It may have escaped the notice of those who live South of the border that there is more than one nationalist party in the UK and that far and away the most successful is the SNP, leader Alec Salmond, which is the government of Scotland. Today's DT headline, the paper of choice in the English shires, reads, "Independent Scotland must apply to join the EU says Brussels". This would result if the application was accepted in Scotland having to join the Euro. So UK EU rights would not be grandfathered down to Scotland or Wales and nor would Mrs Thatcher's famous rebate according to Barroso. Wow!
The Scot Nat finance spokesman John Swinney states as Scotland would be applying from within the EU its all OK.
I think this may prove to be a shot in the foot by the EU and a gift for the SNP. Alec S likes the EU. He is by a mile the ablest politician operating in the UK. Upsetting Alec is not a samrt move by Barroso. It could be seen as a crude attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of a wannabe sovereign nation. Despite Alec Salmond's views the EU is no more popular in Scotland than it is in the rest of the UK.
If Alec wants to play hardball he will point to how much of current EU fishing goes on in what could become Scottish territorial waters. The same argument applies to Scottish oil which provides a secure back up if there was more trouble in the Middle East. Then of course he is not without allies in Spain in Catalonia and the Basque country. What happened when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech republic and Slovakia.
I don't know how this will play out. Personally I would like to see Scotland in with its historic trading partner Norway ie out of the EU entirely and into a Hanseatic league trading confederacy which was incidentally the foundation of the City of London's wealth creation in the 14th and 15th centuries. I am confident Scotland has more to gain than lose in this scenario. The big losers would be the Labour party which should be a big plus i.n Southern England.
Alec will do a good job for Scotland whatever happens. I don't want to be ruled by a load of posh boys who don't know the price of milk or left wing Oxford PPE types like Milliband, Balls and Mrs Balls.
2 comments:
Hello Eric,
I don't suppose many people know that you and I flew to Scotland with a pot of gold to help defeat the Labour Party Europe minister Murphy in a referendum on the EU. And that we flew up to Edinburgh (at our own expense Mr. Farage) to conduct a prior referendum in Gordon Brown's constituency to prove that the public were on our side.
We worked with the Conservative and SNP parties on the basis that my enemy's enemy is my friend, and Alex Salmond threw his weight behind defeating Labour. Perhaps that victory helped the public to believe that Labour in Scotland could be beaten. And they were !
Did we cause the genie to be let out of the bottle ?
Alan,
I would like to think we had some effect but I am proud of what we did and that we paid for the Edinburgh trip ourselves.
It saddens me to see so many people who believe and worked without payment for our cause kicked out of UKIP because they dared disagree with Farage or his EU paid glove puppets and trolls.
The ordinary decent members of UKIP have no idea how rotten UKIP is at the top. I occasionally hear rumours that TV is preparing an expose of this. Let us hope that one day these rumours are proved true.
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