Perhaps in an effort to take some of the heat off his mate Joe Hockey, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has swaggered up to the plate with the kind of spectacular gaffe that may well dominate the news cycle for days to come. In a recent interview with The Times, Abbott was drawn into a question about the upcoming Scottish Independence Referendum, and it didn’t go well.
A referendum with the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” will be put to the people of Scotland in September 18, and if successful, it will result in the country breaking away from the United Kingdom. Abbott is not keen on this prospect. In fact, he more or less came out and said that those in favour of independence, or around half the Scottish population, are opposed to freedom and justice.
“As a friend of Britain, as an observer from afar, it’s hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland,” he said. “I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, the friends of freedom, and the countries that would cheer at the prospect … are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.”
According to The BBC, a spokesman for the Scottish government said “Tony Abbott has a reputation for gaffes, but his bewildering comments have all the hallmarks of one of the Westminster government’s international briefings against Scotland,” adding that “an independent Scotland will be a beacon for fairness, justice and cooperation in the international community – and a great friend of Australia.”
Don’t panic just yet, but generally speaking, when the leaders of Western countries throw around phrases like “not the friends of of freedom and justice”, we end up in some kind of ground war. It may only be a matter of time before we’re marching on Dumfries, knocking down statues of Robbie Burns and declaring a victory in the name of democracy.
via The Guardian
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