This was not a great week to be a member of the Tartan Army or a supporter of the SNP. Both of these entities had a terrible week. It is also arguable that both the defeats they suffered at home venues were self-inflicted and both for the same reasons, poor management decisions and tactics!
At Hampden on Friday night, Scotland faced Iceland, a team that has been having massive problems recently. On the UEFA rankings, Scotland sits 41 places higher than their opponent. Indeed, in their last competitive matches, Iceland had been beaten 5-2 on aggregate by Kosovo and relegated to Nations League C. Scotland has just come down from League A.
However, Iceland’s luck was about to change at Hampden. For reasons only known to himself, the Scotland manager deployed a 5-4-1 system in a friendly home match against what on paper was an inferior team. On the night, what can easily be described as one of their worst performances in living memory, Scotland at home were pumped 1-3!
The blame ultimately rests with the players, however the manager has to take huge responsibility for the defeat. He selected the players, the tactics, and as the horror show unfolded, he was the only one that could change the system and tactics. He failed in all of that, and as this is not a first reversal or a fluke result, his future as Scotland coach should be over. In his favour, the blazers at the SFA are some of the most incompetent administrators in the world of football.It might take the fans voting with their feet to get them the manager the team and supporters deserve!
Meanwhile, in the Hamilton by-election on Thursday night the SNP playing a home match in the most iconic Parliamentary seat in all of Scotland also had a howler. They were facing in political terms an opponent in absolute disarray. The present Labour Government is arguably the most disliked and mistrusted UK Government post war. Indeed, on the same night in North Lynn,West Norfolk in a by-election there the Labour vote was down 50.5%!
The Labour candidate that the SNP were facing was kept well away from hustings and television debates by the Labour Party for a reason.The Red Tories themselves have been pilloried in Scotland for their lies and betrayals of Grangemouth, WASPi women, WFA and their lies about 1,000 Aberdeen jobs in GB Energy.Their Hamilton candidate with respect is not the best orator or thinker and unlikely to be able to defend the party’s troubles to the attendant media throng, so they kept him away from exposure. Well done them, smart move!
Facing such a weak opponent the SNP Manager deployed a defensive formation, inferior player selection and amateurish tactics. This seat that famously in November 1967 kicked off the SNP as a serious party has a huge number of independence supporters in the constituency. Some second and third generation supporters. In a nutshell fertile ground for the so-called party of independence.
John Swinney having won a few council by-elections recently obviously thought this was going to be a walk in the park. Instead of using Hamilton as a launch pad for 2026 and a full frontal independence plebiscite election for Holyrood John chose to fight it on British narratives. The biggest mistake possible, fighting on Brit ground!
Several weeks into the campaign John had called a Stop Reform Summit. This brought together all the British Unionist Parties and the SNP. No doubt John hoped by forming a united ‘british’ front against the party that is causing alarm in England he would get lauded. Instead, he rightly got roasted!
Instead of uniting, the unionists used the opportunity to bash the nats. The real Tories didn’t even bother to turn up. The Red Tories used the moment to shout SNP Bad. The we did it for you Beth party came to eat the sandwiches and smile for the cameras. The other British Party omitted from the guest list, the Seig Heil Tories received all the publicity and victimhood. They could never have managed this on their own, way to go John!. In effect John gave the very people he wanted to defeat on behalf of the English hegemony a lift up, not a put down! Amateurish by Swinney!
Undeterred and oblivious to the stupidity of his actions Swinney decided to double down. Throughout the campaign he continued to point to Reform as the danger. He insisted it was a two donkey race between SNP and Reform. This was despite the info he was being fed back from the SNP grassroots on the ground (NOT THE PAYROLL!) that Labour, not Reform were the danger!
This, I am afraid, has been the same problem the SNP has faced since November 2015, CES which is Cloth Ear Syndrome. They just refuse to listen to anyone outside of their own self-made little self-righteous bubble. They have lost more than 50% of their membership, 80% of their income, and more worryingly than anything, as of July 2024, 750,000 pro-independence voters do not feel motivated enough to go to the polls in support of the SNP.That is more than actually voted SNP in July 2024.
The reality of the 2024 UKGE was this, more pro-independence supporters dont/wont vote for the SNP than actually vote for them! The exact same happened in Hamilton. The last MSP had 16,000 votes in 2021. On Thursday, not even 8,000 voted for the SNP! This defeat and the manner of it should send shockwaves through the SNP and result in the removal of the present leader and leadership. I fear it will only entrench them further inside their toxic bubble.
Sadly, like the SFA those in charge of the SNP are as amateurish as the football blazers. Both are more interested in their personal aggrandisement than delivering what the supporters of them both want most of all. A team on the pitch that is worthy of the great loyal support.
Post the defeat, John Swinney talked of the great progress his party had made in Hamilton. If losing 8,000 voters and losing the seat to a wounded Labour Party is progress, I would hate to see what John calls a calamity!
The writing is on the wall, and if the SNP do not take radical and immediate steps to halt the slide, oblivion awaits them in 2026. There is still time, however, the party needs to act immediately.
It is against this backdrop that the Through A Scottish Prism panel convened. Lloyd Quinan, Eva Comrie, Allan Petrie and Phil Boswell all bring their unique foresight to bear on the events of the week. Their opinions and analysis are as always clear, concise and brutally honest!
In the time since Thursday, on social media, assorted SNP payroll and devotees have been trying to switch away any criticism of this horrendous defeat in the most iconic of SNP seats. With no Alba Party to blame, they are, of course, scurrying about looking for anyone or anything to blame for this debacle. Taking responsibility or listening to reality are no longer in the SNP DNA.
This week, Scotland should be getting two new dynamic leaders and a change of tactics with the National Football team and the National Party. Sadly, I expect neither will happen. We can’t support another International football team, but we can support another independence-seeking Party! One that actually does what it says on the tin, and one that has no carrots, just an action plan! The voters are already voting with their feet. The SNP’s only hope is to come out of their bubble and make the necessary changes!
All this and more on your favourite Scottish political weekly review podcast.
The SNP won’t change. There’s nobody left in the party capable of doing this and the constitution and rules were changed to completely disempower members. Their elected representatives have been preselected to ensure absolute obedience and are more interested in hyper-wokeness and drawing a paycheck than being accountable to the independence supporters who elected them. They are, at best, devolutionists which makes them unionists. Many are quislings.
Independence supporters need to find another vehicle to take them to their destination because the SNP won’t do this. They’ve been sat in front of an open goal since 2014 but have repeatedly demonstrated that they are incapable of even heading in the right direction, never mind hitting the target. How many more chances do they deserve? None.
Liberate needs to expose the SNP for what it has become and wipe the party from the political map of Scotland. This needs to happen now, well ahead of the 2026 Holyrood election, otherwise another decade or more could be wasted, during which Westminster will continue its asset stripping of Scotland’s economy and society.
We’re unlikely to get widespread mainstream media coverage for this mission so the grassroots independence movement will need to do it by word of mouth, just as we did so successfully in 2014. We can do this, but we need to talk about it with our friends, neighbours, work colleagues and relatives.
It is Liberate Scotland, not Liberation
Sorry, of course it is. I would edit my original post but WordPress doesn’t appear to allow this.
Done on your behalf
I’ve only just read your article having just made the same comparison between the Hamil-pden debacles on Friday, on Peter Bell’s blog but you have made the comparison much more eloquently and in more depth than I did. Both events were highly damaging, embarrassing and worrying in light of the imminent challenges and opportunities our country face both in the political and football arenas. The current leadership of the SNP is bringing the independence movement into disrepute by their poor decision making and their inability to see anything other than SNP as the soul voice and vehicle of the independence movement and turn blind eyes and put fingers in their ears to ignore any other initiatives, views or ideas that don’t come from their own top tables as tho fearing infiltration from other pro independence activists like some kind of weird religious isolationist cult. I don’t know how this can be changed without the SNP grass roots forcing it…but I hope they…and the Tartan Army will press for this on behalf of all everyone behind both the Independence cause and the footballing cause 🏴❤️🏴 Looking forward to watching the prism video on YouTube later
Thank you for your kind words and observations. I think we should go with great minds think alike… 😅
Good discussion. You are right, the SNP leadership seldom mentions independence and clearly has no idea how to define it never mind deliver it.
However, there could be more mention here of our colonial condition and the fact that independence means decolonisation, and liberation from oppression:
https://liberation.scot/hidden.html
As you say, it wasn’t the musical, more like a comedy. Unfortunately, for both of them, the audience have stopped laughing. It’s a pity that neither lot have got decent scriptwriters, because the scripts badly need changing.
Hamilton is now famous for the SNP words ” stop the world, Scotland wants to get off ”
And that I am afraid is where we are with the SNP.
The SNP is nothing less than a Brit Trojan Horse masquerading as a independence party and the voters increasingly know it. Soon however they will be gone. The establishment has played well but how they have played is straight out of their play book.
The Irish party was the same all those years ago until it was swept away with another party that the Brits did not control.