My column for The National is out:
'This is one where all those with an interest in Scotland being independent must have an opinion now' // Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy)https://t.co/qmQGyjlGGi
— The National (@ScotNational) June 11, 2021
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What Scotland can learn from the G7 is that Johnson’s ‘Global Britain’, build back better on a World Stage narrative, in the light of day (rather than Downing Street PR or our feeble-witted media Johnson-gofers), is mere gabbling: we are Global, with a special relationship with the US that does not make us needy, so it isn’t actually special because we are an independent Global Britain; but it is an indestructible relationship that is vital: gabbling. Johnson actually used the word ‘reality’ in the midst of this guff; but we know from Tom McTague that johnson doesn’t believe in reality; he believes in a “narrative”; a story he can sell, a story the British people can be seduced to buy. A story of Churchill, Dunkirk and the Atlantic Charter. A story from long, long ago and a story that was really about the end of Empire, and of Britain as a World Power. The ‘reality’ to which Johnson too carelessly refers is merely a reminder that life is not a story, but full of hard-nosed facts, not subject to his trite story-telling.
The reality is of Great Powers on a scale undreamed of by the risible Johnson Global Britain (a player too small to turn the World into a market niche opportunity); of China, of the US, of the rise of India, and of European Powers that know they need the combined power of the EU in order simply to make a fist of Europe in the real World that now exists. For the first time in its own history, in a modern post-war world that America did so much to create, the US is confronted by a world power competitor in the PRC that, unlike Russia, or the Great Powers of the past is primarliy an accomplished economic giant, with a population of 1.4Bn, growing diplomatic aspirations and potentially possesses military power (including in science, technology and in space), to match.
Global Britain operating as an independent player on the world stage, in all our futures? Don’t be daft.