DAN HANNAN: Scottish Nationalists are making their countrymen less independent by the day.
American friends are often surprised by how hectoring and statist the Scottish government is. Scotland, in their minds, is a hardy, rugged place — hardier, certainly, than its effete southern neighbor. It can come as quite a shock to learn Scottish separatists now define their national character as being all about big government — or, as they prefer to put it, “fairness.”
Forget the image of a woad-painted Mel Gibson screaming “freeeeedom!” If you want a more apt cinematic picture, think of Ewan MacGregor’s lament in Trainspotting, as he sits in the Highlands swigging a bottle of vodka: “It’s shite being Scottish!”
Now it’s true that many people of Scottish descent — including, I’m afraid, this columnist — drink more than is good for them. No other country would have invented the “hauf an’ a hauf”, a mixture of beer and whiskey, guaranteed to set the room spinning within minutes. But whiskey won’t be affected by this law. It is aimed, rather, at the booze that people on low incomes drink — notably high-strength ciders and lagers.
There’s a curious streak of snobbery in the Scottish National Party (SNP) that pushed through this levy. I say “curious” because the party likes to think of itself as the voice of working-class Scots: miners and steelworkers and crofters standing up against anglicized landlords. But although it idolizes these groups in the abstract, it disapproves of their lifestyles in practice.
When SNP lawmakers talk about “junk food”, they don’t mean duck à l’orange or a decent bottle of Meursault. They mean KFC and Doritos and other poor people’s grub. Scotland’s indigenous rival to Coca-Cola, a bright orange concoction called Irn-Bru, has reduced its sugar content to avoid a tax that had been levied not on sugar in general, but on sodas in particular. Poor people’s drinks, you see.
Well, somebody’s got to pay for the nannystaters’ expensive virtue signaling.
