Neil MacKay is the leader of AUOB & Suzanne Blackley is an Activist, in AUOB & radio host for Webcomradio.co.uk
Webcom Radio is Now Playing: Suzanne - 10 at 10 - The Beatles Webcom Radio is Now Playing: Suzanne - 10 at 10 - The BeatlesNeil MacKay is the leader of AUOB & Suzanne Blackley is an Activist, in AUOB & radio host for Webcomradio.co.uk
Very enjoyable Roddy, I am one of the ladies who has maintained that I will not vote SNP in May unless she calls a Plebiscite election.. However, you are right, no matter how we feel about the leadership or even the party as it is today, which is a party I no longer wish to be part of under this leadership, as I do not believe in allowing another government in Scotland to be as corrupt or treat it’s voters with the contempt Labour did.
Hence my resignation from the SNP as a member. But we must hold our nose & vote for them again in May, for me it will be the last time if nothing in that party changes, I.e. leadership along with huge sweep out the back door of the ones that plotted against Alex.
Plus I have no faith at all in the Msps & Mps who have kept their heads down & mouths shut during this whole Stitch up, when they could/should have been doing something productive like speaking out about what they saw or heard about the dirty tactics being implemented in the party.
Through their silence they have allowed the party to fester to where it is today, disgraced.
I still hope that an INDY party comes forward with the promise that a vote for them will be a vote for a plebiscite election in May & they challenge the SNP in the constituency as well as the List.. Because nobody should be giving a vote to a corrupt party knowingly. That does not bode well with me.. But if NO party comes forward with the Plebiscite promise..Then NOSE held it will be..
It is impossible to think about, debate, discuss, speculate in any way that takes us any closer to why – really why – the SNP has behaved in this way for almost six years. Even the most gradualist of gradualists cannot escape seeing that: a) a S30 Order is a waste of time and effort; b) that, since Brexit, we are on a path of destruction as a devolved nation, that we simply cannot be allowed any measure of autonomy at all while independence is still so strong in Scotland; and, c) the pain and misery that will be inflicted on the Scottish population cannot be mitigated by any amount of pandering to NO voters and Unionists of all hues.
My own feeling is that either the leadership and those around the leadership are actually comprised (not by the subject matter of the inquiries, but by the British State itself) or a level of incompetence and graft has entered the SNPG never seen before, even in Labour, and that the leadership genuinely has no idea or the will on how to move forward and does not wish to jeopardize their careers in even trying. Or, of course, a combination of both, which is more likely. Nothing else makes any sense when you strip it all down to basics because answers are out there. Other people, lay members and independence supporters themselves, instead of the well-paid party apparatchiks and advisers, have been offering suggestions since 2014, to no avail. The latter appear to have been on the same treadmill as the leadership for the past almost six years, getting nowhere at all. It is an utter disgrace, an utter betrayal of the party’s principles.
Everyone seems to be too scared to actually do what it will take – and it is going to take full-on confrontation even to achieve a peaceful, democratic and legal transition to independence. The fundamental problem with dithering around the margins, trying not to offend people who, frankly, should be offended, should have their heads forcibly removed from their nether regions and made to confront what they have done with their NO and Leave votes, is that you simply store up negativity, and it comes back, eventually, to bite you. If you do what needs to be done in the early stages, you save everyone a great deal of pain and misery.
I always take the last of the Tsars of All the Russias, Nicholas II, as a yardstick: had that foolish man not accepted that a constitutional monarchy was the only way forward for his family’s survival; had the Mensheviks not allowed power to slip through their fingers by always taking the path of least resistance; and had the reality of the heir’s illness not been kept secret, the history of Russia and the Soviet Union might have been very different. No Russian Revolution and the aftermath, claiming millions of lives, and no nihilistic, murderous Stalinist regime, claiming many, many more, for starters. If history shows us anything, it is that NOT acting when you should that is the more dangerous path.
Great show once again Roddy,
Just one thing annoys me, I hear yourself, Neil & Suzanne constantly refer a section 30 as Nicolas strategy for independence and how it doesn’t make sense, the reason it doesn’t make sense is because it’s not a strategy for independence, it’s a strategy to avoid independence and when you view it like that it all starts to make sense.
Nicola is not a stupid woman she knows as well as anyone else a section 30 wont be granted, she clearly doesn’t want independence it’s the only thing that makes sense
Fishy Willie: I’m not sure that is the whole story, though, because, again, that doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Her entire approach was always very different from Alex Salmond’s. The problem was that, never again would we be granted a S30 Order Order because, albeit Mr Salmond did not not take us to independence, he all but did. I think, early on, she believed that impending Brexit would bring hundreds of thousands of so-called ‘soft’ Nos – just NOs – into the fold.
It is here that I think her undoubted ability failed her: she just could not see – or could not admit – that that was never going to happen. She seriously misjudged the NO vote and its adherence to Unionism. Scottish Unionists she could understand, but she could never get her head round the rUK vote in Scotland. That became very evident from 2016 onwards, when she simply did not seem to appreciate that the largest part of the Leave vote in Scotland was also NO and also rUK. The Scottish YES/Leave vote could have been persuaded with a promise to join EFTA or EEA, as a preliminary, but the NO/Leave vote was solidly against independence under any circumstances. It still is, so that independence in Europe is a non-starter with them.
That is when the groundwork should have been done to find new routes to independence that, largely, kept that NO/Leave vote, in particular, at bay, because being out of the EU would just have strengthened it. NO/Remain voters were always a better bet to turn, but leaving it till we were actually out of the EU left them nowhere to go. It was always a safe bet in their case that an accommodation with Brexit rather than one with independence was more likely.
Now, any move towards independence will involve a full-on confrontation with both NO/Leave and NO/Remain, allowing them, once again, to join forces against us. She is not the only one who has been unwilling to accept and digest and work from the reality of the 2014 NO vote – because it made people uncomfortable to admit it – and we may yet pay the price for being spineless and too accommodating in the face of blatant anti democratic, colonial and internationally illegal alliances against our self-determination. Neither the minority Scottish Unionists nor the minority rUK NO voters could have done what they have done without collusion between them, and passivity on our part.
All these factors: the FM’s personality and style of leadership; the Scottish Unionist NO/Leave and the rUK NO/Leave vote together; and the YES/Leave and NO/Remain together have all conspired to take us to where we are. Throw in a capture of the party by people whose priority was never independence, but a pseudo ‘woke’ agenda, very likely infiltration by the British State along the way and sheer incompetence and a drive to keep out anyone who did not ‘belong’ to the orthodoxy (Mr Salmond being but one, and the most high profile), and you have a recipe for disaster. The insistence on the S30 Order route and no other can only now be interpreted as a delaying tactic for which the gullible still fall. Nicola Sturgeon and her administration are going to fall at some point. It will be up to her whether it will be a relatively graceful one, salvaging independence, or a tumble into the deepest glaur. She has not long to decide. The Manifesto awaits.
Lorna Campbell
A long post which could be replaced by Sturgeon does not want independence and will not deliver independence and is only interested in the retention of personal power.