“Irony is wasted on the stupid”: Oscar Wilde
All of which went through my mind last week while crossing the Pentland Firth on the way to Orkney for a few days of meetings culminating in a Burns Supper in Kirkwall. These are the idle thoughts that occur when you’ve got an eight hour drive from Stranraer. But the bigger questions are never far away, either. For all I know, Alanis still doesn’t understand the concept but for those of us who follow the constitutional debate, the conceit abounds. Perhaps she needs to book the Hydro and do a couple of gigs. In modern Scotland, irony is everywhere. And nearly all of it is Tory in nature.
The unamended withdrawal bill represents a sea-change, however. This feels like a step change from simply putting party loyalty ahead of constituency need (morally indefensible, but hardly surprising) to actively undermining the Scottish Parliament and the central idea of Scottish Democracy itself (deeply alarming). It seems unlikely, but not if you apply the logic of Sherlock Holmes. “Eliminate the impossible”, wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “and whatever’s left, however improbable, is the answer”. Some people are surprised that Tories are trying to undermine Scottish Democracy. Frankly, given that this describes their raison d’etre, I’d be astonished if they weren’t. The first way to deal with a problem is to recognise that there is a problem. Only then can we start to do something about it. So we need to get organised. Now.
So this was my epiphany on the Pentalina. The Tories aren’t doing this because they’re incompetent or self-interested or ideologically hidebound. They’re doing it because that is their job. They’re doing it because they’re British, not Scottish. They’re doing it because Brexit gives them and their reactionist, alt-right, tax-avoiding, neo-liberal, state-rolling back, climate-change denying, workers-rights removing, wall-building, xenophobic backers the opportunity to destroy the devolution settlement which is an obstacle to their Brexit Nirvana.
This, lovely Alanis, is real irony. Irony is every incorporationist in Scotland and beyond lecturing people like me and the good folk I met in Kirkwall on Saturday to respect a referendum result that was predicated on many falsehoods – not least that our No votes were needed to keep us in the EU, yet who are at best comfortable and, at worst, viciously gleeful at a British State driving a coach and horses through an even more fundamental decision – devolution itself. This, Alanis, is irony on stilts.
But it’s not the only one. The other one can be found in the reactions from either side of the constitutional debate to the 2014 result. As I said in Kirkwall last Friday, I fear that one side of that debate has reflected on the previous campaign, been honest about where it went wrong, and triangulated its vote whilst building a war chest and planning for a campaign well in advance of the starting gun being fired. One side only has done all this. And it isn’t us. The truth is that every action since 2014 – project fear, Scotland in Union, the power grab, a vicious media campaign – has been designed to create the conditions whereby Scotland can never go for independence again. So the second irony is that we’ve been browbeaten into shelving the constitutional question and getting on with the day job (and doing it well, incidentally) by people whose only concern is the preservation of the Union by any means available. But the clock is ticking, and we need to be ready – particularly, as I suspect – the Repeal Bill is brought forward in response to the leaked Treasury impact figures which – ironically – are broadly similar to those published by the Scottish Government many months previously.
And, finally, we should reflect on this. Many No voters said in 2014 that they were voting No because they didn’t want change. And yet, strikingly, the anti-change vote led to perhaps the greatest period of flux in the modern history of these isles. For Scotland, this is change that we didn’t vote for and change that we have, legally, constitutionally and practically, absolutely zero control over. And let me say this again: without our independence, we never will.
Theresa May, like David Cameron before her, likes to talk about a precious union, a family of nations. And yet it is the unionist failure to engage with the members of that family, its utter failure to engage and its sneering contempt, that means that the Union will soon be dead. Not because of those of us who consider Scotland their country and something worth fighting for, but because of those who believe in neither of those things. And that, dear Alanis, truly is ironic.
PS – I’ve taken up enough of your time, but next week we’ll talk about the implications for farming. I’ve just bought a farm supply business, so the issues just got personal. I’ve more skin in this game than ever. We’ll also look at what we need to do to win the second, and final, independence referendum.