This week’s podcast asks the question, “What happens when Westminster says no?” There can be no other outcome to the SNP plan for Holyrood irrespective of the outcome of their SNP 1-2 campaign. There cannot be a single person in all of Scotland or England that believes Westminster will ever again grant a Section 30 order.
The exception to that being those people that last week in Aberdeen voted for John Swinney’s resolution. The delegates that whooped and hollered as John’s motion passed are either delusional or as thick as a railway sleeper.
There are more flaws in the SNP plan than in Swiss cheese! The first flaw being simple: the SNP does not have the votes to recreate the 2011 result. On that occasion, the Alex Salmond led SNP achieved 45.4% of all the votes cast.
Recent opinion polls show the SNP achieving somewhere between 30% and 35%. This last week, in a previously held SNP Council seat in Ayrshire, they managed just 23.3% of the votes cast. Their vote share was down a whopping 22.5%. It seems that vote transferred itself to the single issue, independent candidate that won the seat.
It was also interesting to note in this seat that all the so-called major parties received setbacks. The Tories, traditionally strong in this county, saw their vote drop by 14.8%. Labour had a 3.7% reverse and polled just 20%. Reform, the new luvvie of the English establishment and the BBC were unable to replicate the huge % they get in England & Wales and managed just 17.3%, half the number they are polling south of the border.
Simply put, whether in opinion or real polls, the SNP are miles off the pace to achieve a victory, let alone a majority of seats and votes to get to the position John Swinney says will guarantee a second independence referendum.
You, the voters, have to decide if John Swinney is a fool, a liar, or a con man! Some might say all three apply. I will be generous and say a fool, because only a fool would believe that any English Prime Minister will ever again agree to a Section 30 referendum. It is simple: they know they would lose any referendum. Scotland subsidises England, and the English turkeys are not going to vote for an electoral Xmas!
The only sensible course of action is the one this blog has consistently championed now for the past five years. It is the same plan that Liberate Scotland has been promoting since its inception.
A united independence campaign. A single-line manifesto, Independence, nothing else! A single independence candidate in each constituency seat and agreed independence candidates on the list. Using this plan, we defeat the voting system the Brits put in place back in 1999 to ensure there could never be a single-party majority. UDI, plain and simple!
At that time, there was only the SNP. The Brits devised a version of D’Hondt that meant that, except in exceptional circumstances like 2011, no single party could get a majority at Holyrood. The Liberals and Labour Parties came up with this voting system to ensure they would always be the governing parties in Scotland. It worked for the first two Parliaments, and we had the Lib-Lab pact.
The things to remember about these 8 years are: Jack McConnell returned £1.5 billion to Westminster from the block Grant because he and his Liberal chums couldn’t think of anything to spend this amount of money on!
They built just 6 social houses, and those were started on Shetland, but not built by the time that they had exited government! There were no free prescriptions, bus passes, free home care for the elderly, no free university education, no second Forth Bridge, and no M74 extension. There were bridge tolls and car parking charges at hospitals, just to name a few highlights!
So the next time any Scottish unionist is shouting out about social housing or diualling the A9, remind them they had the chance and sent £1.5 billion back to Mother England!
The SNP Holyrood plan is deeply flawed. It cannot succeed; it will not succeed. That is the basis for today’s Through A Scottish Prism podcast. Our panel of Phil Boswell, Allan Petrie, Eva Comrie and Lloyd Quinan discuss the topic, “When Westminster says no.”
They give not just their opinion on the SNP folly. They also give us alternatives in achieving the goal of liberation! If you like and agree with what they say, then here are two handy contact points for you.
www.liberatescot.scot
info@liberatescot.scot
Hasn’t Westminster and the PM said NO more than 5 times, so what going to be difference next year when Swinney ask again. I hope your going to talk about the by election the SNP lost to an Independent, because here’s were the story is.
If I was the SNP MSP’s I’d be worried, I know JS isn’t, he sacrificed the Westminster MP’s for Sturgeon and now he’s going to do it all other again to the SNP MSP’s next year with is Indy plan, the SNP or more to the point John Swinney believes the Scottish people are stupid or maybe he has two goals stop Independence and destroy the SNP, this might just be something John will actually achieved in his life.
I agree with the comments being made. I feel we need more information to be shared in our local communities ,and we need to do this pronto. I know from experience that the majority of people I speak with haven’t a clue about the Claim of Right or our Sovereignty. Thanks for the broadcast peeps. Patricia
Excellent podcast. Full of energy.
The comment “you are dividing the vote” has to be single-handedly the soundbite from SNP apparatchiks that annoys me the most.
And it is not just because it brings flashbacks of the shallow labour mantra: “if you do not vote for labour, you will be letting the tories in”. What really gets at me is two things:
a. the arrogance in presuming that, if there is no real independence party contesting the seats, all us pro-independence supporters are going to obediently cast our votes like brainless sheep for the SNP. Like turkeys voting for Christmas.
b. the self-entitlement and implicit defeatism in accepting and indirectly acknowledging that the only way people would vote for them is there is no competition. In other words, they know what they have on offer is so rubbish that if there is a moderately attractive alternative voters will abandon them in their droves. Yet, their solution to that is to cast pelters on the competition rather than actually moving their own backsides to actually improve the crap product they are offering.
Never mind that they have been taken us for absolute fools for 11 years; or that they have shown no intention to capitalise on the many opportunities and majorities handed to them to move Scotland towards independence; or that we have just had the British state useful idiots in control of the party telling us at their “conference” that it is Groundhog day all over again and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Groundhog day is all what the SNP is prepared to offer. Vote for us and we will do nothing. This idea that the voters simply have to accept and be thankful for the absolute shite they have on offer is what really gets at me.
Well, I cannot stand having my intelligence being insulted. I wonder if the SNP “leadership” and their apparatchiks ever look at the election results; or maybe they think we voters are all so politically myopic that we would never even entertain the idea of actually looking at the results beyond the official narrative.
Since Swinney was coronated as the “leader” of the SNP, I do not think there has been many elections in Scotland where the turnout has been even close to 50%.
If Scotland was a democracy, any election where the turnout was less than 50% would have been declared null. If an election is not validated by at least half of the electorate, then it cannot be democratic. The “winning” party is a majority of a minority. In what parallel universe is that representative? How is it that there is not a minimum turnout for an election to be considered valid? This to me is proof that elections in Scotland are nothing other than window dressing – a ticking exercise to keep the status quo going, rather than actual plebiscites. The SNP have demonstrated they are also part of that status quo now.
At the last UK GE, turnout in Scotland was 59.2%. How many hundreds of thousands of pro-independence supporters were so disgusted with the stasis caused by the SNP that chose not to vote compared to the previous election?
Isn’t disenfranchising voters “dividing the vote” at all practical effects?
The pro-independence vote is divided because those in control of the SNP have deliberately driven the party in the diametrically opposite direction to where it should be going.
What is currently defining every election in Scotland is the appallingly low turnout. What is that telling us? It is telling us that the option the voters really want has been missing/removed from the ballot. The option cannot be another unionist party because we already have at least 5 to choose from. I include in this figure the SNP and the Greens, by the way. They cannot be considered pro-independence anymore after the last 5 years of doing absolutely nothing to progress independence despite, between both, having control of Holyrood.
What is missing from the ballot is a party that is perceived by the voters as a vehicle for independence. Clearly less and less voters see the SNP as that. Here is where the Liberate Scotland umbrella comes in.
Question for Allan Petrie:
Hi Allan, please can you explain how the name of the candidates standing under the Liberate Scotland umbrella will appear in the ballot. Will they all appear under “Liberate Scotland” and the Liberate Scotland logo for both, the constituency and the regional list, or will they appear for any of the lists under their own party’s banners and logos (Independents for Indy, ISP, Sovereignty, etc)?
I think it is important we all pro-independence voters know what to expect beforehand, so we do not make mistakes on the day of the election. Thank you.
Tne first answer:
In July 2024 UKGE 750,000 Independence voters stayed at home.
In the Constituencies that ISP or Sovereignty are standing their party name will be as follows : ISP &Liberate Scotland Sovereignty & Liberate Scotland. All the I4I will be standing as Liberate Scotland.
On the list all of those parties will be standing as Liberate Scotland.
Think of Labour & Cooperative Party Conservative & Unionist Party.
Hope that explains it
Thank you Roddy.
I have to admit at the 2021 election I made proposals on here , on WOS and elsewhere to compose a pro forma paper that could be downloaded from the internet and sent to snp representatives individually or collectively THREATENING them that if they didn’t bin the GRA and focus their attentions and actions on independence the electorate wouldn’t vote for them , unfortunately no one took up my suggestion and sturgeon and her cabal of misfits deviants and perverts were elected
At that time there also were voices and proposals Alan Petrie’s among them to spoil our ballot papers representing our collective outrage that the troughers were NOT listening to independence supporters , I believed that was the way to go but again the CULT didn’t listen and voted for the BETRAYERS , subjecting us to more misery and incompetence
Fortunately we now have REAL INDEPENDENCE FIGHTERS who are supplying an alternative to a spoiled vote or an abstention to stay away from a voting booth , be assured I personally will be attending a voting booth and voting hopefully for a candidate from Liberate Scotland both in the constituency vote and the list vote , in the event that LS candidates are not standing in both votes I will VERY RELUCTANTLY vote for ALBA due to Kenny MacAskills REFUSAL to align with Liberate Scotland
Liberate Scotland is trying to get candidates fir every Constituency. Fir certain they will gave candidates on every regional list
And meanwhile whilst folks are considering how to achieve independence the SNP are fretting about Prince Andrew and raising motions to have his title removed.
Tells you exactly as to how the SNP are focused on things unrelated to independence.
Better that they spent their time on things they could be doing, things that need doing. Who cares about the Caligulan English lush bag prince
and his slutbag ex wife.
And his brother King Chuck and his Bidey in bit on the side, now Queen. More of the same.
As I am a dedicated republican you will hear no argument from me