Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson’s speech to the Conservative party conference recently contained her wrapping herself in the Union flag to attack the pro-independence camp in Scotland. Since the Tories were the only major party to even oppose Scotland having a devolved parliament I tend to pay little attention to what Scottish Conservatives said – they are mostly a fringe party in Scots politics, really, both in terms of Holyrood and Westminster, disliked and distrusted by the majority of the electorate, as their voting habits have shown numerous times in recent decades. Ironically the voting system for the Scots Parliament has been their best hope for clinging on to at least a small amount of politicians in Holyrood…
However my friend Alex pointed out that during her speech to the conference she said:
“But 98% of Conservatives said they wanted to keep our Kingdom United.
And friends, do you know what I want? I want the names and numbers of the other 2%”
Er, is that right? She wants the names and numbers of anyone who doesn’t agree with her completely? Great British Gods! How dare someone hold or express a different opinion in our democratic society! Fear being tracked down by Davidson’s secret police and dragged away in dead of night for dissenting, you disloyal scum!
Seriously though, that is quite a disturbing thing for a politician to say and more to the point why the hell are the lazy-arse Scottish media not grilling this politician over this remark? That’s their job, to hold politicians to account. And when they utter chilling phrases like that they should be held to account and questioned very closely and publicly on what they meant. Or perhaps like other right-wing politicians recently she will simply say “taken out of context” (the standard excuse) or the “it was a joke” (an excuse for uttering disturbing lines that seems to be making a come back in British politics at the moment). Either way she should have been questioned by the Scots media on this and she should also be a damned sight more careful of the wording of her speeches. As my friend remarked as we discussed this, had a Yes camp politician said something similar there would have been uproar, and rightly so.
And before anyone says I’m just doing some pro-independence biased ranting here, A) I am still waiting on a proper debate (as opposed to simple posturing and either scare stories or misty-eyed rhetoric from each side we’ve had so far) and information on which to base my decision for my vote (and lines like that above don’t help persuade me to the No camp) and B) even if I had decided completely to be in the Yes camp already it doesn’t invalidate the criticism of her quite disturbing wording.