Last night, for example, I joined in with the very obviously justified criticism of SNP MPs for their premeditated act of petty bullying in walking out of the Commons chamber as soon as an Alba MP opened a debate on an issue of vital importance to the people of Scotland. My reward was SNP leadership uber-loyalists screaming abuse at me because I apparently don't understand that Alba MPs are subhuman creatures who all right-thinking people must joyfully shun at every available opportunity. I replied rather forcibly to that infantile nonsense, but my only reward was people on the other extreme jubilantly telling me that this proves I was wrong for saying we mustn't split the pro-independence vote in a first-past-the-post Westminster election. Apparently last night's incident means that all decent people must vote against the evil SNP at every conceivable opportunity for the remainder of time, regardless of the consequences for independence. Can people really not see how pathetic this all is, and how we're losing sight of the bigger picture?
A few weeks ago, a chap insta-blocked me on Twitter, literally because of a single reply in which I politely disagreed with his view that unionist list MSPs are "unelected". (By definition, people elected on the list ballot cannot be unelected. Anyone who thinks they are is essentially saying that first-past-the-post is the only 'proper' electoral system, and thus legitimising the system which unleashed the horrors of Thatcherism on the basis of as little as 42% of the popular vote.) This suggests to me that the factions are now becoming intolerant of anyone who rejects even the smallest, most trivial facet of their belief systems. It's like you have to unthinkingly chant articles of faith such as "Murdo Fraser has lost every election he's stood in!" to avoid expulsion from the tribe on the basis that you're a bit suspect or can't be trusted. This is of course the flipside of the madness that has gripped both the SNP and the Greens on identity politics issues - it's practically getting to the point where it's career death in those parties to fail to display your pronouns on social media, because that means you're probably secretly in league with far-right forces in America or whatever.
One reason why I haven't done many podcasts recently is that it's increasingly hard to find anyone willing to take part as a guest. Many SNP and Green people who would have happily spoken to me prior to spring 2021 now regard me as untouchable because I'm an Alba member. But many people in my own party also regard me with suspicion because I'm a moderate, have a mind of my own, and have stood up to the likes of Stuart Campbell in the past. And with almost comical irony, there's a third group who see themselves as above the fray and regard me with distaste because I've "picked a side and am contributing to the warfare within the Yes movement". Well, if this is what being on one side feels like, all I can say is I'd like to know where the hell my troops are. It's getting to the point where I'm taking a "plague on all your houses" attitude - I've more or less decided that the podcasts will continue, but mostly as solo efforts from now on.
Maybe it's about time that "the scunnered middle" have a few articles of faith of their own to bash others over the head with. Here are a few suggestions...
* Free speech and tolerance on identity politics matters. We all have the right to take strong views in favour of either trans rights or women's sex-based rights, but we must also respect the right of others to take the opposite view, and we must accept that both camps will always have a home within the independence movement. (You would think that would be an utterly uncontroversial point to make, but we all know that otherwise sensible people will be screaming in horror as I say it. "The independence movement must be purified from all transphobes!", "You're throwing women and girls under the bus, James!", etc, etc, etc.)
* Independence first. No other issue should be allowed to get in the way of us uniting to bring independence about - and that includes the trans issue, and it also includes the personal animosity between the groups surrounding Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond.
* People should not be dismissed as troublemakers or the enemy within (or as "contributors to internal warfare") simply for putting pressure on the SNP leadership to stop kicking independence into the long grass. Foot-soldiers in the independence movement have the right to their opinions on "process" just as much as on anything else, and there's nothing magical about being at the top of the SNP that gives anyone "papal infallibility" on questions of strategy.
* But by the same token, the right to pressure the SNP on independence strategy should not be abused to justify all-out hate campaigns against Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues. (Nor are hate campaigns against Alex Salmond justified, nor should he be written out of the SNP's history in Soviet style.)
* No self-sabotage in elections. Proportional election systems give pro-indy parties the scope to compete with each other without doing harm to Yes representation, but where first-past-the-post still exists (ie. Westminster and the Holyrood constituency ballot), there has to be unity to prevent a split vote that will allow unionists to gain seats. You can't go from "supermajority" in 2021 to "minimise-our-majority" in 2024 and pretend not to spot the contradiction.
Any other suggestions?
Three cheers for the scunnered middle, and those in other parties... Snp, Alba and Green that still work constructively together
ReplyDeleteThis post perfectly summarises my own feelings. I hope the rest of the moment can see this kind of sense.
ReplyDeleteWell said, maybe we need a Scunnered Middle party,? 😉
ReplyDeleteThe SMP?
DeleteNone of this division existed pre Sturgeon era. So why does the supposed leader (Sturgeon) of Scottish independence not take responsibility for the situation? Sturgeon has turned the SNP in to just another political party when it was and still should be the leader of an independence movement.
ReplyDeleteJames your argument only makes sense if you believe Sturgeon actually wants independence. I don't . I voted SNP Constituency in May 21. That was the last chance saloon as far as I am concerned. Once again she promised a referendum but she didn't promise it was subject to a UK Court giving her approval to do it. The approval she said she wanted was from the people of Scotland. She got that. Sturgeon is a charlatan.
Independence first. Then we can argue the toss about everything else. The leaders of the Independence movement need to take a personal interest in the disharmony amongst independence supporters. As the most powerful group the SNP need to publicly reach out to the rest of the movement and work with them to achieve the common goal.
ReplyDeleteI'm in YES group with SNP members and Alba members. We don't discuss party politics; we cooperate for the promotion of the cause of Independence. Surely our national leaders can do the same.
My sense is the scunnered middle represents 99% of the Indy movement James. We need people like you to keep writing and giving voice to the rational, common sense majority. I honestly don’t know where else to get that kind of take on Scottish political developments. That doesn’t mean I always agree with you, but when I disagree it also doesn’t mean that I view you as the devil incarnate. Anyone who behaves in that way is anathema to the vast majority of people. Even if they are louder and brasher and dominate social media, in the real world nobody gives a toss about them.
ReplyDeleteIt’s insane that the infighting seems to be intensifying at precisely the time that we are sitting on the launch pad, with support more or less at 50%, the effects of Brexit and austerity 2.0 about to hit, and demographics on our side. Maybe Indy isn’t coming quite as fast as we’d all like, but it’s not the time to give up or pluck defeat from the jaws of victory by turning on each other. Taken together the opinion polls don’t lie. The unpalatable truth is we just haven’t quite persuaded enough people yet. It’s frustrating as hell that there is a stubborn 10% of don’t knows, but fighting each other won’t persuade any of them.
If I could wave a magic wand and guarantee independence in, say 2028, you get the impression that a chunk of the Yes movement would reject it, moaning and complaining that it wasn’t coming in 2022 and any delay is unacceptable. We need to keep our focus on what independence is for. Quite simply it’s for a long time. It’s for our generation (I hope) and all the generations to come. In that context can we not keep patient and deal with the reality that we haven’t completed the job yet? Get out and persuade people, confront the tricky questions honestly and with well-reasoned answers, and for goodness’ sake stop attacking your own side. We’ll get independence when we’ve earned it and not before.
I have to say I partly disagree with that (ironically), because it's implicitly an argument for delaying a referendum or a plebiscite election until Yes support rises. This is exactly why people were tearing their hair out with the SNP leadership two or three years ago. The message from the leadership to the footsoldiers always seemed to be "go out and get more Yes support for us, we can't do anything more until you do". The reality is that 49% Yes support is plenty enough for the leadership to be getting the ball rolling, and dramatic pro-Yes shifts in the polls are unlikely to happen until they do.
Delete"with demographics on our side"
DeleteNo they are not.. demographics is composed of births, deaths and migration before participation rates are considered..
1. Births: Scots have the lowest fertility in western Europe..the population is being topped up by migrants predominantly from England. These are mainly professional classes with high participation rates and high longevity...and around 3/4s of them are nawbags.
This impact dwarves the low participation rate youth yes effect which while based on low participation rates also ignores a tendency for people to become more conservative as they age and the lower longevity of lower socio-economic groups that yes supporters typically occupy..
Our society is being Anglicised like in Wales to prevent independence. Demographics are against us and it's a unionist/SNP devo trick to pretend otherwise.
That’s a characteristically fair point that you raise James :) You’re quite right that 49% is a cracking starting point, especially compared to where we started from back in 2014. But it’s no guarantee that we’ll get over the line. We seem to have around 45% fairly hard Yes and No, and 10% undecided, where the battle will be won and lost.
DeleteTo win this 10% I think we need to do two things. Firstly, sell a positive vision of what an independent Scotland can be. There’s no question the SNP are asleep at the wheel on this point. The papers being released in recent months seem to come and go with barely a murmur. Whose job is it to actually drive home the message?
Secondly, we need to contrast the vision with the status quo. Given the chaotic UK politics over the last decade this should be a much easier sell than in 2014. The vision shouldn’t be presented as hypothetical pie-in-the-sky stuff, but rather as a real alternative, something that we are actively missing out on due to continued Westminster misrule. Staying in the UK is an opportunity cost in other words, one we are paying for each and every day.
Ultimately I’m an optimist and given the economic headwinds, with more austerity and the full effects of Brexit soon to bite, plus the demographic patterns, with Brenda popping her clogs and memories of WWII and empire passing away into the history books, I don’t think it will take too long to see a stable 50-55% for Yes emerging. But only if the SNP leadership get the ball rolling now and re-energise the campaign, as you rightly suggest.
Scotland has had little from its oil and gas resources and history is repeating itself with wind power. The furore over the ignorant SNP walkout should not detract from the key thrust of MacAskill' s debate.
ReplyDeleteAs he says:- " But where's the windfall for Scotland as a nation from this natural bounty? Where's the wealth that should flow along with energy from this vital resource?
England treats Scotland as its possession - call it a colony - as long as this remains the cases all we can expect is exploitation and lies.
Excellent article. Couldn’t agree more.
ReplyDeleteWhy is "Independence first" the second article of faith?
ReplyDeleteJames, buckle up, because I can only see the factionalism getting worse from here on in. However that might end up being a good sign! Because how I see the independence thing playing out in the long run (ten to twenty years) is that independence will increasingly become the common sense view of a majority of Scots. It took 18 years for devolution to go from divisive in 1979, to the “settled will of the people” in 1997. If independence follows a similar trajectory then we may have a 70% majority for independence in the early 2030s. At a certain point, I think the dam will break, and even Labour will come on board, and even Westminster politicians will begin talking about Scottish independence as a logical and reasonable development, just as they came to terms with devolution, the withdrawal from empire, and Ireland, in the end. At that point I fully expect that the likes of Rev Campbell on the fringe will be all out opponents of independence on grounds that seems entirely reasonable to him at the time. (We already see it, “an independent Scotland with Sturgeon and trans ideology is not worth having” idea). But at that point factionalism in the old independence alliance will not matter any more because it will be superseded by a larger consensus that independence makes sense in the country as a whole. At least that’s what I hope. And I say this as an Alba, Salmond, and scotgoespop supporter, because they all perform a useful role, and because I believe loyalty AS and other stalwart supporters of independence in Abla is justified on a personal level.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem with the "independence first" element is that it's hard to make a case for independence without saying what things you'd change. It is navigable but the SNP/ScotGov don't really seem to be doing that well with their papers. Stuff like rejoining the EU - whether you want to rejoin or not the decision should be made by an independent Scotland, not assumed as a given to make or support the economic case for independence in the first place.
ReplyDeleteBut in general, the problem here is simple. Whether they were right or wrong in their gradualist approach the SNP have missed the optimum moment for a second referendum. Since the Brexit vote in 2016 they have - intentionally or unintentionally - squandered the time and the opportunity to take advantage of the optimal combination of public support levels and general Yes unity. Instead, they have contributed to the waning and fracturing of the movement because of a combination of incompetence, misdirection, control freakery, lack of singular focus on the end goal, and awful communication. That could be accepted, perhaps, if the polls had continued to consistently move in the favour of Yes, but they have stagnated, so neither public support nor Yes unity has been well served by the SNP's abject dithering.
Independence may ultimately still be achievable, but I'm afraid not on the current trajectory it won't. It requires the SNP to accept that what they're doing isn't working, and there's zero sign of that.
Take heart. The news is always bad because it's NOT the normal. Normal is peaceful people living without drought and disaster. Likewise there are millions who don't grumble or attack on social media but they will vote in a referendum.
ReplyDeleteWhat will influence them?
Good policies and the belief that their possible new government have at their centre that which will be in the best interests of Scotland and its people.
Here are a few ideas.
Politicians come and go. Don't rely on or attack personalities. Focus on social welfare paid for by land reform. Real devolved local government protected by a written constitution. Find a way to make the Scottish currency advantages easily understandable.
Build a clear picture of how Scotland can contribute to reduce global warming.
We are rebuilding a nation so concentrate on putting the foundation and building blocks in place. You can keep one hand on your weapon, in case you get attacked but we shouldn't go out there looking for a fight. Concentrate on getting those walls up and make it a place that inspires the world.
>>Focus on social welfare paid for by land reform. Real devolved local government protected by a written constitution. Find a way to make the Scottish currency advantages easily understandable.
DeleteLand reform, truly locally accountable government, a Scottish currency. All needed (plus a Scottish broadcaster imho), none unfortunately seem to be being worked onby the Scottish Government.
I like to think of myself as a founder member of the 'scunnered middle'.
ReplyDelete#DissolveTheUnion #ScottishUDI
You're certainly scunnered, Peter, but you've never been in the middle, as you've helpfully confirmed once again with your UDI hashtags. Your basic problem is that you're far more radical than the Alba Party and yet you keep waiting for the ultra-cautious centrist careerists in the SNP to give you what you want. It doesn't make sense now, and it's never made any sense.
DeleteI agree with what you say James - an area you don't touch on but raises it's (ugly) head in ALBA circles is the idea of a franchise that can exclude people not born here can you envisage any way such a roll could be put together?
ReplyDeleteEven if it could be done, what would be the point? If it's an agreed referendum, Westminster would never agree to a dodgy franchise. If it's not an agreed referendum, the idea would be to pressurise the UK government into accepting the result, and that pressure would be instantly eased if a dodgy franchise was used. This is one of my major concerns about the implicit seal of approval that the Alba leadership has given to Barrhead Boy with the extremely frequent appearances on his YouTube set-up. If you do that without a crystal-clear disclaimer that he and Alf Baird and the others don't speak for the party on issues like an ethnic franchise, people will quite understandably conclude that they do speak for the party. At the very least it's a grey area. I honestly think the leadership underestimate how much this sort of stuff tarnishes the party's representation and costs us votes from committed independence supporters. The irony is that I ended up having to self-censor on the subject (even though I actually agree with the party's official position of opposing an ethnic franchise) simply because I was on the NEC with Barrhead Boy until ten days ago.
DeleteAnonymous that would include Sturgeon advocating an ethnic franchise to a certain extent as she has advocated using a UK GE as a de facto referendum and that franchise would exclude E U citizens.
DeleteIf Alba is going to take criticism for Alba party members discussions how come there is no criticism of the SNP who actually now have it as a policy. Similarly there is no criticism of the UK Government who have actually used this franchise.
Surely the EU accepting a yes vote is important. How will they view a result that excluded their citizens? Well they accepted the 2016 result but they didn't really have any choice. Do we actually want to win a de facto referendum then why pick a franchise that is the least favourable towards a yes vote.
Personally, I think the whole situation is a mess and I blame Sturgeon.
Spot on.
ReplyDelete