The UK is on “life support” – Gordon Brown slams the Tories for whipping up English nationalism

Gordon Brown has warned that the UK is on “life support” because the Conservatives have given up on saving it.

The former PM has written a blistering critique of the Conservative’s approach to Scotland and England. This comes as the government plans to limit Scottish MPs’ voting rights at Westminster, under English Votes for English Laws. Brown argues in the Guardian:

“If the United Kingdom collapses, it will not be because a majority of Scots are hell-bent on leaving but because the UK government is giving up on saving it.

“No union can survive without unionists and, after an election in which, to head off Ukip, the Conservative and Unionist party presented itself as the English Nationalist party, it is clear that the union is on life support … It is London’s equivocation over Scotland that is becoming the greater risk to the UK.”

Brown took a leading role in the Better Together campaign during the Scottish independent referendum last year. However, this is one of the most vocal public interventions he has made on the Scotland subject since the referendum.

The morning after the referendum result last year, David Cameron announced his intention to limit Scottish MPs’ voting rights. This reportedly prompted Brown to contact Jeremy Heywood, cabinet secretary, to warn of the dangers of this strategy.

In his article, Brown points out that the Tories are whipping up English nationalism against Scottish nationalism, by conjuring up the idea of “the Scottish menace”. To prove his point, he gives an example of Conservative election material, which showed SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon as Ed Miliband’s puppet master. He writes:

 “Sadly, this tactic – to divide and rule and put party before country rather than to unite – is one that the Conservatives can return to again and again.

“It reveals a bigger truth: that while Scotland has not yet written off Britain, the Conservatives are starting to write off Scotland.”

Brown goes on to direct his fire at both says the Conservatives and the SNP. He says the two parties are engaging in “sectarian war of words” as they are both “raising the spectre of Scottish and English “vetoes” and suggesting there are irreconcilable differences between the two nations”.

He says that the SNP’s claim, that the UK should not leave Europe unless all four nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – vote “no”, is a “dubious constitutional principle”. He questions the legitimacy “that any one nation of the UK can block the decision of the other three nations.”