Divergent political cultures?
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
The latest email distributed to supporters - and to anyone interested - from our friends at Europe for Scotland includes some punchy analysis and comment, including the following observations on our country's politics - and democratic rights.
Recent weeks have seen an extraordinary escalation in global crises, with the US-Israeli aggression on Iran and its dire economic repercussions.
This was compounded by President Trump’s remarks that celebrated violence, threatened “civilizational erasure” and war crimes of all sorts, all the while offending and threatening allies, journalists and even the Pope.
This further military and rhetorical escalation signals surely a point of no return that should advise everyone in a position of authority to distance themselves from the words and actions of a US President who is clearly unfit for his role.
In the face of all this, once again, Scotland’s response has been more democratic, more aligned with Europe and more principled than Westminster’s: Scottish First Minister John Swinney has repeatedly condemned the aggression on Iran as illegal and called on the UK government to stand up to Trump’s genocidal rhetoric.
Keir Starmer, instead, has adopted an ambivalent approach, distancing himself publicly from the war while offering practical complicity, including UK military support through British bases. Not that it helped, anyway.
Such ambivalence in matters of foreign politics has come to characterise this Labour government. Yet one of the few convictions that they show no ambivalence about is that, like the Tories before them, they will deny Scots the right to choose their own future.
When challenged over this a few days ago, UK Health secretary and aspiring Starmer successor Wes Streeting bluntly ruled out a referendum, no matter how Scots will vote in their Parliamentary elections. Scots already had a vote, he insisted.
Scottish actor and director Alan Cumming commented: "just another example of refusal to engage in democracy." Quite.
Published 16 April 2026