The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland Under Nationalism [Paperback]

Tom Gallagher, Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University, has written a brilliant study of the Scottish National Party.

He observes that the SNP is `a party driven in large measure by negativity and resentment', against England and the English, and that it is `dominated by ... lawyers, spin doctors, full-time politicians and quangocrats'.

Scotland faces a shortfall in energy supplies, but the SNP has pledged to block any new nuclear plants and has no plan to develop other energy sources. Even Alex Salmond's own Council of Economic Advisers warned that his energy policy could cost Scotland dear.

The SNP government has funded Muslim schools, despite their poor record in producing pupils at ease in British society. The SNP has attacked pro-integration Muslims. In 2008, it gave the Scottish Islamic Foundation £419,000, while giving more moderate Muslim groups nothing. The SIF wants Islamic schools where children are taught the Koran, girls wear the hijab, and boys and girls are segregated. Its chief executive wants `a restored caliphate' and defends Sharia law: he is an SNP candidate for Glasgow Central.

The SNP allies itself with Catalonia's `pro-independence' government, which shares its `victim ideology'. This SNP ally "is not afraid to put out the red carpet for Islamist groups. It distinguished itself in January 2009 by banning the commemoration marking the holocaust of Jews across much of Europe."

Gallagher criticises the SNP's embrace of identity politics: "Unifying narratives underlying a sense of Britishness have ceased to be reproduced. Instead politicians have embraced the false gods of free market capitalism and divisive multiculturalism across the public sector ..."

Gallagher observes, "a party with the Conservatives' long tradition of being a defender of the British state now contains a minority of members ready to embrace insular positions that could result in its complete unravelling and Britain being replaced by a series of territorial units that would count for far less than they do now in Europe and the wider world."

In 2007, Salmond said, "we are pledging a light-touch regulation." In February 2008, he said, "the Scottish banks are among the most stable financial institutions in the world." Then followed almost at once the failures of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Halifax Bank of Scotland, when the British Treasury spent £38 billion bailing them out.

In August 2008, Salmond said, "I am certain that the RBS will overcome current challenges to become both highly profitable and highly successful once again." On 19 January 2009, RBS reported a £28 billion loss, the biggest in British corporate history.

In September 2008, Salmond tried to blame HBOS's woes on short-selling but "Salmond's theory was quickly discredited, as evidence emerged that the chief reason for HBOS's demise was the extremely poor judgement of the bank's senior officials in the mortgage market. According to bank insiders, it was the reckless actions of senior people in the HBOS management offices at the Mound in Edinburgh who placed the bank in such jeopardy." Scotland's banks, far from building an independent Scottish economy, brought disaster.

One of Salmond's closest allies, Jim Mather, enterprise minister since 2007, said in 2003, "We want more millionaires, and any notion that an independent Scotland would be left-wing is delusional nonsense ... Most Scots have enough experience of left-wing policies to know that they only make matters worse."

Gallagher observes that the SNP is the most pro-EU political party in Britain. The SNP even wants Scotland to join the euro. But, as he notes, "there is no attempt to explain how Scotland can safeguard its right to self-government in a European Union dominated by unelected entities which are acquiring increasing powers from national members. A stream of directives pour from Brussels which regulate life down to the most minute level. The European Parliament is a talking-shop absorbed with its own perks and privileges."

Gallagher sums up, "The party is committed to membership of a continental federation where powerful cartels are intent on turning national Parliaments into conveyor belts for a uniform raft of policies. ... But in the EU, especially if it enters the Monetary Union and embraces the euro, Scotland would risk a sharp diminution of its economic independence."

After the earlier negative reviews, it wouldn't harm to make the following points:
The author is frank about why the British connection in Scotland has been eroded. He makes no last-ditch defence of Britishness in this book. Gallagher argues instead that the SNP brand of nationism is very sub-standard with separatism offering no effective substitute for the extensive autonomy currently available to Scotland. He suggests that in our consumerist, post-religious age, the SNP has promoted a sense of victimhood among the Scots, especially those in younger age-groups. He faults the SNP for failing to offer much more than a "Lets Bash London" level of politics with little to indicate what practical vision the party has for an independent Scotland. The author has the measure of Alex Salmond who presents himself as a latter day Louis XIV, believing himself to be a ruler who is Scotland incarnate. The book manages to combine an accessible writing style with serious analysis and it deals with questions about contemporary Scotland which the Scottish media usually sidesteps. When published in late 2009, it predicted that Scotland would move in an increasingly populist direction, with Salmond dominating the scene; so far the author doesn't seem to have been proven very wrong.

A truly woeful read, hacked out by the author - who draws one astonishingly negative assumption after the other about the SNP Goverrnment's progressive work since coming into power some five years ago. For example, the SNP are light on policy, and heavy on identity. Anyone who has lived in Scotland, or paid even scant attention to the Scottish political scene these past years (especially when compared to the appalling Lab-lib coaliton) can nevertheless find adequate use for the text as a convenient doorstop. Hamster owners can also enjoy several years worth of cage lino. A disappointing read, leaving one with the impression that the author doesn't merely struggle with political fact, but that he also fundamentally fails to understand the opportunities at hand for Scotland itself. When oh when will the unfounded scaremongering end from the British Nationalists? - who seem ill at ease, and certainly ill equipped with fact nor reason, to confidently join the referendum debate. Loathsome stuff from a frustrated Brit-nat.