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Portillo attacks Brown and says independence is viable |
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Tuesday, 29 May 2007 |
Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown is “unhelpful and uncourteous”, according to former Conservative MP Michael Portillo.
Speaking to Holyrood about his time shadowing the Labour Chancellor in
2000, Portillo describes the period as his unhappiest time in
Westminster, saying Brown treated him “rather shabbily” and that he was
“unhelpful and uncourteous” towards him.
Portillo goes on to say that Brown’s interest in the Scottish elections
was one of self-interest and about securing his own power base in
Westminster.
“I thought the result was less bad for Labour than I had imagined. I
think the view from south of the Border is that it looked as though
Brown had avoided a disastrous result. His position would be, I think,
substantially worse if he had suffered an even worse result in Scotland
because it would have been so easy to argue that he was railroading
legislation through parliament, affecting the English and not his own
constituents, at a time when he had clearly lost the support of people
back home.”
However, Portillo had more positive things to say about First Minister
Alex Salmond, calling him: “Extraordinarily able, very articulate,
witty, extremely good at needling his opponents and tactically very
clever.”
He added: “There was that extraordinary period when the Nats were not
led by him and he seems head and shoulders above anyone in his party,
and I would think head and shoulders above anyone in the Scottish
Parliament.”
Portillo went on to call for the issue of independence to be debated
without the “fear factor”. He says: “I think both Scotland and England
should by now have moved on from fearing independence. I think it
should be something that is debated without the fear factor.
“Look, 30 years ago it seemed extraordinary the idea that Scotland
could be independent, but with the development of the EU, Scotland
would now have many countries of similar or smaller size in the EU and
some of those are outstandingly successful – think of Ireland, think of
Denmark, which are equal size, and then of course, you think of Latvia,
Estonia and Slovenia and so on that are much smaller than Scotland. So
the proposition is no longer absurd.”
However, he goes onto call Scotland “the most socialist country in
Europe”, which he says he regards as “swimming against the tide of
history and is only made possible by English subsidy.”
He added: “The countries in Europe that were highly socialist that have
had to fend for themselves have, of course, abandoned socialist
solutions and are now typified by progressive, low-rate tax systems.
I’m thinking of countries like Slovakia and so on. I think Scotland
would be forced along the same route.”
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