{"id":79486,"date":"2025-01-09T07:22:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T07:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=79486"},"modified":"2025-01-09T07:22:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T07:22:22","slug":"everything-has-changed-it-is-time-to-consider-what-we-once-thought-absurd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/09\/everything-has-changed-it-is-time-to-consider-what-we-once-thought-absurd\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything has changed. It is time to consider what we once thought absurd."},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a headline in The National<\/a> in Scotland this morning:<\/p>\n

\n

Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland. Is Scotland next?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am the author of the article in question, in which I set out my arguments, as I will in a video over the next day or two here.<\/p>\n

This is one of my suggestions:<\/p>\n

Talking of governments, there is one final dimension of this to consider. Suppose that quite soon, the UK has a far-right, English-dominated government in\u00a0Westminster\u00a0that is facing economic collapse as a consequence of\u00a0climate change\u00a0and the economic turmoil that Trump is going to create in the world economy. Might such a UK government be willing to negotiate the sale of Scotland? Imagine Farage in Number 10, and everything falls into place to make that idea plausible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are, of course, other suggestions, including that this idea might be ludicrous. But in response to that, I argue:<\/p>\n

Is this a ridiculous fantasy? I would love to reject my own argument for precisely that reason. The trouble is, once I had this thought, it would not go away. If it is easy to work out why Trump wants Greenland, and he has made that claim over a number of years now, it is just as easy to see why he might also want Scotland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We used to live in the land of the sane. We no longer do that. The insane is now on the agenda. We need to plan for it.<\/p>\n

I think that last point is the most important. Everything has changed. I am not sure we have got our heads around that as yet. We have to, and quickly. Fascists just think of countries as property to be possessed. We need defences to that argument, or that is what they will become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a headline in The National in Scotland this morning: Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland. Is Scotland next? I am the author of
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,106,140,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fascism","category-politics","category-scotland","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79487,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79486\/revisions\/79487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}