A couple of headlines in today’s Sunday National looked promising as I cast around seeking inspiration for an article. With a column in which Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s campaign director for the forthcoming UK General Election, outlines his plans and a report previewing Humza Yousaf’s address to the STUC congress in Dundee on Tuesday, it should be possible to gain a clear idea of the party’s campaign strategy. Plenty material there for a 1,000-word commentary. Or so you’d think.
Stewart Hosie’s piece is remarkable only for the fact that it ends before it’s finished. Given that the headline leads us to expect information about the SNP’s proposed offering to voters, what we actually get is depressingly disappointing. To be fair to Mr Hosie, he does manage to squeeze in a mention of “independence” in the opening paragraph. It’s almost as if he’s keen to get it out of the way. As if he’s embarrassed to talk about the constitutional issue. As if he has nothing to say on the matter of restoring Scotland’s independence.
This is what I mean when I say the article ends before it is finished. This is the campaign director of the ‘party of independence’, after all. It seems reasonable to expect that having broached the subject in the first paragraph, he would return to it further down the page. That one mention of independence isn’t even in the context of the campaign. But that’s pretty much all we get.
There is a stock phrase about the SNP being “the party for all of Scotland – rooted in Scotland’s values and defending Scotland’s right to choose its own future”. What form this defence might take remains a mystery. That the people of Scotland have the right to choose is beyond question. What I hoped to hear from Stewart Hosie was something about how it is proposed to enable us to exercise this right. What is the point in having the right of self-determination if the party of government in Scotland has no plans or proposals for an opportunity to choose? While the party we elected to govern Scotland is supposedly defending the principle of Scotland’s right to choose its own future”, that future is in practice continues to be dictated by parties and politicians we rejected at the polls. Stewrt Hosie has nothing to tell us about how his party intends to rectify this affront to democracy.
The rest is a pick ‘n’ mix of well-worn boilerplate. This, for example –
The SNP Scottish Government has also ensured people are benefitting from free university education, free personal care, free prescriptions and free bus travel for under-22s and over-60s.
Which literally begs the question, “Aye! But what have you done for us lately, Stewart?”. At least he didn’t mention baby-boxes! Doubtless, the reproving memo from HQ will have hit his inbox by now.
This is tired, stale, insipid stuff. And just we expect him to get to the meat of his plans for the 2024 Westminster election, Stewart Hosie winds up his flimsy column with a woeful summary of the SNP’s offering.
At the General Election, Scottish voters have the chance to reject the cosy status quo of a broken Westminster system and take a step towards a more prosperous, independent Scotland – where we’ll never again have Tory governments that we don’t vote for.
With SNP candidates confirmed in all 57 Scottish constituencies, the SNP are ready and raring for the Westminster election.
And our message to the people of Scotland is one of optimism and hope – vote SNP to make Scotland Tory-free, vote SNP for a strong voice at Westminster standing up for Scotland and vote SNP to ensure that decisions are made in Scotland, for Scotland.
We’ve heard it all before. We’ve been hearing this for years. Far too many years. So far, nothing has come of any of it. Time after time we’ve rejected the “cosy status quo of a broken Westminster system” only to find the party we voted for in order to demonstrate this rejection deferring to that same “broken Westminster system”. In election after election, Scotland’s voters have responded to that message of hope and optimism. Nothing of what we hope for has been delivered. Nothing in Stewart Hosie’s ‘plans’ for the election gives us cause to be optimistic that our rejection of the Union will be given ‘democratic effect’, to borrow the SNP’s deceitful euphemism for the uteerly discredited Section 30 process.
We’ve heard that “strong voice at Westminster”. Ian Blackford’s three speeches are tattooed on our memory.
The one with the dire warning about what the British government is about to do before they do it. The one loudly objecting to what the British government is doing while it’s doing it. And the one angrily protesting against what the British government has done after it has done it.
Can we roll credits now?
We are all, I’m sure, grateful for the fact that Stephen Flynn has thus far avoided getting stuck on that treadmill. But how are we to assess this “strong voice” purportedly provided by the SNP’s Westminster group? Surely we can only judge by results. The measure of a ‘strong voice’ is the effect that it has. I challenge anybody to find any effect attributable to SNP MPs. For all the ‘refreshed’ style brought to the group leader’s role by Stephen Flynn, the cycle is unchanged from the days of Blackford’s three speeches. Nothing in what Stewart Hosie writes gives any assurance of that cycle being broken.
There is, however, a phrase we find scattered throughout his column which hints at what may be the dominant theme of the SNP’s election campaign. That phrase is “Scotland’s values”. What is interesting is that this term also features in the speech Humza Yousaf will give at the STUC conference. A speech in which Yousaf will present the election as a ‘choice of values’. A choice between the values which inform Scotland’s distinctive political culture and the values represented by the British parties.
I get the sense that somewhere in the SNP somebody is bringing just a hint of clever thinking to the party’s election strategy. Their problem is that, as Stewart Hosie amply demonstrates, they have nothing substantial or novel to offer the electorate – and especially independence supporters. So, what are they to talk about? The great thing about the concept of values is that even left undefined, it sounds positive and worthy. Here’s Humza. –
In this election, Scotland has a choice of values, and I will be calling on people to vote for what they believe in, and vote for a progressive future for Scotland that I know we all want to see.
Humza Yousaf: Scotland in ‘choice of values’ at next General Election
The rhetoric is excellent. But where’s the substance? The advantage of an undefined term such as ‘values’ is also its weakness. There is nothing tangible at its centre. Nothing solid. The term is purposefuly vague. Because it is undefined, voters are free to have it mean whatever they want it to mean. Given that these values are contrasted with the values represented by the British parties, voters will inevitably put their own positive spin on the term.
Or their own negative spin! That’s the problem. Because the term ‘values’ is undefined, it is open to being burdened with associations chosen by the SNP’s opponents. As is amply demonstrated by the odious Jackie Baillie, who is given the last word in the story about Humza Yousaf’s intended speech. Yousaf serves –
Keir Starmer’s values will see him lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, but not lift the two-child benefit cap, those are the wrong values and wrong priorities
Baillie returns –
The SNP cannot lecture anyone on values as long as it is defending the eye-watering profits of oil and gas giants while hiking taxes on working people.
Love – forty, Ms Baillie!
An idea is only as good as its execution. If the SNP intends making contrasting values the centre-piece of its election campaign, not for the first time we have to wonder if Humza Yousaf is the best person for the job.
The main point is that as far as Scotland’s cause is concerned, there’s nothing here. It’s what is not said that matters. And absolutely nothing is said by either Stewart Hosie or Humza Yousaf which suggests the SNP has either the wit or the will to restore Scotland’s independence. Since nobody else can, that is very bad news for our nation.
Peter A Bell 
Stewart Hosie SNP GE Campaign manager in the National:
“And our message to the people of Scotland is one of optimism and hope – vote SNP to make Scotland Tory-free, vote SNP for a strong voice at Westminster standing up for Scotland and vote SNP to ensure that decisions are made in Scotland, for Scotland.“
They still don’t get it. We don’t want Scotland to be Tory-free, we want to be Westminster-free; we don’t want a strong voice at Westminster we want OUT of Westminster. The only way to ensure decisions are made in Scotland for Scotland, is INDEPENDENCE.
So was Independence mentioned in this pathetic excuse for an article by Stewart Hosie? Yes, just the once:
“I promised to remain active in the SNP and the cause of independence for Scotland.“
Broken promise if that article is anything to go by.
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It looks like Yousaf is now fixated on this ‘Tory-free’ pish as if it was the greatest electioneering idea ever. The guy just isn’t very bright.
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They really have to get off the Tory focus when Labour are in many ways a bigger barrier to escape .The stronger voice at Westminster schtick is also infuriatingly out of touch.
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“I get the sense that somewhere in the SNP somebody is bringing just a hint of clever thinking to the party’s election strategy.”
I sometimes hope there is. For instance there could be a message to get out before the STUC conference, as they’re not far from being onside, specially the way Starmer is destroying Labour and making Sarwar look like a foolish glove puppet.
And ultimately it’s not too late until the actual day of the General Election – in 2011 Salmond had been vague about the Indy ref timing (the 2008 crash still a problem), and it required the media to pin him down to the “second half of the parliamentary term” which turned out to be 18th September 2014. So a few days before GE, a totally unambiguous message from the SNP about the GE being a vote for Indy, and the SNP could swoosh the GE.
Ah well, time to wake up now.
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“a few days before GE”
Have to take account of postal votes of course.
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That “unambiguous message” would have to be in the party’s manifesto. Which, presumably, would be publish much earlier than the day before the vote. The only reason for than message going out so late would be that the party was facing electoral disaster and was resorting to ‘desperate measures’. Who would trust a ‘promise’ made under such circumstances. I’m willing to bet that given the kind of scrutiny these messages rarely get, we’d find it was ‘not-quite-a-promise’. Or a promise of something other and much less than SNP loyalists would immediately and unthinkingly assume. Remember that those party loyalists swore blind that the ‘new strategy for independence’ agreed at last October’s conference had nothing to do with Section 30.
I’d want the undertaking in writing and signed in blood before I’d even start to think about trusting the SNP to deliver. Even then, I’d be looking at every word and punctuation mark in that undertaking seeking the get-out clause. And, of course, it shouldn’t be a “vote for Indy”. But I weary of pointing this out when it should be obvious.
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The SNP leadership have so hideously distorted the meaning of language that the words of Yousaf, Flynn, Hosie and co could mean anything that they wish them to be. They will re-interpret them as suits there own purposes at a juncture that the consider appropriate to do so.
And when Yousaf talks of a “progressive” future for Scotland I become deeply worried.
Once that word spoken in a political sense meant something left of centre and referenced the economics of Keynes with government intervention and demand management fiscal policy as well as social policies that prioritised the welfare state, health, housing and employment. With the Scottish Government this has come to be code for accommodating men in women’s safe spaces, suppression of free speech and intolerance of alternative views.
As I remain committed to the restoration of Scotland’s full self-government and independent statehood I will not be voting for the SNP.
#EndTheUnion
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Aye. The wrod ‘progressive’ uttered by anyone from the SNP or Greens certainly rings alarm bells for me.
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‘progressive‘ has come to mean individual instead of collective, societal rights, which include proper government regulation of ‘free’ unconstrained market forces. You know, something along the lines of what we once came to take as normal, when banks facilitated actual business and essential services were not profit extraction machines for the obscenely wealthy. Thatcher’s legacy is a hate crime. But its fine, the pampered classes are now further empowered to use its victims* as scapegoats for their unease about the shitshow we all now exist in.
*racist, and incitement to division in itself of course. Not that its a competition, but its people of colour who as a demographic continue to suffer the worst poverty. Braverman couldnt have done a better job. Witness the opportunist Labour councillors. Plenty more where they came from.
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Yousaf n Hosiery display the Unbearable Lightness Of Meaning that characterises every utterance by the snP in these days of ” miracles ( humans CAN change sex ) & wonder ( a whole day has passed without their Green pals producing a policy of dazzling idiocy : that said , I was busy yesterday so may have missed it ) ” .
I reckon you’re right , P – they ( snP ) have heard , ie …. Party sorceress Kirsty Blackman was visited in her dreams by a non-binary denizen of the Twilight Zone and informed that * things * are not well in Lotus Land – and desperate measures are required to save the mission .
These may include finding out the names of every single person who voted Tory previously and may do so in the future – and * eliminating * them with extreme prejudice ; this noble task to be realised by exposing the aforementioned ingrates to 5 mins in the company of John Nicolson ( I can hear the distressed , futile pleas for mercy already ) . Thus ensuring Scotland is , indeed , Tory Free .
If even this is insufficient to avert electoral catastrophe they may have to attempt to reanimate the political corpse of beloved avatar of fatuity – St Knickers of Dreghorn , n cart her around Scotland like those Indonesian tribes that * invite * their dead relatives to festive occasions . Pleasant company , I understand , but hopeless at communal sing-a-longs
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“vote SNP to ensure that decisions are made in Scotland, for Scotland.”
Shouldnt that be “in Scotland, for Scotland, by the Scottish people“?
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In a colonial society ‘only the values of the colonizer are sovereign’ (Memmi). Clearly the dubious values of the ‘mother country’ also apply to the colonial administrators, a richt paircel o rogues.
They aye kid on they work to liberate the fowk when all the time ‘they are moving ever closer to colonialism’ (Fanon), and duly ‘become an implement of coercion’; as we see in oppressive laws and use of colonial forces, moving ever closer to colonialism’s roots, which ‘is fascism’ (Cesaire).
In this situation the dominant national party and its hypocritical elite has nothing to offer the people but ‘meaningless slogans’ whilst for the most part ‘leaves independence to future events’ (Fanon), i.e. in the hands of the oppressor.
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I’m starting to get the impression that this is a hopeless situation. The SNP are a parcel of rogues, native elites, troughers doing Scotland down, even attacking independence, yet only the SNP can restore Scotland’s independence. It sounds hopeless, a Catch 22 if you like. A dilemma with no way out…
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Not quite hopeless. But the more time goes by, the more the problems pile up.
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