Sturgeon’s SNP – the timeline of failure

On and immediately after Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, everybody who was anybody was either heaping praise on the dear, departed First Minister or telling the truth, I thought I’d have a go as well. Why not, I thought?

I had decided to wait until after Sturgeon’s final FMQ’s in the hope that she might show some humility or even some contrition for past mistakes, but, as we all know, Sturgeon believes she has never made a mistake, so admitting any failing was never going to happen. Just another example of wishful thinking on my part?

As most regular, or even occasional, readers will know, I’m not one of Sturgeon’s fans, though it was not always the case. Like many others, I was extremely disappointed when Alex Salmond resigned following the 2014 referendum, but I thought, in Nicola Sturgeon, we had a replacement who would continue to develop the case for independence. Independence, I thought, was certain in my lifetime, but I was a young and easily impressed 70-year-old then. Those were the days!

Little did I know that 2015 was the high point for the independence campaign and from then, it would be all downhill.

Who then would have been able to imagine the mandates given and the open goals ignored, not missed, because the SNP refused even to take a shot.

And who then would have been able to imagine what would have changed by 2023. Today, the party seem up to their necks in problems: the sudden, unexpected resignation of First Minister; the missing £600,000; the fiddled leadership election; the unlikely battlebus purchase; the former CEO arrested and questioned by the police for 11 hours and who knows how many more. But does this come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to what has happened, or not happened, over the 8+ years since Sturgeon took charge? It shouldn’t.

Let’s look at a brief history of Nicola Sturgeon’s time in charge of the SNP.

2015

The Westminster election, the first after the referendum and after Sturgeon’s coronation. Polling was showing overwhelming support for the SNP, so the leadership knew they were going to win big, though perhaps not just as big as it turned out. However, for reasons known only to Sturgeon, the manifesto included the statement below that a vote for the SNP was not a vote for independence, supposedly, but unneccessarily included so as not to frighten off potential SNP voters who might be ambivalent about independence. However, it’s unlikely the statement had any significant effect on the outcome of the election, but it set the scene for what was to come.

Here’s an extract from the 2015 manifesto. Is it significant that the heading says “Home Rule” (a unionist construct) and not independence? The remainder of the extract then lists a series of expectations which, as we now know, were never realised and, in any case, given the huge English majority in Westminster, were never realistic as the leadership would have known. It was not about “making Scotland stronger at Westminster” as that just wasn’t possible, so what was it about?

This was one of only four mentions of independence in the manifesto, none of which suggested there was any plan, or even any intention, to achieve it and, in the following twelve months, nothing was done. A failure.

2016

Two elections this year, or rather one election and a referendum. The election was for the Scottish Parliament, resulting in another big win for the SNP, though they just failed to repeat the majority achieved by Alex Salmond in 2011. This wasn’t a problem as they had the support of the Greens, who, at that time, were still considered to be an independence supporting party. More of that later.

The 2016 manifesto contained seven mentions of independence, a 75% increase compared to 2015, and it also promised some action. Unfortunately, as we came to expect from a Sturgeon led government, none of the promised action was ever delivered.

Surely the most significant statement was the one on the left, or at least, so it seemed at the time. Here, at last, were definite criteria for progressing an independence campaign. Note that no mention is made of the infamous Section 30, introduced later as yet another stalling tactic.

Of course, as we now know, the significant and material change in circumstances mentioned above did occur, but no use was ever made of it to progress independence.

2017

The election came as the result of a surprise decision by Prime Minister Theresa May (remember her?) in an attempt to get her Brexit bill through Westminster. She had hoped to get a larger majority and a stronger mandate for her plans, but instead, she lost seats and, ultimately, lost her job. However, the Tories’ loss of seats was tiny compared to the SNP’s. The SNP lost over a third of their MPs, falling from 56 to 35 by the simple expedient of ignoring independence.

The manifesto did contain 8 mentions of independence, but no promises of action. As can be seen from the excerpt on the left, being taken out of the EU against our will (in 2016) had morphed into once the final terms are known (by 2020), a handy 4 year delay. The party was also asking for a “triple lock” mandate. One mandate wasn’t enough to trigger action on independence, neither was two mandates, it had to be three mandates. As we now know, three mandates was still not enough.

Could be a cue for a song …
“There were three Indy mandates,
Spaffed against the wall …”

The SNP had been unprepared for the election, both financially and politically, coming less than a year after the double expenditure in 2016 and being in the middle of their mid-term fallow period, when they didn’t normally feel the need even to talk about independence. Despite unionist media claims that thousands of SNP voters transferred to unionist parties, the simple truth is that about half a million independence supporting former SNP voters just couldn’t be bothered turning out to vote for a party that didn’t consider independence a priority.

In the following twelve months, no action was taken to further the cause of independence.

2018

The start of arguably the worst action ever undertaken by Sturgeon’s SNP, the attempt to discredit Alex Salmond to prevent his return to front-line politics, an attempt that eventually culminated in a High Court trial on trumped-up sexual assault charges.

The action had actually started towards the end of 2017, when a decision was taken to introduce a procedure covering sexual assault charges against former ministers. How this developed is covered extensively by Calton Jock in his posting about the case, so those who want to find out more can read it here.

Sufficient at this stage to say that a procedure covering harassment by former ministers was specially produced by a combination of politicians and civil servants working in concert (some might call it a conspiracy) to prevent Salmond returning to politics. Salmond’s view was that the procedure was flawed and unfair. After several unsuccessful attempts by him to have the procedure reviewed independently, he was forced to take the Scottish Government to court, resulting in a win for Salmond at a cost of over £500,000 to the Government (and the taxpayer). Interestingly, the Scottish Government had continued with the case despite legal advice and only gave in when their own legal team threatened to resign when they found out the Scottish Government had been lying to them.

So determined were the plotters to remove Alex Salmond from politics, that following the loss of the civil case, they escalated the case to the police. Salmond eventually went to trial in 2020 facing 14 charges, all from people with a connection to the Scottish Government. This was despite an unprecedented attempt by the police to drum up other accusations by interviewing over 400 other women with even the slightest connection to Salmond and despite various members of the Scottish Government trying to induce their contacts to make complaints.

Salmond was acquitted of all charges, but that has not stopped members of Sturgeon’s government and other SNP supporters continuing to smear him.

Obviously, with all these legal shenanigans going on, no progress was made to bring independence closer.

2019

The 2019 General Election came again as a surprise and again was an attempt by the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to increase his majority to make it easier to get his often controversial legislation passed. His attempt was much more successful than Theresa May’s earlier attempt, though, despite the large majority he gained from the election, he failed to last out the full term.

The SNP went with a manifesto that was long on the advantages of independence, but short on the actions the Scottish Government were intending to take to achieve it. The extract below is typical of the content of the manifesto.

The manifesto contained 17 mentions of independence, mainly telling Scots how independence will improve their lives, but there was not one mention of how the SNP proposed to achieve it. The extract on the left was typical, proposing a referendum in 2020 with no idea how it might be brought about.

But then came Covid, an excuse for delay so good, that it is almost impossible to believe that Sturgeon herself wasn’t responsible for the pandemic. Covid not only gave the SNP the excuse to stop campaigning (obviously every single person in the government was so tied up with Covid, that no one could be spared for anything else), but it also allowed laws to be passed to prevent all other campaigning, and it was obvious that no election or referendum would be held during the pandemic. This was despite elections and referendums going ahead in other countries with Covid restrictions in place. What was special about Scotland?

It wasn’t as if the restrictions led to Scotland surviving the pandemic particularly well. The Scottish death rate may have been the best among the home nations, but was still among the highest in the world.

So the promised 2020 referendum was cancelled but Covid did give Sturgeon the opportunity to enhance her reputation through frequent television appearances.

2021

The 2021 Scottish election, when Sturgeon advised candidates to remove references to independence from their election literature and when the SNP gerrymandered the regional list to put Sturgeon supporting woke candidates at the top in each region, displacing independence supporting candidates like Joan McAlpine. This was the point when I gave up all hope of the SNP ever returning to being a party of independence. I resigned. Better late than never?

Unlike most of the earlier manifestos the 2021 version contained several promises of action. Look at all the promises made in the in the extract on the left and try to think when these independence related actions went ahead. (Spoiler, they didn’t.)

As I’ve said, promises don’t always lead to delivery in Sturgeon’s SNP.

Another planned event in this year which didn’t go ahead was the Scottish Census, held every ten years since 1801 and only cancelled once, in 1941 because of WWII. Using Covid as an excuse, the Scottish Government postponed the census till the following year. The census went ahead as scheduled in all other parts of the UK. It is not known what particular aspects of the Scottish census made holding it in 2021 too much of a risk, but other events would suggest that the Scottish Government must have gained some advantage. No results have yet been released from the delayed census.

However, what did go ahead was the passing of the Hate Crimes Bill which made it a criminal act to say something which another person took offence to, even if no offence was meant. Of course, if a criminal offence is to be determined by another’s opinion, it is difficult to know in advance whether what you say is against the law. Better to shut up and not take the risk. Was that the real objective?

Here is an extract from the bill (now an act, but not as yet in force as Police Scotland have said parts of it are unenforceable). Note that the impressively long list of characteristics doesn’t include sex, subject to a later decision on whether it should be included or not, which means hate speech against women is not included. It is ironical that a man wearing a dress is covered by the legislation, but a woman isn’t.

The Scottish Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, described in the extract on the left, led to the Gender Recognition \Reform bill. Interestingly, as with the Hate Crimes Act, the protected characteristics mentioned do not include sex.

Following the election, the SNP decided to formalise the relationship with the Scottish Greens and they were invited to form a coalition with two Green MSPs becoming government ministers. It was about this point that both parties, having for years been flirting with gender reassignment policies, seemed to become full-on transgender parties, dropping their interest in Scottish independence beyond its use as a marketing tool. In the eighteen months following, the impression was widely gained that Scottish Government policies were either designed by the Greens or were designed to keep the Greens on-side.

2022

The one action the Scottish Government took in relation to independence was to ask the Westminster Supreme Court if the Scottish Government was permitted to hold a referendum on independence. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court said no, as everyone in Scotland expected, with the apparent exception of Scottish Government ministers.

However, there was no follow-up action, no attempt to argue against the decision.

The one major parliamentary activity was the debate on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. To say the bill was contentious would be the understatement of the year. The main area of disquiet was the inclusion of self-id, not mentioned in the SNP manifesto. This removed the need for a medical diagnosis of gender disphoria, replacing it with a simple unsupported declaration that the individual is now of a different sex (or gender). Poll after poll has consistently shown that a large majority of Scots are against the government’s plans for the introduction of self-id, but no changes were made to take account of these objections. In fact, the provisions contained in the bill were entirely designed with reference to only the minority point of view. Women’s majority viewpoints were ignored, were even declared “invalid” by Sturgeon.

Westminster have indicated that they will use the provisions contained in Section 35 of the Scotland Act to strike down the GRR Act due to its impact on the UK-wide 2010 Equality Act. The Scottish Government have decided to take legal action against Westminster to overturn the decision, an expensive action which is extremely unlikely to succeed. It is perhaps indicative of the relative priority placed by the Scottish Government on these pieces of legislation when they are contesting the Westminster decision affecting Gender Recognition Reform, which only a small minority of Scots support, but just accepting the Supreme Court decision affecting independence.

2023

What can be said about the SNP in 2023? If the SNP are to continue as Scotland’s major political party, changes must be made. Their position of virtual domination in Scotland was created by Alex Salmond and was continued by Nicola Sturgeon only by virtue of her ability to use Alex Salmond’s legacy as a marketing instrument. Her skill was to persuade so many to believe that today’s SNP was still the SNP of 2014, while converting the party into a vehicle for her own ambition, her true ambition, to become Scotland’s most famous political figure of the 21st century. Her every action was based on enhancing her own reputation, not on enhancing the chances of Scottish independence. It was this desire for fame and success that seemed to drive her to seek to destroy those who represented a challenge to her position or those who would disagree with any policy she supported. She wouldn’t ever change her mind, because changing your mind or being persuaded to accept a different opinion was weakness and weakness couldn’t be tolerated.

One aspect of Sturgeon’s SNP has been its ability to deliver electoral success. Unfortunately, this success has created two situations which have contributed to their current problems and may even become the reason for their downfall.

Electoral success persuades those who are benefitting from that success to accept unquestioningly everything the party does, whether they agree or not. A lack of debate within any party leads to the party stultifying, not developing.

Electoral success also attracts those who are not in tune with the party’s goals but who seek electoral success for its own sake, simply for the money, the power and the fame which it brings.

Sturgeon’s SNP has a substantial number of elected members who fit into one or both of these categories and more and more members are starting to realise this, causing the current steady stream of leavers, the loss of membership income and the potential loss of seats and therefore income at next year’s Westminster election.

Postscript

For the government of any country considering independence, there are two actions in particular that they must take.

Firstly, they must begin a continuing process of educating the citizens of the country to show them the benefits that each will gain from independence. This process should begin as soon as independence is mooted and must be continued right up to the date of decision. It should be constantly updated to reflect the then current circumstances. Only then will the people be persuaded that independence is essential.

Secondly, they must begin a continuing process of readying the country for independence by reviewing its infrastructure, its systems of governance, its financial systems and its trade and political relationships and upgrading or replacing where necessary. It is essential that, when independence comes, the country is independence-ready and does not have to go through a period of months or even years of adjustment, preventing the country from getting the benefits of independence that its people were promised.

In both of these areas, the Scottish Government can only be described as having failed.

There has been no consistent campaign to show the people what independence will mean and why they should vote for it. What efforts the Scottish Government have made have been limited to telling the people to persuade their family, friends and neighbours without providing the materials and the information necessary to support such a campaign. The Scottish Government should have been leading the charge, not introducing road blocks.

There has been little effort made to ready the country for independence. The introduction of a few tax processes and social security processes is not good enough. The lack of trading and other relationships with our European neighbours is not good enough. The lack of a truly Scottish Civil Service able to run an independent country is not good enough. In almost every area, the Scottish Government’s attitude has been either there’s plenty of time or we can’t be bothered because nothing’s going to happen for years. Neither attitude takes us to independence. Neither attitude is a winner.

Things have to change and have to change fast. Let’s finish with an instruction to the Scottish Government. Let’s hope the government, under its new leadership, will pay more attention than the lot that went before.

Scottish Government. The time to start is now. It’s time to shit or get off the pot as our American cousins say.

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