The elephant in the nationalist room

There were two dominant themes in this year’s blogposts which I have just reviewed - the need to dismantle the political class; and the “independence question”, whether Scotland should break away from England……

One of my strongest reservations about that discussion came from its failure to engage with the question of how exactly Scotland could break what seem these days to be two “iron laws” – namely (a) of capital flight from countries which show any signs of challenging corporate power; and (b) of the self-serving nature of the political and professional class which moves into any vacant positions of power. An August post referred to the first as the “missing question at the heart of the Scottish debate”; and one just 2 weeks before the vote referred to an article which contained the following assertion -

 Nowhere in the mainstream campaign has anyone from Yes or No acknowledged that our financial and fiscal systems are fatally flawed. No plans have been proposed to tackle the creation and destruction of money as interest paying debt, a system that cannot be sustained for much longer before it buries us all under a mountain of credit that’s impossible to service. None of the good things that enthusiasts for independence want to happen are likely to happen or be sustained until we make structural reforms to our dysfunctional systems of democracy and finance. The same goes for the “strength in unity” arguments of those who seek to preserve the union by voting No.

I am not therefore surprised by today’s news that Craig Murray – whose blogposts always enlighten my day – has been rejected as a candidate for the lists of those approved to fight the general election as Scottish Nationalists. Nor that the grounds on which he was rejected relate to his reliability as a “loyal” party supporter. He apparently gave a negative response to a question he was asked during his interview about his willingness, in the case of a coalition, to support a new tax which was highly unpopular in Scotland (and whose rejection is actually still official Nationalist policy). Note also the designation of the man signing the letter of rejection - "corporate governance and compliance manager"!!!!!!!

Murray is a man of conviction – and a thorn in the side of the powerful. The statement he was required to give in support of his candidacy was typically blunt and uncompromising..

You see him here in an extended (skype) interview earlier today,

The interviewing panel (of 3 parliamentarians) seems to have been very stupid and he has, typically, gone to town in exposing the new breed of career politician which has embedded itself in the party. Anything less than a quick disavowal of the panel decision will badly affect the standing of the Nationalist party. But that will not be easy for a party which took a very clear decision a few years ago to present itself only in a positive light and to stifle dissent……and the public and aggrieved way in which he has reacted will confirm many in the nationalist party in their belief that he lacked the suitability to be a political figure - with all the compromising that involves........ 

The Labour party has been hemorrhaging electoral support and will relish this turn of events – but would be very ill-advised to try to use it to their own advantage since it is exactly how their own higher echelons behaved in 1998 during the interviewing of candidates for the elections to Scotland’s first Parliament when they selected only loyal Blairites…..  

update
A recent post from Craig gives a link to a strong, balanced counter-response - which has the ring of truth to it....