EPluribusUnum 11/05/2021 18:57:52

Jeremy V says that in the 2014 ref, Scots voted to stay in the UK and EU, but that "England took them out [of the EU] anyway". This is not true. The EU/Brexit vote in 2016 was a national, all-UK vote. Many people in England voted leave, many people in England (including a majority in London) voted Remain. In Wales the same, with a majority for Leave. In Scotland many people voted Remain - and many also voted Leave. There was no block vote in Scotland to Remain, and no block vote in England to Leave. The national population was divided on the issue, but in total the largest number of citizens voted to Leave. They voted as British citizens, not as Scots or English or Welsh or Irish. It was a British vote to leave, not an “English vote” to leave. This is important because the main media outlets -- all based in London, and often very vague about what's going on in the rest of the country, whether in Scotland or elsewhere in England -- they have bought in to this endlessly repeated SNP messaging that the Scots and the English are two separate species, like the French and the Russians, and that you can talk about the Scots or the English as ethnic blocks, all having the same opinions. Twenty years ago we considered the Scots and the English (and the Welsh and many Irish) to be broadly the same people, often intermarried, and sharing a common British nationality. Ten years of divisive SNP messaging have created this mental hard border, convincing many people that there is a fixed cultural boundary between us. Tell that to people in the Borders. This is a standard propaganda trick, used by extremists, such as the far right, jihadists and the extreme left, perfected by the Nazis and the KGB -- to divide people into "us v them" with constant repetition of simplistic tropes, and endless emotional messaging to drive people into two polarised camps. (The same has happened in the US, esp under Trump, with the population divided into two opposing camps of Republicans and Democrats.) In Britain we're still very naive about disinformation and media manipulation. In Russia and eastern Europe, they're much more aware of how dangerous it is. It's no surprise that Alex Salmond became a programme presenter on RT (Russia Today - Russia's state propaganda TV station). He began the Nationalists' clever use of propaganda to build a quasi-cult following for the SNP, particularly among impressionable youth (glued to their social media feeds -- the most effective means of spreading emotive propaganda). But it's depressing and maddening that so many media people in the London bubble have fallen for the same trick.