It may be hard to imagine now but there was a time when I actually took some quiet pride in being a member of the Scottish National Party (SNP). I well remember my eagerness to join the party the day I turned 12 years of age. That was 61 years ago and for most of that period there was hardly a day that I didn’t sport a badge proclaiming my membership of the ‘party of independence’. It felt good to be part of the fight to restore Scotland’s independence. Being a member of the SNP symbolised commitment to Scotland’s cause, even during those times when the demands of family and work made it difficult to play an active role.
It wasn’t all, or even mainly, partisan loyalty. I genuinely felt that the SNP was special. It was different from other political parties. Not least because, as a member, I felt I had a voice. There was always the sense that the party membership was in control. We were listened to by a leadership that existed to serve us. Later, as I became more involved in branch work and started attending conference and National Council first as a visitor and later as a delegate, that feeling of having a voice and being heard was powerfully reinforced.
Things changed after the 2014 referendum. Alex Salmond resigned as party leader and First Minister to be replaced by Nicola Sturgeon. I can’t say when I first started to notice the change. It was a gradual realisation. And an even more gradual admission. There was a period of perhaps four years prior to resigning from the SNP in early 2020 when I was increasingly uncomfortable with the direction in which the party was being taken. Most discomfiting of all was the choice to conceal my true feelings and defend both party and leader even as I watched seriously bad choices being made and seriously good opportunities being squandered by a party leadership that was less and less inclined to listen to anyone outside Nicola Sturgeon’s immediate circle.
I have no intention of going over the old ground of the SNP’s failings and failures since 2015. That has been done to death and, while we must always be mindful of the past, we can’t continue to live there. At some point, we must move on to the next thing. What I want to focus on here is the change in the relationship between members and leaders that occurred over those years. As stated, I had always felt that I had a voice in the party. By late 2019 I was forced to acknowledge that this was no longer the case. The connection between membership and leadership was broken some time prior to that. But like many others, I clung on convinced that the situation could be turned around. I stuck with the SNP long after others had quite because I wanted to restore the spirit that had been lost and genuinely supposed this to be possible. I was mistaken. I was wrong.
What made matters much worse was that it was not only the connection between membership and leadership that was lost. One of the things I had argued made the SNP different from other political parties – and explained its electoral success – was a connection between party and people. It wasn’t just members who were listened to. The SNP at that time was remarkably aware of and responsive to the public mood. Not being bound by ideological dogma and ossified partisan rivalries, the SNP was able to adopt an approach to policy which I described as principled pragmatism. That this principled pragmatism appealed to voters is evident in the party’s rise to dominance of Scotland’s political scene between 2007 and 2015. It has been all downhill from there.
Nothing illustrates this loss of connection better than the protracted debacle of the SNP/SGP Scottish Government’s catastrophically cack-handed stab at a Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRR). Nothing better demonstrates the obdurate unwillingness to listen than the party leadership’s blank refusal hear criticism of its self-ID proposals or concerns regarding sex-based rights or warnings about a potential clash with reserved legislation.
The most tragic thing about the ultimate fate of GRR is its obvious inevitability – combined with the Scottish Government’s abject failure to discern this inevitability. Even now, when the Bill is unquestionably dead, Shirley-Anne Somerville refuses to bury it. Like Norman Bates’ ill-fated mother, the corpse is to be preserved and kept on display so that the ‘debate’ that has been the cause of so much harm can rumble bitterly on.
Alex Salmond has provided what should be the epitaph for the GRR Bill.
Self-identification was the worst legislation in the history of devolution. It divided the country, weakened the political process and alienated much of the women’s movement from their own parliament.
Now that Scottish Government ministers have been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Alister Jack and ridiculed in defence of the indefensible, they might reflect that a renewed focus on self-determination for fuel-poor Scots in energy-rich Scotland might be a better way forward for 2024.
Alex Salmond: Gender reforms ‘worst legislation in the history of devolution’
It would be gratifying to think this was the final word on the whole sorry affair. But that would be to reckon without the mindless persistence of Ms Somerville and her colleagues. Rather than lay the matter to rest and after a period of quiet reflection, go back to the drawing-board, they continue to insist the legislation is fine and the only reason it is not law is the wicked intransigence of the British government is the person of Alister “Union” Jack. His resort to Section 35 of the Scotland Act is, they declare, an attack on devolution. Well, of course it is! Devolution has been under intensifying attack since at least 2007. The point is not that it is a wholly unsurprising attack on Scotland’s democracy but that the attack was successful.
As Alex Salmond states, the Scottish Government was “comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Alister Jack”. Which is no tribute to the odious Mr Jack as the Scottish Government contrived to hand him an effortless victory. He couldn’t lose. The Scottish Government couldn’t win. They were told this repeatedly. They just wouldn’t listen!
Peter A Bell 
It is hard to know what is the most ridiculous:
Shona Robison:
“If we see this again, on a piece of legislation the Secretary of State for Scotland happens not to like, we will continue to robustly defend the wishes of this Parliament.
“(We will) make sure that we get the support of civic Scotland and other institutions in Scotland, to make sure that we send a loud message that this pattern of behaviour will not be tolerated.
“And we want to make sure if there is a change of government at UK level that we get a different understanding and a different relationship that is based on respect.”
(https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/shona-robison-confirms-gender-reform-31713060)
It reminds me of a slimmed down female – that’s f-e-m-a-l-e as in WOMAN – version of one Ian Blackford spluttering that ‘Scotland will not get taken out of the EU against its will!’
or
Shirley-Anne Somerville:
“For the avoidance of doubt, this bill is not in the bin and is waiting an incoming UK government that has more respect for devolution.”
“Regardless of people’s views and opinions on gender recognition, that is a very worrying place for our parliament to be.”
(https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/20/gender-recognition-reform-bill-scottish-ministers-drop-legal-action-westminster-veto)
More respect! This overt appeal to Starmer will have Labour, Tories and the rest of the British rolling around the ground, holding their bloated stomachs, in fits of laughter.
The SNP:
A party of gullible fools led by cabal of bloody-minded morons.
(with a few exceptions excluded).
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They truly are proving the too stupid bit of too wee, too poor, and too stupid.
We have a group of the worst political representatives in the UK if not Europe. They are heading lemming like to oblivion. Unfortunately they will cause irreparable damage to Scotland on the way.
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A sorry tale indeed and there has been much written about the demise of the SNP and no doubt there will be much more in the coming years with different degrees of knowledge and understanding of the true story.
I have been supporting trans people for over 30 years and still do for 3 at present but I have heard nothing but condemnation from them about this ridiculous legislation. Yes, no doubt at all that reform was needed as it was overly-regulated and controlled by psychiatrists with varying levels of understanding. However, I am told that where many of those that I have helped over the years were quite happy and accepted within their local communities, some of them are fearful of what is happening and has happened to others who have been abused both verbally and physically since this Bill has become the most important issue for the Scottish Coalition Government..
Leaving aside the cack-handed efforts of reform proposed by the GRRB, how did they ever think that it would pass WM scrutiny? In October 2021, the UKSC ruled against the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child because it interfered with WM legislation i.e. Section 28/7 of the Scotland Act 1998 and the right for WM to make laws for Scotland. An opportunity for WM to slap down the Scottish Parliament and let them know their limitations. Yet one year later they hoped that the UKSC was going to allow a section 30 Order and of course they used the exact same Section 28/7 to once again rule against the competence of the Scottish Parliament. How on earth they expected that WM would miss the opportunity to once again slap down and humiliate the Scottish Parliament over the GRRB by the use of Section 35 Order is beyond understanding.
The GRRB may have the support of the Scottish Parliament but it certainly does not have the support of what really matters, i.e. the people of Scotland.
When will the Scottish government finally understand that the Scottish Parliament is only an administrative arm of the superior Westminster parliament? The Scotland Act 1998 is doing exactly what it was designed to do and that is to prevent the restoration of Scotland’s right to self-determination and independence.
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I’d vote for that bear though, all the right attributes, jug ears out and listening, eyes wide open, mouth firmly shut.
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SAS displaying the arrogance that got Scotland into this mess. Claiming that it’s Parliament’s bill not just the SNP’s beggars belief. Labour, although they voted for it, soon saw the voter backlash and remain silent, apart from Starmer saying he is opposed to it.
The overwhelming response to the GRR consultation was opposition
For SAS to claim the court didn’t condemn the Bill is the antics of the asylum.
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The SNP has manouevred itself into a position in which it doesn’t feel the need to listen. They know that the Scottish people don’t really have a choice of parties to vote for, and so they pick up the votes by default. So Scotland is not governed by a party of choice, but one of last resort.
That has given them the power to do what they want, and there is no sign that they feel the need to change their approach. No matter how bad they are as a government, people will still feel trapped into voting for them, because there is no acceptable alternative. They have thus become immune to normal political pressures, and will continue to feel free to ignore anyone who doesn’t loudly cheer the party line, disastrous as it may be.
It has become Boris Johnsons ‘turd’. It cannot be polished. The only thing you could do with such an object is to flush it away. But because of the ‘SNP by default’ situation occurring time after time, the cloth eared rabble will continue to play their juvenile games regardless of the fact that Scotland is going down the pan, when it should be them.
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“manouevred itself”? Only with a lot of help from the Yes movement. And, of course, the voters. We put the SNP where it is.
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We put them in to do a job which they promised to do. We weren’t complicit in their change of direction which Sturgeon brought about.
Once they had become all powerful they stuck two fingers up, and ploughed their own furrow. Listening went off the agenda, and shows no sign of return.
The cuckoo’s egg hatched, and all the other young birds were tipped out of the nest. leaving a monster which feeds on power, fed by disenfranchised voters.
I feel no guilt. Just betrayal.
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The people are sovereign. Governments are what we make them. Or what we allow them to be.
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I would suggest we have much to learn from postcolonial theory (Fanon, Memmi, Cesaire etc), upon which is developed an accurate template on the basis of such events and experiences in numerous former colonies. This helps explain what is happening, and what is still to occur.
In colonial societies in the process of decolonization:
the dominant national party elite becomes part of the racket, it behaves like a gang, it feathers its nest and builds up its pensions
it takes the movement up successive blind alleys, delaying independence, becoming an instrument of coercion
it lacks any innovation on the main cause and, in order to make itself look busy it introduces laws which mystify (and oppresses) the people, halting any progress towards liberation
the national party elite attach a fundamental importance to the fetish of organization which takes precedence over a reasoned study of colonial society; it does not understand what independence means or why it is essential and urgent
such developments sicken the movement which result in its rupture leading to creation of new national parties
which brings us then to the second phase, where the more assimilated native is disturbed; he decides to remember what he is and, no matter whether he thought of himself as British or French, realises this was ‘a manufactured being’ (Memmi)
And so “we spew ourselves up; but already underneath laughter can be heard” (Fanon) as we realise the colonial hoax and begin to understand our ‘condition’
the third and final phase must awaken and ‘shake the people’ from their lethargy in the face of the forces of occupation and deliver liberation; failing which they and their culture will perish
Click to access The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
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Peter, you are avoiding the pertinent point, made above, that the SNP is the party of last resort. The people may be sovereign but can only vote for one of the parties put before them. Having been betrayed by the SNP, the independence movement seems incapable of harnessing the power of the people so that the government becomes ‘what we make them’ and does ‘what we allow them to do’.
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I’ve been “avoiding the pertinent point” by writing and speaking about it for the last four years.
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