What Voting Tory Means

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By Jason Michael

Voting Conservative to save the Union is a lie. Voting Conservative is voting Conservative – supporting all of the evil, rancid, and vile things for which the Nasty Party stands. Tory-voting is saving nothing. It is blood on your hands.

Jill Stephenson, the retired expert in Nazism from Edinburgh University and present demented mouthpiece for Scottish unionism, has adopted a new Twitter profile picture. This image of a stylised umbrella emblazoned with the party colours of the unionist parties – orange for the Liberal Democrats, red for Labour, blue and purple on the far right for the Conservatives and UKIP, and white to keep the “butcher’s apron” in the mix – is rather similar to my LGBT Pride brolly, but there is nothing lovely about this parasol. Under it, no doubt seeking shelter from the rain of contempt falling on them, are the words: “always choose a scotland in the uk party [sic],” an awkward phraseology that betrays even the unionists’ distaste for the word “unionist.”

It isn’t only Jill flying this new Jolly Roger; it has become something of a thing for the yoons. Of course, like most of the flags our unionist friends fly on social media, this is a code. It is a dog whistle. A conspiratorial wink, saying it’s okay to vote Tory. At this stage it doesn’t even look as though Kezia Dugdale will be voting Labour on 4 May or at the general election. Forget UKIP. Everyone knows that would be a spoiled ballot north of the border. Other than in Orkney and Shetland where the unionists are quite content to have a pathological liar for an MP, a vote for the Liberal Democrats in Scotland will only split the unionist vote.

All the chips are down, and from this point on unionism in Scotland is the Tory Party – Ruth Davidson’s Conservative and Unionist Party. However, it’s still not okay to vote for Thatcher’s party in Scotland. It is tainted and ugly. It is un-Scottish, and they know it. You cannot say you are “Scottish and British” and then go off and vote Conservative. The ideologues of Scottish unionism know this. They know that to be a Tory is to be British – period.

This is the reason for this infantile umbrella. It is a means by which they are convincing themselves and others – traditional unionist Labour and Liberal Democrat voters – that it is okay, in extremis, to vote for the Tories… to save the Union. What is more is that this ploy will work. It is already working. Hoping to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, and becoming increasingly aware of the utter futility of voting Labour and Liberal Democrat, the unionists of Scotland are rallying to the blue banner of the Conservatives. All these heretofore non-Tory yoons need is that gentle nudge, that permission.

As a voting tactic, it will work. It won’t increase the size of the unionist vote, but it will inflate the Tory share of the vote and probably win them a few seats.

But this will work only because people who do not want to vote Conservative have been convinced this is their last chance to save the United Kingdom. It is precisely this that is also the weakness of the idea – these people do not want to vote Tory. Our job now is to show them that their qualms are well-founded; that they don’t want to vote Tory is an indication that they also shouldn’t vote Tory. Is keeping the United Kingdom united worth the moral bankruptcy of voting for the Conservatives, or is the fact that the Tories are the only option left not proof the that Union is already rotting in its grave?

People who are moving to the Conservatives to save the Union are prepared to put this Union before their own consciences because of what voting Tory really means. While they may think this is saving Britain, the Tories in Westminster couldn’t give a crap about Scotland. They never have, and nor have they ever cared about Wales or Northern Ireland or any of the ordinary working people anywhere in the United Kingdom. Voting Tory – to coin Theresa May’s comment on Brexit – means voting Tory and everything that Toryism in Britain stands for. They are kidding themselves on.

008 — Rule Britannia: The reality of Tory rule.

By voting Tory in this general election or at the Scottish council elections means supporting the two child policy and the repulsive and dehumanising rape clause. It means supporting the Conservative austerity agenda that has enriched the wealthiest while impoverishing everyone else. It means supporting the toxic and racist immigration policies that have driven Brexit, the system of DWP sanctions which have stripped this country’s most vulnerable people of basic protection and dignity, and the tax cuts and deregulation that has made every working class occupation a race to the bottom. Voting for the Tories means supporting arms deals to dictators, human rights violators, and tyrants, it means supporting proxy wars over other people’s oil resources that have now cost millions of lives, and supporting a barbaric war on children attempting to flee those bloodbaths.

Is the Union worth any of this? No one can deny that this is what the Union has become. In fact, as we are learning, this is what the Union has always been. If their answer to this question is yes, then let them go and cast their vote. But let us not ever let them forget that this is what they voted for. They want to hide from the reality of what this Toryism is, but we – the Nationalists, the anti-Tory’s – will be doing far worse than them if we allow them to continue to delude themselves that they have clean consciences. Their Tory-voting consciences will be as dark as night. What does it profit a man that he save the Union, but forfeit his very soul?