Thank you for the kind words about the previous blogpost, which suggested that the SNP leadership have become an obstacle to independence. It was bound to polarise opinion, but I would say around 80% of the reaction was positive and only around 15% was negative. (The remaining 5% was a niche group who wanted to know when I was going to apologise to Stuart Campbell, but God alone knows what I’m supposed to be apologising to him for. For not reacting with a cheery smile when he emailed to call me a “c**t”, or when he got his solicitor to threaten me at the dead of night, presumably.)
One common theme of the negative comments was that instead of urging people to pile on the pressure for an independence referendum to actually be held, I should instead be encouraging them to “prepare for the referendum”. It’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry at that sort of comment. Nobody could accuse me of not assuming good faith on the part of the SNP leadership for many, many, many years. When Nicola Sturgeon “called an independence referendum” in 2017, I took that at face value and I encouraged people to donate to the “ring-fenced referendum campaign fund”. That referendum, let me gently remind people, never took place. After well over four years, I think we’re entitled to say that definitively. It was a fantasy, a mirage, a work of fiction. The money in the ring-fenced fund was cynically spent on other things. This time around, I have no intention of wasting my life “preparing” for a vote that is not being held, or of deceiving other people into doing so. Having breached the faith of their members and voters once, the onus is now on the SNP leadership to prove that they are not pulling the same trick twice – and brazenly briefing the Sunday Times that there won’t be a referendum this side of the 2024 general election is, to put it mildly, not the way to do that.
Incidentally, my trust in the SNP leadership did not even end in the summer of 2017 when they broke their word that a majority of Scottish seats in that year’s general election would constitute a “triple lock” mandate for the referendum they had already “called” (they won 35 out of 59 seats – that’s roughly 60%). You can check the archives of this blog if you don’t believe me – I spent the first couple of weeks after the election urging the SNP leadership not to backtrack (I remember being interviewed in the Financial Times about that), but as soon as Nicola Sturgeon made her statement about deferring, not cancelling, the referendum until the end of the Brexit process, I took her at her word and urged people to unite behind the strategy. I continued to urge trust and patience when the timetable slipped well beyond Brexit day, and then when coronavirus struck I naturally accepted that a referendum couldn’t be held in the middle of the biggest international crisis since the Second World War. But Brexit is the casus belli for an independence referendum, and Brexit occurred eighteen months ago. If the pandemic is the genuine and only reason for the further delay in holding the vote, it’s logical to expect that there will be a referendum as soon as practically possible after the crisis eases. Although it’s not possible to pinpoint exactly when that moment will arrive, it’s likely to be some time next year. At the very latest, the year after. When we instead hear that a referendum is unlikely to be held until after the 2024 election, any reasonable person has little choice but to conclude that this is a leadership that is completely taking the mick, and that the priority for the Yes movement has to be to do something about that. As I pointed out in my previous post, a referendum ‘delayed’ beyond the UK general election is unlikely to take place at all, because any SNP seat losses at that election will once again be used as an excuse for shelving the whole idea, just as it was in 2017.
But even if there’s a genuine intention to hold a referendum in 2025 or whenever, the reality is that will be five years after Brexit, which makes a mockery of the idea that we’re holding the vote because it’s intolerable for Scotland to have been dragged out of the European Union against its will. It must be fairly tolerable if we’re content to live that way for five long years. Essentially we’re chucking the material change of circumstances out of the window, in which case we might just as well go back to waiting for the fabled “generation” to pass. I’m beginning to suspect that was the idea all along. The people I feel sorriest for are the EU citizens who were persuaded to stay in Scotland on a bogus promise from the SNP leadership that the Scottish vote for Remain would be upheld.
I want my faith in the SNP leadership to be restored. Until very recently, I had a reputation as a leadership loyalist and I would be delighted to become one again. But enough is enough. No more words, it’s time for action. We need two things: the date for the referendum needs to be set, and that date needs to be before 31st December 2023.
From my perspective, there can be no further compromise. We’ve waited far, far, far too long already.
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You can catch up with the latest episode of the Scot Goes Popcast HERE.
