Tell Them You’re Frightened
Whoever advised John Swinney to do this should be tarred, feathered and fired.
Because incredibly, the sheer abject patheticness of it isn’t even the biggest problem.
It’s wretched enough that the sole reason the First Minister can offer voters in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse to vote for his party is that he isn’t Nigel Farage, a man who hardly even notices Scotland’s existence. But the absolute mind-numbing stupidity of the headline is that it works just as well the other way round.
Swinney’s just told everyone in the constituency who hates the SNP what it is that he’s most afraid of, and what the best way to beat them is.
The first five words are certainly correct. In fact, Labour is barely even trying to win the seat. Their candidate Davy Russell isn’t showing up to hustings or TV debates or radio interviews. The party couldn’t be more openly surrendering (in Larkhall of all places) if it campaigned under a white flag.
The Tories were a very distant third in 2021 and have used Russell’s invisibility as an excuse to duck out of hustings too. It very much looks like both of the main Unionist parties are basically just waving Reform’s contender Ross Lambie through as the best bet to defeat the SNP’s hapless wannabe career politician Katy Loudon, last seen being humiliatingly thrashed out of sight in the Rutherglen by-election of 2023 and failing to recapture it in 2024.
That’s probably still a long shot. But between Labour, the Tories and now Swinney and a hysterical editorial leader in the Record, it couldn’t be clearer who the SNP fear most. If Loudon somehow does manage to rack up a hat-trick of failures, not only will she be challenging Toni Giugliano for the title of the party’s biggest serial loser, she’ll also have helped John Swinney send a loud, clear message to the wider electorate for next year’s Holyrood election about how best to hurt the SNP.
(Just in case that wasn’t already plain enough from the absurd way the party has raced to the rescue of Anas Sarwar by unsuccessfully whining to Facebook that Reform’s election ad targeting some very ill-judged and recently-revealed comments by Sarwar was racist, when Labour hadn’t even bothered to do so themselves. All the complaint achieved was to make it look like they were panicking and wanted to shore up the Labour vote at Reform’s expense to save their own necks.)
We’ll find out in a week whether the SNP has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of what looked like a comfortable victory. But even if they don’t, it’ll have been more through blind luck than judgement. The SNP is a shambles of imbeciles and it needs putting out of its own, and everyone else’s, misery.
I despise them. I do hope they get gubbed next week. Reform 8/1 at corals, surley worth a tenner for interest purposes.
“should be tarred, feathered and fired”
Naw. Promoted.
Vote for us! We’re shit, but not as shit as the other guy!
When Alex was in charge, he said don’t mention the opposition
It just gives them publicity
Swinney is so frustratingly annoying and spineless
He’s actually worse than useless
They still don’t realise they have lost support by the abandonment,alienation and demeaning of native Scots while encouraging large immigration not preventing emigration.
Recently Farage spoke of health reform he mentioned the French system not the American one.
If their hostility to devolution is true you could believe that all parties including Labour if they have any principles left and the Tories who where saved from oblivion by Holyrood
to unite to defeat them.
Also ask about their policy on gun ownership so they don’t allow mass shootings to become a regular occurrence here.
Just to think about the quality and standard of Labour leadership between John Smith and Anas Sarwar
Ross Lambie’s page should say “all too well” so I’m afraid I don’t rate him.
If Nigel Farage is the answer, we need better questions.
Any semblance of policy or direction is long gone- clinging on to power for more Holyrood gravy is all that matters.
The cupboard is bare.
You’d better do as yer telt otherwise the Bogeyman’s coming!
The silent merger of SNP & Labour continues apace .
The Daily Record , arch-Unionist cat-tray-liner , source of ” The Vow ” n Beano-level * insight * with their supposed great rival SNP’s leader plastered on the front page ( note the soft focus n halo-like glow around the baldy buffoon ; that Vogue front page can’t be far away : well , if not Vogue , maybe a Inverness Courier centrefold )
Labour stepping side to allow their now great mates a free run to defeat the terrifying ( ie rapidly succeeding ) Reform and save Hamilton/Scotland from a fate worse that Scottish Independence ( is there such a thing , in the eyes of the devoutly devolutionist Swinney snP ? ) .
I despise Reform n everything they stand for ( zero , other than Yank-style Corporate takeover & John Bull(shit) Little England exceptionalism ) but I’d rather see them win this by-election than the monstrous aberration that is Nu SNP . Anything to take the shine off that spineless , duplicitous cunt Swinney’s slaphead bonce and hasten the demise of the necrotic pathetic beast the snP has become under his and his * former * Supreme Leader – Sturgeon’s watch ( Yousaf’s was too intangible to barely cause a ripple )
That is the sum total of Nu SNP’s * achievement * – making a collection of English Blimps preferable to what was once a genuinely patriotic Scottish Party .
Take a bow all concerned – they couldn’t have done it without you
Elder Swinney says;
Vote Woke..
As predicted by Alf Baird :
Thankfully, and due in no small part to the diligent efforts of WoS in exposing SNP incompetence and corruption, Scotland’s dominant national party is all but finished in the eyes of the Scottish electorate.
The SNP is no longer of any use to the people of Scotland and has become a serious liability to Scotland’s independence movement.
Correct.
Very sad, but correct.
A plague on their houses..
John Swinney is the consummate politician. He has a natural ability to turn people to apathy so he can usher in corporate power unimpeded.
Previously proven failed SNP leader and now presently failing First Minister and SNP Leader warns that even an English based populist Part led by the most Anglo Saxons of Anglo Saxons may yet prove more popular with the Scots electorate than an ostensibly Scottish Independence Party.
Was it really only some 11 years ago the political giant Mr Salmond was on the crest of achieving independence whilst leading a demonstrably competent devolved administration (never a government, despite the vanity title).
At least we now have a serious effort to unite all indepence committed potential MSPs under an “umbrella” front for 2026 elections.
If the people of Larkhall and Stonehouse think electing a reform party MP is a good choice to spite the SNP, then they are trully stupid.
Handing over to a facist group to reap havoc on Scotland even more than English msainstream parties is outlandish.
Farage is a Belgian and criminal wake up people.
And the Daily Record to boot! First thought was the Vow! Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right.
John Swinney is an energy vampire,
like Colin in `What we do in the shadows`
An energy vampire;
sustains himself by draining humans and fellow vampires of their life force by being extremely boring or frustrating.
Bravo! Scot Finlayson…Bravo!
100% correct
This is not accidental rubbishness on the part of John Swinney. It is orchestrated, deliberate failure…. that benefits the Union.
Rule number 1 in political campaigning is you NEVER promote the other candidate, no matter how clever you think your argument / witticism is against them. For a person with his length of service, and experience in high office – party and government, this is most certainly a case of spiking the guns.
By ‘accidentally’ bigging up Reform, Swinney lays out the ground work for the tenure/siren cry of the next 10 years of SNP policy.
‘You must vote SNP, only we are big enough to see off the threat of the Far Right Nigel Party, now is not the time for Indy, not with Farage so close to power.’
The irony being, of course, that the easiest way to burst the Reform balloon, is to point out the obvious.
In an Independent Scotland, it will be the people of Scotland who decide what their immigration policy is, and how best to defend her borders.
Exactly, if you want to send us a message vote Reform – it couldn’t be clearer!
Remember the SNP policy at the 2024 general election?
“The facts are clear. Only voting SNP is the guaranteed way to make Scotland Tory-free.”
link to snp.org
———————————————————-
How did that work out Swinney?
“In the end, the SNP’s 39 seats lost – leaving them on just nine – was a far worse performance than models suggested ahead of the vote. Labour’s 37 seats slightly outperformed their predicted best-case scenario, and the Liberal Democrat’s six seats, overtaking the Conservatives on five, was also beyond what one could have reasonably predicted from the polls.”
Yes Swinney – you lost 39 seats.
Scottish nationalism needs English nationalism if it aims to end the Union between our countries. The current Unionist/internationalist parties are losing to nationalism, that’s why left/right are losing their meaning, they’re so 20th Century… look ahead, it’s happening everywhere.
For the first time in a while I think the SNP might just be onto something, Reform may be the only way to break the logjam down south, now that the SNP have clearly demonstrated that they can’t.
The only thing that frightens me is the prospect of Unionists offering a ‘Devolution or bust’ referendum, because if Scots choose to keep *this* Holyrood over losing it, then we’ll NEVER get anything better, and it will only get worse.
I agree this is tactically imbecilic on the part of the SNP – but that’s the point isn’t it? It’s just the SNP being the same old pathetically useless, ineffectual, political zeal-free and generally messed up SNP. Why anyone would actually bother to get up, walk down to the voting booth and put an “X” next to their candidate is beyond my comprehension, given the embarrassing mess they’ve made of literally everything.
They’re right to fear Reform. Surely people have had enough and want radical change, as evidenced clearly in opinion polls and local elections. Change is indeed afoot. Good.
@ Captain Caveman: the change Scotland desperately needs is freedom from English colonial rule, not rule by an English fascist.
“English fascist”
You lefties love bandying around these slurs and labels don’t you?
“Fascist”
“Far right”
“Bigot”
“Transphobe”
Etc
I mean, it’s all rather pathetic isn’t it? Throw in a heavy dose of xenophobia “the English” etc) and you’ve the complete set: sub par schoolboy playground politics and crass insults that would shame the Sixth Form Common Room.
I can only sit and wonder what sane, rational folk browsing these pages BTL make of it all.
“fascist”
What’s sixth form? Are you foreign?
‘Change’… yes, we heard all that from labour – and look what we got. Until each party explains PRECISELY what they are offering, and none of this single ‘change’ garbage, with nothing behind it, they’ll not get a vote from this house.
I think much of Scotland feels the same way. They won’t be taken in by the ‘change’ nonsense.
Vote in Holyrood, get Unionist. That’s the pup they’ve sold you.
Reform and the SNP are cut from the same cloth. Promise radical reform, get elected on the promise, then fail to deliver because they’re talentless opportunistic charlatans without honour, integrity or competence. Peas in a pod.
I wasn’t very popular for saying so, off message at the time, but among my earliest contributions to Wings way back in 2013, or probably earlier, was my warning that Swinney was a feckless two faced charlatan.
He dealt with an important complaint by waffling pish about some total irrelevance, ignored the black and white evidence put in front of him, then stonewalled objections saying he’d nothing to add to the reply I’d already been given. Absolute tosser and accomplice to corrupt local government.
His status as Establishment wanker should not come as a surprise to anybody.
You should have listened to Breeks.
The SNP is the kid crying wolf at ever election. For me, its simple I’d rather see the demise of the SNP than give them my vote to keep reform out.
This is the con, the SNP would have you believe that Reform is a threat to Scotland and our democracy and if people thought clearly about politics and whats happened in the last 11yrs they would see that reform is no more a threat than the SNP.
If the SNP had been honest and true to there values they could be looking to this Hamilton by election with nothing to worry about instead the SNP has had to kowtow to the Daily Record to attract voters to vote for them.
Sturgeon and the SNP has done more to damage Scotland in the last 11yrs and yet this pathetic party who once had a membership of over 125,000 needs to appeal to Labour voters to vote for them when after the 2014 referendum the SNP owned their votes its the SNP who’s squanders the gold opportunity’s other and other again, for me I don’t even believe the SNP leadership is even bothered about the SNP as a party.
Its simple Independence isn’t going to delivered by the SNP or any other party for the next ten years or more. Its the work liberate Scotland and Salvo have been doing that’s were I believe is the most important route for Scotland work that the SNP wants nothing to do with.
NOBODY is going to hold the SNP to account except possibly the people.
Until it happens, the SNP will linger like a bad smell which stifles the recovery of the Independence movement proper.
I hope the people of Hamilton do the right thing and send the SNP out on their ear, this cesspit of a party has done nothing for the ordinary people or Scotland.
I’m totally 100% behind Holyrood being shut down and down for good, it only benefits the people who work there and not Scotland or our people.
The SNP could have denied flamingo land planning application on Loch Lomond but have embraced it, another stab in the heart by this rotten party and as it happened this isn’t a constitutional question its entirely within the SNP power to stop it.
The so called Stronger for Scotland party no longer exist, so for me I’d love to see the SNP dead and buried and no longer a party because its holding Scotland back.
I’d love to know who paid for the advert in the Daily Record.
It might seem counterintuitive for the UK’s Scottish regional admin centre (comically known as the Scottish government) to be permanently shut down and all those devolved ‘powers’ returned to Westminster…but it isn’t.
The saying, attributed to Enoch Powell, that “power devolved is power retained” couldn’t be more apt when applied to Scotland’s devolved ‘government’.
The Scottish government has very little in the way of serious powers.
Westminster kindly gave Scotland’s politicians the power to twiddle their thumbs and collect their huge salaries and fraudulent expenses whilst pretending to pull on the levers of real power.
If I were dishonest and corrupt and lazy and stupid and devious I might very well have been drawn to a career as one of Scotland’s politicians, but sadly I’m unreasonably honest and of moderate intelligence so that path was denied me.
Scotland’s devolved administration is just that – an administrative branch office of Westminster. It is most definitely NOT a government.
But the real problem the Scots have with their ‘Scottish Government’ is that it gives the impression they have some control over what happens in Scotland when they absolutely don’t.
This might come as a huge disappointment to those who actually believe the devolved government in Scotland can effect real change in seriously bettering their lives…but it can’t and it wouldn’t even if it could.
Holyrood is a tool of Westminster and exists to promote England’s interests over Scotland’s – it’s no more complicated than that.
It might not seem like it, but It would be a great boon to Scotland’s independence movement if Scotland’s devolved government was shut down for good and the Holyrood parliament building turned into a community centre or something that was actually useful.
Did you know that the Holyrood parliament building was designed by a Spaniard and is modelled on capsized boats?
How hilariously fantastically symbolically appropriate.
ABANDON SHIP!
“The Scottish government has very little in the way of serious powers”
I don’t know about that.
Health
Education
Local Government
Justice
Environment
Housing
Rural Affairs
Economy
Transport
Taxation
Social Security
I believe they also get to determine how many Scottish genders there are – and that’s a biggie.
Now I know that with an uber brain like yours, you could sort all of this out pronto and still knock off early for lunch.
But to the rest of us mere mortals, it’s more than enough to keep them busy. And more than enough to demonstrate just how fecking clueless they really are.
Holyrood gets pocket money. Westminster is the parent, and as parent, has final say on everything.
“The SNP is a shambles of imbeciles and it needs putting out of its own, and everyone else’s, misery” – indeed, but not by Reform, please. I wouldn’t trust Farage and his Merry Men as far as I could throw them. Let’s do it ourselves by uniting against their arrogance, shameless promotion of minority interests and total lack of a brain cell between them all. Well, a few decent sorts, but the rest are not fit for purpose. They have betrayed us all.
Happy to admit that I am not as politically erudite as some commentators here, but ..if Swinney gets the win next week (even if the percentage is close), does he trump about how “we, Scotland, have shown there is no place for Reform up here / shades of ‘Cable St’., etc, etc…and try and avoid how close things actually were (possibly?)…
Or if Reform wins…..does Swinney then try and disown / slander said voters…and explains that they (SNP) will have some more ‘soul searching’ (if I remember correctly from last year)?
I find his plea to vote for ‘us’ is rather asking for the opposite to happen….like putting up the proverbial ‘don’t touch, wet paint’….it’s just going to happen.
100% correct Stu
I am wearing my cynic hat on right now.
There is less than a year until the next Holyrood election. This means whatever candidate is catapulted to the seat will not stay long. It will not be a great loss for any of the other status quo parties if the Reform candidate is parachuted to the seat.
What is the likelihood the status quo parties are actually seeking this Reform win?
England’s parties operating in Scotland may perceive a REform win of this seat as their opportunity to ramp up their campaign to distract from independence.
Is Reform going to win on its own merits, or is it going to be catapulted to the seat by design where every other status quo party put forward either serial losers or paper candidates?
Remember George Galloway and his landslide win on the protest vote? It was very short-lived, wasn’t it?.
My cynic hat tells me this situation may easily become a repeat of Galloway’s win.
Galloway’s win scared the bejesus of the establishment, who deployed and ramped up the damage limitation strategy on the following GE.
So, what are the odds that this by-election could become a repeat of Galloway’s case? From the perspective of unionists, a REform win would have a couple of advantages:
a. it might help drag disenfranchised voters to polling places in 2026. A low turnout is possibly today the most serious threat to voters to the perception of elections in Scotland as democratic exercises.
b. it might help distracting yes voters from independence by forcing them to focus on something else: a fabricated imminent “danger”, in the form of a “far-right” bogey man. More and more people in Scotland are stopping caring what party controls WEstminster because the result is always the same: Scotland gets shafted. So this bogeyman figure is also needed in Holyrood to focus voters’ minds in Scotland.
I think it is rather obvious that the administrative branches of Labour, Libdems and Tories have nothing to offer. Traditional tory voters will still have fresh in their minds the monumental mess left behind Sunak, Johnson and of course Liz Truss so there isn’t much appetite to vote tory left.
Traditional labour voters in Scotland will be dismayed at the ghastly performance by the pathetic duo Starmer-Reeves. Again, not much appetite from their voting base in Scotland to approach the ballot box.
I have mentioned in the past that I view Reform in Scotland as simply the new status quo strategy to unite the pro-union vote + soft yes behind the same party. I stand by this. The behaviour of tories and labour in this by-election appears to corroborate that stance.
The apathy from Tory and Labour candidates could easily be interpreted as either having given up or as deliberately acting as paper candidates to secure a reform win.
Another advantage of sacrificing one seat to Reform is that, it makes the ‘far-right’ bogeyman more credible and this may boost their squalid campaigns for 2026. It is pathetic that the threat from the far-right bogeyman seems the only opportunity the status quo parties have of a win. I
What about the SNP?
My cynic hat tells me that either the useless Swinney does not want to win, or was instructed by his masters to not win. He and the party he was parachuted to lead unelected have nothing to offer to yes supporters, so he is running on a tank of gaslighting and hot air. They are of course resourcing to Labour’s old formula:
“vote SNP and get tory” used to be in the day. That has now evolved to become:
“Do not vote SNP and get Reform”.
In other words, Swinney has sank the SNP to the bottom of the barrel.
“My cynic hat tells me that either the useless Swinney does not want to win, or was instructed by his masters to not win”
Yes, I believe the latter possibility suggested by your hat is the correct interpretation of Swinney’s behaviour.
Swinney might not be the smartest of politicians but he isn’t an idiot and he certainly isn’t politically naive.
I don’t think Swinney does or says anything publicly without it being sanctioned by Westminster. Probably not directly sanctioned… but more likely through an intermediary of some kind. Perhaps an aspiring novelist or some low-down dirty cheatin’ black-hearted desperado on the run from justice – who knows?
Westminster knows the SNP is a busted flush, as does the SNP’s National Executive Committee, even if its acolytes and few remaining members don’t – which they probably don’t.
I don’t think Westminster views the SNP as the effective tool it once was in its ongoing mission to suppress the Scots and deny them their independence.
The SNP has lost the confidence and support of the Scottish people and the majority of Scots are no longer deceived by SNP lies.
The SNP is finished, but for now, until its absolute demise, it will be deployed in the performance of some trickery or other designed to frustrate the ambitions of Scotland’s independence movement – much as we see in Swinney’s attempts to confuse the electorate in the Record.
For it must be remembered that every major political party operating in Scotland, and yes, even the SNP now, is a servant of the same master.
Does your cynic hat tell you who the “masters” are?
That was a rhetorical question BTW.
What’s your problem with spelling it out then, Mia?
Feart? Or is it that even you, on your better, lesser medicated days, read over your own posts and conclude that even if they are concocted shite from end to end, it’s best not to make it too obvious?
What makes me sick is that all those SNP MP/MSPs got voted in on the basis that they would be fighting tooth and nail for independence. Yet there is no rebellion or outcry at the almost deliberate anti independence stance being pursued by the leadership just a deafening silence apart from the lapping noise at the trough.
‘for England, nothing changed’
Robert Black KC
@rblackqc
·
1h
I just started a Substack! You can subscribe to it here link to rblackkc.substack.com
We don’t know what Reform stand for; but, after 20 years in Holyrood, what the heck does the SNP stand for?
Ah Larkhall! Fond memories as the place of my childhood, and the butt of so many jokes from my catholic friends in nearby Quarter, and my catholic relatives in Glasgow – I was brought up non religious.
Kerbstones painted red white and blue; the stagecoach in and out of town.
Wasn’t there a bus which went from Halfway to Quarter?
– oh … the comedy routines we did about that one.
You know I’d never heard of Halfway in Cambuslang until you mentioned it!
Everything Swinney says is correct and it’s troubling that RevStu and many of his clan seem not too bothered by the rise of Reform. I suppose they appeal to the antivaxxer, Covid-denying etc wing of ALBA. If ALBA are still a thing.
It’s troubling that some indy supporters think the SNP still have any interest in independence, but here we are.
Doesn’t really address any point I made, RevStu, but there you go.
You didn’t make any discernible point.