by Christian Wright

Alex Massie, one of the Spectator’s house trained pet jocks pontificates in his latest sermon from the pulpit on the nature of the SNP, Scottish nationalism, and Scottish Nationalists:

“… how do you defeat a faith-based party whose voters are animated by quasi-religious zealotry?”

“This helps explain why, according to YouGov, 56 per cent of SNP voters believe collapsing oil prices are ‘neither good nor bad’ for Scotland. It helps explain why so many Scottish voters are prepared to buy the idea that Scotland contributes more, per capita, in tax revenue than the UK average while ignoring the inconvenient reality that it also receives much more per capita than it contributes. These too are just numbers.”

Now, this tells us far more about Massie than it does about the Nationalist psyche. Massie, like others of his ilk, is not a journalist, he is a pontificator who deals in truthiness.

The data are indisputable that over the past four plus decades, Scotland’s contribution to the UK has exceeded what it has received back in pocket money by many tens of billions of pounds.

As the Herald noted 

1997: “Mr William Waldegrave, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has been forced to concede figures in Commons questioning in recent months, which show that if Scotland’s share of North Sea revenues had been allocated since 1979, then the net flow in favour of the Treasury from north of the Border ran to £27bn.”

That figure was later corrected to THIRTY ONE BILLION POUNDS

And as recently as 2013 Denis Healey admitted that the Thatcher boom was funded by Scottish oil that alone accounted for 5% of UK GDP in the Eighties. In an interview with Holyrood magazine he said:

“I think we did underplay the value of the oil to the country because of the threat of nationalism but that was mainly down to Thatcher. Thatcher wouldn’t have been able to carry out any of her policies without that additional 5% on GDP from oil.”

Massie again: ‘.. how do you defeat a faith-based party [SNP] whose voters are animated by quasi-religious zealotry?”

This from the Fundamental Unionist who went on a jihad to save us all from the break-up of Britain. Yet when asked repeatedly by we ourselves and many others to articulate his positive substantive case for Scotland remaining in union with England, the extremist McHadi journo couldn’t do it.

For Massie Unionism is an article of faith – full stop. He believes in it . . . well, because he does. He cannot offer a rationale.

Alex Massie should meditate on the fact that the eye sees not itself but by reflection. If he wants to find a swivel-eyed quasi-religious political fanatic fueled by blind faith in a cause, he need look no further than the nearest mirror.