The question of whether the public wants Nicola Sturgeon to remain as First Minister is quite distinct from the question of whether her remaining is what best serves Scotland's cause. Or for that matter, what best serves Scotland. Clearly, there is no appetite either within the SNP or among the general public for Sturgeon to … Continue reading The question for conference
Yesterday, I received a number of messages drawing my attention to Lord Frost's rant in the Telegraph and asking if I would be commenting on it. I was already aware of the article. It was difficult to avoid given the unfavourable attention it was getting from the independence movement. Given that Yes activists make up … Continue reading The ugly face of British Nationalism
As you watch events unfold over the coming days and weeks please remember this. It is not the diagnosis that kills the patient. It's the disease. It is not the people who warn of impending failure who bring about that failure. It's the people who ignore those warnings. Before you start shooting messengers, bear in … Continue reading The worst of times
My preference would have been that Nicola Sturgeon combine her role as Scotland's political leader and her role as de facto figurehead of the independence movement with a role as the 'face' of the campaign - with the SNP managing that campaign.
Why ask if 'Plan B' might be a panacea anyway? Has anybody claimed that it might have the power to cure all ills? Come to that, has anybody claimed that it might be the "solution to all our indy woes"? Or that it could "break the constitutional stand off and get us swiftly and easily to independence"? Who has described 'Plan B' in such terms? When? Where?
Nicola Sturgeon is an astute and highly experienced politician. As a political operator, she is undoubtedly outshone by her predecessor. But that leaves her plenty of scope for putting into practice whatever tricks she may have picked up.
I am generally in favour of sympathy. If I say society has deteriorated over recent decades largely due to a declining capacity for human empathy, this may be more than just the tendency to rose-tinted hindsight which often comes with age.
The SNP leadership has seized on the Ashcroft poll with the eagerness of someone accused of a serious crime who has suddenly been offered an alibi. At last! Something they can represent as vindicating the relentless waiting that has become their only discernible strategy.
The anti-democratic British Nationalist 'One Nation' project is behind schedule - by about a year. The Article 50 extension granted by the EU gave us a year's grace. A year in which we could have acted to save Scotland. A year which has been wantonly squandered.
This is dominance behaviour. It is political scent-marking. It is a blunt and imperious message from the British state reminding us that they own devolution. They own the Scottish Parliament. They own Scotland.
Peter A Bell 