A Party in Turmoil
1st May 2023
What will the 40 percent (and falling) of Scots separatists do now that their vehicle for independence is spluttering to a halt? Like a clapped-out old car, rust is creeping up its innards, parts of it are falling off, and an incompetent driver is at the wheel who seems to have neither a map nor a clear sense of direction.
For a short time, the Scottish National Party (SNP) led the most vibrant movement of its kind in the modern world, secure in its moral and civic purpose and outperforming all other campaigns for secession. Catalonian separatists are disheartened and disunited while the campaign for the Bavarian independence in Germany was only able to muster 1.7 percent of the vote in the last general election. The SNP’s authoritarian leadership, on the other hand, has managed to keep splits and factionalism to a minimum—until recently, at least.
The case for the independence of what was a sovereign state until the 18th century was pressed with unwearying fervour, larded with flattery of the Scots’ genius and contempt for the (English-dominated) Westminster government. For nearly two decades, the UK-wide parties—Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat—had been consigned to the futile sidelines of political power. Two-thirds of Scots voted to remain in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and the SNP’s pledge to rejoin upon winning independence was seen as a way of righting a terrible wrong.
I find it impossible to take seriously a ‘Scottish National Party’ whose leader is named Humza Yousaf. Sorry. Just can’t do it, any more than I can pretend that Dylan Mulvaney is a woman.