Stephen Flynn has said that Rachel Reeves' rejection of an independence referendum in the event of an SNP overall majority "carries little weight", but if it really doesn't matter what the UK government think, what is the remaining argument against, say, using an election as a de facto referendum? It turns out that what Mr Flynn really meant is that Rachel Reeves' views don't matter because she won't be Chancellor for much longer, and Keir Starmer won't be Prime Minister for long either. That of course implies that Mr Flynn thinks the views of the next Labour leader and next Labour Chancellor very much *do* matter, and indeed will be far more decisive in determining Scotland's future than any decisions made by the people of Scotland themselves. In the video below, I explain why that's hard to reconcile with the SNP leadership's own campaign for "Scotland's right to choose", and I also suggest a way forward that would not require any direct reversal of the strategy agreed at the SNP conference two months ago.
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Unfortunately fear IS the key to understanding the SNP leadership's wee verbal tangle as expressed by Mr. Flynn.
ReplyDeletePeople who have become comfortably middle class by the existing rules want to continue being so - dead simple. People like that don't lead rule breaking movements.
The UK has decided to make independence for Scotland a revolutionary demand i.e. one that can only be achieved by sustained breaking of 'rules'.
We've already discussed the only other possibility - that the UK state's economic and political contradictions lead it into some form of collapse where it is unable to enforce its rules.
This is where we are - a leadership which wont kick its way out and an inperial state that wont accept any alternative unless it is dead on its feet.
A revolutionary situation in which we have no revolutionary leadership with, at the recent conference, about 70% of the most active of SNP members voting for that non strategy.
We need to change the perspective of the party and then change its leadership. No small task !
And the irony is that if we don’t, Farage will. And whatever England drags us through next. Brexit, Boris, Truss, Starmer… they’re going through a permanent crisis down there.
DeleteIt's no fun being a nationalist for the moment, but it must be even worse to be a unionist!
One of the policies Jeremy Corbyn tried to progress while he was leader of the Labour Party was MPs compulsorily offering themselves up for re-election / deselection, in their constituencies in the run up to every election. Corbyn himself adhered to this principle.
ReplyDeleteAll parties are chock-a-block full of individuals who have settled down to a comfortable life in Westminster. SNP, Headquarters vetting of potential candidates exacerbated this. Frankly, most of the SNP, Westminster cohort from the glory years would never see that kind of financial remuneration in any other circumstance. £94k plus expenses is a hell of a salary for folk not previously employed in a managerial capacity. The exception would be the likes of Joanna Cherry who could earn considerable more in her previous career. It’s no surprise Jackson’s Entry tried to move heaven, and earth to get rid of Cherry (who they couldn’t exercise total control over).
I wouldn’t send Kirsty Blackman out to pick litter unsupervised.
At a “corporate” scale, the SNP accrued c. £1.3 million per year in British state, Short money, when they had 40 odd MPs.
With party democracy hollowed out (by Angus Robertson), the party is de facto, a small number of people employed at Jackson’s Entry. £1.3m pa provides comfortable sinecures when divided up between in the region of 20 folk. Headquarters extract tithes from MPs, and MSPs on top of this. The ability of some employees of the SNP to earn these kind of salaries elsewhere can also be questioned (check out Sue Ruddick’s CV, and yet she rose to be acting Chief Executive).
We have mediocrity by design at Westminster, and Holyrood. It suits Jackson’s Entry, and it suits the British state.
British state, Short money is the bait for the dependency trap.
Sinn Féin are well aware of this.
What is your point again? Sing Fein sit at Stormont collecting their pay cheques too.
Delete"That of course implies that Mr Flynn thinks the views of the next Labour leader and next Labour Chancellor very much *do* matter, and indeed will be far more decisive in determining Scotland's future than any decisions made by the people of Scotland themselves."
ReplyDeletePrecisely.
And what that means is that Flynn et al believe that Westminster has a veto over the will of the Scottish people.
When you agree to the subjugation of your people to the will of a third party, in this case the British government, that is treachery.
Aye traitors everywhere. Was Salmond in toe with MI5?
DeletePut it this way, he wasn't a ventriloquist!
Deletegockle of geer
DeleteTae the barricades with Liberate Scotland.
DeleteJames the Scottish people are not sovereign when we don't have our elected officials enforcing our legal rights.
ReplyDeleteWe can keep blaming Westminster for the wrongs with the UK and it isn't the UKG, England or Westminster it’s the SNP and the Scottish government who are to blame. In may the SNP will seek another mandate for Independence and even you have stated that we now need to look to the next Westminster election. I'm totally fed up with the SNP the leadership and the Scottish government, Scotland and its people have never had so much clout and support and the SNP are using it to help the other side of the constitutional question.
YES, it does matter what Reeves or Starmer thinks when the other side doesn’t do anything to counter act against it.
Even if both the PM and the chancellor were replaced today, they would only be replaced by another two who had the same opinion on the UK and Scotland being part of the UK.
There is only one solution come may and that is to allow the Scots to have a legal and binding say on the constitutional question which the SNP and the present leadership will never allow to happen and here is where our problem is.
At present unless the SNP changes is plan on saving the UK again. I will not be voting for the SNP and neither will anyone in this household, I’m not voting to be taken up the hill only to be brought back down again, am sure this is the SNP real plan.
A 11yrs has passed and the SNP has been totally useless in standing up for Scotland 1 Smith commission 2 When the UK left the EU and the powers that should have come back to Scotland but the SNP failed to lodge it with the Supreme court 3 failing to pass a referendum bill through the Scottish parliament 4 taken the constitutional question to the British courts 5 failing to enforcing all the mandate given to the SNP, the list goes on and on.
The blame for Scotland not being independent lies squarely on the shoulders of the people of Scotland, they were offered the chance and refused it
DeleteIt's always easy to blame politicians when they're not the politicians you might want or that you support another party but to blame the people who set up the chance and offered it to people who refused the offer is just ludicrous
We are where we are because we're a dithering argumentative nation of selfish gits that wants comfortably fed watered and our bottoms wiped without having the hardship of going out and voting for something that every other nation that took its independence from England had to fight tooth and nail for
Scotland the Brave? Scotland the chicken shit moaning faced cowards more like
Tell you what, you can blame me now for telling the truth
This is true. All the historic symbolism about the Bruce, Wallace, claymores, blue bonnets yet all those declaring themselves brave radicals never stop whining that they are victims of this, victims of that and bleating that the SNP haven't got them a pony for Christmas. Bruce wasn't some altruistic independence for Scotland leader - he wanted the crown, he was a feudal leader, he and his brothers were motivated by gaining monarchical power, increasing their land assets and maintaining their financial interests. Their accounts books are an intriguing read. You think the Cayman Islands was a modern-day tax haven idea - study James I and VI and the many overseas trade and income streams of the clan chiefs who starved their cadets and feudally trapped tenants. People fond of saying the Bruce altruistically wanted an independent Scotland to maintain any kind of universal well-being for its population and the wee sma folk are as bonkers as those who think the forever squabbling nobles were not motivated entirely by 'what's in it for me'. Those who wax lyrical about Bonnie Prince Charlie forget that he followed the instructions of his soaked auld bitter father who reminded him that he need feel no loyalty to the Jacobite Scots dying for him - because as ever the aim was the English throne, not to improve the lot of the Scots who risked all fighting for the self-interested ungrateful opportunist.
DeleteCorrect, the population of Scotland were offered the chance and they just didn't want it.
All this simplified garbage that SNP MSPs and MPs are solely only interested in keeping a job, getting a pension and have no interest in independence are misled by SOME of those MPS whose heads were turned by the surroundings and status psychology that hanging around Westminster afforded them and who came to look down their noses at plain wee Holyrood and wee Scotland because their activities in big city bright lights London convinced them they were a cut above their Edinburgh based colleagues. Salmond in Scotland was a different Salmond to the luxury flat renting Salmond who never hid his preference for Westminster and the attraction of being in and about the establishment. The independence movement is not short of middle-class Scottish establishment networkers and social climbers, many of whose only interest in the 'wee sma folk' is from a distance and seeing them as the most likely to doff their cap and show adoration for certain movement influencers who they think will keep them in the independence limelight and show them a bit of adoration.
The desperate drive to replace John Swinney is nothing whatsoever to do with prioritising advancing independence!
Short money (named after the Labour MP in Harold Wilson’s administration who piloted the scheme through Parliament) is administered by the Electoral Commission. That’s to say they distribute the payments. Short money was initiated to facilitate “research, and policy development”. No-one audits whether it is actually being put to that purpose. How many policy papers did the SNP issue when they were collecting £1.3 million per annum? This lack of oversight isn’t an accident, it’s purposeful dilettantism.
ReplyDeleteShort money is allocated according to a two part algorithm.
* £23k per MP
* £45.64 per 200 votes
In the immediate aftermath of the 4th July general election 2024, the algorithm was changed BEFORE PARLIAMENT WAS RECONVENED. The British, Permanent State just went and did it itself without any democratic input. The change was retrospectively applied!
The largest change to the algorithm was the increase in payments per 200 votes. It increased out of all recognition of any of the inflationary indexes.
Q. Why did this happen?
A. The election turnout was a record low for the modern franchise.
The message from the Permanent State to the parties was clear. “You can run on unpopular manifestos, and cheese off the electorate to the extent they just stop voting. It doesn’t matter, we’ll still have your back. You’ll still get your money.”.
Short money is an open invitation to fraud, and a certain CEO of a Scottish political party walked straight through that open door.
Single issue election capaign.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's it.
There are many arguments against a political party from doing so especially one that is in government (it would be an abdication of governance), and nothing to stop them doing so apart from a membership veto. Apart from Council dusty bin candidates and Ukip, it's very far fetched indeed.
YouGov, Public attitudes towards Israel, field work 25 - 26 Nov, population sample 2,119.
ReplyDeleteExcluding neutral positions, where does the public stand on a pro-Israel / anti-Israel prospectus?
UK result; Net +20% anti-Israel.
Scottish sub-sample (184); Net +30% anti-Israel.
With such a clear public preference, you’d have to wonder why Starmer, and half his cabinet chose to drop everything to stan so aggressively for a bunch of violent, racist, foreign football hooligans.
Wanna buy a second hand Toyota RAV4 (slight fire damage)?
I see the Bath slug is now highlighting and gloating over the £9million donation from ex-Tory supporter and chief Brexit-funder Christopher Harborne, to Farage's mob.
ReplyDeleteHarborne is also a major shareholder in a company called Quinetic which is a supplier of the lethal drones Israel uses so indiscrimately to slaughter tens of thousands of completely innocent Palestinian women and kids.
So this piece of extreme right, warmongering human detritus is being used by that little fake-rev creep, to score points against the SNP, while completely ignoring the fact that Harborne has not only heavily funded the most destructive thing ever to hit the Scottish economy, Brexit, but whose hands are drenched in the blood of huge numbers of non-combatant Palestinian souls.
Campbell has now sunk to depths even I didn't think he could reach.
He is a total anathema to every single thing our movement hopes for an Independent Scotland and so is every single clown who still supports him.
"Watchkeeper drone project: QinetiQ was part of the team that developed the Watchkeeper drone, which is based on the Israeli Hermes 450 drone. The Hermes 450 has been used by the Israeli military in operations in Palestinian territories.
Ongoing defense contracts: Organizations like the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) report that QinetiQ has received multiple export licenses to Israel over the years, and some sources suggest current operational contracts exist."
You hit the nail on the head at the end of the vid, James. Fear of success is the fundamental problem here. Nicola had it, Humza had it, and Swinney has it too.
ReplyDelete"What if I’m on the hook?"
Well-intentioned failure is so much easier to manage than the fearful business of live negotiations with London and soothing the electorate that you know what you're doing and you really could lead Scotland to successful independence.
And that’s why I can't vote for them. They’re wasting our time, and by that the lives and opportunity of everyone living in Scotland. You either believe in your prospectus, or you clear the way for somebody who does.
You talk nonesense. I’m no voting is a cowards way out promoted by labour guising as independence supporters.
DeleteI stopped voting SNP last year, and I was not alone. There were a hundred thousand of us. There will be again.
DeleteCongratulations on helping to bring about Labour's victory in Scotland. What, if anything, do you feel this has achieved?
Delete@8:15. It made not a lick of difference. Labour won the election in England, and we must endure whatever they choose for us. Always is and always was, that’s the UK. And isn't our desire to therefore leave it?
DeleteThe SNP's delusions about having sway at Westminster have achieved hee haw as well. They don’t. Scotland is irrelevant to the British government. Our desire for independence, our need for the democratic right to self determination, and frankly our wellbeing as a whole.
Indy won't be easy. But for the love of Scots, we'll never get it without TRYING!
"It made not a lick of difference"
DeleteDon't be ridiculous. Scotland voting unionist in 2024, apparently with your enthusiastic assistance, set us back years. Yes, we won't get independence without trying, and not contributing to unionist mandates is kind of the basic minimum requirement of "trying".
Anonymous at 8:13 PM.
DeleteJust one amendment to your post: you have never voted SNP, and aren't very convincing masquerading as an independence supporter. The Labour Party really need to train their people to dissemble more effectively.
Salmond had as much fear of winning in 2014 as you are projecting onto Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney and when he realised in 2017 that his constituency weren't going to vote for him because of independence, he panicked and told Nicola Sturgeon to take independence out of the campaign. He didn't do that because he wanted to prioritise independence did he - he wanted to maintain his career and return to his favoured habitat of Westminster - and when he didn't win, he blamed Nicola Sturgeon and refused to speak to her. As always, always someone else to blame for his choices and mostly the expectation of Nicola Sturgeon being merely his puppet.
DeleteThe curious thing is that when Sturgeon got the numbers up to 58% - the usual allegedly independence supporting wee nobles immediately started working against her. Same when the polls are not briliant but holding for the SNP - the usual alleged indy supporters go into full got to stop him/them mode. If these wee nobles get what the want and the SNP fall victim to the many ongoing plots against them - the onus will fall fully on those alleged indy parties assuring you that they are the route to independence sans SNP. So - they can be held to account now if their hooks and crooks obliterate the SNP. Let's see if they fulfil their promises.
December 4 at 8.13pm - so hundreds of thousands of self-declared bravest of the brave indy warriors promising not to vote for the SNP. Fair enough if that's a repeat of your last game-plan - free choice. LOL! Sounds like there's a Faustian pact with Westminster parties going on there. Looking forward to seeing spectacular independence success then because surely grabbing a few Holyrood seats is a bit of a hypocritical damp squib and simply following the Sillars and a few others suggested strategy of using the next General Election as the tool to getting independence.
Delete"It made not a lick of difference" is a red herring trope - probably to hide a 'we'll help you oust the SNP if you promise us something in return'. Now - what on earth in the deepest depths of the most cynical imagination would that something be?!!!!
DeleteAnon at 8.35. Ach, there's always Alba.
DeleteAnon 12.55 absolute nonsense - are you Nicola Sturgeon? Think back to Swinney in the BBC documentary about the indyref and how calmly confident Salmond was that we would win. Total pish about Salmond being afraid of indy - he was the last leader of the SNP to want it
DeleteAs for SNP MP's doing hee-haw in Westminster: Scotland won't be dragged out of the European Union against our will. Remember that one? What a disgrace those do nothing SNP bums were on plush green seats! Pick up the bloody mace, man. Do something to stop the travesty. Yet they were well behaved wee House Jocks and did what Master told them.
Delete100,000 of us won't be fooled again.
Then why did Salmond ask for devo max to be a third option on the ballot paper?
DeleteWhy did Salmond appear to fall apart in two TV debates with Alistair Darling right before the referendum?
Why did Labour's Alistair Campbell state that Salmond had done a deal with Labour that when Labour next came to power Salmond would receive a peerage if he tanked Indyref?
Now make up some crappy excuses about Salmond being cleverer than everybody else in the world with a secret plan
Salmond was always a Westminster man, that's where he wanted to be, he couldn't stand to be away from the place, a champagne swilling jock full of his own self importance blowhard like his mates in Labour and the Tories
And if I was Nicola Sturgeon I'd blow the truth about Salmond wide open, maybe she will yet even though Salmond's lawyers
"tried to put a smell one her" because that was Salmond's total defense in court against the women "put a smell on them"
He was a great guy alright, a Prince among liars
He failed.
Delete"Why did Salmond appear to fall apart in two TV debates with Alistair Darling right before the referendum?"
DeleteThere's a near total consensus that Salmond won the second debate comfortably.
Farage & Polanski friendly Find Out Now, Westminster voting intention, field work 3rd Nov.
ReplyDeleteUK headlines; RefUK 11% lead (over Tories), -2% week on week, Labour on record breaking 14%.
Scottish sub-sample (135)
Con 9%, Lab 13%, LibDem 9%, RefUK 23%, Green 12%, SNP 30%.
The European Broadcasting Union opted not to have a vote on the continued participation of Apartheid, Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest. When you cancel a vote, it means only one thing. You’ve lost the argument.
ReplyDeleteNever mind, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia will now boycott the contest, and others may follow.
The EBU escaped a counter boycott from Germany, if Israel had been excluded. The German elites are curiously beholden to the Apartheid state. The German public are every bit as opposed to the genocidal nation as every other European country.
If the Jeffrey Epstein, Kompromat operation, targeted at American, and to some extent the English speaking world, (Andrew Mountbatten Windsor) was as wildly successful as it appears to have been, and it was running for decades, why wouldn’t they replicate it in other countries?
Any successful Kompromat operation in Germany would receive the full, authoritarian backing of the German, Permanent State. If they’ll breach their legal obligations under Schengen to prevent individuals entering German merely to discuss international law, they’ll do anything, up to, and including shutting down the press.
The notion of the current SNP participating in acts disruptive to the British state is tragically misplaced.
ReplyDeleteThe SNP contingent at Westminster couldn’t even vote against the proscription of Palestine Action. The entirely of the Green block voted against, together with 6 independent MPs, 9 Labour, 6 Liberal Democrats, and one SDLP MP.
When the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 was passing through Parliament, the SNP block sat on their hands for the first, and second readings of the Bill.
Let’s be clear, this Act made it legal for an agent of the State to torture, and kill, just as long as their line Manager signed off on it first.
The SNP have been captured by the British state.
The reason the SNP abstained was because Westminster lumped together 3 groups in the one vote and wouldn't let MPs vote on each group separately. Two of the proscribed groups deliberately put together with Palestine Action for the ONE vote were the 'Maniacs Murder Cult' the Molodovan neo-Nazi group and the extreme far-right group the Russian Imperial Movement who want have a paramilitary wing (the Russian Imperial Legion) and want to rebuild the Russian Empire. It was a Westminster gov trick to put all three groups together and not allow a vote for or against one group alone. You were not allowed to vote against just one group - so if you voted against Palestine Action being proscribed - your vote would also be counted as against proscribing the other two really serious terrorist groups. That's why the SNP (and I thought the Lib Dems had also) abstained from voting. Westminster set up to deliberately lump the inconvenient to them Palestine Action group with two really really dodgy actual terrorist groups.
DeleteWhat complete drivel. Are you Le Carre?
DeleteAnon at 6.56 pm ... totally correct.
DeleteLabour Brit Nat votes labour but pretend they are independence supporter on blogs. It becomes boring after a while. Still the truism remains, the people best to govern Scotland are the people of Scotland. The same principle applies to Norway, Ireland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Netherlands……..Westminster and England only want our resources for themselves.
ReplyDeleteI can't get over that decision by the EBU. No vote, no real transparency, just a behind the scenes discussion and a full endorsement of genocide.
ReplyDeleteThe four protesting nations have been airily brushed aside. So disappointed by this.
Just for laughs, let’s put the Find Out Now, UK poll numbers with their Scottish sub-sample into the Electoral Calculus model.
ReplyDeleteSeat projection (island of Grande Bretagne).
Con 40, Lab 25, LibDem 46, RefUK 402, Green 58, SNP 43, Plaid Cymru 4, others 14.
RefUK outright majority of 154.
Labour from the party of government to sixth place.
Turbulent times indeed.
John Mann, the former Labour MP, ennobled by Theresa May, is the Government’s, Independent Advisor on Antisemitism.
ReplyDeleteThe term “independent” occupies the same category of derision as “democratic” in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Me thinks they doth protest too much.
I saw him on tv showcasing his beard. Didn't catch her name.
DeleteGroup C
ReplyDeleteHaiti 3 - 0 Scotland
Scotland 3 - 1 Morocco
Scotland 1 - 1 Brazil
Scotland would have needed to beat Morocco 3 - 0. So close!
You'll need to brush up on the format, because if we finish third in the group there's still a chance of going through.
DeleteYeah I know. Hence "Scotland would have needed to beat Morocco 3 - 0".
DeleteYou've lost me. A win and a draw would very likely be enough. Even a win and two defeats might be enough.
DeleteOh right, I see what you mean.
DeleteI was working in Amsterdam in 1978 and in a bar when Archie Gemmill's goal against the Netherlands got us so close to going through. Scars the memory, or was that most of the bar putting Amstel in front of me? They actually wanted us to score the 4th.
DeleteYiref2- stop writing such tosh.
ReplyDelete