Once upon a time top spot on the regional list was used as belt and braces to protect high profile names within the party. It’s how people like Nicola Sturgeon rose through the parliament in Holyrood and it’s the reason folk like Mordo Fraser and Elaine (Not C) Smith are still there.
The SNP’s decision to give top place to either a BAME or Disabled (self identifying or not) is, like the previous decision to create a gender balance, not one borne out of realism but out of idealogy. Giving the top job (indeed ANY job) to someone because of their colour, sex, or disability (or even their personal/family connections) and not on their competence is foolhardy. You only need to look at the Labour Party of the past to see where that got them.
If there was a concentrated effort by unionists to tactically vote to get Nicola Sturgeon out of her constituency and it succeeded, then the highest possible place she could be given on the list is second. So the list seat would go to a BAME candidate, regardless of experience or value to the party, and Sturgeon would have to rely on enough constituencies being lost to the SNP to generate a second list place.
If I were a unionist in her Govan constituency I would be seizing the chance to cut off the head of the snake with both hands.
I read Martin Hannan’s letter describing his reasons for leaving the SNP and thought that I would register my thanks to him in the face of the bitter and childish criticism that he received from some quarters on social media which unfortunately bore out his comments that the SNP was more and more becoming a cult. His reasons for resigning struck a chord with me on a personal level. I joined the SNP in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, and quickly saw practices and attitudes which were entirely unacceptable, and which as far as I could see went all the way from a rotten branch right up the tree to SNP headquarters. What I saw at a local level has been replicated and magnified many times at national level, and for those who tried to pretend that our branch was an exception, only now are they seeing that it was just a part of a bigger, cancerous whole. I left the SNP as quickly as I joined and I believe, like Martin now does, that you cannot stay in and fix this from the inside, for that means getting down in the sewer with your opponents and joining them, and who with any modicum of self-respect wants to do that?As an activist with more than one independence group, Martin has been a great friend to us in our efforts to grow and promote our activities. You only have to read his articles to see that he lives and breathes independence; his credentials as a supporter of independence cannot be called into question. That’s why people across the independence movement and especially within the SNP should be sitting up and taking notice. They cannot afford to lose good people like that – yet they are, hand over fist. Membership numbers have fallen drastically recently, and those who claimed credit for the 2014 rise seem unwilling to accept responsibility for the 2021 crash. Many of those members were once folk who would go out and chap doors for nothing more that the thought that they were helping achieve something better, and were let go with nothing but a thank you email from Peter Murrell, not the heartfelt, unscripted video which a select few received from Nicola Sturgeon. Some of the most dedicated supporters are becoming demoralised, and how do you motivate people to chap doors when the best they can offer is to tell you to keep your eyes on the prize and hold your nose while you vote for the SNP? In 2014 we were offered “hope over fear”. Now we are being offered Westminster corruption with a tartan paint job. As an independence supporter and activist, I cannot take that message onto the streets. I know that we are far beyond the point where the internal differences of the SNP can be resolved over a handshake. We can now only sit back and wait to see what we can salvage from the wreckage, before regrouping to fight again. In Scotland some things never change.
For us mere bystanders who were relying on the SNP to lead the independence movement to victory, their recent behaviour has been a bin fire which has spread to a nearby skip and now threatens to burn down the house, and which the SNP insist on trying to put out with petrol! The idea of leaving petty differences aside until after independence is one which the SNP high-heidyins should have noted a long time ago: before they conspired to send an innocent man to jail, and before setting the hounds on non-compliant journalists. We have to deal with reality here, however uncomfortable, and it is dismaying to see so many people still labouring under the impression that these matters could still be set aside.
That ship has sailed. That bridge has been burned. As the French say: the carrots are cooked. If this was a movie it would be dismissed as being too far-fetched: A political conspiracy to destroy the reputation of their former boss, to ensure that he can never come back to politics with senior elected SNP members leaking internal information to the press and the Crown Office leaking details of prosecutions to the press. Malicious reports to the police by seedy politicians to put pressure on their enemies, and silencing journalists who support the victim of the conspiracy by threatening them with going to jail. Sounds too far fetched? Why not throw in the loss of around £600,000 in ring-fenced campaign funds, and just to top that off, why not sack one of the most able front bench MP’s in order to to satisfy the bloodlust of a small but vocal group of trans-rights extremists? If any thinks that this genie can be put back in the bottle they are utterly delusional. Many people think that Nicola Sturgeon has done a fantastic job managing the coronavirus pandemic in Scotland and are willing to turn a blind eye to the current shenanigans because of their support for independence. That’s just wrong. That’s like turning a blind eye to the abuse carried out by Jimmy Saville because he did a lot of work for charity.
There is every possibility that, despite her popularity in the polls, Nicola Sturgeon will possibly not be SNP leader come May. A good leader, like Alex Salmond did, would be trying to prepare the ground for such a possibility. Instead Nicola Sturgeon appears to be implementing a scorched earth policy, ensuring that many people who are competent and capable are taken off the board. Her decision to remove Joanna Cherry from the field and replace her with Anne McLaughlin is akin to substituting Kenny Dalglish in a vital qualifier and replacing him with Wayne Biggins! Apologies to Wayne Biggins…
It’s time the independence woke up and smelled the coffee. Crying “Leave oor Nicola alone” is not a viable line of defence, and to build her up to an infallible icon is a sure road to disappointment, and goodness knows we’ve had enough of that. I’m sure that after the axe has swung there will be others just as capable of managing to govern Scotland AND campaign for independence, perhaps more so. Whoever that leader is they must go back to first principles, the ones which united us all in 2014. An end to dirty politics. Transparency and honesty must be their watchwords, otherwise all we can look forward to upon independence is a Little Westminster in Edinburgh.
An Independent Scotsman 