Back to Scotland, where it appears even the SNP’s own politicians have lost faith in the party’s raison d’être. One of First Minister John Swinney’s backbenchers, Emma Roddick, has apparently decided that an independent Scotland shouldn’t mean the end of the Union — despite her party having argued for secession for decades while many separatists now refer to the UK only as ‘these isles’. Mr S accepts the Nats don’t often make sense at the best of times, but this development is staggering even for them.
How Roddick — recently sacked from her ministerial role after Swinney’s not-so-radical reshuffle — has come to this conclusion Mr S is not entirely sure. In a rather confusing interview with the august journal that is the National, the Highland MSP bleated that:
I don’t want Scotland to be independent and then act on our own, I want us to be a voice on the world stage and promote international cooperation. It would be daft not to include England, Wales and Ireland in that. I would love to have an independent Scotland be in some sort of union or cooperation agreement with the rest of the UK.
So, er, the United Kingdom? In that case, Mr S has some good news for Roddick…
Continuing on the theme of having-your-cake-and-eating-it, the MSP went on:
What we have now is not a union. If you at what we had when we were in the EU, the UK had the same voice as everyone else. Scotland doesn’t have that in the UK. If we had the cooperation with the rest of the UK, I would be well up for a union with our closest neighbours… As independence is up to Scotland, it would of course be up to England if they wanted to be in a union with us, but I would personally love that… You see a lot of folk who are iffy about independence because they love England or they’ve got family there or they’ve worked there, and that’s great [that they think that about England]. I want close relationships with our neighbours.
The nonsensical Nat blasted the ‘democratic deficit’ Scotland faces as part of the UK, before rounding her muddled spiel off: ‘I think we need to go back to basics on what independence means because it has become such a heightened debate.’ Given the Scottish National party has admitted an independent Scotland will require new income sources, a different currency and potentially even a hard border with the rest of the UK, Mr S would suggest she take, um, her own advice…
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