I posted this exactly one year ago , please read it and see if you can place any logic to where we were then and where we are now , because as far as independence goes we are in exactly the same place .
We still have not had any guidance from the SNP as to the issues we lost the last referendum on, in fact all we have had is one carrot after another dangled in front of us and we are no further forward than we were the day after the referendum.
There has been two major events . We had the Scottish parliamentary elections at which the SNP lost 6 seats and were instrumental in facilitating a more than doubling of the Tory presence in Holyrood . This as a direct result of severe disappointment at no attempt being made to address the outstanding issues concerning a road map to independence or at the very least a commitment in the manifesto to secure the right to hold a referendum here in Scotland without going cap in hand to the Westminster government to ask permission to hold one .
The only reference to independence was a commitment that a vote to leave the EU by England over the wishes of the Scottish people to remain ,would be the trigger for another independence referendum. Well we all now know just how genuine that commitment was ,do we ?
Then we indeed had the EU referendum which I alude to in the previous paragraph, which threw the Tory party into a state of utter confusion and showed that whereas they made great play during the independence referendum of a need for a plan B in connection with monitory union , they did not even have a plan A for Brexit.
This together with the melt down in the labour party was the best, up to now, and very probably the very best ever ,set of circumstances likely to present themselves in connection with a referendum for Scotland’s independence.
So what did we get? well we had a promise ( made just before the Scottish elections) of an new Summer push towards independence, which never materialised.
So now what have we got? Well ,we now have a conversation , a conversation without any answers, answers that have been needing supplied since the last independence referendum. This is quite simply not good enough and there is frustration building up at the SNP’s lack of clear strategy and drive for independence.
When was the last time anyone can remember an SNP , independence inspired rally? When was the last time anyone can remember a town hall meeting by the SNP to address the issues we lost the last referendum on ,such as the monetary situation or pensions ? Anyone remember? no neither can I, because there has not been any.
The SNP have been the beneficiaries of circumstance, circumstances brought about , not by the SNP but by the Tory party or the labour party and they have been carried along on the crest of the wave caused by these two parties.
The Common Weil are about to release an initiative such as the SNP should have done almost two years ago in an attempt to address the issues we lost the last referendum on, I wish them well in this and any assistance through the Dundee Yes Bus team will be willingly given. It will ,I am sure ,be a different experience from trying to organise independence related events in Dundee only to have obstacles put in the way by Dundee’s SNP led Council.
So ,to the SNP , the words of Bob Dylan come to mind.
“Your old road is rapidly aging, please get out of the new one if you cant lend a hand , for the times they are a changing”
Bob Costello 