WELL this is a farce, isn’t it. For all that the SNP come under a constant barrage of criticism in the media, out of all the major parties in this General Election they’re coming across as the only adults in the room. Although admittedly it does have to be said that the bar is pretty low.
And when I say low I mean that it could easily be cleared by an intellectual dwarf of a baboon which has lost all sense of perspective, which is, come to think of it, a reasonable description of quite a few of the candidates in this election. And these are candidates who haven’t resigned. Yet.
The first week of this election campaign has seen the resignations of a number of significant figures. In normal times, when the MP who was the chancellor of the exchequer just a few months ago resigns and decides that he’s not going to stand in this General Election because, and I paraphrase, he thinks that the current Prime Minister is a right-wing extremist English nationalist who can’t be trusted with a glass of red wine and a white sofa, and who lies every time he opens his mouth, this would be huge news.
Equally, in normal times it would be huge news when the deputy leader of the Labour Party announces he’s not going to stand in this election because he thinks it’s a far more productive use of his time to pursue a career as a gym teacher than to pursue a career in politics.
But these are not normal times. These are Brexit times. These are the times of the end of days for the UK. Crazy is the new normal.
Democracy is being trashed. Trust has been trashed. Politics’ tenuous remaining links to the truth have been trashed. We are so far through the mirror that the Conservatives in Scotland are campaigning in this election on a platform of asking the electorate to vote to stop voters from voting, and no-one bats an eyelid at this quite remarkable proposition. Michael Gove is fronting a Conservative election video in which he claims that another referendum would be misery. No Michael.
Voting isn’t misery. Poverty is.
The Conservatives have been joined in this subversion of basic democracy by the LibDems who, as far as Scotland is concerned, are competing with the Conservatives to demonstrate that they are neither liberal nor democratic.
We are being told both by the Conservatives and by the LibDem leader Jo Swinson that it doesn’t matter how Scotland votes next month. Neither does it matter how Scotland votes in the Holyrood election of 2021. On December 12, Scotland could hypothetically return 56 SNP MPs elected by the people of Scotland on an explicit mandate for another independence referendum, but this would not be enough for the Conservatives or the LibDems. At the next Scottish elections, the voters of Scotland could theoretically return a massive majority of pro-independence MSPs to Holyrood, elected to pursue the right of this country to ask itself about its future within the UK, and this would still not be enough for the Conservatives or the LibDems.
The Conservatives and the LibDems have taken it upon themselves to decide what the people of Scotland will get, irrespective of what the people of Scotland themselves decide.
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This is a profoundly anti-democratic stance for two avowedly democratic parties to take, yet they are not being challenged on this by most of the media in this country. And that is yet another betrayal of basic democratic standards.
Such a denial of basic democracy is unsustainable. However, the reason that the forces opposed to independence are making these shocking statements, safe in the knowledge that the majority of the press will not challenge them, is because they’re trying to discourage independence supporters.
They want us to despair, to occupy ourselves with fears and worries about what’s going to happen when a Section 30 order is refused instead of campaigning vigorously and confidently against them.
They’re trying to make us give up, to force the surrender of the independence movement. They’re trying to test our resolve. Well they are in for a big disappointment. Scotland will not be silenced.
The dysfunction which passes for British politics will not be able to resist Scotland’s legitimate demand for another independence referendum forever.
A politics which is defined only by chaos and inconsistency is not a politics which is capable of taking a resolute stance on anything at all. The two biggest parties in the UK are falling apart, they’re not going to be able to resist a strong and determined Scotland.
That’s why it’s vital that two things happen. Firstly that supporters of independence are not cowed by the threats of the British nationalists and we get out and vote in large numbers. We must ensure that there is a massive majority of pro-independence MPs, and electorally wipe out those Tory and Labour MPs who are vulnerable to a rise in SNP support. That way the British nationalist parties will not be able to maintain their fiction that no-one in Scotland wants another referendum.
Secondly the Scottish Government must, on the back of this surge in support, stop playing nice. If and when a future Boris Johnson government says no to another independence referendum, the Scottish Government must play hard ball. It must seek to challenge the British Government’s unreasonable refusal of the basic democratic demands of the people of Scotland in every possible legal way.
It must challenge in the press – and let’s be honest here, the SNP’s media rebuttal unit has been pretty woeful. It must challenge in the courts in order to test the lawfulness of a referendum without a Section 30 order and it must court international support.
It’s only by doing all these things that the SNP and the wider independence movement can ensure that there is sufficient awareness and anger within Scotland so that there is widespread public support for alternative routes to a referendum.
But one thing is certain, the institutions and political parties of the British state have never been weaker or more discredited than they are now.
The farce of British politics tells us that these are not political parties or institutions which are going to be able to long resist a concerted and confident campaign seeking to assert Scotland’s legitimate democratic rights.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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