An Ex-Royal Butler Thinks He’s an Expert on Scottish Independence

Welcome to Worst Hot Take of the Week – a weekly column in which NEO, AKA @MULLET_FAN NEO, pits two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other.

TAKE #1

What's the story? Former Royal butler, Paul Burrell, argues Scottish Independence wouldn’t work and would just hurt the Queen.
Reasonable take: I think Scotland should decide their future.
Brain rot: Scotland belongs to the UK, how is it going to survive without us? What’s their economy going to be based around, the Loch Ness Monster and Irn-Bru? Has no-one considered how much this would hurt the Queen? Her Empire is her life.

Paul Burrell angered many Scots this week by suggesting Scotland would not be able to sustain itself without England. A Jeremy Vine Show panel he appeared on was discussing Boris Johnson's campaign to become the next Prime Minister, and its repercussions for the Union. Burrell instantly bemoaned that all this talk was becoming “food for Nicola Sturgeon”, exclaiming: "I mean, for goodness sake, Scotland by itself? How is it going to survive? What does it have? Oil, and a monster in a lake.”

Fellow panelists helped out Burrell with their extensive understanding of the Scottish economy by chipping in: “it's got Irn-Bru, that really only sells in Scotland, to be fair” and “Shortbread? Tartan? Bagpipes?”. Burrell went on to say that he wouldn't like to see Scotland detached from the UK as he believes “they belong to the United Kingdom”.

It’s incredible how English media personalities can't see that opening their mouths on TV regarding Scottish matters of self-governance does far more leg-work to push the agenda of a second Independence Referendum than a thousand SNP political broadcasts. Who decided that the Unionist “I love you, that’s why I degrade you” rhetoric works best? If the Scottish wanted to be daddy dom’d by some posh English cunts they’d all join the British Army.

Scottish musician Amy Macdonald replied to “this patronising crap” on Twitter: “if Scotland is this fucking shite then why do these folk want us to stay so much? This government won’t subsidise an extra bedroom for those in need but it’s happy to subsidise an entire country?”.

I imagine this is what happens when your life’s ambition was to clean the shit out of the Queen’s knickers, but I can see why Burrell’s loyalty still lays with ‘Her Majesty’, she did manage to save him from a stretch behind bars after his flat was found to contain 310 items of the dead Princess Diana’s estate that one time.

No wonder he also said on the show that the “£82 million to keep the Royals going” are “worth every penny”. Burrell finished with giving us a true insight into what actually weighs most heavily on the minds of most Unionists, should the UK collapse: “What would our flag look like?”

Oh Lord, give me the confidence of a misinformed Englishman talking about Scottish matters.

TAKE #2

What's the story? Morrissey says he "absolutely" supports a far-right movement.
Reasonable take: I should probably stop worrying about minorities since I am a rich, white, old Englishman who lives a very privileged existence.
Brain rot: The media always misrepresent me, so instead I’ll let my nephew interview me so everyone will get the authentic, undiluted, racist gibberish straight from my mouth.

This week Morrissey reaffirmed his support for the far-right, anti-Islam political party ‘For Britain’ in an interview with his nephew, Sam Esty Rayner, where Morrissey sweepingly declared that “everyone ultimately prefers their own race”, before rhetorically musing: “does this make everyone racist?”

The short answer: yes.

The long answer: yes, you daft cunt.

Throughout the extensive interview Morrissey sounded more like “Steven Morrissey, 60, from Manchester”, ten pints deep on the high street and coming out with vox pop guff like “diversity can’t possibly be a strength if everyone has ideas that will never correspond” and “if borders are such terrible things then why did they ever exist in the first place? Borders bring order.”

Morrissey went on to say that “the UK is a dangerously hateful place now” and “we need someone to put a stop to the lunacy and to speak for everyone”, suggesting For Britain leader Annie Marie Waters as the person to do this. Yes, that’s the very same Anne Marie Waters who in 2017 was recorded calling Muslims “fuckers” who “just come along and take it all” and advocated the reduction of birthrates of Muslims as they are “dangerous”.

Morrissey’s other suggestion for supreme leader of his idealised Britain was Nigel Farage, who he says he doesn’t support but stated: “it’s obvious that he would make a good Prime Minister… if any of us can actually remember what a good Prime Minister is.”

When asked by his nephew how he felt about being called racist for his comments Morrissey said: “if you call someone racist in modern Britain you are telling them that you have run out of words. You are shutting the debate down and running off. The word is meaningless now.”

The National Front Disco sounds less and less like a song Morrissey wrote in 1992 about a disillusioned English youth straying into ethnocentric extremism and more like an event on he’d mark himself down as “interested” in on Facebook.

Of course, crucially the most annoying aspect of his continued unraveling is that your dad can smugly say “I always told you he was knobhead” and now feels fully justified in his opinion that The Smiths were “shit”. The sea-change in Morrissey fans is probably going to fully transform from Depop sad boys to Stone Island casuals who will find a way of working in a “Johnny Marr Away” dust up into the football season.

But at this rate the only fans of Morrissey that will be left is Morrissey himself.

Winner: Both takes sound like something Enoch Powell would say if you dug the cunt up and gave him a massive shot of adrenaline, but Morrissey’s “clarifying what the haters in the press have misrepresented about me” angle comes out on top.

@MULLET_FAN NEO