Alex Salmond, My Part in His Downfall

We lost. I'm not for raking over the ashes of the referendum outcome with X Files stories of doddery enumerators and mysterious blank backed ballot papers. We lost the referendum vote on whether Scotland should be an independent country. I am saddened but accepting of it, but I hear calls now, a week or so after the results, that it's over, we should move on and that the issue is closed and gone for a generation. That's not how I feel and I don't think I am alone in feeling it. What to do? What to think?

Start with me, me, me, why don't we? What's happening with me after this huge setback? Well, for one thing I'm aware as I type that I'm now using the word "we". A few months back I tapped out a few blogs about my politics and I am reminded in reading them now that my "I" has become a "we". It strikes me that that is no loss. I am still feeling a belonging to and a membership of something bigger than me. For me and others who have experienced it, that transformation, still in such early, fragile days, is such a beautiful, hopeful wondrous thing. I became we. 

It's clear a week on from the No vote that we don't yet know our next steps and that we're disappointed, hurt and even angry. Too right we are, and much more besides. We're allowed to be mixed up and pissed off for heaven's sakes, and yet from the usual sources I hear the usual voices and their encouragements to move on, put behind, mend and pretend we've not changed after our brief dalliance with silliness. I'm not feeling it. Sorry, we're not feeling it. We're feeling lots of things but let's just feel them and not be rushed away from the emotions. There's no shame in them, to recover and be healthy we need to address our thoughts and feelings, not supplant them with someone else's poor advice. Our independence hangover and its pains mean it's not just some fleeting want that we all shared like a passing fad. We're bruised and sore because we really believed and haven't stopped doing so. We seem awful serious about this, whatever this is. We seem to not be done with it and that alone feels hopeful.

It looks for all the world that we are indeed "we" and that we intend to remain so because we have unfinished business. It's not just some poorly defined business either, our unfinished business is the bedrock of what we want our lives (and our kids lives) to become. Such matters were once the business of political parties and the vying ideas they offered as solutions. We've discovered that again, in the muck and dirt left behind by Westminster parties clamoring to love banks, power, wealth and celebrity. We've re-discovered a shared glimpse of a different future where people are more important than profit and where economies are part of society, not the other way round. We've been fed a lie for 40 years that nasty right wing neo-liberal politics and economics is the natural law of human society and that there can be no other way. In Scotland many of us did something remarkable, we discovered that we don't see the world that way. And remember, not "I don't see the world that way", WE. We don't buy it any more. In our biggest city and many of our towns, we don't buy it. In our poorest places, we won't buy it. In our younger generation and our housing schemes, we see something different. We began to imagine something better. We did that. Us. In Scotland.

This business then. the business of making our society a fairer, more compassionate, more humane existence, rather than a competitive, sharp elbowed war of all against all, that journey won't be via #the45 or angry gatherings like it. Those things are fleeting reflections of our different confused reactions to a first defeat.

Glasgow shows the way

We won't stay there, we can't, there's no energy or progress in pissing and moaning at some great unfair "other" or others, to treat us better. Our revolutionary business will find its energy and politics in making the world the way we want it to be: in the donations to food banks that we've seen arise in Glasgow; in the commitments being made by people joining political parties, and in the awareness that when we listen to each other we are so much better informed than when we listen to voices who mendaciously support the rich and powerful. We'll do that. Us. 

We've come an awful long way and there's no doubt we've an awful long way to go, but we're us, we're Scots by choice. Many of us (at least 45%) want a better Scotland that is supportive and compassionate for its people, peaceful and progressive in the world, and most of all we want a Scotland that allows its people to become the folk they have the potential to be.

I'm in for the long haul. We're going to do this. Positively, wonderfully, beautifully and we will shake the world. All of us who want to be called us. Thanks Alex Salmond for helping wake us to who we are. We'll take it from here.

That's Not How I Feel

That's us that is. It will however be raining

I've chuntered a fair bit along the bottom of my Marianas trench of gloom and doom about the state of affairs in our United Kingdoms. No sorries, it's necessary to critique now before leaping to any notion of a wonderful future. In that respect I'll certainly circle back on the trail plenty of times to plough a deeper furrow, but I want to take a leap of positivity - "Steady on Stevie!" yer saying. We'll be fine. Pinky promise.

For any definite No voters reading this far the scarey stuff will start soon. I'm going to do the bad thing, the thing where I consider what an independent Scotland could be like - emotionally at least. At this point you might want to bring to mind a happy, safe memory, hold it in your thoughts for a moment, and when you feel ready to proceed just let the memory go for now, knowing that you can easily go to it should anything about my hopes for Scotland lead to panic or terror for you. I suffer from panic attacks, I'm not mocking (much).

Now that hopefully we're all feeling safe I ask you allow me a brief return to my alienated rage to facilitate dainty pro-Indy steps later...

If I can't put faith in the United Kingdom to reform itself that doesn't necessarily mean an Independent Scotland would be a good idea either. It could conceivably be worse than our current position, or so I am to believe from the Better Together campaign where I might find myself trapped in Brazil with Merks as currency, Somalian levels of government and only my haggis burning slowly in the fire to ease my dark Scottish pain. You know when I said I was alienated from everything that the United Kingdom has to offer as a political state? Yeah, I am also alienated, angry and offended by the views and attitudes shown towards Scots and Scotland. The level of disconnect from mainstream sources and figures, even some I would normally respect, has been quite staggering. In communication and relationship terms it serves to demonstrate again the disconnect and other-worldliness of the people I am meant to be happily bonded in union with. Unsurprisingly that too has made me angry, alienated and all that jazz. Really, really importantly for me, in terms of the independence debate here's the rub....

THIS IS NOT HOW I FEEL

When engaged in the politics, debate, passion, creativity, energy, camaraderie, discovery, joy, awakening - and so much more besides - I feel connected to the people I share a country with! I am an engaged human being who has some, agency, power and involvement in my social and political world. That's how I feel and it's bloody marvelous.

For decades I've felt my core values, sense of politics, fairness and all that "stuff" have been held like a battered shield against the constant attacks from the world of de-humanised power and profit. I've been told and made to feel that my battering from those inhuman profit hungry forces, with each inch of my self that I lose to them, is just a law of the universe and any sense I retain of social justice and some humanity about our society is reduced to a fools rose-tinted reference to a historical aberration. Let me summarise - the period of "socialist silliness" rightly ended with bin men catapulting dead bodies at Liverpudlians who were attacking brave Lady Thatcher as she defended the Falklands from the miners, who had traitorously allied with the evil Argentinians to force lazy unions demands for no-work/full-pay contracts on the masses. I've used a wee bit of license there, but it captures the important parts of the argument I feel battered by - stupid and alien. However....

THAT'S NOT HOW I FEEL NOW

It really isn't. I don't feel as though I am holding a battered shield to a never ending onslaught from the rich and powerful as they wage class war on me while telling me it's healthy for us all. As part of the Indyref debate I feel empowered and that the antics of the No campaign and vast majority of mainstream media merely serve to demonstrate that I do indeed have some power these days. The shrillness of panicked voices - Brian Wilson is my favourite - only serves to strengthen me more. It's magical! They're scared of my arguments - well not mine per se, mine are bollocks - but our arguments. They're losing control of the space and nature of the debate. Out of the box of "us" comes all the life and love of possibilities and ideas from sources in our civic society, not the SNP or talking heads on the telly. From us. Scottish folk. Ordinary punters. That's a bit special, don't forget this feeling. It's the steam that drives the piston of the changes we want in our world - aye a Trot reference, deal with it.

The Yes campaign for independence has captured a spirit of people like me as they meet in huge numbers, debate in pubs, leaflet and man stalls in public places. I've never seen a nation so alive with political discourse and activity. No wonder the politicians and their mates in the media are terrified. They can't get us back in the box and back to discussing how much we miss Princess Diana, fear immigrants and hate Europeans - Daily Mail stock headlines 101. That's the debate our English friends are having right now because they do not have the vehicle and mechanism we have. They do not have the opportunity we have. They don't experience the joyous political awakening and landscape of possibilities we do. Instead they have Nigel Farage.

Think about that for a moment. It captures what's happening across the UK. Scots are no different from our English friends - anyone making an ethnic case for independence can bugger off now, seriously. We're not abandoning them, we've found a way to have the conversations, find each other in the darkness and organise an escape from the hopelessly inhuman political economy of our union. If we lead the English like us will follow. People have great power when they awaken, we had just forgotten it and lost hope. Hope is what I have re-discovered when I consider the possibilities of Scottish independence. I'm not daft, I know it's not a magic wand and I know it'll be bloody hard, with hard times involved too, but why the hell should we be put off by that? It's like discovering the open door to your cell and being too lazy and conditioned to escape. No I'm not talking about Scots being prisoners of the English in our union, I am talking about us all on these islands being prisoners of a union and political system that now serves to beggar and imprison us all, with the exception of 0.01% of the population which our union serves to enrich. The very human awakenings of our politics and social conscience is an infinitely brigher light and hope for England than 59 votes in a den of thieves.

When I involve myself in the politics of the union and its reform I am alienated, horrified and pretty much done with it.

When I involve myself with the politics and possibilities of an independent Scotland life feels bloody good. As one of "us" I can make a difference and be involved. As a passive victim of what the United Kingdom has become I cannot.

The independence debate has made me feel alive. Alienated no more, dreadful no more - Reid brothers, have it, it'd be magic, seriously. I'm convinced that for me and us "BetterTogether" is a lie as a phrase and a campaign. We should bin that, let's be GallusThegither. Now sing along wi Sam...

Stevie

Deeper and Deeper

Me being all melancholy n alienated n stuff

Thanks for coming back, or hiya if you're here for the first time.

A Boring Personal Recap

I'm working my way through my thoughts, feelings and politics about our Scottish independence referendum. I'm barely started in trying to piece together anything like a consistent ground for my definite Yes vote but as I fumble my thoughts into some sort of rational order I am becoming more aware that we should all be doing something of this nature. 

No I am not a saint or guru leading the way to the promised land Don't follow me for heaven's sakes (well follow me here and on twitter but spare yourself in a spiritual sense). All I'm reflecting is that to find my rational choice, rather than the emotive one I feel guilty about, I need a better political education/consciousness to underpin reason. 

As ever, bear with me.

Back to My "Issues"

If I am going to justify to myself that I want a new nation-state of Scotland (it's currently a stateless nation) then I really do have to be sure that the existing nation-state of the UK isn't usefully salvageable - it's not, I'm sure of this, but need self-assurance I am not delusional. 

"I'd be voting Yes because it's got some hope about it"

That's me on an imaginary psychotherapists couch talking about my Indyref vote.

"because it's beyond f...ed. I can't see a way to save it without more pain for the most vulnerable. In fact I feel utterly powerless to do anything about it."

That's me telling my inner therapist the essence of why I can't stay with the nation-state arrangements of the United Kingdom. I did say I was not the full shilling didn't I? No? Oh well. Back to the angst...

There's so much I am horrified, angry, concerned and powerless about. I'm not alone, I know it fine. Here's something from one of the finest speeches ever passionately spoken, forty years old and achingly relevant right now:

Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It's the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies. Jimmy Reid - A working Class Heroes Finest Speech

I'm tempted to go into my "Ed Miliband, Ed f...ing Miliband" schtick and rail against the poverty of decent options. See my earlier posts for that stuff though. It's this, when Jimmy says this:

"The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies"

God, that gets me deep. That's me that is, and surely so many of you too. I've got to hope so or I'll be hopelessly alone in my horror at the way our world is. Right, here's my deal then, I need to be personally committed and trusting of the assertion that my alienation and anger can't be sorted by UK wide reform, beyond the gut feeling response of "it just bloody can't!".


Confessions of a Selfish Fool

"I just can't. If you're saying to me to wait, and achieve my goals by working within the Labour movement and Labour party to achieve broad social and economic reform then I fear I might have to tell you to f..k right off and awaken yourself to some harsh realities"

That's me responding to my inner therapist asking me to consider a reformist route within the UK - I fear he may have referred me on after this session, poor soul. It's familiar stuff for anyone who's read my previous dribblings I've been round that roundabout a few times now though. I need to get past it. Why can't I trust or hope for Labour renewals? Let's go there a bit more.

I was in the Labour Party for a while in the 90's. Donald Dewar's constituency. Steven Purcell was the branch chair, lovely bloke and I have huge sympathy for his path and difficulties of recent years despite not being in touch since those 90s days - side avenue though, sorry. 

I think I left because I wanted to talk about politics, ideas, society, and what we usually talked about was anything but - party machinations, internal stuff or even worse, deliberately avoiding having a debate by using a technical point. That's what happened when I turned up with "Clause 4" on the back of my membership card and instead of us debating whether the party should bin this historic commitment to some sort of socialist ideal the discussion was held till the next meeting (after the Clause 4 vote) because a member of decades standing had "never heard of Clause 4 and needed time to find out more about it before a proper discussion". Aye right. Pure mince so it was.

That's a petty wee insight and reflection on a personal experience. I know that. It doesn't capture lots of good things about those days and the Labour party, not least the comradeship. However, I do think it represents a tiny microcosm of a bigger picture. The Labour party in the 90s weren't interested in fostering debate, they were interesting in reshaping themselves to be palatable to the electorate and keen to ditch ideas, principles and any other "baggage" needed to become electable. I don't think that's a controversial reading of party history and I am happy to be contradicted, fire in! 

If I move on though then the loss of principle, sidelining of debate, centralisation of party power away from the control of "the movement" etc. brings me back to this place:

"The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies" Jimmy Reid

As I say, I am happy to argue the toss with anyone who wants to, but that's my personal experience and perspective on where I stand in relation to my one real hope in UK politics. So it strikes me that I feel EXACTLY the same way about the Labour party as I do about the problems of the UK state. I am deeply and completely alienated from it and by it. It doesn't feel like my party, doesn't speak for my hopes and can't empower my voice. In fact it denies me all of those things.

Other folk will be alienated in different ways. Their loyalties and histories will be theirs, not mine. Their analysis will be different, but I am convinced that they'll not find a sense of connectedness and humanity that dissipates their alienation in any Westminster party. That's why I see no hope there. 

I'm still voting Yes because like Jimmy Reid and so many others too, I am of a mind that the best way to lose my alienation, anomie or pissed-offness is to stop being part of the "rat race" - it's for rats, not humans. For me, the Labour Party and the parliament it sits in in Westminster have become utterly co-opted by that rat race. They are part of what alienates and de-humanises me and us. Their politics, policies and ambitions are part of the thing that makes me angry and us all ill as a society. I can't place my trust for us re-humanising our political world in Labour or any Westminster parliamentary party. It turns out they're the source of my despair at our inhuman society. 

Still thinking, stay tuned

Stevie

P.S. of course I'll address the "but Scotland won't solve all those problems Stevie" stuff. Gimme a break you slave-drivers 

Woe is Us

UK financial stability guaranteed!!

I’m not done. In fact I’m not even sure I am past the early fumbling stages of beginning to make sense to myself, never mind any poor soul reading this.

In my first few posts I set myself the seemingly therapeutic task of justifying my gut feeling Yes vote to my guilt ridden socialist conscience dyed in its anti-nationalist juices. Congruence I think it’s called.

So far I’ve had a right rant about Nigel Farage a couple of times. Ed Miliband and party leader chums too. On reflection I seem to be what academics might call “deeply alienated” from Westminster party leaders and the parties they represent. Of course folks who prefer lowfalutin might just identify my feelings towards the Westminster political offerings as “pissed off”, “scunnered” or something even more earthy. Those folks would be dead right.

Why though? I’m saying that our UK politicians are hopeless, that they really make me angry and that I feel so very distant from their universe, but why? What is it I wanted them to do, or be doing? What’s wrong with my world that I needed these parental leadership figures to be setting right for poor we me (and us)?

I can feel it already, just asking myself that question. What’s wrong? Before we even get to the “What is to be done?” stuff (top marks to reference getters there by the way) there seems to be so much broken in our British society that it’s hard to know where to begin. I suppose I had a bit of a bash with the “Ed Miliband? Seriously? Ed Miliband?” type rant in a previous post, and of course there’s always Nigel as a crow-like harbinger of the spirit of the times – I refuse to use “Zeitgeist”, I just refuse. But they’re just two blokes who represent social “stuff”. They’re handy blame/rage-hounds for me, and I suspect us. So what’s the social stuff I want sorting out? Again hard to know where to start.

So let's start here: Paul Moore was on the Max Keiser show on 15^th May and whatever you feel about Max and Stacey’s Barnum-like financial reporting Mr Robson, Head of Risk at HBOS during the financial crisis had some real bombshells for anyone who’s paying attention. Watch him from 12:35 to the end, it’s worth it and I promise it’s jaw dropping.

Right you’re back. So the top layers of our biggest banks, their accountants, the regulators we expect to govern their practice and the politicians we expect to govern the whole framework and system are corrupt. Not just incompetent, but wilfully, criminally corrupt. Watch it again, watch other Keiser shows, or other financial commentary from the likes of Professor Steve Keen. Google “Brown’s Bottom” and dig a bit on why Gordie deliberately undersold Britain’s gold reserves as the bottom of the market.  Folks, it sounds mad, conspiracy laden and leftfield, but we’re really not living in anything remotely like a democracy. Kleptocracy, autocracy, fraudocracy, call it what you like, it’s not in our interests and it’s also not something that Ed, Dave, Nick or even Nige are talking about or intending to change. Austerity politics is about propping the damned thing up.  Good god that was a rant. Sorry if I’ve lost anyone on a “wow Stevie’s a conspiracy nut” type response. Let me be more sensible for a bit.

It’s easy to disappear down the rabbit hole of this stuff, losing yourself in the financial shenanigans and conspiracies, but if you and I manage to get the gist of it it’s this - our politics in the UK are about the public acceptance of corporate risks and debts while our corporations pay no tax and essentially have no risk or liabilities. We print them our money, we pay their debt, they take the profit. That’s what austerity is. The nationalisation of risk and debt with the privatisation of profit and wealth. That’s quite a trick if you can pull it off and it certainly takes some explaining once someone starts asking you about it. And that’s one of the things that makes me angry or exceptionally disillusioned with Westminster politics and politicians. Instead of there being a political “reckoning” following our banking crisis, with its' austerity based policy reaction, we’ve had an emerging consensus on increasingly right wing politics that kisses goodbye to the notion of welfare and victimises the poor for the sins of the rich. And in our media? Well we’re back to Farage and seemingly it goes like this “Get Nigel out of the closet, he’ll mug it up and say some offensive stuff to throw folk off the scent.”

That’s our politics there folks. A corrupt elite masking a huge corporate robbery of our public wealth. Sounds like madness and a conspiracy doesn’t it? Like some wild eyed lefty waving arms and flinging spit instead of sense. I know it does. I wish it didn't. Do some reading. Do some thinking. It really isn’t. £1.5 trillion pounds worth of debt UK PLC will have soon. Me and you lined to pay for it, in every sense of the phrase. Watch Professor Steve Keen, one of the few who predicted the 2008 crash. Dig around it for yourself. Even if you disagree with my own strange take on it all, find your own, you'll very quickly discover just how bad the UK economy and City of London are for 99.9% of the people living in the UK. 

So when someone says “we need to stick with the UK for financial stability” don’t punch them, but think about it a lot while maybe explaining the error in their ways.

Clearly I have more thinking to do. We all do,

Stevie

Resistance is Futile

Let’s begin with a couple of bold assertions:

1.       Nigel Farage is what happens when your political parties are rotten and disconnected from the people who are expected to vote for them.

2.       Ed Miliband is what happens to a political party and its leader when everything about your parliamentary party has to be geared towards winning a few hundred thousand votes in key marginals, across mostly the midlands and south of England. Allow me this further ranty type observation on Ed, he’s an injection molded, soulless  manifestation of a “leader” that media analaysts and party strategists think certain sorts of voters won’t want to hang. So are Dave and Nick.

Farage and those injection moldings we have as party leaders are politically connected. The politics of our union offers Ed Miliband, David Cameron and Nick Clegg as leaders we’re meant to believe will identify what’s wrong with our British world and put it right, or at least have a good bash at doing so. That’s the sort of thing an ideology used to give us in quick cultural shorthand – “a political party believes society has X problems and must do Y in order to make a better future that will look like Z”. In very broad terms that used to translate as Labour will pursue “socialist”/social democratic type policies, the Tories will support business and try to veil their inherent racism, and the Liberals will be nice – sort of Greens without a purpose.

Well the Liberals lost their niceness, the Tories stayed the same and the Labour party became the Tories with cheaper suits. There is no vision, no future, no way the world should be, just a bland acceptance that capitalism is a natural law of the universe and the best we can manage is leaving soulless clones to fiddle with its levers.

Ed Miliband tells me he’ll freeze energy prices or give transport companioes a jolly big row and I find myself screaming at the telly “but I want you to nationalise them!”. You might not be screaming the same thing, but I know you’re screaming, right? Right. And Ed’s the one I’m supposed to like.

Then there’s Dave. Dave tells me the NHS is safe in his hands, does anyone believe him? Anything he says? Trust his motives? Feel some bond of kinship or sense of fellow-traveller on the good ship UK? No me neither.  I’ll leave aside descriptions of the telly-watching/responding scene when Dave’s on. Rest assured it’s not pretty. 

Lastly of course there’s Nick. I can’t remember experiencing Nick Clegg in any way whatsoever since he replaced that decent sounding bloke with the red hair. When Nick tells me anything I fail to care. He’s the neutrino of the political world, except I don’t despise neutrinos for being so weak and poor at interacting – top physics gag there. Yass!

Those are the leaders of our main UK political parties, our supposed vehicles for hope and change.   Seriously, does anyone believe they’re capable, or even remotely interested in big change? I can’t be alone in thinking the three of them, and currently their parties, could not be further from the sort of thing I want or feel is necessary in terms of representing my political life and aspirations.

And when our leaders, their parties and our whole political system lets us down this way? Cue Nigel Farage as a walking, talking two fingered salute to the British political establishment. He captures the same rancour, pissed offness and spite about the world and what it does to us as the London riots (other cities were available for rioting activities too).

Nigel Farage is a riot, and not just in the photo mugging, blokey, jokey, smokey,  down the pub sense either. He’s a physical embodiment of the outburst of “free speech” we saw when London kids rioted. Farage just lets older people smash and burn their “town”/England in a “fuck this” political sort of way. It’s lashing out, it’s blaming others, it’s visceral and raw. What it really is though is bloody worrying if I am expecting Ed Miliband and the Labour party to sort it out by painting a vision of the future that gives hope.

Goodness that’s a bleak picture I paint. If only there was some political mechanism I could use to change things.

Stevie

Waiting on Labour

In my first fumbling attempts at blogging my Indyref mental turmoil I said “hiya!” and then admitted that I’d given up on the United Kingdom before disappearing up my nether regions about my discomfort with nationalism . I’ll return to the nationalism/ist bit in due course. I want to have a wee think about why I I’ve given up on the United Kingdom as a hopeful thing.

Why not our Union?

It’s hard to know where to start. I’m genuinely struggling to begin to capture what it is that causes such a lack of faith, despair and alienation in me when I consider our British political society.

UKIP, let’s start there then. Nigel Farage, what’s that all about?

How can Nigel Farage and a party of xenophobic grotesques more suited to Little Britain than real life be polling as highly as they seem to be in England? Farage and UKIP represent a reactionary right wing political force playing on the same fears, and driven by many of the same factors, as the libertarian right in the US. Anti-“other”, anti-government, anti-welfare and anti much else. I am horrified by him but it’s important to hold onto the fact that people turn to figures like Farage when they have nowhere else to turn. They find hope or a protest when they have no way of otherwise expressing  themselves. Farage and his merry band of “Littlejohns” are with us because our Westminster parties are failing to represent the interests of English people and give them a political voice, vision and future that they trust - the use of "English" wasn't a slip. I'll have a think about where Scotland is in this circus sometime soon.

As an example of this Farage-ness consider why he’s always on the BBC? Simply, because he’s different from the rest of the party aparatchiks who pollute our screens with mind shrivelling dross. He gets a reaction, he makes politics seem interesting to people who've come to hate politicians, even if it’s just to hate him. He’s an interesting, charasmatic clown. He might have the strong whiff of racism about him, but he’s more engaging and entertaining than the rest of our politicians who could (deliberately) bore the arse off you at fifty paces.

Why do people engage, react, or wake up with Farage, while turning away from his soporific political peers? Simply because he’s talking in a language that doesn’t deliberately exclude people from his conversation in the way that others do, you know the “you’re too silly to understand interest rates and bond markets so leave it to us experts” type stuff? Farage is trying to connect with and address people’s real issues. In a stinkingly blokey, xenophobic, right wing and nasty sort of way, but nonetheless he’s trying to connect and having some success in doing so. That’s a pretty damning indictment of our political process. The UK has produced a Farage because our politics and politicians are so bad that a load of us would rather pay attention to a xenophobic charlatan .

Where is Ed Miliband or any progressive, left or even social democrat voice? Even that question makes me shudder. We have a populist xenophobe rising in the polls and throwing bread and circuses at the masses and my biggest hope is in Ed Miliband. Our NHS and post war welfare state are being dismantled, sold off, financialised, commoditised, opened to competition...yada yada and I’m thinking “where’s Ed Miliband?” Bloody hell, that’s a rum do. I could spend months on where Ed Miliband is, but I think it is very succinctly captured by rembering Ed Miliband  eulogising Tony Benn. Ed couldn’t bring himself to use the words “socialist” or “socialism” in a reflection on a man whose whole life was defined by those things. Instead we got a belly full of navel gazing management speak, buzzwords and key phrases. Bland, safe, unintelligent, grey, boring pap fed to us by a man who’s all of those words while he eulogises a man who was none of them . That’s where Britain, England, Westminster, Ed Miliband and the Labour party are at, right there in that nutshell. I’m to put my hopes for societal change in a man, a party and a system that cannot bear to hear words and concepts, hopes and aspirations that define me and my own personal politics. Sure many folk won’t be socialists, won’t be of the same mind as me and won’t feel the same revulsion in exactly the way I’ve described here, but I am convinced that revulsion is what they do feel. Maybe not in the same way I experience my alienation and revulsion, but certainly in a similar and related way. To put ones hopes and future in something that feels so utterly alien, not us, not caring, not even bloody human, that’s what Ed, Labour, Westminster and the UK have become for me. That's why folk turn to something as nasty as UKIP. If that's what's on offer it's not for me.

I’ll need to think about it some more.

Stevie

Picking at my nationalist scab

An initial wander through my terrifying fears that I may have become a "nasty nationalist".

I remember an argument when I was a ridiculously outspoken twenty something during which my mate Colin was arguing from a nationalist point of view and I was responding with “aye, so why doesn’t Aberdeen become independent, as it will do far better? Where do we stop with fragmenting politics to suit identity?”. That thought and position still lurks in me somewhere and it definitely rose in my conscience when recent news bulletins and press pieces carried the notion of independence for Shetland or The Islands.

“What? Don’t be so daft” 

I found myself telling the news program, while being well aware of my lurking hypocrisy and guilt about also thinking 

“Shit, all that oil and possible renewable energy would be gone!”. 

Good god I must be the worst sort of "nationalist" and a terribly selfish, hypocritical daft one to boot. Before I continue I should really apologise to committed nationalists and allow that their political view is nothing abhorrent in civilised life and within reason. Remember I am dealing with my own struggle, so it's my struggle with nationalism I am confuddled by, not a rejection of whatever nationalism some others might hold - not yet anyway.

Back on (off) track, there’s definitely something shameful, guilty and politically conflicted going on in my head, something deep and terribly meaningful about my identity. I think it’s probably going on for many others in Scotland too. These days Colin (see above), as far as I can tell, seems to be staunchly pro Union – largely based on Union Jacks and a spectacular dislike for Alex Salmond  – and I’ve somehow managed to find myself arguing alongside the SNP that Scotland should be an independent nation. There’s that word, “nation”. Damn, I must be a nationalist, and of course, the very worst sort of that too. Woe is officially me.

It’s dark in this pit of self doubt I’ve hurled myself into and I’m genuinely ill at ease with the thoughts of betraying the socialism I’ve always claimed as an important part of my identity. There’s an easy ladder out too, the traditional left who support unionism offer it to me most consistently in terms of a class based argument for working class unity and solidarity. I could overcome my silly conflictedness and doubts about being a nasty nationalist if I just accept that my way out of the pit of political self doubt is to vote with my class and the Labour movement to change politics in the United Kingdom. Brilliant, easy, I’m sorted, not conflicted at all. I just vote Labour and they’ll deliver change in tandem with the trade unions I solidly support and believe in...

There's a problem though. I've tried this mental leap a fair few times and every single time I attempt it rather than a happy escape from conflictedness about how to improve the UK I hear my political conscience kicking in with: 

“Really?

Naw, really Stevie? 

That’s your political masterplan for sorting out the mess we’re in? The same masterplan you and many others have had (with a quite remarkable lack of success) for the last 4 decades during which the things you believe in, equality, social justice, the welfare state, trade unions, the NHS and much else have been under sustained and succesful attack? That's your plan?”

“Stevie man, have a word wi yerself!” I can hear my conscience ‘hint’ loudly.

“Waiting for Labour is your best shot at a sensible way out of the daft pit you metaphorically hurled yourself into? No chance, that’s just bloody stupid” (and something we’ll return to in more detail in another post).

I’ll not lengthen this early wandering through my delusions by including much on “waiting for the Lib Dems” or Tories. Anyone who wants to argue that with me or my incredibly rude and intolerant sub-conscious is welcome to try, but don’t, for all our sakes. I cannot in good conscience vote or wait for a Labour party who have...well, perhaps I can revisit that in more detail in another post. I can't vote for Labour or wait for them to deliver the changes I want to see in British and Scottish society. I just can't.

So here I am in my pit of seemingly overwhelming nationalist guilt that the one way I have of possibly, maybe, positively changing the politics of my Clydebank, wife, weans, dugs and debt, world is to vote Yes. What else can I do when nothing from the existing political settlement within the union will bring about a necessary change and improvement in our lives? It’s a “sair fecht” this gig, being forced to be a dastardly Nat because all other options seemed closed to me, but despite my discomfort they really, really do.

I'm left in this initial skip through my daftness with the summary that I must vote Yes to get rid of a hopeless Westminster political setup and perhaps be able to build a better Scottish version? Seems sensible enough at this stage. I’ll mutter on about it more soon.

Stevie