Wings Over Scotland

Don’t watch this. You’ll only waste 12 minutes of your life making yourself angry.

It’s our job to be angry for you.

Quite aside from anything else, the title is a barefaced lie. There is nothing remotely resembling a “route to independence” aired anywhere in the interview. Despite being gently pressed by former SNP adviser Geoff Aberdein, neither Swinney nor Forbes has a single word to say that amounts to any sort of strategy, let alone a credible one.

Forbes says that the SNP’s primary responsibility is to “inspire hope”. Which it isn’t, but even if it was, the party is manifestly not fit for that purpose. It has lost almost 40% of its own support in just two years, from a peak of 50% in December 2022 to an average of 33% since last year’s general election.

(And just two years before that it was as high as 56%.)

It’s lost half of its own members, from 125,000 to somewhere around 60,000. It’s lost 80% of its MPs. It’s shown itself unable to build a ferry, deliver a road, or even conduct a simple headcount or correctly identify what a woman is.

Scottish voters are so scunnered with the party that’s held the reins of power for nearly 18 years that they look set to elect a bunch of MSPs from Reform, a party that barely even exists in Scotland.

So the idea that the SNP are going to be inspiring “hope” any time soon is a crass insult to the intelligence of anyone watching. But that’s just the start of the shambles.

Forbes’ first suggestion of the party’s grand vision of the future is that an independent Scotland could “power the road to Net Zero” – a futile and stupid piece of expensive, damaging virtue signalling that voters don’t actually give a toss about (77% of Scottish voters don’t think it’s a top-three priority) and which was toxically unpopular when the Greens were driving the Scottish Government’s agenda just a matter of months ago.

Forbes elaborates that “wee plucky countries can do a great job if they believe in themselves”, (yes, she honestly did say “wee plucky countries”) and that “the route to independence is about outlining that alternative that can inspire”.

Amid a general vomiting of empty motivational-poster waffle, she opines that this feelgood drivel at demonstrable odds with the manifest reality of public opinion is “an electric solution”, which sounds about right.

(She MIGHT have meant “electoral”, but she definitely says “electric”.)

Geoff Aberdein then invites John Swinney to explain how this aimless wibble is in practice going to lead to independence and how it differs from the SNP’s previous strategy, and after some more drivel and padding Swinney finally gives the closest thing that either politician does in the whole interview to an answer:

“In a democracy, Westminster cannot stand in the way of the people of Scotland determining their own future […] that is just a logical democratic inconsistency that cannot be sustained.” 

We had to stop writing this article for a moment and go and give our punchbag a good battering at that point, because dear Jesus above.

Westminster has spent the last decade demonstrating in the most comprehensive manner that could possibly ever be imagined that it CAN stand in the way and that it CAN sustain that “democratic inconsistency”, and the Supreme Court confirmed its legal right to do so. It is a settled fact.

So it is contempt for the electorate on the most staggering, inconceivable scale for Swinney to STILL be trying to flog that dead and rotting pig in a poke to voters. Westminster told the SNP to GTF when it had 56 out of 59 MPs and 50% of the vote, and neither of those things is happening again any time in the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately Scotland’s media is almost as wretched as its politics, so the interview then allows Swinney to claim that “I’ve got a very clear sense about how we need to progress on the constitutional question” but then refuse point-blank to say what that means. (“I’m just not prepared to do that”.)

The whole thing is uncomfortably cosy and pally, with everyone chuckling fondly at his unwillingness to reveal anything about the SNP’s 2026 manifesto. Politicians of the past were not models of accountability and transparency, but Margaret Thatcher used to submit herself occasionally to proper inquisitions from the likes of Robin Day or Brian Walden, and Tony Blair had to face up to extended grillings from Jeremy Paxman now and again.

We struggle to recall Nicola Sturgeon ever doing a proper full-length interview with any sort of serious journalist in her entire time as First Minister, and with the likes of Gordon Brewer and Bernard Ponsonby now off the scene there’s barely anyone capable of doing the job even if our leaders were willing to allow it.

By modern soundbite standards 12 minutes is an eternity, but neither Forbes nor Swinney is given a single uncomfortable moment in the entire clip, and the time just dribbles out with absolutely nothing of any value emerging. The most incisive thing that happens is Aberdein’s sceptical expression after Forbes witters on about the “democratic deficit” again like an incredulous pouting child.

The final words spoken in the video are Swinney saying “nothing happens on the constitution in Scotland without the SNP doing really well”.

But if that’s true, then given that the SNP so evidently lacks the ability to regain the trust of Scottish voters (even as its main opponent implodes as spectacularly as Labour are currently doing), so evidently lacks the basic competence required for government, so evidently lacks any sort of inspirational talent that these two simpering, vacuous damp blankets are the FM and DFM, and so evidently doesn’t have the tiniest clue about a coherent strategy for independence other than whining “It’s all so unfair!” for another 10 years, it really does look like everything is screwed.

For as long as the SNP owns the indy movement, that movement has no future.