andrewducker | Interesting Links for 31-05-2023

4) The Labour Party are currently a Brexit Party. I suspect that will soften in their second term.

The SNP might as well be a Brexit Party given that they appear to have stopped actually campaigning for Scottish independence.

I wonder what such campaigning would look like at the moment. I've been assuming that they are waiting for the results of the special conference in June.

I've definitely hear semi-regularly about how rubbish Westminster is from the SNP, but it's nowhere near as loud as during the last referendum, obviously.

I think it would look like one of 1) sticking with their original plan for a de facto plebiscite (which was bonkers but was at least doing something) 2) declaring that they have a mandate for a referendum from having won all those elections with that mandate and that if the UK government won't honour that mandate then the UK is an undemocratic tyranny and then publicly withdrawing MPs and perhaps MSPs from Parliament (s) 3) ignoring the Supreme Court case that they lost and daring the UK government to put them in prison a la Catalonia (or more properly a Catalunya.

Or taking the sort of disruptive action at Westminster that you and I have discussed before as a protest.

Or stating publicly that they would keep the Tories in government in exchange for a DUP-style bribe in the event of a hung parliament unless Labour agrees to transfer constitutional powers to Holyrood. If we can't have freedom we can at least have sandwiches.

That at least would be doing something.

Now, they don't have to stand on a platform of independence. They could actually stand on what they appear to be doing which is beige social democracy with occasional bouts of madness and authoritarian over reach and a vague hat tip on sidling up to provisionally accepting the principal of asking for greater devolution at some point. (But I did not lend them my vote for that and if that is their position I shall take my vote back at the next opportunity.)

As for the special conference Yousef is going to bottle it and he has neither the gallus charm of Salmond or the homespun earnestness of Sturgeon to carry off disguising that he has. More accurately, the special conference appears to my jaundiced eye to be the vehicle by which Yousef bottles it and is designed to be that vehicle.

Not my circus, not my monkeys but if Yousef is SNP leader at the next general election you and I can kiss goodbye to our Scottish and EU passport this side of our UK pension.

Wasn't the special conference set up by Sturgeon? (in which case it's fair enough to say that it was set up by her to avoid dealing with it).

I think that the de facto plebiscite had charm - and that getting 50%+ in the next general election would definitely show that there was a majority of voters in favour of Independence (quibbling over "different voters for different elections" to one side). We'll see if they go for that at the special conference.

I can see withdrawing from Westminster as a possible option. Ignoring the Supreme Court would, I think, go down badly with the kind of nervous indie-supporter who is just-about onside with Independence, but not if it means that politicians are being arrested/riots in the streets, etc. I'm not sure that either of those would get more people to vote for Independence, in any case.

Certainly, if the SNP stated they would keep the Tories in government for any reason I can see them losing a large chunk of their voters (and membership) overnight.

Like it or not (and I don't), the votes for Independence seem to be very-much tied to how popular the SNP are and how unpopular the current Westminster government is. Making the SNP less attractive wouldn't move the needle positively for getting Independence, as far as I can see.

Not that I'm convinced that Scotland would vote for Independence at the moment. At least, not reliably. I suspect that rather too much would fall on random events of the week the vote was held.

Interesting Links for 31-05-2023

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