How the Nationalist smearing of Tories spectacularly backfired
By Graham Grant
THERE was something familiar about the diminutive figure on the fringes of the playpark.
Soon it became clear to parents that the lurking passer-by was none other than former First Minister Alex Salmond.
He was holding a copy of The National, a fiercely pro-independence newspaper, and enthusing about it to an aide videoing the monologue.
In the footage, later posted online, Mr Salmond lashed out at the ‘yoon’, or Unionist-supporting, media for failing to provide the truth in the way that (he believes) The National does.
On a previous occasion, he had explained the ‘yoon media’ were really the ‘fake facts media’, but he didn’t want to use that Trump-esque label.
‘You don’t have to be a racist or a misogynist to know when stories are being distorted,’ he explained (forgetting the time when he and Mr Trump were bosom buddies).
Mr Salmond is increasingly fond of bandying around the pejorative term ‘yoon’, a word also much beloved of the cybernat web trolls his party claims to disavow.
By ‘yoon’, he effectively means Tory, given that Labour is only nominally a Unionist party, depending on what day of the week it is.
Nationalist MSP James Dornan tweeted ahead of last week’s council elections: ‘If you’d rather vote for the Tories than @theSNP please don’t pretend you’re a socialist, you’re a right wing Rape Clause supporting enabler.’
This was a reference to the row over the so-called ‘rape clause’, which exempts mothers who have been raped from the two-child tax credit cap.
Transport Minister Humza Yousaf, who drove without insurance and admitted he was not a ‘transport expert’, also condemned ‘Tory born-again Brexiteers & rape-clause advocates’ .
These interventions were all part of a concerted effort to link conservatism in the public mind with the abhorrent crime of rape.
This is sick enough, but Mr Yousaf also retweeted the front page of another newspaper at the weekend proclaiming: ‘Orange Order elected to councils as Labour and Tory members’.
Another newspaper carried the headline: ‘They’re back: Tories invade Scotland after sweeping local elections’: a claim that ignores the reality that you can’t invade your own country.
Tory councillors were elected in areas that were previously no-go zones, including the deprivation hotspots of Ferguslie Park in Paisley, and the Calton and Shettleston areas of Glasgow.
All of which makes the Nationalist tactic of ‘othering’ Tories and their supporters as malign, fundamentally un-Scottish, ‘hard-Right’ rape apologists, well, a little harder to sustain.
This is a real problem for the SNP, not least because Nicola Sturgeon can hardly take a breath without denouncing supposedly evil Tories.
The Tory revival is a backlash against the ‘othering’ that has characterised Nationalist politics for so long (and will doubtless intensify over the next month).
But it also reminded us that Toryism is in Scotland’s DNA because it champions what matters most to Scots: the work ethic, family values, thrift, self-help, entrepreneurialism…
We believe in these values and hope, often forlornly, that they will be shared and practised by our political masters.
They are certainly values held by 20-year-old Thomas Kerr, newly elected Tory councillor for Shettleston, the first Conservative elected for the area since 1918.
He could hardly be further away from the stereotypical Tory of old, typified by the likes of castle-dwelling Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, the late Perth and Kinross MP, famed for his tartan regalia.
Currently studying for a HNC at the City of Glasgow College, Mr Kerr explained last week that the Conservatives ‘are the only party that says, “anyone can do anything, whoever you are”.’
Mr Kerr said: ‘I was brought up by my mum and my grandparents after the death of my dad, so that message means a lot to someone like me.’
And it means a lot to many others who are sick of a deep-rooted dependency culture that purports to help the poor while trapping them in generations of ‘worklessness’.
The Tories are not only popular because they reject shallow identity politics and the SNP’s plan for another divisive referendum.
Last week’s victories also represented a rediscovery of Tory values that run deep in Scottish society.
After eight years of Tory Government under Margaret Thatcher, despite the miners’ strike and industrial decline in Scotland, almost a quarter of those Scots who chose to vote in 1987 backed the Conservatives.
Back in 1955, the Tories took 36 Commons seats with 50.1 per cent support in Scotland, the heyday of Scottish conservatism.
It is hard to envisage a Scottish Tory triumph of similarly epic proportions at the forthcoming General Election.
But last week’s local government results signalled a growing acceptance of Conservative values.
This wasn’t an ‘invasion’, but a recognition that the constitutional obsession of the Nationalists, and the policy vacuum at the heart of their political agenda, are hobbling public services and blighting economic growth.
Yesterday Derek Mackay – the hapless Finance Secretary whose biggest innovation has been a tax raid on middle-class families – was appointed the SNP’s General Election campaign co-ordinator.
Mr Mackay once admitted he hadn’t even heard of the ‘Laffer curve’, the famous economic principle that the more an activity such as production is taxed, the less of it is generated.
(Ironically, he had to ask Scottish Tory MSP Murdo Fraser what it meant – so the Tories aren’t all bad, after all).
Another of the party’s great economic thinkers is East Lothian SNP MP George Kerevan – who yesterday praised the euro as a ‘perfectly sound currency’.
Is it any wonder, with politicians of this calibre, that debt-laden, high-tax Scotland is facing a recession for the first time since 2012?
Some within the pro-independence movement now realise their politics of alienation aren’t working.
Former Scottish Socialist MSP Carolyn Leckie sensibly warned yesterday that ‘Scotland has moved on and we won’t win this time round just by… chanting the same slogans and waving the same flags’.
She said voters who are open to persuasion must not be treated as ‘enemies to be vanquished… We need open, respectful conversation’.
Tellingly, she also welcomed an election-free ‘breathing space’ after June 8, allowing pro-independence activists to build support for separatism ahead of the Holyrood poll in 2021 – despite Miss Sturgeon’s public call for another referendum by Spring 2019.
Taking a markedly different approach, Robin McAlpine, a leading grassroots independence supporter, has warned that ‘Unionists are going to find out what a campaign of polarisation looks like’.
He blogged last month: ‘I’m afraid I just can’t see any option for the independence movement but to return fire in the “polarisation wars”. For the next decade at least, unionism is Total Tory.’
Some Nationalists view the Tory resurgence as a gift, offering a binary choice between the SNP and Tories – a sobering prospect for many, they hope, which will put the brakes on the Conservative revival.
But what is missing from this analysis is that ‘polarisation’ was precisely what drove so many Scots to vote Tory last week – and if it continues, many more are sure to follow.
