The Wheels Of Industry
Last Friday’s edition of The National ran this guff:
And as we often are, we were put in mind of the greatest politics book ever written.
We’d really need to quote a much longer section to fully convey the point – ideally just read all of the piece linked above – but this passage will suffice for general purposes:
“What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself.
Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war.
It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”
So let’s talk about the independence industry.
Or as Orwell put it, “The war is now within measurable distance of its end”. Kemp’s claim is obvious bollocks. Plaid Cymru are now the party of power in Wales but they don’t have a majority, they’ve pledged NOT to hold a referendum on independence, and if they did there’s essentially no chance they’d win it. Support in Wales usually bobbles around between 25% and 40% with DKs excluded.
Similarly, we can’t even find much in the way of evidence of Sinn Fein even seriously talking about a border poll in Northern Ireland. Much like the SNP in Scotland, they tend to talk it up a bit during elections then immediately kick it back into the long grass.
And of course the UK government has less than no interest in granting any more referendums in the foreseeable future, having been quite terrified by the unexpected closeness of the Scottish one and then losing the Brexit one.
So what of this “strategy for victory”, then? Kemp has a surprise for us.
Apparently the “true” support for independence is actually less than 40%. That’s what Kemp says would be the result of a “de facto referendum” conducted via a general election. He doesn’t cite any evidence for that figure, although it does pretty much correspond with what pro-indy parties got in the Holyrood election in May.
There’s little prospect of support for either the SNP or the Greens rocketing in the near future, and no sign of any new party with any traction, so let’s accept that proposition for the sake of argument. Now what?
This, though, is cobblers of the very lowest grade. For reasons we’ve explored extensively in the past, using a Westminster election rather than a Holyrood one is an epically terrible idea. You’d struggle to even get heard in a media which would be focused on UK issues, and you’d only really have one party to vote for – the Scottish Greens are a total irrelevance at Westminster.
That leaves it all on the SNP, and (as Kemp notes), the SNP are a shambles of a party that even many indy supporters won’t vote for.
In a Holyrood election you have the huge advantage of two votes, and thereby you can campaign on the basis of using the constituency vote as your de-facto indyref and the list vote as your normal election vote, making it much easier for people who don’t support the SNP to vote “for independence” while still backing their preferred party.
Heavens, we’re getting dizzy trying to track all these U-turns. Does he want a de-facto indyref or not? At this point we honestly don’t know. Just a few paragraphs ago he’s told us we’d get less than 40% in such a vote, now he wants to have it in three years anyway, in the most doomed-to-certain-failure manner possible.
What’s your game, Gordon?
“Impulsive”? Christ above. We’ve been demanding Westminster outline a defined route for over a decade now – since at least the Brexit vote of June 2016 – and they’ve swatted it away like a mildly annoying moth on a summer’s evening. The chances of them having a sudden change of heart between now and 2028 are roughly on a par with FIFA agreeing to replay the whole World Cup due the the referee’s refusal to give Scotland a nailed-on penalty against Morocco.
(And about the same as the SNP finally coming up with all the serious work on the case for independence that they’ve so conspicuously failed to do in that decade. What does he think has changed? Has the party suddenly recruited an army of geniuses?)
This drivel is what the SNP has been punting relentlessly at voters since 2015 and all that’s happened as a result is that SNP support has plunged from 60% to the mid-30s. The definition of insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
But that assumes you WANT different results. And there’s the rub. Because if you did you’d be trying a bit harder than this:
Billboards and petitions. Whoop-de-sodding-doo. (We all know how much attention we pay to political bumf shoved through our letterbox, and 75,000 is a pathetic number – just one for every 34 households in the country – anyway. What are the people who get one going to do, call the whole street round to read it together?)
As for the “Scottish Citizens’ Convention”, Kemp and Believe In Scotland have been trying to flog that ridiculous pig-in-a-poke for years now and it’s an absolute honking embarrassment of a plan.
But as we pointed out yesterday, punting this quack-hooey at the hopelessly gullible is a nice little earner for BiS’s parent company Business For Scotland. Failing to deliver it year after year keeps the (folding, not clinking) money rolling in and Kemp in an undisclosed, but we’re quite certain enviable, salary.
Independence either happening, or definitively failing, would see that gravy train crashing straight into the buffers. The only thing that keeps it rolling along (apologies for the mixed metaphor) is a carrot on a stick, constantly dangling something a couple of years ahead, no matter how implausible, whether it’s an 11-point plan or yet another talking shop, committee, “task force”, “Summer Of Independence” or whatever.
Even as shonky independence strategies go this one’s a duffer, for a truckload of reasons so blindingly obvious that we feel bad about insulting your intelligence by spelling them out, so we’ll just do a few of the biggest ones.
(1) There is NO chance of the SNP willingly surrendering their political ownership of the concept of independence. They wouldn’t even accept votes for other indy parties at this year’s election as being votes for indy, they insisted only SNP ones counted.
(2) Even if they did (they won’t) and the “common national banner” took every seat at Westminster, so what? The SNP got 56 out of 59 in 2015 and they did nothing. They did nothing when they had numerical leverage in 2018-2019 either. If they had any cunning plans, those were the times to whip them out.
(3) You get zero “legitimacy” from a discussion process that Unionists have absolutely no reason to participate in. Why on Earth would they lend any sort of support or credibility to a venture expressly and openly designed to achieve the thing they most oppose? So you’re talking solely to the people who already agree with you, persuading no-one and getting nowhere.
(4) If BiS know the people capable of getting us from where we are now to a position of being ready to win a de-facto indyref, where the heck are they and what have they been doing for the last 10 years, when the circumstances have been so favourable? Washing their hair? Were they just waiting for all the momentum and impetus of Brexit, COVID, May, Truss and Starmer to die down because they didn’t want to make it too easy?
The snake oil they’re selling isn’t even oil, it’s toilet water. The independence industry wants your money to pay its wages, and that’s the end of their interest in you. If they had anything to offer, they’d have done it by now, but then they’d be out of a job and have to do something a little harder than organising a dinner and a march for a few hundred people once a year.
In football, if you produce nothing for a decade you get the sack. But Scottish politics is a gig for life. When you’re cruising, you don’t rock the boat.
GMK doesn’t know what Swinney and the SNP are going to do next.
So he’s just keeping all ‘options’ on the table … so that when Swinney/SNP start flogging another non-starter he can jump on that bandwagon and keep the lolly rolling in.
England and America will drain Scotland dry of all oil and gas while the SNP sit back and look onward and say Westminster bad.
The worst things in the last 12yrs is the people who actively promote the SNP as the party to make Scotland Independent.
The National, Independence live, Scotgoespop, Dug, Kemp, Riddock and the list goes on of of false Independence supporters. I’m pleased these people have made a good living but when disaster hits they’ll all shut down and move on as did our former FM Nicola Sturgeon.
Even today these so called soft Independence supporters are saying look to Westminster and I say for what? What is it we can do at the next Westminster election we can’t do now.
Even worse than that you have others saying we needs to wait until Holyrood 2031 and I say when all the damaged has been done.
There is no one will convince me The National newspaper has been a force for good or Independence live has furthered the cause of Independence. All of these so called Independence body’s have promoted a SNP agenda.
Scotland is dying, its people are losing their jobs and all the SNP is bothered about is more powers for Scotland. I thought the idea was to return all the powers to Scotland.
People on here can go out and buy the national read the article give your comments but next year and the year after what have you achieved?
Both the Greens & SNP will now argue that they need to convince more people to support Independence without actually doing anything about it.
Swinney will write to the PM and when he says NAW, nothing will happen until we have the usual individuals telling us all again to vote for the SNP and only the SNP in the next Westminster election. Yes the SNP will go into the Westminster election on a Indy ticket but whatch out the trap will be in the detail, but here’s the thing not one soft Indy supporter will mention the SNP duplicity other than Wings.
The new PM made it perfectly clear the union is going to survive for the next ten years and he knows perfectly the SNP is on board with that time frame.
I’ve often heard it said that Gordon MK is really an arm of the SNP.
He’s tried to split the marching fraternity by setting up his own rallies. John Swinney spoke at the last one, though the SNP usually try to ignore AUOB, which is the original marching organisation.
Now he’s trying to usurp the idea of a Citizen’s Convention for himself. A genuine Citizen’s Convention could provide a way forward to independence, but Gordon MK is definitely not the person to lead it. It would have to be much more genuinely convened right across civil society.
As you say, Wings, Gordon’s got a nice little earner for himself and will keep the SNP happy. He’s definitely trying to become the independence movement’s leader. Really? Well, as far as I see it, that is neither his true aim nor his true motivation.
A Citizen’s Convention is a con if run by anyone put in charge by the SNP.
I scribbled 6 paragraphs and tossed the lot with the exception the last line…
“The SNP is a parasite”.
All that preceded it was superfluous.
robertkknight
A parasite is a living thing the SNP is dead.
Your reference to the greatest book on politics ever written reminded me of the greatest political speech ever given. I refer of course to the ‘Pussies, dicks and assholes’ speech in Team America. And no, I’m not joking.
Depressingly accurate demolition of BiS.
Next up AUOB? Funds misappropriated? I do hope not. We need a few marches in England.
What grinds my gears is the amount of gullibility surrounding independence supporters, FFS are they blind can they not see that Kemp and his faux progressive entourage are just GRIFTING on Scotland’s independence
Pensioners for indy sup up his and the other fake indy grifters lies and pish despite repeated warnings that they are being taken for a ride, you only have to look at paypal Pauls site to see the effect these troons encourage, it is an insult to REAL independence supporters when you see the slavering acceptance and adulation they heap on these grifters , as long as these scum can manipulate and fleece the willing dummies WM can relax, they don’t even need to do anything, the GRIFTERS will just keep on grifting and the snp will encourage their lies because the TROUGH depends on immobility
“He doesn’t cite any evidence for that figure, although it does pretty much correspond with what pro-indy parties got in the Holyrood election in May.
There’s little prospect of support for either the SNP or the Greens rocketing in the near future, and no sign of any new party with any traction, so let’s accept that proposition for the sake of argument.”
Hmm, many spokes and nipples to maketh wheels… Why accept that at all if it’s guff, and then run with it? And jist completely ignore the pro Scotland self-governance vote isn’t just the SNP and Greens vote share these days, and that Labour also has significant pro Scotland self-governance support.
“…using a Westminster election rather than a Holyrood one is an epically terrible idea.”
Well using Holyrood “elections” hasn’t exactly been a roaring success for numerous reasons. Twats of political Parties putting themselves before country, the voting system virtually nae cunt understands, let’s not forget the non-bigoted ridiculously open enfranchisement that gives us (not you though) Q Trannymanvan.
But sod it, lets jist do the same shit over and over again and not even consider doing anything differently. Aye, jist keep this up and we’ll all be dead soon enough and not give a fuck anyway.
“You’d struggle to even get heard in a media which would be focused on UK issues.”
Great, they’ll be stretched and fighting on two fronts trying to float opposite lies to both KoE and KoS electorates.
“and you’d only really have one party to vote for – the Scottish Greens are a total irrelevance at Westminster.”
And so have pretty much every other Scottish Party politicians ever voted into Westminster due to the democratic deficit of the KoE having a near ten to one advantage over KoS MPs.
Only need 54 decent serious candidates to sign up for and stand on an end the Union mandate, and get busy promoting the prospect to build support, or jist continue rolling along with yon wheel…
“The findings showed:
60% of voters in England say current politics makes them feel angry
55% say it makes them fearful, and
78% say it makes them frustrated
9% reported feeling hopeful
3% said it made them happy.
…Grievance with the union, and how England is governed, continues to suggest that the English feel their voice is not heard, their culture and identity not given the attention it deserves.”
More here
link to theunionsurvey.com
Thank god you told us the nitty gritty. To be honest I’d rather sell my sole to the devil than read 42 pages of English being unhappy.
Has anyone seen the new BBC advert about how honest it is. I didn’t know wither to lol or report them for lying.
I didn’t know the devil bought soles.
@Dan
Your final paragraph is exactly right.
John Swinney leader of the SNP, just been elected on a huge lie, but his top priority is the cost of living. So now we know what we on Wings already knew Independence is dead for another 5yrs.
Seriously, who pays money to read this garbage? Endlessly promising a better future (we just need to be patient & wait for it) but its the here & now that matters to me. I have absolutely no time for anybody in the SNP – all they are interested in since 2015 are looking after themselves.
Professors Henderson and Wyn Jones have done studies on the “Future of England” over a number of yeaars.
The findings from their study in 2025 and the link to their work are below.
It might be that the English people would like to see the end of the Union and perhaps the people of Scotland en masse and not the political parties could give a nudge or two along the road.
link to theunionsurvey.com
“We have identified and examined a number of individual themes across this body of work including, inter alia:
? The very strong relationship between English national identity and
Euroscepticism. On average, the more a given individual prioritises their sense of English identity the more Eurosceptic their views are likely to be;
? The strong sense of identification among the English in particular with some parts of the UK state’s imperial history and with the peoples of some of its former colonies, namely what used to be known as the ‘White Dominions’. There is no escaping the racialised dimensions of what we have termed the ‘English worldview’;
? The very strong relationship between English national identity and what we have termed devo-anxiety, namely a sense that England is unfairly treated within the domestic union with a sense of grievance focused particularly on Scotland, a country regarded as enjoying an undeserved and unfair level of political influence and resources compared to England;
? A striking degree of ambivalence about the continuing territorial integrity of the UK state among English-identifiers, including a tendency to regard the goal of Brexit as being far more important than maintaining the place of either Scotland or Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom; and finally,
? A strong sense of dissatisfaction with the current arrangements for English governance combined with a sense that the proffered alternative, namely ‘English devolution’ – the buttressing of a regional or meso-level of government within England – is also inappropriate and/or insufficient.Again, this is particularly the case among English-identifiers, although it is also worth stressing that in this case even those in England who identify as British and not English also tend to favour treating England as a single entity rather than as a collection of distinct units.”…
“As these references to ‘scepticism’, ‘grievance’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘dissatisfaction’ make clear, the overriding sense derived from a study of English attitudes is of discontent, of an English nation that is unhappy, even mutinous. We emphasise English rather than British simply because the overwhelming evidence suggests that, within England, it is those who embrace English identity – whether alone or in combination with a sense of Britishness – who are by far the most discontented. By contrast, those who emphasise their British identity tend to feel rather differently. They are, on average, much less sceptical, aggrieved and/or dissatisfied. (While we will not pursue the point further here, it is worth reminding readers that, outside of England, those attitudes that align with Englishness in England tend to align with British identity in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.In other words, the views associated with Britishness not only vary but contrast across the state.)
This is the post-apocalyptic political landscape that was anticipated a few years ago, the inevitable consequence of the SNP crime syndicate’s inevitable unraveling. It’s the waste land.
Maybe we need to spend a few years wondering what’s to be done before we work out what’s to be done.
It’s a great reckoning and we need to make sure we get it right; we ought not to distract or burden ourselves with constructive thoughts at a time like this.
“Maybe we need to spend a few years wondering what’s to be done before we work out what’s to be done”
Since the birth of the United Nations, more than 80 former colonies comprising some 750 million people have gained independence.
Scots don’t have to wonder or wait, the global decolonization template is well established. We just need to better understand our colonial oppression and why independence means decolonization:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Who funds the National ? as I doubt its sales revenue, hope its not the missing Yes Scotland funds
Kemp is sitting in a crashed car trying to convince the passengers and eye-witnesses that the car is still road worthy.
Just pondering history, with some links to (what would be) Scotland.
Emperor Hadrian (of wall fame) listed his successor as (ultimately) Marcus Aurelius (of Gladiator fame) yet as he wasn’t old or experienced enough Antoninus Pius was given the “as long as you agree to it” interim role till MA was ready.
Meantime;
Back at the farm here in Scotchland Mrs Murrell effs aff and promptly bursts into tears when dull as dishwater Bible John Swinney agreed to stand in as her uber compliant proxy.
First election past who gets the deputy “in waiting” job?
None other than serial failure in ministerial posts the ever petulant Jenny (lesbian) Gilruth..
Hardly Marcus Aurelius material, nor her serial career sponger (Labour vote happy clapper poster girl (?!..) partner “Kez” (job for life) catastrophic failure Dugdale..
Anyone else see a pattern here?
I think Mrs Murrell thinks we are all too thick to see it, or at least her party is..