Cllr Alan Dean

Liberal Democrat Councillor for Stansted North on Uttlesford District Council and former Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group Learn more

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50 Hours in Scotland

by Alan Dean on 23 September, 2014

Last week I spent Monday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon in Scotland. To be precise, I went to Helensburgh to help local people achieve a No vote for Scottish Independence. The local people were impressive. Never before have I attended a campaign organisation meeting attended by 80 people from most political persuasions and none. I reckon over half the people present had never before been involved in a political campaign. But out they had come to stop Alex Salmond and his Yes to Independence coalition from breaking Scotland away from the United Kingdom.

People were afraid. Some felt physically sick. Emotions were very strong.  I spoke to people who had been having sleepless night at the thought of Salmond’s ill thought through agenda for what he describes as freedom from the Westminster machine.

Helensburgh was strongly against the Yes campaign and emotionally attached the No, Better Together. A major local issue was the risk of losing many services jobs from the nearby Faslane nuclear submarine base.

It was so easy to give away N0, Better Together stickers in the town centre. I knocked on doors. Tried to reassure people that No could win. I even predicted a No vote of 57% or better. It turned out at 57.3%. No time to place a bet! Argyll and Bute, which includes Helensburgh, came out with a vote near that national average of 55/45% for No, but Helensburgh was closer to 2:1 against independence.

The disappointing outcome has been the way the Conservatives have reacted, initially claiming they wanted to sort out English devolution and limits on the voting rights of Scottish MPs at Westminster in a matter of a few months. The Tories don’t really believe in devolution. They’ve been centralising at every opportunity since the 1980s. It’s only three years ago that they scrapped regional assemblies that provided some strategic oversight in key areas such as transport, energy and housing.

Until the Tories demonstrate that they can trust anyone but Tories to run this country, and stop trying to gerrymander the constitution to suit their own narrow party interests, the UK will continue as a dysfunctional state. It’s not just Scotland that is fed up with self-serving politicians at Westminster who think they have the right to hand down their solutions without listening to the people.

 

   1 Comment

One Response

  1. Geoff says:

    In complete agreement. Indeed, we need some form of REGIONAL government in England. What do the South-West, the West Midlands, London and Tyneside have in common. We continue to suffer from London-centred government – this is where it all happens and the rest of the country is secondary.

    At the same time we must recognise that it’s the Conference Season when politicians will be in headline -grabbing mode and won’t miss the chance of a sound-bite making rash, ill-thought out promises and policy statements that, in the cold light of dawn, are hardly realisable. Yes, we want to keep the private sector from wresting the NHS from us, but we need to give attention to education, transport, elderly care and employment opportunities too. How do we set the priorities, and whose priorities? Everyone will have a differently ordered list. What we need to establish in the first instance is a system of taxation that is not full of loopholes that the rich can continually exploit to the detriment of those who have little more to give and are called ‘scroungers’ by the rest.

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