What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger comes from an observation by the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It has been translated into English and quoted in several variations, but is generally used as an affirmation of resilience.
It is an undeniable fact the SNP at the moment is in deep trouble. The problem is that the SNP refuses to take the necessary steps required to save themselves from more damage. They were warned that electing a Continuity Candidate would only increase their woes. How Humza was elected/selected is for another day. We have to deal with the here and now.
That the same cabal that drove the SNP on to the rocks is still in place. All that has changed is the captain of the sinking ship! Instead of sending for help the S.S. SNP has decided that by keeping the exact same course and heading they will somehow defy logic and sail into calm waters once again.
To have avoided much of this present clusterbrouach, Humza just needed to do some of the things he promised when campaigning for the leadership. He admitted that the SNP Governance “was not as it should be.” He also said it would allow an opportunity to “have a different way of doing things.” That has not proved to be the case. Instead of replacing the HQ staff with fresh untainted employees, he has just shuffled them around into new positions or left it as it was. Sue Ruddock another of the overpaid misfits was promoted into the position of acting CEO to replace the discredited Murrell. As bad as Tories getting rid of Pritti Patel and replacing her with Suella Braverman. Different day, same racism!
All the Spads and other advisors that ran the ship aground are still in place. The policy of GRRB that cost the SNP 50,000-70,000 members is still the central plank of the SNP, not independence. All the promises of unity have quickly been dismissed. Any chance of uniting the entire movement in a Constitutional Convention is remote. In a nutshell the SNP is on the verge of total collapse. Nobody in that party seems capable of bringing any sense to those that are in charge.
Many of the more sensible members and elected officers of the party are looking to the lifeboats. A large number of the membership have decided that another independence party is their best hope. Others have just decided to make it ashore and sit out the storm battering the S.S. SNP!
Meanwhile, the unionists are gleefully kidding themselves on that as the SNP breaks up on the rocks that the desire for Scottish independence will sink along with it. They are so wrong! The SS House Jocks are oblivious to the realities all around them, their bigotry clouds their cognitive reasoning. Such is their hatred for their own country of birth they are blinded to what is actually happening.
Polls since Sturgeon and Murrell were forced to resign have shown a steady decline in support for the SNP. This is what has made the Unionists so excited. They have put two and two together and come up with 1690!
They have tried for decades to destroy any moves towards Scottish self-determination. The mistake they have always made and they will continue to make is, they view the desire for independence as a party political matter. It is why they always attacked our leaders and the SNP only. They have never tried to challenge the concept of independence. They think if they can just cut off the head of the snake then the entire movement will just wither on the vine, collapse and return to voting for either of the English registered House Jock Parties and keep their corrupt uninon intact. They are deluded!
Both the SNP and the Unionists live inside their own wee separate denial bubbles. Within these closed units they kid themselves on with their rhetoric to each other.
On the campaign trail Humza kidded himself and his followers with the complete idiocy that gender politics had gained the SNP support. They all nodded in agreement and just ignored the fact that 70,000 members left the SNP BECAUSE of gender policies!
The Unionists for decades have believed that their message of Mother England’s rule is best for Scotland was just not getting through because the SNP had somehow hypnotised the people of Scotland. The unionists pretend to themselves that Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to be an independent nation. How many times a day do you hear or read SNP BAD? They believe this to be effective just as Humza’s believes gender politics is a vote winner!
It never crosses their minds that maybe, just maybe that a different approach is needed in Scotland. Because they want to be just like England they want Scots to be the same and they cannot understand why there is any resistance. perhaps if they had kept their VOW things might be different!
What neither the SNP or Unionist high commands have acknowledged or taken seriously is the most important fact that has emerged in these times. While support for the SNP has indeed slipped by 10 points the support for independence has remained consistently high!
That should have told the unionists that their belief that the key to unionist victory is to just defeat the SNP is a fallacy.
The SNP should have realised carrots only go so far and that their are some new kids on the block. They should have realised their best chance of survival is to make friends with the new guys not abuse and ignore them. There is safety in numbers. The numbers of Yes supporters far outweighs the number that vote SNP. if they ever learn that simple lesson the unions days are numbered. Failure to learn, then the SNP days are numbered.
What cannot be denied is that the people of Scotland are extremely unhappy with the SNP. They are not though unhappy with the concept of independence. They are not going to return to voting for the English based parties and Unionism. They may abstain for an election or two, however, they will not return to Unionism!
Any electoral success that occurs for the unionists will be temporary as the forces of independence regroup and recalibrate. History gives us a great example that should give comfort to independence supporters that at present are feeling a little despondent. It should also be a cautionary tale for the slabbering unionists.
Following the end of the First World War in November 1918, the British government called a general election just one month later. In that election Sinn Féin won 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland. The election saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party. This party had dominated Irish politics since the 1880s, much in the same way as the SNP has dominated Scottish politics for the past two decades.
The landslide victory for Sinn Féin, came as a shock to all the political factions on the British Isles. Sinn Féin had never before enjoyed significant electoral success before this election. In Ulster the Unionists remained the dominant party. That though did not stop the march to Irish independence.
As always Westminster was too focussed on who would be the next charlatan to get the keys to No.10 to pay too much attention to politics in Ireland. They just assumed the IPP would return and as they were no threat to the Union, so what?
The IPP had become settled down at Westminster and had forgotten its main purpose was to bring Home Rule to Ireland. They attempted to achieve that end by playing by Westminster rules. Does it sound familiar? Instead of bringing down the English establishment’s time in Ireland, the IPP became the establishment in Ireland for England! Again, does it sound familiar?
The IPP’s actions during the 1916 uprising had placed doubts in the minds of loyal IPP voters. For many the IPP had become too Anglo sympathetic and not Irish patriotic enough. They seemed more concerned about offending the unionists in Ireland rather than supporting the Irish patriots!
After the shock of the 1918 General Election, the successful Sinn Féin candidates refused to take their seats in Westminster and instead formed a parliament in Dublin on 21 January 1919, the first Dáil Éireann, which declared Irish independence. The rest as they say is history.
Now more than 100 years later it seems that Sinn Féin is once again on the verge of a monumental election. It is expected that they and their charismatic leader Mary Lou Mcdonald will form the next government in the Republic. It is also likely reunification of the entire island will follow shortly after a Border Poll is held. That rump of British Unionist majority in the north, dissipates every day
I tell you this to give you hope and encouragement to all those that want Scottish independence. Going into the UKGE of 1918, nobody thought that Sinn Féin could not only replace but crush the IPP. Nobody in Westminster suspected for a moment that this British Election would lead to Mother England losing Ireland. Voters can catch out those living in bubbles. The Irish voters did just that in December 1918.
Scotland’s destiny is in the hands of Scottish voters. It is not in the gift of Westminster or US Big Pharma. It won’t be won by challenging Westminster in a court in London or the Hague. It won’t be won by petitioning the USA UN in New York. It will be won by Xs on a ballot paper.
Our independence depends on the people and their choices. Unless the SNP wakes up and changes tact immediately then we need to find another party willing to listen to the people.
Ask yourself while the SNP has been tearing itself up over GRRB, financial schisms,luxury mobile homes, missing funds and leadership beauty parades which party has been touring Scotland talking about independence? While SNP is talking about returning ginger bottles which party has been talking about returning powers to Scotland?
While Unionists have been talking about isolating themselves from Europe and the rest of the world which party has been talking about rejoining the nations of the world?
While the SNP was selling off Scotland’s renewables for pennies, and Labour is talking about using Scotland’s renewables to give a Council Tax freeze and new roads to England. Which Party has been talking about eradicating Scotland’s poverty with our renewables abundance? Who coined the phrase ” energy rich, fuel poverty poor!”
While the Unionist Parties gloat and hope and the SNP dodge and dive only one party in Scotland is working to give us hope. Alba is Gaelic for Scotland. Alba is hope for Scotland! Let us all work towards making the next general election our moment! Let us look to our Irish cousins for inspiration and vote ourselves out of the union!
Let us show the world that resilience does indeed defeat rhetoric!
So hope you are right and 2024 Holyrood election will be a wee test.
Let’s hope Alba take at least 10 seats and both them and ISP take some regional list seats as well.
2024 is UKGE Holyrood is 2026
I hope one of the true Independence parties stand in clydesdale otherwise I will have to spoil my ballot paper.
Spot on, BB. We are now in exactly the same position as Ireland before independence. Naturally, the British State will do what it did to Ireland but in a different way – a far more subtle way. However, the opposite is true of the Scottish independence movement in that we have little support in America.
On the contrary, many of our ills can be traced right back to the US and its global corporatism, always open-mouthed like a basking shark and sucking in nutrients – in this case, other people’s, of course. American global corporatism has no soft and gentle side like the basking shark, and, while Ireland has always benefitted from its diaspora, we are in different territory, being the hosts of the UK’s nuclear weaponry which both the UK and America would hope to retain.
The SNP, almost from the get-go, under Sturgeon, was in thrall to American corporatism, as, indeed, is the UKG, so we are getting it from two directions. Our curse is that we have the seas and land territories that lend themselves to a wider defence, and England has always seen us as its backdoor which has to be locked up against intruders – once the French and Spanish, now the Russians and Chinese.
The ‘trans’ lobby will, in time, come to be viewed by historians for what is actually is: a mechanism to overturn our society in favour of American corporatism – essentially, a terrorist organisation that has no wider remit for the good of the many. The foot soldiers and their ‘terrorist’ activists have led the way and their reward will be the destruction of all laws that control behaviours that cannot be condoned in public, in a civilised society. They want all of these laws removed to afford them a clear path to the Queer Theory cul-de-sac for most of us, whose consent will not be necessary.
Women and children, gays and lesbians, and animals are the natural barriers to complete sexual freedom for many men – and I’m sorry to say that it is mainly men – mentally-ill from excessive and extreme porn consumption and practice, and the porn industry, another largely corporate and global industry, is doing its utmost to normalise extreme porn which takes no account of public spaces or societal prohibitions or people’s sensibilities.
That so many still do not see through this charade of ‘poor, victimised’ ‘trans’ leads me to believe that a large part of the population has been brainwashed in its nether regions where it keeps its brains and the bits that get excited at the thought of complete sexual freedom. That so many females cheer and clap is completely disheartening – they are the Scottish Unionist version of the ‘trans’ movement – because, one day, they will grow up, all their wee synapses fully joined, and they will understand what it is that they enabled.
The ones who have had their healthy breasts removed and who have taken cross-sex hormones will be living a ‘mutant’-like existence, unable to enjoy a normal life. Then, perhaps, they will come to realise that they did this for the benefit of sex-addicted men who used them, young boys and children – as shields against public scrutiny, while their funders across the Pond plotted how to swallow up our resources and assets and turn them into profits for themselves.
The cosy constitutionalism of the current SNP definitely echoes that of John Redmond’s IPP. It took the Easter Rising, and more specifically the British reaction to it, and also the threat of conscription in Ireland, to stir the Irish public into swapping going-nowhere constitutionalism for radical political action by changing from the IPP to Sinn Fein.
[Although it must be remembered that first-passed-the-post elections in 1918, in Ireland and elsewhere, were equally less than clear cut in garnering specific public opinion as today’s FPTP elections – and not just because of differing franchises back in the day].
But the fact remains that electorally and, for want of a better word, emotionally, Irish people got behind a party and a group of political leaders who were not afraid of England and Westminster, and were not afraid to reject constitutionalism in favour of more direct political action.
Scotland’s political circumstances today show very marked similarities with the Ireland of the early years of the twentieth century. But with one obvious difference: independence supporters in Ireland had fearless leadership to follow and emulate whereas today Scotland only has political cowards in charge. In my opinion the independence-supporting people of Scotland want and deserve such fearless leadership as Ireland had in 1918.
The opportunity is there for Alba and Scotland to deliver.
Many years ago I worked in Ireland and when I returned home to the Highlands I immediately became an SNP member. In the summer of 2014 I naturally spent a great deal of time extolling the many benefits of Scottish Independence. We came close, thanks to ALEX SALMOND but then Sturgeon grabbed the reins and took off in the opposite direction.
This time, with all we’ve learned recently, I believe the true independence party – ALBA – will most certainly achieve our aim, thus setting us free from those thieving knights of the realm.
The Westminster establishment have played a deep covert game to undermine the SNP, the Yes Movement and the cause of independence – and our troughers have certainly helped them in that.
In a Westminster statement this week Penny Mordaunt announced that unless the SNP secure auditors by the end of next month then the Short Money paid to cover the expense of party administration, travel, support and etc will be cut.
Quite how money paid to all opposition parties, including Sinn Fein which get paid similar through an alternative scheme, can be selectively cut shows how Westminster can urinate all over Scots at will. But that is not all that is to emerge.
The erstwhile supporter of the Great British state the Daily Telegraph is today running a story about Angus Robertson and how his company set up around 2017 undertake polling has been accepting funding donations, and still is, but has done no polling. Shades of the missing £600k perchance, the selectivity of the British Media in sticking the boot in is clear.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/nicola-sturgeon-ally-s-polling-group-takes-donations-despite-no-surveys-for-three-years/ar-AA1aao4L?cvid=9e23e28d9afa4d9caf02c7b1311ac877&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=5
Anyway, Progress Scotland Ltd despite having delayed and delayed filing accounts now has to do so within the next few weeks and with this Telegraph trailer, one wonders exactly what is about to emerge. Personally I wouldn’t trust Mr Robertson or his alphabetically named Jennifer D ( nee) as far as I could spit.
But the upside of this is that whilst dark forces within and without the SNP have conspired to destroy the party and the movement they have not done so and a new movement will emerge. We were closer than we dare think in 2014, and independence despite the tidal wave of media manipulation and dark dark arts is unfinished business.
Our time will come as sure as day follows night.
What I would like to know is what are the 15 rebels are doing. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of the rebellion taking place. Why are they not trying to regain control of the party all are they nodding horses to . Is it not time for them to jump ship, if they are not up to the fight to regain control or cant then leave the SNP and come over to Alba . We have had enough of the Unionists lackey infuriation. The 6 mandates I voted for was for independence and only independence nothing else.
Dissolve the Union.