A Date, a Date our Country for a Date

As Westminster returns to default chaos and omnishambles things are strangely quiet in Scotland.

Debacles at Westminster are nothing new it is just they are turning up with greater regularity under Labour. The Tories themselves flirted with comparative normality but instead have opted for continuing lunatic Britain, with either Kemi or Jenrick. Labour has people scunnered with their twice weekly cash scandals. 

Just after the election I mentioned to Alex Salmond and a some others,  that the next  6 months, would be for Labour’s  honeymoon. I asserted that if they continue with Brexit and Tory austerity, matters will start to fray after 6 months by January. I was wrong. By September, the previous little loved Sunak Government was more popular than the depressives of team gloomy Starmer. They the lurch. almost Boris-style, from cluelessness to chaos. Or as one Labour MP wryly told me recently, “It is a government with all the finesse and choreography of a 3-legged Friesian heifer. 

The upshot is that the opportunity is again coming to an open goal for Scottish independence. The opportunity was squandered by a lack of real leadership in the Boris years, so what will happen this time?

If our newspaper columnist weathervanes, Kevin McKenna, and Iain MacWhirter are to be believed it is “ochone, ochone we are doomed.”  They feel the opportunity has gone. In fairness they are just picking the tone set by the SNP Government as regards independence, which is lacklustre, and they are reflecting the disinterested behaviour of the Scottish Government towards independence.

However, with the UK again reverting to the default of political corruption scunnering the Scottish public as well as in other countries, there is a wonderful opportunity for a pro-independence Government that would be switched on to any opportunity to get Scotland moving. Moving in ways that deals with cost-of-living crisis, and not just its symptoms. 

It is 8 years since my Energy and Climate Change Committee went to the Danish Technical University (DTU), and a sensible question was asked about Fuel Poverty from a new-boy MP, one James Cleverly. The researchers looked at each other in the DTU until one answered, "In Denmark folk can afford stuff." Well 8 years later in the UK fewer folk can afford stuff, the direction of travel is not good.

So, the Scottish Government again stands at an open goal, or soon will do. In the SNP ranks are some, let us call them, “the generally feartie”, who will say,  “Do nothing we will not get the votes on our record”. There are others, “The not until 2050” brigade,  in essence these are Two Decade Unionists, saying , “not now”. Time may yet show some of these characters to be travellers of convenience if they turn into “Infinite Decade Yoons.”

Trapped in those headlights the SNP leadership fails to inspire – next to no one is reading the papers they are releasing on independence; they are hardly publicising it themselves. A few of their number have actually in their deeds abandoned independence for devolving XYZ powers. John Swinney on BBC Newsnight, was so caught in Starmer’s Nations and Regions workshop, that it was all about noting that Scotland in the UK is doing a fraction better than Yorkshire while not mentioning independence or that Ireland in the last decade has 10 times the average the economic growth of Scotland.

It need not be like this, leave the lack lustre and the generally gloomy to Keir Starmer and get on the front foot ready for the coming opportunity. Fight not on the record of performance with the shackles of UK devolution but on independence. Devolution tells us nothing about independence, just compare Northern Ireland to the Republic.

Instead give people hope and inspire, work with others who want independence to help disinfect the SNP record - name a date for an election on independence, not a devolved record.  A date, a date, our independence for a date. Independence is a matter for the majority will of the Scottish people. they  could express that opinion in a referendum, however we all know that is blocked, but they can also express it at an election.

People are not going to engage with independence or papers published by the Scottish Government on the matter, unless the leadership at Holyrood looks serious about the actual prospect of independence. 

Thus far Swinney doesn’t look interested in independence and is quite content to squander his days as SNP leader, in the same manner as Sturgeon and Yusaf, by achieving nothing and even worse not trying to achieve anything.  At least Nicola Sturgeon went to the Supreme Court although she incredibly had not gamed any reactions to possible outcomes. A genuine antipode to a great strategist like Napolean.

But Swinney has the opportunity to be the man of the moment, to electrify Scotland. To change weathervane commentators, to scare the likes of BBC’s Nick Robinson and James Naughtie back to Scotland as happened in 2014. A mere spider changed the mindset and thus the fortunes of Robert the Bruce, naming a date for an independence election could do the same for John Swinney.

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(This article was about to be published on Saturday evening, but literally minutes before the dreadfully sad news of the great Alex Salmond’s death came through.  Alex as we all know was always pushing for Scottish independence for how it could change and improve Scotland.  He too, recently, in light if the Supreme Court, especially saw elections were the only way to independence.  We disagreed, as ever amicably, on when that election should be.  

He felt I was too idealistic by wanting an early election on independence, not because it wouldn’t work or electrify the news agenda, but for the practical unfortunate matter that the SNP would never give independence a chance at the polls, before the Westminster timetabled election at Holyrood in 2026.   He was likely right and the more practical (again) on that reality - time will inevitably tell. We agreed to disagree.  But I still feel the SNP’s tremendous opportunity, but also its inactivity, of which he despaired of in recent times, should be highlighted.)

May he rest in peace, and get full justice posthumously.  The dream will never die, until it becomes a reality.