ROBIN McAlpine’s new assault on the SNP leadership – the latest in a long and now expletive-bearing series – clearly echoes the frustrations of a growing number of independence supporters, both party members and others, at the slow (some would say glacial) progress towards what’s supposed to be our shared goal: to exit the increasingly shambolic and backward-looking UK.

Before I put the boot in, I think it’s only fair to acknowledge that Robin McAlpine has invested a lot more time and energy into the debate about what an independent Scotland should look like than most of us, myself included. I think that discussing policy in advance is always a good and responsible thing to do and the independence movement scores much higher in this respect than, for example, Brexiteers who are – in the good old English public-school tradition of sado-masochism – pushing ahead with the total disaster of a No-Deal Brexit just as the country is reeling from the unprecedented impact of Covid-19.

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As an SNP member, I share quite a lot of the general frustrations about the pace and direction of travel – for example, I think that the Scottish Government too often plays by Westminster’s ever-changing rulebook and needs to change its strategy accordingly. But overall I’m not as dissatisfied as Robin McAlpine; I think that there are still many areas where the Scottish Government has clearly surpassed Westminster in terms of social justice and common sense, such as free care for the elderly, minimum pricing on alcohol (in the teeth of considerable industry lobbying), social housing etc, and it seems churlish just to write it off completely.

I also think he’s rather blasé in his dismissal of the Scottish Government’s superior response to Covid-19 as a factor in how they should be assessed; after all, what could be more important than the preservation of human life? Saving lives just might be the sort of long-term legacy that is remembered by the sort of people (voters) not normally interested in politics or abstruse policy debates.

I’m currently based in south-east London and can assure him and others that even in these heathen parts – where the Queen’s portrait hangs behind the bar in my local pub – the Scottish Government’s superior response to the pandemic compared to Boris Johnson’s clown college has NOT gone unnoticed, despite the densest smokescreens blown out by Jackson Carlaw and others (and I use the word “dense” advisedly).

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Robin McAlpine’s latest broadside made me think again about something that’s troubled me for a while: by throwing his toys out of the pram every time the Scottish Government does things differently from how he would have done it, isn’t he in danger of putting the cart before the horse? Maybe if he invested just 20% of the time that he currently devotes to attacking the SNP leadership for – essentially – lacking his ideological purity, and focused instead on HOW we get independence in the first place, it would be better for the cause?

Again, it’s only fair to acknowledge that he recently posted some suggestions about campaigns of civil disobedience etc, but the “mundane” and unsexy practicalities of HOW to break free from Westminster are clearly an afterthought in his work, 99% of which comprises wonkishly-detailed policy.

I happen to like a lot of Common Weal’s policies, but obviously it’s all academic unless we can secure independence first.

Meanwhile, falling out with the SNP over future policy while Scotland currently lacks the powers to materially deviate from Westminster, at a time when Westminster is preparing a power grab from the devolved parliaments, strikes me as supremely self-indulgent and totally lacking in perspective. It calls to mind Common Weal’s “acrimonious” split from the Jimmy Reid Foundation at the start of August 2014 – just six weeks before the referendum. The timing was hardly conducive or helpful to the cause; in fact it was a gift to the opposition (sounds familiar?). No doubt there are two sides to the story but again it makes me wonder whether personal considerations may have clouded judgement.

I note with puzzlement that none of Robin McAlpine’s websites has a message board enabling comments or feedback by the general public. That strikes me as rather unusual in the digital age – not unique, of course, but certainly a tad rich from someone who publicly accuses the SNP of being uninterested in hearing the views of their membership.

I urge Robin McAlpine to try and be a bit more constructive about what’s been achieved so far. I also urge him (and others) not to throw in the towel (his latest post certainly reads like a man at the end of his tether). Six years since the referendum, there are plenty of trends moving in a pro-independence direction. Walking away from the fray at this point would be like Archie Gemmill waltzing past those three Dutch defenders then tapping the ball out of play just because an over-excited gaucho had thrown a toilet roll onto the pitch. 42 years on, we’re all really glad that he kept his eyes on the prize.

Robert Clark
Bromley