The Glasgow riots reflect Scotland’s ugly political tribalism

In 2014, a young SNP activist called Aidan Kerr caused some consternation when he contended that Scotland was undergoing ‘Ulsterisation’. The nation’s politics, which for the past generation had pitched nationalism against social democracy, was becoming a battle between nationalism and unionism. The casus belli would be identity, not class or income. Kerr’s critics were soon silenced as his predictions began to pan out. The Scottish Tories replaced Labour as the main opposition on a single-issue pro-Union platform. Labour politicians who had avoided the term ‘Unionist’ because of its association with cultural Protestantism embraced the label, if often with evident discomfort. 

Orange walks gained a competitor in secessionist parades, taking place on a monthly and even weekly basis, with thousands marching behind ‘Tory scum out’ banners bearing the emblem of Siol nan Gaidheal, an ethno-nationalist faction expelled from the SNP as ‘proto-fascist’. An approximation of a newspaper calling itself the National hit the shelves and interspersed hagiographic coverage of Nicola Sturgeon with campaigns against the few remaining symbols of British identity, from the BBC to Union Jack stickers on supermarket packaging.