Kate Forbes and the end of the independence dream
The implosion of the SNP has altered the course of Scottish and UK politics for a generation
The self-destruction of of the Scottish National Party, in the midst of a leadership election, is one of those moments in politics when everyone is lost for words. What can you say when just about every figure of importance, from the Chief Executive Peter Murrell down, resigns in disgrace after the party is discovered to be lying about its membership figures. It is beyond parody, beyond satire. It is almost beyond belief.
The SNP under Nicola Sturgeon has been one of the most electorally-successful political parties in Europe. It is hard to think of any democratic leader, outside the communist or post-communist world, who has matched electoral achievement of Nicola Sturgeon and her election Svengali, Peter Murrell. There is something rather tragic about Murrell, who has masterminded countless election victories, resigning over such a trivial affair as giving out the wrong membership figures.
The SNP has been in power for sixteen years. It dominates politics at every level in Scotland, with more MPs in Westminster than all the rival parties put together, and more MSPs in Holyrood than all the Unionist parties put together. It even extended its success in the local elections of 2021, winning control of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. It has turned Scotland into a defacto one party state – an electoral one party state, not a dictatorship. The opposition parties, Labour and the Tories, have been down so long they don't know which way is up.
Of course, party stalwarts try to pretend that this is merely a temporary set back, and some may even believe it. Sturgeon diehards like Mhairi Hunter , who used to run her constituency office, and the deputy Westminster leader, Mhairi Black, have been doggedly insisting that this election chaos is all just so much froth. They are both gender radicals, advocates of those “progressive values” who've have yet to realise that voters see nothing very progressive in misogynistic dogmas that lead to male bodied sex offenders being placed in women's prisons.
But hope springs. Lesley Riddoch, the activist-journalists told Channel 4 News that things may even better for the independence movement now that the “old guard” of John Swinney, Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon et all have gone. “Whoever comes in now gets a clean start” she said, nodding vigorously. It's onward and upward.
But as I will explain, it isn't. It's the end of the dream.
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