Being out of power could be good news for the SNP
The present strategy of John Swinney and the hierarchy appears to be to talk-up the far right to destroy the Tories and take votes from Labour in order to form the largest party at Holyrood with a meagre 30-35% of the vote, thus forming another minority government with the tacit support of the Greens.
Even if it's possible to form such an administration in 2026 – which is looking less likely due to recent failures in election strategy – the majority of MSPs will be British nationalists, a substantial proportion of whom will be the proto-fascists of Farage's party. This will make effective government well-nigh impossible and will in effect render the SNP government a lame-duck administration, unable to pass any meaningful legislation while taking the blame for Westminster's failures.
Indeed, the existence of Holyrood is now a useful opportunity for the British nationalist parties and the anti-independence media to deflect voters' frustration and anger away from the real source of the problem, ie, Westminster.
This present system of devolution was set up to fail. Could you imagine a system whereby we could achieve wildly more successful outcomes for the people of Scotland compared to the other nations within the Union? It simply wouldn't be tolerated by the English voting public nor their representatives. The Barnett formula would be re-assessed and Holyrood's funding slashed accordingly.
Farage has made no secret of his desire to have the Barnett formula 're-examined'. In addition, a hugely successful Scottish Government would be seen by the British nationalist establishment as a boost to Scottish self-confidence and thereby a threat to the Union. So despite the Scottish Government's better outcomes and performance to that of England's public sector on nearly every metric, the British nationalist parties and anti-independence media portray the Scottish Government as failing.
We have to be perceived as failing, even if the reality is somewhat different. It appeases English voters whilst denting Scottish voters' confidence in our ability to govern well. It's not 2007. For the reasons outlined, we can no longer show good governance, that particular ship has sailed.
Personally, I couldn't stomach another five years of daily ferry and SNP-baaad stories on the state broadcaster's 'news' and current affairs programmes. That scenario would be calamitous for both the SNP and the country.
If the SNP leadership fails to show any urgency or to produce a credible plan to remove the country from this toxic Union, perhaps it's now time to think the unthinkable and consider the advantages of being out of government, as clearly, they lack the bandwidth to progress independence while attempting to administer a creaking and under-funded devolution settlement.
A likely British nationalist (coalition) government in 2026 has the advantage of exposing them to Scottish public opinion before the 2029 UK General Election. The benefits of SNP policy decisions over the past 18 years are largely taken for granted now, however, three years of a British nationalist administration operating under worsening economic conditions and a likely budget squeeze would concentrate minds greatly.
Being out of government would allow the SNP to re-discover their mojo, inject fresh thinking and personnel into leadership roles, while enabling them to prepare a credible plan for independence to put before the voters in the 2029 election.
That plan must be 'Vote SNP for an independent Scotland'. It should be made perfectly clear to the Scottish people that they are voting to begin negotiations to end the Union if a majority of independence MPs are elected. Similarly, the English government should be made aware that in such a scenario, failure on their part to engage will lead to a declaration.
With a failing economy and sterling in freefall at the prospect of a disorderly exit, the English government will be left with no choice other than to agree to a referendum as a least-worst option (as they see it). Being bold achieves a referendum whereas begging is rightly seen as weakness.
Of course, there is nothing to prevent the SNP from using this strategy for the Scottish election next year, as it would indicate we're serious about independence and that far from being defeated (as they believe), independence hasn't gone away. The SNP have absolutely nothing to lose.
Alan Calder
Darvel
WHAT we are witnessing here is not merely the bumbling incompetence of a mediocre politician – though Keir Starmer is certainly that – but the latest chapter in Britain's long, sordid tradition of kowtowing before the bloodstained altar of Zionism while pretending to preach 'de-escalation'. The man is a moral contortionist, a liar so practised in the art of political euphemism that he can dispatch RAF jets to the Middle East under the guise of 'contingency support' while insisting, with a straight face, that his 'constant message is de-escalation'. One might as well pour petrol on a fire and call it a cooling mist.
Starmer's refusal to rule out direct British involvement in defending Israel – a rogue state currently engaged in a campaign of extermination against Palestinians and now escalating its butchery into Iran – reveals the grotesque hypocrisy at the heart of Westminster's foreign policy.
The man is an imbecile, yes, but worse: he is a willing accomplice to genocide, a servile lickspittle to the Zionist regime, whose hands are so drenched in Palestinian blood that even Lady Macbeth would recoil. And let us not pretend this is some aberration of Labour policy – this is the inevitable endpoint of a political class that has spent decades bankrolled by pro-Israel lobbyists and war profiteers, a class for whom Palestinian lives are as expendable as yesterday's chip paper.
The Zionist entity, that grotesque colonial anachronism, has once again demonstrated its bloodlust with its latest 'pre-emptive' strikes on Iran – a term the Western media dutifully parrots, as if mass murder can be laundered into legitimacy through lexical sleight-of-hand. Netanyahu boasts of setting back Iran's nuclear programme 'by years', as though this justifies the charred corpses of children pulled from the rubble of residential neighbourhoods. But of course, when Israel murders civilians, it is 'precision'; when Iran retaliates, it is 'terror'. The hypocrisy is so brazen it would be laughable were it not so lethal.
And what of Starmer's vaunted 'discussions' with allies? A pantomime of diplomacy, a hollow performance for the cameras while British jets are scrambled to aid a regime that has turned Gaza into a graveyard. His mealy-mouthed evasion – 'I'm not going to get into that' – when pressed on whether Britain was complicit in Israel's attacks is the coward's refrain, the weasel words of a man who knows his policies are indefensible but lacks the backbone to admit it. As for the broader British political establishment – Tory, Labour, LibDem – they are all culpable. A cabal of bloodthirsty liars, bought and paid for by arms dealers and AIPAC-aligned donors, who have spent years cheering on Israel's slaughter in Gaza while wringing their hands over 'both sides' when the victims dare to resist.
They are not statesmen; they are stenographers for genocide, their moral compasses so corroded by power and patronage that they can no longer distinguish between a war crime and a 'strategic operation'.
The only de-escalation this situation demands is the immediate grounding of British jets, the severing of diplomatic ties with the Zionist regime and the prosecution of its leaders for crimes against humanity.
But we will get none of that from Starmer or his ilk. Instead, we will get more bombs, more lies and more dead children – all while the PM goes on about 'contingency support' as if war were a technical glitch rather than a conscious choice made by moral imbeciles.
Starmer is a warmongering clown. The Zionist regime is a bloodthirsty gang. And the British political class? A disgrace to the concept of democracy.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee
A LETTER from Cliff Purvis (June 14) stated 'it is always a good way to finish the working week, witnessing the complete meltdown with associated frothing at the mouth of the extremists, those who love to label themselves as Reform'.
Reform UK may well have suffered the temporary loss of their chair, however, on Thursday evening, they gained almost 60% in the local authority by-election in Nottingham.
The result was: Reform 59.3% (standing for the first time), Labour 24.3%; Tory 9.6%; Green 5.6%.
Although this is an English result, there is currently no magic forcefield separating the electorates of Scotland and England. At the recent by-election, the SNP candidate could only manage to achieve 29% of the vote and 13% of the electorate. The SNP's share of the vote fell from 46% in 2021. This looks more like a 'meltdown' than anything Reform UK may have managed. The Reform UK candidate was less than 1000 votes behind the SNP candidate.
It is very easy to dismiss what Mr Purvis calls 'the followers of Farage', but sadly they are your neighbours, your workmates and in some cases your friends and family. They do not all, as Mr Purvis labels them, 'dislike having their twisted ideology questioned', or have 'leanings towards the totalitarian state, a disdain for human rights, obsession with national security, and want of suppression of workers' rights, all pointing to the fascist way of thinking'.
Many are clearly ordinary folk who feel traditional politicians, including sadly the SNP, have deserted them. They see and fear immigration as a problem rather than a solution. They need look no further than another article in Saturday's National headed 'Gray under fire for using ministerial car to visit pub' to justify their opinions! It is all too easy for some voters to see a tenuous link between their difficulty in obtaining a GP appointment, the length of Scottish NHS waiting lists and a Health Secretary in a taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven car stopping off at a pub on his way to corporate hospitality at a football match.
They see their industries closing, their cost of living rising and their standard of living falling. They see a Holyrood apparently more interested in gender recognition and toilet etiquette than addressing the loss of Scotland's only oil refinery. They see the landscape of their country increasingly covered in wind turbines and wonder why they cannot afford the electricity they generate.
The 25% gap between those who claim to support independence (54%) and SNP support (29% in the recent by-election) cannot be blamed on the followers of Farage. The leaders of all political parties should perhaps be asking themselves why 66% of the electorate of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse could not even be bothered to vote for any of them!
It is all too easy to dismiss Reform UK as an English problem and for the SNP to dismiss Reform voters as fascist supporters while they completely fail to address their concerns.
Anne Laird
Inverness
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