James Cook, the BBC’s Scotland editor, is ‘a traitor’. He is ‘scum’, ‘a scumbag’ and ‘a liar’. At least he is according to the Scottish nationalists who howled those epithets at him last night as he tried to report on the Tory leadership hustings. Outside Perth Concert Hall, a mob had gathered, as they invariably do when any of Scotland’s pro-Union parties meet, not for a spirited protest but to shout abuse and spew vitriol. These are the people who love Scotland so much they hate half the people living there.
There was the familiar ‘TORY SCUM OUT’ banner, complete with the black saltire emblem of Siol nan Gaidheal, an ethnic nationalist group that pledges itself to ‘the essential survival of our people as an ethnic and cultural community’, asserts that ‘every English incomer at present is suspect’ and states it will ‘not stand idly by and watch our country being used, abused or betrayed by enemies both internal and external’. The late Gordon Wilson, former SNP leader, banned Siol nan Gaidheal from the party in 1982, branding it ‘proto-fascist’. Today its banner routinely leads large-scale pro-independence marches. In June, SNP MSP Evelyn Tweed denied she supported ‘any form of ultra-nationalism’ after a photograph emerged of her holding the black saltire flag at an event to commemorate the Battle of Bannockburn.
There are a number of angry nationalists out there, some of them extremely so, and maybe even a few dangerously so
Cook is a good journalist and a talented broadcaster but a frequent target for venom from Scottish nationalists. (The other side have a fair tongue on them, too.) No wonder his predecessor Sarah Smith, who left for a role in the United States, professed herself relieved to be escaping the ‘bile and hatred’ of Scottish politics. In her case, that included people shouting at her in the street that she was a ‘fucking lying bitch’. When the video from last night began getting traction on social media, Nicola Sturgeon put out a tweet in support of Cook.
If that seems like a magnanimous gesture, it is worth asking what leads people to scream about traitors and scumbags. For sure, invective is not unique to Scottish politics or to the nationalist side of it, but it does seem to have become more pronounced since the SNP began dividing Scots along constitutional lines. A decade ago, categories like ‘Unionist’ and ‘Nationalist’ existed in Scottish political debate but they weren’t as prominent, nor were their boundaries as sharply drawn. The constitution is now the fault line of Scottish public affairs and it has pumped poison into the body politic.
When Nicola Sturgeon calls the treatment of James Cook ‘disgraceful’ and condemns ‘hurling abuse at journalists’, she might want to reflect on her role in shaping the public discourse in Scotland. The First Minister regularly accuses her opponents of ‘democracy denial’, or of ‘trying to frustrate democracy’, or ‘rig Scotland’s democratic right to choose’. The whole premise of her agitation for another referendum is that it would be undemocratic for Westminster to refuse and that, when one doesn’t materialise, she can parlay indignation over that into another election victory. Leave aside the fact that the vast majority of countries around the world inhibit or even prohibit secession referendums, what effect does Sturgeon think it might have telling 5.5 million people that they don’t live in a democracy?
Sturgeon warns that the Tories are ‘interested in undermining this parliament’ and declares: ‘We must defend our parliament against the UK Government power grabs that are undermining the very principles on which it is founded.’ When you tell people their parliament is being undermined, the parliament they see as the only way to bring about independence, how does Sturgeon think that goes down with them? How does she think they process the word ‘defend’?
In January, Sturgeon said Scotland was ‘being treated like something on the sole of Westminster’s shoe’. The First Minister stood in the Scottish parliament and told Scots they were akin to dog shit in the eyes of the UK parliament. Does Sturgeon stop to think, when she speaks like this, that people can hear her? And that maybe one day one of those people is going to be tipped over the edge? This is, after all, a country in which nationalists have chased a Labour politician down the street with a chainsaw, gone ‘hunting’ for a female politician as she canvassed in her constituency, spray-painted ‘traitor’ on the walls of one MP’s offices and threatened to drag another MP’s female assistant ‘to the noose’.
Political extremism in Scotland goes both ways, as the ugly slurs directed at Sturgeon by hardline Unionists confirm. The same applies to unpleasant behaviour towards the media. In her write-up of last night’s hustings, Isabel Hardman mentions the repeated heckling and booing of the moderator, Colin Mackay, by Tory members. For full disclosure, Colin is a former colleague. But setting that aside, his questions were fair and reasonable efforts to test the candidates’ various policies and positions. His manner was interrogative but by no means aggressive or rude. As Isabel says, ‘heckling is rarely the sign of a party at ease with difficult questions’.
But there is no use in pretending that this problem can be both-sidesed away. The problem is more pronounced and more pungent on the nationalist side, where the lunatic fringe isn’t all that fringe anymore. There are a number of angry nationalists out there, some of them extremely so, and maybe even a few dangerously so. These will be people who are tightly wound as it is and the SNP’s strategy from now until the next election is winding them up more and more. Sooner or later, someone’s going to snap.
James Cook is not a traitor. He’s not scum or a scumbag or a liar. He’s not part of a nefarious media conspiracy to undermine independence. No one at the BBC is. No one is planning to demolish democracy in Scotland. No one is planning to dismantle devolution. (I can’t even convince them to reform it.) You are not on the bottom of anyone’s shoe. You live in one of the freest, wealthiest, most advanced countries on the planet and when a politician tells you you’re oppressed, you should ask yourself why they want you to feel that way. In the case of Nicola Sturgeon and her government, they talk about freeing you because they don’t want you to notice they’re failing you.
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