Tweet Follow @RPJblog
By Jason Michael
We are being informed over all frequencies that the empire is striking back, but when we take a cool and collected look at the data we see that this is a bluff. On the whole unionism is on the decline and a new hope awaits.
Britain’s media propaganda machine would have us believe that in the local council elections today and in the June 8 general election we’re going to see an unbelievable Tory revival in Scotland. The only thing it has right in this assessment of Scotland’s political reality is that this prediction is unbelievable. It’s a fiction that says more about the nature of polls in modern democracy than it does of reality on the ground. That some in the Tory press are able to write of a “swing from the SNP to the Tories” merely underlines our mainstream media’s embrace of post-truth politics.
Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives have gained in the polls and this will be reflected in the number of local council and Westminster seats they gain over both elections, but to claim this as a revival completely misses what is actually happening in Scottish politics. The Tories, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats have campaigned in these local elections on a platform of preventing another independence referendum and saying “No” to independence, questions wholly beyond the brief of local councils. Other than being completely irrelevant, this tactic demonstrates the extent to which our country is divided on the constitutional question.
What we learn from this is that party affiliation itself has become irrelevant – at both local and national level, bringing to the fore two political blocs rather than numerous parties; the nationalist and unionist blocs to which the parties are aligned. In this analysis a vote for the Conservatives in Scotland is not a vote for UK-wide Tory policy – that remains as toxic as ever. Scottish unionists will be voting for the Tories because unionism has consolidated itself around the Tory Party at the cost of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In no way has the unionist bloc – the aggregate of the votes for all the unionist parties – increased. The polls show that this is well and truly on the decline. It is only understood among unionists – not just Tories – that voting Labour or Liberal Democrat splits the unionist vote. This is far from a Conservative resurgence. This is the phase of national polarisation where unionism is being consolidated around a single party.
Of course this process – which is entirely natural and to be expected – will benefit the Scottish Conservatives, but this is not the desired goal. The objective of unionism is to increase its support across Scotland, but this is clearly not happening. When we count the vote share of the two blocs we see that the pro-independence bloc is in a steady upward trajectory – showing in all polls more than a 50 per cent share of the vote. What this means is that we are now well and truly in the end game. Scotland will become more clearly split between the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives as Labour and the Liberal Democrats retreat into practical non-existence. This will continue to be the case until the next independence referendum, where it is more likely than not that we will decide to leave the United Kingdom.
What Voting Tory Really Means
Random Public Journal 