INDEPENDENCE may not be “the land of milk and honey” but at least we’d be in charge.
That’s according to Susie McCabe, the award-winning comedian who won praise for her straight-talking answers on Thursday’s Question Time in Inverness.
The Glaswegian took on the idea that a second independence referendum is divisive and that a No vote in 2014 was the only way to maintain Scotland's membership of the EU.
Asked why she found herself with such a positive reception, McCabe told The National that honesty goes a long way.
“I think when you’re not a politician, you don’t need to toe a party line,” she said.
“And even people who don't fundamentally agree with you on something that’s as divisive as independence respect you for your truth and respect you for your honesty.
“And I think they’ll respect you if you put a cohesive argument together on why you think something which is something that's been lacking in our politics for the best part of a decade.
“People respect you being honest and not trying to squeeze in something funny, because you know, there’s nothing funny about the cost of living crisis.”
McCabe, like so much of the Scottish electorate, was previously a traditional Labour voter – but things changed in the lead up to the 2014 referendum.
I don’t know if there’ll be a Scottish independence referendum but just a few points - Susie McCabe #bbcqt pic.twitter.com/CbzSNCe0wM
— Phantom Power (@PhantomPower14) June 30, 2022
“Everything about me screams Labour,” she admitted. “East end of Glasgow, working-class, woman, gay.
“The last time I voted for Labour was 2010 and I’d say gradually from 2010 I started to see the argument against independence and it made me go, ‘oh, wait a minute. This is wrong’.
The morning after the 2014 referendum, McCabe, like most Yessers, was despondent.
That was bad enough, and then the other referendum happened.
“The Brexit referendum for me was unforgivable," she said. “To sort your internal party dispute by calling a national referendum, after five years of austerity measures was quite frankly, unpalatable for me.
“That’s the moment I went ‘no, no, no’.”
“And now that we’ve got that, quite frankly, f****** narcissist running a country.”
McCabe, who was an electrician before her success in Scotland’s comedy circuit, said even though she disagreed with what she described as “old school Scottish Tory, small C, Church of Scotland, middle-class, Daily Mail-reading Tories” she still respected them.
“But now we’ve got populism in our politics where it’s just slogans and no policy,” she lamented. "This is just a vanity project.”
Hi Twitter , thanks for all the nice comments re Question Time. Like you I have my political beliefs and they won’t align with everyone and that’s ok. It’s good to have the debate I am not a member of any political party so I never have any skin in the game. Have a great weekend
— Susie McCabe (@susie_mccabe) July 1, 2022
This evolution in British politics feeds into McCabe’s desire for independence, and while it won't be “the land of milk and honey,” she admits, “all I ask is that we’re in charge.”
During her appearance on Question Time, the comic took issue with the use of “divisive” as an anti-indy argument.
Described as “an obsession” and even “tearing the country apart” by Scotland’s Unionist party leaders, it’s not an argument that convinces McCabe against indyref2.
“I’ve grown up in the West of Scotland my whole life, and it’s divided through religion. We just saw that this weekend. That’s divisive.
“Our whole society is framed through social class because you have a monarchy at the top of that.
“Our actual politics in the UK Parliament is a two-party system set up for tribal arguments. That’s divisive.
“So if you're talking about divisiveness, and wanting to get out of it, would you just make us all communists? Because that's basically what they're saying.
“So yes, it is divisive, but you know what else is divisive? Salt and sauce or salt and vinegar. Music taste is divisive, comedy is divisive. You can look at everything and see the division.
“The United Kingdom is a country that separated two countries into four in the past 100 years, that was divisive. Where do you stop?”
McCabe also pointed to what she felt is a lack of understanding from London leaders on that country north of the Border.
“I read David Cameron’s autobiography,” she said. “And if you ever to have the summing of things that are out of touch, David Cameron in his autobiography mentioned the last day of campaigning in the 2015 general election.
“And he’s gone ‘The last day of the election campaigning is always chaos because you're trying to cover as much ground as possible. So I started off in the far north up at 5am. I was in a Hi-Fi manufacturing plant and Paisley.’
“And I'm going 'Paisley's 12 miles from Glasgow! Glasgow's not even in the middle of Scotland, never mind the far north.’
“If you don’t know what a map looks like and where places are how are you possibly going to represent someone in Orkney or Shetland or Inverness. We’re an hour and a half from the Border.”
