Is the Scottish National Party (SNP) indispensable to the cause of restoring Scotland's independence? The SNP leadership certainly seems to think so. For many years the party's election strategy has been built on the assumption that it will harvest the vast majority of pro-independence votes. So assured were successive party leaders of this guaranteed base … Continue reading Indispensable SNP?
Refusal of a Section 30 order leaves Scotland’s cause exactly where it is now; nothing relevant having changed since the last such refusal. Therefore, anything that can be done to progress Scotland’s cause after a Section request, could be done without another Section 30 request. So, why bother with another Section 30 request? And why is the SNP never asked this question?
To those of us who come to these things with critical faculties intact and functioning, the performance seemed hammy the script hackneyed and the plot a serious challenge to our ability to suspend disbelief.
It must be clearly understood that prior to referring the draft Referendum Bill to the UKSC, Nicola Sturgeon could quite easily have steered that Bill through the Scottish Parliament, only to have it blocked at the Royal Assent stage.
Normal democracy will be resumed as soon as the Union is ended and Scotland's independence is restored. It is time to wake up now!
The thing about a path to independence is that in order to qualify as a path to independence the purported path to independence must lead to independence. It must have independence at the end of it.
We cannot hope or trust that the SNP Scottish Government will do what is required if Scotland is to be removed from under the heel of the Union because they have effectively told us that they have absolutely no intention of doing what is required.
The resolution passed by the SNP conference yesterday amounts to nothing more than a rewording of the 'strategy' that has kept Scotland's cause immobile since 2015 and seen numerous opportunities for progress casually squandered.
When politicians urge us to stop talking about something, we should assume it is the thing we most need to be talking about. When they urge us to focus on one thing, we should look for the thing they're trying to divert us from.
What the SNP leadership is asking delegates to support is a weak and desperate strategy for obtaining votes by false pretences.
Peter A Bell 