Something is rotten in the state of Scotland. No, not the creaking CalMac ferry fleet but rather the health of free speech in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The warning signs have been there for years now, what with the Hate Crime Act, the Scottish government’s efforts to evade Holyrood scrutiny and the SNP’s own intolerance for any kind of internal party dissent. But now a minor episode at a leading university perhaps best illustrates the sorry state of the right to dissent in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland.
Students at the University of St Andrews last week published a short satirical article in their magazine the Saint, making fun of relations between London and Edinburgh. Titled ‘Och Aye The Noo And Au Revoir‘ it likens the Union between England and Scotland to a loveless marriage, comparing the two nations to a ‘middle-aged couple living in the suburbs’. Scotland is ‘menopausal’, England is having a ‘midlife crisis’ while Wales is described as ‘the family dog’, with devolution having confined the countries to ‘separate bedrooms since 1997.’
The tone is classic undergraduate – jocular, a tad facetious and plainly tongue-in-cheek. The author, an Englishman, suggests his home country seize the initiative and press for ‘unilateral divorce’ and ‘watch Scotland descend back into the deep-fried gloom from which we once rescued her.’ Expelling Scotland from the Union would mean ‘we’d no longer have to feign knowledge of Rabbie Burns and Walter Scott or pretend that Shinty is a real sport’.
Harmless stuff that would, in times of old, have passed without notice. But this is Scotland, 2022, and gentle mockery is very last season. The article was seized on by the SNP’s legions of cyber-nats who duly denounced the Saint and all associated with it. Holyrood’s former presiding officer Tricia Marwick lambasted the students as ‘pathetic wee trolls’ and mocked them for being ‘poor souls who failed to get into Oxbridge. An SNP council candidate dubbed it ‘disgusting and misogynistic’ and demanded St Andrews take action against its students. The National, meanwhile splashed the ‘story’ on its front page; not like there is any other news in the world today.
Such spittle-flecked fury seems to have been sparked most of all by some minor jibes at the Blessed Nicola, the nationalist-in-chief. The Saint article joked that the First Minister had made ‘hell a place on Earth,’ turning Scotland into the ‘ultimate Braveheart tribute act (sponsored by Heineken 0.0, naturally).’ It joked that she ‘must be the only politician who ever looked at Saudi Arabia’s nightlife and said, “I want a piece of that action”‘ and asked how ‘exactly would Nicola’s new society of alcohol-free Gaelic androids survive without English money and common sense?’
Clearly, such stabs at satire are verboten in the new regime. Perhaps the under-fire undergraduate ought to have taken a leaf out of the SNP’s own book and used jokes by one of their party-approved comedians. Janey Godley, for instance, the fervent independence supporter and self-proclaimed ‘anti-Tory’ who was described by Nicola Sturgeon as her ‘alter-ego.’ Godley was very much the SNP’s favourite comedian until recently, becoming the prominent face of a Public Health Scotland campaign during Covid, for which she received £12,000 of taxpayers’ money.
That was until certain old tweets emerged in which she made what Wikipedia drily describes as ‘insults based on the Chernobyl disaster and disabilities, and racial insults towards African American musicians Kelly Rowland, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg.’ Whoops! At least the hapless Saint student is barely out of adolescence: Godley by contrast was well into middle age.
You can read the original article from the Saint in full here.
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