Toby on Tuesday 

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”

 

Last week I wrote about UKIP’s one MP in the House of Commons, Douglas Carswell. Today, I want to write about our one Scottish Member of the European Parliament, David Coburn. But first, let me tell you what he is up against – the SNP and its mercurial leader, Nicola Sturgeon. To illustrate this, last week she was in the United States where she was a guest of the Daily Show’s arch-interrogator, Jon Stewart. Their conversation went like this:

Jon Stewart: “The SNP won 56 out of 59 seats…it was unprecedented.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “ I’ve ordered an enquiry into how come we didn’t win those other three. It reports directly to me.”
Jon Stewart: “Those other three? You think you’re Saddam Hussein? You want 99%? 56 out of 59 is pretty good.”
Nicola Sturgeon: “Well you know, I always think you should aim for more.”

Last week too, the EU Referendum Bill passed its next stage in the House of Commons. The House was virtually united on this, with even the Labour Party now supporting the Bill, and the voting was 544 for the measure with only 53 against. And you can guess where those 53 votes came from – of course, from the SNP. They never stop demanding another Referendum on Scottish independence, but when the whole of the British people ask for a vote for the first time in 40 years on our EU relationship, democracy for them stops there. Together, these two episodes sum up the SNP’s unique combination of thuggish totalitarianism and brazen hypocrisy.

UKIP’s response also has two strands, both typically sensible. The first is financial, as set out in our General Election manifesto. This recommends the end of the Barnet Formula for Scotland, where public spending runs at some £1,400 head more annually than the UK average, and calls for “substantial reductions in funding for Scotland, but, as the Scottish government is to have significant further powers over taxation, borrowing and spending in due course, it can make its own decision as to whether to raise taxes or cut public spending to balance the books.” The second response, which our Scots MEP David Coburn deploys with great skill, is humour. He has already riled his opponents with his somewhat politically incorrect jibes, comparing Nicola Sturgeon to Lady Macbeth and Green Party leader Natalie Bennett to Dame Edna Everage. And he says that Nicola Sturgeon’s “national socialism” is “killing Scotland” – “The SNP are worthy of the Stasi in East Germany” he says, “I find it terrifying.”

But there is serious purpose behind the humour and when the other day the SNP argued for a “double lock” on the EU Referendum, with a “No” vote” required in Scotland as well as in the whole of the UK before a “Brexit”, he declared, “We came into the EU as one United Kingdom, we came into the EU together, so we will leave together. The Scottish people clearly decided that they wanted to remain as part of the United Kingdom so any talk of the double lock mechanism makes a mockery of the Scottish people’s decision. We respected the result, now they must too.”

Of course, the one good thing that the SNP have done is to have swept away Labour’s rotten boroughs across Scotland. This is exactly what UKIP must do across the North of England, but all that’s for another day!

Until next Tuesday!
Toby