The brutal dirty tricks campaign against Kate Forbes is beginning to backfire
As Sturgeon and Swinney pour scorn on her beliefs while backing Humza ‘worst health minister’ Yousaf, SNP members think they’ve gone too far
The base problem is that absolutely none of them have any particular merit or vision. They’re just scrambling for power so that they can have power. Thus there is no tactic available to anyone other than dirty tricks. If there’s no there there, then how to distinguish oneself from the pack? So, play dirty.
How much merit or vision do you need to sit on a glorified parish council? (Apologies to those who actually sit on real parish councils).
You could argue it’s the same as Westminster when we were in an increasingly centralised EU – if someone else took the big decisions, the clowns couldn’t do too much damage. Now we need proper leadership, they are found seriously wanting and we are seriously fucked.
It wasn’t that brutal.
The MSM was waiting with a basic bitch gotcha question and she decided to answer it at considerable length, cue outrage they prepared earlier when it turns out an evangelical Protestant Mum from the Highlands isn’t a big fan of homosexual party times.
It’s an ambush, yes, and it’s so unfair, yes, but it’s not brutal by the standards of modern politics.
Brutal is Jeremy Corbyn being labelled “a threat to Jewish life” in the national press, or Boris Johnson being secretly recorded arguing with his girlfriend, or Liz Truss being coup’d by the Bank of England, or Alex Salmond being fitted up with false sexual assault allegations.
Its quite amusing and tragic if your independence minded. The SNP is a single issue campaign group that wants to attract independence voters from across the political spectrum to demonstrate that they have broad and strong backing for their cause.
At the same time they have to be able to demonstrate that an independent Scotland can be successful and the only way they can do that is to govern well within the bounds of what they can do, something they’ve failed to do.
As a broad coalition the only way to keep it together when things get tough is to wave the flag and shout nasty things about the government in Westminster, the English or whatever is the rallying cry of the day and Nicola Sturgeon excelled at this side of the politics.
However they’ve also been hijacked by the progressive left who have have demonstrated a complete inability to govern competently or work within a broad coalition. There’s only one or two competent administrators amongst them and one of those who is standing for the leadership has social opinions the progressives hate and they’re going to cut off their noses to spite their faces.
Thing is Jimmers, being in charge of Jockland, or Sheepshaggerland or Londonistan allows one to push agendas that would not stand scrutiny elsewhere. It is all on a mych smaller scale, so there is less chance of rebellious MPs popping up on Sky and complaining. Everyone owes their position to patronage from their party leader.
This one of the big problems of list-based systems. Some of the members actualy have to get elected, but the numbers are made up directly from mates of the leadership.
@Jimmers
“How much merit or vision do you need to sit on a glorified parish council?”
The Scottish parliament has got plenty of power. Why do you think our schools have got much worse, our drug deaths are many times higher, we pay more tax, we have worse hate speech laws, we had harsher covid restrictions etc etc?
Jimmers – what Bloke in Aberdeen said.
The Scottish Parliament controls a £50 Bn pa budget (remember that used to be a lot of money before the money printing craze?), an army of civil servants and the criminal justice system oop norf.
They have plenty of power to fuck people up, as Alex Salmond found.
Anyway, our enemies have made sure they control the parish councils because they understand the importance of controlling the levers of state power. We may find the Scottish government contemptible, but George Soros doesn’t.
Seems more because they didn’t do enough of the right things and too much if the wrong things ie far too much focus on independence and not enough on running the country.
Since I live in Scotland, I’m naturally predisposed towards better government and the SNP have been a disaster, but the idea of perennial idiot Humza Yousaf getting the nod does have some value add.
That the likes of Sturgeon and Swinney are prepared to back this fool rather than Katey of the Wee Free’s shows how much of the progressive agenda they’ve swallowed. They’d literally support an incompetent imbecile than a TERF.
He would run a wrecking ball through the SNP as well as appointing his mates as members through the party list system, not because they give a shit about Scottish Independence, but because that’s how it’s done back home.
The decimation of the SNP has value over and beyond the damage they have/will do through Holyrood’s concrete parish council.
As I suggested in another thread, the only downside of Abu Humza getting the SNP leadership would be the end of any prospect of our independence from Jockland.
Oh Noes! How awful would that be? That might cause the entire SNP to fade back into the shadows with the rest of the cockroaches.
😀
The reality is that Scottish Independence in any meaningful form is dead anyway. BRExit killed it.
@John Galt
I understand that line of thinking, but can’t agree with it. Having someone bad in charge doesn’t lead to people voting them out, it just leads to more bad things happening. Better to have the most competent person winning please.
As a wise man once said, “there’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
BiND: they’re going to cut off their noses to spite their faces
Given the stinking mess that is Scottish politics you might even say they’re going to cut off their noses to spite their fæces.
@Bloke in Aberdeen – Nope. The next checkpoint for Scotland is the elections to the Scottish Parliament on or before 7th May 2026. Hard to see the SNP staying in power beyond that point, especially with Abu Hamza at the helm.
That’s even saying we have to wait that long, remember that if there is disagreement over the selection of a First Minister then the resolution to that is a Scottish Parliamentary election anyway. I doubt the SNP would let it go that far though, because they’d be out on their ear.
So, while I hear what you say, I think stabbing the SNP in the heart is worth “a certain amount of ruin”. I mean look at the damage they’ve done since 2007, already.
Can still recall the day… sitting at my desk in the Aberdeen office, when a visiting exec asked if I would consider leaving Scotland to run the Houston operation. Mrs G. had her bags packed by the time I returned home that evening. Looking back, am confident I made the correct move.
BiA
“Having someone bad in charge doesn’t lead to people voting them out, it just leads to more bad things happening. ”
I agree, especially if the group or person in charge can rely on a constituency always to vote for them. The die hard Nats will always vote SNP and we see it aplenty elsewhere in the UK with solid Labour or Tory seats. Khan as ever provides a good example – he won thanks mostly to 2nd pref votes on a turnout of 42% hardly a ringing endorsement.
@Ottokring
Not that long ago Scotland was a Labour stronghold, the SNP successfully took their policies and swallowed up the party whole (aided by the general incompetence and corruption in a lot of long term Labour controlled areas). Scotland isn’t so much a Nat stronghold.
I expect Labour to be looking on with interest.
It will be interesting to see if the next SNP leader is a Scot nationalist (the Krankie wasn’t) or a politician.
BiW: If they really did go then we would still have to bail them out sooner or later – shades of Darien. There is no way Scotland can exist financially on its own, and the idea of the EU picking up the tab is fantasy. I can’t even see them doing that to spite us.
The “fun” thing about the SNP is, that if a ruthless mind thought up a way to squish the sentiment for scottish independence, the way the party is going about it is just about perfect. A gift from heaven.
No-one sane or competent would want to be associated with this gaggle of clowns, and they do a very good job of poisoning the well for anyone sane and competent who would want to bring up the issue in the future.
Next question will be, of course, which of the people involved will get nice, cushy seats with Tories and Labour once this has all played out, and the SNP has crashed. Time will tell, I guess.
Is the real objection to Forbes that the Greens will pull out of their agreement and that will force an election and they want to keep the gravy train going for as long as possible until they have to face the electorate
No-one sane or competent would want to be associated with this gaggle of clowns, and they do a very good job of poisoning the well for anyone sane and competent who would want to bring up the issue in the future.
A true statement but, sadly, one that applies much more widely than simply the Sweaties.
@John Galt
“Hard to see the SNP staying in power beyond that point”
Alas it’s very easy to see them staying in power at the next election, regardless of what messes they make.
@BniC
I think the Greens would abstain and the complaining SNP MSPs would fall into line if Forbes won. She’d be first minister, but have a tough shift ahead of her.
The objections to her are mostly because she’s said she believes something culturally unpalatable. Though a lot of the attack dogs will be Sturgeon outriders, as she is supporting Yousaf and controls the party apparatus.
A true statement but, sadly, one that applies much more widely than simply the Sweaties.
Chris gets it.
What’s happened to the SNP is the same thing that’s happened in Westminster, and in every Western country.
The majority of the population has been deliberately disenfranchised, just in time for the endgame of Net Zero and the final push to kill your nation with immigration.
I haven’t seen any evidence that Forbes wants to forcibly convert the population to the Wee Frees, she appears to believe that she herself being a Wee Free she herself should follow the practices of the Wee Frees.
@Grikath
A few minutes on Wings Over Scotland would suggest that you are indeed corrct, and furthermore its all a Westminster plot with Krankie as a Manchurian candidate with full Ipcress programming
So the Scots cant even run an incompetent government without the dead hand of the eeeeevil English guiding and manipulating them
The levels of dissonance and surething conspiracyising is quite impressive
Of course they may be right which makes the English establishment reassuringly devious