People’s futures reduced to a good photo opportunity: President Trump and Prime Minister May hand-in-hand in the Whitehouse
English politicians are apt to claim England as the greatest country in the world. The USA will disabuse them of that fantasy. The fact is, a wild-eyed narcissist tearing up the US Constitution and trampling on civil rights can blow us all to smithereens in a fit of pique, but that doesn’t trouble Theresa May one bit.
A neighbour nation keen on formulating a new, healthier relationship with England is ignored or ridiculed. Scotland is depicted either minion or leper. London’s parliament works hard at ignoring Scotland, its facile members taking turns to troll Nicola Sturgeon, their way of telling the Scots they’re second-class, not English in the least. Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, cannot attract a grain of respect from Theresa May.
How do you cure people with bipolar pathology? The ability of colonialists to hold two opposing doctrines in their head at once is a perpetual marvel.
Darien time
Theresa May has little choice but to suck up to Trump. Out of Europe, England is desperate to grab as many new trade routes as it can whilst blocking Scotland from getting to them first. It’s Darien time all over again. Just as unionists suck up to multi-millionaire Rowling, so May is obsequious to the rich guy on the block. If she upsets Trump he’s liable to offer support to Scotland’s political ambitions in homage to his Scots mother, so mercurial are his pronouncements.
Currently the British establishment is doing all it can to block Scotland’s justified wish to return to international status. The Tories even enlisted prime minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain to threaten all sorts of things if Scotland regained nationhood, but he said the opposite, that he wouldn’t interfere. He has his eye on Gibraltar. He’s noticed England doesn’t rule the waves these days.
May was Trumped.
Trumped. We need a new word for beaten to the punch. Farage and Gove met Trump before May got her make-up on, bumping gums, pumping handshakes, clinking teeth against whisky glasses. Wrinkled and cuckolded Rupert Murdoch was in the room when Gove kissed Trump’s feet. What a threesome.
May’s only card worth playing was the Queen of Hearts. She invited Trump on a state visit. It will cost millions of pounds. The Speaker of the House, the diminutive, pugnacious John Bercow, a man who needs a stool to stand on if a backbencher isn’t available, said, no, no no! – Trump shall not speak to us. It had not entered his mind, nor May’s, that Trump can barely string together a sentence, let alone ‘speak’.
When it came to the Great Debate on Brexit Bercow and his deputy were at it again – Scotland shall not speak in this house! The SNP were silenced, reminded they don’t count for anything other than a good laugh.
Facing a barrage of criticism, May apologists blamed the “State Visit Committee” for Trump’s invitation, as if May has no power of veto. No such committee exists.
Scotland has waited over 300 years for an invitation to the top table.
Silence is for funerals
The Scots are foreigners
It may not come as a surprise to readers to hear that the US Declaration of Independence – influenced and drafted by Scots – was partly based on the Founders’ grievances against England’s grossly overweight King George III “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners” and “refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.”
Brexit deprives Scots of their citizenship of the European Union and the protections we have enjoyed for nearly a quarter of a century:
a. The right of free movement and residence in the EU.
b. Protection from discrimination on grounds of nationality or religion.
c. The right to live in a clean environment.
d. Farming and fishing protection rights.
Under Westminster rule civil rights are lost. Who can say what rights will be reinstated by the London parliament, or if at all?
The London government promises all the protections on workers’ rights will be translated intact into UK law by the Great Repeal Bill. We laugh and then gulp. If they are not recreated for England they sure as hell will not be offered to Scotland.
And while I am arguing the obvious, why would Westminster’s members lift European laws and reinstate them wholesale? To do that means there was no point in leaving the EU in the first place. Their entire argument for withdrawing was to ‘throw off’ Johnny Foreigner and his trespassing on English prejudices.
The result of less government is less democracy
Tory policy, that is, neo-liberal deregulation and privatisation, is for less government intervention in our lives, leaving daily existence to the level of wild animals, every man for himself. Continual use the word ‘intervention’ is designed to be read as interference.
We elect governments to intervene in a million things, to protect us, and to remedy wrongs. Millions believe our governments are weak and so they don’t bother to vote. But remove government and your remove the democratic process. Keeping Scotland docile blocks political reform and reduces civil liberties. If there is one nation that won’t be given a say in the resettlement of rights it will be Scotland.
Ask Theresa May why she pretends to consult our government over Europe but ignores the Scottish vote. Please, somebody remind her that the Treaty of Union did not wipe out Scotland’s rights.
Can you see the Queen Bee?
The Queen is impartial – NOT
We remember Lizzie’s exercising diplomacy during the independence debate. Officials emphasise she is strictly impartial on political matters. In reality she’s highly practised in political intervention.
Lizzie just happened to be going to Crathie Kirk at Balmoral two days before the independence vote when she let slip she’d prefer we all gave careful thought to throwing ourselves in the fiery pit – a statement later admitted was the concoction of her advisers.
The Royal family does not exist merely to grace state occasions and charities. Prince Charles is known to spend a lot of his day scribbling opinion and instructions to ministers. Only recently released are once-secret papers showing how the Queen was counselled (then Princess Elizabeth) about preventing the growing influence of Plaid Cymru in Wales.
Each time there is a threat to British national unity, a royal figure is rolled out to smooth things over, or a princess is forced to pop another Royal baby to distract us. Conception is enough for an announcement.
Curiously, Her Majesty has nothing to say about the UK Supreme Court aiding English colonial authority. MSPs in the Scottish Parliament “only have legislative competence – the ability to make law – in devolved policy areas. Which is to say, keep building sandcastles. The tide will wash them away.
The power of the monarchy
Sometimes US aggression comes at the behest of UK request. There is evidence of CIA involvement in a virtual coup that overturned the Whitlam Labor government in Australia in 1975, when it was feared that Whitlam might interfere with Washington’s military and intelligence bases in Australia. Whitlam hated Australia’s adoration of the Royal family. You could say he signed his own death warrant.
Australia failed to rid itself of English colonial power when it lost an independence vote by a small majority. The Queen was a large totem in that affair. You don’t need to be paranoid to worry what May might ask Trump to do in the name of British national unity.
The slogan of May and her extremist Right-wingers is stark and to the point: Scotland, Keep your mouth shut, and sit down!
Grouse Beater 
Naw.
😉
Gove, not Gore and the overweight king was George IV not George III. EU powers over agricultural and fishing would transfer by default to Scotland as they are not rserved matters. Westminster would have to legislate to remove them from Holyrood.
Good article though!
Grouse , you have depressed me and it’s only 7.45.
You have depressed me with truth – which is even worse.
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The problem is that as May originally possited her plan was simply to repeal Human Rights and replace them with a British Bill of Rights. The obvious con there is that that method risks the loss of every single one of them and I doubt a majority of MPs would buy it.
The obvious solution would be to remove references to the EU and replace them with either the UK or treaty obligations. From a devolved perspective that means Westminster can simply overrule Holyrood on fisheries and farming if it suits them. Fisheries is even votes as it’ll be put in the realms of Crown Estate a bit like oil. Depending on just how badly prices of imported food rise an emergency can be concocted in order to increase home grown products. Centralisation for the good of the nation will be an ongoing theme.
Damn! ‘Gore’ was corrected but obviously not saved! But many thanks. That’s what comes of a 3am finish!
Sorry. I write in the mood I’m in at the time. Didn’t realise it was a downer. Am about to publish another essay, this one on Trump. It might cheer you up a bit.
You’re right – everything is up in the air, leaving Westminster to decide how it can nip Holyrood in the bud, and you know it will do it. It’s second nature.
Great article and this is my fear too. American intervention by Trump influenced by May.
May will clutch at everything and everyone she can bring onboard to stop the Independance movement gaining its right for an Independent country.
There is a great deal in our favour, at the moment, with Brexit, our strong MPs in WM and no longer a strong labour in Scotland to do the Tories “dirty work” in the next Indy campaign.
Nonetheless we can’t be complacent as we know all the media and establishment will be on full force during the Indy campaign but we are starting from a stronger position than last time and need to take full advantage of this. Here’s hoping.
I agree. I think we will see greater anger displayed this time around on a second independence debate. Patience won’t be a virtue. We have arrived at the stage it’s all or nothing, certainly for the next 20 or more years. Goodness knows what mechanisms will have been created in that time to block any independence movement.
“In 1976, the Aldo Moro government fell in Italy after revelations the CIA had spent $6 million to support anti-communist candidates. ”
I’m glad I’m not the onlyperson who has remembered this. I view the likelihoof od US interference unter Trump with some disquiet, and I hope that the Indy movement will be on the lookout for a repeat in Scotland
Thanks GB! excellent post.
As soon as T.May went to see Trump, My thoughts were that Scotland was probably central to the objective. I see what is going on in S.American, (note, they are called “American”) countries, and fear and despair.
I do not think the london establishment nor Trump would hesitate to get a wee bit military towards Scotland. If a country has something that the UK, ie england wants, or that the US wants, even more so, that country will be taken down, and any notions of democracy will be crushed.
I sincerely hope that we are as insignificant as my friends in Northumberland said we were pre 2014, (having said that, one of those dear friends, a Graun reader also said that we could, ‘end up like Syria!’)
So, just what is being plotted behind the scenes could be sinister in the extreme, and queenie will know all about, she is in the loop, to say the very least.
Hello Hetty.
What did your friend mean we could ‘end up like Syria’? We might get attacked by rUK and A.N. Other? The London parliament has so many mechanisms at the their fingertips to strangle Scotland’s ambitions without overt physical action, but like the tanks in George Square we should never rule out military action in service of ‘British security’. I always thought it would come about over our oil fields, but they did it by a simple act, and did it overnight. My sadness is, that action was not enough for Scots to rebel there and then, but I suppose too many were still stuck fast to the union and the British ideal.
Was not sure what she meant, a Guardian reader, who mayb thought that a strive for independence would bring huge trouble. They are a couple, one from Ireland, so that has some influence and they ridiculed, if not hated Scotland for some involvement in UK, england attacking Ireland some hundreds of yrs ago. Very ambiguous to Scottish history though. It is aworry, my son’s have NZ passports, which Inhave to say to them keep them updated. I do follow Telesurtv, and read a lot about S.America, dreadful in the extreme. Doing some artwork about extraction industries, environmental, indigenous rights activism gets you killed in S.A. Scary stuff.
Did my reply reach you?
Any residual Irish dislike for Scots usually comes from the elderly and refers to the British governments use of Scottish regiments in the Uprising, nicknamed the Black and Tans. (Forgive me if you know this.) They became notorious for their ruthlessness in putting down local rebellion, and entering homes without warning. Alas, not an honourable moment in Scottish military history, but certainly one that indicates what can happen when one nation’s soldiers fight for another nation’s misguided wars.
I’ll be over in Dublin early in March. I’ll ask friends of their memories of that time.
Yes, replied to it.
Thanks, interesting.
Interesting that such animosity still held in that regard, and obvs little understanding. Had heard of black n tans, but know little. Still, for intelligent people, though with views extremely skewed by reading the pretendy lefty Graun, I was a bit shocked at their hatred. They were quite ambivalent re the EU, but now are really pissed off, they go on many cheap hols!
Really against Brexit, but think Trump is more threat than May. I put May and Trump in same category. Deluded, dangerous and imbibed with very false but sinister levels of power.
Hard to keep with things, but always good to read yr articles.
I have to say in all honesty that if the worst comes to the worst I am not afraid to go down fighting.
You’re very welcome, Hetty. (This essay has surpassed 6,000 hits today, posted Friday in the early hours.) Have a good Sunday.
I’ve the feeling lots will join you in that struggle.
Trump is so deranged, he’s probably itching to send in the USMC to stop that ‘monster’ Salmond from destroying his golf courses with offshore wind turbines!
During the Irish Troubles, no American President sided with the UK, as circa 12% of the population is descended from Irish immigrants. This tacitly kept England’s war mongers in check during the Troubles!
Today just under 3.8% of Americans are descended from Scots and Ulster-Scots. 15% of Canadians are descended from Scottish immigrants.
Also with an iScotland in the EU, an attack by England or USA on Scotland would be an attack on the EU. NATO would implode.
We haven’t even started yet but watch out May your blue nose should turn red when we take back our own country, and Trump can go jump, off a high cliff preferably.
He seems to do that with almost every tweet.
NATO is merely an imperial military structure for the US anyway. Time it was sent on its way. The current geopolitical tensions are entirely down to NATO’s aggression anyway.
In full agreement on that issue.
Grouse – the “Black and Tans” were not Scottish regiments – they were men taken from prison all over the UK, dressed in police or army blouses and police or army trousers – hence black and tan! However, there were Scottish regiments deployed in Ireland after the union – colonial troops used to keep the colonies in order! Frequent occurrence by British and other imperialists!
Sorry! I should have commented that the official story is that they were recruited from unemployed ex World War 1 soldiers for service as auxiliary policemen in Ireland. The Irish, understandably, are more inclined to the earlier explanation. Ultimately, the point is that the Black and Tans were not Scottish Regiments. Sorry if that appears pedantic. Bill
A fair correction, Bill. From what My Irish friends tell me, the problem was twofold: Many of the recruits were ex-Scottish soldiers. And some Irish saw Scotland as complicit with London in the campaign to terrorise and demoralise the Irish Free movement. One supposes it merely took hearing a Scots accent to consolidate prejudices.
And don’t forget, some soldiers wore kilts.
When I worked in Northern Ireland for the BBC during the worst of the Troubles the only soldiers to stop and search me were … Scots. Even after I pointed out I too was Scottish they perverted with their brusque searches. We get around.
I’m back in Dublin next month and intend to ask a lot of questions of Irish republican associates. Last time we talked over those days I learned some atrocities were committed upon Irish citizens by the Auxiliary police, and not the Black and Tans. Visit Ireland today and you meet a Brit-Irish unionists sooner or later. The Irish deride them as an aberration, a hang over from the Jurassic period.
The Australian PM is Malcolm Turnbull or Trumbull as Trump likes to call him…
You’re right, ‘Trumbull’ is it! (I reversed the insult.) I tried to get the whole conversation from Aussie friends in time for publication but failed. By all accounts it was a humdinger.
Writing from the land of Oz , Turnbull reminds me of David Cameron all image and no substance but beneath it all an extremely wealthy Tory/Tollie and if there was an argument with Trump he will do what all previous Australian prime minsiters have done and that is roll over and have his tummy tickled.
I was wondering about Turnbull’s predilections … good comment. And welcome.
But seems to me Tories are already angling to have control of fishing and agriculture taken back to Westminster if recent reported comments are true.
It’s quite astonishing how the propaganda around “Britishness” and Scotland’s “vital.part” in that has been cranked up.
I don’t really watch much TV anymore but occasionally I will catch a documentary in which the words Britain, British or British Isles is mentioned in every other paragraph.
There was the ludicrous nonsense about the “ancient capital of Britain” being in Orkney and how it disseminated culture and custom to the “rest of Britain”. Hogwash of the first order designed to put forward the idea that we’ve been “British” forever.
And then there was the “great historical fibs” which was “Britain” and “British” all the way.
And of course they talk about Britain and England in synonymous terms. Wales, Scotland and Ireland (north and south) just don’t figure in the mindset at all.
At its most trivial it takes the form of referring to the current monarch simply as Elizabeth the Second – which she is for England but not for Scotland.
Scotland was de facto colonised in 1707. Its Parliament was shut down at the behest of a few dozen individuals who stood to gain enormously from hitching their wagon to the Westminster horse.
There is no evidence that the general population of Scotland either wanted it or needed it at the time. There is nothing to show that the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution wouldn’t have happened had Scotland stayed independent.
As for the USA I am old enough to remember Vietnam and all their other interventions across the globe since then. American foreign policy had always been based on the “othering” of those who don’t share American world views and on a need to fund their own military industrial complex. It’s very hard to see where, since the 1960s, US intervention has made the world safer or better.
Their much trumpeted freedom of speech is only really a freedom to say that which America approves of. And the American Dream is largely an illusion based, as it it, on the fact that it only possible if 95% of people can never achieve it.
Don’t get me wrong – Russia and China are little better but surely we have a right to expect more from America?
Just finished reading Chomsky’s “Who Rules the World”, a horrifying indictment of US power (with its UK poodle in tow from time to time). The US is summed up as the global terrorist.
I have no evidence for this assertion, but it seems inconceivable that the UK Security Services were not active during the last referendum and I fully expect them to be so again.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence
That’s a fair assertion, Broadbield.
Certainly both Obama and Clinton made plain they wanted Scotland to stay in the Union, we are, after all, a strategic territory as far as the US is concerned. The notion they were not briefed by security officials to arrive at that opinion won’t stand up to scrutiny.
Clinton put it clumsily “It will be a pity if England loses Scotland.”
“The History Thieves” by Ian Cobain is an eye-opener on the lengths the UK state has and continues to go to in order spy on, undermine, destabilise and wage war on anyone and anything considered a threat – individuals, movements, countries.
The alternative view is that, unlike the Queen, Nick Macpherson and others nominally impartial, they sat and twiddled their thumbs while the sanctity of the UK State was threatened.
Cheers, GB, that final sentence is all-revealing.
I’ll be there alongside you sir. I have been long and much concerned about the possibility of an aggressive and armed opposition to our successful attempt at Independence for Scotland. The time has come for a ‘fuck it’ attitude. Perhaps our cause needs some martyrs and, much as I love my life with my people, I will be ready to give it in defence of what is rightly ours. I am a great believer in the maxim, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”
We require to adopt a more intellectually ruthless attitude to the government paid propagandists, the chronic dissemblers, the budding fascists, and the time wasters who are about as democratic as a starving shark in a shoal of tuna.