Class warfare and the SNP.

Nicola ‘Mugabe’ Sturgeon is wasting no time in pressing ahead with the creation of the Caledonian Democratic Peoples Republic, the prime target, as ever, being those capitalist running-dogs, the rural landowners.

Non-domestic rates were abolished in Scotland long ago which brought it into line with the English practice. Sturgeon’s land reform will bring back NDR on agricultural land and sporting estates and woodland.

This is ideological, a weapon in the class war. Profitability on sporting estates is very marginal. There is little alternative use. It is likely to lead to the break-up of large estates and shaft the lairds. Which is the intention.

There will be ‘powers for Scottish Ministers to intervene where the scale of land ownership and land management decisions are a barrier to local sustainable development’. This also targets rural landowners; much is made of the fact that half the rural land is owned by just 432 people ignoring another fact, that most of this land is unviable except in large units.

But the real stinker is ‘the modernisation of succession law so that all children are treated equally when it comes to inheriting land’.

At this time,  a testator can leave his property, whether land or just money and personal effects, to whomsoever he chooses. In the absence of a will, land will pass by primogeniture.

Although we have yet to see the small print, the general principle being pursued by the SNP is for both moveable and immovable property to be shared amongst the family.

Until modern times this was the practice in European countries that followed Roman/Dutch law or the Code Napoleon. The upshot was that with each passing generation the holdings became smaller and eventually unviable. The law of succession ensured that large estates were broken up, which suits the SNP admirably. But if Comrade Sturgeon believes all this will be easy she is in for a rude shock.

The landed gentry has remarkable survival capacity. Over the centuries it has suffered confiscation, execution by tyrants like Henry VIII, taxes, death duties, decimation of its heirs in WW1. It continues in rude health.

Magna Carta says ‘NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold’. The sanctity of freehold is an essential feature  of political, social and economic stability.

 

Since Ms Sturgeon is a great admirer and supporter of the Greek Marxist buffoons currently ‘governing’ Greece, perhaps this is of little consequence to her. Scottish country-folk don’t vote SNP.