THE Tories have “bigger things to worry about” than a new “Scottish Unionist Party” that wants civil servants fired for working on independence, according to polling expert Professor John Curtice.
The Scottish Unionist Party (SUP), originally formed in 1986 in protest at Margaret Thatcher’s Anglo-Irish Agreement, has been re-registered with the Electoral Commission (EC) after not running candidates in major elections since 2007.
The party, which aims to “remove the SNP from all levels of government” and wants to effectively ban the Scottish Parliament from working on independence at all by scrapping Section 30 provisions from the Scotland Act, now intends to field candidates at the upcoming Holyrood and Westminster ballots.
At present, the party is not planning to field candidates at the local elections this May.
The SUP is being led by Bow Group researcher Jonathan Stanley, who is also the group’s nominating officer and treasurer and is a former Central Scotland list candidate for George Galloway and Jamie Blackett’s failed All for Unity party.
Campaigns officer David Griffiths was also a candidate for Galloway’s party, which stood on a similar anti-independence platform in 2021 and managed to bring in just 0.9% of the regional vote.
Griffiths appears to be continuing in his constitution spokesperson role for All for Unity, despite his involvement in the SUP. Stanley insists that the two parties will work together when needed.
Last year during his Holyrood campaign Griffiths made headlines for sharing posts calling Nicola Sturgeon a “fascist dictator” and comparing the SNP to Nazis.
According to Stanley, who writes for the right-wing virtual think tank Think Scotland, the SUP believe the Unionist parties are keeping pro-Union voters on the “hamster wheel” by failing to ever truly rule out indyref2.
That means he would not rule out standing against Labour, LibDems or Conservative candidates at UK Parliament elections in an effort to push the Tories towards a more intensive Unionism, a la Ukip pushing them towards a more Eurosceptical position prior to the 2016 Brexit referendum.
“If we were in Holyrood tomorrow what we’d say is we’d have a Section 30 request to remove Section 30 from the Scotland Act,” he said. “Because devolution means that Holyrood is devolved … and so if you want anything changed, you’ve got MPs. If they want to raise anything by private members’ bills, that’s fine, that’s okay.
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“If you want constitutional change you have to raise that via your MP in Westminster,” he insisted.
Asked whether he felt legislating to prevent Holyrood from working on independence would increase support for leaving the Union, Stanley said that wouldn’t matter – and if Scots voters had an issue with it they could raise it through their MP, given constitutional issues are reserved.
Since announcing their return to politics, the party’s social media account shared a call for the UK Government to take “decisive action” to end the independence debate, and retweeted journalist Stephen Daisley’s call to ban Scottish civil servants from working on independence-related matters without Westminster consent.
Stanley also said that civil service figures allowing independence planning to take place should lose their jobs for doing so.
On policies other than Unionism, Stanley said the Scottish Unionist Party are extremely opposed to the Northern Irish Protocol and “definitely not woke”.
Speaking to The National, pollster Curtice (below) said he doubted the SUP would be much of a threat to the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.
He noted that the party had managed to retain a deposit in 2001 General Election when the Tories hadn’t stood in Glasgow Springburn, and nearly kept it in Airdrie and Shotts.
“I wouldn’t have thought the Tories would be worried,” he said. “I can think of bigger problems to worry about than this lot – it starts in 10 Downing Street, that’s their principal problem.
“The last thing the Unionist side needs is more fragmentation, that’s their weakness at the moment. The crucial advantage the nationalist side has is basically everything is concentrated within the SNP, with the Greens very much sharing the same vote. The Unionist vote’s fragmented.”
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On the SUP’s plan to scrap Section 30 altogether to end the independence debate, Curtice explained: “It doesn’t matter whether the Section 30 exists or not. If the UK Government wishes to allow a referendum to happen, it would just mean it had to pass primary legislation rather than secondary legislation. But it could still do so perfectly well.
“I think parliament is sovereign so if the UK Government has a majority and wishes to hold one it can happen, doesn’t matter what’s currently there.”
Curtice said that the divided Unionist side would continue to have major electoral issues while the SNP continues getting more than 45% of the vote.
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