The perfect union

Tweet Sometimes, one rather suspects that some politicians get so carried away by their own rhetoric that they don’t really think through the implications of what they are saying.  That was certainly the feeling that I got when I read this report in Saturday’s Western Mail about the question and answer session with Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in Midlothian.

The particular – and peculiar – sentence which struck me was this one:

“If we didn’t have a union right now the Labour party would be arguing to have one... ”

The only way that I can see of interpreting that is that, if events had turned out differently in 1706/7, and if, instead of uniting with England, Scotland had remained an independent state for the last 300 years, then the Englandandwales Labour Party would today be arguing for union with Scotland. Really?

(And if events in Ireland in had turned out differently would the Labour Party, by the same logic about the perfection of the current union, be arguing for detaching the northern six counties and uniting them with England?) 

It’s peculiar that it isn’t just union in a general sense that they would be arguing for – they’re not arguing, for instance, for union with Ireland, or France, or anywhere else.  It seems to be that is the specific precise union which exists, with its currently defined boundaries, which is so perfect that the Labour Party would have, apparently, invented it if history hadn’t already brought it about.  The logic is curious, to say the least.