One thing that is for certain this year. There will be a UK General Election. It is likely to be overshadowed by the US Presidential race in November. From a Scottish point of view, neither result in UK or US will be of any good to us.
In UK the Red-Wing of the Neoliberal Business Party is favourite to replace the Blue-Wing Neoliberal Business Party. In reality in the UK, we have a Cabinet reshuffle not really an election. Democracy in the UK is illusionary. It doesn’t truly exist. The elections every 5 years or so is to kid the public on that voting actually matters and changes things. It doesn’t! In our non-written constitutional monarchy, it is a con job, nothing more.
Sir Keir Starmer, the red-wing party head honcho is on record as saying he won’t change or repeal many, if any Tory policies. Same old Labour they promise milk and honey and serve us the same Tory gruel every time.
I don’t actually blame our corrupt politicians nor even our disgusting media. I blame the stupid people who keep believing the lies. The narrative is simply this, the Tories are past their sell by date let’s replace them with Labour and pretend to the people that there is a difference. There isn’t!
Austerity will continue, our pensions and welfare payments will remain the lowest in the developed world.Our wages will not keep pace with the cost of living. Our energy bills will keep growing as will the profits of the energy companies. The poverty gap between the rich and poor will continue to widen. In a nutshell your life won’t improve, it never does, no matter which English Business Party is in charge.
Immigrants, the weak, the vulnerable and the poor will continue to get the blame for all the ills of the country. For at least the next 5 years of a Labour Government the previous Tory Government will receive the blame for anything and everything that goes wrong. They will only remain in power until the establishment decides we need to change the head boy at Westminster. The most exclusive private members club in the UK.
Wes Streeting the Labour Health Shadow has already begun attacks on the NHS. He has also embraced the idea of more private health care involvement in our system. Not very socialist!
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/10/wes-streeting-nhs-uses-winter-crisis-excuse-more-money-labour
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23932636.wes-streeting-wants-nhs-wide-open-private-sector/
They have said Labour will keep the Bedroom Tax and the Two Child Rape Clause. They wont introduce free school meals for our kids.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/rachel-reeves-says-labour-may-104242411.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACLCOMHvTnrsIf__ZHzL-3NP6bW2PFjnBzhPCUgaMuxI6KxExgQSfU_SPnG-ykgZmFOSgEmWJuknVmQOGhJ1mf-z3eoHKEUbajSizUBbQYeTCNx_BGw9SjNfs0_XLw4isxRBWbmiD6yPC5FcNr9DS-X7HKKvVikVrJNP3uxfbmoW
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-rules-out-free-school-meals-for-all-children-bpcz5r9ls
They have ruled out a wealth tax. They have ruled out a windfall tax against the energy and oil companies. They will tinker around the edges of a few taxes and have a few headlines but fundamentally nothing will change. They will also continue to be the US poodle. The days of a radical Labour Party have been consigned to the bin decades ago. They live in fear of Murdoch, Barclay, Lord Rothermere, the Israeli lobby and the city spivs.
Yet people even knowing this will vote Labour pretending to themselves that things will get better! It defies logic, and history warns us it will be no better. That won’t stop a lot of sheep voting Labour. They treat the public like fools because most are fools. Easily manipulated and groomed by the corrupt establishment media.
Meanwhile, in Scotland the Apathy Party will win, big time. This will be like 2017 except on steroids. That election the ‘Independence vote’ remained at home underwhelmed and lacking in motivation to even go to the polling station. Sturgeon had forbidden the use of the Independence word in that campaign. The one and only thing that motivates the Yes voters. Go figure!
Sturgeon’s autogynephilia obsession has destroyed the SNP and its electoral chances for the foreseeable future. Mr Continuity will see his numbers at Westminster decimated to single figures. The Unionist Parties will win most of the seats by default. The only good thing about that is it will make them wrongly believe they have finally killed the independence dragon. The Unionist ‘victory’ will be pyrrhic and short-lived.
Short term though, we in the independence movement have to be prepared for some pain. The SNP has no money, no leadership, no plan and is completely finished. The grassroots no longer exists.There is nobody to deliver the leaflets, knock the doors or get the vote out. More importantly a huge number of the independence vote no longer trust or believe in the SNP.
All their attacks against other independence parties and supporters is going to come home to roost. The people of Scotland have never been so badly served as they will be at this election.
Their choices are limited, a broken, disjointed, directionless SNP. Alba sticking up a few candidates in a few challenging seats, sadly, not enough to make a real difference. The ISP maybe will field a couple of candidates throughout Scotland. This is all that stands against the might and wealth of the English political parties. There is an irony that the ultra English Nationalist Reform Party will stand in every Scottish seat and our homegrown parties can only contest a few.
There is nobody amongst the Scottish Parties that is able to protect the Scots on this occasion. There is nobody able to take the fight to the Brits. Nobody that can advance our cause at this election. It will be carnage on the night and in the subsequent weeks and months after the wipeout.
The independence movement needs to take a good long hard look at itself. Due to a few massive egos in the different Parties and splinter independence organisations the movement is divided and frankly incapable of advancing our cause.
That might not sit well with some people, however, it is my honest assessment of our movement today. The worry is if we do not address the inherent weakness within our movement and quickly, things could get a lot worse in 2026 at Holyrood. Time is not on our side.
The Scotland United idea was a good idea. The main problem is that at present there is nobody to unite the clans. Nobody that all the parties and groups can coalesce around. Too many vested interests preventing the SNP in particular from putting the nation before party.
The strength of 2014 was the Yes Movement. It was the catalyst for our near success. Back then the SNP was playing catch up with the grassroots. The ordinary folk were driving the campaign and the narratives. It was the YES supporters that were knocking the doors and manning the street stalls and standing and cheering in Freedom Square.
None of that was SNP led. The SNP followed the Yes Movement and tried to keep up. They had no control over the movement and that is exactly why Sturgeon set out to destroy it! Politicians hate when they don’t have total control. We have seen it with Sturgeon’s attack and destruction of the Yes Movement. We have seen it in SNP Party politics where the leadership rigged their constitution and NEC. That gerrymandering is now going to come back and bite them. Politicians need to learn rigging internal votes is never a smart thing to do.
The SNP crushing victory in 2015 came about because of the Yes Movement. It had nothing to do with Sturgeon or any of the carpetbaggers that were elected by the Yes Movement. Latterly and wrongly the SNP took all the glory for 2015. The mistake Sturgeon, her party, and her successor made is to believe it was all somehow down to their genius and political nous!
Perhaps if the politicians had better handled the questions of currency and EU in 2014 we might just have carried the day and wouldn’t be facing this dilemma. Now politicians need to learn to stay in their lane and encourage the grassroots to do the heavy lifting.
The Yes Movement has nothing to regret.In 2014 it did everything humanly possible and more. We would never have risen from 28% to 45% if we had just relied on the SNP and their politicians.
Just as now, it is the so-called professional politicians that are letting Scotland down and they have been doing that ever since September, 19th, 2014. We lack leadership and direction. We lack a coherent and agreed plan. Those are not miraculously going to appear in the next few months to enthuse the independence vote. Too many personal agendas are being pursued and not enough attention is being given to the factors needed to motivate our voter base.
We can only hope that after the unionist victory later this year the independence movement once more finds its mojo and leads from the front. Because if you are waiting on the politicians to come up with a cunning wheeze or lawyers going to the UN or ICJ you are going to go to your grave very disappointed and still holding a British passport.
Unfortunately this piece is pretty much dead right. People like the current generation of SNP ‘parliamentarians’ simply don’t lead liberation movements. Salaries and delusions of self importance have wrecked them far more quickly than the same process took in the Labour party.
Feeble, self serving and, remembering the basis on which they were elected, living a lie.
(As always, Roddy, I leave it to you to decide on this post.)
Extract: ‘ We can only hope that after the unionist victory later this year the independence movement once more finds its mojo and leads from the front. Because if you are waiting on the politicians to come up with a cunning wheeze or lawyers going to the UN or ICJ you are going to go to your grave very disappointed and still holding a British passport.’
Let me start with two questions:
The people of Scotland are Sovereign. True or False?
All peoples have the right of self-determination. True or False?
IF – there is truth and not falsehood in both statements then you will have found the basis of the Declaration of a Sovereign Scot initiative.
For 3 years now individual Scots from all over Scotland (may I stress – NOT lawyers and NOT politicians) have asked the United Nations (and more recently 17 UN Members) to accept and recognise their individually signed Declarations in these terms:
Exercising my Claim Of Right as a Sovereign Scot – I declare for the people of the world to know and recognise, I do not consent to the continuation of the Treaty of Union.
I make this Declaration in recognition of the right of all peoples to self-determination, a right of the people – by the people, for the people of Scotland.
**********************
The initiative has and is being established in Stages – this is the latest post addressing the next Stage:
‘The People are Sovereign!’ … is THE most fundamental legacy left to every single one of us – by those who added their names to a document. It changed the future.
The Declaration of a Sovereign Scot initiative is an invitation – based on that legacy – to add your name to a document.
The initiative is completely non party political – it has one objective, one clear focus – to change the future and regain Scotland’s independence.
The Declaration of Arbroath is something we both honour and celebrate. UNESCO awarded it the title of a ‘Memory of the World’.
Will we who are alive today leave our legacy for future generations – an independent Scotland? Will history record that as our ‘Memory for the World’? It involves nothing more than your signature on a document.
Will you add your signature to all those from across Scotland who have already done so?
One signature, that’s it – have you anything to lose? Consider please – with that one signature – you have everything to gain – OUR legacy – the independence of OUR country – OUR Scotland.
I have often asked for patience as the initiative was developed, let me try to explain why. It has to do with the Stages being used. They are crucial.
My New Year Resolution (from my post on 31/12/2023): To do my best to ensure that EVERY ONE who wants to sign their individual Declaration will be able to do so.
Over the last three years I have tested how that can be achieved in a small way only. It involved leaving a batch of unsigned Declarations with individuals I knew I could trust and then having them return signed Declarations to me for delivery to the United Nations.
But to ensure that EVERY ONE who wishes to sign their Declaration – EVERY ONE, no exclusions – requires a vastly different method which I have always known would be needed – thus the Stages.
There are in fact several ways of doing it, but in this next Stage I will be looking for 3/4 Yes Groups to help in the way I believe will work best. I will explain in a follow-up post.
Ends
Mike I always appreciate your comments. I refer you to the last sentence in my article today. There are no short cuts no clever ancient treaty escapes. The ballot box or the barrel of the gun. That is the only choices.
By far the vast majority of Scots saw the ruling of the Supreme Court as closing a door – hard! But did it?
These are not ancient wheezes, I do fully understand your doubts on that score, honest!,
These items are part of, and drawn from, the Supreme Court ruling. They are ‘hard’ evidence which I did not have when I started, but are truly welcome and are now of fundamental importance for the later Stages in the initiative.
Open door #1: The Advocate General on behalf of the UK said this: “The Advocate General does not dispute that the United Kingdom recognises and respects the right of self-determination in international law.”
Thus the wording used in the Declaration. For once we have the UK saying Yes – there is a route forward they do NOT dispute!
Open door #2: Lord Reed – “A clear outcome, whichever way the question was answered, would possess the authority, in a constitution and political culture founded upon democracy, of a democratic expression of the view of the Scottish electorate.”
So let’s frame the question as: Do you consent to the continuation of the Treaty of Union?
Thus the wording used in the Declaration. We now have the UK Supreme Court confirming reality! They also agree there is a route forward – if we use it!
They say walls have ears, social media has both eyes and ears, which is why I have very very deliberately developed the initiative in very specific Stages and not released (as yet) what will appear in a later Stage. It will appear when the time is right.
And then perhaps, you will witness, as now – both the UK Advocate General, and Lord Reed in the UK Supreme Court have conceded – that there is another route to Scotland’s freedom.
Roddy – realistically I have been told by others that this won’t work and that I will not get the numbers needed.
But I have started and have no intention of stopping..
Que sera!
Independence will come via the ballot box or the gun not at the UN ,the ICJ or any court anywhere.
Within the constraints (walls have ears etc) may I offer these comments as they apply to your thoughts on the UN, ICJ, and courts, and within those constraint bounds hopefully clarify any misapprehensions that you, and your wide readership may currently harbour.
UN: Over the last 3 years at rallies all over Scotland, other events and at Yes Stalls, I have collected signed Declarations, and then using “Track and Sign” post I have issued them in batches to the HQ of the UN in New York.
However – and this is crucial to your understanding – the only request I have made to the Secretary General is that he accept, retain in UN custody, and keep safe all such documents. Any belief that my approach reaches beyond that would be incorrect.
ICJ/Courts: Again any belief that such would be involved would be incorrect – not least because of the time and expense elements, but primarily because since its inception the UN have established the principles which underpin the right of all peoples to self-determination. I frequently see posts which sadly ‘skim the surface’ of such principles referring only to the original Charter in 1945. That is indeed a founding document which embraces the right of self determination – but since then there have been many Resolutions adopted by UN Members which not only reinforce those principles, but add to them in areas such as ‘territorial integrity’ (think the North Sea boundary change). Significantly these Resolutions are ‘binding’ on UN Members and many passed by the General Assembly have been carried – withou dissent – and impose a requirement upon Members not only to adhere to the terms of the Resolution but to promote them.
That established background is why I ask no more of the Secretary General, but led to the more recent contact with 17 UN Members – chosen because they share a common characteristic, namely that each at different times and in different ways, gained their independence from the UK. Each are UN Members and are signatories to those ‘binding’ Resolutions – specifically those which enshrine the principle of the right of all peoples to self-determination. Some examples as an illustration of how I intend to handle and fully develop those contacts – but within the constraints (as above).
One of the countries is South Africa. Will they remember Nelson Mandela being granted the freedom of Glasgow – but refuse to hear the people of Scotland in their struggles for their country’s freedom?
Another is Ireland, their freedom arose through the use of the gun, but is now embraced within with the international Treaty of the Belfast agreement allowing for Referenda.
Let me end with this – my emphasis on the statement made by the Attorney General in the Supreme Court: ” “The Advocate General does not dispute that the United Kingdom recognises and respects the right of self-determination in international law.”
If the UK do NOT dispute that right – a right established and repeatedly recognised by the UN – we need do no more than exercise that right as Scots – but will we? Will we do so in full view of the world, and it’s people?
Will Sovereign Scots exercise that right – IF – all it requires is a signature on a Declaration.
Que Sera!
And I shall repeat the only way to our Independence is via the ballot box or the barrel of the gun. There is no other way
Roddy , I think in the end you might be right. But the type of action Mike is carrying out and the work that Salvo and Liberation are doing are still important for the following reasons. First, they can help in improving the odds that the solution is the ballot box and not the gun. Second is that if this is a 2-horse race then you are certain to win if you back both horses – ignoring the possibility that they both fall at first or final hurdle.
Geoff, Salvo is a chattering class thing,nothing else. Each week there is a new cunning silver bullet plan. A New organisation set up always with same head honcho, and what has progressed a centimetre in all this time? Answer not a single thing, hence why a new cunning wheeze is announced almost weekly. It has one purpose only, education there is NOTHING practical in anything they do that will move the dial a centimetre..
“if you are waiting on the politicians to come up with a cunning wheeze or lawyers going to the UN or ICJ you are going to go to your grave very disappointed and still holding a British passport.”
Most astute observers will agree with this, Roddy, and especially when it comes to our daeless an deceitfu national party politicians who have a proven track record of delivering nothing but broken promises since 2015. As postcolonial theory predicts, these national party politicians have proven their ‘neutralism’ on independence after three successive Scotland majorities of MPs settling back into position within the UK legislature, rather than withdrawing and ending the right of Westminster to legislate for Scotland. Meantime Holyrood continues its function as a colonial administration aided by faux-nationalist figureheads.
Like you I also have some doubts about the UN/ICJ option. However, we have not yet gone down this route so we do not know how effective or ineffective it may be. If such actions, undertaken voluntary by the people, help to improve the understanding of the Scottish people as well as the wider international community as to Scotland’s colonial condition then this can only be to our advantage. Many Scots do not yet understand that they are a colonized and exploited people; our re-written history and ‘colonial mindset’ leads to some native groups denying they are oppressed and rejecting their own liberation.
Postcolonial theory also tells us that national party politicians fail to deliver because ‘they have yet to undertake a reasoned study of colonial society’ (Fanon); hence our politicians (‘who are not intellectuals’) do not fully understand what independence means nor have they been able to explain to the people our ‘condition’ and the real purpose of independence – which is to liberate an oppressed people. Any case going before the UN/ICJ would have to set this out for all to see, including not least the numerous ongoing treaty violations, the nature and extent of oppression etc.
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
First of all, may I wish you and yours a very happy new year, BB. I am trying to face it with some kind of conviction, but my gut feeling is that it is going to be worse.
My gut feeling is that Labour need to win in Scotland – if not outright, then through the Westminster results. The Scots – all of them – need a damn good kicking this year to knock them out of their complacency/depression/acceptance (delete as appropriate). The SNP could make a revival after the GE, but not with the same leadership and certainly not with the same ‘woke’ drones beneath them. So, no revival, then.
We need to galvanize the working-class towards an independence vote and away from all the Unionist parties. They are the ones who can bring us independence, nobody else. Bringing back all the females who have been alienated is another must-do if independence is to be won via the ballot box. From what I have been able to glean, a good proportion of the ultra loyalist SNP voters are middle-class ‘woke’.
They see no contradiction between pointless virtue-signalling and pointless support of the SNP as the supposed vehicle of independence. Probably, for the first time in my life, I now consider a university education the means to a closed mind and utter ignorance of a magnitude never before envisioned – except, perhaps, in Maoist China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Stalin’s Soviet Union. The sheer scale of the stupidity is actually off the scale, and these people lay claims to being our leaders and future leaders, our movers and shakers. David Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Reid, Hutcheson, Burns, Fergusson, et al, are, I am sure, birlin themselves out of their graves like human corkscrews. God help us!
We need independence now as a matter opt absolute priority if we are to save ourselves and the rest of the UK – and, by implication, the rest of the West – from totalitarian fools who are so dim their brains have fallen out of their ‘open’ minds, open only in their diseased wee heids. What everyone who is sane sees are people so brainwashed in so many ways that they might as well be automatons. Like Thatcher, in the UK, Sturgeon started something, in Scotland, that is going to haunt all of us for the rest of our lives unless we manage to get out from under the pressure to cave.
You are right, BB: in the end, we either go to the ballot box and vote for independence absolutely, no ifs, no buts, and a declaration of UDI if there is the slightest opposition, or we face an armed struggle and, probably civil war, because there are Unionists and rUK voters who will never use their brains to determine their own best interests. This is now our only choice. Having gone through a timeline of political history, I have come to the conclusion that the hard left always opens the door to the ‘hard right’ or themselves become the oppressors a la hard right. Always. The hard left has been reinforced with post modernists, and, together, they will take us to totalitarianism, I promise, if we do not escape very soon.
I have been accused of being nutty, but I’m not. I wish that I was not cursed with being able to see what is coming if we do not get out of the starting blocks, but I have studied politics and movements all my life, and this is coming – because we did not stamp down on ‘woke’ when it first reared its ugly, demented head. We are in the unique position, the independistas, of being able to save not just ourselves by leaving the Union, but the UK, and with the UK, the rest of the Anglosphere. Only wholesale disruption will create a large enough distraction to get us out from under this malevolence that is heading our way. Otherwise, prepare to live – and die, of course, because killing opponents is one of the mainstays of totalitarianism – in a Maoist UK.
” I blame the stupid people who keep believing the lies”.
I’m not sure that the people believe the lies. It’s just that they choose the least of the worst options as a default position, which means that the SNP always benefits. The SNP know this and have made a good, comfortable living out of it.
Given that most people will discount the Tory Party and (until very recently) the Labour Party, and woudn’t touch the Greens with a barge pole, what sort of real choice have they had to vote for a genuine independence seeking party?
The SNP has shot itself in the foot big time under Sturgeon’s and now Humza’s disastrous leadership, but where are the voters to turn to? The Union vote will hold up, and Labour are likely to win by default, as independence voters reject the SNP and stay at home rather than put them back in again.
Sadly there is no new independence party which has captured peoples’s imagination, so we will end up with a government which people haven’t really chosen, but is imposed yet again by default..
The ballot box route seems a long way off.
The only people who can get us there are the working-class voters, male and female, who, traditionally, do not turn out to vote. What is there for them to vote for? Everything is the preserve now of middle-class virtue-signalling elites who, having been passed through the colon of the ‘woke’ university system, are quite unable to think. They have substituted thinking for brainwashing because thinking means actually having to do something; if you think, you are liable to come to a very different conclusion from the pervading orthodoxy, and that seems like too much hard work or too dangerous. Remember the people who survived on the Earth after the nuclear winter in ‘The Time Machine’? They glibly frittered away every day, not even stirring when their fellows were taken away to be eaten by the troglodytes. We are in that kind of torpor. These phases almost always lead to rebellion when the right leader comes along.
I resigned from the Labour Party when Blair revised Clause IX, although the incoming Labour Party did save the NHS, introduce the minimum wage and implement other important social reforms such as tax credits. Keeping us out of the eurozone was essential.
My pessimism before the 1997 General Election was, at least in part, misplaced. I think, and hope, some of the current pessimissm with Labour is similarly misplaced.
Labour does have a proud history of building homes, creating the welfare state and NHS, and helping those in need.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Aye, we need one that doesn’t close due to ice accretion.
Ah a Brit a toll Bridge then
I joined Business for Scotland in 2013 and became a regional organiser in the hope that I could help advance the business and economic case for independence. Up until then, I had never been actively involved in politcs.
It became clear to me, by early August 2014, that the SNP and Yes movement were deliberately presenting a substandard prospectus for independence. I was utterly demoralised delivering thousands of leaflets for the Yes campaign that were insipid at best and unlikely to persuade undecideds. I had strong suspicions that the Yes campaign was being controlled by unionists. Nothing in the last nine years has changed that opinion. Quite the opposite.
I joined the SNP after the referendum in the hope that I could help to improve the prospectus for independence and help them to learn the lessons from our defeat. I volunteered to help lead a business and economy section of our constituency party. I had recently taken early retirement from a multinational company where my roles included helping to draft and negotiate billion dollar contracts. As such, I thought I had a skillset that could be useful to the SNP, even though I didn’t want to become a politician. We approached SNP HQ to offer our services. They basically told us to go away and never come back.
At around the same time, the candidate selection process for the 2015 General Election got underway. When the winning candidate was announced, I asked our Branch Secretary how many votes had been cast for each candidate. She asked me why I wanted to know. I was somewhat taken aback by this response. Democracy has to be seen to be done, and part of this process is announcing the turnout, the number of votes cast for each candidate and the number of spoiled ballot papers. Can you imagine the Returning Officer for a Council, Holyrood or Westminster election announcing the winner but refusing to disclose these details? Of course not. So why does the SNP behave in this anti-democratic manner? After a number of exchanges with our branch secretary, I was told to complain to SNP HQ if I wasn’t happy. I did, but received no response. Shortly afterwards, I resigned from the SNP. It was abundantly clear to me that the party was being controlled by an inner circle, was being run autocratically and had no interest in improving the prospectus for independence. I had no desire to remain a member of an antidemocratic political party, especially one that had deliberately, in my opinion, lost the referendum.
Fast forward five years, and my confidence and trust in the SNP hierarchy had further diminished. They were deliberately squandering the best opportunities Scotland had ever had to regain its independence. In my opinion, the leadership were quislings masquerading as independence supporters. Despite this, I was persuaded by other independence activists to rejoin the SNP in order to try to assist their mission to achieve democratic control of their party. Given my professional experience of drafting and negotiating contracts, I spent a considerable amount of time reading the SNP’s constitution and rules. It became abundantly clear to me that the party was an autocracy by design, with this autocracy having been enshrined and concealed, very cleverly, in the party’s constitution and rules. I reached the conclusion that the “good guys” strategy at the 2020 autumn conference was doomed to failure and wasn’t in the least surprised when our elected representatives were subsequently prevented from carrying out their remits by Sturgeon, Murrell and their cabal. I had one last try complaining about various issues to SNP HQ but it was futile so I resigned once more from the party.
When the Alba Party formed, I was one of the early members. Sadly, the party is, constitionally, nearly as antidemocratic as the SNP (and, indeed, most other political parties in the UK). The constitution allows members to elect representatives but they can always be outvoted by the leader and their cabal. The recent debacle of the internal elections led me to resign from the party. Alba is doing some reasonable work on various issues because the current leader is facilitating these activities but could easily suffer the same fate as the SNP. I’m too old to want to get actively involved in trying to fix this.
As with an increasing number of independence supporters, I’m struggling to find any party that is making a compelling case for it and converting undecided voters. Instead, they couldn’t agree on the colour of sh1te and are too busy arguing amongst themselves and about process.
In the meantime, I’ll carry on doing, at a grass roots level, what the various independence parties are not doing and, arguably, have never done properly. That is, persuading any undecideds that have the misfortune of knowing or meeting me about the business, economic, social and democratic advantages of independence. It is persuading and converting undecideds that will win our independence, not endlessly arguing about process and fighting like cats in a sack. The SNP are primarily responsible for this dreadful situation and the sooner they become defunct, the sooner we will win our independence.
I think that there exists in the SNP a fear of upsetting Unionists (and that stands whether the leadership is Unionist or not; I believe they are almost certainly devolutionist at the very least, and not just them, but many of the MPs and MSPs, too). The demographics we need to persuade to come out and vote for independence are the working-class, women and those who have come to Scotland and get it (those from outwith the UK, in the main, with a contingent of savvy rUK). We are never going to persuade around three-quarters of the rUK vote. Never. We are never going to persuade around 45% of Unionists. Never. We probably have around 55% of the electorate to work with, in total, on a good day, perhaps slightly more depending on how persuasive we can be and if we can galvanise them to go out and vote. That will not come in time for the GE, but we can do it in time for the SE. Will we do it, though?
The SNP is on a trajectory to oblivion and is putting all its eggs in one basket: the youth vote (under 40s). They have abandoned entirely the older population who are the ones who will turn out to vote. They have abandoned the working-class, once one of their strongest demographics and they have abandoned women in favour of the simpering middle-class virtue-signallers. The problem with virtue-signallers is that they are naturally incontinent when it comes to allegiance or are so stuck in non reality that they are useless when the going gets tough.
To some extent, this is understandable because the party was once a bastion of balance and representative of all opinion in Scotland that veered towards independence. That is long gone. Sturgeon and her cronies destroyed that balanced consensus in the party just as Thatcher destroyed the balanced consensus in the UK. The SNP has no answer to the neo liberalism and globalism of today, let alone the advance of AI. No one does, as elitist, global corporate billionaires now decide policy everywhere – because, like sheeple, we let them and listen to lobbying groups financed by them instead of asking why they would want to interfere in our democracy when the answer is so obvious. It will benefit only them. A complete wipe-out of small people’s jobs is on the way – like the industrial revolution in reverse and the Depression and banking collapse rolled into one. I see uprisings and revolutions happening all over the globe as the effects of these events become manifest. Scotland must get out from under the UK, but we should not make the mistake that Thatcher did, and think we can run an economy like a household budget by trying to run the economy solely on the needs of business either, albeit we need business, just not controlling every aspect of our lives.
I agree, to an extent, about ALBA’s constitution and plan of action. We need a totally different strategy now, and, if they sit down and really give it a great deal of thought, they will get there. For starters, I think that the hard work of SALVO, etc., and Mike Fenwick’s excellent efforts will at least ensure that our voice is heard at the UN, whether or not they actually do anything at all to help us. Educating the population as to their rights and obligations is no small matter. However, in the end, it will come down to the ballot box and, after that, to a unilateral declaration of independence which, if ignored or flouted, must lead inevitably to armed conflict and, possibly, civil war. I take no comfort from saying that, but the way the West is going, we may have no choice if we are to save ourselves.
The internet alone, micro managed by Midas lookalikes, intent on exploiting everyone and everything, has brought us almost to the brink of collapse; irresponsible use of AI will finish the job. Around 35-40% of the internet is dedicated to deviant sex and extreme *orn; it is almost certain that AI will be exploited in the same manner, and probably to an even higher ratio. That distracts people – mostly men – from everything else as addiction becomes the norm. I understand what you are saying, Colin, but you may already be too late. The SNP, in the past almost ten years, has sold us out to the lowest bidder: our oil and gas, our wind, our electricity, our seas, our land… The global billionaires reign supreme, and our sole use to them is as fodder for their wallets and as chaff before their narcissistic psychopathy. They enjoy our torment even as they create it.
You are correct to identify and separate GE 2024 and SE 2026, Lorna, and although I come at it from a different perspective – Roddy is right to place his emphasis on the ballot box.
My perspective: Our differences accumulate rather than dissipate – we are all over the place on regaining our independence – and by how much will be apparent when we see the results of the GE via that one specific ballot box.
I suspect it will be negative in many respects, but I also suspect that it might, just might, provide the spark for the Yes movement to engage in some really deep, and vitally necessary, thinking and re-calibration about how we achieve our independence.We have a lot of baggage to abandon.
If that does happen – then for SE 2026 – I live in hope! Genuinely!
Unlike NI, which has Ireland proper behind it, plus the Americans behind them, we have no such strings to pull. On the contrary, we will have to rely on our own ingenuity to take was forward. Like you and Roddy, I also believe we can achieve this through the ballot box – at least, we must, at first. If that does not work a second time, and if we find that too many people – the same people – are deliberately blocking our way, I think that resentment will set in with a vengeance, and, then, like Ireland, we will end up in a tinderbox situation. I fear that mightily. That is why every avenue must be explored, but the old failed methods must be jettisoned, and we must make a realistic appraisal of where we go from here – or rather, where we can go. That means that we have to take the UK and America into account, weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of crossing them and, then, go for it. The longer we leave it, the worse our situation gets. I also cannot see any way past a unilateral declaration of independence once we have voted for, if we vote for, independence at the ballot box. It has to be a fait accompli or we will be taken to the cleaners.
I suspect there are elements where you’re correct Roddy; I don’t believe for a moment that the UN or International community will “lead” Scotland to Independence. The best we can hope for is their international recognition when we make that decision for ourselves.
So do I distance myself from SALVO and Scotland’s sovereign Constitution? Absolutely not. I back them, and their approach 100%.
Scotland must go through these channels because expediency and protocol demands it. If Scotland has a constitutional grievance, then Scotland either contests that grievance to a rightful conclusion, or it bites its tongue and rolls over in subordination.
Here’s the “why” as I see it… Because when we’re fighting for the life of our Nation, hopefully peacefully at the ballot box, I want the unjust and unlawful nature of Scotland’s subjugation and colonial exploitation under the Union to be at the front of the voter’s minds, and them being fully cognisant of the fact that Scottish Independence, and ONLY Scottish Independence, is synonymous with justice under International Law.
If they still want to vote for the Union, let it burrow away in their psyche that their objective is to perpetuate an illegitimate grievance and inappropriate curse on a Scottish nation which simply asks for parity with other nations; the right to exist, and the right to administer it’s own people and resources.
SALVO must stand firm on Scotland’s Constitution, because look around. There is nobody else doing a damned thing, even to ensure Scotland holds its current station. They are thus complicit in the deconstruction of our Nation.
The Faculty of Advocates? They do nothing to defend Scotland. Scotland’s politicians? Lining their pockets in Westminster, or a Vichy Assembly masquerading as Parliament of Scotland while the very existence of that “Chamber” is an affront and an anathema to Scotland’s sovereign Constitution. Why? Because merely by existing, it embeds the encroachment of UK Parliamentary sovereignty into the Realm of Scotland, where it has always been the Community of the Realm who hold sovereignty.
We fight this Union everywhere it exists. We fight this Union everywhere it can be defeated. This Union can be defeated under International Law with all the world’s eyes upon us.
We must ALL back SALVO.
There has been lots of talk and lots of wild forecasts made by Salvo. ‘We can sack the government!” As soon as you ask how do we do that? a new idea is produced. We will go to the ICJ! We will go to the UN! When it is pointed out you cannot do that as a grouping only nation states and UN agencies can fo that Ah OK well our ancient constitution says you cannot have Freeports etc etc etc. But as each new wheeze is released and a new Salvo Grouping/ Salvo Core, Scottish National Congress/ Liberation is formed nothing spoken of previously as the magic bullet to bypass the politicians actually advances.Its all talk! The info produced is great for educating our people re the past. Practically it is of little use in the independence struggle. The ballot box is where our destiny lies,nowhere else. So no we must not all back Salvo it distracts from what we must do. Get into the schemes and sign up people to register for voting.Those are the people that need independence most. We need to mobilise the people to swamp the ballot boxes in votes for Scottish independence.We need to elect politicians that will do what Scotland
needs not what Stonewall or donors want.So I must respectfully disagree.
That’s fine Roddy, I get where you’re coming from, but when you’re out in the schemes persuading folks, I think it’s helpful to augment the positive and progressive arguments for an Independent Scotland, with a categoric demolition of the status quo and Treaty of Union’s legitimacy.
That demolition should address the powers Westminster arbitrarily “assumes” versus the Scottish Constitution which should properly prevent it happening, from being sidelined.
It should also address the Constitutional outrage of a Scottish sovereign and democratic edict being ignored…(Brexit). Being sovereign is a meaningless distinction if it isn’t backed up by meaningful commitment.
It is also correct to condemn the status quo where Scotland’s Constitutional rights are truncated, for example where “the people” (albeit via a Convention of the Estates) had the last word over King, Parliament, and Court of Session. If it was that way once, what mechanism removed that power from us?
What SALVO is trying to do is resurrect the ghost of Scotland’s auld constitution, make it terrestrial again, and add “modern” flesh to that original constitutional skeleton. More power to them.
The reason we, that is the Independence Movement do “dot about” from notion to notion, strategy to strategy, in my opinion reflects a lack of cohesive structure. If there are 20 of us in a room, typically, there are 20 different opinions on how we secure Independence. Frankly, that is inexcusable. We will continue to court defeat until we change our ways.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, a majority of Westminster seats was sold to us as the threshold for Independence. When Scotland returns 56 out 59 SNP seats… we secured NOTHING. Who moved the goal posts?
I no longer trust the integrity of our politicians. We need leadership, we need direction, but most of all we need the critical path which delivers incontrovertible victory, we need to pursue that path in detail, and we need the International community, UN, ICJ or whatever, to have Scotland’s legitimacy and our journey to Independence firmly on it’s radar.
Our politicians are incapable of delivering it. Barely a handful of them even try, but perhaps, just perhaps, SALVO can, and defend what remains of our ancient sovereignty, Society, and Nation.
Tell me practically how Salvo can defend our sovereignty?
Talk is cheap,
It has been my experience as soon as you ask How? When? Where? Have you got a legal opinion on that? either silence , word salad or pile ons follow.
I so want to be qrong and eat copious amounts of humble pie. However, experience has shown me that simple questioning of their claims it falls apart.
Try yourself and ask to see a legal opinion on any of their claims.
Word salad will follow,
Unfortunately I am unconvinced that the Scottish people have a sovereignty any greater than the English do. If the Scottish people are truly sovereign we would not be in the position we are now. Having done considerable resarch I can find no examples whatever of the Scottish people exercising their so-called sovereignty. The debacle of 1707 clearly showed that sovereignty lay with parliament and the monarchy and indeed it has always lain with the Establishment, just as it does now.
Nor am I convinced even if there ever was a Scottish contitution it still exists – like Scotland’s national sovereignty, it was lost in 1707 with the creation of the new state of Great Britain.
Looking to the past seems to me to be fairly futile particularly when so many of the theories espoused by Salvo are based on misinformation or misunderstanding and would not stand up in any court of law. The suggestion that UN will recognise a “Scottish Liberation Movement” if 100,000 people sign up to it is absurd. If we want to achieve independence we have to look to the future and convince people that they and their families wil be much better off in an independent Scotland. Sadly, little effort has been made to do that.
Breeks; DaveyTee19: I, too, believe that we require international recognition, which is why I support the SALVO, Liberation.Scot and Mike Fenwick’s hard work. We need to appear, and to be, legitimate. I also believe that too many people have no understanding of the Articles of the Treaty and how they have been breached consistently and illegally, which confers the legal obligation upon us to take back our independence.
Too many Scots believe that we were subjugated. When I was very young, almost everyone knew about the Treaty, about our Claim of Right and our sovereignty, but, now, too few do. The SNP got out of the habit of making all these things known to members and to the wider electorate. As I said in another thread, my old history teacher was a card-carrying Tory, but he knew everything about these issues and he supported a Scotland at peace with itself, even if he did not support independence. We appear to have lost much of this knowledge that Hansard can substantiate and corroborate.
Every public meeting should have a stack of printed material available for people to read. SALVO has stuff that can be adapted easily. Every SNP, ALBA, ISP and YES movement gathering and/or meeting should have the same, and they can be pushed through letterboxes, too. Nothing fancy and expensive, just well-printed material with pithy points. The real problem is that England, as the UK, has deliberately acted in ways that it knows perfectly well are illegitimate and, ultimately, illegal, despite their ‘sovereignty residing in parliament’ constitutional position.
Lorna, even if (and it’s a big IF) the Articles of Treaty have been”consistently and illegally” breached, then Scotland has consistently acquiesced and gone along with such breaches, sometimes, I suspect, with considerable enthusiasm. 317 years of acquiescence and acceptance of the sovereignty of the UK parliament ensures that any attempt to negate the Act of Union would fail at the outset. I hasten to add that that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take back our independence – indeed, I wish we would – but there certainly isn’t any legal obligation requiring us to do so. I tend to agree with Roddy – independence can only achieved through the ballot box which means that a majority of the Scottish people have to support it. At present that isn’t the case and I believe that we will only get the numbers we need if the Scottish people are convinced that independence will be good for them and their families, now and in the future. In actually getting people to vote, ancient documents are of minimal importance and reliance on them isn’t going to convert anyone, especially when theories put forward about them are inaccurate – it’s the future that counts.
Yes, DaveyTee19, I absolutely agree with you that our political representatives have been complicit. We, the wee folk, have not – there has never been a time in the past 317 years when someone somewhere in Scotland has not demanded an end to the Union.
No ‘if’ about the breaching. Eminently provable. I do not advocate the resiling of the Treaty as the means to independence, but it allows us the reasons for leaving the Union and the justification for leaving the Union. Nor did I say that there was a legal obligation. If you want to be taken to the cleaners by your partner, there is no obligation on you to take him to court – but you can, i.e. you have the legal right and the power conferred by that legal right to so do.
I have always said that we need to achieve independence via the ballot box, but, in the event of a win, we declare independence immediately. I’m sorry, Davey, but, with the migrations into Scotland in recent years, I think that 60-70% in favour is an impractical dream. We should revert to the SNP’s original constitutional acceptance of 50% + 1, and make it plain that that is our position. I would not have said that even five years ago, but, if left to ferment, the resentment that can be felt in every corner of the country will boil over eventually.
The Treaty is not an ancient document: it underpins the UK today, and some of Scotland’s best mind have stated as much (Professors Campbell, and the late, Walker). As I said, international treaties supersede domestic acts. If the Treaty is ancient and no longer extant, neither is the Union because the Union was/is not based upon devolution but upon agreement by two sovereign nations. No Treaty, and Westminster has no locus to devolve anything because it has no powers to do so.
That Westminster patently understands that it is still extant explains the underhand ways in which it pushes Scotland around today. A goodly number of lords in the HoL want the Treaty renegotiated. How do you REnegotiate a non existent Treaty, Davey? Note, too, that all these lords are lawyers. They are not daft, just extremely sleekit.
Just because no one has actually demanded a ruling on the Treaty, does not mean that it cannot be ruled upon, and I would bet my boots, that, if someone did, the SG, say, that Westminster and the HoL would be rushing to offer a new treaty a la the HoL. Scots would be insane and self-destructive to accept such an offer.
The only reason that we need for leaving the Union, Lorna, is that it is the will of the Scottish people, that they themselves have determined their destiny. We don’t need any excuses or other reasons. If the Scottish people determine that that is what they want, then that is what they should get – how they would go about getting it is a different matter. Unfortunately, the settled will of the Scottish people at present is to remain in the Union. I don’t understand it, but there it is.
I don”t disagree with what you say about 50%+1. A very small vote in favour leaving the EU was enough to bring about Brexit, even though it was inevitably going to be a disaster. The snag is the Don’t Knows. In a referendum wanting change, abstentions usually mean that the person abstaining doesn’t care. It can’t be read as support – if anything it can be regarded as contentment with the status quo – and to make it work we have to carry the people with us including organisations such as the civil service, the police, the legal establishment and the banks. We can say “Look, we’ve got 50.5%. we’re independent”, but if most of the population and the organs of state and the international community ignore that we’ll get nowhere. In such a case negotiations with Westminster would be necessary.
The Act of Union effectively destroyed two sovereign nations and incorporated them into a new one, the parliament of which governed the whole new state. Neither of the nations that agreed the Treaty now exists. That’s not to mean that they can’t exist again in future, but in the meantime Westminster can do what it wants and Scotland has no legal power to stop it because Scotland is no longer a sovereign nation and retains no sovereign powers. Obviously we want to restore its sovereignty but we’re not going to do that by making unfounded claims as to the relevance of ancient documents.
The two nations still exist, Davey. If your scenario is the case, then the UK cannot exist either after devolution because time has passed. That is patently nonsense. I see that Hamish MacPherson, in The National on Sunday has a piece in about the Union, and he makes the same fundamental mistake that most do. I have a lot of time for Hamish and his history pieces because The National would be much the poorer if they were not in it, but he has received poor advice here.
No domestic legislation can supersede an international treaty, which, by its very nature must: a) be an agreement between sovereign, independent states; b) be binding on those who make the agreement; c) be the primary legislation and, therefore, source of legitimacy for all subsequent secondary legislation.
When we joined the EU and enabled parts/whole of the treaty(ies) into our domestic legislation, the EU treaties did not disappear into the ether of history; they exist to this day. Likewise, the human rights legislation of the UN, agreed by most countries, and enabled into our legal lexicon did not cease to exist. It seems to me that this is precisely what some people would want us to believe. Why they do is at least open to question, no?
The Acts of Union did not create the Union, the Treaty did that; they enabled the Union to exist as a functioning British political and sovereign entity. Primary legislation = source legislation; secondary legislation = enabling legislation. Source legislation cannot be superseded by secondary legislation which itself was created by the source legislation. The secondary legislation is the creature of the primary, source legislation and cannot cancel or resile its parent, the Treaty, just as the devolved Scottish administration cannot cancel Westminster – which, in turn, cannot cancel the Treaty or absorb Scotland, the other primary legislative signatory.
It is not difficult to understand. Neither the Treaty nor the Acts cancelled out the two nations; they altered them and created a new one, drawing on the sovereignty of each nation. It cannot be stipulated in any legal way just how much sovereignty was ceded. If it was it all, and that would appear to be the constitutional position of the UK, then England has no sovereignty and no legal or constitutional rights to tell us what to do and legislate and rule only for itself – which is the case, more often than not, which, to an extent is understandable because of the difference in size of voting population, but, nevertheless, it is ultra vires, unconstitutional and illegal. Actually, it had no constitutional, legal right to create a devolved Scotland without, simultaneously devolving England.
The real reason that 50% + 1 may not be accepted as you state is because of the numerous rUK voters in Scotland who are anti independence, believing that they moved to Scotland which was subsumed by England, the myth that England has been careful too nurture. The real constitutional position is very, very different, and SALVO and Liberation.scot are very close to the mark, especially from the Scottish constitutional angle.
Yes Lorna, postcolonial theory tells us that a key impediment relates to ‘a peoples’ lack of understanding about their ‘colonial condition’ (Fanon) and hence the resulting confusion about what independence actually means – i.e. ‘decolonization’ – or why it is necessary – i.e. ‘liberation’ from oppression (Memmi).
This first requires a critical analysis of the oppressive situation from the oppressed peoples perspective (Freire).
Because national party political elites (bourgeoisie) fail to undertake ‘a critical analysis of colonial society’, this means the understanding of the people (and the political elite!) ‘remains rudimentary’.
Widely distributed brief explanatory pamphlets on the subject would assist:
https://salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
This then leads to ‘a new way of thinking’ by the people about their situation:
https://peterabell.scot/2023/08/27/the-new-thinking/comment-page-1/#