Why the English Tories should hope that the Scots Nats retain their grip on Scotland

The phenomenal electoral success of the Scots nats in the recent  British general election is to my knowledge unprecedented in a democracy so deserves serious thought. They won 56 out of 59 Scottish  seats.  It shows the continuing appeal of Fascism.  Fascism is socialism ("we will look after you") combined with with nationalism ("we are the greatest") so it had huge appeal to all sectors of Scottish society. Scots are nothing if not patriotic.  In WWII, Fascism helped Germans to march relentlessly to their doom -- right up until the bitter end.

So it is likely that Scottish politics will remain dominated by the SNP.  The Scots in Scotland are ferociously socialist so the Labour party will have nothing distinctive to offer and the Tories have only ever been marginal in Scotland.  The only pressure for change might be if the SNP-dominated Scottish government makes a mess of things.  They are certainly spendthrift. But, ironically.  the English subsidy in the form of the Barnett formula or its successors  will probably rescue them from any meltdown.

So why should the Tories care?  They have almost no following in Scotland in any case.  It matters because no Anglospheric political party remains in charge for long.  The political parties tend to rotate.  The British Tories have now won two general elections in a row so, on a purely probabalistic basis, they are due to lose the next one. But they may not, of course.  They have made Britain the standout nation in Europe in terms of economic recovery so that may contribute to a third win.

But the time will one day come when the Tories lose control. And when they do they will most probably not be faced with a Labour government but rather by a SNP-Labour alliance.  And if it is an alliance with policies as destructive as those recently offered by Ed Miliband, that will be a very alarming prospect -- a prospect alarming enough for extreme measures.

As ever, however, the ace up the Tory sleeve will be the British Labour party.  It used to be said that the Labour party was Margaret Thatcher's biggest asset -- they were so extreme as to be unelectable -- and Ed Miliband was certainly David Cameron's greatest asset in 2015. And something else that is useful about the Labour party -- aside from their destructive policies -- is that they will never consent to Scottish independence.  Without the Scottish seats in the Westminster parliament they would be permanently out in the cold.

And the Tories too don't like the idea of breaking up the UK. But that dislike is more a sentimental than a practical thing.  It would be a great relief to them to boot the Scottish MPs out of Westminster.  And a SNP/Labour government would enable them to do just that.  They could offer to vote with the SNP for Scottish independence.  The SNP would certainly accept and the combined Tory/SNP vote would win the day -- terminating, probably immediately, the SNP/Labour government and entrenching conservatism in England for a very long time.

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