Nicola Sturgeon

A ban is a touch far, Claire should edit the post

 

@TonyL I shifted the video into the main quote. Saves space/richardg’s face for not knowing a classic.

Its a particular term just right for the times we live in referring to the Scottish and Irish in the East India Company’s private army predating “Oliver’s Army” by a couple hunnerd years. Some ppl need a little hand-holding it seems.

I also expected asterisks as they are reserved for words like ****, **** and so on. I am sure mods will add it globally to the oeuvre — if necessary.

 

****ing dickhead ****s bollocks **** shit twat bellend knobhead arsehole tit

Certainly the language filter needs some work, I agree with that!

Enjoy my post while it lasts! Plenty of hand-holding required, as this is a family site, certificate U.

 

Sure, at a time when that was overall quite convenient for the establishment. Now it’s less convenient and she’s gone and the party’s disintegrating. If she was a great leader doesn’t that say something about the limits of leadership.

 

Quite. You also have to look at the sheer scale of their majority. No party is about one politician and while Sturgeon is a hard act to follow, they will move on. The Tories haven’t had a majority in Scotland since 1955, the Labour vote collapsed over a decade ago and I’m pretty sure the Labour habit has now gone ( I’d never vote for them again). People here will look from Sunak to Starmer and think ‘no thanks’. I therefore respectfully suggest the SNP will not implode/disintegrate etc.

 

She had the good fortune to be first minister while a procession of excrement occupied No. 10. It’s not a particularly impressive benchmark to be better than Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. She and her husband ruled the SNP with an almost Stalinist ruthlessness. She appointed a small, solidly neoliberal, pro-NATO cabal around her that micro-managed every aspect of the SNP’s operations. Scotland’s death rate from Covid was only a little bit better than England’s. She presided over record NHS waiting times, a woefully incompetent programme of ferry refurbishment upon which island dweller’s livelihood’s depend, Forbes austerity budget would have found approval with Liz Truss, and she expects us to believe both that the current and upcoming travails surrounding the SNP were not a factor in her resignation, and she knew nothing of a £107,000 loan made to the party by her husband.

She was a formidable political operator in being able to keep open hostility to a minimum in what is essentially a cross-class alliance, but it was unsustainable and we are now witnessing its rapid unravelling. Of course, given a straight choice between the social progressiveness of SNP (Kate Forbes aside) and the venal corruption of Westminster, it’s no contest, but Sturgeon’s supposed positive legacy does not withstand any serious interrogation.

 

(TBF I thought about The Clash’s Safe European Home but EC summed up (on family friendly TV no-less) in just two words (plus, a better song) — the whole grisly descent Scotland is about to experience chained to England.

Freeports, Company Towns, Charter Cities, Workhouses. Empire’s sun set on the sunlit uplands.

 

Reduction of the Barnett Formula courtesy of Brexit, too. Still, you won't be there.

 

At least you’ll be in vassalage to your masters and betters and not those foreign types with their human rights laws, employment protections, rights to protest, feedom of movement, frictionless trade and wokey whatnot. Its still a neoliberal hellscape in the EU with the fash nipping at the ankles of disgruntlement — but did y’all have to be so slavish about embracing a rehash of the enclosures acts by modern day robber barons?

A shiny met-issued jackboot on the back of the neck. Brits cant seem to get enough of that shit.

He only made certified bangers back then. I can *still* hear in my mind’s ear the “but there’s no danger” bridge with the oppositional 5th and 3rds harmony inversion [chef’s kiss].

 

They don’t have a majority of voters. Similar to the tories across the UK, the SNP benefits greatly from FPTP in a UK General Election.

At the 2019 GE, out of 4,053,140 registered voters, 1,242,380 voted SNP, 2,810,760 people did not.
Of those who did not vote SNP, 1,516,681 voted against nationalism as follows:
692,939 Tory
511,838 Labour
263,417 LibDem
28,122 Green
13,243 Brexit Party
3,303 UKIP
3,819 others
Source: 2019 GE Results Scotland

 

Much derision at the expense of SNP at the falling party numbers. Meltdown!
Membership is 70k in a population of 6 million
Tory party membership is about 180k in a population of 60 million.
Which party is failing and in a minority?

 

It’s the only thing I’ve ever seen that unites ( weirdly) the left and right of the Labour Party with the Tories - in a brief trip out to get a local anaesthetic for their shared misery. Thank god that’s not the political choice we’re left with in Scotland.

 

I didn't think this post is really directed at anyone here. In fact, not even at the conservative voters, as they all seem to dislike their party at the moment.

 

You just have recent sex scandals, misappropriation of funds and manipulation of data.

It's a riot down at the SNP, let's keep them in power and see what else they get up to / off with!

 

Is this an extract from your autobiography?

 

There is no derision, at least none at the expense of the SNP. It’s clear where any derision comes from.

Anyway, to answer your question, both, obviously.

Your post is whataboutism. Most know the situation with the tories and nobody pretends anything different, it attracted much criticism on this forum and elsewhere. The situation in Scotland with the SNP is similar.

It seems the sheer scale of the SNP majority is 1.24 million votes from a population of 6 million. That’s a bit like the level of tory support from the UK population.

 

I have no axe to grind for Labour. Neither am I a member of the SNP. I would love to see an independent Scotland, and regardless of your opinion of the SNP, they were best placed to deliver it. I’m not predicting implosion, or demise, or anything of the sort. But it’s difficult to deny that they’re currently facing their biggest crisis in their recent history.

I expect, largely due to the paucity of opposition, that they will effortlessly retain their position as the biggest party in Scotland, and will almost certainly form the next Scottish government. But I agree with whoever it was that said we’ve seen peak SNP. Thankfully, the independence movement as a whole is bigger than any one political party.

 

I would also like to see an independent Scotland and a successful, progressive SNP. This is all a bit depressing but hopefully Finnegan is right.