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August 20, 2024 - 7:00am
The SNP has a unique capacity for generating internal rows over issues which have little to do with Scottish independence. The transgender reform bill comes to mind. Now, days out from its annual conference, the party’s leadership is in turmoil over genocide denial in Gaza.
On Saturday, the party suspended Glasgow Shettleston MSP John Mason for saying he didn’t believe that Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza. His remarks outraged bien pensant nationalists who loathe Mason, an evangelical Christian, for having also opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. “You glorify killing and murder with your obtuse comment,” fulminated former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, urging the MSP to go. The whip was duly withdrawn for Mason “bringing the party into disrepute”.
By that point, the SNP External Affairs Secretary, Angus Robertson, had just had a meeting with the Israeli deputy ambassador, Daniela Grudsky. Was this not lending legitimacy to the genocidal regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, asked MPs such as Brendan O’Hara? Prominent nationalists have supported a motion ahead of this month’s conference calling for Robertson to be suspended pending an investigation.
However, it then emerged that the meeting had been authorised by the First Minister himself, John Swinney. According to SNP logic, this meant that the party leader was now guilty of bringing the party into disrepute. The FM insists the meeting was only held to urge an immediate ceasefire. Robertson has also delivered a grovelling apology, but discontent lingers.
It’s not as if the SNP doesn’t have enough to argue about at its first conference since the general election disaster, when it lost 39 of its 48 MPs. The campaign for a repeat referendum has collapsed, not least because of Swinney’s ill-advised decision to make the case for it dependent on the SNP winning a majority of seats. The rage had to go somewhere, and recently it has focused on personalities such as Mason and Robertson, who do not fully subscribe to the SNP’s progressive agenda.
Under Nicola Sturgeon, the nationalists sought to enlist to the cause any and every special interest with a grievance against Westminster or Tory governments. This explains the genuflection toward causes such as LGBTQ advocacy, green activism and the pro-Palestine movement. And unlike many nationalist parties in Europe, the SNP is also almost fanatically pro-immigration.
The objective throughout has been to bolster the moral justification for leaving the Union by portraying the UK as essentially racist, transphobic, prone to climate-change denial and, of course, soft on Israel. But now that independence is off the agenda for a generation, the SNP has been left with little to obsess over other than the various progressive causes which it has championed. Hence the row about a conflict in Gaza over which the Scottish Government has precisely zero influence or control.
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SubscribeMeantime, 95% or so of Scots are waiting for a government.
Northern Ireland managed just fine without one for some years.
The SNP, and Scottish nationalism in general, has always in part defined itself by being the opposite to the Tories.
When I first read that Mason had been suspended for merely suggesting what is happening in Gaza might not be genocide I had to read it a couple more times to try and see what I’d missed.
Whats’s happening in Gaza may or may not be genocide. How are you supposed to debate something if the answer is already determined on the basis of opinion and very few facts?
“The whip was duly withdrawn for Mason “bringing the party into disrepute””….lets not dissemble, for not supporting terrorists
It’s not based on opinion, but on fact.
The fact is, if it were genocide, it’d have been over at least six months ago. That there’s nothing resembling “genocide” going on is too patently obvious to need stating, unless those who say it is wish to change the meaning of the term to include “war”.
There is a genocidal tendency, however; it’s the stated aim of Hamas, against the Jews. So, the inversion of truth, as per the usual tactics of those with a cognitive deficit we have to live alongside.
We laughed back in the 1980s and 1990s when these dimwits were “occupying” university libraries in solidarity with Nicaraguan Sandanistas and other faraway left wing causes that had nothing whatsoever to do with them.
Jokes on us though. Now they’re in government.
It’s still quite funny though….
“The SNP has a unique capacity for generating internal rows over issues which have little to do with Scottish independence”
Brilliant! John Cleese and co. could have written the scripts for the SNP.
Ian MacWhirter is, IMHO, the top commentator on Scottish politics. I wonder if he, like me, is seeing someething eerily familiar about Scottish politics today. In the 1980’s, the SNP had lost the 1979 devolution referendum and in the ensuing general election, they lost 9 seats, winning only 2, and Labour won 44 Scottish seats. With no prospect of independence, the SNP come-back strategy was to prioritise winning over the (largely pro-Labour) commentariat and chatterati. The idea was always to out-woke Labour in any policy area, from nuclear weapons to immigration. The strategy worked, but eventually those policy positions came to define the SNP.
Indeed, but where is all this out-woking the woke going? If your answer is to a Labour landslide in the next election then I agree. There is a point in this absurdity spiral where the average voter says enough of this nonesense, grimaces and places the X next to Labour.
And we (or Scotland) are back to the start of the cycle.
I suspect that the SNP is hoping for disillusion with Labour to set in. The SNP will want to be woker-than-thou in policy areas like Gaza so that, for specific target groups, they can point to specific issues where sections of the community might feel let down by Labour. The important point about these policies is that PRECISELY that they have nothing to do with devolved governement in Scotland. That is a shambles (health, education, ferries, yo name it), so issues like Gaza are a very useful distraction.
Here’s an idea. Naive I know, but bear with me. Why not just do good government? You know, the sort that focuses on education, emptying the bins, growing the economy, collecting taxes, good roads (and the odd ferry), decent healthcare, etc., etc. Get that half right and the need for distracting the punters with vanity projects might not be necessary. Just a thought….
Well, the SNP annual conference is starting soon and I suspect that there will be very little discussion of your “good government” approach. Just the usual arcane motions that only conference nerds understand
Scottish independence, like the Welsh version, depends on entry to the EU at some stage. Scottish MPs have to toady up to figures in Europe as well as to the electorate. Both Wales and Scotland have a permanent staff in Brussels.
So the politics varies from that practised at Westminster and the more that it varies, the more that Scotland is destabilising the UK, the more that it appeals to Ursula & Co.
Wales is quieter because it has to think about survival after leaving the UK. The water reservoirs are key to this. At the moment they are owned privately but nationalisation of water in the UK will provide a bargaining point.
“Just relax, no need to worry, the government is providing your water now”
Run for your life
Isn’t Welsh water a public utility
Yes, but the reservoirs aren’t.
Yes, but the reservoirs are part-owned by Severn Trent Water, which is private.
Wales is quieter because it has to think about survival after leaving the UK.
Scotland doesn’t?
Wales has only one industry – tourism. Every year 11 million tourists come to Wales, of which 10 million are English. The Senedd wants to discourage tourism, especially the ownership of second homes. The Welsh Labour leadership has said that they will only be happy when all jobs are government jobs (includes those on benefits, of course) and then they would have complete control of the labour market. If they went on to control prices of key food products you would then have a communist state.
Scotland doesn’t seem to be heading this way and is trying to attract private business.
Iain nailed it. The SNP are fanatics.
If the SNP will only talk to governments it approves of, presumably it will refuse to have anything to do with the UK Government.
Or itself!!!
If I were English I’d be for letting Scotland go. What do you gain by holding on to it?
Well, I’d be for English secession, just as I’m for partitioning the United States (my country of birth and residence).
Thumbs up for partitioning the US. It might solve a lot of our problems. But are we grown-up enough to make it happen?
The demonstrations about Gaza, and in places the violence against Jews, seen since October 2023 in a number of European countries, will fade away once a cease-fire is in place. The conflict should have been brought to an end earlier this year but getting an end to violence in the Middle East is rarely simple or fast. The US Secretary of State seems near to success in his shuttle diplomacy this time. The incentive to halt fighting before the first anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas will be strong. Once Gaza is out of the headlines and people are no longer losing their lives in the region, the fuss over it will cease. Then the SNP will have to find something else to engage in internal argument about.
Poor old Agnes, my neighbour in leafy Trinity. An urbane intellectual who has used the SNP’s political dominance to carve a nice little number for himself rubbing shoulders with Edinburgh’s artistic elite. Ah but a warning about trying to ride the nationalist tiger (and shhh! He’s actually English, golly, gosh). He may have escaped this time but the face painting Celtic loving republicans have him in their sights. Watch him wriggle.
Has anyone noticed that there / were no shops selling scotch in Gaza, while you can get scotch in Israel? In fact, scotch is very popular beverage at many Jewish celebrations and holidays (Passover excepted). I bet you don’t see scotch at Ramadan break fasts.
Just sayin…