A Guest Post by Michael Breslin
Many of you will have read on social media the resignation letter of SNP stalwarts Michael & Phil Breslin. The restrictions on social media meant Michael & Phil could not list all of the factors that forced them to cancel their memberships to the party they had devoted decades too. I am delighted to bring you the further thoughts and suggestions from true Scottish patriots. It is a pleasure to bring you this guest post by Michael Breslin.
The text below in Calibri was what went to SNP HQ with my resignation. It wasn’t full of flowing prose because we wanted a summary on no more than 2 A4 pages that could easily be put out on Twitter. It had over 200,000 page impressions in the first 30 hours. There are some further thought to follow this in the same font as this.
This is far from an exhaustive list of why the SNP is no longer our party. As is often said, the party has left us.
• The lack of detailed planning for independence and the wasted years since 2014. Lots could have been done to prepare, eg the creation of new or improved ports for direct exports to the EU. Instead, this was driven by one MP with no obvious support from Edinburgh. The lack of any real enthusiasm from the leadership was obvious.
• The chaotic mutterings in the past few days from people close to the FM put the icing on the cake. For example, saying that winning a de facto referendum would lead to us asking for a S30 order. Really? Kicking the can down the road yet again. And then the intervention from Keith Brown ruling out using a Holyrood election before the issue can be discussed by members. Arrogant and undemocratic.
• The mystery of the missing £600k independence fund. And yes, it is missing.
• The generally poor standard of governance in recent years by the Scottish Government, in stark contrast to the many years of good governance. The calibre of some cabinet members leaves much to be desired. The promotion of these people reflects badly on the FM as a leader.
• The folly of promoting SNP 1 and 2, especially in the most recent election. We could have had a much stronger pro-independence parliament had this not been pursued, but perhaps that was precisely what the party didn’t want.
• The dearth of activists, the moribund branches and CA, repeated suppression of debate in case it upsets the hierarchy, etc. The branch executives acting as gatekeepers to ensure the ‘wrong things’ don’t get debated. This is not how successful parties operate.
• The appalling treatment of Joanna Cherry; the protection given to Patrick Grady and all the other double standards from MPs.
• The MP we have here in Argyll. A person driven by ambition and entitlement who has done more to create division and tension than anything else. Good for photo ops and little else.
• The local issue of ferries which deserves a bit more detail. While the national mess around ferries has gained lots of publicity, the least reliable route, by far, is the passenger only route between the town centres of Dunoon and Gourock. The SNP government did what Thatcher wanted to do by taking the safe, comfortable and very reliable car ferries off the route in 2011. This handed a monopoly to Western Ferries for vehicle traffic. The unsuitable, uncomfortable and unreliable passenger ferries that replaced them have meant a slow burn destruction of Dunoon’s public transport based commuting system. Work, medical, leisure and educational opportunities have been badly damaged due to the unreliability. And with no new vessels in sight for at least 3 years we will have had 14 or 15 years of harm. Abysmal and wholly avoidable failure by the SNP.
• The gerrymandering of the internal vote that propelled the ‘right people ‘ to the top of the list for the last Holyrood election. Even worse, the refusal to publish the outcome of the vote in case it upset the unworthy.
• The dysfunctional HQ that doesn’t investigate complaints properly and which ignores appalling behaviour by certain branches.
• The sell-out of our wind assets in the laughably named Scotwind. A travesty.
• The superb concept of a National Care Service ruined by the design work being handed to hugely expensive consultants rather than by those who understand what we need. The excellent work of Common Weal was simply ignored.
• The National Energy Company that never was. Wales can do it, but we can’t. Another conference decision ignored.
• The shambles of a position on currency, with leadership characters blatantly ignoring conference decisions and pursuing the recklessness of sterlingisation.
• The Gender Reform proposals, which are a danger to women and politically stupid. These will lose us support for independence. For this to be pursued at the expense of a single-minded push for independence is inexcusable. The rejection of the Tory amendment that now allows those on the sex offenders‘ register to change gender is as dangerous and dumb as it gets.
We could go on, but this will suffice. We’ve had enough of the SNP. We remain fully committed to Scotland’s independence, unlike the Scottish National Party.
Michael & Phil Breslin November 2022
Roddy asked if there was anything to add to the above. To give the people of Scotland the confidence that an independent Scotland would work for them, perhaps it’s best to summarise the things that could have been done within the restricted powers of devolution.
1 There was an SNP commitment many years ago to reform council tax, a tax that hits the least well off hardest and which fails to levy a fair tax on huge levels of wealth. Why this was never tackled is a mystery but it was binned by the SNP. Reform would have had wide support, properly done, although the richest folk might not have been that happy.
2 Having been a councillor in Argyll & Bute Council for the 5 years from 2012 and having dealt with the council before and after that, the scope for wholesale reform of councils is an open goal. They are far too big in most cases and too remote from the communities they are supposed to serve. But even leaving them as they are, there is a desperate need to get councils under democratic control. Frankly, they can get away (almost) with murder and there is no simple way for the aggrieved public to get issues resolved. Audit Scotland is a chocolate fireguard; the Standards Commissioner is a joke and the Ombudsman service far too bureaucratic. A fellow councillor from Falkirk Council and myself had a meeting with the then minister, Marco Biagi, a meeting kindly brokered by my then MSP Michael Russell. We had a very good session in Holyrood but absolutely nothing came of it. It was a waste of everyone’s time.
3 Land reform has not been tackled in anything like a radical manner and this ties in with reform of council tax. There is little merit in me adding much to the excellent work of Common Weal which can be read at: https://commonweal.scot/policies/land-reform-in-a-net-zero-nation/
4 In fact, Common Weal has produced lots of really good, radical stuff which would chime very well with the average Yes supporting voter from 2014 and which would have shown so called Scottish Labour up for the Tories they are. It’s worth reading these at: https://commonweal.scot/library/policy/ Perhaps lefty stuff isn’t what would inspire your average Scot but my hunch is it would, for the most part.
To sum up, there is so much more a Scottish Government could have, and should have, done using the powers we already have. To rub salt into the wound, the SNP has expended effort elsewhere, as we all currently know with gender reform. That waste of time and effort has damaged the cause of independence.
We need to recover lost ground.
Thanks to Roddy for the opportunity to put this on his website.
Agree entirely, and am certain you speak for many thousand former SNP enthusiasts as they despair with the cynical re-directing of the party. It is crystal clear that the SNP are now opposed to independence and driven by a self-serving status quo, with ‘shop window’ policies that bear no relation to what’s for sale inside. The YES movement placed their political faith in the party, to which many have given a lifetime of support – only to be treacherously disenfranchised. I have transferred my allegiance and financial support to Alba but seventy years of slow but determined progress are going to be difficult to replace.
The issue of the removal of the Gourock /Dunoon vehicle ferries always deserved a lot more publicity than it got as the SNP quietly acquiesced to a private monopoly on a vital route and now with the council wanting to remove the Dunoon linkspan any CalMac Ro Ro will never happen —they have most certainly not acted in the public interest here
Well said gents. The venom that you’ve received online is pretty disgusting, so keep it up because you’re rattling all the right cages.
Sums it up for me. Bitter taste in my mouth regarding SNP – same for many of my family members who voted time after time for them. My niece cancelled her membership last week and is joining ALBA. I cancelled my membership after the AS witch-hunt…my son, my sister and even my big brother- who has been a member for decades – all leaving for same reasons.
Totally agree with these accurate comments.
As a resident Dunoon & former SNP activist I confirm Dunoon has been dreadfully let down by SNP.
O’Hara MP is a wastrel Nicola cheerleader.
I hope that other SNP ‘stalwarts’ will now finally show some courage and put Scotland ahead of their own comfy positions. Sadly I feel it’s too little too late in many respects. The Dunoon ferry issue is interesting on a number of fronts. It was never a priority or of anything more than a passing interest to Russell, yet his predecessor Jim Mathers was elected on a ‘promise’ of votes for boats in 2007. Given the closeness of the result nationally the significance of this unfulfilled pledge may have had an effect far beyond the Clyde. I was at a small event in Renfrew a few years later where Sturgeon met with a small group of carers. (It was Derek McKay’s constituency at the time and I remember being struck by how he sat like a frightened rabbit in boss’s company). As the meeting broke up I was beside Sturgeon and couldn’t resist the chance , not for a selfie, but to ask her about the Dunoon ferry. The reply was ‘ what is it with you folk and that ferry!’ I am glad that Mike is publicly speaking out against what has become a regime. One omission from the reasons listed however must be the disgraceful and disgusting framing of Salmond – a chilling and sinister plot that marked the point where not even remotely enough people spoke up.
Postcolonial theory tells us that many oppressed peoples have been here before.
According to Frantz Fanon, the dominant national party leaders “first hesitate and then choose neutralism”. So what we see with the SNP elite is neutralism, which of course leads the independence movement up a blind alley.
The problem arises because: “inside the nationalist parties, the will to break colonialism is linked with another quite different will: that of coming to a friendly agreement with it”
Hence “the rupture occurs between the illegal and legal tendencies in the party”. The SNP elite is the latter tendency, with any progress dependent on the colonial courts and parliament, the party still to comprehend that such political action is “powerless to modify or overthrow the colonial regime”.
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
I left the SNP because of the GRA. It was my first ever political party membership at 64 in 2014. I was late to being politically ‘involved’. Reading the litany of reasons in the letter I better understand all the criticism directed towards the FM and SG. While they do a lot of ‘good’ things for Scotland they do seem to have us pedalling a chainless bike making no progress in preparation for an independent Scotland.
How do we make them realise the people need the SNP to change because I fear if we stop voting SNP the unionists will get a hold and our dream will die (in my lifetime).
Pretty much sums it up for me, too.
While this is without doubt the best post i have read for a while it does also have a few flaws borne from what can only be ignorance of the subject involved.
“The lack of detailed planning for independence and the wasted years since 2014. Lots could have been done to prepare, eg the creation of new or improved “ports for direct exports to the EU. ”
“Port direct to the EU ” is the giveaway and clearly relates to the idea Scotland is being shortchanged from goods leaving from RUK Ports which is just false and was made clears by the SNP Scot Gov on our own Scot Gov website , its time this misinformation on this was dead and buried as it makes the Yes movement look stupid and uneducated. “The ESS publication measures the destination of goods exported from Scotland regardless of the port from which they leave the UK.” https://www.gov.scot/publications/about-export-statistics-scotland/pages/useful-information/
“The mystery of the missing £600k independence fund. And yes, it is missing.” The money isn’t “missing” it was spent by the SNP on refurbishing its own HQ, the money spent doing this almost matched the missing sum exactly. https://wingsoverscotland.com/homework-exercise/#more-130459
“The MP we have here in Argyll. A person driven by ambition and entitlement who has done more to create division and tension than anything else. ”
Another low IQ moron.
“The sell-out of our wind assets in the laughably named Scotwind. A travesty.”
This mistaken grievance is based on Kenny MacAskills own invented story that somehow the auctions for Scottish Sea Acreage should have brought in the same value as Auctions for Sea Acreage in the very busy Sea channels and Acreage in the Bay of New York in the USA , quite a preposterous fantasy , there is no shortage of Acreage of Scottish Coastline available whereas there is a shortage of Acreage available in the Bay of New York. Its shortage of supply that causes high Auction prices and there is no comparison between Scotland and the Bay of New York for shipping traffic and competing Windpower space. By MacAskills same reasoning a 3 bedroom House in Harthill would be the same price as a 3 bedroom House in the Centre of Edinburgh or Glasgow, we all know they are not and we all understand the reasons why, so apply that thought process to Windfarm acreage in different parts of the world too.
“There was an SNP commitment many years ago to reform council tax, a tax that hits the least well off hardest and which fails to levy a fair tax on huge levels of wealth. Why this was never tackled is a mystery but it was binned by the SNP. Reform would have had wide support, properly done, although the richest folk might not have been that happy.”
Unfortunately this another poorly understood issue but appeals to people who prefer easy answers, “Tax the Rich” is always the easy answer but is poorly understood and just isn’t easy to do without just chasing them all away and ending up with no taxes from them or from their Businesses which by then would have moved to other countries too, its called cutting off your nose to spite your own face and just leaves the budget for Public Spending worse off instead of better. There are not that many really rich people to tax in Scotland who would stay if over penalised the burden of Taxation falls to the much much bigger number of the middle classes and these economic facts are well known from the “Laffer Curve” of wealth that is actually used for taxation policy across economies in the whole World (mostly)..certainly not in Russia for instance where there is a much wider gap between rich and poor than in the UK or Scotland ) https://www.investopedia.com/articles/08/laffer-curve.asp
Christine – the problem is that the data provided on exports has for me the same credibility as the Gers reports. -“They would say that wouldn’t they”.
A practical approach does seem to me to drive to a Scottish port un-hitch the goods container and return to depot, a morning’s work – and, next job boss? Return journey of 60 to 100 miles? And compared to a return journey to an English south coast port – 700 mile return journey? What is the Irish practise/ policy on shipping from ports to Europe?
The MP we have here in Argyll – explain who is the moron, the complainant or the MP?
Sell out of our wind assets – economics, the allocation of scarce resources, and so yes the Bay of New York is a scarce resource for the citizens of the USA. But so too is the potential of Scotland’s renewable energy a scarce resource to the citizens of Europe.
Council tax – maybe the “very wealthy” leaving Scotland because of a Council tax hike would be a good thing, since money, you imply is “their God”, not the wellbeing of our nation.
Best wishes
The SNP have owned the GERS report themselves since 2007 when they were elected to the Scot Gov , they spent 6 years changing it to their own design and used it by their own choice for the 2014 White Paper.
Do you disagree with Alex Salmond here https://archive.ph/jcmu8 or with SNP favourite Economist Margaret Cuthbert here ? https://archive.ph/Kp32G
People can even see on the SNP Scot Govs own Document Archive the SNP themselves have been responsible for producing the GERS numbers going back to 2007 when the SNP were Voted into Holyrood as seen on the Archive https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20191010063153/https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Economy/GERS/Methodology
Ah the ramblings of another colonised house Jock
Ps have you ever actually been to an auction ? There seller doesn’t set the final price , its the bidder that stops bidding when they think they have paid a fair price, there is no need to pay New York Bay land prices for Scottish Coastline with much lighter shipping traffic. Supply and demand is what pushes Auction prices higher and prices didn’t need to be higher just because Kenny MacAskill dreamt up a conspiracy theory saying otherwise.
Aye Roddy, the greater exposure given to this article the clearer it will become to the Scottish public that the SNP has most definitely left us to fend for ourselves.
Christine, quite clearly not of our persuasion in a political sense would appear to be at ease with the direction the SNP is taking and indeed through another prism could be asserting her Westminster inspired disdain for Scots and Scotland.
Super article – thank you.
Sadly I cannot disagree with any of your rationale and applaud your decision to stand by your principles. Wheest for Indy has led us down a dangerous path where we have lent our votes to policies we don’t agree with in the name of an independence that we are not significantly closer to seeing despite 8 years of open goals handed to Scotland on a plate. Even the cost of living crisis hasn’t seen a line drawn or the gravy train screeching to a halt. That will cost the lives of many of our fellow Scots. I have voted SNP my whole life and never thought I’d see myself looking around for another option – but now I am. You are not alone. Not by a long shot. Basically, it’s all an illusion of what indy voters want to see. Very little of it is real and the reckoning is coming. @indyscotparty manifesto aligns with my values and I have faith in liberation.scot to win over Scots to support their case to the UN. There’s a distinct lack of passion and far too much apathy in the movement if we can’t even bother to spend 2 minutes signing up to endorse an international legal challenge.
This is my first comment here. I finally packed it in with the SNP in the summer – probably later than I should have done.
Mike Breslin’s fight within Argyll and Bute Council was a credit to him and his allies and, in retropect, indicated the complacecy and collaborationism that was coming among the SNP leadership.
The ‘supreme’ court may have done us a favour. The collaborationists now have no clothes. Gradually, ways forward, and groups to express those through, are emerging for those of us who want to keep up the fight for independence.
We’ll probably have to keep voting SNP, in some circumstances, for a while yet but it is never too early to start planning for the first, post independence, general election.🏴✌
The SNP is the ONLY party I had ever voted for, I did not jump from Labour as many did. I voted SNP & supported the SNP by canvassing the doors and posting their leaflets through doors back in the day when, well when they were what ALBA is today, an VERY small Independence Party, trying to breakthrough to the Scottish people.. I am 73yrs of age now, I honestly believed we had the dream team in Alex & Sturgeon..
I admit to admiring Alex more but that was basically because he was FM & as it turns out did so much as FM.. From all the mitigation he did to help the poorest among us. Everything we have today like free prescriptions, free care for the elderly, NO Tuition fees, scrapped bridge tolls, Free parking in Hospital car parks for staff and visitors & patients.. EXCEPT for 2 PRIVATE hospitals built via PFI by Labour…He also Brought Dentist from Europe to ensure that we all got our NHS dental service again, which was dropping patients right left & centre due to privatisation.. He froze council tax something that UNDER labour, went up EVERY year as a form of taxation that Labour councillors benefitted from. (I would say LINED their own pockets with) We certainly did not see new house builds. Better roads..
I was pleased when Sturgeon was handed the baton, I honestly though she would pick it up and run with it, especially when in 2015, with a LARGE influx of new members behind her, we had an almost clean sweep of
WM seats.. That was a fantastic lift from the down of 18th Sept 2014, Scotland finally got rid of LABOUR, we had done the same to the Tories many years before. Scotland was screaming to the world, STOP THE WORLD WE WANT TO GET ON…
Yet NOT one extra power via that VOW was fought for by Sturgeon, I know I waited with bated breath for the announcement that with 56MPS Scotland was declaring INDY.. NOT asking for it, NOT sending begging letters. just doing what Thatcher, and almost EVERY UNIONIST used to say, If Scotland wants Independence, then all they have to do is send a majority of SNP MPs to WM..
WE did, we saw nor got a damned thing.. Then worse the following year we got BREXIT, we were in the best position EVER to refute that exit forced on us by another country.
Yet we never saw nor heard Sturgeon once address us Scots about how SHE would NOT let us be dragged out of the EU..
I finally left the SNP in late 2017.. Just when Unbeknown to me the plot was being put together (badly) to stitch up Alex Salmond..
The real Sturgeon surfaced then, because she knew Alex was thinking about standing for HR in a by election in 2017.. And her true colours came out.. She did NOT want Alex anywhere near HR to be challenging her or advising her on what she should be doing..
That stitch up, brought back memories for me…
Years ago, during a BBC demo outside the BBC studios in Glasgow, I think it was 2012, I met a man, he stopped my sister & I as we left the crowd to go use the toilet in the other building..
You here with the SNP he asked.
We replied yes, He smiled, told us as long as STURGEON was in the party, there would be NO Independence
We took him for a UNIONST, and started to walk on, he said, SHE is the worse thing to happen to that party, & I should know, he said he worked with & for her, he travelled all over the country with her in her car, WE told him straight we did not believe him, he took out his SNP membership Card.. And said I am still a member, but all of this, pointing to the gathering at the demonstration… is a waste of time..
Alex of course was FM then.. Yet he never said ONE bad word about Alex or to be fair even the party never got run down.. it was all about STURGEON.. How she was a back stabber, a Liar, & a fraud..
WE of course did not believe him.. He was just a bitter man with a grievance obviously of his own.. His parting shot at us as we walked away from him, was “Mark my words she will destroy that party..”
My sister & I both admired Sturgeon she was up on the same pedestal as Alex..
My sister in particular had many selfies with Sturgeon, taken at conferences and again at the first marches the SNP led..
But I think of that man to this day, if only he had alerted more to what he KNEW. But then would it have made any difference? we dismissed him & I am sure her loyal CULT following today would have throttled him had they heard him bad mouth her..
I wish I had taken a note of his name, he did tell us his name and it was also on his membership card..
But we didn’t like him because of what he was saying about OOR NIKLA..
He must be laughing everyday now, especially since she took over knowing that what he said about her to people like us, has all come true..
He really insisted she was a right NASTY..
And when that Stitch up happened against ALEX, I believe he obviously knew her very well indeed..
The SNP lost 9 members of my family.
We all swore never again to invest so much in a political party, Then back came Alex & ALBA my husband & I signed up on the day ALBA launched, my sister & her husband did too. But the rest of our family, they vote for Alba. but will never join another party..
We are also signed up to SALVO & Liberation.Scot
But when you see how much that woman can do & get away with, the lives she has destroyed, The split she has created not just in the SNP but in the YES family altogether.. Is there any hope at all now..
Seems to me she has won…
Kate, Sturgeon will only win if we let her win. It’s up to us!
I live in the same area as the writer. I agree with every section of his letter except one.
Western Ferries provide an outstanding service. It is fast, reliable and sailing is only restricted in very extreme weather ( a few days a year). £4 Million pounds a year is spent subsidising the inefficient and unreliable passenger ferries. It runs with a handful of passengers most of the time.
For £4Million you could have a fleet of mini busses going from Dunoon centre to Gourock on Western Ferries.
The Campaign to get the Dunoon-Gourock ferry back should argue any benefit and not make inaccurate statements on an excellent Western Ferries operation