Watching the circus of barking dogs masquerading as a UK government reminds me of an exchange I had with a lovely young English woman not long after the Scottish independence referendum.
We were chatting in a bar in Brussels just weeks after the ballot – oh, the ironic foreshadowing – and she asked how I’d voted.
When I said it was “yes” she looked hurt and perplexed and asked, plaintively: “Why?”
“If you had the chance to scrape Westminster out of your life, would you take it?” I replied. Which was greeted with vigorous head-nodding and a resounding: “Oh, yes.”
That is, of course, a fairly simplistic summation, but one that resonates more and more every single day now. I’m pretty sure most people would want to see the back of the monstrous affront to decency, dignity and democracy that is Number 10 and its grisly gang.
None more so, I imagine, than our very own Douglas Ross, the “lightweight” and insignificant member of the Tory party who leads the Scottish Conservatives.
‘He’s a plonker, but he’s our plonker’
A funny thing happened when Jacob Rees-Mogg decided to turn on his own colleague like a crazed weasel. He almost earned the Scots Tory leader a degree of sympathy north of the border.
Certainly in the online world there was a sense of: “Oi, posh boy… back off.”
My favourite tweet was: “We know Douglas Ross is a plonker, but he’s our plonker and we’re perfectly capable of insulting him for ourselves – in fact, we’re better at it.”
Except they didn’t say plonker.
I will give Mr Ross credit for this… he had enough backbone to call for Boris Johnson to quit. That’s more than the supine poodles around Number 10, as they try to gaslight a nation into believing the prime minister of the United Kingdom doesn’t have wit to know if he’s at a party or not.
But, then, Mr Ross knows he cannot go into the Scottish local elections this May showing even a smidgeon of support for a man now deemed repellent, other than by the barmy brigade who think Brexit is a good thing.
Personally, I think he should listen to suggestions that the Scottish Conservatives cut their ties with the UK party and stand on their own two feet north of the border.
Who knows? That might even spark debate within Tory ranks that this backward blinkered unionist thing needs another look.
Conservatives could fare very well indeed in a new Scotland
If you truly believe in democracy, you cannot accept a nation of five million people is governed from Westminster by a party it has rejected time and time again.
Rees-Mogg’s derisory and dismissive comments weren’t just aimed at Douglas Ross. They were aimed at us Scots, every single one of us
It is wrong that a country has policies imposed on it that are anathema to the majority of the population, from Brexit to austerity to the dismantling of the NHS that is waiting in the wings.
Plus, Rees-Mogg’s derisory and dismissive comments weren’t just aimed at Douglas Ross. They were aimed at us Scots, every single one of us. Never forget that.
So, once we all come to our collective senses and give the right answer at the next referendum, our nation will need to come together to build that brighter future, aided by all sides of the political spectrum.
Freed from the yoke of Westminster, the Conservatives could fare very well indeed in our new nation – as will we all.
Scott Begbie is entertainment editor for The Press & Journal and Evening Express
