STURGEON - JUST ANOTHER FANATIC.

Nicola Sturgeon is a fanatic. She has one idea in her head and that is to separate Scotland from England, followed by tying her newly 'free' country to the European Union's restrictive and stifling bureaucracy.

Sturgeon claims that she has an arguable case and a mandate from the electorate although this claim is, to say the least, dubious. In 2014, the Scottish people voted against leaving the United Kingdom by a significant majority, even though in the general election of the following year the Scottish National Party won all but 3 of Scotland's 59 parliamentary seats. This time round, while the SNP did make gains, it won only 48 seats and yet Sturgeon claims that this gives her a clear mandate to demand another referendum on the issue of Scottish independence. However, it seems fairly obvious that a vote for the SNP is not necessarily a vote for independence and, even if it is, the supposed mandate given to Sturgeon is actually less strong than she had in 2015, the year after she'd lost the original referendum.

It's also the case that while the Conservatives did lose seats in Scotland in the recent election, this was mostly to do with a collapse in the Labour vote with former Labour voters switching to the SNP in epic numbers, while the Conservative vote held up fairly well in most of the country. Sturgeon's claims that the SNP's success was a vote against the Conservatives and Brexit, and in favour of a second independence referendum simply don't stand up to scrutiny. 

When David Cameron agreed to allow the referendum in 2014 it was on the basis that it was a once in a generation opportunity; the Scottish people rejected that opportunity in favour of maintaining the status quo. Sturgeon now claims that the UK's exit from the European Union is a matter of such import that a second referendum must be held, irrespective of the 'once in a generation' status given to the first. One wonders what arguments she would advance for the third, fourth and later referendums that would be deemed necessary after her second one also fails to produce the desired result.

Sturgeon ignores the fact that Scotland has not been an independent country since the Act of Union of 1707, a rather longer time than the 46 years that the UK has been in the EU. Disentangling Scotland from the UK would be a far more complicated matter although Sturgeon glosses over even the obvious difficulties of the position of the monarchy, the currency to be used and border issues, particularly given that it's also her intention to take an independent Scotland back into the European Union. The problems of the Northern Ireland border would pale into insignificance alongside those of resolving the little matter of a direct and open EU border with a major economic power.

But, of course, when it's a matter of fanaticism nothing but the goal matters. Sturgeon hates England and the very idea of the United Kingdom. She will deride the Conservatives as being wedded to a right wing nationalistic philosophy and yet seems oblivious to the contradiction of her stance. She hates Scotland being a small cog in the wheel of the larger United Kingdom and yet is determined to make it an even smaller cog in the much larger, and far more dictatorial, wheel of the European Union. 

Fanatics use the arguments that support their purpose and ignore those that don't. Anything that they can twist to their own use will be so twisted. Facts will be distorted and used selectively, lies will abound. Thankfully for the people of the United Kingdom, Sturgeon's fanaticism is unlikely to yield results in the foreseeable future.