Please, sir: can I have some vision and passion?

Few things gave me greater pleasure in 2014 than the resignation of Alex Salmond after his referendum defeat.

I was not so naïve as to suppose I had heard the last of him, but at least I hoped for a decent interlude of remission from the dread disease.

Instead he is back in the headlines and all over Conservative billboards as the great bogeyman of the forthcoming General Election: the one-issue obsessive who may well determine which of the leading contenders enters Downing Street.

And, of course, he will do so at a high price. This will mean either another independence referendum that he will surely be odds-on to win, if the SNP has indeed eliminated Labour as a political force in Scotland; or a “devo max” settlement that it will be hard to discern from independence by the naked eye.

As political stratagems go, there can surely be few that have failed more spectacularly than Labour’s brilliant idea of creating a devolved Scottish parliament with a voting system rigged to prevent the SNP ever attaining a majority, thus granting themselves a cosy fiefdom they could rule forever.

But then the fundamental problem seems to be that contemporary politics is all about stratagems. Trying to outmanoeuvre the other side with the promise of a tactical tax cut here, a raid on someone else’s savings there, or yet another scare story about the NHS.

And always seeking to crow that someone who has wandered off-message by saying what they genuinely think about any issue has committed an unforgiveable “gaffe”.

From "two Jags" Prescott to "two kitchens" Miliband, apparently the key election issue of 2015

It’s a contemptible game. Small wonder, then, that the British public has come to treat politicians with such contempt. Condemning them to a Western Front-style stand-off in which both sides pound away with small hope of gaining more than a yard or two of ground, let alone clinching an outright victory.

I no more understand the Scots’ sense of grievance that propels the independence movement than I can comprehend what drives the militants of Islamic State. Both seem to me to be based on a misreading of history.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the piscine double act of Sturgeon and Salmond can tap into a genuine passion for a cause, however wrong-headed it may be. So do other smaller parties like UKIP and the Greens, even though on closer examination many of their policies prove to range from the ill-thought-through to the howling mad.

Beer, fags, lentils ... and fruitcakes?

Where is the passion and vision in the campaigns of the two major parties? How are they going to save Britain from break-up, and ensure that we are properly defended, whether that be from Islamist terror or President Putin?

Can we please move on from foot-shuffling and pointing at the other child across the classroom (“Please, sir, it was him, sir!”) whenever the issue of cuts to defence spending is aired?

Yes, I know that campaigns trying to stir our patriotic impulses have not always proved a roaring success, notably William Hague’s “save the pound” crusade of 2001.

But these are dangerous times, and it surely behoves our would-be leaders to rise to the occasion with some real vision instead of playing party games, of which the bickering about televised debates is but the most egregious example.

To be fair, David Cameron and Gordon Brown both managed to express some powerfully pro-Union sentiments when the referendum campaign appeared to be running away from them. How much better it would have been if they had relied on that passion, rather than trying to buy off the other side with massive concessions. A ploy that never creates gratitude, and always feeds the appetite for more.

I don’t actually expect the tone and content of the election campaign to be elevated as I wish, but I do have one small consolation. According to Monday’s Times a “celebrity chef” called Valentine Warner (no, I’d never heard of him, either) is setting up a distillery in the Simonside Hills to produce Northumbrian whisky form genuinely local ingredients.

If he succeeds, he will replace at a stroke the one Scotch export on which I am reliant, and allow me to wave a bittersweet farewell to that land of midges, wind turbines, identity cards, grievance and bitterness.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Intensive care: the right place for the euro, not the UK

There comes a point for many of us when life seems to consist of a series of hospital admissions: each leaving the patient looking and feeling weaker than the last, and sadly allowing little doubt about the final outcome.

That is very much the condition of the euro today. We may, if we wish, utter a sigh of relief at markets’ positive reaction to the Spanish bailout, but should be under no illusion that it constitutes any sort of cure.

In Germany, Frau Merkel keeps warning darkly that the survival of the single currency is “an issue of war or peace”, which should worry all of us who remember some basic history. She may well be right.

The conundrum is that eminent specialists take diametrically opposed views on whether drastic action to try and save the euro will make war less or more likely. Kill or cure? It’s not an issue one wants to settle with the toss of a coin, whether that be a euro or a pound.

I personally find it hard to fathom why our supposedly Eurosceptic Government is urging members of the Eurozone to forge ahead with creating a single state to save their currency, regardless of the wishes of their electorates, while at the same time contending that Britain will have nothing to do with any of it.

Apparently this went much better than the follow-up: "Look, Angela, it's an elephant!"

Particularly when, at the same time as encouraging the Continent to unite (probably against us, on all past form), it seems to be doing precious little to prevent Britain itself from breaking up.

Doomsters gleefully predict that the United Kingdom is another terminal case, and that the fine displays of Union flags turned out for the Queen’s Jubilee will never be seen again. Not because they are about to be replaced with the EU stars, but because the blue and white Scottish component will have to be removed following Mr Salmond’s independence referendum.

Given that the flag was created to symbolise the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1603, rather than the union of governments in 1707, it is not immediately obvious why it should be doomed by a reversal of the latter, given that the SNP seems to have abandoned its plan to make Scotland a republic.

Along with its plans to join the euro and make Scotland part of that great “arc of prosperity” embracing Ireland and Iceland. Remember that?

Let us pause to reflect on exactly how much of its hard-won independence Ireland enjoys today. It simply has its austerity medicine prescribed by Berlin rather than London.

The other fatal flaw in what is left of Mr Salmond’s great scheme is that he now proposes to retain the British (or English) pound as his currency. Just as, thanks to the brilliant demonstration provided by the euro, it is generally agreed that having a single currency without a single government is a non-starter. 

Why are we entertaining the prospect of this nonsense running on until the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn in 2014, when there are so many bigger issues in the wider world to worry about?

The Jubilee surely gave a welcome boost to British identity and, if we can avert our eyes from no doubt embarrassing events in Poland and Ukraine over the next three weeks, this should be back on course as the country rallies behind Team GB at the Olympics.

What sort of showing would an independent Team Scotland make there, in the absence of recognition for caber-tossing and bridie-eating as Olympic sports?

With the world around us getting more dangerous by the day, it is surely high time that our friends across the border recognised how well off they are under our current constitutional and financial arrangements, and abandoned their sentimental longing for something better.

We may not be able to stop the European dream expiring, but at least moving the United Kingdom out of the bed next to the door would be a brave-hearted step in the right direction.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.