Scottish Independence is an extremely attractive prospect to states at the United Nations, and for reasons that you might not expect.
Every state knows that the current UN structure is outdated and indefensible, with five states – US, China, Russia, UK and France – having a permanent seat and a total veto on the Security Council.
US abuse of the veto directly to continue the Gaza genocide has been flagrant and caused outrage.
Africa and South America have no permanent representation or veto. The prominence of the Imperial powers of the UK and France is anachronistic.
The difficulty is, that any change to the veto is subject to veto. So there has been stalemate, and during the genocide in Gaza the UN itself has been outraged, maligned, abused and practically useless.
States, and particularly the entire developing world, are desperate for a lever to crack open the P5.
Scottish Independence is that lever.
There is an entirely false assumption that England and Wales (assuming the Welsh have not also escaped occupation) would be the successor state and automatically take the UN P5 seat. That is absolutely wrong. It is in fact extremely unlikely that England would retain its P5 status.
Here are some of the reasons why:
1) Russia assumed all of the national debt and all other obligations of the former Soviet Union. This was a fundamental requirement for successor state status.
In the 2014 referendum and since, the UK government has made it crystal clear England would not do this and would seek to offload debt onto Scotland.
2) Russia left its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities in situ in the other CIS states. The nuclear weapons in Ukraine and the chemical weapons in Uzbekistan were then dismantled under international supervision.
There is no indication London would leave Trident in Scotland to be dismantled under international supervision.
3) The other CIS states all specifically agreed, under the Vienna Convention on Successor States, that Russia would be the successor state and specifically agreed that Russia would take the P5 seat.
There is no requirement for Scotland to do this – and indeed international recognition of Scotland may depend on not doing it, because the large majority of states want a lever for P5 reform.
4) Russia taking over the P5 seat was subject to a “no objections” mechanism in a letter to all General Assembly states from the Secretary General, enclosing Yeltsin’s letter of claim. There were no objections.
There would certainly be objections to England.
5) Russia had huge international sympathy, as the Soviet Union split amidst hopes for a new era of world peace.
By contrast the UK is extremely unpopular. It is viewed by the large majority of states in the world as complicit in Genocide. The attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are not forgotten.
Do not underestimate the resentment caused by the massive cut in UK aid budgets under austerity. Starmer’s echoes of racist rhetoric have not gone unnoticed. The EU no longer can be counted on for automatic support.
Any attempt by England to take over the P5 seat would, after objections to the Secretary General’s letter and at the UN Credentials Committee, have to go to the UN General Assembly. There England would lose the vote. Even if it did succeed, the change would need to be approved by the Security Council – and, with the most delicious irony, would be subject to Chinese or Russian veto.
If England were not accepted as the successor state, the P5 reform question would perforce be blown wide open. How it would be shut again is unpredictable. Most conservative would be to substitute a new P5 member – such as India, Brazil or South Africa. A regional grouping may be used as a replacement, such as the African Union. Or best of all the entire system would be shaken up.
I have been thrice this year to the UN discussing why Scottish Independence is important with various national delegations. All of the above ramifications scan instantly through the mind of diplomats as soon as I mention Scottish Independence and P5 status. Which is why I can put my hand on my heart and tell you I am yet to encounter a single negative reaction.
It is vital to understand that, though states operate within a framework of international law, in introducing Scottish Independence to the decolonisation committee as a concept, this is a political question amongst states and not in any sense a judicial process. That is a fundamental misunderstanding.
I have never heard anybody contend that Scottish Independence can be achieved through the United Nations without support for it in Scotland. That is a ludicrous Aunt Sally that is used to denigrate what I am doing at the UN in combination with Liberation Scotland and Salvo.
But once Scottish Independence is declared in Scotland, we are going to need the support of the international community. I have never believed that London will willingly relinquish Scotland’s resources, and I still do not believe it. Independence will have to be achieved in the teeth of London opposition, through robust assertion and control at home and recognition abroad.
Here the work at the UN is vital.
At the UN Security Council, the UK permanent seat was already on a shoogly peg. Scottish Independence gives it a tug. The world is cheering.
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Your characterisation as imperial powers of the UK and France and not of Russia tells us all we need to know here.
Perhaps a better phrase would have been “former” Imperial powers. Nobody is denying that Russia was also an Imperial Power – they had an Emperor as did China. The important difference is that Russia – whatever you think of it – is a peer of China and the USA, the UK and France are not.
Why not use the good old “Great Power” term?
Yes thankyou Craig for that clarification. Russia stopped being an imperial power around 1990.
Of course one of the reasons that was accepted and even encouraged by the Russian population is that the Soviet Empire was unusual. Instead of being motivated by the theft or wealth from the subordinate nations, Russia actually subsidised them and instead was motivated by the Export of an ideology. Russians by 1990 were greatful they no longer had to subsidise the other countries with their oil wealth.
As Paul says, it seems some of us have a need to learn.
As for France – the appearance of Russian flags in the Sahel is a signal of the diminishing French empire not the creation of a new Russian one.
Did the Soviet Union actually subsidize Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR? There are some who think that the USSR entered into trade “agreements” with those countries which saw – inter alia – the USSR offering rather low prices for many of their industrial exports.
The Russian-Soviet empire disbanded in 1991, the USSA didn’t.
“Your characterisation as imperial powers of the UK and France and not of Russia tells us all we need to know here.”
In that case, doesn’t the omission of the US tell “us” something also?
” Russia left its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities in situ in the other CIS states. The nuclear weapons in Ukraine and the chemical weapons in Uzbekistan were then dismantled under international supervision.”
Important point: Ukraine did not have nuclear weapons but Soviet (Russian) nuclear missiles and warheads deployed there.
? “Soviet” doesn’t mean “Russian”.
An interesting factor is that Ukraine has always been a member of the UN ever since the UN was founded in 1945. (Unlike Russia.)
As was Belarus
A strong desire naturally exists in the rest of the world to end the UK’s outsized, nefarious influence. It appears to me the greatest obstacle to Scotland breaking it up is the SNP, which still looks completely captured by hard-core British imperialists and zionists.
Westminster also looks determined to renege on a border poll for the 6 counties judging by Hilary Benn’s latest comments, but at least the Irish know Sinn Fein will fight.
The notion that Britain might lose its permanent seat and veto on the UNSC is “wash your mouth out with a scrubbing brush” talk from the point of view of the poshboy ruling elite. For them it’s similar to saying that the top private boarding schools should have their assets seized and be shut down forever, or that the monarchy should be abolished.
Why should the population of the six remaining counties of the Ascendancy have a veto over the rest of the UK? The rule of the majority shouldn’t be a hostage of a minority, regional or not.
If only people in the Six Counties did have a veto on the introduction of “Brit cards” across the whole of Britain.
Jonathan Powell what with his Irish experience surely told the government the term “Brit card” wouldn’t go down well there.
“Why should the population of the six remaining counties of the Ascendancy have a veto over the rest of the UK? The rule of the majority shouldn’t be a hostage of a minority, regional or not.”
Wow. Just, wow.
Another liberal speaks….
Move across and you will get your vote, Staunch. That is if England keeps faith. Always a big if.
The last time an official referendum was held, a clear majority of voters in Scotland (over 55%) voted to remain in the United Kingdom.
Yes indeed. But that was a long while ago, and the world has changed a great deal.
That referendum result would not have been valid under UN supervision, what with the (constant) outside interference by the ‘UK’ [English] media, the bizarre town council franchise used and the hilarious “Vow” trumpeted during the ‘purdah’ period.
Indeed no international observers – and every man and his dog was allowed to vote – which most countries don’t allow on constitutional votes – combined with a dodgy postal voting system – next year at the Holyrood elections the votes won’t counted until the next day – so they’ll be left to lie overnight.
“The computer software to check signatures and date of birth was produced by a company of which Peter Lilley, former Conservative government minister in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, was a director.”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/18963656.observed-postal-voting-2014s-indyref-security-concerns/
Republicofscotland
November 14, 2025 at 16:51
I never understood why an Exit Poll wasn’t conducted after the most consequential vote in Scottish or English history.
Might the results have been… inconvenient?
Not to mention Mi5 useful idiot – Ruth Davidson gaining access to the votes to check them out.
Also the UK military stationed in Scotland were not withdrawn prior to the referendum. The legal presence of Russian soldiers during the Crimean referendum is one of the excuses used to dismiss its result; why would the same argument not apply in Scotland?
“England would (…) seek to offload debt onto Scotland.”
If there are two successor states, they will both have to inherit shares of the British sovereign debt.
“If there are two successor states, they will both have to inherit shares of the British sovereign debt.”
but not the oil.
Scotland will want all the oil, what’s left of it, but not the £24 billion cost of decommissioning the infrastructure.
Indeed, but if there is not simply a sole successor state, then England cannot assume the security council chair. Russia was the sole successor state.
You appear to have grasped the argument while under the impression you are arguing against it.
Interesting case, but I cannot but think of a drowning man grabbing at straws. Good luck though !
I am not a Scot but it is my hope that Scotland will eventually achieve its independence. Irrespective of such an outcome, it remains a scandal that, in the 21st century, Britain and France, two minuscule European countries, should hold two of the five permanent, veto-wielding seats on the UN Security Council while the vast continents of Africa and South America are excluded.
“while the vast continents of Africa and South America are excluded.”
White supremacy determined a long time ago, that those continents (Africa in particular) are there to fuel the excesses of Capitalism. The Berlin Conference of (1884-5) determined how Africa was to be split between the Europeans. Not a single African had a say.
I agree with your sentiment, however: when ‘we’ say Africa and South America who exactly are we talking about ?
These two large continents are not countries and don’t have any unified representatives, which obviously suits the west. In a similar fashion, Europe is not represented. The UN setup is obviously the problem, there are no united nations just dictators and vassals.
I get the strong impression that the USA thinks it represents South America and is ever eager to impose its will on those countries (to their detriment). I imagine it wants the same result in “Africa””.
You are correct Mr Murray. Actually, you understate the case.
At the moment Europe holds four out of seven ¨power positions¨ in the United Nations.
There are France and the UK as permanent members of the Security Council. But then you must add to that Antonio Guterres* of Portugal who is the Secretary General, and Analena Baerbock of Germany who is President of the General Assembly.
The rest of the world can see that Europe is a complete basket case, that the European Union is morphing into the European Soviet, and that the entire continent is pretty much doomed under current management.
The day of reckoning is coming. Fast coming.
*As an aside, I wrote yesterday that
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/11/the-four-mentors-of-king-charles/comment-page-3/#comment-1089394
The man who presided over that meeting was Antonio Guterres.
He´s a made man, and his reward for the coverup is the UN gig.
European cynicism and perfidy are breathtaking.
Another breathtaking statistic is that three of the five permanent members of the SC belong to NATO.
“The rest of the world can see that Europe is a complete basket case, that the European Union is morphing into the European Soviet”
The view that the “West” is a complete basket case is common in India, Africa, Middle East, etc. – and pretty obviously correct.
Not so sure, though, that the EU features much in how people see the present and the future. The EU didn’t play much of a role during Covid. Nor has it played one in the Russo-Ukrainian war either (although some of its members have). It would be interesting if someone without an axe to grind one way or the other could look at whether the EU is getting more important or less.
Got to disagree there, Brian. You know about Fond´o Lyin´ and her text messages. She spent some 40 Billion Euros on Pfizer vaccines on the basis of a few personal texts with the CEO, and which she now refuses to allow anyone to see. She´s also married to some bigwig in the industry. And the EU has played such an outsized role in the NATO Russian war that the Ruskies are unlikely to allow Ukraine to join the EU, as they now consider the EU to be a geopolitical project.
In other words the EU has played an absolutely central role in both Covid and the War.
The EU is becoming more important internally, as it tightens control over the member states (¨Belgium, Steal that Russian money¨) and less important externally as it loses the respect of the rest of the world.
We disagree about the EU’s involvement in the war.
But what facts are you referring to as regards Covid? I wasn’t aware that the EU bought €40bn of vaccines from Pfizer. Can you educate me please. The restrictions and the vaccination rules certainly varied a lot from country to country. Free movement came to a near halt, although perhaps that’s not significant in the discussion because internal movements within countries were also restricted. How much behind the scenes was agreed at EU level?
Hi Brian. Here´s a summary from Grok
Brian Red
November 14, 2025 at 15:59
Come on Brian.
If ever the term “basket case” was applicable it would be to India.
You can’t even breath the air in Kolkata safely: https://www.aqi.in/dashboard/india/west-bengal/kolkata.
Come on JK. At the height of its power, when it ruled something like a fifth of the world, much of the time you couldn’t breathe the air safely in London either. I’d agree that India has a way to go, certainly compared to China, but it is on the way up while the West is clearly on the way down. The New American Century ain’t happening. If and when China stumbles, India could end up on top.
As I see it.
China actually had a plan to lift it’s citizens out of poverty and because of their single party, educated, government they have achieved that.
India, to my knowledge, has no equivalent plan. And, because their government system is based on the British system they will never be able to lift the population out of poverty, although the 1% will do very well thank you.
Capitalism and western democracy are based on inequality, by design.
India has reduced the proportion of its population living in extreme poverty according to the World Bank standard (less than $1.90 per day) from 16% in 2011 to 0.8% in 2025. This is on a par with China although they use a slightly higher wage.
No use over-egging the pudding, John Cleary. The President of the General Assembly is a 1 year gig and worth almost nothing in power terms.
Not entirely convinced by your mention of the Sec Gen either, for the reason of both his functions (limited) and his particular personality (non if not anti-charismatic).
And, by the way, John Cleary, the meeting to which you refer – at Santa Maria da Feira in 2000 – was of the European Council and not the “Council of Europe”.
Which is why I think the UK will fight tooth and nail to ever agree to our secession. All decolonisations end with a treaty of some sort. Eventually.
As an alternative, and to preserve the UN Security Council place it could give us ‘leverage’ with the UK if we were to propose a British Federation where the constituent nations had equal weight in matters of defence and foreign policy but were devolved in everything else.
First step to that is to have an English parliament.
If anyone says you can’t realistically have countries so widely varying in population size having an equal say in defence, they may have a point but they gotta take it on board that if it means nuclear disarmament that will be a positive not a negative.
Could be good if Scottish independence supporters started proposing sensible things for a British federation. (An example of the opposite strategy being Alec Salmond saying whether or not Scots kept British passports would be a matter for the government down south.)
Liberation has said that it, and I agree with them – that they won’t settle for any form of federalism – the idea is to break the P5+1 and the permanent UN members grip by replacing Britain with say a Africa or South America – there are many UN reps – at the UN, in which they recognise Scotland’s current predicament, their countries having been in this position prior to decolonisation.
Interesting. Quite a lot of UNSC-authorised military actions since 2000 have been in Africa – probably the majority.
Britain ran concentration camps in Kenya for about 10 years before independence.
The UN will probably be a dead letter by 2050. It has been big during the world’s USA years, during which it was tolerated by the USSR. Can’t see it retaining much of a role when everyone recognises China as top dog. On the other hand, China could work through the UN (and through the USA for that matter).
The St Vincent election later this month is going to be fascinating…. Government is pro-Taiwan, opposition is pro-China.
Brian, what difference does it make how 100,000 people in St Vincent vote in that election regarding Taiwan? Since almost one and a half billion people in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has determined the fate of Taiwan and most of the world including the US, a long time ago.
In the long run, nothing. But word is that China wants its favoured side to win the election, and Ralph Gonsalves has criticised the Trinidadian govt for having no problem with US military attacks in the region, and the US has a lot of firepower near there. Hopefully there will be no violence. The election is likely to be close. I can imagine Trump stepping up his killing from sinking civilian boats, to whacking St Vincent, to whacking Venezuela.
In the big picture, Taiwan may already be under Beijing control.
There are local Chinese gangland faces (not the kind of guys to be publicly known as pro-CCP) involved in Beijing’s police stations in Europe, including in Britain.
We were talking about colonialism in these comments. One of its features was consular courts. The PRC seems to be operating such courts now. (Makes note to compare expenditure of British Council and Confucius Institute.)
Latest St Vincent news : PM Ralph Gonsalves’s party has gone to court to challenge the nomination of opposition leader Godwin Friday, who has been on the assembly since 2001 and lost the last election to Gonsalves in 2020. Friday has now been nominated but the understanding is there may well be more action in court. The contention is that Friday and fellow UDP candidate Fitz Bramble have taken on voluntary “allegiance to a foreign power” because they acquired Canadian citizenship, and that consequently they shouldn’t be allowed to stand for re-election in their seats.
If any SAS guys are thinking of trying a Simon Mann, they’ll probably arrive wearing flowery Bermuda shorts because wearing camouflage clothing is illegal in St Vincent.
Yes. If it comes to it, London will agree a federal model, like Germany or Canada, to head off full Scottish secession. Then requiring a UK-wide referendum. Probably the best solution for all, in fact, as the laughable House of Lords becomes a shared Senate, the Royal Family purely decorative, and National Parliaments take full responsibility and accountability for taxation, education, welfare, health, justice, etc.
Very interesting. Thank you, Craig.
In the event of Scottish independence, the successor state would not be England but the UK – perhaps with a slight official name change to the United Kingdom of Southern Great Britain & Northern Ireland. The UK could make its recognition of Scottish Independence (and a tariff-free trade agreement) contingent on Scotland recognising the residual UK as the rightful successor state but also agreeing to take on its fair share of the national debt, similarly to the EU insisting on a massive 40 billion plus divorce fee as part of our Brexit deal. It should be fairly easy for the UK to move its (essentially useless*) ballistic missile subs to be berthed with some of the US ones in Kings Bay, Georgia – albeit for a hefty fee.
* As I’ve mentioned before, the guidance systems for the UK’s Trident missiles are half-programmed by the US, so they’ll be going nowhere near their putative targets if ever launched in anger.
Scotland can only realistically become independent by means of a referendum, in which case Rump Britain would have to recognise its independence. RB could be arsy over this and that (as could the Edinburgh side), but they couldn’t say if we don’t get what we want we won’t recognise independence. In practice the Scottish government would accept a share of debt and also receive a share of assets, although there might be some front-page squabbles over a few minor things. Scotland would have to choose between customs union with Rump Britain and EU membership. I wonder how long it would take to build facilities for the subs somewhere in RB anyway. They could always ask China to help. (A similar point could be made about having a proper motorway between London and Edinburgh. If the will was there, it could be done.)
Thanks for your reply Brian. The UK can choose to recognise – or not recognise – any state it pleases (whether any referendums have taken place or not). For example, despite UK-based companies doing quite a bit of trade with it, the UK does not officially recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state, and indeed officially considers it to be part of the PRC. There would be massive protests against berthing the Trident subs anywhere in the residual UK – far less trouble to pay for them to be based in the US if we wish to keep up our ‘nuclear deterrent’ facade.
Brian Red.
UDI could be an option – and when Scotland is placed on the C-24 list as a colony of England’s things should change quite a bit.
Below is Professors Robert Black’s excellent explanation of why the union isn’t real – and that Scotland is in reality a colony of England’s, he spoke at the UN recently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGvHUWYNyGM
Professor Black has given a clear explanation indeed, of why the Union is asymmetrical, with Scotland having only a small minority of Commons seats, the Executive being essentially English, though with devolution this needs some qualification e.g. the position for students North of the border is much better – just compare Open University fees! The Scottish judiciary seems to be largely independent, though, as Black says, at the very highest level Scotland is not as well represented in the Supreme Court as it should be (at the least by having a quorum of Scots Law experts for judging appeals from Scotland – at least three and preferably five IMHO as a non-lawyer).
That said, like it or not, in 2014 the voters North of the border voted to remain in the Union. The result was accentuated by the “silent Nos”, and as a rule analysts seem unwilling to try to deal with this particular elephant in the room or its equivalents elsewhere eg silent Brexiters, silent Tories, silent Trump voters etc. Therefore I am not at all sure that, were a referendum to be held again, that Scottish nationalists would win. But unless such a clear majority could be proven, representing a real sea-change, I don’t think that such a serious constitutional reform to the UK would be justified. Therefore I suspect that the advocates of Scottish independence have some convincing to do yet.
M.J
“While 52.7 per cent of native-born Scots voted Yes, a massive 72.1 per cent of voters from England, Wales or Northern Ireland backed the Union.”
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/independence-referendum-figures-revealed-majority-5408163
Cue Vivian Oblivian to dispute the above.
RepublicofScotland
This finding is interesting and worth noting, and also the gender and age divisions, the latter which mirrors a pattern in the Brexit referendum. If the age for voting is reduced to 16 the next time such a referendum is held, that could influence the result.
A good question for debate may be whether citizens living in Scotland but born outside it should have the right to vote in such a referendum, or permanent residents of the UK living in Scotland.
PS. RepublicofScotland
We should note that since the referendum ballot was secret and did not collect personal data, any demographic analysis—such as that published by the Daily Record or other media outlets—was based on post-referendum polling and survey data, not the ballots themselves.
That means that the findings in the Daily Record, while interesting, suffer from the same limitations as polls generally, and in particular that of the ‘Silent Nos’ that I referred to.
Therefore we still can’t be certain that another referendum would bring advocates for independence what they want.
United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Sharof Azizov has stabbed us in the back but no matter – we will prevail.
A lot of wishful thinking there Mr Murray.
If distributed according to population size Scotland would take on about 8% of the national debt, surely for a country that’s going to be as rich as an independent Scotland that wouldn’t be a problem? Otherwise the rUK could just suck it up.
The nuclear weapons issue is a bit of a red herring, in 1990 the Soviet Union possessed 45,000 nuclear warheads, although some were obsolete models waiting to be dismantled that was clearly more than they ever needed and whilst some were stationed in four satellite countries sufficient were based in Russia itself. Current stockpile is about 1,700.
I would agree that the security council needs a shake up, the permanent members are the victor nations from WW2 which is more than a bit outdated. Maybe it out to be the world’s largest economies but that would be the US, China and India or perhaps time to do away with the permanent members altogether.
“the permanent members are the victor nations from WW2 which is more than a bit outdated.”
Plus France, which didn’t win WWII any more than any other country that was occupied by Germany and had to be liberated.
True – the French resistance was mostly a myth invented in 1944.
It was probably included as a veto state because of its colonial empire. Then again, Belgium had one too.
This was all Stalin’s fault. It was him who insisted that Germany also capitulates to France and that France has a sit at UN SC. Both Churchill and Rosevelt hated de Gaulle personally and everything French in general.
To say that Churchill hated de Gaulle personally is inaccurate (see what he says about him in his history of WW2) and to say he hated everything French in general is absolute nonsense (would a French-hater have offered the French joint citizenship with the British in 1940?).
Where do you get stuff like this from, Yuri?
France was Churchill’s favourite holiday destination, he spent a lot of time painting there.
I don’t think many people outside of France liked de Gaulle. He was appallingly arrogant and difficult to deal with.
2 Luis Cunha da Silva: From Churchill’s books and letters, of course. See what he wrote about French demands before D-Day, for example; Churchill did not even try to hide his irritation. It is obvious that Churchill considered the French as capricious prima donnas who demanded a lot but contributed little. In the 6th volume de Gaulle is mentioned around the Autumn 1944 time, then he simply vanishes for the next 270 pages until the events in Lebanon in May 1945. It is also obvious that Churchill did not trust the French. The only moment ever that Churchill begged Stalin for something came early in 1945 when the Germans launched “Operation Nordwind”. Churchill feared that if Salsbourg fell, the French will collapse politically so he begged Stalin to launch his offensive in Prussia earlier than planned. This was a moment of weakness and I do not believe Churchill ever forgave the French for this.
@Yuri
I am glad I have obtained in your posts a change from “hating” De Gaulle (which is inaccurate) to finding him “irritating” (which is accurate) as well as from “hating” De Gaulle and the French (inaccurate) to considering him and they as “capricious prima donnas” (again, accurate) and “not trustworthy” (partly accurate). This must count as progess!
Not to be mentioned for 270 pages sounds impressive (even terrible!) but when you look at the period covered by those 270 pages, it is from the autumn of 1944 (ie, just after the allied landings in ….wait for it…France!) to, apparently, May 1945, so let us say about 9 months. Perhaps there were other rather more important things going on during those 9 months (from Churchill’s point of view) than De Gaulle doing a lot of work on the future internal political and administrative structure of France?
It is true, though, that what some people, perhaps including Churchill) were and are still unable to forgive De Gaulle for was his attempt to preserve good relations with the Soviet Union , as evidenced, for example, by the signing of the Franco-Soviet Treaty and the inclusion of several Communist ministers in his provisional government. This of course at a time when the likely fate of the wartime alliance was already becoming clear. Future French governments soon got rid of both, of course.
2 Luis Cunha da Silva:
“Perhaps there were other rather more important things going on during those 9 months…”
Right. Like, capitulation of Germany, for example.
” as evidenced, for example, by the signing of the Franco-Soviet Treaty ”
This treaty was similar to Anglo-Soviet Treaty of 1942. In fact, it was a carbon copy of it.
2 Pears Morgaine:
There must be a distinction between places and people. If you read “The Movable Feast” you’ll conclude that Hemingway was quite fond of Paris. However, he did not befriend a single Frenchman (or a Frenchwoman, if this matters). When he came back to France in 1944 as a war correspondent, he only drank with his American army buddies. Reading his “A Farewell to Arms” or many writings on Spain you can feel his admiration of Italians and Spaniards, but you never see this feeling about the French.
Curiously, this is also true for many other writers of those days. George Orwell’s buddy in Paris was a Russian emigre. In Remarque’s “The Arch of Triumph” the hero’s buddy is also a Russian; his lover is of mixed Anglo-Romanian descent and grew up in Italy; the only Frenchmen that is described with sympathy is Dr Wagner who, by his name and looks, must be either Jewish or a German from Alsace, and all other French characters in the novel are disgusting. If you read George Kennan’s diaries you’ll conclude he was quite fond of Germans and Russians but felt deep animosity toward the French.
So, Yuri, let’s reconstruct the narrative and create some order.
The narrative starts off with the claim that Churchill hated everything about the French “in general”.
I assume that hating everything about a people in general is a way (perhaps a weasely way) of saying you hate that people. If you hate their appearance, their characters, their way of speaking, their cleanliness, their friendliness, their honesty, etc, etc, does this not amount to hating the people?
Then Pears Morgaine points out that Churchill spent quite a bit of time in France painting.
As a riposte to Pears, it is then suggested that there “must be” a distinction between places (presumably, France) and the people (presumably the French). The idea seems to be that Churchill did actually like France while (according to Yuri) hating everything about the French – in effect hating the French.
Further proof of the hateful nature of the French is then offered on the evidence that Hemingway, Orwell and Remarque did not make any French friends during their stays in Paris. The fact that their stays in France were relatively brief and in particular the circumstances under and for which they were in France were not particularly conducive to making French friends is not mentioned.
On the subject of the Franco -Soviet Treaty, let us accept, for the sake of argument, that they are similar. But the timing is crucial: the Anglo-Soviet Treaty followed hard on the Soviet Union entering the war against Germany. The Soviet Union became an invaluable ally, making the defeat of Germany inevitable. By the time of the Franco-Soviet Treaty, the war was clearly won (German capitulation was only a matter of time), the motivation for the Treaty was very different, and certain minds in the UK and USA were already turning in a less than friendly direction as regards the Soviet Union.
That is why certain elements ever forgave – and have still not forgiven – that Treaty and its originator.
2 Luis Cunha da Silva:
My reply tp Pears Mogaine meant that travelling to France does not mean Churchill’s love of the French. Maybe this was just geography, the closest country a Britt can get away.
Re the treaty, we do not have to assume anything cause this is a fact of life. Moreover, Stalin informed Churchill that “Franco-Soviet mutual aid pact [will be] patterned on the Anglo-Soviet Treaty.” (Telegram Dec 3d, 1944).
Before this, Stalin actually asked Churchill’s opinion before de Gaulle visited Moscow:
“The indications are that de Gaulle and his friends, who have arrived in the Soviet Union, will raise two questions. (1) Concluding a Franco-Soviet pact of mutual aid similar to the Anglo-Soviet pact. We shall find it hard to object. But I should like to know what you think. What do you advise.” (Telegram Nov 2nd, 1944)
To which Churchill replied on Dec 5th that “We have no objection whatever to a Franco-Soviet pact of mutual assistance similar to the Anglo- Soviet pact. On the contrary His Majesty’s Government consider it desirable and an additional link between us all. Indeed it also occurs to us that it might be best of all if we were to conclude a tripartite treaty between the three of us which would embody our existing Anglo-Soviet Treaty with any improvements.”
De Gaulle later objected to the tripartite treaty explaining that this will take some time to prepare.
So I do not know what were the later comments on this treaty but at that time I can tell that Stalin was somewhat hesitant but Churchill encouraged him to sign it.
@ Yuri
But Pears Morgaine and I never claimed that Churchill’s stays in France meant he “loved” the French. You, on the other hand, asserted that Churchill hated everything about the French in general – an assertion Pears replied to by saying that Churchill often went to France to paint ( with the aim of saying that he would not have gone there had he really hated everything about the French in general).
As for your argument about the geographical proximity of the UK and France as the reason why Churchill went there, you will certainly know that Churchill did manage to get further into Europe than just France after the war…?
Despite ample opportunity, and multiple attempts to divert, you have still not managed to back up your assertion.
And we have not even started discussing your further assertion that not only Churchill but also Roosevelt “hated everything about the French in general”……..
2 Luis Cunha da Silva:
So you are happy with my answer re the treaty? OK then.
I strongly recommend reading at least “The Hinge of Fait” which is a shorter digest of Churchill’s wartime memories, then we can discuss how much de Gaulle (and the French in general) irritated Churchill. Otherwise, I am in position of trying to please you with more proofs and this is always not enough for you.
One passage especially comes to mind during the Casablanca talks, “I had a very strong interview with de Gaulle making it clear that if he continued to be an obstacle we will not hesitate to break up with him finally.”
Yuri K
The French have a saying: foreigners ‘love France, but hate the French’. That seems to cover the case being discussed here. If the French didn’t conform to Churchill’s way of thinking, then they were being ‘difficult’.
Yuri
So now you suggest discussing how much De Gaulle and the French in general “irritated” Churchill
There is, however, little point in having that discussion since I do not disagree.
I note with satisfaction that you have moved a considerable distance – perhaps at my insistence and after considerable twisting and turning – from asserting that Churchill “hated De Gaulle and everything about France in general”.
Thank you.
I would suggest you now make a similar retraction regarding your identical assertion about …..Roosevelt.
Ah but you are forgetting the Entente Cordiale between the Great Eastern (Rothschilds) and the Scottish Rite (Windsors)
The French like to think they liberated themselves.
The French were not invited to Potsdam. But they did get their own occupation zone in Germany, carved out of the US zone (thanks in large part to Churchill! – let no good deed be unrewarded…)
“Distributed according to population size” is not a valid way of apportioning any debt. The only valid method is a detailed examination of the actual flows of money using a formal independent, open, forensic accounting process. Anything else is a political fudge to hide the truth of who really owes that debt.
A wee bit more on Azizov’s we shall call it a change of heart – is the Auld Alliance over? it was mainly onesided to start with I think – though General De Gaulle did say.
“In every combat where for five centuries the destiny of France was at stake, there were always men of Scotland to fight side by side with men of France, and what Frenchmen feel is that no people has ever been more generous than yours with its friendship.”
https://www.electricscotland.com/france/degaulle.htm
“JPTi were told we were withdrawing from our arrangement because of contractual failures. I am not allowed to detail those failures except where Azizov has brought them up. (ND clause.) So once again, as I have repeatedly explained!: Sharof Azizov announced in NY last month that he was going to speak in support of the French coloniser. There is a very serious move being piloted by France to replace self determination with a colonising definition of self determination as devolution which, incidentally is utterly incompatible with the Swiss model he cited. Although he essentially dissuaded, this told us our working relationship was over and we withdrew from the MoU under the 7 day clause. We calculated exactly what we owed him and we have slightly overpaid. He went ballistic as you have seen. But hey, he couldn’t possibly be lying or making things up eh? There could not possibly be an obvious explanation based on the level of threat we now represent to England as UK”
It is disappointing to hear Craig offer a change in the constitutional position of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ and leave out one of the constituent parts of the state i.e. Northern Ireland.
“There is an entirely false assumption that England and Wales (assuming the Welsh have not also escaped occupation) would be the successor state and automatically take the UN P5 seat. That is absolutely wrong. It is in fact extremely unlikely that England would retain its P5 status”.
Further up thread Re-lapsed Agnostic argues that “In the event of Scottish independence, the successor state would not be England but the UK – perhaps with a slight official name change to the United Kingdom of Southern Great Britain & Northern Ireland”.
Number 1/ Scottish independence would not leave the “United Kingdom of Southern Great Britain & Northern Ireland”. Since Wales is a country and has no King, Northern Ireland is a Province within a country or state.
Norther Ireland is a legitimate part of ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ state. Some people wish it was not so, but according to the Anglo Irish treaty agreed to by the Irish government, British government and Northern Irish parties, including Sinn Fein there can be no change in its constitutional position as an integral part of the UK, without a vote of 50% plus 1 in a border poll referendum.
Voting in Northern Ireland elections is notoriously on sectarian grounds, so that Catholics are reluctant to vote for Unionist (usually Protestant) candidates and Protestants are similarly reluctant to vote for Catholic Parties, like Sinn Fein or the SDLP.
Opinion polls in the Province (the Life and Times survey) have indicated that at least half the Catholic population do not want a United Ireland, so long as they are not discriminated against and no one tries to drape a Union Jack around their shoulders.
As I have argued on another of Craig’s articles recently, almost 2 million Northern Ireland citizens have no vote, since no one can vote for any of the parties contesting to be government for the whole of the UK. Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, Reform I am not sure about ‘Your Party’. Bottom line, if you cannot vote for or against the Parties that govern you, then you have no vote.
Nation states can call themselves what they want, Harry. If Westminster decides to grant IndyRefs to all regions of the current UK that are a net drain on the Treasury, and they all vote to leave, the rump UK can call itself the United Kingdom of Greater London & South East England, because its Head of State would be a king and it would be united. Voters in Northern Ireland can usually vote for the NI Conservatives, if they so wish. Otherwise, the Ulster Unionists usually align with the Tories, the SDLP with Labour, and the Alliance with the Lib Dems. I’d imagine that DUP will generally be on the same page as Reform, and People before Profit with Your Party.
Enjoy the weekend.
“Nation states can call themselves what they want, Harry”. That’s true however if one wants to break up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, it is incumbent of you to describe the resulting state and more particularly how the component parts of that state Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (in the event that all three component parts vote for independence from England) have a relationship with each other and the wider world. I am all for a border poll in Northern Ireland, however that would not be the end of the matter, the people of the Irish Republic would have to consent to unification, It cannot be thrust on them since huge costs and other financial and constitutional arrangements would have to be worked out. On your last point, you appear to be saying the present sectarian voting arrangements are fine, and that Catholic, Protestant and other workers of no creed and mostly organized in British Trade Unions can go take a hike, and continue to vote for the sectarian parties whose nature has caused the violence known as the ‘troubles’ for well over half a century.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain has only two constituent kingdoms, Scotland and England.
The “…and Northern Ireland…” part is the rump left after the Republic of Ireland was declared in the 1930s and was previously, from 1801 until 1934, “…and Ireland…”
The country of Wales isn’t and has never been, a signatory to any of the constitutional agreements of any iteration of the UK, vis..
The United Kingdom of Great Britain (1707 – 1801)
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801 -1927)
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1927 – present)
Scottish independence would break the United Kingdom part so the logical resulting states (assuming neither Wales nor NI altered their own constitutional statuses) would surely be “Scotland” and “England and Northern Ireland”
Hello Neth.
From my friend Grok
It is important to stress that the new entity was the Kingdom of Great Britain and not the United Kingdom of Great Britain. I can explain why if you wish.
John Cleary said;
“The Act of Union 1707 merged the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland into a single sovereign state known as the Kingdom of Great Britain.”
That ‘single’ sovereignty is exclusively Scottish, because England’s sovereignty expired in 1707 when its sole owner, the Parliament of England, ceased to exist in 1707 along with Scotland’s parliament, as formally declared by the UK Supreme Court in 2022.
England’s parliament died intestate, no provision of any kind ever having been made and/or enacted to transfer England’s sovereignty to the brand new British parliament. England’s sovereignty wasn’t abolished by the Treaty, it was killed by the arrogant carelessness of the English establishment in ‘assuming’ that England’s sovereignty would ‘automatically’ transfer to the new parliament. It couldn’t. It needed a formal constitutional mechanism to do so because this was an unprecedented scenario, and it hadn’t occurred to anyone to create one before that sovereignty evaporated.
As the highly respected Robert Black KC has affirmed on record on more than one occasion, England’s parliamentary sovereignty makes no sense without the continuation of the English parliament that held it. And now it’s too late. Oh, dear, ‘ow sad, never mind.
The loss of Scotland’s parliament affected Scotland’s sovereignty not at all, since it was always owned by Scotland’s people, as they still do today, since no-one involved in negotiating, agreeing, signing and ratifying the Treaty possessed any legitimate authority to remove, transfer, or demote the sovereignty of the Scots. In addition, Scotland’s constitution as cited and exerted by Scotland’s 1689 Claim of Right was formally guaranteed the permanence of its authority by both parliaments in 1707, thus also guaranteeing Scotland’s sovereignty.
It is also worth loudly pointing out, that in Scotland, the ‘Crown’ refers to the Community of the Realm of Scotland, i.e. its people, and not to its monarch. And their Crown sovereignty is formally incorporated and represented in the UK parliament exclusively by Scotland’s MPs, who are elected directly to the UK parliament by those sovereign Scots themselves.
Thus the UK Parliament’s Sovereignty of the ‘Crown in Parliament’ is exclusively Scottish, and has been since 1707, and only Scotland’s MPs may exert it on Scotland’s behalf.
To John Cleary (there is no direct reply button on your reply to me!)
Hi John
The naming is I think ambiguous (and/or confusing) as shown in this extract from the Queen Anne proclamation…
Whereas, by the Treaty of Union, happily concluded and approved in the Parliaments of Kingdoms of Scotland and England respectively, it is provided that Our Said two Kingdoms shall upon the first day of May next, and forever afterward, be united into one Kingdom, to be called by the name of the Kingdom of Great Britain. And by the Third Article of the said Treaty, it is stipulated that the said United kingdom of Great-Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament,
So there are two versions of the name of the “new” kingdom in two consecutive sentences.
However the second does not have the word “kingdom” capitalised.
In any case I am aware that the kingdoms were not united under one crown which I suspect is what your explanation will touch on
However I am more than happy to be corrected where needed and would be interested to hear further explanation.
“Scottish independence would break the United Kingdom part ”
No it wouldn’t, it would break the “Great Britain” part, “Great Britain” being the entity that was formed with the Union of England and Scotland. However, there is nothing to stop the remaining British government calling England and Wales “Great Britain” and retaining the same designation of the UK for the new state. Obviously, if Northern Ireland joined Eire and left the UK, then the “and Northern Ireland” bit would have to be dropped, but the state could still retain the “United Kingdom” bit; it’s just a name.
To Bayard
…..However, there is nothing to stop the remaining British government calling England and Wales “Great Britain”…..
Wouldn’t geography rather get in the way of that?
Breaking the “Great Britain” part and breaking the “United Kingdom” part amount to the same since what would actually get broken would be the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” part?
At least that’s how it seems to me!
The “Northern Ireland” part isn’t signifying any union between a kingdom of Great Britain and a kingdom of Northern Ireland – it’s an addition to the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
I get that 1707 formed the Kingdom of Great Britain (if we accept the long-standing British narrative which Salvo and others are currently disputing) and that the United Kingdom part was introduced by the 1801 Act of Settlement forming a political union between the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain – the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
However since Ireland is no longer a kingdom, and the 1801 union is gone in any case, the current United Kingdom of Great Britain can surely only refer to the union (if such actually exists) between the kingdoms of Scotland and England hence my assertion that Scottish independence would break the “United Kingdom” part.
It would have been clearer to say it would break the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” part.
I think.
Why is this stuff so complicated – oh yeah – it’s England at the root of it all!
“No it wouldn’t, it would break the “Great Britain” part,”
Bayard.
Great Britain is the land mass, that includes Northern Ireland – its not a nation – but, the description of the land mass.
John Cleary
Check out Professor Robert Black at my 17.00pm comment at the UN.
There was no union – Scotland became a colony of England’s – the English parliament didn’t change, only a few bought and paid Scots were added with absolutely no sway whatsoever, there is NO UK parliament – just the continuation of England’s parliament.
“Wouldn’t geography rather get in the way of that?”
Not really, we think of “Great Britain” as “England, Wales and Scotland”, because that’s the name chosen for it back in the C17th, but it could have been called something else, like “The British Union” or “United Britain”. The term “The United Kingdom” was, as you say, out of date as soon as Ireland was partitioned and ceased to be a kingdom, but it was retained probably for reasons of nationalism and not wanting to change all the paperwork too much. Austria (Osterreich) is still “The Eastern Kingdom” even though it hasn’t been a kingdom since 1918.
Mmmmm…..
I think the geographic term Great Britain goes back much earlier than the 17th century, to refer to the largest island of the British Isles
To Bayard,
The reason they held on to the name ¨United Kingdom¨ is because some laws make specific reference to that entity.
If that entity disappears, then those laws are deleted.
The most important law in all of this is the Treason Felony Act of 1848, which converted the crime of treason away from a political offence, and into a criminal offence. It grants enormous powers to ¨our Most Gracious Lady the Queen¨ and which is central to this dictatorship.
I agree that it makes no sense because Northern Ireland is not and never has been a kingdom, but that doesn´t matter to a dictatorship, does it?
And of course the law was formally challenged under the Human Rights Act (1998). The case is R v Rusbridger (2003).
But because Blair the sneak passed a Human Rights Act that fired blanks*, the high and mighty of the law left the Treason Felony Act (1848) intact as part of the law of the land, all the while assuring all and sundry that such a law would NEVER be enforced.
The British State is full of shit.
*The Human Rights Act of 1998, you know, the one they are always waving in the faces of the people, was passed as defective legislation.
The European Convention, on which the act was based, includes Article 13. This Article guarantees the right to an effective remedy, even against an over mighty government. Check it out.
That Article was quietly left out of the Act. It is simply not there. Check it out.
The effect of all of this, with the Treason Felony Act operating in conjunction with the defective Human Rights Act, is to allow selective application of Human Rights. If the Regime likes you, you have human rights coming out of the Kazoo. If the Regime does not like you, well, sorry my son. You ain´t got no human rights.
Like the people in Epping
Thanks for your reply Harry. It is not incumbent on me or anyone else to define how the constituent parts of the UK would relate to each other and the wider world should they become independent. That would be a matter for the governments of those states. As regards Northern Ireland, it’s a matter for political parties whether they wish to stand candidates in NI constituencies. Forcing parties to stand in every constituency at general elections would mean that the smaller ones would need to put up (and potentially lose) £325k in deposits. Northern Irish voters who don’t want to vote for a ‘sectarian’ party can currently vote Alliance (or perhaps for the NI Tories). If any voters in the UK can legitimately claim to be disenfranchised, it’s the good burghers of Chorley, which is the Speaker’s seat, and is uncontested by all of the main parties except the Greens.
P.S. The Irish Republic was dissolved in 1922.
The issue of the Labour party organizing in Northern Ireland (NI) is a long standing one dating back 40 years, then it was a fact that anyone in the world could retain or become a member simply by registering at Labour HQ. Incredibly this meant NI was the only place on earth where it was not possible to join the party. Even though NI had a huge British based Trade Union membership who actually contracted in to pay a fee (levy) towards the Labour funds. Union members in GB had the levy automatically taken for the Labour party, unless the member objected to it.
This anomaly was partially solved when a Trade Union member from Larne NI applied for a job as a Researcher at Labour HQ, the job requirement was that the applicant had to be a LP member for at least 12 months. Because he could not meet that requirement through no fault of his own, he complained to the Industrial tribunal on the grounds of Indirect racial discrimination contrary to the 1968 Race Relations Act. i.e. Applying a condition for employment which most people In NI could not comply with, because he resided in NI. The claimant won the case, but incredibly losed on appeal, the 3 Appeal court judges thought that a ‘Researcher’ was merely a vocation and not ’employment’ in the traditional sense. Later the party were threatened with further legal action, backed by a large Union, this time the party accepted Individual members from NI, my latest check was there is one Province wide group with 2000 approx members they are unable (banned) from forming ordinary constituency parties, while paying full membership fees, but unable to have any other benefits of membership. A profoundly undemocratic state of affairs. In a recent comment I said Palestinians living in Israel have more rights than NI citizens, at least they can vote for Netanyahu’s Likud party. They don’t of course, but they could do
“Forcing parties to stand in every constituency at general elections would mean that the smaller ones would need to put up (and potentially lose) £325k in deposits”.
The Labour party is a National party, its constitution said, it must organize in every constituency in the country, which it did even in seats it had no chance of winning, in Cornwall for instance. There are many Trade Unionists in Northern Ireland approx 230,000 many in British based unions meaning that the majority of Catholic and Protestant working people are completely disfranchised. Could anyone suggest with a straight face they should join their local sectarian party, or the Conservative party.
This from Secretary LPNI..The LPNI are awaiting the report of the recent Labour Party National Executive Committee (NEC) Review into the party standing candidates in Northern Ireland elections. We are hoping to make some progress towards our aims.
The NEC denies us the right to run Labour Party candidates for our District Councils, the Stormont Assembly and the Westminster Parliament.
In July we were denied the right to to vote for Labour Party candidates to help elect our Labour government. Labour Party electoral politics are suppressed. This, despite the fact that polling evidence suggests there would be sizeable support for Labour Party candidates.
In suppressing our right to vote Labour, the NEC pushes politics in Northern Ireland further into its communal / sectarian trenches. https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/letters/letter-the-labour-partys-refusal-to-stand-in-northern-ireland-fuels-political-instability-here-4788233
Harry Law
Your corrupt genocidal neoliberal party is heading for the dustbin of history.
“Northern Ireland” won’t be far behind.
Zoot, “Your corrupt genocidal neoliberal party is heading for the dustbin of history. “Northern Ireland” won’t be far behind”. I hope you don’t assume I am a member or support the current Labour party, the present Labour leadership is as you say a Genocidal, Apartheid loving bunch of creeps, I would never vote for them with this leadership. However all parties who claim to govern the state have a democratic duty to offer themselves to every part of the state they govern.
As for your other point, Northern Ireland may as you say end up in the dustbin of history, but you cannot deny them the right to secede via a referendum or would you prefer the IRA take up arms again for another 30 years bloodletting?
Even worse is to treat nearly 2 million NI citizens as second class citizens, forever denied the rights as full citizens and unable to vote for the parties that govern them, that’s not democracy.
The logic of zoot’s argument is that Scotland and Wales are destined for the dustbin of history. Their right to secede has been conceded by the Westminster government pending a successful 50% plus 1 vote in a referendum. In the meantime again following your argument, no governing or party aspiring to govern Scotland or Wales should field candidates in any of those places, I am sure the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists might prefer no opposition and a free run. I suspect they might balk at seeking to ban their own electorate from voting for the parties that actually govern them.
If Scotland and Wales vote to end English rule they will become independent nations. Proud new chapters in their long histories will begin – defined by dignity and self-respect.
“Northern Ireland” will never be an independent nation. It will simply be subsumed back into the rest of Ireland. Gone.
The great question hanging over the 6 counties today is not whether people there can cast a vote for the Savile-Epstein party (possibly the most universally reviled governing party in western European history.)
It is how close the antidemocratic, ahistorical creation of “Northern Ireland” is to the dustbin.
That depends on whether Westminster honours its GFA promise of a border poll or decides again to brazenly abandon democracy, as it did with the creation “Northern Ireland” (in arrogant defiance of Sinn Fein’s landslide victory in the last all-Ireland election in 1918.)
Zoot, Northern Ireland has never wanted to be an independent nation, the Good Friday agreement agreed by both the Irish Republic and the UK government including Sinn Fein agreed that Northern Ireland does have the right, enshrined in the UN charter, to self determination i.e. to secede via a referendum. Until that happens you nor I have the right to insist they remain second class citizens, that’s elemental democracy. The Sec state for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn does not think a border poll is necessary at this time, he thinks, rightly or wrongly the support for a poll is just not there. I personally would support such a poll.
The dangers of opinion polls is a major constitutional change should not be enacted on the fleeting opinions of transient governments, for instance if Jeremy Corbyn had remained Labour Leader, opinions in all the constituent parts of the UK could well be different, better than the 12% support Starmer has now for sure, especially on foreign policy.
Opinion polls, election results and many other variables, and over a reasonable time frame make up the governments policy, It is so important a major constitutional change such as breaking up the state is not treated lightly or with undue haste, As an aside, I think Starmer and Lammy should be indicted by the ICC for being accessories to war crimes, both have denied Genocide and have enabled Israel to commit grave war crimes and crimes against Humanity.
They’re both brazening it out, pretending nothing has happened. Or being allowed to, more precisely. I read this morning that Lammy is rebuking colleagues who address him by name, insisting that he be addressed as ‘Deputy Prime Minister’.
Thanks for your replies Harry. The Labour Party can organise itself how it wishes. If that goes against its constitution then that’s a matter for Labour lawyers – of which there are plenty. Labour supporters in Northern Ireland can vote for its sister party the SDLP, which generally votes with Labour in Westminster. The trade unions may pay a lot of Labour’s bills, but they had no say in its last two leadership elections. Once again, people do not have the right to vote for the party they wish if that party is not standing in their constituency. I didn’t vote at the last election because there were no parties standing in my constituency whose policies I broadly agreed with. That doesn’t mean I’ve been disenfranchised.
Re: ‘Palestinians living in Israel have more rights than NI citizens’
Really? The right to vote for a party that hates you? Is there a Northern Israel Assembly, dominated by Palestinians, which has considerable devolved powers (when it hasn’t got itself suspended)?
P.S. Labour have won several seats in Cornwall over the years, and currently 4 out of 6 constituencies there have a Labour MP.
Bit of a strange post. I distinctly remember the head of the Bank of England saying that rUK would take over responsibility for the entire UK debt in the event of a Yes vote (obviously just to reassure the market, but nonetheless it’s clear that it’s not controversial). As for the trident question – where they berth the submarines (Faslane) isn’t that big a problem. It’s replacing Coulport (the weapons dump) that would take many years.
Scotland needs a colored revolution. Imagine that George Soros and USAID will pour money and all true Scottsmen will march onto London in full gear, kilts and bagpipes, with posters like “Enough of feeding London!”; EU leaders will try to negotiate the deal; POTUS will make a statement in support of democracy; Putin will make a statement in support of peaceful outcome; then PM will resign and escape to Canada in a private jet while the King simply hides under his bed. The next day Scotland will declare independence and all UN members except Spain and China will recognize it at once.
(Sorry, Craig, just fantasising)
We are Lucky to have you Craig… And Proud to have
met you a few times.. Stay well
I’ve long been bemused by France’s inclusion in the ” defeat of the Nazis ” post-hoc narrative. I mean- no offence n’all, but they folded within weeks – or was it days? – of the Germans crossing the French border and contributed not much more than * Vichy * water and * Existential * resistance – slightly tongue-in-cheek with that remark, I’m sure there were ” brave Resistance fighters “, though there may be some, let’s say…..ambiguiety regarding the number of such – as opposed to the number of those who claimed to be such. Yet they’ve been strutting about beating their collective chests on the world stage since 1945 as if Austerlitz occurred in 1940, rather than capitulation to the Nazis in that year.
Granted, it was probably Britain’s island status that prevented it being similarly overrun, but at least * we * did attempt to take the fight to the ( designated ) enemy; albeit with disastrous consequences, ie BEF/Dunkirk.
Kinda revolting how Germany is now being vaunted as a great ally, is being encouraged ( actually, compelled, by the U.S ) to remilitarise, as well as voluntarily ( insanely ) proposing some form of conscription.
At the same time Russia, that actually contributed much more – in terms of blood and sacrifice – to the defeat of Nazism ( was it ever TRULY defeated, though? ) has been prodded, provoked, insulted, anathametized and sanctioned to extreme degree by the pampered, toothless poodles belonging to the US Neocon headcases: at the behest of and to the further enrichment of the latter.
Some scam, man, innit, ie fuck-up Europe’s formerly mutually beneficial Russian energy supplies, compelling the dafties in Europe to then buy much more expense US energy.
Provoke a ( Proxy ) war in Ukraine,*waste* $Billions on it ( at the same time further enriching the U.S M.I.C ), pull-out when expedient, then coerce the same dafties in Europe into buying £ESquillions of US produced weapons to ( attempt to ) continue a war that they ( the US ) started, and which they are happy to see continue in the unhinged desire to damage Russia – as long as no Americans are killed in the process.
The whole shitshow is – almost – unbelievable in it’s cynicism and stupidity.
Vive l’empire des imbéciles!!
This comment was ( meant to be ) in response to Bayard’s @ 18.08 . I must have inadvertently dropped below his comment. If it seems a bit of a non-sequitur where it appeared, that’s why
The Free French Army numbered 500,000 by D-Day of whom 58,000 were killed.
https://www.historyonthenet.com/free-french-forces-during-world-war-two
Fair enough: as I said it was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment. 58,000 is a considerable number of casualties, but minuscule in relation to the approx 25,000,000 Russians who lost their lives.
Still, Russian lives are worth less than * Western * ones, right?
That 25 million figure is for the whole Soviet Union, not just Russia. Eight million were Ukrainians including 1.6 million of the 7 million who served with the Red Army.
There are lies, damned lies and…..numbers? Let us stick to military number at least. The Soviet Union may have lost 20 to 25 million people, but that was military losses and civilian losses combined. The military losses (by which I mean deaths in combat and in German pow camps) were nowhere near 20-25 million. Similarly, I think the figure someone gave of 500,000 for the Free French forces at D Day must include the FFI (the forces françaises de l’intérieur, ie militarized civilians and not only regular army). And many of the regulars were serving outside France at the time (Lebanon/Syria, North Africa, French colonies…).
By the way, a lot of De Gaulle’s time in the 270 pages in which Churchill did not mention him was spent on the question of command of the FFI and how to integrate them with the French regulars).
Mostly colonial troops, though.
Indeed so.
This reminds me of the composition of the French forces in Indo China during the war there. Leaving aside the officer corps and most of the NCOs, the great majority of the grunts were anything but ethnic French.
How many Free French were French and not Africans?
Perfectly sets out why Scottish independence will never happen?
It’s the same reasoning I apply to the commonwealth, the only way we can get rid of this outdated, historically cruel and embarrasingly out of touch institution is to disolve the union. My money is on NI taking the plunge first, they only have to swap countries rather than secede to form a new (old) one. They would have a better standard of living if they joined the republic which is all most people care about really.
An interesting fact about royal prerogatives I came across recently is the monarch still has the authority to secede UK territory, maybe the royals could redeem themselves and mandate scottish independence after a successful referendum to vote leave.
The Council on Foreign Relations disagrees (well they would, wouldn’t they).
This is from 2014 and the link attempts to rebutt Craig’s future argument. Clearly the the UK seat succession issue has been on everyone’s radar for a long time. However even if the CFR’s position that Russia, being a weak and declining power, would not go along with it was true ten years ago it certainly is not today.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/scot-free-uks-security-council-seat-safe-no-matter-what
Can’t see the English government ever giving permission for Scotland to go independent. Farage would send the army to put down protests, so would Starmer or anyone replacing him. Scotland would have to fight like Ireland which is very unlikely.
You need to re-examine about five of your premises. Or start by asking how the army regiments based in Scotland would feel about other units being “sent” to Scotland to quell protests. Because I can tell you that is certainly among the questions senior army officers would ask in the scenario you refer to.
So much crap is talked about all this. What should be put first and foremost in Scotland is improving living conditions in Scotland. Those of us who support this aim should, in principle, be able to recognise each other and acknowledge common ground. And that’s just the kind of thing that puts the shits up the bosses.
If there were another independence referendum with loud voices in favour of “two good options”, something good could come out of it. Neither independence nor the continuation of the union is good in itself.
And yet one continues to hear xenophobic rabble-rousing rubbish about “the English government”, occupation, and being just like Kenya in the 1950s (a country in which the murderous colonials weren’t only English).
Keir Starmer is a “world leader” according to ……… the Daily Telegraph:
https://archive.is/PYX8N
Well okay, they play games with the attribution, but still, whoever says it, it’s ridiculous:
“A senior White House official told The Telegraph that the phone call between the two world leaders would be amicable, saying: “It’s always going to be friendly. That’s just how the two of them are.” “
The Telegraph continued …
“It is understood that Sir Keir will use the call to insist that the BBC is a strong British institution and has a crucial role to play in an age of disinformation.”
Right, The BBC spreads disinformation more subtly than anyone else.
The doctored Trump video was an exception, a bit too crude.
The extent to which the BBC-Trump affair is proceeding as planned by those who initiated it is unclear. If it was deliberately initiated (which is likely), it’s also unclear what the goal was (or is). I am not a consumer of BBC services (except for “In Our Time”), but those who do imbibe may notice a change in the way USA government doings are reported.
Could Musk who is not an Afrikaner (but then again Hitler was Austrian) nonetheless still have it in for Britain? It wouldn’t be surprising. Musk (and also Thiel for that matter, but especially Musk) has an awful lot of money to spend on influence. (Or his creditors do.)
On the specific, a TACO is probable. Or an “out of court settlement” amounting to the BBC giving Trump a bottle of the king’s piss with a special crest on it and Trump saying he’s won. They can tell him it’s a holy cure for scrofula of the mind, only bestowed by the king on rare individuals the king feels to be of exceptional greatness, like….well no-one other than Trump.
This is unless Trump goes full Forrestal. If the Epstein email is genuine, Epstein seems to have thought a full-on freakout was realistically possible. Well it hasn’t happened yet, but Epstein was surely an extremely good assessor of people, so his opinion (if it was his opinion) is worth listening to. We shall see. In any case, not everyone who keeps running up to the edge falls off it. Trump is insane but he has shown skill at keeping a grip on himself.
Meanwhile, watch the Caribbean.
I’d be interested in finding if this scandal was orchestrated by CommercialPrivateEquitybbc as yet another pretext to pretend that they lies they spew is due to fear of censure, rather than it being policy.
Trump is saying he’ll sue the BBC next week. What a pathetic threat. Are his lawyers on vacation? My other car’s a Lamborghini.
Someone may be about to scupper a Gaza “deal”. That will be the 372nd time a Palestine-related deal has been scuppered, if so.
Tony Blair seems to be keeping remarkably quiet about the BBC-Trump affair. How strange he’s keeping so quiet, given his wealth of experience, his success at competing with McKinsey since leaving office, and his worldwide network of connections, and of course the enormous prestige the
corrupt war criminalgreat man holds on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps he won’t get a chance to fail in Gaza like he failed in Jerusalem.Wild speculation, but I wonder whether Blair met Epstein more than the one time that’s admitted.
I agree that Blair’s silence is astounding. But there again, he’s always known what to be vocal about and what not.
Perhaps he’s on holiday somewhere? Tuscany? Hong Kong? Eilat?
Trump has earmarked Blair for a prominent role in an interim government/junta (whatever you want to call it) to rule Gaza. He’s hardly likely to want to jeapordise that by opening his big mouth.
Especially since the UK is practically a US vassal state, and votes in line with the US on most issues.
Ecuador has just voted, by about 2 to 1 with a near-90% turnout, to ban foreign military bases from its territory. If UK citizens got to vote on a similar issue – if the UK were a democracy, in other words – we’d vote the same way.
I wouldn’t be so sure ! The MSM leads the public by the nose, and they follow.
The five permanent members of the UN security council were the great powers who won the second world war. And in 1945 when the UN was founded, the British Empire still ruled the waves (half of Africa, India….etc), and the Republic of China was still ruling from Beijing under Chiang Kai-Shek. But then the British and French Empires rapidly disintegrated, and Chairman Mao took over in China (PRC). But the 5 permanent members remained, with the Republic of China (ie now Taiwan). Taiwan was eventually kicked out of the UN in 1971, and PRC admitted following a 2/3 vote in the general assembly. So Taiwan had veto powers between 1949 and 1971, although they only used it once when in 1955, it blocked the admission of the Mongolian People’s Republic to the United Nations on the grounds that all of Mongolia was part of China.
In his last tweet on the service now known as X Craig draws attention to Simon Tisdall’s column in yesterday’s Observer, in which he lambasts the policy of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean which is a hallmark of the Trump administration’s foreign policy and a microcosm of it’s approach to the rule of law more generally. Tisdall brands the US as a “rogue state.” I have to join with Craig in wondering why it has taken Tisdall this long to notice the nature of the US, for he must have been sleeping for the last 75 years if he has failed to notice the truth about how the US acts in the world, the only difference in recent events is that the Trump administration uses no pious humbug in defending its actions, but apart from that it is simply business as usual
And on the domestic front, in a similar vein, look at today’s Guardian where two leading columnists virtually say it is ‘game over’ for Starmer – columnists who 18 months ago were saying the opposite about Starmer and/or the same about Sunak (and previously also about Corbyn). So what explains this ‘reverse ferret’ – are these leading journalists fools, liars or has the ‘piper’s’ narrative changed, and they now want yet another Prime Minister? Absurdly, the Guardian’s moderators were even deleting support for Starmer – fearing anyone contradicting their echo chamber, I guess.
Anyone interested in the release of the Epstein files must watch this unhinged MAGA woman going off the rails, this Don Lemon video five minutes in is hilarious, she also wants to know who Bubba is, thinking it could be Melania, when in fact it is Ghislaine Maxwell’s horse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbc8WX_e0-k