STEPHEN Flynn has opened the SNP conference with quips aimed at Anas Sarwar, right-wing media, and Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander.
The party’s Westminster leader delivered the opening address to the SNP’s one-day campaign conference – which is being held in Edinburgh on Saturday – following a moment of silence in memory of former health secretary Jeane Freeman, who passed away in February.
SNP delegates were also shown a video featuring First Minister John Swinney extending an invitation to a pro-independence rally to be held in Edinburgh in two weeks’ time, on March 28. The SNP leader and Succession star Brian Cox are among the confirmed speakers.
Officially opening the conference, Flynn’s speech was light on policy, instead leaning into a more conversational, “rally-the-troops” style with quips aimed at various political opponents.
He began: “What a day it is to be here, for in just a few hours’ time the Scotland men’s rugby team could well be crowned Six Nations champions.
“And friends, I have a confession to make. Should we beat Ireland this afternoon, I can confirm that I will, for the first time in my life, be proudly supporting the most magnificent and extraordinarily talented England team to ever play the game against France tonight.
“That one will confuse the Daily Express journalists.”
Turning to the Holyrood elections on May 7, Flynn went on: “I’m sorry to say that joyful optimism for the weeks ahead isn’t shared by our friends in the Labour Party.
“I’ve even heard that certain members of the Royal Family are already calling it Labour’s very own Anas Horribilis – a tragedy for the ages.
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“Because when poor Anas Sarwar finally found the courage to agree with all of us that Keir Starmer wasn’t up to the job the Labour Party in London did to Anas Sarwar just what they always do to the people of Scotland: they ignored him.
“Imagine being the man who picked a fight with the most unpopular leaders in modern political history – and lost.”
Flynn brought up Sarwar’s speech to the Scottish Labour campaign conference two weeks ago, in which he asked voters to “hold your nose” and vote for Labour despite the unpopularity of the Government at Westminster.
“No matter how hard anyone holds their nose – the Scottish people will always smell desperation from Anas Sarwar and Labour,” Flynn said. “And friends, I think I have a better idea.
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“Instead of asking people to hold their noses – let’s give them a far better choice. How about the chance to breathe the free air of an independent Scotland?”
The attacks on Sarwar came after his Scottish Labour party met the opening of the SNP conference with an attack on Swinney, saying his time in government had been a "catastrophic failure”.
“Absurdly, the man who broke Scotland is now trying to make out that he can offer the people of Scotland a ‘fresh start’. This is either completely delusional, or deeply dishonest,” Sarwar said.
Elsewhere, Flynn also took aim at Keir Starmer over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal, after files revealed the Prime Minister had ignored warnings about the Labour grandee’s ties to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in order to appoint him US ambassador in what the national security adviser called a “weirdly rushed” process.
“We now know that chaos is the permanent pattern of Westminster,” Flynn said. “Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer. They change the person – but the politics, and the chaos they create, remains.”
“But friends, if I keep talking about the mess at Westminster, I’ll risk becoming as cheery as Douglas Alexander,” Flynn added.
The SNP Westminster leader went on to paint Scottish independence as the route away from the chaos of Westminster, but said that “narrow Unionism” would see opponents argue that “there will never be a right time because they are incapable of seeing a world beyond Westminster”.
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He went on: “But they are not the audience we need to reach.
“The people we must reach are those who see, feel, and recognise Broken Britain – and who long for something better …
“I don’t want to live in the relic of Thatcher and Blair’s Britain. I don’t want to live in Starmer’s Britain. I certainly don’t want to live in Farage’s Britain.
“If we want a different future, if we want change – then we need to create it for ourselves.
“I know the future I want. I want to live in an independent Scotland, back home in the European Union.”
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