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Some fallacies will never die “SNP MSP claims border with England would ‘create jobs'”, writes Tom Gordon in the Herald.
AN SNP candidate has claimed that a new a trade border between Scotland and England resulting from independence could “create jobs”, despite the impact on business.
South Scotland MSP Emma Harper, who is challenging a Tory incumbent in Galloway & West Dumfries, was accused of spouting “half-witted nonsense” after the comment.
Speaking to ITV Border, Ms Harper criticised Boris Johnson for creating a Brexit hard border down the Irish Sea despite previous assurances it wouldn’t happen.
Asked “so why add another one here?”, she replied: “If a border will work, we can show that a border will work, there are issues that have been brought to my attention that show that jobs can be created if a border is created.
Job creation for guards: sounds just the Scottish National Party’s style. Perhaps that is why they are so keen on the Hate Crime (Scotland) Bill. Think of the career opportunities for snoopers and informers!
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For a certain type of person, the creation of one government job in exchange for the loss of ten private jobs is a net gain.
Sadly, people of that type seem to be in charge all over the world right now.
She may be right. Building a wall with guard towers (now where has that worked in the past?), laying minefields, barbed wire obstacles and savage guard dogs with their handlers will all provide massive job opportunities. Maintaining that lot will lead to lots of government contracts and lots of non jobs manning the wall to keep the Scots in their Socialist Utopia. We capitalists love only money so we lock up our money. Wee Jimmy Krankie loves her people so she locks up …????
I have said it before but if they really, actually and truly want independence, then if they couch it in terms of “This is the breakup of the UK so the whole of the UK needs to vote” then I can’t see the majority of the English voting to keep the Union.
Let them go their own way. They will still blame the English for everything for the next 2,000 years but at least we won’t be paying for it and subsidising them.
All very well for you sassenachs on the other side of Frau Sturgeon’s Anti-Fascist Protection rampart but we’ve got to live with the mad bint and the gerrymandered election going on (and on) up here until next Thursday. She’s been promising streets paved with gold to anybody who will listen, although quite where the money is going to come from if she gets her way on the IndyRef2 vote is anybody’s guess. The magic money tree, probably.
Fortunately, even Wee Jimmy Krankie’s most rose tinted utterances aren’t carrying the polls at the moment and it’s likely that as in 2014 lots will think twice in the voting booths and opt for the status quo of “No”. Thank god.
Last time Wee Eck could just about fudge the numbers with a bit of EU magic and the ever flowing spiggot of “Scotland’s Oil” to just about balance the books with a fair wind and a bit of Scottish Government sleight of hand. The blessed Nicola has neither the charisma nor anything like a decent economic argument to pull that off with IndyRef2 and her constant refrain that the EU will step in and fill the gap appears to be little more than a Hail Mary.
Yet another vote seems inevitable, but it’ll be BRExit all over again with a very marginal “No” (and a deep sigh of relief) followed by the demented porridge wogs of the SNP going full KGB on us all for having the temerity to refuse the delights of creating “Venezuela on the Clyde”.
It’s going to be another tiresome few years up here.
I am curious- on what does Scottish trade depend? If most of their trade is on trucks or trains through England to get to Europe, and vice versa, then tariffs would increase prices so that Scottish goods become too pricey. A German who likes Johnny Walker Whisky might switch to Napoleon Brandy. So where is the advantage?
@Nicholas – Difficult to see in aggregate, lots of stuff like Scottish Whiskey (obviously), but also agricultural crops, fish (lake, inshore and offshore), beef, lamb, oil services (albeit declining) and some specialist financial and legal services. It’s quite interesting to look at where those “exports” go (since most are to rUK)
https://www.gov.scot/publications/export-stats-scotland-2018/
Last publication I could find (link above) showed that of the £85 billion GBP “exports”, roughly 60% of those went to rUK, 19% to the EU and 21% to the Rest of the World.
That rather puts the mockers on a hard border I would have thought, in fact, post-BRExit, I’m guessing that that 19% of exports to the EU will have declined a little (and continue to decline), with rUK and/or RotW making up the difference perhaps?
If Wee Jimmie were to actually get her way, what divisions would spring up within Scotland? Highland vs lowland, Edinburgh vs Glasgow, Rangers vs Celtic?
How “final” would a vote actually be, and what, legally, would a “yes” mean, if it means anything at all?
The EU – a pox on it – at least had some framework. As I understand it, what binds Scotland is the act of union. Would it just be a case of repealing that?
The SNP are a bunch of total morons who make the time bandits look like the seven samurai. They couldn’t lead shit round a U bend, and they clearly don’t want proper independence.
I just wish Boris – or whoever – would read them the riot act. You want another referendum? Fine. This – from the RUK side at least – is what you will be voting for. If the EU want to lure them onto their rocks with siren calls, well, they are free to vote for that too.
The SNP does appear to be a particular rancid mix of hostility and incompetence.
If we broke all the windows in this country then all the unemployed people would be needed in the window industry, business would blossom and people would have job security.
I foresee a big boom in the smuggling industry. We (the U.S.) can recommend the Mexican cartels as a source of high-grade instructors for any Scots who have let their cross border skills atrophy. I understand they used to be quite good at it.
I cannot decide whether the economic and social policies of Scottish National Socialism are based on East Germany or North Korea. Will Mrs Sturgeon ever write a Little Tartan Book to enlighten us?
The SNP bang on about the EU single market and how Scotland was “dragged out against our will”.
They ignore the fact that, as John Galt says above, the majority of Scotland’s “exports” go to somewhere else in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (it’s a country, not a union) (so they’re not “exports” are they!! Does Somerset “export” cider to Yorkshire? )
Ah, they say, but if we had “freedumb” then we’d (re)join the EU and have access to the huge “Single Market”: A single market which most businesses in Scotland took no advantage of over the 40 years that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (it’s a country, not a union) was a part of the EU.
God knows what the result is going to be on May 7th (or whenever they finish counting: because Covid), but I’m not looking forward to another term of the SNP in office. I’ve even managed to convince my 85 yr old father (who’s a separatist) that we might consider a move “down south” (and I don’t mean Carlisle).
The SNP are mainly a phenomena of the central belt (Edinburgh across to Glasgow) and represent mostly a community of Scots who would be utterly screwed if their beloved Independence ever came to pass in the form Krankie demands, since most of the businesses that could move South to Englandshire would do. Sure, they might leave a few representative branches hither-and-thither to service any remaining Scots businesses and customers that might survive the devastation of Independence, but there is no way they would leave themselves to Wee Jimmy and her bunch of demented porridge wogs.
If Scotland were ever to declare themselves independent, then the Highlands and Islands (particularly the latter), might demand separate sovereignty from the UK (in the form of the creation of an Isle of Man / Jersey / Guernsey style crown dependency) and all of a sudden there goes Krankie’s oil-and-gas and most of the offshore resources and fishing. That’s a pretty credible threat in and of itself and just like the EU’s abuse of Northern Ireland during BRExit, one which the UK government would be foolish to give in.
RBS and the Bank of Scotland, to name but two, might well have a Scottish heritage, but they are UK banks and dependent upon the Bank of England for their own survival. There is no way they would be foolish enough to retain anything more than a skeleton staff in Scotland post-Independence, simply because that fiction of “re”-joining the EU (and all of the insane accession requirements that come with it) are baggage that no sane country would accept, including a hard border with a tariff wall to keep non-EU goods out.
That’s even assuming that the incompetent SNP could even navigate the accession requirements successfully, like it or not they have zero leverage with the EU and there are a number of existing EU countries (Spain not the least), who would have real problems bringing a secessionist state like Scotland into the EU as it would encourage their own secession movements. That’s before you even start looking at other aspects such as the debt-to-GDP ratio of an independent Scotland. The last thing the EU needs is another Greece.
As I’ve said before, lots of Scots, quite reasonably, like the idea of an independent Scotland, but the vision that is being sold by Wee Jimmy and the SNP is an utterly unrealisable fantasy and the ACTUAL REALITY would be a nightmare of heavy taxation, massive cuts to health provision / services and mass unemployment.
Enough Scots understand this well enough to know to wave the Saltire in the street and vote “No” at the ballot box.
Mark asks As I understand it, what binds Scotland is the act of union. Would it just be a case of repealing that?
Pedant alert: There are 4 acts of union (2 pairs).
The union with Scotland Act 1706 and the union with England Act 1707 which brought to an end the two countries of England and Scotland and formed the single kingdom/country of Great Britain.
The Union with Ireland Act 1800 and The Act of Union (Ireland) 1800 which created the kingdom/country called “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”.
Strip Scotland out of the equation, and what do you call what’s left? There is no “Great Britain” without Scotland.
Far simpler to repeal the piece of batshit legislation that created devolution. I still think we should crucify (literally) whoever it was who allowed Salmond to rename the “Scottish Executive” as “Scottish Government” and whoever then added that to an amendment of the Scotland Act passing the name into law.
If Wee Jimmie were to actually get her way, what divisions would spring up within Scotland? Highland vs lowland, Edinburgh vs Glasgow, Rangers vs Celtic?
“Spring up”?? Those divisions are already here and have been here since time immemorial. “Rangers vs Celtic” is simply “protestant vs catholic” in football strips. Being asked “Whit team do you support?” when I moved to a new school had nothing to do with football. “Glasgow vs Edinburgh” is “working class vs toffs”, or “Irish vs English”, as much as it is also “catholic vs protestant”. and “Highland vs Lowland” is merely “gaelic speakers vs english speakers”.
The Jacobite rebellion wasn’t, as it is mythologised, Scotsman v Englishman. It’s sectarianism again. There were English Jacobites, supporters of catholic Charlie, and protestant Scots who were against him.
The divisions within this small geographical area then found their way across the atlantic, and in the “Revolutionary War”/”War of Independance” different Scots were on opposing sides. Some fought FOR the King, others fought AGAINST the King. The winners created the USA, the losers moved north and created Canada.
I can think of one immediate private-sector opportunity for entrepreneurs on the English side that would open up as a result of Scottish separation.
In recent years the organizations previously known as ‘High Street’ banks have shut their branches in several small English rural towns just a few miles south of the border, like Longtown, Bellingham and Wooler. So, one could buy up these secure buildings and equip them with safe-deposit boxes to rent out to those living in Sturgeon’s satrapy who want to keep cash, jewellery, bullion, and other valuables safely out of her jurisdiction.
You might say “fallacy”, but no true Scotsman would…
In 1707 Scotland exchanged slightly higher tax rates for free trade with England. I say slightly higher – because the Poor Law Tax of England and Wales was not extended to Scotland – indeed most of Scotland did not have a Poor Law Tax till 1845 (France did not have one did not have one till the 20th century – but British economists ignored both Scottish and French experience when they assumed a Poor Law Tax was unavoidable).
The SNP is not offering lower taxes in return for a border with England – it seems to regard taxation as balanced by the “benefits” of government spending (a fallacy, as they gleefully point out, can be found in Adam Smith).
Nor does the SNP believe in Scottish independence – they believe in rule by the European Union, they talk as if rule from Frankfurt and Brussels was rule by Scottish cities.
I do not understand this SNP politics – it makes no sense.
But then I do not understand English politics either.
Nothing that is happening makes any sense.
Paul:
The only thing that matters to Nicola Sturgeon and her band of Scottish National Socialists is that they will be the top dogs in their new state. They will become a member state of the EU and be invited to the “summits” and be driven around Brussels in big cars. They will be members of the EU, and once a year Nicola will fly to New York and address the General Assembly. That is the point of it all. Viewed objectively, there is no case for Scottish independence, but that is not the point.
There we disagree. Viewed objectively there certainly IS a case for Scottish independence, indeed there are various models of Scottish independence that would be beneficial for Scotland as a whole. The problem is that none of the Scottish political parties (and absolutely not the SNP) have any desire for an independent Scotland based upon any of those models. The closest seems to be an updated version of East Germany with the nomenklatura of the SNP acting as the Scottish satellite state of the EU in the same way that the GDR was a satellite state of the USSR. I can’t see that model bringing anything other than untold misery to Scotland.
Continuation of the status quo where Scotland remains as a subsidised satrapy of England isn’t exactly a sustainable approach either.
John:
I take your point, but the fact is that the case for Scottish independence is not and never will be made from a libertarian point of view. The case for Scottish independence is being made from a national socialist viewpoint, and I suspect always will be.
Unless you put forward the argument that the Scots are a people oppressed by the English, yearning to breathe free, what is the case? Why break up a 300 year old union unless there is a very good reason to do so? As things stand, there is no good reason. Therefore Scottish national socialism has to construct reasons, and ferment racial divisions where none exist. They are very sick and dangerous people.
John:
I would also take issue with your use of the word “satrapy” to describe Scotland’s position with regard to England. Scotland is not a subordinate province of England. In 1707 full political and economic union between England and Scotland was established. A united state was created, with full citizenship for all. Just of our last few prime ministers, Blair, Brown and Cameron were either Scottish or had Scottish roots.
The establishment of a Scottish parliament by the Blair government must go down as one of the most ill considered actions of any British government. Far from ending the case for independence, it gave the SNP a base from which to campaign for it. Every constitutional change which Tony Blair made was a disaster.
JohnK – you have a point, politicians (of all parties) like such perks and ego massaging.
However, there is some horrible Collectivist “idealism” involved as well.
John K. – yes the old East Germany is the aim.
Many socialists shied away from defending Marxist regimes in Eastern Europe – but in Scotland such regimes were popular among the sort of socialist who now dominate the SNP.
It is logical and consistent – it is a Scottish virtue to apply principles logically and consistently (old Scots Law and Scottish education was famous for this) – the problem comes when the principles themselves are wrong. Then the more logically and consistently the totally wrong principles are applied….
@Paul Mark’s
The principles are never wrong, that’s the problem