Ok Folks .
You will see below, two blogs I did recently ., The first one , I did the day before the Scottish government published their paper on Brexit and the second one ,I did on the day the paper was published after reading all 64 pages of it .
Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon conformed exactly what I said in both of these blogs. I wont go over the same arguments and hope you will take the time to read them. They convey the fears I have had for quite some time, and in fact the dissatisfaction I have had with the SNP for the last two years since the referendum. Two years , during which I found that the SNP ideas and actions ,or indeed inactions gave me such concern that after much soul-searching, I realised that they were not the party I had joined 30 years before, and therefore felt I had no choice but to resign from the party, the party that had up to that point, exclusively carried my hopes for an independent Scotland.
I thought that when Nicola Sturgeon replaced Alex Salmond she was to be the breath of fresh air we needed to carry on the fight for a free Scotland. Now please do not get me wrong , as I have the greatest respect for Alex Salmond and I believe he is by far the most able politician in the whole of the UK at the moment, but he did make mistakes during the referendum campaign and for some reason he did not come over well to many people and whilst campaigning with the Yes bus team we constantly had people saying ” I would vote yes if it wasn’t for that man Salmond “.
So Nicola brought with her great hopes and of course the ranks of the SNP swelled hugely on the back of the result and the fact that Labour had thrown their lot in with the Tories.
So to cut a long story short ( it might be told in full before long) the popularity of the SNP surged but to be honest ,they were the recipients of circumstance and not the architects of their structure of popularity.
Over the last 27 Months, Nicola Sturgeon has led her troops up to the top of the hill, only to march them down again. Generally they were marched up the hill in the run up to an election with a selection of carrots like the Summer initiative , which never transpired and then the troops wearily marched back down again after the election.
The SNP have ,I feel been in the process of painting themselves into a corner, whether through incompetence or design and I have often wondered as to the motives of the later. The only possible motive I can offer is that Nicola sees herself as the saviour of the UK with a possibility of standing candidates in England, Wales and possibly Ireland in the future , possibly joint candidates with traditional parties in these countries’
The SNP are ,according to their constitution , the party of independence. As the government of Scotland they have no mandate to govern for all , that is something which is intrinsically impossible anyway. They have a duty to “consider all ” but that is it . They were voted for on their manifesto and the fact that they were the SNP and any one who voted for them knew that. This “governing for all ” is nonsense , their job is to achieve independence.
The latest obstacle on the way ,it would seem is Brexit and I have covered this in the two blogs attached. It would seem that all Theresa May has to do is remain in the single market and independence is off the table for the forseeable future. I feel also that the rather unwise consultation with the Scottish people, which ended on St Andrews day, presented without addressing the issues we lost the last referendum on ,might have something to do with the present situation
Now ,there is a slim chance that there could be a situation in which another referendum would be triggered and that is a very hard Brexit but I do not think there is a remote chance of that happening , because that would involve the British government committing the most stupid act of suicide in history as this would involve taking away the advantages of a single market at the same time as possibly loosing Scotland’s assets.
I would have more faith in the SNP’s intentions if they would make some move to prepare the ground for another possible referendum but they have not done a singe thing to address that since the last referendum, which brings me to the consultation on the “draft ” legislation before the Scottish parliament to allow a referendum to take place . I would urge everyone to read this as it is basically the same as the last one with no additional safeguards as to security , postal voting, international observers, or exit polls. additionally it states quite brazenly that during the last referendum there was a satisfaction rating of 96% for normal voting and 98% for postal voting. This is unbelievable and shows one of two things, either the SNP are completely out of touch with the people of Scotland, or they have not bothered to scrutinise the work of their officers because they realise there wont be a referendum anyway.
So that is my concerns and I stick to my assessment that the SNP’s position is more of a road map to unionism than a road map to independence
https://bobsblog.scot/2016/12/19/a-road-map-to-unionism/
https://bobsblog.scot/2016/12/20/i-told-you-so/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true
Bob Costello 