ALBA - Unofficial Forum

In one of my favourite moments in Father Ted, Dougal has an actually good idea. Ted jumps on it and asks a follow-up question. Dougal panics: "I went too far too soon” he says. "I didn’t know a good idea had to be followed by loads more little good ideas”. This is a problem the SNP has solved. And not by having lots more little good ideas…

Sometimes I despair. I know you wouldn’t know it but every day I look for something the Scottish Government is doing which I can be positive about. Relentless negativity isn’t really my style. And wouldn’t you know it, in other circumstances I’d be writing positive things about their actually quite encouraging (though chaotic and vague) proposals for local government reform.

But there is such a long way to go with that and there is so, so much that could go wrong, I find myself instead writing about the thing we know is certain. Which is to say ‘here comes SNP conference, quick, chloroform the members and come up with some elaborate bollocks to announce we can quickly forget the following day’.

When the SNP started trailing that it was going to produce a ‘prospectus’ which will ‘answer key questions undecided voters have’, I was entirely unsurprised. Because two weeks earlier we had announced a project to produce a ‘prospectus’ which would ‘answer key questions undecided voters have’

I’ve been here before many times. In 2017, frustrated at lack of action by the SNP, we (Common Weal) announced that we were going to run a project to look at the flaws and gaps in the White Paper (gaps which were crucial to our failure). I know for certain that the week before the SNP had no plans. But two weeks later they announced the Growth Commission.

It was only announced as a spoiler for us. This happened again the next year. We (Scottish Independence Convention) had spent £25,000 producing a strong, coherent plan and brand for an all-movement, public-facing campaign organisation. We wanted SNP support. Our Convener went for lunch with Nicola Sturgeon, told her about the launch date and asked for her support.

She said ‘oh, how wonderful’. The night before our launch, the SNP rushed out a cursory relaunch of Yes.scot. Again, the sole purpose was to destroy a movement initiative. Then again, I’ve always been pretty sure that the only reason the SNP ran its £600k ‘referendum’ fundraiser was because they got wind that the Scottish Independence Convention was planning.

Again, a rushed spoiler was rolled out. We had the last laugh though – they rushed this one so fast they forgot to put ‘any unused funds will revert to party budget’ disclaimer at the bottom and as a direct result one of them is in prison. This feels like some justice at least.

If this was me, Common Weal, SIC, it would be bad enough. But it’s not. On the first anniversary of the independence referendum quite a few pals of mine had been elected for the SNP. One was supposed to be speaking at an anniversary event with me. They contacted me and told me ‘I have to pull out – we’re being told all of us must be available for a party event’.

But there was no party event. It was an utter lie. Sturgeon had already decided that independence was soooo last year and she was now an ecumenical ‘mother of the nation’. She wanted the movement excommunicated from her new self-contained SNP. She made sure every journalist knew she was watching tennis on the anniversary.

Then they put on a full boycott of All Under One Banner, when there was utterly no justification for it. They briefed the Scottish media against the independence movement all the time. I know this because journalists told me they’d be told by her people to ignore anything from the movement. She told them she wouldn’t give us house room so we were irrelevant.

Then again, if you’re in the indy movement, you know this. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t failed to get a reply, or has been brushed off, ignored, boycotted or undermined. The SNP doesn’t answer the phone to scum like us.

Meanwhile the only people treated with more contempt than the independence movement is the party’s membership. That is now 12 years and to the best of my knowledge not a single branch has managed to get a single resolution on independence on any conference agenda ever – unless they’re on the payroll (Mairi Hunter has allowed her name to be put to one leadership-penned resolution) or who fully plan to be soon (YSI copy-pasted the other).

It is barely even possible to get amendments to motions through. This has had its desired effect, as has holding every conference in that awful out of town business park that is Aberdeen Conference Centre. If one SNP member has told me ‘I’m not paying £500 of my own money to go up there and be ignored for two days’ it must be 20 of them.

Which means two thirds of the conference are now paid staffers, politicians and others on the payroll. Last week the Common Weal graph of the week was on where political parties get their funding. It was quite revealing – the SNP is entirely unlike any other major party in terms of how much it relies on funding that comes from getting politicians elected.

If you looked at Reform’s funding but were told it was a business, the business model would be ‘produce content for sociopathic billionaires’. If you did the same for the SNP it would be ‘a small enterprise which monetised people getting elected’. It’s a bit like Uber for Scottish politics – you vote, the politician gets a salary but it is the SNP which takes the generous fees.

Which means it’s not a proper democracy at all any more. It’s a clique passing a a democracy. This begs a question – how do they get away with it? Mostly it is because a lot of activists are now basically well-boiled frogs. I know individual members I’ve known for years who I’ve asked ‘what are your red lines?’.

What I’ve seen is those people adamant they have red lines and them me observe them crossing those lines one at a time until there are no lines. What has enabled them to do this? The ludicrous theatre show the SNP puts on every year.

This is where Dougal comes in. He freaked out at having to come up with new ideas. The SNP has seven to last them a lifetime – de facto referendum, constitutional convention, door-knocking campaign, citizens assembly, rebuttal unit, broadcasting platform, prospectus development. Pick one and repeat.

So you want to know how utterly, totally ludicrous these all are? Let me try this on you. Last year at SNP conference, with all the gravitas and seriousness of a plodding character actor playing a statesman in regional rep, Swinney solemnly pledged that the election that took place this May would be a de facto referendum and that he would deliver a vote of 50 per cent.

In reality he lost that referendum 38-62. He was utterly crushed. It was one of the worst failures in recent electoral memory, getting close to the levels of debacle of the 2011 AV referendum. He was rightly met with calls for his resignation and realising that he had no credibility left after an all-in gambit he screwed royally, he apologised and resigned.

Or at least that is what you would expect from the serious solemnity of that conference. And of course the failure very much did happen. What didn’t was anyone treating it like the conference was anything other than a joke. So self-serious and up itself in Aberdeen, straight out the door to behave like it never happened.

Why did not a single journalist anywhere in the world give the slightest credence to the ‘de facto referendum’ nonsense? Because its ludicrous, fantastical, endlessly-repeated fictions are taken seriously by no-one at all, even a bit. This party is now a joke, getting together once a year to mouth words no-one believes before forgetting them all again and doing it again next year.

It is fucking embarrassing at every level. If I ever get to the point where the whole world lets me ramble on then rolls its eyes and walks out taking not a word of it seriously at all, I’d be devastated. (That’s not happening, is it? Oh…)

But the SNP leadership has literally nothing left but its vindictiveness. Not credibility. Not ideas. Not even self respect. I swear you’d be better off just electing Dougal as First Minister. I’m not sure it could be worse, and at least it would be entertaining. This lot are simply dreadful.