A controversial historian has come under fire after comparing the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to the Nazis and the saltire flag to the swastika, while claiming Scots treat the English like Hitler’s fascists treated Jews.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, historian David Starkey went to great lengths to compare the SNP, who stormed to electoral victory across much of Scotland last month, with the Nazis in World War Two.
Starkey, who is known for his controversial rants, argued that SNP supporters across the UK are “incapable of recognizing that this is National Socialism.”
“And the nationalism is much more important than the socialism, as it was in Germany. The socialism is a very fragile, superficial thing. The nationalism is very real.
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“We have a political movement that has a single historic explanation for why your country is facing such terrible oppression; it’s either Versailles or the Treaty of the Union,” the historian argued.
“You have a particular group of people who are responsible for this; it is either the English or the Jews.
“You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in economic self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil,” Starkey added.
SNP politicians wasted no time responding to the claims, with John Nicholson MP asking during an interview with the BBC if Starkey just said “the silliest thing that comes into his mind on any given day?”
Kirsten Oswald MP was even more withering in her appraisal, saying that Starkey had “become little more than a serial utterer of bile and bilge.”
The row comes as it is reported the SNP are calling for a second referendum on Scottish independence.
Stewart Hosie, the SNP Westminster Treasury spokesman, was quoted in the Financial Times on Sunday.
“The public — particularly those who voted No [in the referendum last September] — think they’ve been sold a pup because what has been promised does not go as far as … the unprecedented program of devolution promised by the prime minister.”
“The key thing about the mandate we have is that if the UK government … make the life of the Scottish government more difficult, the political consequences of that might be very serious indeed.”