“The feeling of being strapped to a political entity in permanent decline is amplified when you realise that in ‘defeating the Tories’ you’ve replaced Sunak’s economics with Osborne’s. Labour is a replicant of the Conservative Party circa 2010”

We are stuck in a place that looks and feels utterly different from 2014, yet is still mired in the same issues and questions. While the Unionist camp is in gleeful mode after the last general election, you are also struck by the extent to which little has changed. Writing in The Scotsman Joyce McMillan notes (‘Why cock-a-hoop Scottish unionists are actually LOSING the argument‘) : “…what is striking about the Scottish unionist cause, as it marks the tenth anniversary of its victory, is how little it has moved on, in these ten years, from the wholly negative “project fear” approach that delivered that result, but also drove much larger numbers than ever before into the independence camp. There is, after all, something profoundly wrong and reactionary about a Union which can only survive by constantly telling the people of Scotland how broken and dependent on handouts the place is, how useless they and their elected government are, and what fools they were ever to vote for it.”