From Noon Sunday Through A Scottish Prism
Every week now we have one political bombshell after another. This past week was no different. At the start of the week Humza Yousaf was First Minister and leader of the SNP/Green Scottish Government. By the middle of the week Humza had sacked the Green Ministers and ended the accursed Bute House Agreement. At the end of the week, Humza had resigned and had apologised to the huffy Greens for their wee hurty feelings.
Meanwhile, John Swinney was counting down the days to his retirement in May 2026. After 7 years of pleading with the despot Sturgeon to leave the government he was in the final two years of his unremarkable career. The only thing remarkable about ‘Honest John’s’ time in government is that he managed to remain in situation after so much incompetence and so many disasters.
As leader back in 2000 to 2004 Swinney led the party to almost extinction such was his ineptitude as the leader. When he resigned from that post in 2004 following poor European parliament election results most of us in the party at that time expected him to stand down completely. Unfortunately, he remained and miraculously was handed positions that his limited talents never warranted. Only Salmond and Sturgeon can explain why they kept giving Swinney positions to screw up.
Last year when Sturgeon/Murrell decided on Yousaf to be their Mr Continuity Swinney ruled himself out of the 2023 leadership race to replace Ms Sturgeon, citing that he had to put his young family first.
They say a week in politics us a long time. It seems in this past calamitous year Mr Swinney’s young family grew up. He has been told that he is to be Mr Continuity Mark II. Instead of his plan to retire and spend time with his young family he has accepted the leadership reins again, god help us all! It seems those Sturgeon skeletons need to be kept in the numerous cupboards where they lurk.
Meanwhile, Ms.Kate Forbes a favourite of many to be the next leader after Humza was expected to stand against Swinney and bring that change so many within the party crave. She has been on maneuvers from almost the moment she lost her previous attempt to become leader!
Many of the members know that the last thing the SNP needs now is more Continuity politics. The Unionist elite, media and English registered parties smell SNP blood. Ms Forbes while not every ones first choice was seen as a better option than yesterdays never was man.
Sadly, for reasons only known to Kate, she declined to enter the race on this occasion. No doubt in the fullness of time we will find out if she was ‘convinced’ it was in her/the party’s best interests to allow Swinney a coronation and not a contest.
By Friday everything looked done and dusted for those that have been running the SNP shitshow for the past 10 years. Swinney agreed to be the next patsy while long term the men in grey kilts move their chess pieces on the board to bring forward their real choice just in time for the 2026 election. Wait to see which of those about to lose their Westminster seat has been anointed by the movers and shakers.
With everything in place all that was left was for Honest John to make the platitude and carrot speech. He hit us with the old ‘we need to convince more of the soft nos’ BS! This, despite every single opinion poll for over a year now showing that over 50%+ of the Scots electorate want independence. So his maiden speech as the chosen one was full of lies and carrots.
In his previous tenure he indicated Devo-Max was his preferred option. It seems it is still his preferred option. Another note of caution. As a Cabinet Secretary he produced a paper suggesting selling off both Caledonian MacBrayne and Scottish Water! Watch for that becoming a policy!
However, unbeknown to the puppeteers slinking about in the background at Jackson Close there was a stirring in the quiet town of Arden on Loch Lomond a retired Conveyancing solicitor and SNP member Graeme McCormick decided he wanted to see a contest not a coronation. I hear despite huge pressure from the protectors of the Bisto, sufficient signatures have been amassed and there will be a contest. The most important part in all of this is the ordinary SNP members will need to be consulted and convinced.
This is the background to today’s edition of Through A Scottish Prism. My panel consists of Lloyd Quinan, SNP member and all round good guy, Eva Comrie and Derek Kerr two of our Independents for Independence candidates. The discussion is far ranging and covers the main topic as well as likely outcomes and other matters that effect all that is happening around this leadership fandango. The panel give their views,we would like to hear yours.
Well at least ug let’s Swinney know he is not everyone left in SNP’s choice.
Over 50000 ex SNP members can see him far enough.
“This, despite every single opinion poll for over a year now showing that over 50%+ of the Scots electorate want independence.”
That really is just not true, as a brief scan of this link proves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_independence
Wikipedia Duncan,really?
Must do better!
The wikipedia record is accurate – I’ve checked against the individual pollsters published survey results of Ipsos, Panelbase/Norstat, Yougov, Renfield and Wilton, Survation etc. Even the most recent poll yesterday by Panelbase/Norstat showed 48% YES, 52% NO. (https://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2024/05/sensational-norstat-poll-shows-support.html)
I wish what you were saying was true. But it isn’t – the majority of the polls over the last year show a balance in favour of NO. Since the start of the year there have been 12 surveys with 9 showing a lead for NO.
Of course if you can substantiate your claims I will stand corrected.
Is it confirmed yet that Graeme McCormick will stand for SNP leadership?
Lloyd is correct. People wait for an independence campaign, be it a plebiscite election or referendum, before they choose their position. So waiting for UK based polls to give us 60% is futile. Our voters do want independence, but cannot get behind the cause, unless there’s a real possibility that a vote on the constitution will achieve independence on a simple majority. The SNP is simply too scared to defy London.
Great stuff again, Roddy. The Sunday Prism really gets its teeth into all the week’s topics and more.
Lloyd is right: no way could Humza have survived long even with Ash Regan’s vote, but he would have gone down in Scottish history as the man who saved Scotland by striking a blow for unity ac ross the whole movement.
Swinney is, and always was, a devolutionist and he never had what got takes to be a real leader. Sorry to say it, but that’s the truth.
Kate Forbes negotiated the Freeports and these will be her nemesis. I like her, I think she is extremely bright and I would never hold her religiosity against her, but she is too neoliberal for my blood, and too in with the Americans for comfort.
Although I understand their motives and their jealousy and malign actions, I still don’t get their never-ending campaign against Mr Salmond unless they are in cahoots with the West inter on that one. Both the useless, dead wood of the SNP (too many of them) and the equally useless, dead wood of the Westminster Unionists fear his return, even as a background power in Scottish politics. They know he will not settle until Scotland is free and that is the last thing they want.
Eva is right in that local people used to stand in all kinds of ways – for parliament, for councils, for public bodies, teachers lived in their school area, doctors in the local surgeries, school board members in the area, etc. You knew them and they knew you and they knew all the local problems. That is all gone now through deliberate social engineering, basically, to break the bond between communities and the people who lived there (and I’m not talking about immigration, before anyone sounds off). This has been going on for a very long time, certainly since the 1960s.
Yes, we have come to the absolute boundaries of devolution. Nowhere to go now except into independence. The issues that require to be tackled no longer can be, if they ever could, with devolution or with Westminster. We need to go and soon.
The WASPI women can kiss goodbye to any compensation even though the facts have been established. I have come to the conclusion that no government, council or public body gives a toss about women and girls, and, yes, Nicola Sturgeon was the architect of the destruction of female rights by handing them to men in frocks.
Only when we have none left, when all women’s jobs are occupied by men (and they will be if this is not stopped), all women’s and girls’ services are under the thumb of larping men and female people are driven back into the home will the idiot middle-class women who support these cheating men understand the damage they have done. I suppose we should be grateful that the ‘trans’ queen bee actually recognizes it now – too late, of course.
Any party now that continues to pander to these men will be punished at the polls for as long as females have the vote. It would not surprise me one little bit if that was the next thing the chaps attack because I don’t believe it is just the ‘trans’ identified men; too many misogynists want women and girls sidelined again, happy to use the ‘trans woo woo’ to do it.
The hatred of females is quite terrifying, but, I do think that, for the first time in history, many female people are beginning to understand that being female is, in itself, a red rag to many a male bull and that we need to discover why because most females just do not regard males in the same way, and God knows, we have more reason.
The very first thing that any written constitution for an independent Scotland should do is embed female rights and male rights as both equal and complementary, reinstate ‘sex’ as the abiding characteristic for all benefits that accrue to being a Scottish subject, albeit not to downgrade anyone else’s rights so that ‘trans’ identified people can swan around as ‘trans’ identified people, but not at the expense of anyone else or anyone else’s safe spaces, sports, medical rights and rights to education, etc.
As many ex SNP members know, and is openly paraded on Wiki, Swinney has a long track record of (a) hounding fundamentalists out of the party and (b) as SNP leader, losing seats in elections. There is obviously a close correlation between both aspects.
The aim of independence is and depends on fundamental change, which means fundamentalists are essential to the process. Gradualist devolutionanists, on the other hand, are colonialists who will only ever deliver more colonialism. In other words, they are anti-independence.
Here’s a wee reminder of the colonial plunder the SNP Scottish Government continues to protect:
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/03/19/the-real-economic-price-of-the-uk-union-for-scots/
Links from this weeks show.
Resolution Foundation
@resfoundation
“Concluding @JohnSwinney
says that a change of UK Government provides the opportunity to re-establish the purpose of devolution, and to equip the Scottish Parliament with the economic powers that would enable it to operate in a much more cohesive and empathic way.”
https://twitter.com/resfoundation/status/1784870661439000628
Lloyd Quinan
@QuinanLloyd
“Everything Dorothy says is true I know I was there.”
https://twitter.com/QuinanLloyd/status/1786409485671551339
“John Swinney considered selling Scottish Water and CalMac ferry fleet”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24020186.john-swinney-considered-selling-scottish-water-calmac-ferry-fleet/
Lloyd : “This is the man who put Julian Assange in jail.
this is the man who fully supports the genecidal behaviour of the Israeli government in Gaza.”
“Israel ‘has the right’ to withhold power and water from Gaza, says Sir Keir Starmer”
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/sir-keir-starmer-hamas-terrorism-israel-defend-itself/
“People of Scotland should choose new SNP leader, says Keir Starmer”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/people-scotland-choose-new-snp-leader-keir-starmer-says-9ms76d7j0
Derek talks about “The Labour files” and al Jazeera
“Documents reveal discrimination and racism in UK Labour Party”
“Al Jazeera reveals how Labour created a hierarchy of racism that discriminated against Black, Asian and Muslim members.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/29/documents-reveal-discrimination-and-racism-in-uk-labour-party
https://www.ajiunit.com/investigation/the-labour-files/
“Al Jazeera Investigations – the making of the Labour Files”
https://institute.aljazeera.net/en/ajr/article/2003
“The Labour Files – Episode 1 – The Purge I Al Jazeera Investigations”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0
‘ “i don’t understand” Jared Bernstein, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ts9AX_Gak
Richard Murphy
@RichardJMurphy
“This is so funny – the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers to Biden very clearly has no idea how many works in the economy, but wants to condemn modern monetary theory for explaining it entirely straightforwardly.”
https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/1786472478765687134?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw