• @TariqAli's actual words:

    "Two processes combined to reawaken Scotland. The depression of the 30s left a deep mark on the country, and the end of empire that followed a decade later after another war created the basis for new thinking. Until 1945 the Labour party, born in Scotland, had been pledged to Scottish home rule. Clement Attlee's reforms, it was thought, made the idea redundant, and certainly few in Scotland thought otherwise. But the emergence of a new nationalism was the result of a democratic deficit.

    The bulk of Scotland voted against Margaret Thatcher, and her brutal dismantling of the 1945 compact shook the union's foundations. When Tony Blair followed suit, belittling the Scottish parliament as little more than a local council, the haemorrhaging of Labour votes began. The real tartan Tories in the Scottish parliament today are the visionless careerists of New Labour, incapable of producing a leader with even one-fifth of the qualities that distinguished the late Donald Dewar. Small wonder that support for independence is strongest among working people.

    The notion that an independent Scotland will be parochial is risible. The "internationalism" of New Labour and its coalition lookalikes essentially means subordinating the entire British state to the interests of the US. They have made Britain a vassal state: on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the gathering of intelligence. An independent Scotland could be far more internationalist and would benefit a great deal from links to both Scandinavia and states in other continents."

    -It's very clear that he is discussing notions of sovereignty and is able to differentiate between the old Scottish-born Labour movement and 'New Labour' which had neither interest in Scottish independence, nor respect for devolution.

    He also makes a clear distinction between the career politicians in Holyrood and the people most likely to support Independence, which are the working people. You seem totally and willfully unable to interpret this as anything but an attack solely on the English, when he doesn't even mention them in anything other than a historical context of union and empire, and clearly highlights both New Labour under Blair's role in continuing Tory policy.

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