Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. Downfall catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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That really was an awful speech. Scotland is a separate country with a separate heritage and social values, which are more inclusive and left wing than further south. Scotland is the home of the original Labour party, whose first MP was Scottish. In the last hundred years five prime ministers have been of Scottish origin. Six if you include Cameron. Scotland has always played an important role in UK politics, but the Tory party has never really been a driving force in Scotland. Its high water mark was in 1955, when 36 MPs and 50% of the votes. Over the following years the numbers shrank until a wipeout in 1997. Since then just one seat. One of the drivers of the independence argument was the fact that Scots were governed by a party for which almost nobody any longer voted.

This nasty rhetoric about ‘clear and present danger’ is ludicrous and will put off many inclusive Conservatives who can think for themselves. Moreover the biggest threat to the Union comes from a majority in England voting to leave the EU. If that happened Scotland for sure would vote to leave the UK and apply to join the EU. What has Sir John Major to say about that?

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This blog has a lot of respect for John Major. Described by Denis Thatcher as a ‘ghastly’ Prime Minister, his wife’s choice as her successor undoubtedly disappointed her. But he had a very difficult hand to play which included Black Wednesday, loads of negative equity and a Tory party split so badly down the EU faultline that he had to withdraw the whip from a gang of rebellious backbenchers and resign himself as Tory leader. He was only re-elected because he did a deal with Heseltine to share power. He then led the Tories into the biggest defeat in their history from which they have still not recovered. So he carries baggage for sure.

His intervention today with yet more frighteners about the SNP is a mistake. The endless Tory barrage about the dangers of the SNP is not only misconstrued but is also undermining the Union itself. Why should the Scots want to stay in a Union which constantly insults them? The threat to a Tory victory, which seems ever more remote, comes not from Nicola Sturgeon (the more seats she takes from Labour north of the border, the better for the Tories overall) but from UKIP and to some extent the Lib Dems in Conservative/Labour marginals. Much more attention should be paid to that theatre of operations rather than obsessing about Scotland.

Meanwhile Sturgeon is now acclaimed as the star and because of all the  publicity she receives on Tory airtime, her party may well end up calling the tune. The problem for the Tories is that huge numbers of UK voters think that would be a very good thing.