David Kerr for Glasgow North East

Wow, this post has been up for five minutes and hasn’t yet attracted some idiotic comment by some hyper-unionist anti-SNP nutter.

I just chose to roll my eyes…..

I guess maybe I should tell my husband to vote for them…

Actually, if you are a citizen of a Commonwealth country (or Éire) and domiciled in the United Kingdom you can vote for them yourself!

I knew a Canadian girl at St Andrews who voted in the 2005 UK General Election.

What are his actualy policies though?

Maggie alienated the electorate here with ‘Me, Me, Me!’ laisez faire capitalism and got slaughtered (I bore one of the knives).

More recently, the Green Party campaigned on generally sensible green policies and did well. The next election they revealed an explicitly secular / p.c. agenda and subsequently got slaughtered (I bore one of the knives)

Labour has alienated the elctorate up here with a slightly watered down laisez faire capitalism but twinned it with a viciously secular p.c. agenda. It is about to be slaughtered (the first blood was let in the aforementioned Glasgow East by election.) ( I will be brandishing one of the knives)

In all three events above I believe I am / will be a fairly typical thirty – something voter.

Okay, I am, like, so sure that is not fair to the average Brit that I could just show up with my Spousal Visa and start voting. The Commonwealth is a big place and not all the Commonwealthy have Briton’s best interests at heart. I mean, I do. But not everybody does, come on!

Beware. Despite a few (just a handful, actually) of any given nationalist party stalwarts may be Catholic (politicians are exceptional, for good and/or bad) truth is that regional nationalism is the most staggering byproduct of secularisation.

When former devout nations undo, somehow, sometime, their attachments to Faith, they may recombinate the individual quench for a Higher Love to a national faith. See the examples of the Basque country, Padania, Catalonia, etc.

In other words, the fact that he is Catholic, does not make his party Catholic. On the contrary, SNP is an outright post-religious party, if the above reasoning makes any sense. Hence, they are pursuing the Catholic vote as they may be pursuing the gay vote all the same.

On the other side, the fact that voters are more conservative and vaguely supportive of some kind of union does not mean that much. As with any political party, it will not be the rank and file the one who will be leading the party action and proposals. Actually, they may well just follow…

Mountolive, Basques and Catalans not withstanding, regionalism does not always lead to secularism.

The Jacobinsm of the post-revolutionary state sought to destroy any ancient regional distinctions, that certainly had a secularizing result.

Also just consider Italian and German unification.

It seems to me that religious faith often does quite better in microstates (Andora, San Marino, Malta, Licthenstein) then their big nation-state counterparts.

A regional outlook on life has done a lot less damage to the Faith than nationalism.

That said, I don’t know much about UK poltiics or this particular situation. I do know that “regional nationalism” like so many things is an idea that can work for good or for ill, just contrast the Spanish Carlists with the Basques, both have a sort of “regional nationalism” and one group is among the most loyal to the Church, the other, the most secularized.

You are painting with two broad a brush.

Oh, sure, admitedly, I may have used some broad paint, like anyone else, I suppose.

The matter is far too complicated to illuminate it with a couple posts.
I am aware that the local Church has typically been a driving force in the rise of regional nationalisms (Brittany, the Basque Country, Catalonia are all but three examples). The problem is that, typically, this nationalist pandora quickly gets out of hand and, like a black hole, absorbs everything around it, including religion and the Catholics typically remain as a mere subgroup of the nationalists, and not the most influential one, by the way.

I know rather well these cases I mentioned before. I wonder, though, how is in the Ulster case. But my call is that Catholic doctrine is no longer (if it ever was) able to rein nationalism there.

The SNP: the leftwingery of the Labour Party, with Scottish nationalism tacked on. No thanks.

I have no idea why David’s an SNP man. Still, voting for Tam Dalyell didn’t necessarily mean one was a Labour supporter. I’d vote for David if he was standing in my constituency, despite his unfortunate party allegiance.