A PROLIFIC Unionist blogger has claimed Rishi Sunak makes the SNP “archaic” in her first piece for The Spectator.
Effie Deans, writing under the name Irena Skuba, has taken her turgid ramblings and plopped them (with a little editing) into the pages of one of the UK’s oldest publications.
The Spectator tells readers it is the “best written” weekly in the English language and that its writers’ only allegiance is to “clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion”.
It was kind of them to lower that high bar for Effie.
Rishi Sunak spells trouble for the SNP. It was much easier to argue against Boris. First article in the Spectator. Hope there are more to comehttps://t.co/wj6nIoAD3H
— Effie Deans (@Effiedeans) October 27, 2022
Her 1185-word piece includes zingers such as: “While everyone’s attention was on Liz Truss no one’s focus was on Nicola Sturgeon. Which must have hurt especially while she was trying to advance the case for Scottish independence.”
She bizarrely goes on to mount an argument which appears to suggest sectarian Scots will be so busy twisting themselves in knots over whether Britain’s first Asian PM is a “Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu” it will consign the SNP to the dustbin.
We wish we were making this up.
Effie goes on: “Rishi Sunak can destroy the Scottish nationalist argument by making it appear irrelevant to our shared future that does not require a shared past.”
I read, against my better judgement, a certain very-online blogger's first column for the Spectator. Their Scottish coverage is becoming straight-up copium for partisan unionists - total lack of understanding of nationalism and the grounding of SNP/independence support.
— Mark McGeoghegan 🌻 (@markmcgeoghegan) October 27, 2022
Unfortunately, analysis of what this means was not possible because it is barely a sentence.
And Deans claims the PM offers a "way forward" to a new Britain, where "we don’t care who your ancestors were or what if anything they did to my ancestors".
Presumably Sunak's utopia will mean people also care about pesky things like the fact you're the wealthiest MP currently in the Commons, the fact your wife was a tax avoider, or that you own a property portfolio which would put Donald Trump to shame.
Sturgeon, in contrast to Sunak, offers “people waving fake claymores and re-enactments of Bannockburn”, Effie/Irena writes, presumably because it was easier to engage with a ridiculous caricature of independence supporters than to grapple with the reality of modern Scottish politics.
Mark McGeoghegan, a Glasgow University researcher in nationalism, said the article showed The Spectator’s Scottish coverage was “copium for partisan Unionists”. Copium is internet slang for an imaginary opiate taken when one is faced with defeat or loss.
He added the piece showed a “total lack of understanding of nationalism and the grounding of SNP/independence support”.
Meanwhile, Effie herself seemed chuffed she had been published in The Spectator and tweeted she was hopeful she’d get more chances to do so in future.
The Jouker has asked the magazine if she will become a regular contributor but we’ve had no word as yet. We might gently suggest they knock a few pennies off the cover price if she does.
