Sunday, July 2, 2017

I'm going to make some mild criticisms of an article written by Neal Ascherson (some viewers may find these scenes distressing)

Just very, very occasionally (maybe once every four months or so) Christopher Silver sends me a passive-aggressive tweet with a "Don't diss the intelligentsia, man!" subtext.  Today was one such occasion.  Clearly even the mildest criticism of Neal Ascherson was just too much to be borne.


Free from the constraints of 140 characters, allow me to briefly set out why I did not misread Ascherson's Sunday Herald piece, whether wilfully or unwilfully, "in the service of latent insecurity" or otherwise.

In the fourth paragraph of his article, Ascherson says this : "What’s true is that the SNP and their leader have been seriously damaged – possibly holed below the waterline in ways which aren’t yet visible. What isn’t true is the assumption that independence sinks or swims with the SNP’s fortunes."  In paragraph 8, he expands on what he means by that : "Neither can we know who will surf that tide. But it might well not be the SNP...it could be some hybrid, say a rebel Scottish Labour Party linked with the Greens and radical seceders from the SNP, which finally leads a free Respublica Scotorum out into the world. Less probably, it could be a much angrier, more impatient formation now hidden in its chrysalis. Remember how Sinn Fein came from behind and wiped out the Irish parliamentary Home Rulers in 1918?"  In paragraph 9, he also speculates about the possibility of Tories leading Scotland to independence.  

In fairness to Ascherson, there is plenty of "possibly" and "might well not be" in there, but I scarcely think it's unreasonable to detect in those segments of the article an assumption that the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon are probably on the way out (and that unambiguously refers to the general election result which saw the SNP win almost 60% of the seats), that the independence cause will survive this upheaval, and that independence supporters will find another vehicle to deliver their goal - which might involve some wildly implausible alliance of pro-indy Labour rebels and the Greens.

For those like Christopher who think that anyone who is dubious about this prospectus must simply be an 'insecure SNP supporter', I'd suggest it might be a useful exercise to look at the current political landscape in Scotland in a hard-headed way and try to work out what a truly objective person would think is the most promising road-map to independence in anything like the foreseeable future.  Is it likely to involve in some way a pro-independence party that currently holds almost 60% of Scottish seats at Westminster and almost 50% of the seats in the Scottish Parliament?  Or is the vehicle more likely to be an as yet unformed splinter group from a much smaller party that has been rabidly anti-independence for as long as anyone can remember?  The answer seems self-evident to me, and if others disagree, perhaps they'd better explain their reasoning in a rather more credible way than they have thus far.  Pipe-dreams could tie us up in knots for decades.

The notion of a new right-of-centre pro-independence party perhaps isn't quite so fanciful, because at present pro-indy Thatcherites don't have a remotely comfortable home in either the Tories or the SNP.  However, people have been talking about that sort of thing for decades and nothing ever materialises, so it appears the critical mass simply isn't there.  Even it did happen, the chances are that the new party would have to work with the SNP to bring independence about (and that the SNP would be the senior partner in that arrangement).

Leaving aside his musings about how the SNP might be replaced, Ascherson's article is primarily about the notion that Scotland should act as if it already is independent, and that the Scottish government should essentially exceed its legal powers and only stop doing so when the UK government forces it to.  I don't have any objection in principle to that, but a more practical objection is that the UK government won't necessarily be the obstacle - where legislation is involved, it would first have to get past the Presiding Officer and his legal advisers.  

22 comments:

  1. "Remember how Sinn Fein came from behind and wiped out the Irish parliamentary Home Rulers in 1918."
    I thought it was because the British shot the leaders of the Uprising.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i think he is referring to the fact that at the elections the british thought the more moderate Home Rule Party would sweep and SF would be a tiny party, SF swept. I think you call it the IPP party, but it is called Home Rule Party over here. actually never heard it called IPP until i took a course in college. I think you are referring to the easter uprising..

      Delete
    2. Yes, that's what he's referring to, but Brian's point still stands - it was UK government-sanctioned violence that radicalised the Irish electorate, and paved the way for Sinn Fein to win.

      Delete
    3. ...or the Bolsheviks came from behind....

      Delete
  2. As many have argued, the trick is to grow the pro-independence movement by allying
    (1) the mainstream social democratic SNP (whose membership is more radical than most - but not all, cf Tommy Sheppard - if it's key leaders) with
    (2) the radical get the vote out folk

    Yes in 2014, Corbyn and Momentum in 2017 both succeeded in allying the two. As the cops fall over Brexit, the SNP is likely to stand a greater chance than Corbyn's Labour in making the break from the pro-Brexit delusional direction.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Again you are totally on the money James. The SNP is the vehice. The challenge is to be as broach a church as possible and not lose nerve at this crucial moment. Never shrink back from the central goal. If unionists get the SNP into a position of defending their right to promote indepdence the unionists have already won. What's needed is a bold promotion of indepdence with no hesitation about the validity of the conversation. Attempts to shut down the very onversation itself should be met with ridicule or simply ignored. Refuting such attempts as if they are valid interventions is fatal.

    Personally I liked the story in the paper today about the SNP pursuing a path to nationalising the railways. We need more of that sort of left of centre action and to make Scotland distinctive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't like it when parallels are drawn with violent struggles like Ireland in 1918. British troops are not shooting at us and we are not shooting at them. The whole thing is being conducted without bloodshed which is as it should be. Ascherson is evidently hankering after a violent replacement for the SNP which would be easier to suppress. Sadly for him the SNP are still the main vehicle for independence and I speak as a Green who wishes them well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are of course correct.
      For now.
      Once the British realise they can no longer subvert the will of Scotland's people via the standard tools of media control and electoral abuse, they will absolutely resort to violence. It's what they have done in every place they have lost.
      You can see it in their deliberate atttempts to stir up sectarian hatred in Scotland. Scorched earth and well poisoning. They're The British; it's what they do...

      Delete
    2. And it wasn't that long ago that UK "forces" were engaged in dirty tricks in Northern Ireland.

      Delete
    3. From history comes the lesson that the British parliament/rulers will not agree to any country being independent that they hold power over.The main reason is commerce the more that the British Rulers control the more world power they have etc; It has always seemed to me that they would rather destroy what the country has than see the fledgling independent country grow with its (UK,s) blessings.No country that has sought independence from Westminster has gained it without an armed struggle or civil unrest as they sometimes called it,so circumventing any assistance to the "rebels" (independence seekers)from the UN or another country.Perhaps some may think there has been and could cite Australia,New Zealand or Canada,but each of those has a governor appointed by the UK and they have also kept the monarch as head of state so they never declared independence in a way that others have.My thinking is that perhaps the Westminster rulers want Scotland to be ruined and they would like to see us start with a campaign of civil unrest,would allow them to put us down and keep a military presence here but NOT with Scottish troops.Like in the 1920,s when they locked the H.L.I. in their Maryhill Barracks and Churchill ordered tanks onto the streets of Glasgow and some shots were fired,look at the water works on the High Street.The harder we try to keep our independence movement bloodless the more Westminster seems to push for something extra!!

      Delete
  5. I don't think anyone can predict what is going to happen in the next two years. however I get the feeling we are looking at a GE in the autumn.

    Everything Sturgeon said in her last statement leads me to that conclusion.

    She is preparing the ground for a future relationship with a new Labour government.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it's unlikely to be as early as the autumn - the DUP deal has stabilised the situation for now. I wouldn't bet my house on Labour winning an early election in any case - the Tories will surely learn from their mistakes to some extent.

      Delete
    2. BUT will the SNP?? Learn from their mistakes, that is.
      Surely the strategy of having Nicola as the omnipresent face of the SNP was wrong!! Why not use the Westminster Leader as the person to be the major face of the Westminster Campaigns and the Holyrood Leader as the leader of the Scottish Elections? This would get round the bogus campaign strategies of ScotLab & the Tories, conflating Holyrood perceived policy failures with the Westminster issues. It would also spike the BBC's Yoon agenda .
      Cailean

      Delete
  6. You're right about Westminster law, James. But there's nothing stopping the Scottish government from putting good radical proposals forward even when knowing they will be rejected by the so-called secretary of state or the Presiding Officer. Good ideas are good ideas so let the britnats take the blame for not allowing Scotland to implement them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Having read it, I think you've been pretty forgiving to the Ascherson article. It's fantasy bollocks. What would the concept of "acting like we're independent" look like? I predict it'll look like the fractious coalition of independence supporters disintegrating as everyone campaigns for Scotlant to ride their particular utopian hobby horse now rather than later. And of course the media screaming at the SNP to get on with their day job, and Westminster blocking their fantasy independence attempts.

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Acting like we're independent" can be done within the existing devolved settlement; the obvious differentiator to RUK is significant land reform, LVT shifting the tax burden onto landowners of all sizes and making a reduction to income tax to keep it revenue neutral.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I am reminded of the hubris around RISE, as a left pro-independence alterative to the SNP. In last year's Holyrood elections they got 2,454 votes in their stronghold of Glasgow - 1% of the total and 1 more vote than the deeply obscure "A Better Britain Unionist Party". The SNP got more than 111,000 votes.

    ReplyDelete
  10. According to Political Compass I'm pretty left wing and that's the kind of Scotland I'd like to see. However, I don't think a very left wing SNP, or any other very left wing party will get the necessary votes in a referendum, therefore, the SNP needs to be a broad church (as said above) and appeal to voters across the spectrum. We need Tory voters too. That's not to say that if Labour did a volte face and a splinter Tory party spun off and all supported Independence then that could change the game. But very unlikely, I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You seem like an uneducated idiot regards British politics. The Scots, English, Welsh and Irish are British. When you mention British you are so thick you mean the English. The Scots were the cutting edge of the Empire. You need to take the blinkers off.

      Delete
    2. "Uneducated idiot"---Takes one to know one

      Delete
    3. Loving the total irony failure here...

      Delete