The United Kingdom

Benedict Brogan, Daily Telegraph op-ed piece for tomorrow, writes that Cameron won’t save the Union by descending into the gutter – to which one has to respond that Brogan won’t save journalism by following the same plan.


What we have here, as in so much that Brogan supposedly composes, is but another “Big-up-Cameron” piece and if this is the best that he can offer one can but suggest that he follows his own advice, namely indulging in lengthy periods of silence.


Does not each of the LibLabCon indulge in ‘soft nationalism’ - until such time as the choice has to be made twixt EU membership and that of their country? In respect of Scotland, ‘soft nationalism’ has been on the agenda since 1968 when Edward Heath raised the matter at the Conservative conference. Of course, had our politicians not indulged in what amounts to sectarianism coupled with their pursuit of power; had they adopted the principle of direct democracy, the problems of today, where Scotland is concerned and where Northern Ireland and Wales are also concerned, albeit to a lesser extent at present, none of the present problems regarding nationalism would exist.


On that last point I am reminded of a quotation by Benedict Anderson (this Benedict seemed to know what he wrote about) who said:

“I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion…. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined…. Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings.“

Did we, as a United Kingdom, not fight wars to preserve that Kingdom, that Nation? Is it not politicians that have, for their own purposes, attempted to create divisions that do not, in reality, exist? On a wider front, is it not politicians who for their own purposes have created the European Union and in so doing created divisions, through their policy of regionalisation, within each Member State?


Yes, we are English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or Northern Irish – we can, understandably, trumpet our individuality – but at the end of the day we are and can be a United Kingdom, one that could exist quite harmoniously under a system of direct democracy – whilst allowing each nation its own ‘identity’.


Don’t let politicians, for their own nefarious reasons, split our United Kingdom! Please?


Just saying……….

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