[Robin McAlpine Blog] Swinney is betraying everything the SNP stands for

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Swinney is betraying everything the SNP stands for

What is left of the SNP? Is it now just a reputation laundering operation for quangos, providing the administrative class vague democratic cover for their authoritarian power-grabs? It is patently disinterested in independence and it doesn’t even pretend to have a vision for Scotland’s future or any understanding of its own failures in government.

And if you want to know why, you need to look mainly at the spinelessness of its leader. For the first time in the 92 years it has existed a leader of the SNP has seen a reckless, patently illegal act of military aggression (a war crime) – and he is unable to drag out a condemnation. In fact there is zero difference (not a jot) between Swinney and Starmer – and Starmer is a disgusting moral vacuum of a man.

I really want to hammer this point home. The SNP has expressed outright hostility to every western abuse of military power in the party’s history, including; the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Suez Crisis, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Falklands War, the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Afghan War, The Iraq War, the murderous bombing campaign in Libya – and they voted against the bombing of Syria as well.

Why such moral consistency? Because the SNP was a party rooted in principle-driven morality. One of those – from day one – was that western colonialism means that London rule in Scotland and its endless military assaults across its former empire were part of the same problem.

The Labour Party in particular always wanted to present this as opportunistic or grandstanding, and it never really worked because it was fundamentally untrue. The SNP has always had a principled stance against western military adventurism of any kind – and even when it was risky or unpopular to do so. It was fundamental to the party’s understanding of the struggle it was in.

There is one glaring exception to that rule and it is John Swinney. His first disastrous spell as leader saw him trying to push the SNP to support the 2003 Iraq War. Leadership sock-puppets try to claim this isn’t true but I’ve spoken to a number of people who were at the meeting at which he tried to do it and it absolutely is true.

And now he has met the US-Israeli attack on Iran with precisely the moral certainty and principled stand of Starmer. It is the same pitiful, weak-minded positioning designed to protect Donald Trump, whose banquet Swinney attended as the only politician in the entire UK not on Starmer’s payroll yet still spinless enough to show up. That’s one of three occasions in which Swinney has crawled to Trumps feet – and Trump tariffed us anyway.

In Scotland we no longer say anything to offend the Epstein class on which our economic strategy is based

Fundamentally I’ve come to believe Swinney is a coward. I can’t think of any instance where he’s believed something when it was more convenient for him not to believe it. And in this instance he has surrounded himself with people who fundamentally want to cave to Trump. To understand that you need to understand the source of this war.

You should think about the attack on Iran as a war by and for the Epstein Class, in ways more literal than you might imagine. It’s biggest public cheerleaders (senior US and Israeli figures) are all over the Epstein files – and it now turns out another bunch of Epstein buddies (the Gulf State oligarchies) have been lobbying for war on Iran for months.

Gulf states see it as a business transaction – they’ve been bribing the Trump administration and funding its ascendency. For example, the takeover of Warner Brothers by Paramount is a deal for a billionaire Trump supporter to take control of key news media institutions using finance supplied by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.

While the Paramount boss Larry Ellison is only in the Epstein files tangentially, he is clearly very close to lots of billionaires who are all over them. Isreal has close links with Epstein in loads of ways including Mossad. Saudi Crown Prince Bin Salman is all over the files and photographed smiling with Epstein. Epstein has links with very senior figures in Abu Dhabi and appeared to lobby for Qatar during the blockade it faced from neighbours.

They’re all Epstein Class, a global network of influential billionaires who seek to run the world as a personal plaything. Iran is a nuisance to that network and apparently they all lobbied for it Iran’s subjugation. They are taking out a regional ally which is not aligned with the Epstein Class.

So what’s the link to Swinney? Well Scotland’s entire economic strategy is to ingratiate ourselves to the Epstein class – a process we all ‘inward investment’ but which is really a fire-sale of assets to the world’s neoliberal investment class.

And who is overseeing it? The Director General for Economy, a man who was previously Peter Mandelson’s right-hand man at Global Counsel, a lobbying and advice firm for some of the world’s most abhorrent regimes. Presumably as Mandelson’s Chief Economist Gregor Irwin will have been involved in the lobbying campaign Global Counsel ran on behalf of Qatar Free Zones Authority (for example).

That is only an example of the way in which Scotland has absorbed the oligarch’s orthodoxy over the last decade. We are a nation obsessed with oligarch wealth and our economic strategy is to try and get some of it to come here. We no longer say anything to offend the Epstein class on which our economic strategy is based.

The future is never built by cowards and I do not believe Swinney will build anything

Then again, betraying SNP tradition comes easily for Swinney. I would (rather arbitrarily) highlight six key themes that were fundamental to the SNP; anti-militarism, anti-colonialism, strong internal democracy (i.e. being as member-led party), anger about the unfair distribution of Scotland’s resources, the defence of our culture and language and of course independence.

Well Swinney gave up worrying about the distribution and ownership of Scotland’s resources a long time ago and is leading an administration which is offering a fire sale of Scottish assets while knowingly incentivising greater concentration of land ownership (while publishing fake land reform legislation to fool his party members).

As leader and deputy he has presided over the de-democratisation of this party and the ending of membership control. He gives no impression of having any interest at all in Scots language or culture and so put Angus fucking Robertson in charge, the one person who seems to have less interest than Swinney.

Under Swinney independence is only a punchline to a depressing joke. As the Common Weal briefing makes clear today, the war in Iran exposes the SNP’s position on independence as woefully unserious. He has no plan for Scottish independence and the issue will disappear as soon as he gets back in power.

On anti-militarism and anti-colonialism Swinney is nowhere, cares nothing, thinks nothing. This is a party who’s intellectual heart is now Stephen Gethins. And by ‘intellectual’ I mean ‘reads out briefing notes the British establishment gives him’.

Cowardice is all this is. There is no higher value, no reasonable argument that his silence pursues Scottish aims and goals. Trump cannot target us with bespoke sanctions any more. What is Swinney’s moral cowardice for if not purely for itself?

Well the future is never built by cowards and I do not believe Swinney will build anything. He is a sad, sad echo of Scotland’s past and has nothing to offer it today or tomorrow. I would vote a hundred times for a man of principle I disagreed with rather than a man who has no principle.

I once rather unkindly referred to Swinney as Bald Starmer. Well he seems to have taken that as a compliment and leant into it. Because they are now indistinguishable other than hairline and Swinney’s limited-but-present ability to project empathy.

I can think of no more damning statement about Swinney, the independence movement or the modern SNP. I’m ashamed.

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