It is actually very simple. There are no circumstances in which we do not need an SNP administration following the next Scottish Parliament elections. NO circumstances! Regardless of whether the party makes any sort of commitment regarding independence, we still have to ensure an SNP administration.
I shouldn’t have to explain why this is. But for those already reaching for their ‘independence isn’t all about the SNP’ boilerplate, I’ll gently suggest that they still their jerking knees long enough to reflect on the alternative to an SNP administration.
Let me put it bluntly. If in the coming Holyrood election campaign you are not working flat out for the biggest SNP win possible, then you might as well go and work for the Tories. Because if we don’t get that decisive SNP win Jackson F Carlaw gets the keys to Bute House.
So, that’s our first priority sorted out. The second priority is to have that SNP administration committed to bold, decisive action in the first half of its term to facilitate the exercise of Scotland’s right of self-determination. A firm commitment. An iron-clad commitment. A commitment with a date and a timetable attached.
A commitment, what is more, to a process which keeps the organisation and management of the referendum entirely within Scotland. A commitment which categorically excludes any involvement from the British state or its agents.
I like to think of this as a Manifesto for Independence. Something quite separate and isolated from a party manifesto. A Manifesto for Independence to which any party or candidate might sign up regardless of their own policy platform or political agenda.
This Manifesto for Independence should be written by the Yes movement and presented to all of the parties standing in the election along with an ultimatum – a promise and a threat. Those who sign up to the Manifesto for Independence will have the electoral support of the Yes movement. Those who do not may anticipate the Yes movement’s best efforts to wipe them off the political map completely.
Forming and campaigning for cunning plan parties doesn’t make it onto our list of priorities. Because if our effort to ensure an SNP administration with a working majority fails then any MSPs from those parties will be powerless to do anything. And if that effort succeeds then those extra MSP’s will be superfluous to our needs.
Told you it was simple! Two priorities! Two tasks! Get on with it!
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Peter A Bell 
Reblogged this on Ramblings of a 50+ Female.
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I think see a flaw in your plan. Being in the middle of a global pandemic, where all manner of timetables have been completely thrown out the window (to the extent it’s still not clear if or how the election will take place as scheduled), the SNP would – rightly, in my opinion – be unwilling to sign up to anything that committed them to any particular date or timetable. But the very parties that you are rightly railing against would be more than happy to sign up to this manifesto – not because they have any realistic opportunity of putting it in to action, but simply to try and one-up the SNP.
So what happens then? Full-blown support for the Greens, the SSP, and “People Who Failed The SNP Vetting Process For Independence”?
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The date in question is relative to the parliament, not to the calendar. If there is no timetable, there’s no commitment. The idea is to restore trust in the SNP’s dedication to getting Scotland’s independence restored. Nobody is going to settle for a ‘when conditions are right’ politician’s promise. We’ve had too many of those already.
I am well used to being told this or that can’t be done because of the pandemic. More often this AND that. Because it seems there is no aspect of life which is not subject to a cease and desist order from some quarter. The miracle is that anything at all is getting done. But it is. Life goes on. Look closely at any of these cease and desist orders and you will find either an agenda or a parrot.
There may well be things that cannot be done, or done safely, at this time. But if it’s something important – like saving our nation from the scourge of rabid British Nationalism – then I want to hear detailed reasons.
One final point. We should be very wary indeed of assertions that the democratic process cannot continue on account of prevailing conditions. Because those conditions, or some significant part of them, are going to be part of the ‘new normal’.
Alexander Graham Bell, a man who knew the meaning of regret, said,
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
And while we’re on quotes, here’s an answer to those who say pursuing constitutional justice just now is selfish. The words of Rabbi Hillel,
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”
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What an opportunity the next Holyrood election presents for an Independence Mandate along the lines of the Norwegian Independence Process. The SNP Mandate should state a Holyrood Parliament vote on Scottish Independence to be held withing 3 months of the election. Followed by a confirmatory referendum organised and run without any UK involvement (ideally neutral and independent) to confirm the people of Scotland’s view. Nobody could object to a declaration of independence based on this prcess.
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@indy Chas
The turnout for Holyrood elections is circa 50% over the last 20 years and half of that fifty vote SNP.
So 25% of the electorate vote for them.
This is what the Murrells understand and it seems no one else in the entire yes movement does.
Its roughly a million votes for the SNP, (out of an electorate of 4 million
And general elections follow a similar voter share, with the crucial difference that FPTP favors the SNIP, they likewise garner a million votes. BUT NEARLY ALL THE MPS.
But when the voter platform is a single issue referendum, the YOON parties do something called Uniting into a defense of the Union. Whereby they put aside all their squabbles and campaign on a single issue.
And all their votes count for one this time ,
That is why spite 500 mandates or so for indy the Murrels have not advanced their all conquering army against the Yoon ramparts for a second time,
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@indyChas: some of us do understand it. I have never been in favour of independence referendums. I am certainly not, and never have been, in favour of a second indyref because of what we should all have learned from the first. Pre independence referendums are supremely unnecessary, in the first instance, in any case. I have studied every indyref in recent times, and they have been disastrous for those seeking independence. I understand, too, that you are saying that fighting an election on a Manifesto policy to move immediately towards independence in the event of a win would ensure that the Unionists and sundry British and English Nationalists in our midst, would collaborate in the election. I agree to an extent, but that is precisely what the Unionists do in any case – ‘game the system’ – in every election nowadays, and they inevitably get away with it. They get away with it even when it is patently illegal, so, yes, we are up against it. However, if we want to get out of this stalemate, we must take the risk and start to play hardball with these ‘Flat Earthers’ and ‘anti evolutionists’ who live in the past.
If the three Unionist parties and their adherents, and other anti independence elements, decide to play the game that way, we play it harder. Let them know in advance of the election – whenever it is held – that we will take them to the international court if they do this, which is, essentially, preventing us from accessing even the means to the means to independence, if you see what I mean. This is fascism and totalitarianism rolled into one, and is in direct opposition to the tenets of the UN Charter on self-determination and human rights. We need to be absolutely ruthless now about applying sanctions to the various MINORITY vested interests of the Unionists. They are a majority on one thing only: independence; and that is illegal according to international law because it denies independence supporters any right to contest the status quo. What they do is not democracy; it is redolent of the worst banana republics. To get the message across, we also need to use social media wisely to access the international community and let people know what the fanatics of the Union are prepared to do to keep the status quo. What they do is, largely, illegal, but they are never hauled up for it because the SNP never does anything about it. We have a hill to climb, but the SNP view has been that we should have an obstacle course place on the gradient to make it even more difficult. If they do not take on board now just how fed up and angry people are with this attitude, they are going to lose heavily as more and more of the members and supporters abandon them.
Most of the problems that we encounter are those of our own making because we never challenge the Unionists on anything. You only have to read the unmitigated drivel that passes for constitutional knowledge to understand how mendacious and venal they are. They make up history and apply it to Scotland; they make up constitutional rules and apply them to independence; and they refuse all rights we have under international law by claiming that the Treaty is no longer extant, by claiming that we have no locus standi in international law; and they claim that we are a subsumed nation when the very Treaty they try to tell us is no longer extant tells us very firmly otherwise. Why did Cameron commission Crawford and Boyle in 2013 to ‘prove’ we had been subsumed (roundly demolished later by Walker and Campbell) and then never use the ‘evidence’? I rather think it was because he discovered that England-as-the-UK would fare only on an equal footing with Scotland because the Treaty shows unequivocally that it was a partnership – which was never honoured on England-as-the-Uk’s part. We have to start calling their bluff and we have to start being as ruthless as they are, keeping democracy, legality and legitimacy as our watchwords. The Treaty supplies all of these, plus instant international recognition, assuming we win – which I believe we would if we build a watertight case, starting now. I think that this should be done by crowdfunding to head off Unionist objections, first-rate constitutional lawyers should be engaged to find a way through the constitutional/legal pitfalls and, if we do these things as half the nation’s electorate, we prove that there is a real, abiding desire for independence. Why should their 50% of the electorate have legitimacy and not ours? It is time we started using our heads as well as our hearts.
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Good luck with getting bold & decisive action from the SNP unless of course it to rubbish rights
and if you’re gonna get nasty and insulting with that statement bring it on matters fuck all to me
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I can see why it would matter fuck all to you. If you’re too thick to understand the argument then you’re probably too thick to be affected by anything much short of being hit by a bin lorry.
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So what part of the argument am I missing ?
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As soon as someone on here disagrees with you Peter or says something you don’t like you immediately turn to name calling and insults, your completely unable to articulate your argument without it,
I never said anything that suggested I didn’t understand what you’re saying I understood perfectly in fact I think it’s a great idea the problem is there’s not a cats chance in hell the SNP will sign up to it because they’ve been compromised and more interested in trashing womens rights, censoring free speech and sooking up to the British establishment.
I’m not gonna indulge you in trading insults Peter but you really do need to head out your own arse
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Graeme, I hear what you are saying, and I have to agree that getting the SNP to sign up to any real action that will bring independence is, for now, at any rate, wishful thinking. They appear to be eagerly trying to head off any arguments in that direction, and I think the pandemic is only part of the reason.
That is why we need to circumvent the SNP hierarchy at the planning stage, let them get on with fighting the pandemic and have a plan ready to go in 2021 or whenever. Will the SNP sanction that? Probably not. As 50% of the Scottish electorate, we are perfectly entitled to bring a case in the International Court of Justice against the UKG for trying to prevent us from being able to access the means to the means to independence. I’m not at all sure that, if we are serious about this, an independence referendum would not be offered by the UKG to stall any move towards the international constitutional stage. The reason – and it is just a feeling right now? Because the UKG knows it would lose on the Treaty – in every way, including on the post independence negotiations. In those circumstances, offering us a referendum in which its sticky paws could dabble would be less of a risk. In the end, we will need the SNP – the party, the government – to take us to independence, but, by then, if they haven’t got the message, they will fall. I think they will get the message. Certainly, there are at least some in the party who will take the message on board, knowing that their future depends on it. I don’t want to see the SNP split or fall, but it has dilly-dallied for too long now, and has only itself to blame for the anger and frustration it has, itself, created by not tackling the Unionists head-on, but by skirting round every issue that affects independence. To anyone looking from the outside inwards, it must appear to be the most milk-sop independence party in the history of the world, barely sentient in relation to independence, after nearly a hundred years of existence. It is quite astonishing.
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Thx Lorna, i was thinking how I could reply to your excellent post, when your last sentence succinctly does it.
” To anyone looking from the outside inwards, it must appear to be the most milk-sop independence party in the history of the world, barely sentient in relation to independence, after nearly a hundred years of existence. It is quite astonishing.”
At least you are attempting to see what the other side, the Yoons see.
I say name any SNP policy, Named person, Alcohol pricing, Reforms to council tax, Land reform etc
And they have dilly dallied round everything , kicked the ball high and out of play.
And these are the same ones who are going to lead from the front come hell or high water?
.
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Independence is about principle, not policy. So long as you’re talking about policy, you’re not talking about independence.
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