What is remarkable about Tommy Sheppard’s self-serving sales-pitch for the SNP is not the dishonesty of it, but the bland wishy-washiness of it. I mean, as electoral calls to action go, vote for us and “we will use every means to press that mandate” isn’t exactly the full-throated, blood-curdling battle-cry of a claymore-wielding warrior. Follow me and I will make a perfectly reasonable demands in a courteous and respectful manner hardly makes the grade as rabble-rousing oratory. It’s all a bit pathetic. It’s all so plainly ineffectual.
To be fair to Tommy, he has to be cautious. He can’t be seen to be promising more than Humza Yousaf is able or willing to deliver. He mustn’t go writing cheques that the party can’t or won’t honour. Most of all, he has to avoid sounding like he’s trying to top the boss in a way that might be taken to imply a tilt at the leadership. That could get a chap into a spot of bother. The lesson dished out to Joanna Cherry and others has been well-learned by all her colleagues. Except Angus Brendan MacNeil, of course. And look where he’s ended up – helplessly adrift in the limbo twixt SNP and Alba. But I digress.
The message from Tommy Sheppard is that the SNP has to “win” the coming UK general election. Quite how the SNP can do that when the most seats the party could possibly take remains a tiny fraction of the total at Westminster, is a bit of a mystery. The more so since the SNP leadership has so contrived things as to be all but certain of losing seats. In the British political system it’s very much a case of winner-takes-all. The winner in an election gets total power, the rest get nothing. Not even His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition gets a share of power. It terms of political effectiveness – the ability to bring about. The SNP cannot possibly “win” a Westminster election. But the party and its MPs can secure a share of whatever loot the British state is prepared to disburse in the name of maintaining the status quo. And the illusion of a functioning democracy.
So, when Tommy Sheppard talks of the SNP “winning” the election, that’s what he means. That’s all he can mean. Because that’s all that’s on offer. Nothing for Scotland. Nothing for Scotland’s cause. Just some desperately needed funding for the SNP and handsome remuneration for the party’s MPs.
The truth is that there is no “win” for Scotland in the 2024 UK general election. There is no “win” for the fight to end the Union and restore Scotland’s independence. There is no outcome which is other than bad news for Scotland. There is no permutation of parliamentary arithmetic which holds the prospect of progress for Scotland’s cause. The reality is that not all the votes in Scotland will make any difference in this election. There is no form of tactical voting that can possibly save Scotland from the British Nationalist onslaught. There is no way for anyone so minded to vote for independence. There is no party standing in Scotland on a platform of ending the Union and restoring constitutional normality to this nation of ours.
Tommy Sheppard’s task here is to do a much as he can to suggest that a vote for the SNP is a vote for independence, without actually saying that it is a vote for independence. Like every other nominally pro-independence politician, Tommy is charged with saying just enough to snare the gullible and make it easy for the party loyalists to maintain their faith. Independence supporters hungry for anything remotely resembling a promise of meaningful action can be relied on to take take a lot more out of Tommy Sheppard’s words than he has put into them.
Like the hole in the middle of the mint and the valleys between the peaks in the chocolate bar, it’s all about putting the least product in the most packaging. Perhaps Tommy can claim credit for using endlessly recycled packaging. But he’s struggling to find any product to put inside.
Peter A Bell 
I despise Tommy Sheppard.
For all the contemptuous scaremongering, lies and threats contained in articles he writes and the words he utters. His ‘vote for the SNP or Independence gets it’ column in today’s National being a particularly despicable exhibit.
The real reason I suspect that Tommy Sheppard is touting ‘Independence’ so hard now is he is more than likely in trouble in his Edinburgh East constituency. This is the seat in the Scottish capital that voted 47.3% for actual Independence – versus 38.9% for Edinburgh overall – and which was much higher than the other 5 constituencies in the city (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum).
People really have had enough of the bull crap offered up by phoneys, windbags and forelock tugging, cap-doffing, cringing self-identified “good parliamentarians” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2wSGjjHXfQ) like Tommy Sheppard.
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Sheppard’s main interest seems to be abolishing the House of Lords. Who gives a flying one? With Independence the House of Lords is gone for Scotland anyway. He’s a diversion from what should be the SNP’s main, and at times of desperate need, only policy.
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Another sadly accurate synposis, Peter.
In Sheppard’s article he states that: “A generation of Labour activists – of which I am one – made a conscious decision to embrace independence as a political strategy not because we were nationalists, but because we believed it offered a better prospect for achieving the social and economic change we desired.”
So, first off Sheppard is not and never has been a ‘nationalist’. He does not therefore know that in order to free the people from oppression the colonized must first become a nationalist (Fanon), as a form of ‘defensive nationalism’ (Memmi) in the struggle against ‘aggressive (British) nationalism’!
Second, like many on the Left, he mistakenly believes independence to be a fight between political ideologies of Left and Right, between Socialism versus Capitalism. This ignores the fact that the most urgent and necessary priority in any colonial society is first ridding an oppressed people of a colonial and hence a racist system; whatever political ideology a liberated people choose AFTER independence is a matter for them and them alone at that time (Memmi).
And so we are sadly left with the sickening realisation that ‘politicians are not intellectuals’ and that Mr Sheppard and his ilk clearly have no idea what independence or nationalism/national consciousness even means, which largely explains why they have yet to find the only remedy:
Click to access THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
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Tommy Sheppard never left Labour, it left him, and he’s still Labour – UK Labour. Joining the SNP was just about opportunism. And his piece in the National is all about UK Labour. Love is where the heart is.
I was at a hustings with him as a candidate depute leader. In reply to my (popular) question he said he would do this, and do that to get branches to be more active about Independence. So did 2 of the others, McEleny and Smith. The only one who, later when I gave it a little thought gave the right answer was Robertson, who said it was up to the branches as this was the SNP root and branch democracy. The other three gave the answer I clearly wanted at the time.
Say what you like about Robertson he was the genuine article, the other 3 were opportunists, and a clear symptom of what is wrong with the SNP.
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Tommy Sheppard talks of
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