By Alasdair Macdonald

Comments.

1. When an opinion poll near voting day for the 2014 referendum suggested YES was going to win, the unionists panicked. David Cameron flew to Scotland. Bodger Broon made his notorious speech at Community Central Halls in Maryhill to Labour Party members (naebdy else allowed in) which the the BBC broadcast live and had ‘pundits who hailed it. The Daily Ranger published the mendacious VOW. A spokesperson for MI5 was interviewed and said that at times when the integrity of the state is at risk all agencies must act to protect it.
2. Even though Labour did not win an overall majority in the Senedd at the last election it was still the dominant party in Wales until the 2026 bye election in Caerphili was won by PC, despite the media suggesting people might want to vote Reform to keep PC out, Weksh Labour always emphasised its Welshness. In that context, BBC Wales did not feel it needed to attack the Senedd (since they perceived it as securely unionist) or indeed things Welsh. Indeed, Wales was just something tacked on at the end of ‘England and Wales’.
3. Establishing the Scottish Parliament was largely driven by Donald Dewar in honour of his friend, the late John Smith. Blair and the UK Labour Party were lukewarm at best, hostile at worst. Remember, Blair dismissively compared it to an English parish council. The powers given to Holyrood, though constrained by the Act, were much greater than those given to the Welsh Assembly. In addition, since Donald Dewar called devolution a ‘continuous process’ rather than a single act, there was the possibility that Holyrood could get more powers, as, indeed, it has. However, since Labour believed they were the ‘natural governing party of Scotland’, they believed Labour would always be the largest party and that there would always be a unionist majority. So, they were sanguine about Dewar’s ‘process’. But following Dewar’s unexpected death and Henry McLeish becoming FM and showing independence of thought, Labour mired him in scandal, forced his resignation and installed the compliant Jack McConnell, who did not rock the boat and actually sent unspent money back to the Treasury. From the day Holyrood was established the Scottish media in its entirety attacked it unrelentingly. The reason was to let Scots know ‘they urrnae very good’. BBC Scotland is continuing this practice.
4. The UK unionist media as they did in 2014 are following their practice of criticising their own ‘straw man’ of ‘Scottish exceptionalism’. This is the context of baleful Libby Brooke’s’ knocking piece in the self proclaimed ‘progressive’Guardian.’. Look at the uniformity of the headlines in today’s Telegraph, Mail, Times, Express, Sun.

I think all of this shows the unionists are really fears that their ‘precious union’ might indeed be falling apart due to Starmer’s and his government’s lack of a narrative and a direction, the rise of Reform and collapse of the Tories, the DUP’s recognition that a united Ireland is coming accompanied by the mollifying words of the president of the Gaelic Games Association, the rise of the Green Party to the left of Labour (Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are more leftwing than Labour), the likely third party status of Labour in Wales and the likely continuation of SNP governance in Scotland.

WB Yeats was prescient when he wrote: “Things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold, mere anarchy rules”.

The problem for us and the Welsh is that Britannia has always had a destructive balefulness – leave Britannia if you must, but we will impoverish and disempower you in the process.