Gordon Brown Bottle Job....Good News for Unionists!

Mr Brown, speaking exclusively to the BBC's Andrew Marr on Saturday in Downing St, said: "I'll not be calling an election. I have a vision for change in Britain and I want to show people how in government we're implementing it

More like he’s had a vision of tomorrow’s News of the World Poll:

A poll to be published by Sunday's News of the World puts the Tories ahead by 6% in marginal seats, with the party overall at 44% against Labour's 38%.
Translated into a general election, it would mean a hung Parliament with Labour holding 306 seats and the Tories 246.

Before I head out for a nice, cold, bottled Brown ale, here’s a very quick response to the news from a Unionist's point of the view...

From that narrow perspective, on all four fronts, it’s actually good news that the election is not happening within the next couple of months.

The SNP and Salmond are still enjoying a honeymoon period with the Sottish electorate and are riding high in the polls- basically because they haven’t been really tested yet. However, there were hopeful signs this week of an informal unionist ganging-up on the minority administration and at some stage, the SNP are going to have to start producing results, instead of cute sound-bites. But minority governments generally get no favours from the majority opposition (unless it reflects better on them, of course), so things can only get more difficult as time progresses. Let’s see how arrogant Salmond is in twelve or twenty-four months’ time.

There are evidently tensions within the One Wales Coalition, there are also evidently genuine and unhappy unionists within the Welsh Labour Party. Again, like in Scotland, things haven’t been really pushed yet, but if we wait a few months down the line, then the bigger cracks will start to appear and there will be only loser from this deal- it won't be Labour. Plaid Cymru have promised their faithful the moon, once a few of those promises start getting reneged on due to lack of their coalition partner’s support, then there’s also going to be hard times ahead. I’ll give it about 6 months before we start seeing fireworks and they’ll be exploding internally within Plaid Cymru.

There are also evidently (heh! heh!) tensions within the Northern Ireland “Administration”. I’ll try to keep a straight face on this one, but anyone who seriously expected a “government” which contains such luminaries as Edwin Poots and Catriona Ruane to operate in any coherent and efficient fashion, really needed to start dropping the reality tabs. If there was an election tomorrow, both the Ulster nationalists and the Irish republicans would undoubtedly sweep the board, simply by resorting to the time-honoured electoral method of banging the sectarian drum. But on the horizon we’ve got the Irish Language Act, various “educational” and of course, the Maze White Elephant “debates”- expect fireworks and the whole charade to start falling part, probably well within 6 months. If that scenario does unfold, then the respective communities will be holding their self-declared defenders to account...in that case, we may well see the Dupes and the Sinners back on the defensive for the first time for a long time. I also believe that for Unionism’s long term future, we need to see a greater variety and diversity of the product on offer. *United* candidates in places like S. Belfast and Fermanagh/S.Tyrone, in practice would inevitably mean the Dupes calling the shots- a more fundamentalist and yes, bigotted Unionism that I, and many others, could not, in all conscience, support. The Dupes are going to take a few more hits (The Maze is a potential timebomb, just needs one investigative journalist to start doing his job on few of the recent property transactions up there and...and I’ll leave the rest to your own imagination). And once the Dupes have been humbled then we can start talking about this fabled “Unionist Unity”.

Last, but not least, England.
Look at that NOW poll again, the Tories win the popular vote, yet Labour remain the UK’s government, why?
In two words, Scotland and Wales. Both countries would basically remain overwhelmingly Labour and their MPs would be effectively keeping Brown and NULabour in power.
The English would be governed by a party that they did not collectively vote for- imagine what kind of impetus that would give to the campaigns demanding “English Votes for English Laws”, and an autonomous, standalone English parliament. The temptation for the Tories to cast aside their British heritage and become “The English Conservatives” would be overwhelming I fear. Much better that they take a pause, continue the debate and ….start to realise that it is the “Devolution Project” that they should be attacking, not the integrity of our nation. Why on earth is the Conservative Party in Wales and Scotland not stressing more their Unionist and British credentials? In both cases, a substantial segment of the population remains loyal to the concept of the UK, they should not be betrayed on the altar of Cameron’s ambition; more to the point they represent the best opportunity for the Tories to continue as a political force in both countries and the United Kingdom as a whole.