The question the BBC and the Tories don’t want to answer

Because I must have masochistic streak a mile wide, last night I watched what the BBC served up to us with the grandiose title of a leaders’ debate. Or rather, I tried to watch it but then halfway through lost the will to live and switched over to another channel, which proves two things: firstly that I can only have a masochistic streak that’s half a mile wide, and secondly that the BBC is an active participant in the campaign to prevent Scottish independence and intends to keep Scotland firmly under Westminster rule by dint of not taking independence seriously and boring us all into submission.

You can’t help but wonder if in between having discussions with Conservative politicians about just how many union flags ought to decorate the cover of the BBC’s annual report, the Corporation’s management had a strategy meeting in which they decided that the best way for a thoroughly British broadcaster to cover Scottish independence was to make it so dull and uninspiring that after thirty minutes viewers would be begging the BBC to make it stop and promising to resign themselves to Conservative rule from Westminster for all eternity just as long as they could watch Bargain Hunt instead. Which is terribly convenient for the British establishment because pinning all your hopes on being able to turn a profit from an over-priced broken down piece of tat that you’ve found at a car boot sale is the next reform to the social security system that the Tories have got in mind.

Not that Douglas Ross was at all keen to talk about the policies of his Westminster masters during last night’s, ahem, debate, but that didn’t prevent him from constantly trying to speak over the top of everyone else. Douglas was terribly keen to talk about one thing and one thing only. Here’s your handy summary of all that the Scottish Conservatives have to offer the people of Scotland in this election and for the next five years to come, badreferendumbadreferendumbadreferendumbadreferendum. That was all that Dross, who is rapidly living down to his nickname, could manage, even as he accused Nicola Sturgeon of being obsessed about a referendum. No matter the subject of the question, and there were plenty of soft balls being lobbed Dross’s way by a virtual audience who had clearly been selected by the same people who are in charge of picking the audience for an episode of BBC Question Time coming to you from a Brexity part of Essex which regularly elects a right wing hang ’em and flog ’em Tory MP. Although to be fair the BBC thinks that’s also a description that applies to Dundee.

Despite the fact that the issue of independence and a second independence referendum is central in this election campaign, the debate was constructed according to the BBC’s usual idea of balance. So we had two politicians who support another referendum up against three who oppose it. Alex Salmond and his new Alba party were noticeable only by their absence, presumably as a brand new party without any representation in Holyrood, and moreover one which would not even have been in existence when the BBC’s planning and organisation for last night’s debate was being carried out , the corporation felt that it was more appropriate not to invite them at the very last minute after the audience panel and their questions had already been selected and vetted.

Supporters of different parties will no doubt have different opinions about whether or not the BBC was correct to do that. However what cannot be disputed is that the BBC knew by last weekend that there are now three significant pro-independence parties contesting this election, and while it’s possible to understand why the Corporation did not change its plans at the last minute to take account of this new political reality, it’s far less possible to understand why, knowing as they did that supporters of independence were outnumbered three to two on the panel, the organisers selected three questions in a row which were hostile to independence out of the pre-approved questions which had been submitted well in advance by the virtual audience.

It’s very difficult to escape the conclusion that the BBC has learned absolutely nothing from the justified criticism it came in for for its heavily slanted coverage of the last independence referendum campaign.

Apart from the BBC, the big loser was Douglas Ross, for all that the virtual audience seemed to be disproportionately comprised of nodding heads who only nodded even more enthusiastically whenever Douglas appeared on screen to tell us that he didn’t want another referendum. He came across as childish and entitled, both in the manner in which he tried to talk over the top of the other speakers but also in his assertion that he would not work with an SNP government if that’s what the people of Scotland elected. But then we shouldn’t have been surprised by that, given that the entire platform of the Scottish Conservatives consists of ignoring the democratic will of the people of Scotland as expressed through the ballot box.

Of course the BBC won’t be keen to highlight the fundamentally anti-democratic position of the Scottish Conservatives. The party is of course perfectly entitled to argue against independence and to oppose holding another independence referendum, that’s their right in a democracy. However what they are not entitled to do is to continue to block another referendum after the people of Scotland have listened to their arguments and decided to vote to have one anyway. Neither do they have the democratic right to undermine and weaken the devolution settlement despite not possessing anything approaching a mandate from the people of Scotland giving their consent for them to do so. The fact that they are able to do just that using powers and authority which do not derive from the democratic choices of the people of Scotland is precisely the reason why it is imperative for Scotland to revisit the issue of independence. It is a question about the very future of democracy itself in this country. But that is a question which neither the BBC nor the Conservatives are at all comfortable about confronting.

Please note that there will not be a blog update tomorrow as I have to travel to the Southern General in Glasgow for physiotherapy treatment on my hand and arm.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Manny Singh, who some months back was convicted for his part in organising a pro-indy march and rally in Glasgow has recently found out that his taxi driving licence has been suspended. Irrespective of what you feel to be the rights and wrongs of that case, taxi-driving was his sole source of income and without the licence he is no longer able to support himself or his family. Manny has started a crowdfunder to pay for the legal fees to appeal this decision and to get his licence restored.

You can find out more about the case here: https://www.facebook.com/102993537719689/posts/470157474336625/

A direct link to the crowdfunding page is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-manny-singh-win-his-legal-battles

The common priority

The parties contesting the Scottish elections have started to delineate their pitch to the voters for the Holyrood elections which are now just a few weeks away. Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon gave her first big speech of the election campaign in which she set out some of the key promises and commitments of the SNP should her party be re-elected with sufficient support to form the next Scottish government. Among the most notable promises was a commitment to doubling the Scottish child payment from £10 a week to £20 a week for each eligible child. In another move designed to help tackle the issue of food poverty, the SNP leader announced that her Scottish Government would extend free school meals – both breakfasts and lunches – to all primary school pupils, in all classes, all year round.

This will make a significant difference to the lives of children living in families struggling with poverty as a result of the Conservative assault on the social security system and the way in which Conservative policies have encouraged a proliferation of low paid and insecure employment. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one of the UK’s leading charities working to solve the issue of poverty, over two thirds of children who live in poverty live in a household where at least one parent is in work. Since the Conservatives introduced its Universal Credit scheme, the number of families who must resort to foodbanks in order to put food on the table has soared. A recent report from the UK’s biggest food bank network said half of all households visiting food banks struggled to afford essential goods such as food and clothes because they were repaying universal credit debts.

Foodbank use in Scotland has soared in recent years, figures from the independent food aid network show that foodbanks distributed more than twice as many emergency food parcels in June and July 2020 as they did during the same months the previous year.  The report finds that a large and increasing number of people are falling through the widening cracks in a social security safety net that has been weakened and undermined by successive Conservative governments. Despite the Labour party’s attempts to pin the blame for the epidemic of child poverty that Scotland is faced with, the truth is that it is a direct result of the financial and economic policies of a Westminster government which jealously guards its control over the macroeconomic levers which exert the real influence over the shape and direction of the economy.

As welcome as a doubling of the Scottish child payment is, all that any devolved Scottish government is able to do is to ameliorate the worst problems created by the impact of social security, employment and economic decisions made by governments in Westminster, it can’t actually prevent those problems from arising in the first place. These problems have been greatly magnified by the Johnson administration’s woeful mishandling of the pandemic.

Over the coming months and years it’s going to be absolutely vital that Scotland charts a path out of the pandemic that leads to a rebuilding and developing of the Scottish economy in a way which tackles poverty and inequality in a secure and environmentally sustainable way. The only way that this can be achieved is by ensuring that Scotland’s parliament possesses the full range of powers that will enable it to do so. That in turn means independence.

The anti-independence parties will be fighting this election on the basis of their claim that the independence issue and the demand for another referendum are distractions from the vital task of rebuilding Scotland after the devastating personal, social and economic effects of the pandemic. They could not be more wrong and in her keynote speech yesterday, delivered online to party activists, Nicola Sturgeon tackled this claim head on, saying that “independence was not a distraction from the country’s recovery after the pandemic but was “essential to secure a recovery that is made here in Scotland and based on the values the majority of us subscribe to.”

It’s only with independence that Scotland can unlock this country’s full potential, and it’s only with independence that Scotland can free itself from the need to have to ameliorate Conservative economic policies that lead to an increase in poverty, deprivation and inequality. Another independence referendum is far from being the distraction that the Conservatives and their British nationalist allies claim it to be, it is absolutely vital to securing a recovery from the pandemic that benefits everyone in Scotland and which is designed to produce the best outcome for Scotland.

As the First minister said yesterday in her speech to party activists, this election will ensure that voters “have the right to decide our own future in an independent referendum when this current crisis has passed, so that Scotland’s recovery will be in Scotland’s hands, so we can build the Scotland that we know we can be, a country of compassion, equality and love”.

For their part the Scottish Greens can agree that independence is absolutely vital to realising their vision of a sustainable Scottish economy which can provide an environmental model for the rest of the world to follow. Independence and the referendum which is required to bring it about is not a peripheral issue or a distraction, it is absolutely essential if we want to realise that better Scotland to which we all aspire.

Although the new Alba party has yet to announce its policy programme, it will certainly do so over the days and weeks ahead. Whatever the details of that announcement there can be absolutely no doubt that the Alba party also shares the view of the other pro-independence parties that Scotland’s democratic right to another referendum is very far from being a distraction from the challenges that Scotland faces, but rather it is absolutely key to unlocking the incredible potential that this country possesses and to putting it to work in the best interests of the people of Scotland. Whatever our disagreements about strategy or tactics, or about the wisdom or otherwise of the launch of this new party, that at least is something about which all supporters of independence can agree.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Putting a stake through the heart of the Tories’ disrespect for democracy

I’ve made my views clear about the new Alba party and Alex Salmond’s real motivation for setting it up.  This blog will continue to advocate SNP 1 and SNP or Green 2 in the elections which are just six weeks away now and to provide a space for people who continue to support Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.  But the Alba party has been launched now, it’s a done deal, and whatever our views about the former leader of the SNP and whether this move is a help or a hindrance to the independence cause, it’s in the interests of all of us to ensure that the presence of the Alba party increases rather than diminishes the total number of pro-independence MSPs in the next Scottish Parliament and that we maximise rather than reduce the total number of votes for all the pro-independence parties. Successful and pragmatic politics means dealing with the situation we actually find ourselves in, not the situation we wish we were in.

It is doubly important that we all now work to maximise the vote for pro-independence parties and to concentrate our rhetorical fire on the Conservative and Labour parties and not on each other because even should Alex Salmond succeed in his gamble with all our futures and we win a new Scottish Parliament with a healthy and unassailable pro-independence majority, Boris Johnson and the Conservatives will only seek to shift the goalposts and will point to the total vote share received by the pro-independence parties. If that total is less than 50% they will use it to claim that the people of Scotland have rejected independence and cite that as a reason why they feel justified in resisting the democratic will of the people of Scotland to revisit the question of Scotland’s constitutional relationship with the other nations in this wet and windy archipelago sitting just off the north west coast of Europe.

It will of course be an entirely specious and hypocritical argument. The vote that Scotland faces in a few weeks time is an election not a referendum, but when did hypocrisy ever stop a Tory? Under the rules of Westminster elections, the Conservatives got a mandate to pursue their vision of Brexit despite securing less than 45% of the popular vote. Under the rules of the far more proportional and fair electoral system used for Scottish Parliamentary elections, the if the pro-independence parties win a majority of the available seats they will likewise secure a mandate to pursue their policy of a second Scottish independence referendum even if their total vote share is slightly less than 50%. Them’s the rules. The Tories don’t get to retrospectively change those rules just because the outcome was not to their liking.

Nevertheless that won’t stop the Conservatives and their allies from trying. They will be aided in their efforts by the BBC and the overwhelmingly anti-independence media. That makes it all the more important that as independence supporters we redouble our efforts to attack the anti-independence parties and rebut their arguments in order to minimise their voter appeal as much as we possibly can and by reducing the anti-independence vote to a minimum to deprive Johnson and his allies of any wriggle room.

Over in the Scotsman, the Über unionist British nationalist Brian Monteith is getting his excuses in early. In an article published today https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/alex-salmond-has-plunged-a-stake-into-the-heart-of-scottish-democracy-brian-monteith-3181513 he accuses Alex Salmond of plunging a stake into the heart of Scottish democracy. To be fair Brian knows a lot about plunging stakes into the heart because he’s a long-standing close associate of Michael Forsyth, the Thatcherite Dracula of Scottish politics. It’s pretty rich of a man who has argued that the Conservatives in Westminster should simply ignore and override the outcome of a Scottish election to argue that someone else is plunging a stake into the heart of democracy by [checks notes] standing for election in a democratic election, but as previously noted the Conservatives are no strangers to hypocrisy. They are however most definitely strangers to self awareness.

Of course what is really thrusting a stake through the heart of Scottish democracy is a Conservative government in Westminster which, without any democratic mandate for it in Scotland whatsoever has unilaterally embarked upon a weakening and hollowing out of a devolution settlement which Scotland overwhelmingly supported in the referendum of 1997 and which the people of this country were promised would be strengthened and entrenched in return for a no vote in the referendum of 2014. Yet despite receiving nothing from the people of Scotland which remotely approaches a mandate for reducing the powers of the Scottish Parliament or allowing Westminster to intervene in areas which are supposed to be devolved, that is precisely what the Conservatives are doing.

Furthermore the Tories have made no bones about their intentions to disrespect the outcome of the Holyrood elections if the people of Scotland give their parliament a mandate for a second independence referendum. It is because Scotland possesses no mechanisms within the structures of the British state as it is currently constituted in order to ensure that a British government must comply with the democratic will of the people of Scotland, and because the promises and commitments made to Scotland by the Better Together parties in 2014 have been so comprehensively traduced that so many people in this country believe that we must revisit the question of independence as a matter of urgency. The fact is that Scottish democracy faces an existential threat from this Conservative government.

The thrust of Brian Monteith’s article was to complain about the supposed unfairness of pro-independence parties gaming the system by calling on the anti-independence to game the system themselves. The Conservatives have indicated that they may not stand candidates in certain seats in order to encourage anti-independence voters to vote tactically. That only reinforces the importance of supporters of the Alba party campaigning to ensure that the SNP sweeps the board in the constituency vote, the success of their party’s super-majority strategy depends on it. As independence supporters above all we must use these elections to thrust a stake through the heart of the Conservatives’ anti-democratic vision for an emasculated and enfeebled Scottish parliament and not to shoot ourselves in the foot.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Finding common ground

It cannot be stressed enough just how important the May elections are for the future of Scotland.

If we are all truly committed to the ideal of an independent Scotland and a permanent escape from the appalling realities of Brexit Britain and the cruel, heartless and callous future that Johnson’s right wing English nationalist Conservative party has in store for us, then we must all strive to make the best of the political situation the independence movement is currently in and not to carp and complain about not having the set of political circumstances that each of us with our different political and social views might consider ideal. We must work to get the best possible outcome from the cards that have been dealt and which are actually on the table.

For all the current difficulties and divisions, the foundations of the independence movement remain strong. Even in the absence of a date for a referendum, which would serve to concentrate the minds of that huge part of the population which does not habitually engage with politics, for over a year opinion polling has demonstrated that a half or more of the population of Scotland favours independence. Among younger age groups, support for independence is overwhelming, meaning that we can expect to see support for independence grow over time among the population as a whole. We are not yet quite at the point where support for independence is the settled will of the people of Scotland, but that is what the demographic trend very clearly points to.

For Alex Salmond supporters, making the best of the current situation means accepting that the campaign to unseat Nicola Sturgeon has failed. She’s not going anywhere. Furthermore the constant attacks on her from supporters of Alex Salmond merely risk alienating undecided and swithering voters who are put off by the sight of a divided movement which seems more interested in arguing amongst itself than in attacking the anti-independence parties or in pointing out the dangers posed by the Conservatives or the lack of any convincing solution to the constitutional issue from the Labour party. That risks driving down the SNP vote in the coming election, which is counterproductive for Alex Salmond’s supporters as the success of his new party and its strategy of maximising the number of pro-independence MSPs crucially depends upon ensuring that the SNP sweeps the board in the constituency vote.

The key problem here is that the supermajority strategy of the Alba Party is fundamentally a strategy for maximising the number of pro-independence MSPs, it is essentially a proposal to carve up the pro-independence vote in what is hoped will be a more productive manner, it will not in itself increase the pro-independence vote in any significant way. The big danger is that if Salmond’s supporters do not cease their attacks on Nicola Sturgeon and her supporters they run a very real danger of damaging and decreasing the total pro-independence vote. This is all the more of an issue because the mere existence of Alex Salmond’s new party ensures that the narrative of a divided SNP and the fall out between the current and former leader of the SNP will remain dominant in this election campaign, particularly in a Scottish media which is overwhelmingly anti-independence and which seeks anything which it can use to minimise the pro-independence vote. Alex Salmond’s decision to associate himself and his new party with deeply divisive figures like Stuart Campbell only makes that easier for them.

Supporters of Alex Salmond need to accept that Nicola Sturgeon is still very firmly in place and must move on from their failed efforts to remove her from office, instead they must focus on doing what their leader called for, which is working to build a supermajority for independence in the coming elections. That means doing what they can to maximise the pro-independence vote, and critically for the success of the Alba party’s plan, to ensuring that the SNP sweeps the board in the constituency vote. That in turn requires that they stop their attacks on Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP and start to focus on attacking the British nationalist parties and highlighting that they have nothing to offer Scotland.

Equally supporters of Nicola Sturgeon need to accept that Alex Salmond isn’t going to just go away. They may have hoped that having failed to unseat Nicola Sturgeon he would quietly pack his bags and head off into retirement, but that isn’t going to happen any more than Nicola Sturgeon is going to resign as leader of the SNP. He has launched his new party now and just as his supporters need to cease their attacks on Nicola Sturgeon so as not to damage the total independence vote, so supporters of Nicola Sturgeon need to stop attacking Alex Salmond for the exact same reason. As far as the attacks on each other are concerned, everyone needs to wheesht for indy.

Both Salmond and Sturgeon are formidable politicians. Both of them have significant numbers of supporters. Neither of them is going to back down. This is a far from ideal situation that we are in but we have to make the best of it and work to ensure that the next Scottish elections deliver that all important pro-independence majority. Above all that means ceasing the vitriolic personal attacks on other independence supporters, making the positive arguments for independence, attacking the forces of British nationalism who are the only beneficiaries of our divisions, and finding common ground. In yesterday’s blog I made my own feelings about this new party clear, but the new party has happened now and the only priority for those of us in the grassroots is to ensure a strong pro-independence majority in May. That means finding a message around which we can all coalesce.

The message now for independence supporters should be to vote SNP in the constituency vote and in the list to give your vote to the pro independence party whose policies are most in tune with your own views and opinions. For me that means voting SNP 1 & 2, but I am not going to attack, criticise, or question the motives of those who have a different opinion, and I trust that those people will pay the same courtesy to me and others who retain our trust in Nicola Sturgeon to deliver a referendum. The toxic divisions and infighting need to end, because if they do not, we will all lose and this period in Scottish politics will go down in the history books as a prime example of this nation’s unfortunate habit of wresting defeat from the jaws of victory.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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It’s still SNP 1 & 2 for me

It was always obvious that Alex Salmond wasn’t going to stand for one of the existing minor parties. He was always going to set up a new party that he could be the undisputed leader of. We can at least be grateful for the small mercy that he has called upon his supporters to vote SNP in the constituency vote despite the best efforts of some of the more trenchant critics of Nicola Sturgeon who spoke at the launch of the new Alba party to get him to say otherwise. However this new party has got SNP spoiler written all over it, and for all the talk of winning a super-majority for independence in the Holyrood elections in May, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Alex Salmond’s true goal is to deprive Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP of winning an overall majority by themselves and so having to rely on Alex Salmond’s party in order to ensure that pro-independence majority.

This new party may succeed in its aim of boosting the total number of pro-independence MSPs, but it is just as possible that Alex Salmond has over-estimated his own popularity and will only succeed in splitting the pro-independence vote and allowing opponents of independence to slip in under the wire because the pro-indy vote on the list is now split between the SNP, the Greens and Alex Salmond’s new vehicle. The events of recent months have done considerable damage to the reputation of a man who was already the marmite of Scottish politics. I am not sure that he really appreciates that.

I am not denigrating the undoubted political talents of Alex Salmond, but he is not infallible. This new party is a dangerous tactic typical of a gambler, and moreover one from a man who despite his undoubted contribution to advancing the cause of independence has in the past made a number of unforced tactical and strategic errors, the consequences of which still dog the independence movement today. Time will tell whether this will prove to be another one, I genuinely hope it’s not. It’s all very well choosing to gamble with your own political career, however it is another level of hubris entirely when you choose to gamble with what is our best and potentially only chance of winning independence for decades to come. If this gamble fails, he risks going down in history as the man who threw away our best chance of independence because of his ego and his resentments.

It’s because of Alex Salmond’s unnecessary rhetorical flourishes that we currently labour under a Conservative administration which constantly throws the once in a generation line back in our faces, allowing them to stand in the way of the will of the people of Scotland while hiding behind a convenient fig leaf of an excuse which disguises their true anti-democratic nature. It’s because Alex Salmond made a needless political error of judgement that we are constantly fending off the what currency will you use question from opponents of independence. In no other country seeking independence is the question of currency pivotal in the independence debate, but it is in Scotland because of Alex Salmond’s decision to say he wanted a post-independence currency union with the rest of the UK. He created a huge open goal for the Better Together campaign because in effect he was saying,”Westminster we want independence from you, but hey, we want you to cooperate with us on on this key aspect of our economic policy.” Of course the Westminster parties were going to take advantage of this open goal by saying no, and they have continued to take advantage of the doubt and confusion it created ever since.

True leadership sometimes means swallowing personally unpalatable truths for the greater good. That’s a test that Alex Salmond has failed. To say that I am saddened and disappointed by a man who was once a huge personal hero is something of an understatement. A true leader would have said to all the pro-independence critics of the SNP : “This isn’t about me, I am prepared to lay to one side my misgivings and disappointment in the current leadership of the SNP in the name of securing a solid SNP majority in these crucial elections which lie ahead, and building a secure and stable platform from which to wrest another referendum from Westminster. If I can do that, so can you.”

But that’s not what he has done. Instead he has created a vehicle in which he personally can be the dominant force, making it look as though he is prioritising his own needs and interests. The biggest danger is that by creating a credible pro-independence list party, he gives succour to those critics of the SNP who are looking for an excuse not to vote SNP in the constituency vote. Some of them may now be more likely to assuage their fears of a British nationalist winning by telling themselves that even though they are boycotting the SNP in the constituency vote they are still casting a pro-independence vote in the list. However the Alba party’s strategy to maximise the independence vote can only succeed if the SNP manage to hoover up almost all the available constituency seats. That in turn will only be sucessful if Alex Salmond can rein in the vociferously anti-SNP element among his supporters and encourage them not to undermine the SNP’s support in the constituency vote  – and ideally to work to maximise the SNP vote in the constituencies. Given that the press conference announcing the launch of this new party prominently featured the toxic Stuart Campbell, who remained eager to use the occasion to get a few digs in at the SNP’s expense, the signs of this happening are not good, and raises additional questions about Alex Salmond’s judgement.

It was already difficult for the average voter to make a principled decision about tactical voting on the list in the Additional Member System used for Holyrood elections. Now instead of weighing up a decision about whether it is better to vote SNP on the list or the Greens, discounting for the time being minor parties which gain no traction, the pro-independence voter is faced with a three way choice, and the chances of an anti-independence candidate managing to slip in due to a divided pro-independence vote are consequently magnified. Now instead of simple slogan SNP 1& 2 the voter needs to be guided by a complex formula which will differ in different areas and which in any case will not become apparent until immediately before the vote, by which time it’s too late to get the message out. I sincerely hope that this unecessary gamble succeeds and produces a healthy pro-independence majority, but I fear today’s development will make that harder, not easier, to achieve. For that reason It’s still SNP 1 & 2 for me.

 

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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‘Nuff said

The Tories stare into the abyss

So that’s Ruth Davidson off to ermine bedecked pastures new. The great renaissance of the Scottish Tories that her many media hypesters claimed that she heralded has proven to be ephemeral. She leaves behind a Conservative party that according to the most recent poll is in serious danger of losing a slew of seats at the Scottish election in May and slipping into third place behind the Labour party. This is because whereas Ruth was able to present a veneer of modernity and when she became leader headed a pro-EU party which promised to strengthen and deepen the devolution settlement, the Conservatives are now the party of Brexit and an aggressive and uncompromising English nationalism which seeks to use the Brexit that Scotland didn’t vote for and doesn’t support in order to undermine and hollow out the devolution that Scotland did vote for and does support. While there was always little of substance to Ruth, she did at least give good PR, was comfortable in front of the cameras, and was always ready with a quip or a cheeky photo op. On the other hand when her successor Douglas Ross appears before the cameras he always manages to give the unfortunate and uncomfortable impression that someone has rammed a broom handle up his arse.

To make matters much worse, Douglas and his colleagues have nothing positive to offer the voters of Scotland in this election. Telling voters that you are going to ignore what they vote for and then impose your policies on them anyway is not an attractive look for a political party which claims to be democratic, but that’s exactly where the Conservatives are in this election. They threw everything into their attempt to unseat Nicola Sturgeon, which was the only strategy that they had for this election. Not only did they fail, they were also exposed as shoddy and shameful political opportunists, preaching hypocritically about standards of government in Scotland while turning a blind eye to the rampant corruption, breaches of the ministerial code, lethal incompetence, lies, and deceit, which characterise the behaviour of their colleagues in Westminster.

The problems for the Scottish Conservatives are compounded by the fact that the Scottish elections of 2016 were something of a high point for them and they won many seats on the slimmest of margins. Many of those seats can be lost to them if their share of the vote slips back by even a couple of percentage points. In 2016 Brexit hadn’t happened and most of us in Scotland didn’t expect it was going to happen There was no realistic prospect of another independence referendum for possibly another decade to come, and so in that election there was not the same urgency as there is now for independence supporters to turn out and vote for a pro-independence party. In 2016 I didn’t vote for my local SNP candidate in the constituency vote (although I did vote SNP on the list) because of his opposition to equal marriage and his support for the teaching of creationism in schools. In this election if I still lived in his constituency I’d have no hesitation in voting for him. Ensuring that we have a strong pro-independence majority in the next Scottish parliament is the over-riding priority. We may not get another chance.

There is a small but vocal minority who claim that they support independence but that they are not going to support Scotland’s largest pro-independence party in this election because of what they claim is corruption or because of the party’s support for certain policies which they dislike but which don’t directly have anything to do with independence. No doubt they are under the influence of a particular individual who has set out to burn down the entire independence movement because it refuses to accept his own estimation of himself as an infallible genius who can do no wrong, some of them are even claiming that they don’t want independence until the leadership of the SNP has been cleared out and replaced with one more to their liking. Usually these comments are prefaced with an assertion to the effect that the individual concerned has been a member of the SNP since 1314 and went leafleting in Bannockburn with King Robert the Bruce.

Although they are loud and vocal on social media, such people seem to have a very limited impact in the real world. An opinion poll for panelbase which was published today shows that the SNP remains on course to win a majority in May and the Greens look set to make substantial gains. The Tories are staring into the abyss and could well fall into third place behind Labour. The real priority of anyone who supports independence is to help make sure that happens. It’s certainly the focus of this blog and will continue to be so

However even if we do accept the premise that the SNP leadership is fundamentally corrupt – which I don’t – this is an argument which fails even on its own logic. What these people are essentially saying is that they want to consign Scotland to the rule of a corrupt government in Westminster which the people of Scotland cannot vote out of office because they cannot countenance the prospect of a corrupt government in Holyrood which the people of Scotland can vote out of office. After all, the entire point of independence is to ensure that the people of Scotland get the governments we vote for. If you don’t like what the SNP are doing, you’ll have a remedy for it in an independent Scotland.

Yet what makes this argument even less logical is that if we do not elect a pro-independence majority in May and press ahead with a successful referendum, that corrupt government in Westminster is very likely to take steps to ensure that there will never again be another independence vote and that Scotland will remain in perpetuity under the thumb of whoever wins a plurality of the vote in England under the undemocratic first past the post system to which Westminster is wedded. To be brutally frank about it, it saying that you are an independence supporter who no longer wants independence because you dislike the leadership of the SNP is not so much a political strategy as it is an exercise in spitting out the dummy.

Talking of spitting out the dummy, I have been informed that Stuart Campbell has published a blog piece today attacking me and everyone else who he feels has done him wrong, telling his dwindling band of supporters to stop supporting us. I have not read the piece and have no intention of doing so, yet I have noticed that three people have cancelled monthly automatic donations to this blog, however three new people have started them, and in addition there was a not insignificant one-off donation from someone saying she was grateful to see that I was standing up to Campbell. His influence is clearly not what he thinks it is.

Normally I would not have bothered to mention any of this, I prefer to rise above the petulant attacks and carry on regardless. The only reason I mention this is because others are also finding themselves the objects of Campbell’s ire. The estimable iScot magazine is also on his hit list. It’s a high quality glossy magazine which is well worth a read whether you support independence or not. So let Stuart Campbell know that you will not allow him to burn down the entire independence movement in a fit of pique and take out a subscription today.  He does not own this movement and we will not be beholden to him.  You can subscribe to iScot at the following link. https://www.iscot.scot/

 

Update: 7.45pm  There have now been nine new monthly donations set up and a considerable number of one off donations including one for a substantial sum.  If Stuart Campbell is reading this, perhaps this tells you that the true extent of your influence is very far from what you think it is, sitting as you do in your little bubble of acolytes.  You are a busted flush.  You told people to stop supporting this blog, the opposite has happened.  Tomorrow please write another of your bile filled hate articles  attacking me, I’m sure it will only increase support for this blog even more.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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A vote of no-confidence in the Tories and their enablers

Yesterday it was going to be the Scottish Tories’ big day. It was going to be the day that Douglas Ross secured his position as the unchallenged leader of the Scottish Conservatives and Ruth Davidson triumphantly set out for the House of Lords with Nicola Sturgeon’s scalp under her belt, to be hailed as the saviour of the Union by her Conservative colleagues and ideally placed to slot into a ministerial position in Johnson’s cabinet.

But that’s not how it turned out. Although it was ostensibly a vote of no confidence in Nicola Sturgeon, it turned into a de facto vote of no confidence in the Scottish Conservatives, one which they lost badly as they were isolated and alone without the support of any of the other parties and finding themselves attacked and assailed by all sides in the parliamentary chamber. The Conservatives were exposed as grubby political opportunists. Their motion fell by 65 votes to 31 with 27 abstentions. Labour abstained.

Yet the fiercest criticism on a day which was supposed to see the decapitation of Nicola Sturgeon was instead levelled at the opposition members of the Holyrood committee who had cynically and shamefully leaked selective findings to a sympathetic press and in so doing had traduced the trust placed in them by parliament and the original complainers in the case, whose interests Jackie Baillie, Murdo Fraser, Alex Cole-Hamilton and Margaret Mitchell hypocritically claimed to have been standing up for. The leader of the Scottish Greens angrily demanded that whoever leaked the findings to the press be disavowed by their party and prevented from standing for reelection as they had proven that they are unfit to hold public office. The cameras cut to a sullen Jackie Baillie looking as though she was chewing her way through a jumbo sized packet of wasps.

The normally mild mannered and scrupulously polite John Swinney launched a ferocious attack on the Conservatives’ Adam Tomkins and Murdo Fraser because of their cynical bad faith and grubby politicking in the inquiry, hanging them out to dry with the evidence of their own Tweets. This was a vote of no-confidence in the Tories and their enablers, they lost badly.

Another loser this week was my resolution to steer clear of the toxic cesspit that is Twitter. Just like John Swinney I reached the limits of my patience.  On Monday I sent a Tweet after Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the ministerial code asking if we could all now please get back to campaigning for a strong pro-independence majority in May and making the case for independence. From behind his sock puppet account set up to get around his Twitter ban, Stuart Campbell told me with his usual grace and charm to get to fuck. Then he blocked me on Twitter, a block which I was happy to return in kind. Then after receiving a series of sniffy tweets from his supporters to tell me that my blog post yesterday wasn’t very conciliatory, I snapped back : Just a wee note to any of Stuart Campbell’s minions whining about my supposed lack of conciliation with their guru. Campbell’s fragile ego can’t cope with compromise and conciliation, so spare me your pearl clutching. I am past caring.

Perhaps it was ill-judged of me to send that tweet,and I apologise if anyone other than Stuart Campbell was upset by it, but I was angry and fed up. To tell the truth I am sick to the back teeth of the double standards employed by Campbell and his supporters. He can be as nasty and abrasive as he wants, but don’t dare respond to him or challenge him, because then it’s you who is in the wrong. His fragile and brittle ego rests upon his refusal to acknowledge that he has ever been wrong. He is remarkably quick to take offence, yet even quicker to resort to personal abuse and insult.

The thing about conciliation is that it is like the tango or making a baby, it takes two to do it. Stuart Campbell has demonstrated that he has no interest in conciliation. He wants supplicants, not anyone who might dare to challenge him. Stuart’s world is a simple black and white one. Yet the real world is complex and full of shades of grey.

Campbell has of course been quite spectacularly wrong. For months now he has been claiming that Nicola Sturgeon will be driven from office, and has been devoting his energies and time to trying to bring about her downfall without any apparent care about how this might impact upon prospects for independence. He has been asserting that she is behind a massive conspiracy in which she set out with malice aforethought and with the collusion of the police, the SNP, the Crown prosecution service, and a group of women whom he alleges to have maliciously invented a series of baseless lies, to send an innocent and saint-like Alex Salmond to prison.

Yet Nicola Sturgeon is still in office and the proof of the conspiracy always remains in a document which has yet to be made public. It’s in the nature of conspiracy theories that they cannot be disproved. Like the Second Coming, for true believers,vindication is always just over the horizon. We have had almost two years of investigations, committees, inquiries and reports, not to mention intense scrutiny from a media which is overwhelmingly hostile to the Scottish Government, despite all that and the best efforts of Campbell and his followers to dig up and propagate any dirt they can find, Nicola Sturgeon remains in post, vindicated by an impartial and independent investigation. Conclusive proof of the grand conspiracy remains as elusive as ever. It’s time to give it up. In FMQs today even Ruth Davidson in her last appearance in Holyrood recognised that the Salmond-Sturgeon saga had run out of political steam, choosing not to address the issue at all and instead attacking the Scottish Government on its record in educational standards.

However Stuart Campbell cannot admit that he was wrong or that he has lost, so in order to protect his fragile psyche from the devastating truth that he is as fallible as any other human, he has resorted to arguing that independence will never happen and that in any case independence isn’t worth having as long as Nicola Sturgeon remains the leader of the SNP. For that reason he is no longer a supporter of Scottish independence but is now actively campaigning to prevent it. My long standing policy of not using this blog as a platform from which to attack or criticise other independence supporters no longer applies to him. He has become a sad irrelevance, and an enemy of independence, and it’s all because of his vanity and ego. Having got that off my chest, I will now get back to ignoring him, and I suggest that is what everyone else does too. I will also get back to ignoring Twitter.

You don’t deal with a narcissist’s attention seeking by giving them the attention that they crave. There are far bigger and more important fish to fry. We have an election to win and an independence referendum campaign to fight. Those of us who are focused on winning this election and winning Scottish independence are no longer telling Nicola Sturgeon’s online critics to wheesht for indy. We are telling them that we are no longer listening to them. We have work to do, if you are not going to help win a pro-indy majority and a victory for independence in the referendum that lies ahead – then get out of our way.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Time to move on

It’s over at last. The concerted attempts to remove Nicola Sturgeon from office have failed. Although we can expect another couple of days of headlines and unconvincing outrage from the Scottish Conservatives as they try to pretend that they really do have principles, the real danger to the First Minister’s position passed yesterday, when the independent Hamilton report cleared her of any breach of the ministerial code. There is a further test today, when the Tories press ahead with their motion of no-confidence in her, but the thoroughly scunnered Greens have already said that they are not going to support the motion which means that the Tories will not have sufficient votes for it to pass. Labour have indicated that they may abstain.

The Tories have failed to unseat Nicola Sturgeon just weeks before the Holyrood election and have now run out of Holyrood procedures to use in order to try and keep the story alive. So that’s them buggered their election strategy. Not only have they failed to depose Nicola Sturgeon, they have nothing remotely positive to offer the electorate and they stand exposed as cynical opportunists who embarked on a witch-hunt against the First Minister while remaining silent about far more serious and egregious breaches of the ministerial code and outright unlawful behaviour on the part of Conservative cabinet ministers. The Tories had nothing else in their armoury apart from their attempts to bring down Nicola Sturgeon and to throw the SNP into chaos just as the election campaign was about to start. That electoral strategy is now in tatters. They are now going to have to fight this election with the focus on the Westminster Tories’ plans to dismantle the devolution settlement. They are now in the uncomfortable position of campaigning to resist the democratic will of the people of Scotland without having any positive offer to put to the electorate themselves. It’s now far harder for them to hide behind a smokescreen of SNPbad.

It’s hard to persuade anyone that you really care about the waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money when you are desperately hoping that no one will mention the reek of corruption that surrounds the billions of pounds of public money that your own party colleagues have spaffed on contracts to Tory donors and personal associates or the almost £500,000 (£340,000 plus legal costs) that Home Secretary Priti Patel had to pay to a former staff member after an independent enquiry found that her bullying behaviour towards her subordinates constituted a direct breach of the ministerial code. But when it comes to Nicola Sturgeon, all of a sudden Douglas Ross and Ruth Davidson think that they can occupy the moral high ground. There hasn’t been a less convincing attempt to assert moral superiority since the serial offspring abandoner Boris Johnson criticised single mothers for their “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” children. Which if nothing else proves that no one does hypocrisy like a Tory. Or indeed a lack of self-awareness.

Patrick Harvie went so far as to give an interview in which he denounced the blatant politicisation of the Holyrood committee investigation and called for sanctions to be imposed on those committee members who leaked parts of the report to the media over the weekend in a calculated attempt to generate a slew of SNPbad headlines just weeks before an all-important Scottish election. Whoever leaked the report was in clear breach of the code of conduct for MSPs, making their attempts to accuse Nicola Sturgeon of breaching the code of behaviour expected of her ring particularly hypocritical, which is quite the achievement given that rank hypocrisy is their normal stock in trade. Murdo Fraser, Jackie Baillie, Margaret Mitchell, and the Alex-Cole-Hamilton shaped void, we’re looking at you.

The BBC’s Glenn Campbell and Sarah Smith presented their reports on the news that Nicola Sturgeon had been cleared of accusations that she had breached the ministerial code looking for all the world as though their dug had just been hit by a bus. I almost felt sorry for Sarah, she’d spent all weekend rehearsing her smug face for the camera, trying to carefully calculate just how much of a smirk she could get away with while still maintaining that the BBC is entirely impartial. Actually, as previous weeks have demonstrated, that’s a very big smirk indeed. Unfortunately Sarah instead found that she was going to have to trot out her trying not to look disappointed face, an expression that TV viewers last saw when Alex Salmond was cleared of all charges. After the First Minister was totally cleared by an independent inquiry led by a man who was once the head of the Irish equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, the best that Sarah Smith could manage was to acknowledge through gritted teeth, “This will allow [Nicola Sturgeon] to claim she has been vindicated.” Between the BBC and the perma-raging anti-Sturgeon bloggers, you won’t see so many noses out of joint even if you binge watch several seasons’ worth of Botched: Nose jobs gone wrong.

Tomorrow Alex Salmond is due to give a press conference. We can only hope that he will accept that this long drawn out saga is now at an end and urge his supporters to support the SNP in the coming election and to work to ensure that the next Scottish Parliament is returned with a strong and unassailable pro-independence majority. He can have the last word, but for the rest of us this is a story which has gone on long enough. It’s time for us all to move on. We are no longer listening to the enraged and infuriated Sturgeon haters who spew their bile online. If you think that independence isn’t worth having as long as Nicola Sturgeon is leading the SNP, we no longer care about your petulant hissy fit.  You can piss off and bow down before your Conservative overlords.  The rest of us have important work to do.  The draft bill for a second Scottish independence referendum has now been published. Now what is key is for everyone who supports Scottish independence to ensure that we win a handsome victory in May, that the referendum becomes a reality and that we have the arguments that are going to win it. Now we can return to what is really important without the distractions which only benefit the Conservatives and their allies. It’s time to move on from the let’s get Nicola saga. It’s time to move on to independence.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Flag-shagging for the Union

In recent months, union flags have been popping up every time some minor British government minister makes an announcement. Tory ministers seem to have more flags than a shoe fetishist has size twelve Manolo Blahniks. One of them, Housing minister Robert Jenrick, didn’t just have a large Union flag on display in the corner of his living room when he made an appearance last week via zoom on the BBC Breakfast Show, he also had a large and conspicuously positioned photie of the queen, just in case anyone thought that his flag wasn’t staunch enough by itself.

This recent outbreak of flag-shagging is apparently one of the bright ideas of the British government’s so-called Union unit. The reason that Scotland is increasingly being attracted to the idea of independence is apparently because we don’t have enough union flags, and if only the British Government can successfully channel the interior design ethic of a flute band hall in Livingston then Scotland will decide that this whole independence lark is maybe not such a good idea after all.

So we are to get union flags on our driving licences and car licence plates. There are to be union flags plastered over all the infrastructure projects directly chosen and funded by the UK government as part of their campaign to wrest powers away from Holyrood and subvert devolution. The UK Government hub in Edinburgh, the building from which the British government will coduct its shameless evisceration of the devolution is already branded with an outsize union flag design which wouldn’t look out of place in a Tory cabinet minister’s zoom call. No doubt they have something similar in mind for the new offices that they have planned for Glasgow.

Naturally the flag is prominently on display in the new press briefing room in 10 Downing Street, which reportedly cost £2.6 million for some sheets of MDF, and a few tins of Tory blue paint. There’s that Conservative procurement policy for you. Ministers even tried to brand the Astra-Zeneca vaccine with union flags despite the fact that the team developing it included Turkish residents of Germany, the company is owned by an Anglo-Swedish consortium with a French chief executive, and one of the major production sites is in Belgium.

The Tories are very keen to plaster union flags on everything because they imagine them to be a symbol of unity. This only goes to show just how out of touch with Scotland they really are. The most recent display of union flags in Scotland was when Rangers fans went on a rampage of vandalism in George Square. The centre of Glasgow has also witnessed such other symbols of union flag unity when red white and blue bedecked right wing thugs ostensibly “defending” statues that no one intended to attack embarked upon an orgy of violence, assaulting peaceful protestors standing up for fair and decent treatment for asylum seekers and migrants. The union flag symbol of unity was also prominently on display when those right wing British nationalist boot boys attacked peaceful independence supporters in the aftermath of the independence referendum in 2014, an incident which the BBC quite disgustingly, with a hypocritical false moral equivalence described as “clashes between supporters and opponents of independence. Every year on the streets of towns and cities of the west of Scotland we see the “unity” that the union flag symbolises in triumphalist sectarian parades that tell Scots from a catholic family background that the union flag wavers will never fully accept them.

In Scotland we are well aware of the “unity” that the union flag represents. It’s the unity that comes after your opponents have been battered into submission, with kicks and punches if necessary. That’s the only kind of unity that the Conservatives understand. For them the union flag is a symbol of their total victory.

This recent plague of flag-shagging represents yet another instance of the historic reversal of a pattern that always infuriated Scots, that of politicians and other public figures referring to England when they meant Britain. The use of the union flag is an example of the Conservatives saying Britain when they really mean England. The Conservatives have come to represent a decidedly English right wing nationalism. The Brexit that they espouse is a creature of English nationalist obsessions and resentments and a peculiarly English sense of exceptionalism. Scotland rejected Brexit at the ballot box, and has repeatedly and consistently rejected the Conservative party which is not only hell bent on imposing the most harsh form of Brexit on all of us, it is also using that Brexit as an excuse to weaken and undermine a devolution settlement that Scotland did give overwhelming support to at the ballot box.

Scotland is not suddenly about to become reconciled to any of this because Tory Government ministers have taken to wrapping themselves in union flags and insisting that it’s a symbol of unity. It’s not symbols we are looking for, it’s substance, and it’s in substance that the Conservatives are lacking when it comes to taking Scotland’s desires and interests into account. What the current plague of union flags symbolises isn’t unity, it’s weakness and desperation. It’s a symbol of political opportunism and a British goverment which has nothing constructive to offer Scotland beyond empty and meaningless platitudes about a precious union and a partnership of nations.

The union flags which this government is hell bent on plastering all over our public life are a last desperate attempt to disguise the fact that the union as it was once understood is over. It’s not a symbol of strength and confidence. It’s a symbol of weakness and hollowness. The real tragedy for supporters of the UK and the union between Scotland and England is that this is all that they have left to offer.

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership ,or about some other issue not directly related to Scottish independence – there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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