Ultimately, Scotland is a side issue in the great scheme of things, Scottish independence somewhat unlikely and of no obvious benefit to Russia. Separatism is in fact contrary to the principles of stability Russia endlessly promotes and even if it might constitute a poke in the eye for a long term ‘imperial adversary’ would be an even greater slap in the face for the concept of sovereign democracy through inviolable territorial unity.
No one in the Russian General staff believes for a second that Scottish independence means a setback for Trident, let alone NATO.
As in Whitehall itself, Scottish independence is no doubt seen as a tiresome issue of miniscule geopolitical importance simply because an independent Scotland is likely to reinforce existing European security arrangements rather than disrupt them.
So if the British establishment has no real fear of Scottish independence and Scots themselves are lukewarm at best to the prospect of going it alone, why the cringe worthy hue and cry over Sputnik’s wholly legitimate reporting from Edinburgh?
In fact, by synthesizing a fear that Russia is out to undermine the British Union, numerous otherwise implausible objectives can be achieved in a flash.
In plain words, these incendiary claims that Russia is agitating for the dissolution of the UK are pure counter-propaganda.
By falsely claiming Russia is ‘conspiring’ to support Scottish nationalism, the discredited British elites are able to stoke national pride in a way that turns the majority of Scots, along with the vast majority of Britons, against Russia at a time when traditionalists are increasingly looking towards the Russian Federation for inspiration.
And yet the truth is that Russia’s supposed grand plan to put the UK into liquidation amounts to no more than a few news stories and the fact that 100,000 Scots signed a petition for a rerun of the referendum on Scottish independence. The latter point is being disingenuously used by the Whitehall guided MSM as evidence of Russian influence in Scotland and ignores the 4 million strong petition to rerun the Brexit vote as proof that any concern over the Scottish petition is entirely contrived.
Secondly, the SNP was founded in 1934 and is integral to Scotland and its democratic voice. While Scottish Unionists like myself would hardly support the SNP’s vision of an independent Scotland, we would stoutly defend the SNP’s right to express its views without being slurred by neo-McCarthyism.
Thirdly, the British political establishment has failed the people of Scotland. Labour collapsed in Scotland in 2014 just as it did in the North of England during the Brexit vote on June 23rd 2016 and there is indeed massive resentment in Scotland against Westminster’s austerity politics. Again, just as in the English North, Scots feel dictated to by London’s elites.
It was Britain’s feudal two-party political system that led to the rise of the SNP and its English analog- UKIP.
Finally, there is now a real chance of forming an alliance of traditionalist states within Europe led by the Russian Federation. From the Visegrad Group to a Trump presidency, this alliance will, ideologically at least, push back against the neoconservative-progressive forces of American exceptionalism and expansionist EU eurosocialism.
Within western societies, there are growing mass movements of traditionalist voters who see Russia as a lighthouse of morality and an anchor of identity; it is these millions who must be scared off from Russia by the nefarious tactic of presenting straw-man arguments that claim Russia is backing the dissolution of the very state these millions call their own.
Make no mistake, NATO has no intention of seeing UKIP, now the third force of British politics, questioning Article 5 and embedding within millions of voiceless working class Britons a sense that Russia is a defender of western civilization, the family, cultural continuity, and the kind of European values that have stood since Emperor Constantine founded the Byzantine Empire.
The British elites’ claims that cynically mix Russia with Scottish independence are designed to short-circuit rational debate and emotionally win an argument that otherwise, quite simply, can’t be won. British people know that globalism is their undoing, not Russia, which, paradoxically, is an anti-globalist state.
In abject frustration, the British media have resorted to fear-mongering. The libel that Russia is out to dismember the Union is a cheap conspiracy theory that aims to deny the British people a voice and a counter narrative to the one that suggests their only future is multicultural oblivion and subservience to globalist institutions.
As such, it’s a thorough insult to the people of Scotland and the British nation in general.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
