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So far the great reboot of the Prime Minister.
Just days after the climax of an extraordinary internal power struggle at No. 10, which prompted the departure of his two key advisers, Boris Johnson has been thrown into another crisis, once again thanks to his undisciplined mouth.
With the Union under increasing pressure, the prime minister told a meeting of Conservative MPs late Monday that the return has been “a disaster north of the border” and “Tony Blair’s biggest mistake.”
Following the departure of his two key advisers, Boris Johnson (pictured) has been in yet another crisis.
His statement has some truth. But it is more a product of verbal incontinence than political strategy and will cause real damage to the arguments of both unionism and conservatism in Scotland, given that skepticism towards refoulement is on par with the denial of climate change in society. Scottish civilian.
Yet while Johnson’s outburst is likely an act of political insanity, it has a refreshing honesty.
Stagnant
Disaster may be too strong a term. But the return has been a huge disappointment since it was enacted more than two decades ago. Most of the great hopes placed on him have been dashed. Far from putting out the flames of separatism, Scottish self-government has added fuel to them.
Rather than promoting entrepreneurship, economic renewal and a vibrant political system, the creation of a new power base in Edinburgh has built something akin to a one-party state, with a well-developed nomenclature and a compliant media. .
The Scottish bureaucracy and political class have done very well in decentralization. The rest of Scotland, not so much.
Just days after his two key advisers left, including Dominic Cummings (pictured), Boris Johnson has been in yet another crisis.
The losers have been a large number of ordinary Scots, for whom educational levels, financial prosperity and social mobility have stagnated or even declined.
In private, Tony Blair could admit that Johnson was right. I don’t think his heart was ever in this process, but he was pressured to accept it because the Labor Party regarded the return as the legacy of his late predecessor John Smith, who died of a heart attack in 1994, and at the insistence of Gordon Brown.
Blair’s willingness to embrace the idea was bolstered by Labor’s belief that they would always be in power north of the border, having long held sway over Scottish politics even when they did not control Westminster. But that arrogance was very out of place.
The return turned out to be the wrecking ball that the Nationalists ruthlessly used to demolish the Scottish strongholds of Labor. In 1997, the former Labor shadow cabinet minister, George Robertson, predicted that the establishment of a Scottish parliament would “totally kill nationalism.”
The opposite happened. The devolution created a taxpayer-funded command center for the nationalist cause in the heart of Edinburgh, producing separatist propaganda, provoking grievances against England, seizing control of the entire machinery of government, and exploiting patronage to ensure that their creed prevailed in the vital institutions of Scottish Public Life.
The return was seen by Tony Blair’s Labor Party (pictured) as the legacy of his late predecessor John Smith, who died of a heart attack in 199
Across academia, the pinnacle of public services, the voluntary sector, civil service, and the arts / cultural elite, there is now a culture of profit-making dependency, where jobs and grants are the reward for sympathy for the cause.
The influence of the nationalist machine has been reinforced not only by the continued transfer of powers from London to Edinburgh, but also through the centralization by the Scottish government of local government autonomy.
In their own expensive fiefdom, the nationalists do not practice devolution, preferring to seize the powers of town halls and local bodies. The recent replacement of local police forces by a national police is a classic example of this.
It has hardly been successful. As a result of this relentless expansion of the state, Scotland is now one of the most governed and bureaucratized countries in the Western world.
But expanding bureaucracy and political obedience do not equate to effective government. At the highest level, the caliber of members of the Scottish Parliament is poor.
I estimate that 70 percent of them would have no chance of winning the same in the real world (unlike MPs in the Commons, where most could earn more without being MPs).
The governance of the SNP has disappointed in many respects, but perhaps especially in education, for which Scotland used to be world famous.
Scotland has long had a proud tradition of social mobility, where high standards and expectations in schools helped ensure that bright but poor children could overcome the disadvantages of their backgrounds.
Barriers
The belief in excellence not only meant that Scotland sent proportionally more college students than England, it also instilled in them the skills to be successful in any field.
It is no coincidence that in Britain’s industrial heyday, Scotland was at the forefront of engineering, invention, exploration, scientific advancement, and the workings of the Empire.
I was the beneficiary of this high-quality approach. Although I was raised in a council house in Paisley, I received an education at my local primary school and then Paisley secondary school that would have equaled that of any private paying institution in the South East of England.
Boris Johnson has called the Scottish return a disaster. Nicola Sturgeon (pictured) announced that 11 local authority areas are moving to the most difficult coronavirus level since Friday
From there, I earned a place at the University of Glasgow, one of the oldest universities in the world, where there were many other working-class students. But under the SNP, this emphasis on achievement and mobility has degraded.
As standards fall, new barriers to progress have been erected, while the previous superiority over the English system has disappeared. A 2018 study found that 20 percent of those who drop out of school in the most deprived areas of England still make it to university.
For Scotland, the figure was just 13 percent.
Mediocrity
Similarly, in 2019, the number of students who achieved passes in higher core subjects dropped significantly, just as international comparisons showed Scotland lagging behind other countries in achievement.
According to Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education Policy at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland’s system is “stuck in mediocrity.”
It’s the same failure story elsewhere. Nationalists may have built a large nomenclature dependent on state spending, but there is no indication of a new business class or a dynamic new business sector, as exists in London or Manchester.
Most of Scotland’s big winners are not those who take risks and create real wealth, but rather those who depend on the generosity of the state, such as doctors, civil servants, quangocrats, judges, consultants and managers.
The Scots once built the British Empire. Now they build bureaucratic empires.
Decentralization has also not created an inspiring new infrastructure that can symbolize a new spirit of national self-confidence, such as a high-speed rail link between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which could have regenerated both cities and forged an impressive new urban conurbation.
global importance. While progress has stalled on so many fronts, nationalists have wallowed in the politics of perpetual victimhood, where the Westminster government is constantly portrayed as the source of all of Scotland’s troubles.
Perhaps that explains why Scotland’s current rulers have done so little to combat entrenched deprivation or ill health. Surprisingly, the life expectancy of men in the East End of Glasgow is only 64.4 years, a lower threshold than in Djibouti in East Africa, Mongolia or Pakistan.
This means that Glasgow men from the East End have a medium chance of dying before they can claim their state pension, an incredible indictment against Scotland’s political elite. In fact, the life expectancy gap between the UK and the poorer parts of Glasgow has worsened in the last 15 years. This is not simply due to “lack of resources”, as the creation of nationalist myths suggests. In reality, spending in Scotland is almost £ 2000 higher per capita than the UK average.
The Edinburgh government is strapped for resources, thanks to a billions of pounds money transfer from London, which would count as the highest budget deficit in Europe if Scotland were independent.
Nationalists are arrogant about his sorry record in office. All they really care about is your ultimate goal of independence. All of its actions are seen through the ideology of independence rather than any drive to improve the lives of its citizens.
Tragically, Boris Johnson’s poorly chosen words, like the return itself, have only served to fuel his crusade.
