A Dialogue with Effie Deans About The New PRO-UK Party 'Rebuild Scotland'
On Thursday 27th May 2021 the Effie Deans posted ‘Do we even want to defeat Sturgeon?’ on her Blog. As a great admirer of Deans on Twitter and having read most of her Blogposts, I was immediately intrigued. Of course the title is a rhetorical question with the assumed answer being ‘yes', and the psychological hook is the implication that ‘we’ are going about defeating Sturgeon in the wrong way. Eager to read what I expected to be her analysis of mistakes ‘we’ are making in our efforts to defeat Sturgeon, Deans did not disappoint, and as I read I agreed with most of her description of the recent Scottish Parliamentary election until half way through the post I read:
“If there is to be a list only Pro UK party (and this is up for debate) then there has to be only one. It may seem good fun setting up your own party and playing at politics, but it is simply stupid that there were so many Pro UK list parties. “
As far as I know only one new PRO-UK party has been set up since the election and that is Rebuild Scotland; the party of which I am Leader.
So, let me say
(1) Rebuild Scotland will not be a “list only” party.
We intend to stand in constituencies as well as in the regional lists.
(2) I would not describe setting up a new party as “good fun”. Giving one’s time for free to do all the work required to set up a new party is not “fun”:
• You have to sacrifice other activities that are fun, for example in my case my painting, which brings me such great joy
• You sacrifice family time
• You lay yourself open to personal attacks and calumny, which is horrible for people who are not used to politics
• You sacrifice sleep
And more.
(3) No ordinary person would endure (2) simply to ‘play’ at politics!
The last thing I would have envisaged for myself would have been to enter politics at the age of 67, when I should be enjoying retirement!
I have only one reason for setting up* Rebuild Scotland and that is to save Scotland and the UK: to save our country and also to save our people from the increasingly Fascist policies of the SNP. 'Fascist' in the classical meaning, resembling Mussolini's politics.
I have been a life-long advocate for Free Speech; specifically Freedom of Expression. So for me the last straw, as it were, that pushed me into politics was the introduction of the Hate Crime Bill (Scotland). This bill is both:
- Incoherent [See my article “Humza’s Hate Bill – Will you be Criminalised for Someone Else’s Emotion?”]
- And extremely dangerous [See my video “Scots Sacrificed on the Altar of Post-modern Philosophy Power Politics -Dr. Catherine McCall”]
My parents’ generation fought and beat Fascism in WWII so that my generation and future generations could live in freedom. As a mother (even as a decent person) how could I sit by and allow everything they fought for, that many died for, be taken away bit by bit to leave the next generation in the grip of a tyrannical SNP government?
Deans write that
"The highest placed Pro UK list party All for Unity had the advantage of George Galloway who is regularly on Television. It had Jamie Blackett who worked extremely hard and who writes regularly for the Daily Telegraph. It had others like me working behind the scenes. But still it only got 23,299 votes (0.86%). There were a variety of reasons for this, but the primary one is that lack of media exposure. "
I agree that the primary reason for A4U getting 0.86% of the votes was lack of media exposure. And I also agree that there were other reasons, However I disagree with Deans' conclusion that
"Unless a new party takes part in the TV debates it might as well not exist."
Unlike A4U, which had 10 months of existence before the 2021 election, Rebuild Scotland has five years in which to reach every household in Scotland. Media exposure is a huge advantage, but it is not the only way.
Deans continues, "if our task is to protect the territorial integrity of the UK, something like the All for Unity strategy will have to be adopted eventually."
I agree that it is the case that if the big 3 PRO-UK parties had united and stood only one PRO-UK candidate in each constituency then they could have beaten the SNP and protected the integrity of the UK. But they didn't, they refused to put "the territorial integrity of the UK" before their own party interests.
However, Rebuild Scotland has a joint 'task': 'saving Scotland and the UK' means preserving the integrity of the UK and also repairing the damage that has been wrought on Scotland mostly by SNP policies but also by some Labour policies.
Conservative, Labour and LibDem politicians have failed Scotland in 4 elections in a row! They appear to think they are entitled to never-ending chances! They have not simply failed to defeat the SNP in elections; they have also failed as an opposition.
In my eyes that makes them unfit to govern Scotland. So Rebuild Scotland will not be following the A4U strategy of facilitating such politicians' entry into government!
Even the former Deputy Leader of the SNP could see that the Hate Crime Bill is
“...one of the most pernicious and dangerous pieces of legislation ever produced by any government in modern times in any part of the United Kingdom.”
Jim Sillars on the Hate Crime Bill
Deans writes,
"All for Unity is the best placed, so it would make sense for it to be the Pro UK list party. But let’s get all of the leaders together to fight it out, decide who has the best chance and let’s all back that one party... With a single Pro UK list party, we might be able to influence the Lib Dems, Labour and Conservatives to at least stand down in those seats where they cannot win."
Many PRO-UK voters are angry with the big 3 PRO-UK parties, they are furious at their disregard for the danger we face; their decisions to put party before country. And they simply do not want to vote for them again!
Others, having 'held their nose' and tried tactical voting will never vote tactically again.
They want a new PRO-UK party to vote for! There is an appetite for a party that will stand up against the SNP and will also stand for Scottish culture and Scottish values. And 'We are all Jock Tamson's Bairns' is certainly an ideal within traditional Scottish culture.
It is not parties that do things; it is individual people who do things. Individual SNP people wasted a billion pounds of public money. Individual SNP, Green party, Liberal Democrat and Labour people voted to pass the Hate Crime Bill.
And I argue [in We're No Longer Jock Tamson's Bairns and elsewhere] that one of the reasons that the individual politicians in the Holyrood Opposition are so ineffectual is that they cannot think well enough because the ideas that have their roots in Post-modern Philosophy and are instantiated in Identity Politics, Critical Race Theory, Critical Theory, Intersectionality etc have lodged in the minds of almost every politician, so that for example they grant the premise that there are groups of people who need special protection under the law. Categorising adult people into groups is indulging in Identity Politics!
If there were groups of people that require special protection that means that everyone is not equal under the law. Some groups are more special than others.
It took thousands of years to establish 'equality under the law' as a principle and our politicians are dismantling this bit by bit.
We need people in Holyrood who can recognise the implications of the laws that are there passed. We need MSPs who reject 'woke'. We need new blood and new thinking if we are to truly save Scotland as well as preserving the integrity of the UK.
Well put and making a lot of sense . Not to sure of the name of the Party does not Do anything For me . But think on the whole your on the right track. But I do think that you have to be Pro Union and Not Just Rebuilding Scotland ,Think it has to be Rebuilding Scotland and the Union . Only my feeling
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