SCOTTISH POLITICS is suffering from gangrene, that toxic combination of dead meat and a galloping infection. Reading the musings of what pass now for journalists during this Holyrood election was depressing. Low grade recycling of indyref threats that will never materialise was combined with that most guilty of pleasures, a seething hatred of the Britain that abandoned their precious European Union.
This is the reality. The vast majority of Scottish journalists are mouth-foaming remoaners who have never forgiven Britain for, wait for it, beating the establishment and declaring its independence via – (drum-roll) a referendum. Unlike many other remain voters I know who moved on and accepted the democratic outcome, many journalists behave like spurned lovers, handling rejection of the EU very badly, very crudely and without grace or humility.
Hence five years after the EU referendum they indulge in the fantasy of breaking up Britain because they have an aching need to be right. None of them foresaw Brexit and when it happened the scream was primal. This is why so many in the press love the SNP. They will latch onto any symbol or sign that Brexit has failed. This is meant to pass for a credible press.
As ever, commentators are quick to offer counter-narratives.
A notable ruse that has surfaced lately is to suggest that as the UK will refuse to grant the SNP a referendum (over which it has no mandate) maybe we should just have indyref now and get it over with…
Well, having actually done an above knee amputation for gangrene, I feel I should offer a few notes of caution. I’ll start with a conversation between a fellow surgeon and one of his patients, whose leg he had operated on to try and save it from poor circulation,
Patient: Doctor, my leg hurts!
Surgeon: Obviously, you’ve just had an operation.
Patient: Does it usually hurt this much?
Surgeon: I don’t know, I haven’t had the operation.
Obviously, dark humour aside, my clinical experience helps me in politics because it is so real and this is something we do not discuss enough in Scotland. Here we go. Nationalists are not equal to unionists in their views because fantasy cannot be equal to reality in a democracy where choices are made.
Choices are real and have real consequences and often we feel negatives before we feel the benefits of change. Alongside realists and fantasists are a third group in this co-dependent relationship and they are journalists. It is journalists that can weave fantasy into reality in their search for cheap and easy copy and in doing so they manufacture consent for fantasy, reporting as if it is reality.
At some point, the SNP leader talking about independence just isn’t news. It may be deemed newsworthy – but it isn’t news. You know, like ‘dog bites man’ is not news? Every now and then another call for a referendum is padded out with other ‘newsworthy’ items that are not really news. This is so a journalist can manufacture consent for some very risky surgery indeed.
Having seen how a SNP minority coalition will never come close to a mandate for changing our constitution, busy minds are turning to Westminster to peddle their fantasies. Some have suggested the UK simply holds a second independence referendum to “get it out of the way”.
I can’t help thinking, that if a surgeon offered a patient an amputation above the knee for grumbling knee pain he’d do well to at least consider some more conservative options!
Maybe see a knee specialist? Maybe we could replace the knee or offer some physiotherapy?
Maybe we could repeal section 30 of the Scotland Act so Holyrood and the referendum question would be permanently uncoupled, leaving the SNP to raise their case in Westminster through a White Paper? If they can’t manage a White Paper then they’re hardly in a state to handle running a new state.
Maybe we could audit the Scottish government, top to bottom, so we know where all the bodies are buried. The super-injunctions of sleaze, the Gupta files, the ferry debacle, there is plenty there to be busy with. Maybe as Andrew Neil once quipped, it is Scotland that needs protected from the SNP.
Instead London journalism appears to see Scotland as an outpost, publishing colonial dispatches from the same two or three Remoaners whose misery only ripened into rage when we left the EU. Lesley Riddoch in the Spectator – really?
Are we supposed to be satisfied that the British public is informed about Scotland from what amounts to a malcontent clique that fits around a pub table? How many print journalists commenting on Scotland are now so fulminant with Brexit that they seem to want to punish Britain with tales of its own demise? (Northern Ireland being another cause celebre.)
This is where the crossover from fantasy to reality becomes dangerous because there are serious risks and a lot of short term pain to chopping off a leg to get rid of pain. For a start the initial pain will be a lot worse and then there is the small matter of life for patient without a leg, and nothing more than a waste bucket for the leg.
It is hard to see what problem a wilful amputation will solve except for an otherwise boring news schedule and peddling destructive ideas for momentary copy is something akin to a James Bond villain creating crises to report on them.
This culture of peddling crisis is rotten and like all things rotten it stinks. I’d like to hear many more voices in Scotland speaking south of the border, offering some real world experience and sensible options of where Britain goes that doesn’t involve a rusty hacksaw.
Perhaps there needs to be a new chapter for pro-British blogs in Scotland, to start sending this message to the British capital where it is sorely needed!
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Photo of infected leg by kirov1969 from Adobe Stock
