Sometimes, when I get an email marked “urgent”, I deliberately ignore it, as I think that’s for me to decide. Inevitably, such emails turn out to be junk or something I have zero interest in. But I accept that I am an awkward pilchard and one day I may wish I had claimed that £250,000 cash money bonus.
This week, it seems the entire political class have made the same deliberate mistake as the people who write those emails. This “urgent” election actually feels like a spam one. The main issue appears to be whether David Cameron takes part in a TV show or not. Underlying this is the fact that no one thinks any one party will get a majority. All the leaders are saying they are not even thinking about coalitions, which is a patent lie. It is highly likely there will be a coalition and another election soon after. Yet every single party’s campaign is repressing, not addressing, this possibility, hence all sorts of weirdness and pretence.
The biggest denial is about the future of the United Kingdom itself, as what is happening in Scotland is a game-changer. If you don’t pay much attention to politics – and most people don’t – you could be forgiven for thinking that the two countries are on the verge of war.
There are the peculiar posters of Alex Salmond (who is not, remember, the leader of the SNP) looking Berlusconi-like with a tiny Ed Miliband in his pocket and the words “Vote Conservative”. The suggestion is that a vote for Labour in England is a vote for the SNP. Labour want to bankrupt Britain, the SNP want to break it up, say the Tories. Meanwhile in Scotland, Labour are telling people that if they vote SNP, they will get a Conservative government. So, the twisted refrain from both is: don’t vote for the party you actually want to win.
What fresh hell is this? It’s a belated realisation on the part of the Westminster parties that the momentum pushing for Scottish independence is still there. This was apparent in the days after the referendum, and it is hard to see how anyone thought it had gone away. You cannot tell the Scots, who voted for years under Thatcher and her successors for a party that did not become government, how to vote. For me, the progressive position can only be to support full independence. A country that has borne the brunt of Thatcherite de-industrialisation, New Labour’s wars and Tory austerity must be allowed to make its own decisions.
The SNP now presents itself as an anti-austerity party and the English press are going mad about it, picturing Nicola Sturgeon coming in half-naked on a wrecking ball, like Miley Cyrus. It seems inevitable that Scotland will break free and that England has to as well. The SNP has played the long game, while the English left has refused to engage, thus ceding all discussion about an independent England needlessly to the right.
We end up here: with the prospect of a Labour wipeout in Scotland and a fair number of SNP MPs at Westminster, unless all polling is wrong. Miliband has said he is not planning a coalition with them: “The reason I don’t want to get into this is that I don’t want to get into post-election speculation.” This is nutzoid political bluffing. Labour are being abandoned wholesale in Scotland. The Tory scaremongering shows they would destroy the union to stay in power. If one thing characterises Cameron’s style, it is this politics of the slapdash, where principles go hang. Whichever side of the argument you are on – and it is absolutely for the Scots to decide – England will be affected by an SNP landslide and we need some “post-election speculation”. It’s called planning for the future.
This is all too reminiscent of how it was until a few weeks before the referendum. Scotland, it had been assumed, loved us really. Even though we had not been home in days, and spent the housekeeping in lapdancing clubs, and forgot its birthday, we reckoned it could be brought round with some wilted garage flowers. It worked for a bit, but did anyone think that the level of engagement and argument inspired by the independence debate would just fade into some renewed vow with the union?
In England, some of us looked on longingly and wondered if we too might have this discussion about more direct democracy. True independence means being in charge of one’s own budget, no taxation without representation and all that. There are big arguments to be had in this election – about who manages austerity the best, where exactly the “recovery” is located, even the utterly fake one about leaving Europe.
There is also the coming reality. The UK in its current form is pulling itself apart. The tectonic plates are shifting. Meanwhile, the politicians are arguing in London about whether they should go on TV or not. Put that in the file marked junk.
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