According to the BBC, "Rees-Mogg says Johnson will stand". My first reaction was that I'm still not convinced, but actually with only 27 hours to go until nominations close, the conceptual gap between Johnson "standing" and "not standing" may not be all that wide. Pulling out two hours before the deadline because it's obvious that he's not going to make the threshold of 100 backers has exactly the same effect as falling short when the clock runs out.
Much has been made of the consequences for the Tory party if Johnson wins, but it must be remembered that Sunak winning on nominations alone isn't exactly a consequence-free outcome either. There'll be tremendous bitterness among the membership about an obvious stitch-up, because it seems likely that if the rules had been the same as for the summer leadership election, Johnson would have won. It may be fortunate for the Tories that their members have limited powers to take revenge directly, although indirect pressure could be applied via MPs who feel they have to take heed of their constituency associations.
From an independence-supporting point of view, one case for Johnson I haven't mentioned yet is that a victory for him is probably the only hope of an early general election, due to the prospect of significant numbers of Tory MPs resigning the whip in protest. But the mood music suggests that the SNP leadership would back off from using an early election as a de facto referendum (what a surprise), a Labour government would almost certainly be elected, and Labour's momentum might see the SNP lose a number of seats (potentially quite a significant number). So it's hard to see how we'd be any further forward. The only advantage I can think of is that with a further general election not due until 2027 or 2028, the SNP leadership might then find itself under increasing internal pressure to bring about a snap Holyrood vote and use that as a plebiscite - which, it now seems apparent, would be the most promising way of seeking an independence mandate.
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I think Sunak will get the Tories back to decent opposition level support rather than the oblivion Johnson would lead them to.
ReplyDeleteEither way, I think a Labour government is now almost inevitable in 2024. The question is how much support will they build in Scotland and subsequently erode SNP Westminster numbers.
Even a relatively minor rise in Scottish Labour support is going to scupper the (de-facto) general election plebiscite referendum idea. A major rise in Labour could see the “Yes” vote in such a scenario well below 40% and maybe even near 30%. Would the SNP then accept such a result as it’s the mechanism they’ve been pushing?
I'm not sure a minor rise for Labour would be sufficient to scupper the plebiscite plan, but a middling or big rise would be a different matter.
DeleteI probably agree with you there. I’m not sure myself what I mean by major or minor rises in Labour support. Someone would have to crunch the numbers anyway.
DeletePersonally, I think the “de-facto plebiscite referendum” in lieu of standing at the General Election is a pile of s***e anyway.
Even if we get above 50% of votes in this scenario, Westminster will simply say so what we didn’t agree to such a vote. Whereas if it’s below 50%, Westminster will say there you go that’s the result you wanted to go by.
It’s such an infeasible plan, Baldrick himself could have come up with it. It’s just another way of getting the SNP of the hook for another few years and kicking the can further down the road.
I honestly believe that if the SNP back off from an early GE being a de facto referendum/plebiscite election (and I agree the mood music is terrible from them at the moment) then they will risk looking totally finished as a serious force for independence.
ReplyDeleteThey can't honestly expect to say "Westminster is in abject chaos and we need to get out of this and we said before we wanted a referendum and if not a plebisicite but put all that on hold and just give us a "normal" vote for now" and be taken seriously. They'll struggle to get out an increasingly exasperated Yes vote, a somewhat resurgent Labour vote will probably squeeze them in the Central Belt, they'll lose seats but probably still comfortably win and that will set everything back to somewhere near 2017 in their heads.
In my eyes they need to accept that it's now or never. They've squandered much better opportunities in recent years to do anything. I certainly won't vote for them in that instance. I've had enough of them stalling, putting out misleading contradictory positions on their supposed "plans", doing little other than shouting "Tories bad" and slumping the entire movement into a massive torpor.
Energise the movement by focusing solely and entirely on independence and how to get there or stand down and let someone else have try.
James, if the SNP can bring about a snap Holyrood vote in the future why have they not done it before and why pick a UK GE as the plebiscite when it is the least favourable to yes voting franchise. Indeed why not now when the UK is very weak. Oh that's right let's just hang about waiting for a Britnat court to tell us if we can have a vote on some self determination
ReplyDeleteI think you know what I think. Sturgeon isn't a useless independence leader she is a fraud.
Anyone in the SNP know where Mike Russells horsebox is at present. Is it getting polished for the referendum. Or is it the one dumped in a field in Islay as suggested on twitter.
The thing about a snap Scottish election is that the electorate don't like the idea of a superfluous election if it can be avoided. The SNP would need to build a case for frustration on the part of the electorate to make it bleedingly obvious that this is the only way to get us out of the Union and back into the EU/EFTA.
DeleteWhich is perfectly doable, provided the will is there, and provided the careerism gets out of the way.
DeleteBill, a case could have been made in May 2021 as Theresa May and Boris Johnson (twice) had said no to a sec 30 over a four year period.
DeleteThis might sound a little tinfoil hat, but I feel like the strained approach the SNP are taking to independence suggests the following.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the party- for whatever reason - wants a referendum within this half of the decade, and is deliberately sabotaging any energy that could help deliver an early referendum by providing piecemeal propectus papers, a disorganised party line on how to deliver a referendum, and centering the political push for one via the Supreme Court's upcoming decision.
An example in point being the latest economic paper. The SNP runs easily one of the most acute and data-driven political machines in Europe (lets not forget the kind of analytics technology they have been using since the 2014 referendum). Yet the economic paper released last week was one of the most superficial publications we've seen from them in a long time. I personally think that the lack of data being provided is deliberate; I don't think they seriously want to provide an evidentiary, hard-nosed analysis of the economics of independence because a) it will prove the reality that the country will likely have to accept mini/major austerity for a short period of time after independence, especially under the Sterlingisation plans, and b) there is far too much resistance to proceed with a referendum due to the Sturgeon / Murrell monopoly in the SNP. Compared to the UK Labour Party and the Conservatives, for all of their rot and corruption, the habitual coups, defections and removal of their leaders they demonstrate is astonishing when we compare it to the SNP's severe control freakery. What was once whispered down to SNP backbenchers as a need to stay united in order to achieve the goal of independence has been corrupted into a magnificant way to shut up any dissidents within the party. So out of a mix of fear and trepidation about the appetite for another referendum, none of the key players in the SNP has the intention to promote ideas beyond the Sturgeon-approved economics of the Growth Commission. I think the shock Sturgeon got after trying to push for a referendum in 2017 changed her forever, and made any prospective referendum far less likely. For a politician already averse to taking risks, the trauma of that general election has pushed away any concessions she may have been willing to give to the likes of the Commonweal. Also, the senior leadership has completely constricted any resistance to this plan, so aside from occasional grumblings from Jim Sillars, their monopoly is unquestioned. They have plenty of allies in the mainstream media, and their domestic agenda is never going to be seriously contended by Scottish Labour.
In my opinion, we're not looking at another referendum until 2029, and that's only if people really fight for it and remove the current leadership who has no intention of doing the dirty work to achieve another referendum.
Well, it's only a theory, but parts of it certainly don't sound completely outlandish.
DeleteMeanwhile more unionists are moving to Scotland from England.
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling the powers that be will make sure BoJo comes third. I bet the votes will fall between Richi and Penny to make it so
ReplyDeleteThat kind of carve-up would be too dangerous with a nomination threshold of 100. By the sounds of it we may not even get the numbers, in which case it won't matter if Mordaunt is third.
DeleteIn the short term, the SNP need to lose enough seats to Labour to make Sturgeon’s position untenable. Ideally some of the wokies in places like Glasgow, Ochil and Aberdeen would be the ones to lose their seats. The SNP needs a big enough fright to allow reconstruction and a re-emphasis on Independence in the longer term.
ReplyDeleteThe "losing seats to unionists will help us win independence" theory doesn't get any less bonkers the more times I hear it.
DeleteThat’s it. Boris officially out. No sign of the 100 names he most definitely honestly no doubt about it had.
ReplyDelete