[Robin McAlpine Blog] Mostly as farce

[ALBA-Bot]

Mostly as farce

Outside Holyrood, a sinister group of sea birds perch menacingly overhead. They murmur to each other in harsh cawing sounds. "Douglas Ross just disrespected us. When our enemies come for us, we strike back ten-fold. Activate Bruiser Hepburn."

There’s a theory you’ll be familiar with which says history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Really I increasingly think humans are just trapped in a perpetual sequence of tragedy and farce to pass the time while we prepare to destroy ourselves and everything around us.

What isn’t in question is that Scotland is pulling its weight on the farce front. A group of people debating into the night on whether to scrap a verdict which will make literally zero difference to Scotland’s justice system having watered a bunch of bad ideas down to nothingness were piqued about another guy hijacking their debate to talk about seagulls. Take your pick

A lot of people want to believe that the biggest problem for independence is just the UK Parliament or just John Swinney, depending on their faction. But the biggest problem for independence is the biggest problem for everything we do – our politicians have made Scotland small.

If you’re going to have a fistfight in parliament, pleased god make it over something more significant than seagulls. The last time I felt like this was sitting in the house on a Saturday getting a notification saying the police had impounded an SNP vehicle as part of Branchform. Having heard rumours about both a Jaguar and a camper van I remember thinking ‘oh, please let it be the Jaguar because that is much less embarrassing’.

It was the camper van.

This lack of seriousness is everywhere. No-one bothers to remember the names of SNP chief executives any more. Like French Prime Ministers it’s not worth the mental exertion. They’ll be off on another vague and hard-to-swallow pretext in no time.

(Does anyone not invoke health, children’s wellbeing or some protected personal characteristic when they depart politics these days, subjects which are conveniently incredibly personal meaning it would seem inappropriate to inquire further? It devalues the times this is real.)

When there is no ambition of scale, small things look big

And the new name not to remember? It is ex-MP Callum McCaig. I never knew there was an MP call Callum McCaig which explains my lack of recognition of an ex-MP with that name. So I checked.

Callum McCaig left university to become an SNP researcher, then left that to be an SNP councillor, then left that to be an SNP MP, then left that to be an SNP Spad, and left that to be SNP head of policy, and left that to cash in for a year in SNP-adjecent lobbying outfit 56° North, then left that to become SNP Chief Executive.

This guy is basically Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Fran Kubelik in The Apartment. It is this endless recycling of tame insiders who no-one has heard of but with sugar daddies that is eroding Scottish politics so constantly.

But this farce stuff is getting everywhere. I came in this morning to a press release announcing a hunger strike to force John Swinney to include an open debate on independence at the SNP conference. There is so much in that sentence that doesn’t track.

People shouldn’t have to go on hunger strike to get the SNP to debate independence strategy. On the other hand, mass immolation wouldn’t drag ‘fair and open’ out of the current SNP regime. A hunger strike seems over the score (it is) until you try to think of alternatives. Then again, this is a party being led by a man that precisely one person wanted to lead the party.

But I didn’t need to parse this for long because it was all cancelled by lunchtime. Here is the sad thing; it was cancelled because an election is coming and keeping our Reform is the priority and that there will be a better time to seek leverage on the SNP when it has just won a stonking victory at Holyrood on a prospectus that includes the policy the hunger strikers are opposed to.

That achieves the remarkable task of making the climbdown less credible than the initial over-the-top initiative. I mean seriously, from starving yourself to wheeshting for the SNP in one press release? There was more chance of the hunger strike working. At least someone would notice.

It is the new mantra at Holyrood that no-one must try anything big. Sturgeon ran about saying big things and it all went wrong because she didn’t deliver them, so best not to talk about big things. But that just creates a landscape without perspective. When there is no ambition of scale, small things look big. We’re just small things now.

And everyone can feel it. As someone messaged me today "My party is a total waste of space – I’d resign but there is no point in that either". You can stay in the SNP and achieve nothing or you can leave the SNP and achieve nothing. As long as you’re achieving nothing you’re on message.

The desire to offer nothing, try nothing and achieve nothing is no reflection of the world or reality, it is purely a reflection of the politicians who have captured our entire democratic machinery

The problem is that this is 100 per cent nothing to do with the moment we are in. The moment we are in, more than any other in my lifetime, is screaming a need for big action. On ever possible front we’re in trouble. Next to nothing is going well.

The desire to offer nothing, try nothing and achieve nothing is no reflection of the world or reality, it is purely a reflection of the politicians who have captured our entire democratic machinery. Someone was on to me asking if I could recommend a good MSP, like I had a list of secret MSPs they’d never heard of.

It has reached the point where people I know who are outwardly not only loyal but full-on boosterish about the Swinney SNP are, in private, they tell me ‘it’s a shitshow, literally no-one wants John leading the party and everyone is desperate to get rid of him’. Two worlds, neither of them credible.

The problem with all of this isn’t just me scoring points or telling you things you don’t know, it’s a strange kind of rule of politics. You create your own context. You really do. When Jack McConnell was First Minister he wanted to do less, better. It created a reality which cost Labour its power. Salmond promised big things and so did Sturgeon. Neither really delivered, but it propelled them to power.

Now Swinney has turned the Scottish Parliament into an HR department of a company no-one caress about. It is – well, tiny. So small I can’t bring myself to look at it. He has created the context for nothing. Nothing can happen in this world. There isn’t space.

The public wants big action. The politicians used to pretend to be leading big action. Now they don’t even pretend that. They are making the smallest things impossible in a parliament with no room for anything much more than a spat over seagulls.

It is fucking embarrassing and it’s getting worse and worse. But not important. Not significant. Not of value. Just worse.

Source: Mostly as farce