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Today, we can prise Scotland from grip of toxic nationalism
By Tom Harris For The Scottish Daily Mail
22:31 03 Jul 2024, updated 22:38 03 Jul 2024
The biggest lie about general elections is that they don’t change anything. The truth is that votes cast today will decide not only the direction the UK goes in the next five years, but the long-term future of Scotland.
Scots have become so used to SNP dominance of our political landscape that it is difficult to remember a time when that was not the case, a time when not everything revolved around the interminable and circular debate about independence.
Could such times return? Is there a realistic possibility that the days when the SNP used Scotland as nothing more than a prop to sustain its constitutional obsession could be coming to an end?
The contests of 2015, 2017 and 2019 were a foregone conclusion, with the pro-UK parties looking defeated before a single vote had been cast. This time is different.
This time the Nationalists are facing an existential crisis as their popularity has plummeted following a series of egregious failures and scandals: failure in their delivery of policy at Holyrood and the scandal that prompted a long-running police investigation into party finances.
On top of which we’ve had the resignations of two First Ministers in 18 months and the ignominious collapse of the SNP’s coalition with the extremist Greens.
But politics isn’t a spectator sport. If ordinary Scots want to change the result of this game, they need to get involved.
We might be told by those with a vested interest in low turnout that the final result has been pre-ordained, that your individual vote isn’t going to change anything.
The truth is that it could change everything. True, Keir Starmer’s Labour looks set to form the next government with a large majority. And Scotland looks set to contribute significantly to Labour’s total of MPs for the first time in 14 years.
But in Scotland there is a different argument being made, by an increasingly desperate and despondent SNP that hopes the polls are wrong and that
it can still be relevant in Scotland’s political arena.
That argument is simple: if a majority of constituencies in Scotland return Nationalist MPs, that will be a ‘mandate’ to open independence negotiations.
It’s a deeply flawed and dishonest premise. How can one side in a debate claim a mandate for negotiations when the other side – the UK Government – explicitly doesn’t recognise such a mandate?
There’s the added complication that John Swinney claims his party already has such a mandate from the 2021 Holyrood elections, which begs the question of what good another ‘mandate’ will do if the first one can’t be delivered.
But ever since the Supreme Court confirmed that Holyrood has no authority to hold another divisive, debilitating referendum on independence, the Nationalists have been panicked into political dead ends. That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped being a threat to the Union – it just means their rhetoric has become increasingly hysterical.
However implausible their manifesto commitment to independence negotiations is, make no mistake: the SNP will use any size of victory today to step up their attack on the very existence of the UK and Scotland’s rightful place in it.
The democratic will of the Scottish people as expressed in the 2014 independence referendum will once again be undermined by the same party that demanded that referendum in the first place.
So reject any notion your vote doesn’t count, that it won’t make a difference. You are the only thing standing in the way of another five years of Nationalist division and failure.
Today is the day to stand united in defence of our country and against a toxic political philosophy that has thrived on negativity for far too long.
Today is the day to draw a line, at last, under the Nationalist confidence trick of blaming all our ills on our compatriots living south of the Border.
Today one small cross, written in pencil in the privacy of a polling booth, can deal a fatal blow to those who would divide us all over again.
Right across Scotland there is a golden opportunity to remove the SNP from the Commons. All you have to do is vote for the pro-UK party best placed to win. That means, in the Borders and the North-East, supporting the Tories.
For many Scots, that will feel like a step too far. Yet only the Tories can mount a realistic challenge to the Nationalists in these areas. And after all, with Rishi Sunak on a hiding to nothing at UK level, a vote for the Scottish Conservatives can hardly be interpreted as a vote for the continuation of this Conservative government.
And it means supporting outgoing Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross in Aberdeenshire North and Moray, a seat the SNP have high hopes of winning. It means voting for Scotland Office minister John Lamont in Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. And it means in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine the pro-UK case can only be made by the Tory candidate, energy minister Andrew Bowie.
But it’s not enough to defend: pro-UK voters need to attack, to remove incumbent Nationalist MPs and prevent them returning to Westminster and using UK taxpayers’ money to fund their continuing campaign against our nation.
So in Gordon and Buchan, a vote for the Conservatives is the only way of removing the SNP’s Richard Thomson. It’s the same story in two other vital target seats, Angus and Perthshire Glens, currently held by Nationalist Dave Doogan, and Perth and Kinross-shire, where Pete Wishart is fighting for survival.
But political Unionism has never been particularly adept at setting aside party differences and focusing on the greater good. In all these seats, Nigel Farage’s Reform party is misleading voters into believing that they have a chance of victory. But all it’s doing is increasing the chance of the SNP winning.
Scots across the country have different political priorities – such is the privilege of living in a democracy. But unless you support independence above everything else – education, the health service, the economy, taxation, international affairs, defence – then the SNP cannot represent you.
And unless the SNP are removed from their position of being Scotland’s biggest party, at both Westminster and Holyrood, then they will continue to claim, dishonestly, that they speak for Scotland.
They will carry on projecting a fake image of Scotland as more ‘progressive’, more tolerant, more welcoming – in short, more ‘exceptional’ – than our fellow citizens in England.
And they will never stop agitating for another independence referendum.
They will stop all such activity on only one condition: that you choose to stop them.
Today we all have an opportunity to do exactly that. We would be letting Scotland down if we failed to grasp it with both hands.
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