Founded in 1934 the Scottish National Party has one overriding aim – independence for Scotland. Their primary purpose for the last 87 years has been to get Scotland out of the UK.
Having failed to persuade us in 2014 they could easily have forced a second referendum but avoided doing so. Instead, they constantly complain about Westminster and the Torys while collecting bumper salaries and expenses.
Having gained power in Holyrood in partnership with the Green party, the SNP won a clear majority of seats (69 out of 129) in the 2011 Scottish election. Discussions were started with the UK government and a referendum was agreed. Even before the first vote took place, the seeds of failure in a second referendum were being sown.
Although the result of the 2014 referendum was a clear vote to remain in the UK, the SNP went from strength to strength and won all but 3 Scottish seats in the UK elections the next year.
Nicola Sturgeon had been appointed leader by her predecessor Alex Salmond and by popular acclaim within her party. She was adamant that Scotland must not be ‘dragged out’ of the EU against our will by the Brexit referendum, conveniently forgetting that we would have been out if the Yes side had won the 2014 referendum.
What happened next was bizarre.
Nicola Sturgeon insisted that the Brexit referendum result, where 62% of Scots who voted supported Remain, was a mandate for independence (it wasn’t for the simple reason that the question was about the UK, not Scotland alone).
You would think that the party’s energies would then be focused on getting Scotland out of the UK before the UK left the EU. They spoke a lot about that but what they did was to fight to block the Brexit result and to find ways to keep the UK in the EU.
Why would a party intent on leaving the UK care about whether the rest of the UK was in or out of the EU? Why would they seek to overturn the result if they intended for us to leave the UK anyway?
Theresa May had become Prime Minister after the Brexit referendum but her hold on power was weak. She called a snap election in 2017 and it became weaker. The SNP lost 21 seats in that election but still held 35.
Imagine the call.
Theresa, it’s Nicola here. I know you are not a fan but I’ve got a wee offer to make. You guarantee us another referendum in the next couple of years and I’ll deliver 35 MPs who will support everything you want to get Brexit done.
It is a matter of record that Mrs May spent up to £2 Billion securing the support of just 10 Ulster Unionist MPs – she’d have jumped at such an offer.
No such offer was made and by mid July 2019 Mrs May had to step down and Boris Johnson was selected by the Conservative party to replace her and he became the Prime Minister. A general election followed in December where the SNP fought on a platform of “Stop Brexit” – something the knew was impossible and which was also nothing to do with a party that intended Scotland to leave the UK.
So, the SNP led Scottish government could easily have gotten agreement for a second referendum and avoided Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister.
Failing Scotland and Failing their Party.
If the SNP were to secure a second referendum on independence they would almost certainly lose it – probably by a larger margin than in 2014.
When it comes to winning a referendum, the simplest way for them to win over undecided voters would be to do the day job well. Instead, the SNP administration in Holyrood are, to put it simply, failing Scotland. Waiting lists are growing, NHS funding shrinking, the attainment gap between poor and wealthy students is widening and addicts are dying in record high numbers year after year.
With every bad news story comes the lament that Westminster are to blame and that we need to leave the UK to fix the problems.
That worked for a while, but after 14 years and with health, education and all council services being fully devolved to Scotland, and funding for all of these areas cut deeper than the funding to Holyrood there is nowhere to hide.
It seems that the SNP took control in 2007 believing they wouldn’t have it for long and so they continued, as they always had, to behave as a party of protest. For 14 years the successive SNP administrations failed to take responsibility for their actions, content to fail and blame others.
The SNP are, and always have been, a part of protest – not a party of power.
The Scam
Every year the SNP have held fundraisers to bolster party funds, including several with the aim of collecting specifically for the next referendum campaign. The police are now helping the party membership to find out where that money went.
Every year they have promised big and delivered small.
- Their promise to end delayed hospital discharges by the end of 2015 resulted in a record HIGH number and no improvement since.
- Nicola Sturgeons insistence that we judge her on education was dropped as our education system crumbled. She pointed to increasing exam passes while failing to admit that the grades are allocated by percentage. They could literally order a 2% increase in ‘A’ passes and that’s what we’d see.
Students at many schools in deprived areas aren’t even allowed to do enough subjects to get them into certain university courses. - Hospital waiting times being enshrined in law hasn’t stopped them being broken hundreds of thousands of times before Covid struck.
- Our ferry services are an embarrassment, women’s rights are being stripped away and our legal system is compromised to the point that likely payouts fro malicious prosecutions will total over half a normal years budget and we have an elderly blogger in prison as a punishment for publishing Alex Salmond’s defence in the trial that found him not guilty on all charges.
- The list goes on and on…
By maintaining the pretence that they are pushing towards independence, and by being adversarial and confrontational with the UK government instead of cooperating where possible, the SNP ensure their loyal following will turn out obediently at the ballot box.
They also keep Scotland mired with poor decisions, infective public services and ministers appointed for their loyalty to the leadership rather than their ability to get the job done.
Even their most vocal supporters and independence bloggers are concerned. Most now admit that the SNP leadership has no intention of holding another referendum and indeed have done nothing as a party to make the case they failed to make in 2014.
The SNP leaders are failing their membership, their country and their own founding principles.
They are now only serving themselves.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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