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Writer Neil McLeod says Scotland and England are moving in starkly different directions on big issues

ON Monday night in his hotel room at the Tory party conference, Michael Gove tweeted his belief that Mrs Brown’s boys is "comedy genius", and on Tuesday Jim Davidson was in attendance at the conference.

This all seemed perfectly in keeping with a gathering so distressingly full of unsubtle, outdated characters who would be comedic if they weren’t so serious.

The Johnny foreigner-bashing and red white and blue-tinted misty-eyed evocation of days of empire is like watching a rerun of Til Death Us Do Part or Love Thy Neighbour.

Welsh leader Andrew RT Davies continued the bumbling farce when he promised the Tories would "make breakfast a success" instead of Brexit. I wouldn’t even trust them to boil an egg, get the proportions of milk and cereal right or get any of it ready before dinner time.

What we had was a four-day conference that could be seen as a microcosm of Theresa May’s possible four-year premiership: get the Brexit issue out of the way nice and early, full of enough pomp and bravado to cover the lack of actual detail, then move onto a cartoon cavalcade of policies culled straight out of Andrea Leadsom’s scrapbook of Daily Mail cuttings.

In a one-note terrace chant of anti-immigration rhetoric straight out of the Ukip songbook, Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced cutting the number of overseas students, making it more difficult for UK firms to hire foreign workers and to list those they do hire in an effort to "shame" them, and suggested getting rid of foreign doctors as soon as sufficient numbers of British are trained.

She finished by rubbishing Labour’s immigration impact fund, and then proudly proclaimed she would be copying the policy but giving it a slightly different name.

It’s almost impossible to liken anyone to Hitler without being branded hysterical but take sections like this from the 'Subjects and Citizens' chapter of Mein Kampf: "The state must draw a sharp line of distinction between those who, as members of the nation, are the foundation and the support of its existence and greatness, and those who are domiciled in the state simply as earners of their livelihood there," and tell me that that wouldn’t have sat comfortably alongside anything Amber Rudd said at the Tory conference.

The rhetoric of the conference is just the product of an increasing emboldening of xenophobia and racism over recent years, topped by the triumphalism of Brexit.

Theresa May as home secretary contributed to the building atmosphere of hostility in July 2013 when the Home Office deployed mobile advertising vans in six London boroughs telling illegal immigrants to 'GO HOME or face arrest'.

The frequency of the use of the words 'go home' or 'leave' towards those from abroad, or with foreign ancestry, show the emotive power this language was quite wittingly echoing.

'Post-referendum racism and xenophobia', an account published in July of racist incidents collected by the social media sites PostRefRacism, Worrying Signs and iStreetWatch, highlighted that there had been a near doubling of racist attacks in England in the four weeks after the EU referendum.

Over 500 separate incidents: assaults, arson attacks and dog excrement shoved through letter boxes, diners refusing to be served by foreign waiters, a crowd striding through a London street chanting: "First we’ll get the Poles out, then the gays."

The fact that all races were being targeted highlighted it wasn't just racism against other Europeans which had been awoken by the Brexit campaign.

May is trying to electrify a political Frankenstein’s monster of big state social interventionism and populist anti-big business, anti-globalisation sentiment with Brexit triumphalism and anti-immigration.

The prime minister’s keynote speech is designed to artfully conceal the truth through statements like "a country that works for everyone", and actually talking about the working class again certainly signals a move from the Cameron and Osborne Lord Fauntleroy capitalism.

The soundbites were completely free of references to actual redistributive policies. The lower classes were workshy skivers and chavs and now they’re the backbone of Britain as the Conservatives realise that they can galvanise the traditional Labour heartlands that jumped to Ukip.

May is trying to electrify a political Frankenstein’s monster of big state social interventionism and populist anti-big business, anti-globalisation sentiment with Brexit triumphalism and anti-immigration – not dissimilar to Marine Le Pen, who enthusiastically acclaimed May's speech and, in particular, her assertion that if you considered you were a citizen of the world you’re a citizen of "nowhere".

It is this parochial outlook, not the spirit of internationalism that is, in fact, delusional. There is no historical golden age of British purity or glory to revisit.

Immigration and cross border co-operation have always been prevalent. Nelson had 22 nationalities in the British Navy that fought at Trafalgar. Fifteen other nationalities flew in the battle of Britain, around 20 per cent of all pilots who fought. So by Amber Rudd’s proposals, they’d have had to account for their hiring policy despite the historic victories.

If a hostile environment is embedded politically, it can’t be a surprise that it takes root culturally. Trump, Wilders, Le Pen, Orban and now, perhaps, May, germinate the politics of hate.

It's not about "taking a country back" and recreating a golden age, but about creating a different, far more hostile and depressing country than ever before: a cowardly new world built on scapegoating and old fashioned divide and rule.

It's not about "taking a country back" and recreating a golden age, but about creating a different, far more hostile and depressing country than ever before: a cowardly new world built on scapegoating and old fashioned divide and rule.

In Scotland we have had leadership from SNP and Labour that has focused on the benefits of immigration and no major Scottish political figures who advocated leaving the EU (George Galloway not registering as a major figure and Michael Gove not registering as Scottish).

Of course racism and xenophobia exist in Scotland, but the opportunity for that to manifest itself politically in a march to the right is almost non-existent. The racists remain marginalised and aware that their views and actions aren’t acceptable.

This must in large part account for the statistics that there was no reported post-referendum increase in racist attacks in Scotland (six in a month), and, of course, why a significant majority of Scots voted to remain.

What the Scots and the English think of as sovereignty and 'governing ourselves' are starkly different. Brussels was never seen as such an undemocratic behemoth as Westminster.

This can only be exacerbated if an inward looking UK Government drags Scotland out of its perceived place as part of a progressive Europe. The union flag-waving poses a huge problem for those opposed to Scottish independence.

The stale whiff of pork pies, jellied eels and warm beer from the Brexiteers' ongoing party is stomach churning for most Scots.

As the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens issued a joint statement condemning the Tory, rhetoric it highlighted that they provide the only apparent alternative to the mainstream UK politics march to the dark ages.

In the 2011 census, eight per cent of people in Scotland ticked only the 'British' box. Sixty-two per cent identified only as Scottish, and 18 per cent put a tick next to both 'Scottish' and 'British'.

That means that roughly only a quarter of Scots see themselves as partly or primarily British. In the same year, there were 5,500 applications for royal wedding street parties in England and Wales. In Scotland, there were fewer than 30, with 20 of those in Edinburgh.

This cultural parting of the ways will become an all but guaranteed political parting of the ways should this English march to the right continue.

As the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens issued a joint statement condemning the Tory, rhetoric it highlighted that they provide the only apparent alternative to the mainstream UK politics march to the dark ages.

Even under a socialist, the Labour Party is caught frozen in fear about how to play its race cards. The inclusive, global outlook of independence seems to provide the spark of light out of the dark days we live in.

If we follow that, perhaps we can have the last laugh over the Alf Garnetts of little England.

Picture courtesy of U.S. Embassy London