You don't have to have an opinion either way on the Tory government positions on Brexit and Venezuela in order to recognise what an outrageous pack of hypocrites they're being.
The mainstay of the Tory government argument against another EU referendum once the terms of Brexit have become clear is that people can't just vote again and again until they get the result that they want.
Even though proponents of another EU referendum can point to the compelling evidence that Leave campaigners lied, cheated, and violated the referendum spending laws, the Tory government remains steadfastly opposed to another referendum.
However when it comes to Venezuela and the right-wing coup plotter Juan Guaidó simply appointing himself as President (despite not even having contested the 2018 Presidential election that delivered a landslide victory for the elected President Nicolás Maduro) the Tories have adopted the exact opposite position.
This time they point to accusations that the vote was manipulated by corruption and cheating in order to demand a redo of the election.
They're demanding that the vote be held again and again until they get the result that they want!
When it comes to their own favoured policy of creating a Brexit economic meltdown they argue that redoing ballots simply because people don't like the result is absolutely unthinkable, but when it comes to elections in foreign states that they shouldn't even be interfering in, they suddenly come out arguing strongly in favour of redoing the ballot until they get the result that they want.
The remarkable thing here is that you don't have to be in favour of a second referendum, or any kind of Maduro supporter to spot this glaring hypocrisy.
All you have to be capable of is spotting that the Tories use one argument to support their own position when it suits them, but then use precisely the opposite argument to support their policies in different circumstances.
The use of mutually contradictory arguments to support their policies is indicative of the fact that both of the policies were actually decided by other factors, and that the arguments they're utilising to defend their policies have simply been added as post hoc justifications.
When it comes to Tory government strategy their policies are decided first and then the arguments they plan to deply in defence of the policies are added in later regardless of whether they're consistent with the arguments they've used to defend their other policies.
Any rational government would consider the arguments first using a logically consistent assessment framework, and then decide their policies accordingly.
But this is clearly not what the Tories are doing.
The fact that the Tories decide their policies first before cobbling their arguments together later tells us two things very clearly.
The first is that their real reasons for pursuing the policies remain hidden (we can hazard guesses that disaster capitalist motivations lie behind their strategy of deliberately triggering a Brexit economic meltdown, and that corporate seizure of the vast Venezuelan oil fields lies behind their Venezuela policy).
The second is that the Tories are treating the British public like a pack of absolute idiots who can't even spot how weak and illogical Tory party arguments are even when they're mutually contradictory.
So even if you somehow agree with the Tory strategies on Brexit and Venezuela, it's difficult to deny that they're hiding their real motivations for these policies, and impossible to deny their absolute contempt towards the general public when they expect us not to even notice that their arguments are mutually contradictory.
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Remember back in January 2016 when Jeremy Corbyn suggested that Britain and Argentina should enter negotiations to co-operate over the Falkland Islands so that both countries can share in the prosperity, rather than restricting economic opportunities through animosity, trade sanctions, antagonism and militaristic posturing?
Remember how the Tories and the right-wing press spouted lie after lie after lie about what Corbyn was suggesting and even tried to claim that Corbyn's policy was to give away the Falkland Islands?
Remember how the Tory defence minister Michael Fallon even claimed that Jeremy Corbyn is "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina"?
Remember how this hyperbolic nonsense was spouted ad nauseum by the mainstream press and how David Cameron even got in on the act by including it in one of his most incredibly evasive* and downright dishonest "answers" ever at PMQs (see image) in which he lied five times in the space of thirty seconds?
Fast-forward just eight months and Theresa May has sent Alan Duncan over to Argentina in order to come up with a deal to ... erm ... work out a deal for Argentina and the UK to co-operate over the Falkland Islands.
Where are the shrieking headlines about the Tories surrendering to the Argies? Where are the bile dripping editorials? Why isn't Michael Fallon attacking his Tory colleague as "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina" for doing exactly what Jeremy Corbyn suggested just eight months previously?
The Falkland Islanders are apparently delighted that the Tories have pinched Jeremy Corbyn's idea, and are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an end to the decades of crippling trade sanctions on hydrocarbons, fishing, shipping and tourism.
Not only did the Tories (and their attack-dogs in the mainstream press) savage Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting an entirely sensible policy of economic co-operation between the UK and Argentina rather than militaristic antagonism, the Tories have actually gone and nicked it off him within the space of a year!
The lack of bile-dripping articles in the mainstream press about how Theresa May is "a bigger threat to the Falklands than the Argentinians" for doing precisely what Jeremy Corbyn was slaughtered for proposing just eight months ago is indicative of the extraordinary levels of pro-Tory bias of the UK mainstream press.
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In just a few days the people of Scotland will go to the polls to decide the future of their nation.
I'm not Scottish, I'm a Yorkshireman, and I don't live in Scotland. However I have written extensively about the Scottish independence referendum because I passionately believe that Scotland could be a better country if they had a smaller, more democratic and more accountable government, instead of being ruled over by the corrupt, self-serving and unaccountable Westminster establishment down in London.
A message of hope
The Yes campaign has attracted support from all kinds of people, from all different walks of life, and all different political persuasions. In my view the one thing that unifies them all is the idea that an independent Scotland has the potential to do things better. It's the hope of a working to create a better Scotland.
This hope for a better Scotland isn't just an idle optimistic fantasy because there is already plenty of evidence that a better Scotland can be achieved through the localisation of political power. Thanks to the existence of the Scottish parliament, access to university education in Scotland hasn't been commodified and financialised as it has been in the rest of the UK. Scottish students from poor and ordinary backgrounds aren't forced to assume huge debts, which are then repayed through a 9% aspiration tax on their disposable income, that for millions will not be payed off, even through an entire lifetime of work.
Thanks to the devolution of power over the NHS and the education system, Scotland has remained immune to the waves of Tory ideological privatisations that have seen £1.5 billion in NHS contracts handed out to Tory party donors, and over 3,000 English schools simply given away to unaccountable private sector interests.
The success of an independent Scotland is by no means guaranteed. If the Yes campaign wins the vote, the people of Scotland can't just sit back and relax at a job well done, It is absolutely vital that the amazing spirit of political engagement that has been awoken by the independence debate is kept alive.
In order for an independent Scotland to "do things better" the ordinary people of Scotland will have to engage in the process of constitutional renewal, work hard to hold their politicians to account, and work together to make sure that the issues that are important to them stay at the forefront of the political agenda.
A Yes vote isn't the objective in itself. The real objective is for the people of Scotland to give themselves the opportunity to hold the Scottish government to account, in a way that has been simply impossible to do through the corrupt and antiquated political system that has allowed the Westminster establishment to ruthlessly enforce their agenda of austerity and privatisation against the will of the vast majority of the population.
A message of fear
The No campaign has promoted a very different message, a message based around the basic animal instinct of fear. The Westminster establishment and their allies in the mainstream media have bombarded the public with one scare story after another.
The No campaign has constantly fearmongered about how Scottish oil is going to dry up, even though the experts are divided on how many billions of barrels remain untapped, and how many hundreds of billions of pounds that will be worth to the Scottish economy. The only consensus between the experts in the oil industry over how much oil remains seems to be that the figures publicised by George Osborne's Office for Budget Responsibility are extraordinary under-estimates.
The No campaign has fearmongered about Scotland not being able to defend itself. Who could forget the former Secretary of State for Scotland George Robertson (who now occupies a seat in the anti-democratic House of Lords) demeaning his own country by referring to it as "a minor entity in the north of Britain" as he tried to fearmonger about the threat of Islamist extremism to an independent Scotland. In my view the threat of Islamist extremism in Scotland would be severely diminished if future governments of the nation avoid participation in the invasion and occupation of predominantly Muslim countries.
The No campaign has fearmongered about the major banks relocating their headquarters to London, presumably because they assume that the Scottish public are such a bunch of feckless halfwits that they'll have completely forgotten that it was the banks that created the economic crisis in the first place with their massive fraud schemes and their incredible binge of reckless unregulated gambling. Even if some of the banks do relocate their headquarters, they can't just take all of their jobs and tax revenues with them. Taxes on financial services provided in an independent Scotland would go to the Scottish government*, no matter where the official headquarters of the bank that provides them.
RBS, which is 82% owned by the taxpayer, threatening to leave an independent Scotland in order to try to influence the outcome of the referendum just goes to show the desperation of the Westminster establishment. What on earth is a publicly owned bank doing trying to interfere with a public vote?
Even though the No campaign has been losing ground in the debate as the referendum has drawn nearer, they have stubbornly refused to change tack. And in the final week, ludicrous stories were circulated about how the supermarkets would impose massive price rises in an independent Scotland. Fortunately there was someone with the good sense to actually write to the supermarkets and ask them. The response from all four of the supermarket giants was the same; that they have no plans at all to raise prices in an independent Scotland.
It beggars belief that the leaders of Better Together can't see that their fearmongering has been driving undecided people into the arms of the Yes camp, and with just days to go before the vote they still haven't tried to present anything resembling a coherent positive case for continued union. All they seem capable of doing is pressurising their corporate buddies into talking down the prospects for an Independent Scotland in order to constantly snipe that "Scotland just won't be able to hack it on it's own". If I was a Unionist (which I'm not) I'd be utterly dismayed with the risible Better Together campaign and the hopelessly complacent debating strategies they've used.
Perhaps the biggest fearmongering campaign of all is the insistence by the Westminster establishment that Scotland will not be able to use the Pound, which is of course, as Alistair Darling himself admits, an impossible threat. Scotland can use the Pound because it is a freely tradeable currency. The only thing that the Westminster establishment can do in reality is to rule out a formal currency union between Scotland and the remainder of the UK.
In my view a long-term currency union wouldn't be in the interests of an independent Scotland anyway (look at the Argentina-US pegged currency union and the Eurozone), however a temporary fixed-term currency union in order to ensure economic stability during the process of constitutional separation would have been by far the most pragmatic option from an economic perspective, because economic uncertainty leads to economic instability (risk aversion, market panics and the development of economic crises).
Such a short term currency agreement would have mitigated some of the worst effects of economic uncertainly on either side of the border during the constitutional separation, however such a pragmatic stance was never going to be adopted by the Westminster establishment because uncertainty over the future currency of Scotland is one of the pillars of their anti-independence propaganda campaign. The fact that the Westminster establishment would put a political propaganda narrative above the stability of the economies on either side of the border just goes to show how terribly unfit to rule they really are.
Conclusion
I know it's not possible to imagine that all pro-Independence people are hopeful optimists, nor to tar all anti-independence people as cynical and fearful pessimists, because that would be the kind of naive absolutist thinking I so often argue against in my work. However, in my view it is fair to describe that the propaganda strategies employed by the two campaigns as a battle between hope and fear.
The spirit of hope must be stronger than fear, because what optimism can we have for the future if, even after the amazing political reawakening of Scotland, the majority still choose fear over hope? What optimism can we possibly have for the future if the positive, complex and very human spirit of hope can be defeated by the negative, simplistic and animalistic sensation of fear?
I'm hoping that later this week I'll be able to celebrate the rebirth of the Scottish nation, and drink heartily to the future of Scotland, rather than having to lament that the people of Scotland passed up the greatest opportunity of their lifetimes to effect real political change because they allowed the animal instinct of fear to overpower the human spirit of hope.
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* As long as the Scottish people are prepared to pressurise the Scottish government into clamping down on tax-dodging.
I know that it isn't possible to extrapolate from a single interview the overall level of institutional bias in a broadcaster, so I'm making it clear that's not what I'm trying to do in this article. The fact is that studies have already shown strong levels of bias against Scottish independence in BBC coverage, so this article isn't intended to prove that the BBC is biased, it is to analyse how this bias presents itself.
The interview in question, from the Sunday Politics Show, was conducted by Andrew Neil (a former Tory party activist and editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times) and featured the Scottish socialist politician and Yes campaigner Tommy Sheridan. I'm no big fan of either man, but I see that they are proficient at what they do. Tommy Sheridan is undoubtedly a talented public speaker, and Andrew Neil does a more-or-less professional job of asking the questions he's supposed to.
Even though I agree with Tommy Sheridan on Scottish independence, I'm always happy to see him asked questions about the subject, because he's great at articulating his vision for a better Scotland. I don't necessarily agree with him on all of it, and I find he occasionally fails to answer the question properly (find me a politician who doesn't when recording an interview), but he speaks with passion and backs up a lot of what he says with evidence.
So the problem with the interview wasn't the fact that Tommy Sheridan was asked questions, but the way the questions were asked.
The interview started out with the classic Unionist tactic of trying to conflate Scottish independence with the SNP. Sheridan eloquently rebuffed this stance, pointing out that the SNP are actually the elected government of Scotland, and will remain so until 2016 - no matter which way the referendum goes. Then he went on to explain that the Yes campaign is about the whole future of Scotland, not just the success or failure of the SNP.
One of the tactics used by Andrew Neil was to use a Trotsky quote to try to undermine the case for independence, but it came across more as a tactic to smear Tommy Sheridan as a "Trotskyite" than anything resembling a good faith attempt to learn anything about the socialist case for independence.
Neil refers to what he calls "Trotsky's famous dictum" that "socialism in one country is impossible" but the question betrays Neil's lack of even a rudimentary understanding of what Trotsky's work on perpetual revolution actually meant. There's no way that Trotsky ever intended the phrase to mean that socialism should never be attempted! That would be ludicrous. Socialism develops at different degrees in different countries, that's what Trotsky's work was about! There's a huge difference between taking the statement to mean that socialism cannot exist in a vacuum (that international solidarity is fundamental to the success of socialism) and trying to spin it to mean that socialism should never even be tried at the national or regional level.
The question was hopeless in it's own right because it relied on a misappropriated out of context quote, but from the BBC perspective it served the purpose of associating the Scottish independence movement with an extreme left word ("Trotskyite") that very few people understand the meaning of. A word which is far more often used as a crude insult-word to throw at "leftie types", than one with an actual meaning to be deployed in serious political debate over the merits of different branches of communist ideology.
Tommy Sheridan raised the subject of BBC bias several times during the interview, although he was too much of a gentleman to make it a personal accusation against his interviewer. One of his complaints was that a report predicting a Scottish oil and gas boom had had no BBC coverage at all since its publication.
The lack of coverage of this positive oil report contrasts sharply with the blanket uncritical publicity afforded to the scaremongering comments of Ian Wood the week before. Wood's comments were framed by the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media to make it seem that the SNP were overestimating the remaining Scottish oil reserves by some 50%, even though Wood's comments also implied that the projections from George Osborne's Office for Budget Responsibility had massively underestimated remaining Scottish oil and gas (by a much bigger margin than the SNP were supposedly over-estimating).
In their desperation to bash the SNP and fearmonger about the Scottish oil industry, the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media failed to even note the massive discrepancy between Ian Wood's projections and those of the Westminster establishment.
It was soon pointed out that the widely cited Ian Wood estimates of 15-16.5 billion barrels contradicted the findings of his own Woods Review on Maximising Oil Production report from February 2014, which cited the 24 billion figure used by the SNP numerous times. One can wonder why a man would want to abandon the conclusions of his own report, just six months after it was published, in order to feed different, much more specific (but apparently unsubstantiated) figures to the anti-independence campaign. What one doesn't need to wonder at, is the reason why the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media reported Wood's comments so uncritically, without subjecting his contradictory claims to any kind of scrutiny. They didn't scrutinise his claims because it was convenient to their narrative that "Scottish independence is a huge risk".
The contrast between the BBC reaction to the two different oil stories is telling. They reported one without even conducting the most rudimentary scrutiny, and they failed to even mention the other. One fit the news narrative perfectly so it was afforded uncritical blanket coverage, the other was completely ignored because it contradicted the news narrative.
The worst question of all in the interview was one of the last, and it was a complete stinker. The question relied on the assertion that "one of your 'comrades' on the yes side is Brian Souter ... another of your 'allies' would seem to be Rupert Murdoch".
If the debate is to be reduced to picking "bad people" who happen to agree with your stance on Scottish independence, then the tactic can easily be reversed by pointing out that extreme-right groups like Britain First vehemently oppose Scottish independence.
It's blatantly obvious that you can be pro-independence and have nothing to do with Brian Souter, just as you can be anti-independence and consider Britain First to be the abhorrent bunch of extremists that they are.
Smearing a left-wing supporter of independence by association with Brian Souter, is just as bad as smearing a left-wing Unionist by association with extreme-right unionist supporters like UKIP and Britain First. It's such an appalling debating tactic that it's an insult to children to describe it as "playground politics".
Only a complete idiot would be convinced by such a weak "tarnish by association" argument, and that's before we even get to the point that Murdoch has only just begun to allow a few pro-independence bits and pieces in his publications, because he famously hates to be seen to have backed a loser. If anyone should be expected to know all about Murdoch's hatred of appearing to back a loser, it should be Andrew Neil himself, who worked for Murdoch as the editor of the Times between 1983 and 1994. If Murdoch was really a strong supporter of Scottish independence, we might have expected his vast media empire to have taken up the cause at some point before the last few days of the campaign.
In my view unionists should be extremely disappointed with this ridiculous "tarnish by association" line of questioning because the BBC has had years to come up with better questions than that. If that's really the final "big gun" question in an interview just days before the referendum, then the anti-independence BBC are clutching at straws.
The bias in BBC coverage of the Scottish independence debate has been plain for all to see, but the problem from the unionist perspective must be that bias alone is clearly not enough to win the debate. If even at this very, very late stage in the game the questions asked of leading Yes campaigners consist of the same old myths (Scottish independence = SNP), the same old Unionist fearmongering about the oil industry, and some ridiculous efforts to smear Yes campaigners by association with "bad people" (the interviewer's former boss!), it strongly suggests that despite their obvious bias, the anti-independence BBC don't have a single well formulated argument against independence at all!
Another Angry Voice is a not-for-profit page which generates absolutely no revenue from advertising and accepts no money from corporate or political interests. The only sources of income for Another Angry Voice are small donations from people who see some value in my work. If you appreciate my efforts and you could afford to make a donation, it would be massively appreciated.
People of Scotland,
One of the most important things to recognise in the Scottish independence debate is that a Yes vote is not a rejection of England, nor a rejection of an Englishman like me, neither is it a rejection of the folk who live elsewhere in the Union, nor a rejection of your own Britishness. It is a rejection of the misrule of the complacent Westminster establishment.
The Westminster establishment has had an unbroken run of power over the island of Great Britain for Centuries. No matter which political party acts out the role of boss in the House of Commons, the establishment class are the real rulers of Great Britain. The anti-democratic unelected House of Lords (an appalling affront to democracy), and bizarre anachronisms like the City Remembrancer and the ludicrous UK honours system serve as reminders of where the power really resides behind the ridiculous pretence at democracy that is the House of Commons.
Over the last Century the Westminster establishment has had their own way on almost every issue, but now the people of Scotland have this amazing opportunity to "kick them in the balls" by ending Westminster misrule for good.
The last time the Westminster establishment suffered such a large setback was in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the Americans forced them to give up the British Empire, then peppered it with US bases, including nuclear bases on British soil. But this American assertion of power wasn't "a kick in the balls", it was an act of total domination to end the British empire and to formalise US superiority and British subservience.
The last time the Westminster establishment was properly stood up to, was the declaration of Irish independence, but because it came at the cost of so many thousands of lives and such a great deal of social suffering it would be trite and offensive to describe this deadly and destructive struggle as "a kick in the balls".
Now the people of Scotland have the chance to reject the complacent Westminster establishment without any of the horrors endured during the long struggle for Irish independence. It's the first chance in a very long time for people to give these complacent and unaccountable rulers "a kick in the balls" without having to endure enormous social suffering to achieve it.
For the last 35 years the behaviour of the Westminster establishment has been particularly egregious. The establishment class has repeatedly got away with neglecting the public interest in order to put their own interests first, in accordance with the cult-like economic dogma of greed, social neglect, privatisation and financialisation that they have become so obsessed with since Thatcher introduced it in 1979.
The Westminster establishment seized the profits from Scottish oil and siphoned them into the City of London and used them to fund tax breaks for their wealthy backers. Instead of creating a sovereign wealth fund which would surely have rivaled Norway's as one of the biggest in the world, the establishment class squandered it all on the ridiculous fantasy of building a post-industrial economy based around the City of London financial sector. Not only did the the establishment ignore Scotland's best social and economic interests, raid their oil revenues to prop up their extremist right-wing ideological experiments and destroy much of Scotland's industrial sector, they also used Scotland as the testing ground for Maggie Thatcher's vile Poll Tax.
It's not just Scotland that has suffered Westminster misrule over the last 35 years, it's nearly all of us. My home territories of Yorkshire and the North East have been horrendously neglected. In its industrial heyday Yorkshire was one of the wealthiest regions in the world, now it contains three of the ten most deprived areas in Northern Europe. This appalling decline in living standards in Yorkshire and the North East can be traced to underinvestment, mismanagement, chronic neglect of infrastructure, and even ideological assaults against so many of the two region's vital industries (coal, steel, transport, fishing, shipbuilding) leaving whole communities blighted for generations by the unemployment, poverty, crime and poor health that are born of lack of opportunity.
It's thanks to devolution that in recent years Scotland has avoided the some of the worst establishment excesses. A measure of Scottish autonomy has protected Scotland from the widespread and ongoing privatisation of the English NHS, blatant barriers to social mobility like tuition fees and the almost unbelievable giveaway of over 3,000 English schools to unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities, many of which are run by wealthy Tory party donors and unelected Tory peers, who gleefully "topslice" education budget to pay themselves and their cronies huge six figure executive salaries.
If a measure of autonomy from Westminster rule has protected Scotland from these establishment excesses, doesn't that suggest that the more autonomy people can take from Westminster, the better?
Aside from their misrule over most of the United Kingdom in order to favour the interests of London and the wealthy south east, the establishment class has also committed appalling crimes, such as selling off the national silver in one dodgy privatisation scam after another despite widespread public opposition, lying to the public in order to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq (see how that turned out), engaging in all kinds of miscarriages of justice and cover ups (The McCrone Report, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Hillsborough, the secret Falklands memos, Ian Duncan Smith's outrageous retroactive legislation, the missing Westminster paedophile dossier ...) and allowing the development of an out of control surveillance state beyond the wildest imagination of the KGB, subject to almost no proper democratic scrutiny at all.
The powers of the UK surveillance state has even gone as far as allowing secret police to steal the identities of dead babies, infiltrate environmental protest groups and initiate sexual relationships with activists, get them pregnant and then simply disappear without trace when the assignment is over, leaving the woman without a penny in child support. What makes this so much worse is the attempt to whitewash the whole affair by chucking out the victims' legal cases at practically the first legal hurdle, and holding absolutely nobody accountable for having authorised such grotesque perversions in the first place.
The fact that they have ruled over us all with such contempt and such impunity for so long has made the establishment class dreadfully complacent. The constant stream of outrageous Westminster expenses scandals is the most visible manifestation of this complacency. That so many of them fiddled their expenses was shocking, but that so many of these self-serving scammers still sit in Westminster is more shocking still. Whoever forms the next Westminster government in 2015, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will in all probability be an expenses scammer, either George Osborne (taxpayer funded paddock) or Ed Balls (serial house flipping).
Another, even more blatant sign of establishment complacency and contempt for the public is the revisionist fairy story that underpins their beloved austerity narrative. They think that we're all just going to forget that the economic crisis spread from out the financial sector in the City of London. They imagine that if they harp on about "scroungers" at the bottom of society, immigrants "stealing our jobs" and how there's "no money left" the public will just forget that the economic shock that nearly wiped out the UK economy came from the heart of the establishment in London.
The establishment class is so complacent that politicians like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage feel free to tell ludicrous revisionist stories about how the City of London is such a remarkable economic success story, even though just a few years ago the London based financial sector had to be saved from complete oblivion with the biggest state subsidies in history. They tell these stories even though the ongoing cost of these secretive off balance "financial sector interventions" still amounts to more than the official entire national debt that they endlessly fearmonger about to justify their ideological austerity agenda.
It's bad enough that the establishment class expect us to believe that they could afford to find £1.5 trillion for secretive off balance sheet deals to save the banks from the consequences of their own reckless gambling, then even more to flood the financial sector with an additional £375 billion in newly created Quantitative Easing money, yet "there's not enough cash" to keep open our local libraries/youth clubs/Sure Start projects/A&E units/maternity wards etc. What is even more contemptuous still, is the way they expect us to believe that the City of London is some kind of miraculous success story rather than the cause of all of this economic chaos.
The combination of their blatant misrule (no matter which party happens to be playing leader of the House of Commons at the time) and the visible manifestations of their greed, complacency and outright contempt for the public has desperately eroded public trust in British politics.
In combination with the hopelessly outdated and non-proportional electoral process used by the House of Commons (a system that leaves countless millions of voters ignored and unrepresented because they happen to live in "safe seat" constituencies), this lack of public trust in politics has created dangerous levels of political apathy. In 2010 David Cameron became Prime Minister after just 23.5% of the electorate voted Tory, meanwhile 35% of the electorate didn't even bother to vote. In the 2014 European elections the "Thatcherism on steroids" party won the most seats with the backing of just 9% of the electorate after an incredible 66% of people didn't even bother to vote.
The independence referendum in Scotland has provided a wonderful opportunity for people to shake off their political apathy and actually think about politics afresh. Independence represents the opportunity to participate in much needed constitutional renewal. It is the opportunity for the people of Scotland to develop a modern 21st Century constitution, rather than continuing to use the ridiculous anachronism riddled and almost infinitely malleable hotch-potch of a UK constitution, which has been continually revised for centuries to do little more than maintain establishment power and serve establishment interests.
The single biggest demonstration of how complacent the Westminster establishment has become is the fact that the Westminster government has now openly admitted that they haven't even formed a contingency plan should the people of Scotland see sense and assert their right to self-determination. David Cameron's official spokesperson said that no contingency plans at all had been drawn up because "The government’s entire focus is on making the case for the UK staying together". This absurdly complacent stance is a blatant display of contempt for the people of Scotland because it assumes with certainly that they will vote the way the Westminster establishment wants them to. But this no contingencies gamble is also a display of outright contempt for the citizens of the rest of the UK too, because how on earth are they going to best represent our interests in separation negotiations with an independent Scotland, if they haven't even begun to think about negotiation strategies out of their sheer complacency?
Yet another demonstration of this appalling establishment complacency is the refusal of the Westminster establishment to allow the the compromise option of "Devo Max" which would have allowed the people of Scotland the option of testing the waters of greater autonomy without the necessity for formal separation.
It is clear that the establishment would rather play an all or nothing gamble in an attempt to maintain their rule over Scotland than voluntarily offer up any more of their powers. Deliberate removal of a compromise option in order to fight a "do-or-die" ultimatum with the people of Scotland on the assumption that they are certain to win so strong that they don't even bother to make any contingency plans is an extraordinarily complacent, and many would say catastrophically stupid risk to take.
That they would take such a ludicrously risky "all or nothing" gamble by removing Devo Max and then not even prepare a contingency plan in case the gamble fails, just goes to show how hopelessly unfit the Westminster establishment is to rule over people's lives in a responsible manner.
The people of Scotland have an amazing opportunity to get rid of these complacent and contemptuous rulers once and for all, so you mustn't vote against your own interests out of pity for the rest of us who will be left under Westminter misrule.
If you want to help us, you must show us that there is a better alternative. That in places like Wales, Cornwall, Yorkshire or any other part of the United Kingdom that chooses to demand it, we too can stand up to the Westminster establishment and achieve greater autonomy for ourselves. You must show us that it is possible to live in Great Britain without a ruling establishment that creates ever more inequality through their adherence to their destructive and unstable "greed is a virtue" - "privatise everything" economic ideology and their willfully blind indifference to poverty and lack of social mobility.
The majority of the Scottish want, and deserve, a society that is run for the benefit of all, not just the privileged few, and a health service that is not being carved open for privatisation and starved of funding by the Westminster establishment. Of course the rest of the United Kingdom deserves this too, but your job isn't to achieve these things for us all, it is to lead by example and to show us that it is at least possible to achieve them for ourselves. It's your job to show us the value of newfound political autonomy, increased political participation, constitutional renewal and greater political accountability.
I'm not trying to say that that Scotland is to become some kind of utopia. It isn't. Utopias don't exist. I'm saying that the people of Scotland have an opportunity to achieve something better for themselves. It will take a hell of a lot of work to create a Scotland that is more like the one you want it to be. You're going to have to stay engaged with politics, you're going to have to hold your politicians to account, and you're going to have to fight incredibly hard for the changes you want to see achieved. But if you put in the effort, it will be worth it.
Instead of voting to stay and suffer Westminster misrule with the rest of us, you've got to tell the Westminster establishment that they are no longer worthy rulers by rejecting them and their Unionist fearmongering. When you do this, know that you're not just doing it for yourselves, you're doing it as an example to the rest of us that the complacent Westminster establishment isn't invincible. Know that there are people all over the rest of the UK who want to celebrate Scottish independence for what it actually is; an all too rare defeat for our unaccountable rulers in Westminster.
Please vote Yes on September 18th to show the rest of us that even against the full combined will of the Westminster establishment, the attempted brainwashing of a ridiculously biased mainstream media and the ever more desperate Unionist fearmongering campaigns, people can stand up for themselves and take a greater measure of control over their lives. Show us that this can be achieved in a peaceful and democratic manner, and show us that a society can be economically and socially reinvigorated through the process of constitutional renewal.
Kindest regards, and best of luck for the future
Tom (Another Angry Voice)
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