What a thoroughly scurrilous piece of Goebbelesque racist propaganda from the Labour Party’s senior apparatchik, the noble lord, Baron Soley of Hammersmith (Here’s his entry in Debrett’s).

In this New Statesman article he seeks to equate Salmond to Farage (nowt new there then), and warns Scots of the inevitable catastrophe awaiting them if they dare have the temerity to choose to be masters in their own house. The English will rightly retaliate he argues <yawn>.

Yet there was something particularly galling about the cynicism, arrogance and sense of entitlement, of this careerist Labour pol that could not go unrecorded and unchallenged.

Soley: “The 1707 Act of Union brought to a halt the internecine conflicts across the border”. No it didn’t, Baron. Have you never heard of the ’45 Rebellion, and the  century of ethnic cleansing and genocide that was the Highland Clearances?

Soley: “Many people have been arguing this case for some years [for a federal UK] now and breaking up the family of nations that is the UK is a serious distraction from that goal “

This is boilerplate New Labour double-speak predicated on the belief that the electorate is as thick as pig shit and cannot see through its glaring absurdity.

The manta and warning from the likes of the noble lord has been that independence would put an end to devolution. Doh!

Yes indeed it would since all power over Scottish affairs would reside with the people of Scotland. Independence is in fact the only devolution max on the table.

Now Soley tops this painfully dumb narrative by suggesting that “independence is a serious distraction from that goal [a federal UK]”

A serious distraction? Whit? Did no one proof read this asinine statement before publication? Breaking up the UK is not a serious distraction from the goal of creating a federal UK, it renders the whole argument moot.

Baron Soley: “This knowledge should lead us naturally to the idea of the UK developing a truly federal system designed for the modern world”.

Clive, your lot had a HUNDRED YEARS to deliver a federal system and you never did. With the best will in the world, why should we believe a word you say? You’ve been a government and party apparatchik supping at the public trough all of your adult life, and you have done precisely nothing to deliver a federal state.

Soley: “Nationalism divides and causes bitterness“.

Here we go again – hypocrisy personified. Uh yeah, unless it’s your brand of British Nationalism, right? And borders are alright when they’re UK borders, hmm?

You’ve signed on to Labour’s increasingly draconian immigration policies haven’t you? Yet you have the unmitigated gall to imply Salmond, whose policy genuinely is for open borders that encourage immigration, is as much a xenophobic racist as Farage!

The wiki open rights group note that “[Soley is] In favour of ID cards, mainly due to immigration“. This is the guy who excoriates Salmond for being another Nigel Farage? 

You’re all Chutzpah and brass neck, aren’t you Baron?

Soley: “… it is naive for Salmond to believe that the rest of the UK will accept Scotland walking out … taking their share of the wealth, but then knocking on the door the next day and saying they want to use the pound” .

This surely reveals the uncomprehending arrogance of Baron Soley. Salmond is many things, but naive he’s not.

Clive, the pound sterling belongs as much to every resident of Scotland as it does to every resident of England. Scotland’s share of the wealth of the UK includes the pound and the UK’s national reserve bank, the Bank of England.

Scots PAID FOR IT, in treasure, by the sweat of their brow, and with their very lives, to preserve the state these assets underpin.

And please, enough of the fiction about the UK surviving its own dissolution. When Scotland dissolves that binary union, the United Kingdom of Great Britain that it shares with England (incorporating Wales), there will be no UK. How could there be?

Consider the tautology, Baron: When the Union is dissolved, the Union ceases to be.

Soley: “The UK has been, by any standard, a remarkably successful union, creating peace and prosperity while retaining cultural differences.“

Well, its certainly been good for you, hasn’t it, Baron? You’ve done alright. But what about the rest?

We usually hear the “most successful union ever” yada yada, when some labour pol like your good self, makes a flying visit to Scotland to open another food bank.

Labour controlled Scottish politics for 60 years, yet poverty is so ingrained in Scotland’s largest city that babies are born today carrying an epigenetic predisposition to disease and early death. You had sixty years to do something about that, Clive, and you did sweet FA.

Put down your claret, get off your backside and come talk to these children and the parents of these children about this “remarkably successful union”.

In parts of Glasgow, residents face a lower life expectancy than that in Baghdad by a margin of 13 years. How can you, amid your pampered taxpayer-bankrolled opulence, lecture Scots about the Union’s success and prosperity, when you have done naught to alleviate the misery of so many of your fellow citizens you pretend to care for and serve?

At long last Baron, regaled in your finery, luxuriating in your self satisfaction and generous publicly-funded pensions and stipends, have you no thought for those you have failed? Have you no sense of shame?

Well of course not.