“Would the EU rather lose Scotland or the rest of the UK?”

I know what the few EU citizens of six or more countries whom I know personally think.

Is there some way we can find out about what a few more of them think?

The EU may not limited options if a roUK government wishes to leave the EU.

I didn’t say all Tory voters were like that, but without these people Margaret Thatcher would never have become prime minister. They voted for Tony Blair (or though that they did because they don’t all live in his constituency. They didn’t vote for John Major (wimp, underpants)and won’t vote for Gordon Brown (ditherer).

I would in all seriousness urge on any SNP or EU politician that it would be a worthwhile use of parliamentary expenses to observe this sector of the population and hear their views. I can tell you where to go.

In Corralejo there is a bar called the Talk of the Town where you can, from the street, look down into a semi basement just as you would as if observing animals in a zoo and see English tourists, drinking their beer in pints and paying for it in pounds while they watch neighbours, play pub quizzes and watch football.

There are C2′s in Scotland, “urban” many of them are not, and they never supported Margaret Thatcher’s government. Many of them have deserted Labour for the SNP. There may be fewer of such voters in Scotland but it is not they who have deserted the Conservatives but the middle class.

If you think the SNP is effective at appealing to their greivances, then perhaps you should ask why, and why Conservatives are not. I do not myself think that the SNP is notably effective in this or that Scottish urban C2′s have any specific greivances that are not shared by rural middle class, and if there are any such it is not obvious to me that the SNP are either making a greater effort or are more successful in adressing these greivances.

Peter’s latest posting gives you an indication of why Scotland did not support the last Conservative governments, but that is not the issue. The West of Scotland working class have not withdrawn support from the Conservatives, others have.

Scotland is the only part of the UK, and the Conservatives the only party of which it can be said to have ever garnered more than 50% of the popular vote in a general election.

It is the dominance of free market fundamentalists and English nationalists within the party which has destroyed the Conservative party in Scotland by promoting values that were repellent to the decent respectable middle-class one-nation Conservatives who saw it as their duty to vote for and – more important -work for the party, as a service to the community and not for what they could get out of it.

I knew one man, a widower in a large house, who had a housekeeper with three underemployed adult sons living at home in a council house. He received an unlooked-for benefit in the poll tax while his housekeeper’s family paid more and, though a lifetime Conservative,felt ashamed to have voted for them.

What Peter says is fair enough as far as it goes, but, fundamentally it is not about issues, it is about values, Conservative values of the past, not the present. “The problem for the (Scottish) Tories” is the Conservative party, not the C2 voters they never had. There are indeed those who have a “visceral hatred that Margaret Thatcher’s name seems to evoke.” None have more justification than the few loyal members of the party in Scotland.

That is why they should re-brand and adopt the Bavarian model. The parliament of an independent Scotland needs them to represent a section of the electorate that no-one else will and PR will secure them their due place.

You highlight the following as being Tory voters in England:

“It may be relevant for the southern urban English C2’s who voted for Thatcher. These are people with little education, beer bellies, genital rings and tattoos (the men have them too) whose interests are television soaps sport and reality shows. They vote as they would on pop idol or big brother: for a strong personality, Thatcher or Blair, but not Major. Their natural home is the BNP, but they don’t vote for losers.”

I think this description is rather pejorative, if you don’t mind my saying so. But you go on to suggest, I think, that it is the lack of such voters in Scotland that explain why the Tories don’t do well. I suggest that, in fact, there are probably just as many C2s in Scotland as England, and the problem for the Tories is that they have swung behind the SNP who are effective at appealing to their grievances.

Your missing quite a lot.

A lot of working people bought there homes, but not the poorest. The better off bought the better homes at a discount, while those on lower incomes often in homes that no one would want to buy were left behind.

Now given that they had paid rent all those years some kind of discount was merited but given that you could get a discount after only 3 years tenancy and that it started at a third, and quickly reached 60% a lot of the poorest with long tenancies still couldn’t buy while better off people with short tenancies could.

It was popular but it wasn’t exactly fair.

In addition Council receipts were less than the outstanding debt so as houses were lost the debt burden on the remaining tenants rose as did rents, meaning that those who couldn’t buy could kind themselves with a higher percentage of their income going in housing costs that better off people who had bought.

The follow on was a lot more people in the private market while the rules on debt made building social housing a non starter. So the private sector took the lead role in housing building to the market not for need. Those at the bottom went increasingly unprovided for while everyone else saw demand outsrip supply and prices climb.

I am not saying that RTB lead to what’s happening today but it is a factor.

It’s a bit like getting mugged by three skint yobs for thirty quid, at the end of the incident more people are better off, they’ve got one of your tenners each, but it doesn’t make up for getting your head kicked in.

Another thing is the English system of being able to choose your school. That has been popular with those who have the means to drive their kids there every morning, but for the single mum with no car who need to be on the till at Tescos by 9.30 It’s the local school no matter how bad.

We also have the nonsense of kids in buses driving past each other at tax payers expense as the past schools close to their homes to go to the other side of town. Like RTB ( right to buy) the costs aren’t principally borne by the beneficiaries.

Privatisation is another one. For a start selling something everyone has already paid for to those with money is hardly fair.

By all means give everyone a share and let them keep them or sell them, like the building societies did, but a lot of people had an issue with having to buy something they already owned.

Again those who benefited were those who had money and when the utilities went private the poorest who hadn’t the money to buy shares soon found they were getting the worst tariffs.

As to the miners and a three day week that’s just swallowing the TINA ( there is no alternative) line.

It’s like people who say if it wasn’t for the US we would all be speaking German. Wrong, if it hadn’t happened as it did it would have been different, but we can’t say that it would have been any particular outcome. Germany managed the decline of it’s coal mining industry in a slower less damaging way than Thatcher.

Again we closed the loss making pits, but the tax payer picked up the redundancy and benefits check for a generation and we left whole communities as basket cases for years. We also then launched the “Dash for Gas” which 20 years on has made us as vulnerable to Putin as Scargill.

I am not saying that everything that Thatcher did was bad, but much of it was for political advantage more than national benefit. although like most leaders she probably saw them as one and the same. Equally in retrospect the execution was poor, with most economist now believing that we could have achieved the same with unemployment peaking at 2m and lower interest rates, inflation and shallower recession.

What Scots have stuck with is a sense that they got a poor deal and from that they have focused not on the benefits but the unfairness of Thatcherism. One of the most popular sketches of the time was the Spitting Image one where Thatcher referred to Scotland as “The Testing Ground”. It was popular because for many it struck a cord.

Where Scotland fits in this is that up here we had a perception that we got a disproportionate amount of the pain, more heavy industry closed and lower incomes meant homes and shares weren’t bought as much, while getting fewer of the benefits. Add that to the fact that the Tories had so few MP’s and we developed a strong felling that these things were “Good done for us” but “Bad done to us”.

You can argue whether that is fair or merited on the part of Scots and the Tories, but as is appropriate for a polling site that largely deals with public perception, few would disagree with the fact that it is in part how many Scots see it.

As to the treaty issue, The Uk would just bin it. Treaties are in the end just bits of paper that people abide by when it suits them. Once it’s no longer in their interest to abide by them then simply ignore them.

Regardless of what the Treaty of Union says if the UK thought that Scotland in the EU was a good idea it would back it. Equally if it wanted an excuse to make trouble it could wheel it out.

We get this kind of legalistic argument all the time usually to scare people about independence, but in the event real politick will take over.

It’s like UK ministers saying an Independent Scotland might not be able to defend itself because Britain might not sell it weapons or give it it’s share of UK assets. The fact is everybody knows there would be a line of manufactures only to happy to have Scotland buy their stuff and UK ministers and companies would be fighting to beat the head of the line.

Peter.