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SNP - what are Scots thoughts?

T

tiggers

pfm Member
Whenever I hear Nicola Sturgeon speaking on major political matters she seems to talk sense and gives me the impression she is Scotland first, everything else second. I am not saying you have to agree with her, but just that she gives me the impression she is in politics for the right reasons... she believes in doing what she thinks is right for Scotland. Whether it is or not is a different matter.

I know many will disagree with me and it seems fashionable if you're English to slag her and her party off, but I like her attitude and the way she talks and presents herself. I am English myself (and becoming increasingly embarrassed to be so), but I find myself wishing I had a political figure and party I could relate to in the same mould.

Given I am mostly a cynical sort I am surprised I find myself broadly warming to her and the SNP and just wondered what the Scots on here think of her and the party.
 
I was going to say she is the most articulate and intelligent party leader in UK politics by miles, but that is unfair on Caroline Lucas who is arguably just as good. Sturgeon certainly runs rings around Conservative and Labour, both in Scotland and the rest of the UK, and justly so. I fundamentally do not support Scottish (or any other) nationalism, I am against it and the borders and mindset it creates to my core, but somehow she (and Ian Blackford in the HoC) are just so articulate and to my mind right on just about every other issue I can almost excuse it!

I wish our main parties could recruit leaders of this calibre.
 
Nicola Sturgeon is articulate and quite relatable in person, apparently. And from I've seen and heard, is pragmatic yet fundamentally cares about Scotland and all who sail in her. She gets my vote all day long.

If and when Scottish Labour becomes a party in their own right, then that's when I think the SNP will face a real challenge on polling days. But for the foreseeable future, I expect the SNP to form government after government.
 
SNP have done some great things up here considering austerity. Caroline sounds good also. Ruth Davidson would have been good for the conservatives in the houses of parliament unfortunately at the moment the Tory party is lead by a public school boys Billy buntter laughing stock. Labour are not even worth debating.
 
She and her party certainly represent the democratic majority in Scotland. The switching of votes to her party has been on a massive scale since 2010. You have to contrast her position with say Arlene Foster who has acted to collapse government in Northern Ireland and likes to give the impression that her small sectarian party has a popular mandate there. It doesn’t. Yesterday she said that she welcomes the suspension of parliament in London ( see the pattern?) so that full Brexit can be achieved and she does this in the face of majority wishes in N.Ireland to remain in the EU. You can see where she’s taking this and the effect it will have on the Good Friday Agreement.
 
So being a Nationalist and thinking about just your own self interests is now to be applauded. What took so long? ***k Scotland and ***k Wales lets start thinking about England first and foremost. Why should taxes paid by people living in England be spent on people living in Scotland? All those people living in England who admire and venerate Nicole Sturgeon and what she stands for should move to Scotland. There is plenty of room up there with all those empty spaces. It might just make England a little bit less crowded. There would be far fewer people constantly running England and English people down if they did. I wonder how many people will follow their convictions and actually move to Scotland if it gets Independence. Not many I suspect but if they do, total respect.
 
PS to my post above: I misread the thread title, I am not a Scot, though am contemplating emigrating there some point in the future. It certainly seems a nicer place at present than Little Brexit England.
 
FWIW I voted 'No' to Scots Independence last time around. One reason for that was we that were told by the Tories that a vote for Independence would mean we'd get dumped out of the EU! Another was, as my better half kept saying, "If the Scots leave the UK the Tories will rule England even more strongly so we'd be deserting the people down South."

I also admire both Sturgeon and Lucas, and have tended to vote green in recent elections despite being well disposed to Labour and Corbyn.

I'm not sure which way I'll vote when we get another Scots Indy referendum. But I'm now sure we will get one. And I think it very likely that Scotland will vote 'Yes' given that people here resent the way we've been treated by the crappy Tories and their rich chums. Scotland is, indeed, a very different place now to Toryland.

Don't be fooled by the Tories doing well in Scotland at the last GE. That was because at the time they played the card that Labour would be soft on Scots Independence. Oh, how times have changed since... That card won't get them far next time, I think. Many old Tory policies that ran down the public sector have been undone or watered away here. We've also done away with a lot of the archaic practices like the equivalent to English 'freehold' and given communities the ability buy their own areas from landlords, etc. Won't go on. But in sum:

I will be surprised if Scotland doesn't now become independent, leave the UK, and probably join the EU, within the next decade. Leave little England to be run by the Daily Mail owners and their Lord Snooty chums. I think just the fact of BoJo becoming PM tells us all we need to know about what life might be like if we remain part of the UK.

Like-minded refugees from down south will probably be welcome. :)

I say all this as someone who spent the first 30+ years of his life as an east londoner, so I do regret what a mess the Tories (inc. Blair) have made of the lives of people there. 'Homes' no bigger than parking spaces, etc. This would once have been criminal. Now its becoming the Tory norm.
 
Konteebos said:
I think you are describing Conservative party policy since 1979...
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or UKIP?
Im an englishman living in Scotland and have to tell anyone like SteveT that they are right. Scotland is a sh****ole and the Scots a hateful, selfish people. Never come near the place son, you'd hate it here, really.

To the OP, Im in agreement. Nicola is excellent. She is visible ofc as a party leader and there may be her equal down south (Lucas comes close i agree). Ruth Davidson is also very very good indeed as evidenced by yesterdays suggestion that she wanted to step down to avoid association with a rampant Boris. Personally I'd like to see her take him on...she'd have been a much better con leader that he, and NS would be better still as a PM. However, I too am not a nationalist by inclination, the opposite in fact as a principle but can see the attraction now. Scotland is quite unique in the UK in having a sort of quite old fashioned sense of 'honour' in its public offices. I have no idea as to the actual scale of corruption, but the impression is that is is far far 'cleaner' than its cousin below the wall. And then there's all that space SteveT, but ofc where there is space, there are midges Steve...stay away!
 
Rockmeister said:
Ruth Davidson is also very very good indeed as evidenced by yesterdays suggestion that she wanted to step down to avoid association with a rampant Boris.
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I think that her resignation has a lot to do with the likelihood that the Scots Tories will probably lose all their seats in the imminent election...
 
Ruth Davidson has quit as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after eight years in the job.

In a statement, she said it had been the "privilege of my life" to have led the party during one of the most "remarkable and important periods of recent Scottish political history".

But she said "much had changed" both politically and personally, which had led her to tender her resignation.

She had a baby son last year, and has been a vocal critic of Boris Johnson.

Ms Davidson, who will continue as the MSP for Edinburgh Central, tweeted her resignation statement shortly before addressing the media at an event in Edinburgh on Thursday morning.


Conservative sources insist that her decision to leave the post has been building for several months, and is not a direct result of Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing that he will suspend parliament for several weeks ahead of the Brexit deadline on 31 October.

Ms Davidson has been widely credited with turning around the fortunes of the Tories in Scotland, but backed opponents of Mr Johnson in the Conservative leadership race and has said she could not support a no-deal Brexit.
 
So if Nicola gets her independent Scotland will the Scottish Nationalist Party disappear just like the Brexit party will eventually ?

Then after that. English Nationalist Party anyone?

Oh, that's so eighties.
 
I enjoyed her appearance on Jon Stewart's show some years ago:


She comes across as a regular sort of person, in a way that I've never seen a normal(?) Westminster pollie come across. Banging the Scottish drum very hard, of course, even though it all does sound a bit improbable. But clearly a lady with a few clues.
 
As with all political parties, success means taking on new candidates who maybe haven't been as well vetted as others, and the SNP have had their share of these. Then there are the ones jumping on the bandwagon, but trying to move the party in a different direction from the leadership, and we've seen what happens at Westminster. At the end of the day, they are all politicians and should not be uncritically believed, but I believe the SNP under the current leadership are clearly the best of a bad lot.
 
One aspect of recent history that I've found interesting is that in Scotland we had a period where *three* party leaders in our Parliament were female and behaved/spoke well and with conviction.

Contrast with the Tories at Westminster giving us May, bookended by Camaroon and BoJo and hemmed in by Lord Snooty, the stranglers from the DUP, etc.
 
I was fan of Caroline Lucas until she had that scheme for an all-female cabinet, forgetting the fact that there are a lot of female brexit ultras in the current cabinet! It made the remain side of the debate look daft.

If Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP were fixated on independence above all else, they wouldn't be fighting against no-deal Brexit in the HoC. Luckily they do have some principle.

I was utterly NO in September 2014. I have turned around 180 deg. We've got to get out of this place.
 
SteveT said:
So being a Nationalist and thinking about just your own self interests is now to be applauded. What took so long? ***k Scotland and ***k Wales lets start thinking about England first and foremost. Why should taxes paid by people living in England be spent on people living in Scotland? All those people living in England who admire and venerate Nicole Sturgeon and what she stands for should move to Scotland. There is plenty of room up there with all those empty spaces. It might just make England a little bit less crowded. There would be far fewer people constantly running England and English people down if they did. I wonder how many people will follow their convictions and actually move to Scotland if it gets Independence. Not many I suspect but if they do, total respect.
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Obviously a believer in the nonsense that constitutes the GERS figures. Doubtless the loss of the Block Grant (read pocket money) won't amount to much against the 1.78 Trillion of the 'Nations' debt and as a bonus, you'll get all your silly Submarines back:)
 
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