There is always a new plan for Scottish independence. It’s
always just over the next hill. So once more just before the SNP is about to
lose a previously safe seat at Rutherglen and Hamilton West, we have a long
paper saying don’t worry soon we will have independence. It’s like after Jeremy
Corbyn lost in 2019 saying don’t worry we’ll soon have socialism.
I think Scottish nationalists were traumatised by the
referendum in 2014. Initially they enjoyed it without much expectation of
winning. They got to wave their flags and shout at people in the street, but
then there was a moment when they thought they were going to do it. But to then
lose by more than ten points wasn’t just disappointing, it was psychologically
devastating. This is why we keep having to promise that next year there will be
a referendum or in ten years we will have 70% support.
Robin McAlpine seems intelligent and sincere, but there
comes a point when we have to ask Scottish nationalists why do you keep
supporting a cause that is obviously corrupt and damaging to Scotland.
McAlpine keeps working hard earning not very much,
while all around him are SNP MPs and MSPs who are obviously in it for the
money. The Westminster SNP MPs were horrified by the de facto referendum plan
because they thought they would lose their jobs. Lisa Cameron was shunned by
fellow SNP MPs. But then why does she want to stay an SNP MP if the experience
is so unpleasant? Why not do something more useful?
This is really the fundamental issue to ask McAlpine.
Let’s say we follow your plan. We use all the modern campaigning techniques
hoping our opponents don’t use them too. We end up with Scottish independence.
Why do you think that would be better?
If Yes had won in 2014 we would have ended up with
Alex Salmond. If there had been a second referendum in 2016 after Brexit we’d
have ended up with Nicola Sturgeon. We would probably never have found out
about the issues with the SNP’s finances or the campervan or anything else. Why
work long hours producing a report for that?
There is always the idea that after independence there
would be a Scottish General Election, and anyone could win even Common Weal?
But why would anything change? Do you really think Humza Yousaf, or his
successor will say well we’ve won time to disband the SNP?
But once we have left the Tory loving UK, we’d have
the chance to vote for socialism. But this is naïve in the extreme. If you want
to join the EU, you have to follow EU rules about budgets and spending. Even if
you don’t join the EU the market is still going to dictate many of your
spending decisions. It is not going to let a socialist country borrow at any
sort of reasonable rate. An independent Scotland would end up with social
democracy not much different from that offered by Keir Starmer or even Rishi
Sunak. So, you spend your life on little more than minimum wage campaigning for
what we have now?
But I don’t think Scottish nationalists including McAlpine
are honest about their motivations. Socialists like Bernie Saunders are not
attempting to secede from the USA. They want to bring the benefits of socialism
to all Americans.
Scottish nationalists are not motivated by utilitarian
concerns to make Scotland more prosperous or even to increase equality. They
are motivated solely by nationalism.
The average independence marcher would accept vote for
an independent Scotland even if he knew it meant that the average standard of
living would fall. So, I think would McAlpine. But then all the Common Weal
stuff is just flimflam.
We wade through fifty pages of pseudointellectualism only
to arrive at the truth. I want Scotland to be independent because Scotland is a
country that plays football and rugby, and I don’t want to be British because I’m
Scottish not British.
But although there are quite a lot of nationalists
like this in Scotland. There are not enough. If the SNP loses Rutherglen and
Hamilton West and then goes on to lose twenty or twenty-five seats at the
General Election Scotland will have decisively proved just as much as in 2014
that we are not solely motivated by nationalism.
McAlpine wants to “create a “national commission” of
independent experts to work out the answers to what Scotland must do on day one
of independence.” But who would these experts be? Would they include Scots who
oppose independence because they think it would be financially damaging to
leave the UK? Obviously not. So, they wouldn’t be very independent. This is no
different from the wishful thinking of the various SNP reports.
I agree that if support for Scottish independence was
consistently at 60% or 70% then it might be possible to persuade the UK
Government to begin negotiations on independence even without needing a referendum.
But that is only because the UK lacks what everyone else in Europe has. There
is no strong national identity anymore. Some English people would regret the loss
of Scotland, others would welcome it, but there would be no demonstrations in
London like in Madrid trying to prevent the departure of Scotland. There would
therefore not be the political will either.
But just as the sense of a common British identity is
weak in most of the UK so too there is zero appetite in Scotland for a “three-day
“carnival” to encourage the mass signing of a petition – styled on the Scottish
Covenant of the 1950s – which should demonstrate an unshakeable mandate for
independence.”
People signed a covenant in the 1950s but they still all
voted for Labour or the Conservatives. Only a few thousand turn up to an
independence march on a sunny day in September how many are going to turn up to
sign your new covenant?
I’m afraid that this is all the wishful thinking of an
outsider looking at the SNP imploding and with a sense of disgust at the behaviour
of some in the SNP. There is no Yes movement to unite. It isn’t even honest
about the issue no longer being Yes or No.
The Scottish Greens are a liability. They discourage more
voters from supporting independence than anyone on the Pro UK side of the
argument. Alba can only work in the context of a Scottish Parliament election
as a list party. In a General Election it merely splits the vote. Which leaves the
SNP.
The referendum in 2014 happened because of the SNP. Political
change can happen due mass movements and protests, but usually this occurs when
there is no democratic alternative. The idea that Scotland could become independent
after the SNP loses half its seats is as preposterous as Scotland gaining home
rule in the 1950s when everyone voted Conservative and Labour.
This then is the problem for Scottish nationalists.
Even when the SNP won all but three of the seats in 2015 and gained nearly 50%
of the vote you had no mandate either for a second referendum or for
independence. If the SNP gets 35% at the next General Election and loses half
its seats, then a British Government can reasonably point out support for
independence is declining.
We care about votes and seats. We don’t care much
about petitions and demonstrations or marching.
Under those circumstances McAlpine’s talk of how to
get to 70% when the only means to get independence is on 35% looks like another
manifestation of Scottish nationalism’s continual failure to accept reality since
2014.
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