QUOTE OF THE MONTH

‘I shall not forget my Edinburgh and Scottish roots. It’s part of my identity and I shall have the interests of the city, my home country and the Scottish Tory Party very much at heart.’

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the MP for Kensington & Chelsea

Sir Malcolm is one of the Scottish political refugees who have lost their seats in Scotland and have decided that a safe seat in England is more to their liking - especially since the Tories remain an insignificant force in Scotland. Sir Malcolm lost his Edinburgh Pentlands seat in the 1997 Labour landslide.

It is all very well for Scottish grandees like Sir Malcolm, still advocating Scottish interests from his safe London constituency, but this merely reveals the extent of the influence of the Tory McMafia and the extent to which English interests are losing out.

Sir Malcolm has recently opined about the Tory failure to win the last election - as well he might. Sir Malcolm said:

‘The choice is whether we continue down the cul-de-sac of the last 8 years or whether we choose an alternative conservative tradition... The last 8 years have been deeply, deeply defective. There is no excuse that is convincing as to why a party that has been in opposition for 8 years should be flat-lining. To have seen no increase in the share of the Conservative share of the vote, despite the intense unpopularity of the Government, is indefensible.'

Sir Malcolm criticised the Tories’ concentration on ‘classic right wing Conservative issues’ such as the EU, immigration and asylum. Scottish Tories were openly criticising Michael Howard’s concentration on these issues immediately after the general election.

Of course, the immigrant communities only make up less than 1% of the population of Scotland, and the issue of immigration is therefore less compelling for the Scots. Also the recent terrorist bombings occurred in England not Scotland.

The problem with the Tory proposals on immigration and asylum at the general election is that those proposals would not work if implemented. Giving the House of Commons a vote to set the number of immigrants to allow into England, is not a commitment to end mass immigration. The proposal to hand over control of asylum policy to the UN was rejected by the UN and was grossly irresponsible. UN officials can be bribed and we are supposed to be conducting a war on terror.

Michael Howard was unable to identify one other country which was prepared to set up holding centres for the processing of asylum seekers, which was another Tory proposal.

The Tories lost the election because their policies were not credible.

Sir Malcolm is right when he refers to the Tories as being ‘deeply, deeply defective’, which is why the English need their own party to represent their own interests in their own parliament.

Given his comments about the importance of his Scottish roots, Sir Malcolm may find that the English prefer to elect Englishmen to represent them in an English parliament.