He does need to try something.
For Westminster, Opinium had the Lib Dems on a miserable 4%, on 25th September and for Holyrood, with a full poll, Survation had them at 7%, on 7th September.
Tony Blair’s Third Way collapsed in the early 21st Century as imperial wars, jihadi terror and corporate greed jolted much of the world back into the awful reality that gurus like Francis Fukuyama thought we could leave behind when the Berlin Wall fell.
Willie’s Third Way seems to have been inspired by Canned Heat’s 1960’s anthem ‘Let’s work together.’
In terms of the constitution it’s just Federalism 2.
Here’s the problem. With any form of federalism, the UK gets to keep its nuclear weapons on the Clyde, keeps sending Scots soldiers into post-imperial wars to die on behalf of the USA, keeps wasting billions on aircraft carriers and super-fighters that are only a burden to us, allows MI5 to break the law as it pleases and taxes us into deficit to pay for the ‘pleasure’.
No doubt there’s more I haven’t thought of but any alternative to full independence is, on the issues that really matter, worthless.
I THINK THE TRIDENT SUBS
SHOULD BE RELOCATED IN WULLIE RENNIEs
CONSTITUENCY
THAT WAY THEY WILL BE FAR NEARER RUSSIA AND ITS A LESS POPULATED AREA SO IF THEY UNTHINKABLE HAPPENS as the drivers of them subs have a
Had several ACCIDENTS IN CLYDE ESTUARY
WAT YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT IDEA WULLIE
YOU EVEN GET 8,000 JOBS or so Mp BAILLIE HAS SHOUTED ABOUT AS A BENEFIT
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I think this is what the “Independence for Orkney and Shetland” divide and conquer fantasy bullshit that the BritNats have been pushing recently.
The Northern Isles would get a 12 mile maritime boundary (both would lose access to hundreds of square miles of fishing grounds and Shetland would lose its oil fund).
Westminster would offer them ‘the honour’ of hosting trident I suspect!
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We have can come too far, experienced too much harm at the hands of Westminster, been limited far too much in what we can choose to achieve for Scotland, to opt now for anything less than normal nation-state status.
We also have to factor in the hard to dispute view that the Westminster/Whitehall/Monarchy-based British state simply cannot be trusted to deliver on its constitutional promises/compromises when Scotland is concerned. We need a simple, straightforward, clean break – dissolution of the Union!
Even for someone with a ‘Liberal’ viewpoint this is not so radical or unreasonable:
‘At a ceremony in Orkney in May this year to mark the centenary of Scottish (Liberal) party icon Jo Grimond’s birth, David Steel quoted from Grimond’s 1983 book ‘A Personal Manifesto’:
“I do not like the word devolution as it has come to be called. It implies that power rests at Westminster, from which centre some may be graciously devolved. I would rather begin by assuming that power should rest with the people who entrust it to their representatives to discharge the essential tasks of government. Once we accept that the Scots and the Welsh are nations, then we must accord them parliaments which have ALL (my emphasis) the normal powers of government, except for those THAT THEY DELEGATE to the United Kingdom government or the EEC.”’
Source: https://wingsoverscotland.com/no-place-like-home-rule/
How things have changed!! None of the ‘third way’/federal propositions that pop up from time to time nowadays are offering to deliver Scotland’s people anything close to the agency that Grimond was proposing in 1983.
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Wee Wullie is no more a federalist than Boris is honest.
He stated at the These Islands conference that—“Scotland has enough powers”.
How does that equat to federalism?
Name ANY election where Wee Wullie has made federalism an issue?
C’mon, he has been Dumb leader for a decade—he MUST have mentioned it once. Hasn’t he?
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Well remembered.
As federalism gets peddled once more, it timely to repeat Peter A Bell’s critique of UK constitutional reform as the solution toUnionists’ Scottish ‘problem’. ( https://peterabell.scot/tag/federalism/ )
One of the points made by Mr Bell that stood out for me was this: “For a federal arrangement to be feasible it would not only have to be fair and equitable, it would have to be seen to be fair and equitable. Which means that the negotiation of the arrangement would have to be seen to be fair and equitable.
Which, in turn, could only be the case if all the parties involved participated in those negotiations on the basis of parity of power, equality of status and mutual respect. Which, to close the circle, could only be possible if those parties to the negotiations were already independent nations.“ (See my earlier BTL reference to Jo Grimond.)
On Tusker in April I commented on what was being written in that hotbed of grassroots Toryism and Unionism, ‘Conservative Home’ about an These islands meeting held earlier in Newcastle.
Conservative Home’s assistant editor Henry Hill seemed then to have a fondness for the ‘F’ word or rather a special interest in dissing it. It’s especially interesting to note who’s views Conservative Home was drawing upon for support in rejecting federalism.
Hill on ‘devo-max’: at the These Islands meeting, Gordon Brown asked Hill if he “accepted that ‘devo-max’ would have got 80 per cent or more had it been on the ballot paper during the 2014 referendum”. In the blog Hill states: “having ‘devo-max’ as a question to be decided by Scots alone was always nonsense .…”.
On the principle of federalism Hill wrote: “… the danger posed by winning with promises to restructure the UK in a way that will fundamentally weakening (sic) it. Buying off the separatists with such concessions is, in terms a former Chancellor (i.e. Brown) should understand, the constitutional equivalent of selling assets to cover costs. That way lies bankruptcy.“
On Starmer’s federalism, Hill wrote: “Notably, and depressingly, he (Starmer) even explicitly says that he wants this to include not only a re-assessment of the relationship between the devolved governments and Westminster, but more powers for the Scottish Parliament.”
Calling on the Lib Dem for support, Hill notes: ‘This (Starmer’s position) illustrates how under-developed this thinking is: even the likes of Willie Rennie, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and a committed federalist, told a recent pro-UK conference that the Scottish Government has “sufficient powers”.’ This confirms gavinochiltree’s point!
On Gordon Brown’s federalism, Hill notes: “In fact even Gordon Brown (at the same Newcastle meeting) was at pains to disclaim the suggestion that he was calling for even more powers for Holyrood.” Disclaim? I think this just means he was at pains to ‘deny’ he was calling for more powers for Holyrood!
So to close, here is Peter A Bell again to put it plainly:
“Federalism cannot proceed from the British state any more than pea and ham soup can proceed ‘fae a chicken’.” The Conservative Home blogger would seem to agree!
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All that the unionists are trying to do is to muddy the waters and hope that all this independence malarkey will blow over so that they can get back to business as usual.
That being to see how little money they can spend in Scotland in return for a title and £300/day plus expenses.
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“On the issues that really matter” Willie Rennie is “worthless”
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If Willie Rennie did not exist would anyone feel the need to invent him ?
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Lets work together, Canned Heat, and Lets stick together, Brian Ferry two songs written by the same guy, Wilbert Harrison to the same tune, check out the originals on youtube,
As for Wullie Rennie, the tune Go Now, seems appropriate.
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He waits, patiently, for his “elevation” to the Lords—aware that all other failed Dumbs eventually end up with ermine.
If Cole-Hamilton could–he would give Wee Wullie a leg up–then he would hope to be Nat KING Cole-Hamilton–though there wont be many left to be KING off!
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