Owen Jones, like so many Guardian writers, combines a detailed knowledge of politics and a gift for cutting analysis with passionate prejudice trenchantly expressed. His article on Scottish independence last Sunday firmly blames Blairite Labour and Thatcherism but ignores the longstanding Liberal attack on institutional sclerosis. Like socialists throughout history he is right about what’s wrong but wrong about what’s right. Concentrated state power is not the solution, spreading power is.
There’s a great deal in the article I agree with but not his romantic socialism. His critique of the Blair government is spot on. He argues that Labour, “Rather than attempting to defeat a yes campaign championing hope with the politics of fear…[should]…have promised to build a socially just Scotland as part of a new federal Britain.” Of course a federal Britain is an old Liberal idea (until our leaders got scared of the word federal). He quotes the fact that most voters voted against Thatcherism and indeed David Cameron. Which party has been championing electoral reform and which has blocked it and lied about it ? The conservatism of the British establishment, Labour included, is at the root of widespread disenchantment with politics. The danger is that people alienated by the failure to reform our antique institutions are tempted by the simple nostrums of nationalism propounded by Alex Salmond in Scotland and Nigel Farage throughout Britain.
Farage, never one to be bothered by logic, says Scotland and the rest of the UK are better together but Europe is better apart. As Edward Heath said of Enoch Powell, whose views were similar to Farage’s if expressed more intelligently, he is washed upon the shore sof history
Disgruntled Radical 