Collective Credit, Selective Blame

THERE’S A powerful mechanism used to manage group identity, from families to nations. It’s a simple, cynical formula: collective credit, selective blame. The concept is straightforward. For collective credit, a success for one part of the group – usually England – is immediately given a British passport. Think of the 1966 World Cup mascot, World Cup Willie, famously blazoned not with a St George’s Cross but a Union Jack. Or consider Brexit; rejected by Scotland, yet hailed as the democratic will of the ‘entire UK’. Success, you see, is for everyone. Failure, however, is selectively assigned to a specific individual or subgroup, isolating them from the rest. Think of Andy Murray’s described nationality when he loses.

A grave-faced newsreader and the crushing weight of a statistic that brands us, once again, the drugs capital of Europe

This is perfectly illustrated by the simple family analogy. When the son gets a first in his degree, he’s “our Jack” – collective credit. But when he crashes the car, he becomes “your son” – selective blame. I was thinking about this during that now-annual ritual: the solemn reporting of Scotland’s drug death statistics. The news, presented as a glimmer of hope – the lowest figure since 2018 – still came with the usual gravitas. You know the tone. A grave-faced newsreader and the crushing weight of a statistic that brands us, once again, the drugs capital of Europe. The message is clear: the buck for this national tragedy stops here. A terrible, uniquely Scottish failure.