Not good enough! If Nicola Sturgeon had ever properly connected with the Yes movement beyond the party membership; indeed, if she hadn’t so totally disconnected even from the party membership, this is the message that would be ringing in her ears. Not good enough!
It is not good enough to merely talk about a new independence referendum. We’ve heard such talk before. We’ve heard little else for the past seven years. What we want now is an absolute commitment to specified action within a defined timeframe.
It is not good enough to offer nebulous assurances about some shadowy thing at some vague point. I ask myself why you qualify your not-quite promises with phrases such as “when this current crisis has passed” when it is impossible to define such a point. I ask myself why the public health emergency presents difficulties for a referendum in Scotland but not in any other country. I ask myself how come it’s possible to have an election under prevailing conditions but not a referendum. I ask myself why I never get any kind of answer to any of these questions. What should I think other than that this is no more than a politician’s device? Why would you be saying “when this current crisis has passed” if not to provide yourself with an excuse for yet further delay once the election is over?
It is not good enough to say that we need independence to effectively address the aftermath of the pandemic while also saying that we can’t even begin the process of restoring Scotland’s independence until the aftermath is upon us. It is not good enough because it doesn’t even make any sense. The different bits of your not-quite promise don’t join up.
It is not good enough that you ask us to put our faith in you while you continue to put your faith in the very politicians and institutions you say are incapable of adequately representing our interests.In asking us to trust you, you are asking us to trust that British political elite will afford the people of Scotland the respect that they have never shown to date. By asking us to have confidence in a plan to restore Scotland’s independence that you will not describe you are asking us to have confidence that the British state will cooperate with that plan.
It’s not good enough to merely imply or hint that you a have a plan to proceed with a referendum absent a Section 30 order at the same time as you insist that a Section 30 or is required. Both things cannot be true. If a Section 30 order is required then we must accept that there cannot be a free and fair referendum. If a Section 30 order is not required then we must wonder why you continue to insist on asking for one. We cannot both wonder about such things and trust you.
It’s not good enough that you expect us to accept such paltry promises and hollow speechifying and illogical statements. If I wanted to be treated like a fool then I’d turn to one or other of the British parties. Not the least of the reasons I want our nation’s independence restored is to escape the very equivocation and prevarication and duplicitousness that I find echoed in your rhetoric.
It’s just not good enough!
It’s not good enough that you ask us to rely on your political skills when recent history provides such compelling evidence that those skills are inadequate at best. In this context the outcome and direct consequences of your recent travails are of less importance than the fact that you allowed the situation to arise – and may even have engineered it to some extent. I look back to where Scotland’s cause was six or seven years ago and ai look at where that cause lies now and a am baffled as to how so much could have been lost in so short a time and with so little apparent effort.
It’s not good enough that you try to divert and distract us with tenuously favourable polls while you have no evident plan to exploit the indicated public support for the benefit of Scotland’s cause rather than your own electoral prospects.
None of it is good enough!
We deserve better! You owe us better! DO BETTER!
Peter A Bell 
Peter, she’s sending the message Scotland needs England for money and support until after the pandemic this isn’t the right message to send if your stating self governing, which we know this isn’t true and it also isn’t true that a referendum can’t be held because of the pandemic because where holding an election. She is only talking about Independence or should I say it’s so far down Sturgeon list of priorities that Sturgeon is having to bring it up to the top because Mr Salmond has put Independence for the Alba Party front and centre.
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Good point about the message Nicola Sturgeon is sending out. But I’m not as impressed with Alba as most people seem to be. As with any party that has no chance of being in government it’s easy to put things front and centre that you’re never going to be asked to deliver.
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But it’s exactly because Alba are not in government that they can indeed put Indy front and centre, Nicola and the SNP OTOH have a country to govern under to say the least trying circumstances. They’re currently having to hold the fort, or should that be the baby, while Alex and his rapidly growing expert team have both hands free. By standing on the lists and leaving the constituances to the SNP, together they stand an excellent chance of evicting a good many unionist party MSPs. Isn’t it obvious once you think about it?
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What’s obvious is that you haven’t thought about it. Or, to be more precise, you haven’t thought it through beyond the point where you are comfortable with the product of that thinking.
It’s also obvious that you either haven’t listened to or haven’t understood any of the arguments that point out the inadequacy of your thinking. You just don’t get it!
Alba can do NOTHING that will bring independence any closer. If they could, you’d tell us all what it is instead of peddling this vacuous waffle.
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Leaving aside perhaps the two regions where the SNP now have list MSPs, a list SNP vote is almost certainly going to be a vote thrown away. That’s just how the system was set up. So how are you going to use your list vote to advance the Indy cause?
Also it’s important that Alba and the SNP don’t obviously cosy up too closely into a friendly cuddle, lest they be deemed a single party by the authorities …
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You have totally failed to explain how voting for or even electing Alba does anything tangible “to advance the Indy cause”. But don’t feel too bad about this failure. Nobody else has done any better.
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C’mon, even if all they manage is to remove Lib/Lab/Con MSPs from Holyrood? Would that not be a gain for Indy?
What would you do?
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No.
Manifesto for Independence.
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“As with any party that has no chance of being in government it’s easy to put things front and center that you’re never going to be asked to deliver.”
Your turning into a cynic, or a “NO” voter.
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Just stating an obvious truth. Definitely a cynic. Your final remark is too stupid to be worthy of a response.
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In what way is the First Minister sending out any such message “we need England’s money”?
I don’t see that anywhere.However I do see a certain needless prevarication, and perhaps a level of over cautious approach, partly in fear of the pro London Media, who would spin it that the SNP is not as concerned with the Covid Crisis as it should be, much as the tories are saying just now for example, and voters would be put off, etc. I have heard ppl say this themselves, that we have to wait ’till this is all over.
That is a big part of it presently.
But also, this same overly cautious approach seems to be in the hope the opinion polls keep rising and rising, and then perhaps when they reach a certain level, the First Minister might be happy to act.
However, as Peter says here, that just ain’t good enough.
Waiting along those lines has already seen us taken out of the EU and Single Market and Customs Union.
It has already seen us kept back from being far more aggressive regards the Covid Crisis, and from being able to be more pro active with funds we would otherwise have had, if we we’re Independent.
And it is going to keep us back so long as we need to rely on London.
And while she waits and waits and waits for that might never to come “perfect moment” all the this continues, and London seeks to further reduce, or simply over rule Scotland’s Parliament.
Much the same way China is doing with Hong Kong, in fact.
And yet the current SNP leadership appear taken by surprise at the creation of ALBA!
As I have said previously, we needed another Party of Independence, but had to be something credible, and up ’till now, we haven’t had that.
I have also said, that if SNP do not act soon, they too, could go the same way as Labour in Scotland, and one day lose near to everything.
And if so, they will have only themselves to blame.
This May election will likely SNP’s last chance to prove themselves.
They are not giving themselves too have much time!
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Yet another cracker Peter and this is exactly what is alienating the longer standing members of the party but is an irrelevance to career seeking individuals and woke brigade who have hitched on to the coattails of our party who are in abundance.
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More lazy, flabby, meaningless, platitudinous, blandishments from Nicola Sturgeon – where’s the inspiration?
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Absolutely nailed it Peter. I am so sick of hearing the same old promises couched in evasive language that I didn’t even bother listening to her speech yesterday – I wonder how many did?
She has absolutely no intention of doing anything about gaining our independence. I think she is deliberately trying to lose a majority in this election so she won’t have to do anything.
Alba might not be the answer to our prayers, but what other options do we have?
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We’ve only ever had one option. The SNP is our only option. There is no other option and there cannot possibly be another option in time to be an option.
Given that the SNP is so crucial to Scotland’s cause, you’d think we’d have taken better care of it.
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Lots of us having taking good care of the SNP over the last 5 years. Unfortunately, the SNP have not been taking such good care of many of us.
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Aye. A big boy did it! It wisnae me!
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Exactly Peter
Do you think she would have even mentioned the dreaded ‘I word’ even in such a vague way if it hadn’t been election time while she’s faces pressure from both inside & outside the party?
It’s more wishy washy words that believers can take as a carrot & Unionists take comfort from a subliminal wink that it’ll never happen on her watch.
There are still good SNP MSPs who should be able to stand up to this guff but are cowed into silence. Party members have little clout now (as you pointed out in comments in your last post we let it happen by not being alert enough).
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Alba, you say, have nothing to bring Indy forward, but I disagree. They could take your article here and articulate it day in day out in Parliament. They could niggle and annoy. Focus minds. Yes, they themselves can’t bring indy but through giving the SNP nowhere to hide they can force THEIR hands. And possible hasten the retirement of NS and Her man from the SNP before it is too late.
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Fantasy politics.
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Anyone remember Chris Iwelumo? He’s the footballer who it’s suggested on YouTube “missed the easiest open goal ever” when playing for Scotland. After Brexit, Covid etc he can reflect that at least he hasn’t missed as many as NS.
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female and commented:
Agreed.
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SNP are still the vehicle for Indy. Sturgeon is the problem we’ll have to meet head on after the Election. If she’d wanted Indy she would have made it Loud and Clear. She’s not interested in it whatsoever. I have no hope of Indy while she’s running the show.
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It certainly seems that Sturgeon is the problem. I wonder how many of those SNP MSPs who have now stepped down might have stayed for what will surely be a crucial period had Sturgeon not been there.
I mentioned somewhere the other day that I’ve pretty much given up hope of this be the ‘independence election’. I’m now starting to think more in terms of what SNP members can do to wrest control of our party out of the hands of the clique of crazies. That, I think, is the first problem we have to meet head on after the election.
It may well be too late to save Scotland. But we have to keep trying.
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What do you think is the likelihood of SNP members actually being able to do that if the party does manage to get a decent election result, along with enough other pro-independence parties to make a majority, super or not.?
Your article above expresses something of my sense of frustration at what I suspect to be a real lack of strategic and visionary thinking in the SNP at present, though I have no evidence to base this upon apart from reading between a few lines. My energy and time at present is too occupied by demands of work (secondary school) and some other commitments so I have limited researching time.
The best thing I can think of in the current situation is to vote for the SNP and hope (with all fingers crossed) that there may be enough people willing to break through any blankets of suppression and get the party and Scottish Government really moving on this issue. I’m not going to hold my breath though and I fear that it’s a fragile balance between possible moves on a new referendum and the whole thing being neutralised by Westminster simply diverting funds away from Holyrood altogether and starving it into irrelevance along with devolution.
Thank you for these posts.
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Thank you for your comment. For someone who understandably has little time for research you have summed up the situation rather well.
It is probably pointless to think of this as the ‘independence election’ now. Where we should have been working to elect the government that would take the appropriate action, we’re now talking about trying to save a pro-independence Parliament. Trying to prevent the British taking over. Of all the missed opportunities over the past seven years, this must surely be the greatest. What should have been the final charge to victory has become an unseemly partisan squabble and a frantic effort to save the position we held.
I keep thinking it’s maybe just me. That I’m being too cynical and pessimistic. But every day now I’m hearing others say much the same thing. I cling to the hope that we’re all wrong. That somehow all the pieces will fall into place at the last minute. But that only happens in the movies. Real life tends to be more messy.
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Nicola Sturgeon said: “In politics, things that once seemed so desperately important, don’t seem so now.”
Is she talking about her desire for Scotland’s independence? It seems that desire she once exhibited has gone for ever. She’s a unionist.
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I think you and others are being too hard on yourselves for the current situation within the SNP. Hindsight is great but 5 or 6 years ago how could you know what was going on? It’s a bit like a new boss taking over a business. They find ways to get rid of the people who will hold them to account properly, or in their view the troublemakers that they accuse of obstructing change. The people that know too much about the business so they feel intimidated by them as they might know more than the new boss does. At the same time they bring in the kind of people who will do what they want to do without question, appoint and promote and get their own team in place, a team of new grateful people who will be guided by them. The workers might can see what’s happening, but they can do nothing to stop it or change it. Sure, the SNP members could have used their votes etc. But you were divided and conquered, it wasn’t all your fault. But it’s a lesson learned and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
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