July 26, 2021 - 2:15pm
The ‘Yes movement’, as the Scottish separatists like to style themselves, is at war with itself again.
It is split on several axes — I have written about them before. But this time the issue is not just over independence strategy or gender politics, but the law: have the SNP illegally spent funds raised for ‘indyref two’?
That’s the question now being formally investigated by Police Scotland, acting on complaints from nationalists and the results of an initial ‘fact-finding mission’.
If you’ve missed the story, the Nationalists previously raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for a ring-fenced fighting fund for the second referendum they keep insisting is coming. Yet there is today no evidence of it in the party’s annual accounts.
The SNP have tried to deflect by claiming they don’t operate any special funds. But this isn’t true. They have also claimed that their accounts are managed on a “cash flow basis”. But to the extent that anyone can work out what this means — “that the SNP uses cash rather than accrual accounting” — it isn’t true either.
Unionists can be forgiven for not getting their hopes up that a political scandal might bring down Nicola Sturgeon or her government given their miraculous escape ahead of May’s elections.
But even if the police don’t conclude that there has been criminal misconduct, the story still tells us a lot about the state of the Nationalists.
First, their once fearsomely phalanx-like internal discipline is breaking down. One of the reasons we know about this is because SNP members (their financial officers, no less) have resigned their posts. Why? Peter Murrell, the Nationalists’ chief executive, wouldn’t give them proper access to the accounts.
Some of these, such as Joanna Cherry, will be ‘Salmondites’ and have other issues with the leadership. But not all.
Second, the SNP’s finances are in bad shape. Notwithstanding the missing indy fund, their 2019 accounts found “cash in hand and at the bank” levels at under a quarter of what they had been in 2018, and their reserves halved.
Put that together with talk of falling membership and SNP ministers starting to signal they might want the First Minister’s job, and it paints a telling picture.
Third, they don’t expect a referendum anytime soon. This might not come as a surprise to unionists — the Government has been quite firm on the question — but the realisation could come as a nasty shock to grassroots separatists who have thus far swallowed Sturgeon’s continual promises that the next battle is just around the corner.
Finally, the story highlights two levels on which the SNP’s hegemonic position has created some unhelpful blurred lines.
According to the Sunday Times, the supposedly-independent Crown Office — led by Scottish Government appointees — intervened to try and water down the police intervention. Given the suspicion of bias on the CO’s part during the Salmond scandal, this is an unwelcome reminder of the long shadow the SNP casts over ‘civic Scotland’.
And grassroots nationalists may live to regret allowing the SNP, a machine party with very mundane interests in controlling government and distributing spoils, to become a stand-in for all the hopes of the ‘Yes Movement’.
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SubscribeThere’s also the fact that the entire focus of the SNP has changed from independence for Scotland to regulating every interaction in that country, be it social, moral, political or religious. They’ve gone completely overboard in the building of some kind of woke paradise and have lost all interest in doing what they were actually founded to do. Perhaps Scotland needs some kind of Scottish nationalist party to protect it from the SNP.
Yes, I’m starting to wonder if that is a feature of female-led societies – in the past we were all watching out for Big Brother, but maybe it was Big Mother we should have been worried about instead.
‘Progressive’ is actually ‘regressive’.
There’s more I could add to this list, but the Left is all about the shedding of fairness and universalism (cleverly labelled ‘oppression’) in order to embrace a tribalism based on mawkish sentimentality and cruelty (social justice activism aka mob justice).
I think that there should be a referendum as soon as possible. And further referendums in rapid succession until we get the required result. Do I hate the Scots and want them gone? No I don’t, but I am not prepared to put up with this bluddy nonsense for ever.
How do you think it is for us in Scotland?
We voted No in the 2014 referendum of a lifetime but it seems lifetimes are getting shorter up here.
Well, we do know that lifespans are shorter here.
I am sure that I have already apologised, but my apology seems to have disappeared.
m
The SNP’s obsessions with curtailing free speech, and opposing ‘uppity women’ suggest that an independent Scotland would have more in common with Orban’s Hungary or Poland. Would the EU need another illiberal Member State?
I suspect that The First Minister has recognised that independence wouldn’t see Scotland join the EU anytime within the first decade, and that wouldn’t be something she’d like to preside over. Whilst nationalists continue to vote SNP, independence is the last thing on the agenda.
No independence referendum any time soon.
In other news, the Pope is Catholic.
The article is even interesting, but the title is clickbait and a waste of a time as it doesn’t really reflect the content of the article, if not tangentially.
If not now, when?
[With apologies to Boris…]