The Bargaining Chip – The Greens, the Budget and a Plebiscite –
Yesterday the SNP rejected the idea of a plebiscite at their National Assembly. This was disappointing, but not surprising to us at ISP. We still haven’t heard a good argument against the proposal; as we have been at pains to explain, it is a legitimate, democratic, internationally recognised means of expressing the will of the Scottish people. It offers a way out of the corner that we have boxed ourselves into with Section 30. And it would also take the tide of opinion at the flood, while there is still majority support for independence. Alex Salmond would have given his eye teeth to have had 20 polls in favour of Yes, with three months campaigning to go in 2014 and with Boris Johnson in charge. Are we really going to squander that opportunity?
There is still a chance to run with this and the leverage to make it happen. And that leverage belongs to the Greens. This week, the SNP prints their budget. They will require Green support to have it passed. And this is customarily the time when the Greens ask for something in return. We humbly suggest to Patrick Harvie that the bargaining chip should be to make the May Holyrood election a plebiscite on independence. There is no downside that we can see. It establishes the Greens’ credentials as an independence supporting party. If the SNP refuses, it’s bad for them and good for the Greens. If they say yes, then it gives the Greens the points for running with it. It’s win win.
A plebiscite is the last chance we are going to have for five years (unless we get a super majority) to have a vote on independence. And it’s not simply five years of sitting on our hands and waiting patiently. We are in for a five years that is going to make the forced de-industrialisation of the ‘80s look like a picnic by comparison.
During that five years, our country’s businesses and public services are going to be dismantled. Brexit is set to ruin our fishing industry, our food and drink exports and everything that requires us to do trade with those abroad. Our specialised brands will lose their protection. By contrast, companies will be brought in from abroad to buy up the NHS. The English NHS has already been broken up and sold off; now it’s going to be our turn. That’s before we even get onto the systematic deregulation of health and safety, employment rights and everything that goes with that. Our parliament is going to be turned into the parish council that Tony Blair spoke of; its powers emasculated and assumed by the Scotland Office. In short, Scotland is going to be totally and utterly destroyed as a country.
Please understand. Brexit is only a shambles to those adversely affected by it. To those who planned it, Brexit is the culmination of many years of campaigning since we signed the Maastricht treaty. It is the deregulation and final privatisation of Britain. It is to be an employer’s paradise with no minimum wage or hours, part time workers trained (or rather not trained) with a low skill set and being paid a similar low wage. This is what they wanted; this is what we are going to get. And our only escape is a vote out of Dodge, before it has time to gain momentum.
That is the price we are going to pay for not having a vote now. By the time we get to the point of having a referendum, it is going to take a generation to repair the damage done by waiting. It is not like switching a light on and off. Rather, it is like trying to raise a ship after it has sunk or repair a house after it has burnt down. It can be reversed, but the marks on the economy are going to be with us for years to come.
The SNP in November 2019 had the leverage to do a deal on Brexit with Theresa May and obtain a referendum in return. They missed that opportunity and now the Bullingdon club rule supreme, braying and laughing at Scotland. The Greens now stand on the same threshold here in Holyrood. This is your chance to shine. Please for our sake and Scotland’s, don’t miss that chance.
It would be good if they did, but I think you will find that GRA is more important to them.
If that is the case they will reap a whirlwind of discontent. On the other hand if they do force a, plebiscite they will be big winners.
The National Assembly didn’t reject the plebescite did they, they were not allowed to discuss it. As for the Greens it would be good if they found a backbone but they seen to be too like the present SG leadership in their political aspirations. In it to be in it, not to win it.
I was not in disagreement with this article until the last paragraph.
‘The SNP in November 2019 had the leverage to do a deal on Brexit with Theresa May and obtain a referendum in return.’
I’m a life long advocate for Independence and would accept almost any option to get this for Scotland but there has to be a line.
I believe the SNP were absolutely right not to make a deal with the Tories, it’ might’ have got them the referendum on paper but do you trust the lying tories wouldn’t have twisted it to their advantage or just back tracked on it completely? Ask the DUP how their deal went.
What it definitely would done was alienated a large portion of the former traditional Labour voting electorate and many others turning them against the SNP.
Which might have worked out well for yourself and the ISP in the long run but little for the momentum we now have.
Ask yourself Alan how could we possibly be worse off than we are now? Independence is now at least 5 years, away the IMB is law. Alister Jack has his 3,000 UK Civil Servants in place. Brexit a rabid right wing government about to take the last vestiges of our democracy away from us.
Julie , you have got my vote. I will still vote SNP constituency in May, but for the last time, unless there is a total clearout of the corrupt leadership. Hopefully when more SNP members see the light in the future when the leadership keep kicking the can down the road that will happen. And SNP members finally wake up to the persecution of Salmond.
Not sure about that first sentence in your last paragraph – how would a deal be done with Theresa May in Nov 2019 Johnston was PM then. Did you mean at an earlier date?
I think the pseudo ‘woke’ elements were given encouragement by the Biden order, and they will not stop now until GRA Reform is on the statute books, followed by the HCB because they depend, largely, on each other. Said all along that people underestimated this lot of science-deniers and gradualists. They have captured the party and they will not allow independence to happen any time soon despite what they tell you.
Their agenda is to change Scotland in their image, then, if it is still worth it – it won’t be, to them – try again for independence. Why go to all the trouble of establishing a new state when you can get all you want from destabilising and destroying the devolved one, and all in the name of privileged, ‘feel good’, middle-class, boredom? Oh, and predatory capitalism, of course. Their priority is not and never was independence.
They still rule the roost in the SNPG, and they have no intention of giving up power. The happenings on Sunday should tell us that. Furthermore, look around the West. Mirror images of the SNPG ‘pseudo’ woke’ faction are everywhere. Joe Biden just proved their strength in America. Half the American population has been sacrificed on the altar of the trans lobby, a supposedly tiny minority of people, and part of the wider pseudo ‘woke’ movement that is totally about the ‘feel good’ factor without actually ever having to do anything real about anything.
When you add in all the cross-dressers, drag queens, fetishists and their deluded, twittering female ‘birdies’ (read, suckers) fan club, that makes hundreds of thousands. Try queuing for the loo then, ladies. You’ll wet your knickers waiting for the men in frocks to vacate the cubicles and put away their lady d***s – and you’ll not get a look in, at the mirrors. These people absolutely love themselves. It’s all about them.
Lorna, Dead right.
For the Scottish Greens, gender ideology came before doing the decent thing for rape victims and voting for Johann Lamont’s amendment to the FMS bill.
Even for list vote, I can never vote for them. It’s ISP for me.
Struggling to hold my nose to vote SNP unless the GRA is off the agenda. What’s the chances?
Nally: Just heard Nicola Sturgeon reiterating her support for trans people, but this could have been both a sop to the Greens to support the budget and to distract from Craig Murray’s revelations.
I just can’t get my head round the fact that seemingly intelligent people can’t understand what has happened. The 2004 GRA gave trans people all their human rights, including the right to marry (ahead of the same sex marriage legislation and the 2010 Equality Act which gave them more protections, in common with other marginalized/vulnerable groups – including women, as a SEX, in law – not a gender, as trans people are classified in the Act).
The definition of a woman in law, currently, is that she is a natal female person. It is to natal female persons, based on their SEX, not on their gender (gender is separate) which the protections in the 2010 Equality Act for women offer and it is there that are being undermined and threatened with extinction, as the trans lobby howls that it has no rights. It has every right that everyone else has. People really need to understand that and not believe the lies of the trans lobby.
Basically, both the same sex marriage legislation and the 2010 Equality Act have superseded the 2004 GRA and made their provisions for trans people unnecessary, yet it is this Act that the trans lobby wants to have extended to include self-ID of any man who claims to be a woman and to, to all intents and purposes, obliterate the GRC (gender recognition certificate) so that the law will redefine a ‘woman’ as anyone who says he is. By doing so, the special provision of safe spaces for woman and girls will be wiped out for good and all hitherto female spaces will be open to any man and all men who claim to be women.
If trans people want to live their lives as they wish, that’s fine by most of us. They already have the right to do that, and they are already protected by both the 2004 GRA and the 2010 Equality Act If they want extensions to provisions, they should do that via trans spaces and trans rights, not by bulldozing women’s rights.
This trans lobby is not a small affair concerned with a handful of genuinely body dysphoric people, but with hundreds of thousands of people who claim they are trans. For men, the situation is far less complicated because trans men (natal women) are very unlikely to be any threat to them, they are very unlikely to play sports against men, and natal women who are now men are far less likely to push themselves into male spaces/areas of expertise/prizes/etc to bring attention to themselves, as, indeed, was also the case with genuinely dysphoric trans women until recently, which, I believe, shows that this is less about rights than about political power.
The opposite is true of trans women, albeit not the genuinely body dysphoric, who have been living among us quietly, causing no problems. It is the trans lobby umbrella, now covering every cross-dresser, drag queen, fetishist there is, and demanding that they be admitted into women’s spaces without question. Narcissism and threatening behaviour, not to mention abuse language, are common traits in this group when they are thwarted, and they will always be a threat to women. Again, I think this shows that rights is not their first concern, but political power to do what they want.
Hundreds and hundreds of cases from across the world are coming to light, but these trans women are classified as ‘women’ in statistics and their crimes are classified as ‘women’s crimes’, so that, even at this level, society is going to be burdened with useless ‘facts’ that tell us nothing. The implications of opening up all of women’s spaces to male-bodied persons does not bear thinking about. All kinds of sadists and women-haters seem to have been empowered by the advance of the trans lobby, which is both hugely political and hugely financed by corporate America. The women-haters are the vanguard, creating a smokescreen for the real agenda which is partly, I think, to further the interests of predatory capitalism, but, may also be something very much darker. Our children are going to pay the price for letting loose this monster. If there is no other agenda than to consolidate rights, then why will the trans lobby not debate and discuss? What are they afraid we will find out?
Julie, the Greens do have something to lose – List Seats. With the ISP and maybe one other new independence party, plus Andy Wightman hopefully standing as an Independent and no sign of the SNP giving up on the lists despite the poor returns in terms of seats, then it is the Greens whose seats could well be lost. You could argue that the ISP is going to win seats from the Greens anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they demand a plebiscite in return for supporting the budget, all they win is Brownie (Greenie ?) points. So I think that the Greens are likely to ask for something else in return for their support.
Oh I hope they do ask for something else, it then once and for all exposes the myth they are an Independence Party. I would love to be wrong.
I agree, BB. The Greens are even more in thrall to the pseudo ‘woke’ element. I do not trust them to deliver independence. They, too, use the fact that the SNP is in power to advance their own agenda – which comes way before our independence.
Geoff, there’s plenty of votes to go round on the list. There’s 800K SNP votes that were wasted last time round. Then there’s the gap of 500K votes between those who voted Yes in 2014, and those who voted for an indy party in 2016. Where are they just now and why aren’t they voting for an indy party? By contrast at maximum you could probably attribute @70K Green votes in 2016 to tactical voting, based on previous elections where they got approx 80K (as opposed to 150K in 2016). There’s an awful lot of voters out there who are indy supporters who didn’t vote Green. There is no reason to suppose that anyone who votes for us, voted Green the last time round. For many, neither the Greens or the SNP appeal and that is the gap we are filling. If the Greens want indy votes then it’s quite simple – do some work on indy. If they don’t, then they can’t expect the indy vote. And that’s before I even get onto them cutting their own throat by running on more constituency seats. That is going to lose them list seats, but it won’t be our doing.
I feel ill whn I read all the posutring about GRA and Hate Crimes Legislation. Wher did all this stuff come from ? I know – California !
Julie
I will be giving you my second vote but I will have to sell this to my friends and family. So could you provide some evidence that a small vote for the ISP or a very large vote for the ISP will not damage the SNP? It was pushed at the National Assembly that this may damage the outcome for the SNP.