One of the hacks for the foreign owned press in Scotland the other day asked this question. ‘Is it OK to talk about SNP civil war yet?’ He, of course, was click baiting for attention. His tweets are invariably thus, he tends to have more people read his tweets than the drivel in his weekly SNP Bad column.
I replied ‘it wouldn’t make a difference there will still be an SNP landslide victory.’ That is very true, unless the SNP manages to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. The worrying factor is that the same leadership and advisors that were responsible for the debacle at the 2017 UK General Election are still steering the SNP bus.
The hack like the rest of the unionist opposition is just not capable of mounting a serious challenge to the SNP. Their decades of SNP Bad has seen unionism move from total dominance in Scotland to fringe status. Only foreign control and management of all the media outlets have allowed them to remain in the picture at all. They are like an 8 track tape manufacturer in the digital age.Unionism and Unionists are literally dying out in Scotland.
Scotland moved on long ago, as has the world however the Little Brit/Englander still continues to pound its puny breast and regale us all with tales of past glories. The belief that Britannia is, still a global power and player is embarrassing to us trapped inside the union. The rest of the world meantime just point fingers and laugh.
We all remember the bravado that followed the Brexit vote. ‘we hold all the cards’ this was topped by ‘this will be the easiest deal ever’ Dr Liam Fox assured us,’the day after Brexit there will be over 40 countries lining up to sign trade deals with UK.’ All nonsense of course, even today our corrupt and amature media insist that the EU is on the verge of capitulation to mighty Mother England. Any day now the CEOs of Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen are going to tell Angela Merkel to give UK everything they want. Those of us in the real world know the reality. Little Englander exceptionalism sadly does not.
The same clowns are trying to convince us, Scots, that although according to them our economy is more backward than medieval Albania we should remain in the English Empire because well just because They never have, nor will they ever be able to articulate a positive case for the union. SNP Bad is all they have in their armoury politicos and hacks alike.
The morons of the English Tory Party we see on our English TV channels everyday are their top operators. The dregs of the English registered parties are to be found in Scotland and Wales. They as already mentioned are only still barely surviving thanks to the offices of the corrupt media imposed upon Scotland and Wales.
Daily they push all the negative stories they can find, invent or create. The hack mentioned above is desperate for the present disquiet among the yes movement to break out into open hostilities. He might not have long to wait. The irony in that is even with all that corrupt media at their disposal it will not have any lasting or material effect at the ballot box. The Scottish people are just not buying what unionism has to sell. They can continue to put lipstick on their pigs, polish their turds, the Scottish voters are not going to buy their substandard product ever again.
Just as the Unionist politicos and media never learn it seems some in the SNP are determined to give them all the help, they can. The present difficulties in the Party are all self-inflicted. The idiotic legislation driving huge wedges between the wider Yes Movement. The apparent collusion between senior SNP figures to try and falsely imprison a former much loved First Minister. A refusal to even investigate this sore is only making matters worse. The gender driven ideology replacing independence as the main focus of the party is the biggest danger to the electoral prospects of the SNP. The First Minister’s idiotic intervention to assist a woke approved candidate that had been caught blatantly lying alas once again exposed the flaws in the Party leaders judgement. She has now openly chosen a side in the GRA debacle. I think this and her failure to act upon the overwhelming evidence of the CEOs part in a conspiracy against Alex Salmond will be her ultimate undoing.
In the 2017 General Election the SNP defeated itself. They didn’t lose voters to other parties. Over 500,000+ potential SNP voters just stayed at home. The SNP Campaign had been so uninspiring these voters didn’t get enthused enough to walk to the polling stations as they had in 2015 and 2016.
For whatever reason in 2017, the SNP decided the ‘I’ word should not be mentioned, not on the doorsteps and not in any literature. It was a monumental error of judgement on the part of the leadership. While they were worried about upsetting the hardcore unionist rump they were discouraging their own hardcore independence support.
The SNP leadership may like to think that gender balanced cabinets and all women lists are the most important matters in the world, their core support do not agree. While Nicola Sturgeon and her inner circle obsess on how best to get men with beards and penises into women’s safe spaces the core support obsess on how we get independence. That is a disconnect that firstly the SNP leadership need to recognise then act upon.
While the SNP hierarchy was trying to falsely imprison the former party leader, the voters were obsessing on the power grab. While Nicola was trying to convince English voters, the SNP knew best on Brexit, her own voters were trying to find exit clauses in the Treaty of Union. As the NEC plotted and connived to exclude and deselect defenders of women’s rights the core vote worried about their future and keeping their jobs and homes inside the post Brexit Union.
The Daily Briefings everyone has conceded Nicola Sturgeon has been excellent in her delivery of the facts. However, the reality is this, there was never a need for the FM to be there every single day. She helped politicise this public health issue with her presence. At the very first hint of the politicising she should have stepped away and left the briefings to the health experts alone. Her presence should have been infrequent and only at times of major policy change. Unfortunately, it seems her ego and inability to delegate or share the limelight clouded her judgement.
The instant the BBC in collusion with The Tory Party turned it into a PPB for Dougie Ross the SNP should have walked away from the briefings. Nicola should have turned it over to the scientists and doctors leaving Douglas Ross, the BBC and the Tories dangling in the air. Sadly our First Minister nor her advisors have any strategic or tactical brains to realise that would have been the smartest course of action.
The SNP leadership need to realise very soon that what a few of them crave is not what the vast majority of their core support desire. The surge in membership in 2014/15, the General Election result of 2015 was the YES voters sending a clear signal to the SNP and to Westminster. Regrettably only Westminster got the memo. Since then they have applied more and more measures, against Scotland and the SNP. In response the independence Party has either capitulated on every occasion or been obsessed with unrelated matters.
The present SNP is unfortunately living in their own wee private bubble. What used to be a well disciplined party and membership has become fractured. That is simply and unarguably down to a lack of proper leadership. It takes a particular type of person to juggle the roles of Party leader and First Minister. Alex Salmond managed it with ease. Nicola Sturgeon has failed abysmally to manage to hold it together. She should however not shoulder the entire responsibility for the present failings.The Party CEO, her husband should be running the party on a daily basis that is after all his remit. He is the one that has allowed the party to lose discipline, navel gaze and disappear up its own arse in self-indulgence. The togetherness is no longer there. The rank and file that always felt part of the SNP family now feel strangers in their own party.
Some felt so estranged they decided to not only leave the party in frustration but impelled to start a new independence party. I speak of course, of the courage and tenacity that Colette Walker and a few others found after being the subject of targeted bullying inside the SNP. On that as on so many other occasions both Mr & Mrs Sturgeon felt no need to intervene to halt the bullying.
This new independence list party is only a few months old. Already it has made giant strides and this in spite of a pandemic. There are branches and office bearers throughout all the regions of Scotland. Policies have been formed and certain ground rules and principles set out. Countless external zoom meetings with interested Yes Groups have been done. The ISP, unlike the Greens, will not challenge the SNP in any Constituency seats.The ISP is committed not to run against the SNP in areas where polling suggests the SNP could win List Seats. Although as a party they cannot openly campaign for the SNP the members and supporters like myself are promoting and advocating SNP 1 ISP 2. The ISP see themselves as fellow travellers on the independence road and as allies of the SNP, not rivals. Their intention is to remove unionist seat warmers and replace them with independence minded MSPs.
A word of caution to the SNP devotees that are attacking the ISP daily and not the Unionists or Greens. You really need to think about what you are doing. The ISP voluntarily are promoting your party in the Constituency. They do not even ask you to reciprocate on the List. However, if you continue to attack an ally, they might just not help you get MSPs elected in the constituencies. Know your enemy, and it is not the ISP. Do not be as clueless on strategy and tactics as the present leadership of the SNP. We are all wanting the same outcome an independent Scotland. It is just the SNP leadership we now need to get on board.
Excellent post, albeit very depressing.
I have noticed a real anger developing with the SNP, it’s coming to the boil now. A lot of us are at breaking point with the leadership. For a 30 plus year member like me, it just beggars belief that we have come to this. I would sight Murrell, Sturgeon, Wishart and Blackford , as the ones to blame for this mess.
I thought that getting rid of Sturgeon might be a tactical mistake before Holyrood 2021. Now I think removing her might be the only hope we have. I think if she stays , then nothing will change at the top. She is a dictator , not a leader. Her narrow views on many things including the mechanism to independence , are killing the movement.
When Boris told Blackford yesterday :”Power is coming back to Edinburgh” . He chose those words carefully. Power is coming back to Edinburgh, but not Holyrood. It’s going to Jack’s new HQ , with 3000 civil servants. We warned them about this 2 years ago. The SNP know what is going on. We are all watching the destruction of our nation. Yet Blackford sits in an English parliament making soundbites.
We have one chance to stop this. Direct action and it needs to be now before this bill gets through the HOL. Talk about angry, I am seething.
Are you listening Nicola, is anybody there?
Great post.
I wonder why Scots of independence mind are threatened by the ISP, or any other organisation created to enhance Scotland’s independent voice? The ISP is about security, a bulwark, existing to inform the global community: ‘Look, this country’s more than ready’; what is it about an additional level of pro-independence security that’s not getting through to them? Why aren’t people getting the simple message that the ISP is our friend? Why is an AUOB march seen as not challenging the SNP but some still resist the ISP as such? Roddy; (I’m introducing a little levity here) have you been swearing at folk on Twitter?
If the ISP’s message is being resisted by folk then it has to try other approaches for altering that negative perception. Disregarding Twitter shills, there’s no reason this party shouldn’t be globally accepted as a sensible, tactically smart idea for Scotland. Get the PR folk to have a big, friendly, informative push to this end, then maintain this image.
Other matters; I wonder what Joanna Cherry’s got up her sleeve? She’s one smart cookie, and I bet she’s not used to sitting on her hands waiting for events to overtake her?
Enjoying your work, Roddy
You have said what millions now think; the SNP must embrace their new allies in the ISP, or risk their entire independence victory, to a misguided strategy of gender politics and a failed framing of Scotland’s greatest living leader.
Cherry should lead us. Nicola is micro managing the health service instead of standing up to English government greed and arrogance
Joanna -may indeed be the very person that saves Scotland from the shit coming down the track!
One thing is clear. The Murrell’s have gone into hiding.
What are the SNP doing about the Internal Market Bill? Is it going to be like Brexit – make a lot of speeches in Westminster and achieve nothing.
I posted on Wings a few years ago that the next few years would tell us if we are being led by a Bruce type or a bunch of Charlie’s. Sturgeons speech in January this year confirmed to me that we are being led by a bunch of useless Charlie’s.
We are not going forward with this lot in charge of the SNP – we are going backwards as Westminster neuters the Scot parliament.
Well said Roddy
Great stuff, BB. No, there isn’t a civil war, because all it would take for us all to close ranks again and move forward would be for the FM to announce that independence is going to take place within the next couple of years, or sooner. On the surface, there does appear to be two parties within the SNP, but a concerted move towards independence now would force all of us to unite and leave the other arguments for later.
I would prefer her to make the 2021 election the turning point, and go into that election on a specific Manifesto for immediate independence and an invitation to Westminster to join negotiations, with the reserve of a case against the UKG based on Treaty violations, to be brought before the UN if England-as-the-UK reneges. The currency/pensions question would also require to be answered. Go for our own currency after six months or so, publish the DWP pensions statement, and offer an enhanced pension in an independent Scotland. No elaborate Manifesto, just bullet points, and refuse to be drawn. If they insist on answers and ridicule everything, then tell them in no uncertain manner that any withdrawal of legal obligations will lead to action for reparations for the oil/gas/Trident, etc., with an immediate demand to remove Trident and Vanguard from our soil and waters. Above all, stop cringing and start standing up to these bullying barstewards.
Meantime, she should inform the UKG, and, by implication, the supine, Vichy Scots in our midst, that the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement is unacceptable to Scotland, as is the power grab, as is the deliberate sidelining of Holyrood in favour of the UKG Office in Scotland. That should be done before the end of the year, so that the UKG will be in no doubt that we are serious about leaving, and that it is no game of brinksmanship, as they tried with the EU, who are now taking legal action against them. If they refuse to comply, we, too, will take action.
This would go to the wire, and I have no doubt that we would be threatened, but we would have to stand fast. I have no doubt either, that they would try and starve us of funding for Covid and everything else. We have to be prepared to stand against this, too, demand the return of all our revenues, and appeal to the international community for aid and other help against this aggressor. We have been on our own in this nightmare for too long already.
Today at FMQs Nicola Sturgeon when asked about the leaked Whattsapp messages first of all tried to hide behind a statement that there is a police investigation into who leaked the messages. That is of course true but totally irrelevant to the question asked – “are these messages genuine or not”. Of course they are genuine that’s why the police are investigating the leak. They are supposed to be held by the crown and it is illegal to make them publicly available.
Sturgeon then said it is not reasonable to ask me to answer for the people in the messages.
I will answer for myself said Sturgeon.
Well it is nearly two weeks now since the leak and not a word from Murrel or Ruddick or indeed any official comment from the SNP
Murrell is Sturgeons husband and the Chief Exec of the SNP. Ruddick is the Chief Operating officer but Sturgeon thinks as leader of the SNP it is nothing to do with her. Truly unbelievable.
This scandal will not end well. The whole business is sickening.
Just who are the Britnats that set the train wreck in motion. I feel so sorry for Salmond and his wife Moira that they have had to put up with this persecution for all these years. I am also in no doubt that people in the SNP/Scotgov have continued to work with the Britnat media and Rape Crisis Scotland to trash Salmonds reputation even after he has been found not guilty. Shameful that any independence supporters think it is right to cover this up. Yes that’s WGD and his fan club and others. With this one wrong decision WGD is trashing his own reputation built up so marvellously over many years. Sad..
This recent article by George Kerevan is well worth some thought- if you have not seen it already.
“SNP at the Crossroad: What is to be Done?”
https://www.conter.co.uk/blog/2020/9/29/snp-at-the-crossroad-what-is-to-be-done
George might perhaps make an interesting guest for Scottish Prism and it would afford him an opportunity to explain some of this recent published thinking.
You have an attentive audience and he certainly has a wealth of experience and perspective that younger generations might benefit to hear from.
😉
Roddy I am as frustrated as ++=+ the EU spokesperson has announced the EU are taking the uk to court citing the breach of the WA agreement which is an international treaty , in introducing the IMB which infringes the GFA and therefore negates the WA and is ILLEGAL in INTERNATIONAL LAW
Yet Joanna Cherry who is a QC announced in the HOC that the IMB also BREACHES the TOU between Scotland and england which is also a recognised international treaty and all the SNP hierarchy talk about is the next HR election , Fuck the next HR election as soon as the IMB receives lizzies assent DECLARE the union has been dissolved , lodge a case at the UN and ICJ and inform them and the international community that due to the WM govt breaking the terms of the TOU we are once again an independent country
Why are the SNP intent on ignoring this opportunity and why are independence supporters not SCREAMING at the SNP to take this route instead of the corrupted referendum route which EVEN if granted a sect30 it enables WM to knobble it
I wish I could answer that for you twathater.
The obvious mistake Ferrier made was not to go by car and stop off for an eye test in the North of England on the way home to her family.
The double standards of the Torues are obvious. The double standards of the SNP are also obvious for all those who choose to look. A whole gang of nasty people in the SNP/Scotgov carry out a malicious persecution including lying in court during a criminal trial and they just continue on as normal in their positions with no discipline applied. Clearly if you are a member of this criminal gang you think you are above any disciplinary action but others hung out to dry with immediate effect. These are not the type of people I want to vote for. I want to vote for the SNP but not for these people. The SNP members need to have a clearout.