You have to love the quaint naivety of Lord Steel. He genuinely seems to believe that an unthinking British nationalist such as John Major might be capable of making a positive contribution to the debate about Scotlands constitutional future. How silly! Major and his ilk are incapable of making a positive case for the union not least because they have never questioned it. They have never asked what the union is and what it does. They have never analysed it. They simply accepted it as the natural order. Their imagined nation of Britain/Greater England is divinely ordained and therefore beyond any critical assessment. Even to attempt to justify it is a form of heresy. Therefore, they can do no more than attack those who do challenge it. And Lord Steel himself is no better. Even as he is urging his fellow British nationalist to essay something which they are incapable of he betrays his own inability to think in terms of anything other than the British state. He says that defenders of the British state should focus on the contribution that Scotland has made and is making. He naturally puts the British state first and foremost giving it precedence not only over Scotlands interests but the interests of all the people of these islands. For British nationalists such as Lord Steel what is important is the structures of power and privilege that define the British state. They will defend those structures, and their own status, at any cost to Scotland or any of the nations and regions of the UK. And those who threaten the comfortable arrangements that serve the ruling elites of the British state they will attack with a vehemence that increases as the threat grows. However much anybody might implore them to refrain from such attacks and seek to articulate a positive case for perpetuating a failed system, they really cant help themselves.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 11:09:00 +0000
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