We’ve been telling you for quite some time now that after eight wasted years of doing absolutely nothing with endless mandates, the SNP establishment want to back away from the party’s defining goal of Scottish independence and settle in for some lovely cosy lifelong careers at Westminster and in the devolved Holyrood, with well-paid staffer jobs for all their pals, followed by tidy £50,000-a-year pensions.
In fairness, you can’t really accuse them of hiding it any more.
The faint hearts and pension-seekers of the SNP think that their time has come – the moment when the party’s pursuit of independence can be quietly downgraded to a vague long-term aspiration that will ensure their seats on the gravy train for decades.
Starting at noon tomorrow is your very last chance to stop them.
While idly browsing Twitter this morning, we made a startling discovery triggered by the SNP leadership election, and it was this: nobody in Scotland really knows what the nation’s law on abortion is.
It was prompted by these two tweets, both of which appear to be true:
The thing they agree on is that Humza Yousaf has just declared that he wants to change the law around abortion so that women can abort babies in Scotland solely on the grounds that they don’t like which sex they are. And that seems like something that should probably be bigger news.
But until this morning we’d regarded Kate Forbes as a decent consolation prize – no plan for indy, but at least someone who’d lead to the withdrawal of the toxic Scottish Greens from government and probably a mass exodus of the SNP’s Twitler Youth, leaving the party in a better place to rebuild for the future.
And after her disappointing chickening-out from the vote on the Gender Recognition Reform bill, we’d been impressed at the fortitude she’d shown by carrying on in the contest after the (justifiable) furore around her views on abortion and equal marriage, and her combative showing in Tuesday night’s STV debate.
Erin Lux, the co-convener of the extremist SNP affiliate Out For Independence, is the ultra-woke Canadian activist who tried to have Forbes kicked out of the election for “transphobia” almost as soon as she’d declared her candidacy.
OFI, whose membership is measured in dozens, has a disproportionate influence on policy but a microscopic percentage of votes in the election. The chances of any of its members ever voting for Kate Forbes under any circumstances are less than nil. She could have waded into the crowd and decapitated Lux with a chainsaw for all the difference it would have made to the number of votes she’s going to get from OFI.
But Forbes still folded like a deckchair in a hurricane.
The great unknown in the SNP leadership contest is an extremely significant one: who are the voters? Nobody but Peter Murrell really knows how many members the party has, but almost nobody believes the claimed number of over 100,000. (Our guess, based on pretty much nothing but a gut feeling, is 75,000 plus or minus 5000.)
But more to the point, nobody knows who they are. The average member age in most political parties is over 50, and according to figures published in 2019, more than 80% of SNP members are over 40, with half of those being over 60. There’s also an almost 3:2 bias in favour of men.
Humza Yousaf will not be the next First Minister of Scotland. We’re calling it now. His trainwreck of a performance on last night’s leadership election debate on STV dealt a blow to his chances that we can’t see him recovering from, and the SNP establishment is now under such intense scrutiny over the electoral process that the chances of a fix being orchestrated by Peter Murrell are receding fast.
In the debate Yousaf declared that Nicola Sturgeon was the best politician in the UK, that he wasn’t as good as her, and that she’d failed to find a successful strategy for independence and therefore he couldn’t either.
If you’re talking about “transwomen”, you’re almost always talking about people with a fully intact and functional penis. More than 95% of people who identify as trans have NOT undergone any genital surgery, and that’s a fact that’s still not widely understood.
We must admit it’s a shock – we were expecting the SNP President to remain neutral in the leadership election – but it’s hard to reasonably interpret this any other way.
(We’re not aware of Russell giving any media interviews last night so we assume from the timing that these comments were made at the regular meeting of the SNP Westminster Parliamentary group.)
Because both Humza Yousaf and Kate Forbes couldn’t have been any clearer that their indy strategies centre on getting Westminster to agree to another Section 30 order, and by pointing out that that’s never going to happen (which we all knew anyway), Mike Russell is admitting that a vote for anyone but Ash Regan is a vote to surrender any hope of independence for the foreseeable future.
We don’t often agree with him these days, but on this one he couldn’t be more right. For the sake of the SNP (and the Yes movement) we hope its members heed the sage, albeit coded, advice of their President.
Let’s take a moment off, folks. In our latest Panelbase poll, we also threw in a question just for fun, with genuinely no agenda at all, simply because we were curious to know what the answer was. Here it is:
By now many of you will have seen last night’s article on Craig Murray’s site, in which a current SNP branch convener revealed how the party machine is setting fire to all its own rules in a desperate attempt to secure the succession of Humza Yousaf.
Yousaf is the party establishment’s last hope of keeping all of its misdeeds in the last few years under wraps, and realising the magnitude of what’s at stake if he loses to Ash Regan or Kate Forbes, they’re abandoning all pretence of neutrality or integrity and throwing everything they’ve got at getting him elected.
Last month Wings broke a story about a “survey” being conducted by dozens of primary schools in the Aberdeen area in which children as young as nine were being asked about their sexual orientation and “gender identity”.
Lorncal on Cowering From Destiny: “Between 25 and 30 now. The total rises every day. Three have already gained outline planning permission. The Central Belt…” Sep 24, 22:04
gm on Cowering From Destiny: “These so called and sometimes self described left wing politicians seem to despise the native poor and the working class?…” Sep 24, 21:59
Lorncal on Cowering From Destiny: “You think, Wally? Yes, Scots can get jobs anywhere, except in Scotland – certainly not the high heid ones.” Sep 24, 21:49
gm on Cowering From Destiny: “Liberals man not left wingers. The individual and self interest over the people and the common good. More that way…” Sep 24, 21:47
Red on Cowering From Destiny: “Data centres employ tiny numbers of people. They only need a handful of junior techies (not very well paid IT…” Sep 24, 20:39
Aidan on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: “Aye so that’s it then Alf – Scotland is geographically contiguous with rUK and therefore cannot be an NSGT.” Sep 24, 20:25
Red on Cowering From Destiny: “I’m glad someone else agrees Susan Aitken could benefit from losing weight. Fascist!” Sep 24, 20:04
Alf Baird on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: ““land border between England and Scotland” Indeed there is such a border, and that’s no doubt why the geographic area…” Sep 24, 19:57
Wally Jumblatt on Cowering From Destiny: “AI jobs won’t go to Scots? We get everywhere around the world and rise to high levels cos our talent,…” Sep 24, 19:10
Campbell Clansman on Cowering From Destiny: “The SNP’s leadership is for Leftism, first and foremost. Indy is NOT their number one priority.” Sep 24, 18:47
Spartan 117 on Cowering From Destiny: ““Enjoy watching a stand alone England ruled by Trump style absurdity and corruption” You seem to miss that we’re already…” Sep 24, 18:21
Colin Alexander on Cowering From Destiny: “A Freedom of Information (FOI) response from the Electoral Commission about the SNP indyref and indy booklet fundraisers monies and…” Sep 24, 18:19
Captain Caveman on Cowering From Destiny: “Tsk tsk, Spartan. Oh dear! It would appear that you are FAR RIGHT. Take yourself off to the reprogramming booth…” Sep 24, 18:17
Frank Gillougley on Cowering From Destiny: “All smoke and mirrors as per the usual… And ‘we’ go round and round and round in the circle game.…” Sep 24, 18:15
Spartan 117 on Cowering From Destiny: “Blimey, and I thought *I* was being sarcastic. Well said Red. We think alike.” Sep 24, 18:07
Spartan 117 on Cowering From Destiny: ““What’s not to like?” We can’t have the little people happy and *enjoying* themselves, can we. No, instead we *really*…” Sep 24, 17:59
Red on Cowering From Destiny: “We’ve got to keep Farage out, because he wants to reduce immigration and also enforce border laws, and that’s what…” Sep 24, 17:40
Ross on Cowering From Destiny: “They can hardly appear to welcome a Reform govt. Or indeed want one as it would be bad for everyone.…” Sep 24, 16:50
MaryB on Cowering From Destiny: “There’s a new Facebook called ‘whynotscotland.com’ looking at all the reasons to support independence. (Not to be confused with Why…” Sep 24, 16:26
Captain Caveman on Cowering From Destiny: ““Farage is a disruptor and represents a significant threat to The Blob of Fabians, Scroungers and Crooks, which the SNP…” Sep 24, 16:16
Spartan 117 on Cowering From Destiny: “Farage is a disruptor and represents a significant threat to The Blob of Fabians, Scroungers and Crooks, which the SNP…” Sep 24, 15:50
Northcode on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: “Aidan’s breakdown of the salt-water rule is exactly right, and it dovetails with the UN procedural constraints I set out…” Sep 24, 15:36
Aidan on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: ““Everyone knows Scotland is geographically separate from England” – Really Sam, everyone knows there is no land border between England…” Sep 24, 15:21
Aidan on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: “The analysis you have provided there is wrong Alf, in respect of the four examples you have given each time…” Sep 24, 15:10
Lorncal on Cowering From Destiny: “Spot on, Turabdin. Take all autonomy away from the local areas. It is at this level that resistance is often…” Sep 24, 14:58
Lorncal on Cowering From Destiny: “Until a majority of Scots get it through their brain box that independence and only independence has any chance of…” Sep 24, 14:54
Northcode on His Majesty’s Loyal Sabre: “The UN doesn’t treat Scotland as a colony procedurally, and has no mechanism to do so without UK permission. That’s…” Sep 24, 14:47
Willie on Cowering From Destiny: “NHS England is this year being abolished. No if, no buts. Privatisation is coming. All the benefits of the corporates…” Sep 24, 14:41