Alex Salmond’s suggestion that Scotland is more predisposed towards ‘social justice’ than other parts of Britain is absurd, repellent, and embarrassing. Let’s take those points in order.
From the Left’s perspective first. To care about the dispossessed must surely imply a sense of solidarity. I walked to the BBC studio this morning through a nearly empty, still cold Brighton. Only nearly empty – the people who’d slept rough the night before were in evidence, of course. Salmond’s message of solidarity, of concern for the dispossessed in England, is: ‘Get lost. You don’t matter, except that my new socially just Scotland will act as a beacon to the socially unjust English.’
That Salmond beacon, unfortunately, would not warm a single, homeless, English soul. If you think political action can alleviate poverty, on what basis do you make such action more efficacious, by drawing an arbitrary circumference around those you seek to help?
During the discussion on the Today programme, my opponent claimed it was ‘specious’ of me to ask whether my English father had less concern for justice than my Scottish mother.
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