One of Gordon Brown’s flunkies* writes in today’s Telegraph:
More than a year ago I argued that a debate about the future of the United Kingdom was long overdue. I suggested that, unless we start to focus more on what unites us than we do on what divides us, there is a real risk that one day people will wake up and find that the benefits of the Union – which they had taken for granted for so long – had disappeared. I was accused of crying wolf. But when secessionist forces are loudly at work it is not the time for silence and passivity. We must be resolute in defending the Union and argue against those who put it at risk.
What follows is blather about
common values we share across the United Kingdom: values we have developed together over the years that are rooted in liberty, in fairness and tolerance, in enterprise, in civic initiative and internationalism.
Because, obviously, all these things are at risk if Scotland (or any other part of the United Kingdom, for that matter) were to secede?
It gets worse, if you can believe it:
So although the Union reflects self-interest – and indeed enlightened self-interest – on the part of its constituent nations it means much more than that; and much more too than a contract of convenience that can easily be renegotiated when it suits each party.
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