"None of the Fun Bits"
Labour never reacted positively to stop the Scot's increasing embrace of the SNP. Instead, it vilified the SNP. Labour has too many safe seats to commit complete political suicide, but its formerly safe seats in Scotland became political graveyards for many senior Labour leaders.
Even Edinburgh, home of Adam Smith and David Hume, which voted 61 percent against independence, elected four S.N.P. lawmakers.
Douglas Alexander, the Labour member who was ousted by Ms. Black in Paisley, had represented the area in Parliament since 1997. Five years ago, he won the seat with 59.6 percent of the vote. As recently as January, his was considered a safe seat.
Then the polls started turning. In recent weeks, the shift had become palpable. As one former Labour member of Parliament here putit to The Economist recently: "It's like the last days of Rome. Without sex. Or wine. In fact, with none of the fun bits."
Even after Labour's repudiation by the voters, Miliband insisted on misstating the nature of his failures. The NYT article that claimed that Labour lost because it "shifted" from a "centrist" position to the left (when it actually move to an even more extreme and economically illiterate position to the right on austerity issues) quotes Miliband's explanation of Labour's loss.
"We haven't made the gains that we wanted in England and Wales," he said, "and in Scotland we have seen a surge of nationalism overwhelm our party."
As I have shown, Scottish nationalism was the least of Labour's problems in Scotland. The abuse of Scots, something that has gone on for centuries, is common in England and became acute and chronic in response to the referendum and to Cameron's election strategy of demonizing the Scots.
Scots also tend to be progressives, and they were disgusted by Labour's leadership becoming "Red Tories." This was a continuation of Tony Blair and "New Labour's" embrace of the neoliberal economic dogmas that led to the corrupt culture of the City of London and economic disaster. Labour's architect of its economically illiterate embrace of austerity was defeated in his MP contest.
In another humiliating blow for Labour, Ed Balls, who speaks for the party on economic issues and is one of its most influential figures, lost his seat of Morley and Outwood to the Conservatives.
When the electorate is offered a choice between a Tory and a Red Tory it tends to elect the genuine Tory instead of the imitation. The same NYT article noted, with apparent approval and neither analysis nor irony, that Prime Minister David Cameron's election strategy was to splinter the "union" through demonizing the Scots as threatening to "splinter" "the nation."
The campaign had centered primarily on domestic issues, including the budget austerity imposed by the Conservatives and funding for the National Health Service, but Mr. Cameron had also played up fears that a Labour government, reliant on support from the Scottish nationalists, would drive the country leftward and risk the nation being splintered.
The Brits claim to be the masters of irony, so I find the lack of understanding the irony of splintering the nation in order to avoid splintering the nation quite wondrous.
A Brief Response to a Reader of My Prior Column
My prior column on the upcoming election was a light piece on the theme: if Americans think our elections are crazy, wait until they read about the UK elections. I began with the example of the UKIP candidate for MP who was given the boot by UKIP because he talked about the fact that he would personally assassinate his Tory opponent should he ever become prime minister. His Tory opponent's capital offense was being of South Asian descent. One of our readers was kind enough to write a response in which he said I generally liked my work, but that my column was the written equivalent of this threat to murder a man for the "crime" of his ancestry. The reader also said that the SNP was as racist as UKIP. Both of those points are self-refuting. The reader also points out that the SNP's policies are contrary to MMT. They are, and I oppose them.
As an American I am, of course, biased in favor of independence from the English. I have never met an American who wishes that we had not insisted on and fought for our independence. But I take no position on independence for Scotland. If a majority of Scots do not wish to restore their sovereignty they will not be condemned by me.
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