Part of me hates this phoney populist bollocks, (see this https://www.thenational.scot/news/23727982.snp-members-urged-shape-strategy-pre-conference-meeting/) not least because a significant section of the membership base of almost all political parties are moonhowlers. Go to a meeting if you don’t believe me.
However, I think it’s a really simple issue. The starting point should be the truth. The SNP should start to say, shout and scream that the British don’t recognise democracy in Scotland. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s a truthful account of the past decade. The SNP should be asking not its members but all of Scotland: what do you want to do about that?
Do you want to accept that you don’t have the right to self-determination or do you want to do something about it? Frame it as a question of equality and rights. Not ‘should we use x election as a de facto referendum’ or, for the moonhowlers, ‘should we go to go to the UN and get them all to support UDI for Scotland’. No, speak to Scotland honestly and openly about the situation we now find ourselves in and let the dilemma play out.
We have a British government, British political establishment (because the ‘opposition’, which is that measly, sordid, preposterous little vessel known as the Labour Party, support the British government on this) and British state that rejects our right to self-determination and that accepts our democratic rights and processes being curtailed.
I fear that the SNP won’t ever frame it like that because it might require them taking ‘drastic’ action that would hugely detract from the industry that has so very tragically been developed out of their success, such as adopting abstentionism in Westminster. It might even mean they cease to exist as a party, as if people who support independence aren’t willing to do what is necessary to reclaim self-determination, there is no point in any of this. We might as well become the mere British ‘region’ that they’ve always wanted us to be.
