GORDON Brown has condemned the “muscular Unionism” on display in the Tory leadership race as he accused Liz Truss of telling Scotland “to get lost” with her suggestion she would “ignore” the First Minister.
Speaking in Edinburgh on Sunday, the former Labour prime minister attacked the two candidates to replace Boris Johnson in No 10 as lacking “respect” for Scotland.
Brown also took a pop at Alba leader Alex Salmond, joking he was a “dictator who would stop at nothing” in a riff on Vladimir Putin during an interview with podcaster Matt Forde.
He condemned a comment made by Tory leadership hopeful Truss, who sparked fury across the political divide, in which she branded First Minister Nicola Sturgeon an “attention seeker” who was best ignored.
He said: “[Truss] is trying to take this domineering attitude, that the best thing to do is just to tell Scotland to get lost.
“You know, ‘I’ll ignore you, I’ll insult you, I’ll denigrate you.’
Brown tears into Truss’ ‘muscular Unionism’ pic.twitter.com/GwmRgg7rSh
— Hamish Morrison (@HMorrison97) August 7, 2022
“And that is a complete mistake because the one person who has got responsibility to try to bring people together is the Prime Minister.
“And you’ve got to be in a position where you can say, ‘Look let’s cooperate on things where we can work together on.’
“You cannot just say, ‘I’m not going to talk to you at all.’ It’s quite a ridiculous position.”
His intervention in the furore echoes that of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who told reporters last week that he wanted Sturgeon to be “held to account” and not ignored, conceding that all politicians were “attention seekers”.
Identifying himself as a “patriot” rather than a “nationalist”, Brown also fired criticism at the flag-waving tendencies of the Conservatives.
But he failed to mention Labour leader Keir Starmer’s fondness for flags, which was revealed in a strategy document leaked to The Guardian in February.
The guidance to the party was to make greater “use of the [Union] flag” as part of a plan to mark a clean break with the Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn years, who were depicted as being unpatriotic by the right-wing press during their periods at the helm of the Labour Party.
Brown added: “It’s this muscular Unionism, that Boris Johnson has sort of practised, and it’s where he says, ‘We’re going to put up more Union Jacks and we’re going to call the roads British roads’ and all that sort of stuff.
“It doesn’t work, what we’ve got to do is respect that people have decided on a different set of politicians and different leaderships and try and work with people.
“The only way that the Union or that Britain will survive is if people find better ways to work together.”
But Brown’s hopes the Tory party’s Union-jackery will let up any time soon will be dashed after Truss took the opportunity last week to pose beside what is thought to be the country’s biggest Union flag, which is painted on the side of a building on the Isle of Wight.
He said that both Rishi Sunak and Truss’s approach to Scotland was misguided. Recognising there would “always be tensions” between Scotland and England, the former Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath MP said Holyrood must be treated with “respect” by Westminster.
The former prime minister’s interview ran across a number of other topics, including the financial crash and his interactions with Putin.
He also reiterated his arguments for abolishing the House of Lords which he said should be replaced with something “more democratic”.
Forde asked Brown if he had thought Salmond would have ended up presenting a show on the Kremlin-linked channel RT after leaving frontline politics.
Forde said: “When you were dealing with Alex Salmond all those years ago, did you ever think it would end with him on a chat show on Russia Today?”
Brown replied to laughs from the audience: “Are you trying to compare Alex Salmond to Mr Putin?
“Well, one is a dictator who would stop at nothing…”
An Alba spokesman said: "Gordon Brown’s latest intervention is true to form in that is both ridiculous in nature and irrelevant in substance.
"It is doubtful if many Scots take seriously the words of a man who was a cheerleader for the illegal invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
“The historic 2007 election was a clear choice of the vision set out by Alex Salmond vs the Labour Party soon to be led by Gordon Brown.
"It seems Brown has never quite managed to get over his huge defeat which resulted in the formation of the first ever pro-independence government.
"His time would be better spent apologising to Scots for the role he played in the 2014 independence referendum, which at his desire has left us shackled to a UK Government overseeing a cost of living crisis that is forcing Scots into deep levels of poverty not seen since the 1980s.”
