It’s not often I ever agree with anything Kevin McKenna writes and that I come across on line but I agree with much of this. McKenna writes when elections have been rendered meaningless owing to the hopelessness of all the other parties the Government can act like a medieval court: granting favours here; extending patronage there while carrying out the odd beheading and evisceration to maintain party discipline. He is not wrong especially around the Gender Reform Act and the Hate Bill that is for sure. He goes on to say, and again he is not far wrong, Scotland as a nation tends to be quite relaxed about how people choose to identify themselves, caring only that they suffer no discrimination in their personal and professional lives as a consequence of their choice. For the SNP though, this isn’t enough and they are now seeking to formulate a discrimination of their own. Aided by some of what’s being proposed in its Hate Crime legislation this is so esoteric and unspecific that to voice your sincere conviction that sex is binary and transwomen aren’t women is to risk criminal proceedings.
I think the SNP are in for a rude awakening once people wake up to what is going on around them, McKenna goes on to say that They advance this sinister little caprice in the safe knowledge that a majority of the population will be largely ignorant of its darker aspects, on the basis that “they can’t possibly be proposing that”. Besides, there is a pandemic to be dealing with and the economic consequences arising from it. I don’t believe that the SNP look at communities with revulsion as McKenna says Rather than working to dismantle the class-driven patterns of poverty that have existed in these communities for generations there’s an implied disdain for them that borders on revulsion. It’s a failure to understand that when your main challenge is simply to source food for the next day and to heat your home, but I do think that the SNP have started, like Scottish Labour, to take our vote for granted and that their priorities are no longer our priorities. We elected the SNP to advance the cause of independence but we are further away from that today than we have ever been. Nicola Sturgeon has done everything in her power to delay the pressing issue of independence, from trying to save England from Brexit even though they voted for it, to not having independence as a central manifesto pledge, to fighting to remove a man from politics who could threatened her hold on power, to promoting gender issues and shutting down free speech to the extent that reading anything not approved by the leader can get you thrown out of the party.
As I wrote yesterday, we now know that Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell, Alyn Smith, Pete Wishart, Iain Blackford, Stuart Hosie, James Dornan, Kirsty Blackman, Linda Fabiani, Bella Calladonia etc are just other obstacles we have to overcome and as McKenna says the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon are now the biggest threat to independence and she has to go and take her drones with her, we need leaders, not drones who will do as they are told no matter how much this damages Scotland and our future. We need a party that wants independence and a leader who will actually fight for it, that sadly is not the SNP right now and it was never Nicola Sturgeon, it was someone with the skills, intellect, and knowledge of an Alex Salmond.
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Bruce, It’s only now, in hindsight, that I see NS’s very public support of Brexit Remain… speaking to crowds, rubbing shoulders with Alistair Campbell… was designed to raise her public profile, not to stop the unstoppable.
And… I used to think independence was essentially about class, in that I know many unionists, most of whom look down their nose at SNP/Indy supporters. Now I see the MPs/MSPs you mention taking the same attitude. Ultimately, that in itself could send the SNP the way of Scottish Labour.
Hope you and your good lady are keeping ok now.
Brian
Both a lot better thanks, I still get a little out of breath and tired but better than I was. I have had reservations about Nicola Sturgeon from about 2016 and have blogged about it for years and took a lot of stick for that view but now many are seeing what I saw. She has never been for independence, more devolution maybe, but has never done anything since she became leader in 2014 to further the cause of independence and I agree, many in the elected roles are being shown to be tartan Tories like Wishart. At least people are starting to see that we are going to have to take a step back now as the SNP are no longer the independence party, we need to re-group and come back stronger and support a party whose priority is independence all the time and will actually act on it. Alex Salmond quickly saw what many are seeing now and they tried to destroy him, Sturgeon and her cult have taken us all for fools and we need to learn from that and start to come back with how we vote in May. We probably need to let the unionists have one term in government while we sort ourselves out and then go for it big time.
Thanks for commenting. Bruce
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