available, to the SNP and to its own, electoral, base. And he would. Backed by her.

The only way to get rid of nuclear weapons is within and through the state and institutions, above all the Parliament, of the United Kingdom.

Three quarters of Labour candidates are anti-Trident. Ed Miliband, like them, would just never give the satisfaction to the SNP.

The one thing that could save Trident might be the determination not to placate the SNP. But that situation can be precluded by the return of hardly any SNP MPs.

Elect Labour ones instead.

1 comment:

  1. I wish you were a candidate, I wish you were an MP, I wish you were our MP. That Geordie Shore reject has a lot to answer for. He'll never be an MP either, but you deserve more vengeance than that.

    ReplyDelete