Yesterday I called out Professor John Robertson for essentially fibbing about the results of an opinion poll. He had claimed that the new Survation poll showed the SNP “surging into a 12% lead”, when in fact the previous Survation poll had also shown a 12% lead – so it was a static position rather than a surge. Rather comically, he then left comments on my post which more or less admitted he was trying it on, but claimed that it was justified because the unionist media do exactly the same thing all the time. He also encouraged me to join in with the fibs.
I published his first couple of comments, but it then went totally beyond a joke – he started trawling through ancient posts on this blog and leaving infantile insults on them, and predictably he also started lecturing me on his all-time favourite subject of how anyone who doesn’t think a man can turn himself into a woman at the stroke of a pen is basically a Nazi. I told him that enough was enough and that he should take his identity politics extremism and his deeply peculiar attitude to the truth elsewhere. Predictably, he’s now lashed out with a rant on his own blog, which randomly lumps me in with a “gang” that apparently also includes Robin McAlpine, Craig Murray and – of all people – Stuart Campbell. (I self-evidently have very little in common with Campbell and my views about him are extremely well known, but I certainly have no objection to being compared with Robin McAlpine and Craig Murray – I’ve often strongly disagreed with them on particular points, but they are both serious and principled people who I very much respect.)
There’s remarkably little substance to Robertson’s rant – it just seems to amount to “I used to think these people were brill but now I think they’re rubbish”. It’s as if, since retiring from academia, Robertson has reverted to the primary school playground. To the extent that there’s anything more specific, it’s this –
“They were impressive then, but today, all are more bothered by a range of issues including gender recognition reforms, economic policies, the campaign strategy and now leadership election conspiracy theories, than they seem to be about winning independence.”
I can’t speak for the other three men, but anyone who has ever read this blog will know that the absolute polar opposite of that allegation is true of me. I would put up with almost anything from the SNP, and as a former member of long standing frequently did so, as long as they remained committed to independence. Neoliberal economics, the gender nonsense, uninspiring campaign pitches, the ruination of an SSSI at the behest of Donald Trump, you name it, I can and did put up with it. It was only when the SNP ceased to work towards independence that I became deeply concerned and started hoping Alex Salmond might set up a new party to pressurise the SNP into returning to the indy fold.
The best proof of my good faith came in the middle of last year, when I was still on the Alba NEC. As soon as Nicola Sturgeon announced the plan for a de facto referendum, I was very pleasantly surprised and said both publicly and privately that Alba needed to embrace the de facto referendum, make sure it happened, make it work, and above all else
not sabotage it by splitting the Yes vote. I also pointed out repeatedly that Alba’s obsession with bringing down Nicola Sturgeon was counterproductive, and if I may say so, history has proved me spot on about that – as soon as Sturgeon was forced out, the de facto referendum plan disappeared with her. Not even Kate Forbes would have kept faith with it. It’s unlikely that Robertson is unaware of the views I expressed, because on the very day that Nicola Sturgeon resigned, The National did a
two page splash about what I had said and featured a reply from Chris McEleny. (Arguably The National’s intention was to cause as much trouble for Alba as possible, but only they can know for sure what it was all about from their point of view.)
Every step of the way, then, I have acted not as a partisan but as an independence supporter who always puts independence first. The reason I am now once again hostile to the SNP leadership under Yousaf is because they have, for the first time since at least the major split of 1942, indefinitely abandoned all attempts to secure independence. It is thus Robertson who has allowed his focus on independence to drift due to his side-passion for one particular devolutionist party and its non-independence-related policies. It goes further than that, though, because I defy anyone to seriously claim that Robertson would have remained a propagandist for the SNP if Kate Forbes had won and ditched GRR reform. I’m not quite sure what would have happened to his blog, but if it had continued at all, there would have been a very abrupt change of direction. I don’t doubt that Robertson is genuinely pro-independence, but just like Stuart Campbell, the “women with beards” thing is his first love, and it will always come before absolutely everything else, including the freedom of his country.
Personally, I would always choose independence. With or without gender self-ID. With or without Tory rule. With or without Humza Yousaf or Kate Forbes as SNP leader. Can Robertson say the same? Spoiler alert: no of course he can’t.
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