Exclusive interview for Bella Caledonia with Tariq Ali prior to his double-lecture this week in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Tariq Ali interviewed by James Foley.

JF: Scottish Labour politicians claim they speak for internationalism, and often accuse independence supporters of parochialism and petty nationalism. As an internationalist living in London, why are you supporting independence?

TA: Because I don’t accept the claims of New Labour or their coalition lookalikes that they are the internationalists. Their internationalism essentially means subordinating the entire British state to the interests of the United States. They have made Britain into a vassal state: on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on various other things. This isn’t even a big secret.

So I would challenge very strongly any idea that the governments within the British state have been internationalist. They haven’t been, for a very long time. That is something that needs to be squashed.

The second point is this: an independent Scotland, a small state, has far more possibilities of real, genuine internationalism. That means establishing direct links with many countries and peoples in the world. The Norwegians, for instance, both in their media and in their culture, are attuned to countries all over the world. I was in Norway last week at a conference on the Middle East, chaired by a Norwegian diplomat. And she said she’d just come back from two years in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, and she knew all about it. So the fact that you’re going to be small doesn’t mean you’re going to be parochial. On the contrary, it can have exactly the opposite impact.

JF: Many Labour politicians will also deride the SNP as neoliberal populists, as anti-working class, and so on. What’s your views on Scottish nationalism?

TA: The Scottish National Party has been transformed. When it was first set up, it was small-C conservative, and a bit archaic. But that was changed by the ’79 Group. Although many of its members were initially expelled, including Alex Salmond, they are now in government. Also, the SNP have been recruiting a lot of people, including Labour supporters and former members of far-Left groups. I personally do not agree with their social and economic program, I think it’s too weak. On many other things, I would also have criticisms.

But I think I would definitely support a Yes vote, purely for the reason that the Scottish people have a democratic right to determine their own future. This is the first time they’ve been asked to actually vote on that. The Union that was pushed through opportunism, corruption, and bribery in 1707 was not the result of a democratic vote, as we know full well. Which is why they had to fight the battle of Culloden. That was a decisive episode of Scottish history, because that defeat at Culloden imposed the Union as we know it, something totally dominated by Britain.

The SNP is now trying to break with that tradition, and effectively to ask the Scottish people to declare the independence which they once had. And I think it would be better for Scotland, and I think it would be better for England. New Labour have become totally corrupt, in my opinion, on every social, political, and economic front. New Labour are the new Tartan Tories.

This doesn’t mean the SNP should not be argued with, debated with, and I’m sure people within its ranks will do that. And the Radical Independence alliance is a massive factor in this. I’ve been invited to speak to a Yes meeting organised by the SNP in Kirkcaldy in June, which I will do.

I’m very very strongly in favour of Scottish independence, and always have been, despite disagreements with the SNP. The idea that one can’t disagree with the SNP if one supports independence is just absurd.

JF: Could you talk a little about the potential global implications of a break up of Britain?

TA: I think, in particular, it would be very positive for England, which has always been the dominant factor in the Union. It will open up new political space. It may not benefit progressives initially, but it will at least allow politics to be discussed afresh and anew. That’s the first thing: it will be good for English democracy, which is in a very sad state.

The second thing is that it will help even the most rabid unionists in Britain to understand that the game is over, and that they have to move some way towards abandoning imperial pretensions. Those pretensions persist even though they’re a joke in the system, and they’re only leading courtesy of the United States. And who knows? Maybe it may open up space for British independence again. I mean genuine British independence, which hasn’t happened since at least 1956.

We shall see what happens, but I doubt the effects will be negative. And I think an independent Scotland , playing an independent role in world politics and in Europe, would have an impact in Britain.

The other thing that’s worth saying is that this can only be done with the consent of the Scottish people. No one can force it. So there can be no argument that arms were twisted. If anything, the campaign of fear and intimidation that has been waged by London is utterly pathetic, and I hope Scottish people will fight against it.

I remember when Tony Blair came on his last tour of Scotland, and he said, If you vote for independence, every family will lose £5,000 a year. Who dreamed up that figure? Some bureaucrat in Whitehall who wants something to frighten the Scots. And then I read, just a few days ago, that Danny Alexander is repeating these absurd figures. They do this because they want to frighten people, by saying your living standards will decline. But there’s no reason they should decline if the economy is properly handled.

JF: Do you think British elites are worried about the prospect of independence?

TA: Sections of them probably are, because they will see it as a blow to British pretensions. But I think there may well be a section of the elite that might well say, Fine, it will save us money, it will stop the subsidies, etc, and Scotland doesn’t make much money anyway. This is the section of the elite which believes that the only way forward is effectively to sell the British economy and the cities of the South to the rich, to oligarchs from various nationalities, Ukrainian, Russian, Arab, etc, who dominate large parts of the financial markets in London today. That section of the elite, which thinks this is the future, won’t care at all, whatever they say in public.

JF: Do you think the Unionists are bluffing over the question of currency union?

TA: I think they are largely bluffing. But I think Alex Salmond should call the bluff by saying, If you are going to behave in such a mean spirited and petty-minded way, then Scotland will have no alternative but to create its own currency. As it is, Scottish currency looks different from the currency in Britain. Scotland prints that money. And we will print our own currency, if you bar us from influence, we will seek other ways. I think Salmond should be sharp on this, and call their bluff. He shouldn’t be frightened.

JF: Can I ask a little bit about the historical element of this. Why do you think the neoliberal counter-revolution was so successful in Britain?

TA: Well, I would challenge the view that it’s been successful. Or if has been successful, it’s largely because the trade unions and the Labour Party didn’t put up any struggle or fight against it. If you look at South America, even small countries in that continent who challenged neoliberalism, and have broken from it to various degrees, have done so with the help of huge social movements which erupted. Unfortunately, the British trade union movement was so defeated after the Miners’ Strike that they just gave up. They didn’t struggle, they didn’t fight, and once the Labour Party had effectively killed itself by becoming New Labour, then you had in Tony Blair a hardcore Thatcherite leader. And he carried on in the same old Thatcherite way.

So in terms of providing any alternative to these people, New Labour and the Conservatives collaborated in saying there was no alternative. And it’s not that people support it, especially after the Wall Street crash in 2008. It is effectively that they have not been presented alternatives.

If Scotland gains independence, and its leadership has the guts, it could break with neoliberalism. In Britain, there was no force from below to challenge it. People felt defeated, they felt demoralised, and they felt that they had trusted for a long time had betrayed them completely. And the way people challenge this is from the right. The growing support for UKIP, in particular, is a way of opposing the games played by the elite. It’s foolish, because Farage and company offer absolutely nil. But that is the scale of the desperation. And nothing exists on the Left to challenge that.

In other parts of Europe, there are challenges from the Left. But not in Britain. I would not say people accept it, I would say they have been shown no alternative by any group of people.

JF: You’re going to speak this week about “dismantling” the British state. Some people have asked you mean by this.

TA: I mean that the British state, created by the Union in the 18th century, has effectively been unchallenged. The only written aspect of the British constitution is the so-called Treaty of Union of 1707. Now, what the Scottish people are voting for, if, as I hope, they do vote yes, then the British state as it exists is dismantled, full stop. The vote for Scottish independence is the end of the British state as we know it. How it will develop after that remains to be seen. But, certainly, Scotland breaking away dismantles the British state.

JF: A lot of socialists would deny that there is something particularly toxic about the British state, and would say that all capitalist states are bad. Of course, we know that rivals like France, Germany, and Italy have their problems as well. Do you think there is a distinctiveness to the state of British? And does this mean we have to challenge it in a special way?

TA: On one level, it can be said that the capitalist economy of these states is more or less the same. But these states do have peculiarities. In the case of Britain, as my old friend Tom Nairn has pointed out, these peculiarities are in the realm of satire. The preservation of a monarchy, kept going largely through the monarchic internationalism of the House of Hannover, which found rulers for Britain when it ran out of natural ones. Creating and maintaining this monarchy is a farce.

The House of Lords is also totally undemocratic. All of this gives the British state an archaic character. The fact that the absurd soap opera Downton Abbey is incredibly popular is an indication of what that means. All this has bred within Britain a deference to the ruler, a doffing of the cap, and all that, which transfer to Scotland in the same way, in the sense that the same Royal family has a house in Balmoral when it comes to Scotland and so on.