I attach a link to a recent blog by Gerry Hassan. Please read this. This is what I and many others have been saying, during and since the recent election.
Gerry puts this in far better and more eloquent a manner than I could ever hope to.
Since the election the SNP have tried to spin the results in a manner that is unbecoming of a mature political party, instead of facing up to the reality that was the Scottish elections. Elections that like the Westminster General election will be remembered for the lost opportunity’s that the vacuous manifestos made plain. The Scottish people swallowed it in the Westminster election but they were not to be mislead in the Scottish election. The absence in the manifestos of any attempt at a road map to independence by way of an intention to wrest control of the ability to hold and organise a referendum at a time of our choosing from Westminster was ,in my mind one of the main reasons for the fall in popularity of the party. That combined with a growing disillusionment and a rather unwise and disrespectful appearance on the front of the Sun , a mere two days after the Hillsborough verdict by Nicola Sturgeon was more than lot of people could stomach.
Yes I suppose it could be said ( as is being said by many of the less able to think ) that the SNP numbers were up in simple terms but when you take the fact that in the last Scottish elections there was a 12.45% increase in vote but in this one there was a pitiful 1.1% increase and that on the back of the referendum , an almost 100.000 increase in SNP membership and a 56 out of 59 majority in the Westminster elections. This election resulted in the loss of a majority, and 6 seats, it also resulted in the Tories more than doubling their seats, in part due to the silly vote twice for the SNP policy This was a classic Pyrrhic victory and the SNP are the poorer for it today
Yes as Gerry Hasan says, and I and others have said many, many times, We have not even had an official post mortem on the mistakes of the referendum and after nineteen months it is well overdue. Otherwise how can we begin to convince the people who voted no that perhaps they were wrong. He is also correct in respect of the tight control that the SNP exercise over their members and employees and their acquiescence in the verbal abuse given out by their supporters to any one who dares question any of the SNP actions ,or inactions as the case may be , which also expresses itself in the derogatory terms given freely to people who ,for their own reasons voted no in the referendum.
So please read the attachment of Gerry Hasan’s Blog. It might not go down to well and it might be difficult for some people to swallow, but he is right and only when we can be our own honest critics can we learn from our mistakes , roll our sleeves up and get on with the job in hand will we ever get back on that road to independence.
As Bob Dylan said way back in the Sixties ” and how many years can a people exist before their allowed to go free? the answer my friend is blown in the wind , the answer is blown in the wind.
http://www.gerryhassan.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-the-snp/
Bob Costello 