Do you have anything to back that up?
England has equivalent laws that allow for the release of prisoners on compassionate grounds.
When Megrahi was released there were just as many Scottish blowhards as English saying it was a mistake.
Throughout the UK revenge is not considered by the justice system to be a valid societal goal of justice whereas in the US, it seems, it quite unashamedly is.
Well, I am English but live in Scotland- moved here six years ago.
Even with a Labour Government in London, Scottish Social Mores are evident in the way the two countries are governed. The way the NHS is run, ownership of Water supplies, funding of tertiary education, bans on short prison sentences, payment for elder care, a somewhat less aggressive policy towards sentencing among many examples place Scotland considerably to the liberal side of England. We elected one Conservative MP out of fifty or so at the last election.
It is interesting to read the Daily Mail (Conservative supporting nationalistic and somewhat reactionary) in its Scottish and English editions concurrently- they have to strip out most right wing dog-whistle stories (their speciality in England) to sell copies in Scotland.
I have no doubt that we are a more liberal country than England- that is a major reason why we moved here.
I certainly wouldn’t argue that the Scottish government seem to be doing a better job than Westminster in many areas, and, even though I would never even look at the Daily Wail, the fact that they have to moderate their ridiculous bile for the Scottish market fill my heart with joy.
Nonetheless, having lived in both countries I can’t agree that the actual populations vary by that much. Any classification from the wettest socialist to the most rabid conservative can be found in either country (and Wales) in, IME, roughly the same proportions.
Sometime Scotland elects no Conservative MP’s whatsoever even in the near two decades of Tory misrule in the 80’s and 90’s. Labour used to be the dominant party.
With devolution the Nationalists (who are also a ‘progressive’ party) form the monority local administration.
Scotland is and mostly always has been left of the UK centre.
But neither the party of the parliamentarians in Edinburgh or London, nor thye social policies enacted with minimum complaints show anything other than a massive difference. The only party of the right is the Conservatives, the others are left of centre.
Scottish National Party 47
Scottish Labour 46
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party 16
Scottish Liberal Democrats 16
Scottish Green Party 2
Independent 1
No Party Affiliation 1
Total: 129
And this on proportional representation- the Tories only get an eighth of the representatives.
English Conservative Dog Whistle policies (many adopted by Labour in England to try to stay in power) do not work in Scotland. Schools, Hospitals are still run in the same way mostly that they were a generation ago. Immigration is not a big issue here, the EC is generally popular, NHS dentistry is widely availbale, all prescriptions will be free of charge in a year or so (and are currently less than half those in England- I pay £35 for an annual exemption certificate which gives me free prescriptions.) Hospitals are not allowed to charge for parking (with two or three exceptions for PFI contracts). People seem more willing to pay more taxes for more services than in England where people clamour for tax cuts- we may have our own additional taxes over the next few years.
I am in no doubt that Scotland is in every way more liberal/left than England. I think that it is up to people who disagree to demonstrate how Scotland is as conservative as England.
I think that the problem here is that you are equating ‘left’ with ‘liberal’ which is not a conflation with which I agree.
I certainly agree that the Scots are more ‘left’ than the English, and also in more pragmatic and useful ways. Free prescriptions and free higher education are a damn site more useful than some of the more dogmatic socialist ideas.
And what are these dogmatic ideas?
And how do they compare to ‘free market’ dogmatism?
Labour hasn’t been a socialist party for nigh on 100 years and certainly not since 1945 has it had any policies that could be considered faintly socialist. And even those were developed under Churchill and have always and still do command cross party support.
If you don’t agree with conflating liberal and left you have a word with all the Americans here who have taken it upon themselves to define them as the same.
Well, probably the worst of the dogmatic socialist ideas was the wholesale nationalisation of as much as possible.
They were generally diametrically opposed.
Probably no surprises there.
In the first place I didn’t mention Labour. I merely spoke of ‘socialist’.
In the second, your statement is palpable nonsense. Clue: clause 4.
I’m not sure what you are trying to do here: defend socialism, perhaps?
If so, you’re probably wasting your time as, just because I decry the worst excesses of socialism and/or capitalism does not mean I reject either out of hand.
To my mind, anyone who espoused either as ‘the one true way’ has been brainwashed and is not using critical thought.
Hold on folks, we are difting away from what I was pointing out.
Whatever the definitions, general political orientation in the US is considerably to the right of those in England, and England is well to the right of Scotland.
I was trying to get over some of the Scottish feeling about being called to explain our social and legal policies by the legislature of a country which most Scots would see as being considerably more conservative than the norm here, and with a totally different approach to judicial and penal policy.
It is as if the Scottish Parliament called on the Governor of Texas to appear before one of its committees to explain why its judicial system was about to execute a Scot. I am sure that the Texas Governors response to that would be considerably less polite than the responses given by Scottish politicians.
Considering that the Governor of Texas would probably tell the US government to fuck off if summoned to testify before it, you’re probably right.
That is the unspoken reaction od scots toward their Parliament being called to account by a couple of grandstanding senators in Washington expecting Scottish political decisions to be expalined in a Congressional Committee room. The Cardinal goes further, but reflects general sentiment here.
The Senate might consider they’ve had a narrow escape, considering George Galloway’s appearance before them George Galloway - Wikipedia
The common reaction here was “Yay! He may be a sonuvabitch, but he’s OUR sonuvabitch”
Clause 4 was the Labour Party useless appendix and removed in the 90’s and not a policy statement. As witnessed by the fact that no Labour administration did the first blind thing about implementing any of it.
The party constitution and the party conference are, as anyone who knows the first thing about British politics, dog and pony sideshows for the Faithful.
Labour in government does exactly what it wants unconstrained by anything, even as we soon found out in 1997, even the Manifesto on which they ran.
And if you could find your way clear not to perform your irrelevant and wrong mind-reading act out of the thread that would be peachy.
Also this is GD not BBQ so you can also rein in the ‘palpable nonsense’ bit. Especially coming from someone citing Clause 4 as evidence of labour party socialism.
Although thanks for the laugh.
You stated: “Labour hasn’t been a socialist party for nigh on 100 years”.
Until 1995 the principle of ‘securing common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’ was embedded in the constitution of that party. Citation: Here
I will leave it to the readership here to determine for themselves whether stating a party that believes in ‘the common ownership of the means of production’ is ‘not socialist’ is palpable nonsense or not. 
I watched that covered by the BBC and by Fox- interesting difference in news values and attitudes!
Goregeous George goes on with his pro-Islamic Respect Party, although he lost his seat in Parliament.