Friday, February 07, 2014

Cameron on Scottish Independence

As I was on a journey and needed something to listen to I tuned to Radio 5 Live and listened to Cameron's velodrome speech on Scottish independence. It was an annoyingly poor speech - badly written and ill-judged.

My big problem with it would be this. If you took away all the proper nouns from his 'better together' argument and substituted them with names and places from our European history it would be a barnstorming pro-European speech. In other words, he rehearses this argument in one cause and the exact opposite in another.

There were other, more minor, problems. Anyone who looks forward, when they are of age, to teaching his children from a book with a political-historical spin should substitute the word indoctrinating for teaching.

And a lack of Conservative Unionist MPs north of the border should tell him that any intervention in the debate from a Conservative Unionist PM would be likely to persuade people whose vote counts (those living north of the border) to do the opposite.

At its heart the only true paragraph was the final, emotional argument. Conservatives don't like changing anything. They conserve. It's in their nature.

Scottish independence may be awkward to administer at first but will not make any significant difference to anything.

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