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Trying to figure out WTF is going on

The cunningest plan!

Peter A Bell

Jun 11

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The above was brought to my attention yesterday in a post on Facebook. It's really quite scary to think that there are parts of the independence movement where this kind of dangerous nonsense is displacing whatever rational thinking might once have existed. Here is the text in full.

This account will be advocating SNP 1&2 for Holyrood 2026. Why? Our reasoning is set out below.
An SNP majority at Holyrood is the only way to move any UK Govt. No other result can apply that real-politik pressure. If the SNP can come u with a campaign that enthuses Yessers then a majority is easily achievable.
But what if the campaign doesn't enthuse Yessers, surely we need to vote SNP 1and Green/Alba 2 to maximise the chance of a pro-Indy majority?
A pro-Indy majority using a mixture of Indy parties means absolutely nothing to Westminster. It has no real political weight. We've seen how works In practice with the SNP vulnerable to erratic Green party mood swings and the loss of key votes. An SNP Govt in such a situation will g through the motions for another five years, managing decline.
What if the SNP win but we end up with a pro-Union majority parliament?
This is going to be controversial. Let the Unionist bloc have power. Let Sarwar become FM. Let the public see what happens when the British nationalists are in power north & south of the border. It won't be long before they turn on Sarwar's administration. Like Starmer & Reeves, Sarwar & Baillie are easy to dislike. They might not even survive a full five year term.
Meanwhile the SNP will have renewed. A new leadership team will be poised to take advantage of a Scottish public exposed to full-blown British nationalism and, as a result, more receptive to the independenc argument. The SNP will be pushing at an open door.
If you want independence then the only way it will be achieved is by voting SNP on the constituency vote and the list vote.

It's not that this individual is wrong about everything. The problem is that even when they get something right, they arrive at entirely the wrong conclusion. Take this, for example:

A pro-Indy majority using a mixture of Indy parties means absolutely nothing to Westminster. It has no real political weight.

That is all but certainly true. The British will latch on to any potential weakness in their determination to discredit an unfavourable outcome. Having lots of different nominally pro-independence parties all saying different things in their election manifestos allows the British to quite credibly claim that it is not clear people were all voting for the same thing. Referendums are binary. Elections are not.

What the author concludes from this is that the problem is the different parties and the solution is to have only one. In fact, the problem is not the different parties but the different manifestos. The independence vote cannot be split. There is only one independence. In a situation where there are several (nominally) pro-independence parties, it is the party vote which is split, not the independence vote. Opponents only get to claim it is the independence vote that is split because each of the nominally pro-independence parties makes is own unique statement on the matter in their election manifesto.

What is troubling the author is not that the independence vote is being split, but that their favoured party's vote is being 'split'.

The simple solution is for all the (nominally) pro-independence parties to adopt exactly the same election manifesto commitment on the constitutional issue. Then, it doesn't matter how the votes are distributed among those parties, every single one of those votes is for the same Manifesto for Independence and nobody can dispute this fact.

There is not going to be a single pro-independence party in the 2026 election. The single-party ship sailed some time ago and was duly sunk by the self-serving cabal which hijacked the SNP. There is now no way to re-float that ship. It's gone! Get over it! And there would be no point in refloating it even if there was a way to do so, because the cargo of commitment to Scotland's cause is now so diluted as to be unrecognisable as such. The SNP's party constitution still has that commitment to independence. But it is sodden and disintegrated and unrecognisable as the hallmark of the 'party of independence'.

Nor can we sensibly hope that all the nominally pro-independence parties will snuggle-up together under the one umbrella. That's because they each want their own party logo emblazoned on that umbrella and no other. They all claim to want 'unity'. But they all want it to be on their terms. None are prepared to make the compromises which would allow this umbrella sharing exercise to get underway. None would be able to sustain the contrived consensus in the turmoil of an electoral contest.

Just as the 'one party' notion is dead and begging to be buried, so the 'one umbrella' notion is either inconceivable or a non-viable embryo.

As very often happens, the best solution to the 'split vote' problem is also the easiest. Old Occam knew what he was about when he wielded his logical razor. The 'single manifesto' solution is what we have left when we pare away all the party-political nonsense. In large part, it works because it deprives the British of an easy target and doesn't require that the political parties act against their nature.

Of course, the 'one manifesto' solution being both the easiest and most effective means the career politicians haven't even thought of it. That's because they do not approach the constitutional issue as a constitutional issue but rather as a party-political issue. For the career politicians, restoring independence is not the imperative. Getting elected is. For some (many?) of those career politicians, restoring independence isn't even a priority. Electoral success is.

Let's move on to one more bit of nonsense from the above statement.

Let the Unionist bloc have power. Let Sarwar become FM. Let the public see what happens when the British nationalists are in power north & south of the border. It won't be long before they turn on Sarwar's administration. Like Starmer & Reeves, Sarwar & Baillie are easy to dislike. They might not even survive a full five year term.

I'm not going to attempt to catalogue all of the flaws in this cunningest of cunning plans. I do try to keep these articles under 2,000 words. I'll cover one or two of the real biggies. As I do so, I'd like you to imagine the slogan that goes with this 'plan'.

The 'idea' is that we let the British parties retake power in 2026 and once the nation has suffered under Sarwar for a few months or years, a "renewed" SNP will charge in to rescue us from our tragic plight. Presumably hoping that the people have forgotten who it was that put them in that tragic plight only a few months or years earlier. And assuming the British haven't taken advantage of the opportunity and done whatever to make the road to independence impassable.

And assuming the people actually respond in the way the cunningest plan relies on them responding. It is hardly the first time that we've been assured that the next iniquity will be the one that proves to be the last straw. The trouble is that it's always the next iniquity and never the one that's prompted the claim that the next one will be the last straw. And it's never the last straw. Each straw is always borne pending the next iniquity.

And assuming the SNP is genuinely "renewed". And assuming people believe the tales of renewal that they've heard so many times before.

That's a lot of assumptions. Not one of them a safe assumption. Even a pro-independence parliamentary majority that is pro-independence in name only has to be better than surrendering our nation to the British parties squatting in the Scottish Parliament. And yes! Before anybody asks, I would vote SNP if it was the only way to prevent that cuckoo coup!

I have seen it suggested that this is the SNP getting its excuses in early in anticipation of a massive electoral reprimand next May. If that is the case, then it is surely the cunningest thing about this cunning plan.

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