“The SNP’s Stephen Flynn has insisted ‘a number of options were being floated’ about the route ahead to indyref2”
There is no route ahead to indyref2. That option is gone and we’re now moving forward to a plebiscite election. Anything else is what is known as a “massive U-turn”.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) December 10, 2022
In the hours after I posted the above tweet, a few people claimed that Stephen Flynn’s words had been misconstrued, but I’ve read the interview and unfortunately that’s not the case at all. He’s clearly suggesting there might be alternatives to the plan of using the next Westminster election as a de facto independence referendum – which would be fine if he was referring to the overwhelmingly sensible alternative option of using an early Holyrood election at some point in 2023, but that’s the one option he explicitly rules out. He pejoratively dismisses the idea as “collapsing Holyrood in a cost of living crisis which I think would be utterly absurd”. That’s a complete nonsense, by the way – if there was a Holyrood election scheduled for next year, nobody would describe that as “the scheduled collapse of Holyrood” and nobody would suggest that democracy should be suspended just because we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
But nevertheless, that’s the daft spin he’s putting on it, which logically means the alternatives he’s referring to are reduced to just two: a) abandoning the idea of a de facto referendum altogether, which in the light of the Supreme Court ruling is tantamount to abandoning support for independence itself, or b) twiddling our thumbs for the next three and a half years until the next scheduled Holyrood election comes around in May 2026. Either of those would be a total betrayal of solemn commitments made by Nicola Sturgeon to SNP members and to the wider independence movement. Using the 2024 Westminster election as a de facto referendum is sub-optimal for reasons that have been well-rehearsed, but if for self-interested reasons the SNP are determined to rule out an early Holyrood election, then Westminster 2024 it will have to be. Apart from the breach of faith that waiting any longer would entail, the idea that we would wait an entire decade after the 2016 EU referendum to give people a choice on independence is self-evidently crazy and strategically inept.
It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that career interests are distorting the SNP’s decision-making at every turn. SNP Westminster MPs are worried that unionist tactical voting in a 2024 plebiscite election could cost them their seats, while SNP Holyrood MSPs who thought they were safe in office until 2026 are horrified by the thought of “unnecessarily” facing election before then. Guys, it’s supposed to be independence before personal interests, not the other way around. Maybe that should be number one in any AIM indy pledge, ahead of all the “transphobia” stuff.
Incidentally, as far as I can see the Herald are just plain wrong in claiming that the Alba Party want the 2026 Holyrood election to be used as a plebiscite. I’m no longer on the Alba NEC, so I can’t tell you definitively what the position is, but everything I’ve heard suggests that Alba are calling for an early Holyrood election well before 2026.
