{"id":1316,"date":"2024-07-08T14:54:45","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T14:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2024-07-08T14:54:45","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T14:54:45","slug":"in-scotlands-yes-city-and-elsewhere-the-sun-sets-on-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/?p=1316","title":{"rendered":"In Scotland’s Yes city \u2013 and elsewhere \u2013 the sun sets on independence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"SO, the SNP\u2019s past caught up with them and they suffered the electoral consequences.<\/strong>
\nThat 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\u2019d had enough.
\nAlthough 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.
\nThere was disappointment too for Kenny MacAskill in the new Alloa and Grangemouth parliamentary seat \u00ac\u2013 again lost to Labour \u2013 along with my old pal Martyn Day, whose Linlithgow and East Falkirk perch returned to Labour\u2019s Michael Connarty.
\nAs the party licks its wounds, John Swinney returns to the top job \u2013 a thoroughly uninspiring choice given his previous time in the role.
\nDuring my time at The National and since then I voiced concerns about the SNP\u2019s lack of progress on indy and how they were taking voters for granted.
\nUnfortunately, nobody listened.
\nIt doesn\u2019t take a genius to work out that the electorate will eventually abandon you if you continually take them for a ride.
\nI said the same thing to former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford in many conversations and interviews \u2013 it\u2019s a pity he didn\u2019t 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.
\nIf the SNP will be paying the price of inaction for some years to come (a generation perhaps) what of ALBA?
\nThey 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.
\nThat campaign failed to attract the anticipated hordes of disillusioned SNP voters.
\nWhy?
\nThe electorate can be very unforgiving, and despite Alex being cleared by the courts, the old saying that \u2018mud sticks\u2019 has more than a ring of truth to it.
\nIt would be too much to hope that there\u2019s much life left in the corpse of what was the independence movement, but I guess we\u2019ll just have to wait and see.
\nPip pip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SO, the SNP\u2019s 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\u2019d had enough. Although I did my best to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}