In Scotland’s Yes city – and elsewhere – the sun sets on independence
SO, the SNP’s past caught up with them and they suffered the electoral consequences.
That past included mandates from the Scottish electorate and the controversy over allegedly misused funds which is still under investigation, and it was only a matter of time before people signalled that they’d had enough.
Although I did my best to steer clear of the pre-election debates, I was counting the votes at one location and could see the disappointment on the faces of the local SNP candidate, while Labour seemed cock-a-hoop.
There was disappointment too for Kenny MacAskill in the new Alloa and Grangemouth parliamentary seat ¬– again lost to Labour – along with my old pal Martyn Day, whose Linlithgow and East Falkirk perch returned to Labour’s Michael Connarty.
As the party licks its wounds, John Swinney returns to the top job – a thoroughly uninspiring choice given his previous time in the role.
During my time at The National and since then I voiced concerns about the SNP’s lack of progress on indy and how they were taking voters for granted.
Unfortunately, nobody listened.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the electorate will eventually abandon you if you continually take them for a ride.
I said the same thing to former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford in many conversations and interviews – it’s a pity he didn’t gee up the party heirarchy and urge them to extract their digits. That’s what they get for becoming too comfortable burrowing their noses in the Westminster trough.
If the SNP will be paying the price of inaction for some years to come (a generation perhaps) what of ALBA?
They were gaining popularity largely because they actually had a plan to gain independence with a campaign fronted by Alex Salmond, under whose tenure as FM and SNP boss David Cameron agreed to the 2014 plebiscite.
That campaign failed to attract the anticipated hordes of disillusioned SNP voters.
Why?
The electorate can be very unforgiving, and despite Alex being cleared by the courts, the old saying that ‘mud sticks’ has more than a ring of truth to it.
It would be too much to hope that there’s much life left in the corpse of what was the independence movement, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Pip pip.