Long since gone are the days when one could hope to read serious analysis in The Times.
The best one can expect nowadays is some intelligible thoughts, however wrong, shallow and ill-informed. Yet Hugo Rifkind consistently frustrates even such modest expectations.
The latest example is his article OK, I Admit it: the Yes Campaign Does Have a Point. That may be, but Hugo certainly doesn’t, at least none discernible to a mind uncorrupted by the same substances he must be on.
A piece of avuncular advice from an older man, Hugo: whatever it is, mate, stay off it for at least three hours before sitting down to write. That way you’d have a sporting chance of producing something other than utter gibberish.
It took me five minutes to read his piece and twice as long to figure out what it means. As far as I can tell, here’s the point Hugo seems to think the Yes campaign has.
The point is that there is no point, other than some red-hot emotions melting any ice-cold thought.
“In Scotland all the good arguments against independence are practical,” writes Hugo. By inference, all the bad ones are impractical, which is fair enough.
Having established this correct premise, any man in command of his mental faculties would proceed to argue why the good arguments are practical and the bad ones aren’t. Elementary logic would demand this.
Instead, Hugo admits, albeit grudgingly, that the good practical arguments may yet lose out to demagogic propaganda appealing to inflamed immature emotions.
His own demagoguery focuses on the obvious fact that the United Kingdom in general and England in particular are far from perfect.
One has to concede this point. Actually it’s so obvious it doesn’t have to be made: in this life we aren’t blessed with perfect systems.
This isn’t so much the truth as a truism. And it’s an irrelevant truism at that, unless of course someone can explain coherently exactly how an independent Scotland would correct all those little imperfections that so sadden Hugh.
To wit: “They look out and they see an ossified, unfair country, with food banks, an aloof elite… And they don’t want to be a part of it,” writes Hugh.
Considering the amount of constitutional vandalism perpetrated in the last half-century, the first accusation is simply cloud-cuckoo land.
Ossified? The country has become unrecognisable in our, well, my, lifetime. In fact one wishes she had more backbone to resist the Walpurgisnacht perpetrated by Hugo’s intellectual kin. One may like the kaleidoscopic change or, like me, despise it. But in either case Britain is rather the opposite of ossified.
Unfair? That word has many meanings but the one in which I suspect Hugo (and the Yes voters) uses it involves the disparity of income between the rich and the poor, something that so far no country in history has managed to eliminate.
Again, I’m guessing here, but the remedy for this iniquity that he probably sees in his mind’s eye is increased social spending.
Now let’s see. Our Exchequer subsidises Scotland to the tune of £17.6 billion a year. That’s £3,300 for every Scot recognised as such by Alex Salmond. (This category includes recent Muslim immigrants living in Glasgow, but excludes Scots born and bred who happen to live in England.)
This is indeed unfair, as is spending billions on welfare in other parts of the United Kingdom. But those on the receiving end of this unfairness are people who work hard only to see half of what they earn extorted from them by a government that insists, among other awful things, on spending £3,300 a year per Scottish capita.
Out of interest, how will this unfairness be corrected if Scotland votes Aye? Every pronouncement by every Scottish chauvinist suggests that they want a straight socialist republic, with more rather than less welfare spending.
Where’s the money going to come from? I suppose this is one of those good practical arguments leaving Hugo and Alex cold.
And what, pray tell, is wrong with food banks? Would Hugo prefer to see people going hungry? Many in Scotland very well may be, if they succumb to Salmond’s mendacious propaganda.
Aloof elite? That’s what an elite always is, by definition. If it’s like everyone else it stops being an elite.
So what’s the argument there? That we shouldn’t have an elite? Then I’m sure Hugo can cite a few examples from the 5,000 years of recorded history of a place where none existed.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a hypothetical example. Let’s say a boy is born to a wealthy Scottish-Jewish family, with his father a Tory minister. He then goes to an expensive public school and Cambridge, after which, thanks to his family connections and despite a manifest lack of any ability, lands a job with a major newspaper.
He now clearly belongs to an elite, perhaps more than one. Can you forgive him for being ever so slightly aloof? I certainly can. Ever so slightly stupid would be a different matter, but that’s beside the point.
“We have a financial system,” continues Hugo, “that seems to move ever farther from accountability of any sort.” A good point but an irrelevant one – unless it can be shown that an independent Scotland would boast a sound and accountable financial system.
Alas, what can be shown is exactly the opposite: it’s clear that the economy of Salmond’s Scotland would be even more socialist, which is to say irresponsible and unaccountable, than that of the UK at large.
And then – are you ready for this? – comes the clincher. “We have half a parliament that isn’t elected,” laments Hugo.
This statement provides a ringing argument against expensive education: it’s money wasted if the youngster emerges so thoroughly ignorant of his country’s constitutional tradition.
Yes, Hugo, we still have an unelected House of Lords, a chamber you and your ilk would doubtless like to reduce entirely, as opposed to mostly, to acting as a stooge beholden to political diktat.
The whole point of our unique upper House is that it’s there to prevent, on the one hand, the tyranny of the monarch and, on the other hand, the dictatorship of the Commons.
That’s only achievable in an hereditary Lords, whose members don’t spend their whole lives currying favour with spivs like Tony, Dave, Ed or Nick. Hugo brags that he knows Britain well – this statement proves he doesn’t know it at all, and understands it even less.
So are these the good points that ‘the Yes campaign does have’? They aren’t points at all, never mind good ones.
But there is indeed a good point in favour of Scottish independence, in fact the only one I can think of: if it becomes a foreign country, perhaps we’ll be spared the insights of hacks like Rifkind.