When is it
morally right
to intervene?
Alan Fisher
A last-minute candidate?
‘Are there any
trees close
to your property?’
Vacancies
Fancy becoming a chair?
The Cafe
Quintin Jardine (7 March) is perfectly at liberty to take whatever view he wishes on the great constitutional debate currently enthralling Scotland’s chattering classes. However, I am not sure the rest of us are particularly better off for having been exposed to a few hundred words of him being rude about people he does not know.
This is not the interesting and intellectually stimulating prose that I have come to expect from the Scottish Review. What is more it is not even accurate. Of course Nick Clegg would have recognised Willie Rennie had they met on the street a year ago, given that they had both served together in the House of Commons briefly following Mr Rennie’s famous by-election win in Dunfermline, at which Nick Clegg was one of his most prominent supporters.
As my grandmother used to say, if you haven’t got anything nice to say about people best to say nothing at all.
Neil Mackinnon
The Cafe
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Early Spring flowers
in Angus
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
George Robertson
will wait a long time
for an apology
Dick Mungin
I was astonished to read an editorial in the Scotsman recently which cautioned the SNP government to beware of its seemingly free use of the ‘anti-Scottish’ insult against its political opponents lest it leave itself open to a charge of behaviour ‘little short of fascism’.
The Scotsman leader was provoked by a parliamentary speech in which Scottish cabinet minister Mike Russell castigated the Tory education spokesperson for criticising the policy of free tuition for Scottish students. She, Liz Smith, was therefore ‘anti-Scottish’. Mike Russell was ploughing a field already well cultivated by his colleague Joan McAlpine via her multiple accusations that leading unionists are by definition ‘anti-Scottish’. It seems pretty obvious therefore that such emotive language is not only sanctioned by the SNP leadership but is part of the daily stock in trade of nationalist political discourse. The Scotsman’s warning was timely.
Now Lord Robertson, in the Scottish Review, has spoken out in protest at the abuse heaped on his head over the years by cybernats and senior SNP figures. The noble lord was wise to proclaim his possession of a thick skin in enabling him to throw off such insults. Having such an attribute is absolutely necessary in the rough and tumble of Scottish politics.
The Nazi jibe thrown at him by a prominent nationalist, now in the Scottish cabinet, must certainly have been hard to take but it happened years ago and the author of the insult made it at a party conference in a possibly febrile atmosphere. I happen to know the minister involved, we were co-directors of a cross-party-supported Scottish charity, and I regard him as a fundamentally decent man. I even believe, though we never discussed it, that he might now regret the remark and the notoriety it brought him at the time. I do recall Winnie Ewing wincing at his words. However on the subject of the cybernats and their effect on Scottish political life Lord Robertson is bang on target.
I’ve written many pieces for SR attacking both cybernat activity and the SNP leadership for its apparent inability, or unwillingness, to condemn their evil works. I’ve now come to the conclusion that the vile comments and insults directed at anyone who opposes the SNP line are not only condoned but encouraged by the leadership.
Is the future of Scotland to be debated by anonymous half-wits who
would rather trade insults and threats than openly engage in
intelligent argument?
It is telling that the cybernat reaction to the ‘anti-Scottish’ insults thrown by Mr Russell and Ms McAlpine was overwhelmingly positive. I’ve waded through hundreds of cybernat comments, a dirty job, and many of the anonymous Bravehearts went much, much further than their parliamentary representatives. This is dog whistle politics of the very worst kind and both of these politicians should be ashamed of themselves. There is an absolute requirement for all nationalists who have a platform in our parliament to be very careful in their use of language. The European political landscape of the last 80 years is littered with the dire consequences of populist, nationalist movements which lost control of events to those not afraid to get their hands dirty.
One thing is very clear: no matter which opinion polls on the referendum issue are proved correct, there will be, in Scotland, a significant minority of unhappy voters come 2014. If the vote is ‘Yes’, much present evidence seems to indicate that nationalist intolerance of those who voted ‘No’ will only increase. This was a recent cybernat posting on the Daily Telegraph website: ‘As decision day approaches, then the reality of an independent Scotland will dawn and the present vocal unionists will quieten down as they realise that they could spend the rest of their lives, and that of their families, branded as traitors and half-Scots’. How different is this statement from the outbursts of Mr Russell and Ms McAlpine?
On the other hand if the vote is ‘No’ can we really expect the cybernats and their senior cheerleaders on the nationalist parliamentary benches to come over all sweetness and light, allowing bygones to be bygones and looking forward to a future of civilised politicking within a devolved settlement – whatever that might be? I doubt it.
The standard cybernat defence is that the dastardly unionists control the mainstream media and that they’re merely ‘standing up for Scotland’. Perhaps they’ve forgotten that leading elements of the Scottish press actually came out in favour of a vote for the SNP in May of last year. In the last few weeks they’ve also got the support of Murdoch and his papers although that may prove to be a mixed blessing. They argue that ‘the English’ are often beastly to us Scots in the online comment columns of London based papers. So what? Is the future of Scotland to be debated by anonymous half-wits who would rather trade insults and threats than openly engage in intelligent argument?
If Lord Robertson is expecting ‘a single word of chastisement from our new establishment’ to be delivered to the cybernats by Alex Salmond he’ll have a very long wait indeed. Far from being a fringe element within the SNP this bunch are the leadership-backed shock troops of the party in the battle for the blogosphere. Must Scotland’s tomorrow belong to them?
Dick Mungin is a consultant based in the Highlands
