Rag-dolled

It was always gonnae happen. The Unionist -backing media were always going to seek out and try to destroy all of the leadership candidates for the race to become First Minister of Scotland. 

Did anyone actually expect anything different?

Humza cannae make a train run on time, or organise a surgery waiting list, wee Kate has strong religious beliefs, she’s too close to the God fulla, he, she or it will come first, and Ash Regan’s no big on committing herself tae saving the planet or gender reform.

They don’t just want Kate Forbes tae pull out. They want all the candidates tae chuck it, Holyrood tae be turned intae a bingo and all of us tae get into in a sanitised box firmly behind a bunch of chancing New Labour centre right trough-eaters, bleeding us dry. Back to the good old days.

The rumours are flying that there will be a late entrant or two before the books close on Friday. If there is they’ll get a media mauling as well, whomever they are, on whatever subject they can get them on, from whatever angle seems the easiest means of attack. There will be no escape.

It’s the way of things in Scotland. It’s part of the process of a controlling power from another country using one of its tools to divide, conquer, confuse and bewilder a nation which they think they’ve more or less convinced, by constant reinforcing propaganda over many years, to believe that we are unable to cope without them governing us. 

We are useless, gallant losers, afraid to be successful and eager to find contentment in excuses why we fail. We don’t want to win, we’ll self-sabotage (with their help) to make sure we don’t succeed. That’s how they see us.

Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson, (I’m still unsure which of these is the current Prime Minister, I don’t think they know either) could take a dump on live television in broad daylight in the middle of Downing Street after dancing round a bonfire of twenty-pound notes wearing nothing but their old school tie, then later in a live BBC interview vehemently deny that either of these events actually took place and get away with it. Move on, move on, nothing to see here.

These incompetent and corrupt feckers resign out of one door, go on holidays paid for by corporate sponsors and come back in through another door and back on the political scene in weeks without fear of outcry or criticism. They have no conscience and they are protected.

But woe betide you if you add a touch of authentic honesty, sprinkle in some courage of convictions, the integrity to stand up and say what may not be popular or win you friends, whilst committing to fiercely protect the freedoms of all.

Mix that in with the bravery to put oneself forward for high office, having been subjected to a long-running vile and unlawful campaign of racist and religious bigotry, knowing full well that if high office is attained this evil bile he and his family faces will only get worse. 

Or, in the absence of unity, being a candidate willing to reach out, to build bridges and begin to mend fences for the greater good, a strategy sure to put many party voters offside, and all hell breaks loose.

I have no preference for an individual candidate in the campaign to become the next First Minister. I see pros and cons in the campaign of all three current candidates. Let them get on with it.

Things look chaotic right now. The media is working to make sure that this is the case. They’ll stir it for every last ounce of negativity that they can. But it will settle down. Trust the members of the party of devolved limited powers government in Scotland to take time to consider the issues that count and come up with the leader to move us forward through the next stage of our journey to our rightful independence.

When it comes to politics I’d rather have our prospective leaders being plain-spoken, open, honest and forthright. For that I am grateful. 

There is no comparison when you look at the farce which is Westminster politics. One chamber filled with non-elected elite spivs, the other mainly filled with representatives of two parties who almost mirror each other in their race to be as creepily appealing to those of of the electorate who see self as being first, last and all of the middle in terms of priorities as they can be. Cowards. 

Independence is normal. Being governed by another country is not. 

Honest, we were only holding power to account

So, there we have it. The long-term leader of the party of devolved limited-powers government in Scotland has chucked it, having withstood a barrage of suffocating twenty-four-seven criticism for years, getting the blame for just about everything bar German measles. A First Minister, clearly scunnered to the point of F**k this for a game of sojers, almost inevitably coming to the conclusion that life is too short for this shy*e.

The British Unionist media, in both the ruling England and the long-subsumed Scotland, are breaking their necks to make the same false argument that they did in 2014, when the then First Minister Alex Salmond was driven away on the Friday after the referendum.

No, dear takers of soup, the success of the campaign for a return to rightful self-government for Scotland does not in any way depend on who, at any time, is the leader of the Scottish National Party.

For all intents and purposes, according to these servants of Union, those with power that are part of the political machinery which the media protect at Westminster, and their viewing and reading public (fed propaganda on a level that most of them don’t even recognise as being propaganda, because Britain is one big happy patriotic red, white and blue exceptional-ist Nirvana, worshipping a weird, often sinister symbolic uber-rich family, there by accident of birth) the mad, bad Scottch (sic) separatist nightmare is over. So sad. Hurrah!

Let the readers of the Daily (hate) Mail. Express, Telegraph and others rejoice. Let church bells ring out and spitfires carve out V-for victory signs in the sky from over the white cliffs (which amazingly are not swarming in poor sea-drenched souls from other countries clambering up siege ladders trying to escape British-made munitions dropping on their heads in their own countries) up through the garden of England and on, on to the resounding notes of Elgar, on through the Midlands and on past the new blue wall of voters who have been fed so much right-wing bile over the last twenty years that they have no idea whether they support Labour or the Tories, on to the banks of the Tweed and beyond. For the wicked witch has gone!

For the hard of thinking, those at the intellectual capacity of referencing ‘Nippy’, ‘Krankie’ and other often far worse, some indictable, social media comments, there will be a sense of contentment with this simple one-take-away-one- equals-zero type of reporting. It makes about as much sense as they can comfortably handle at the one time, without having to be barred from using heavy machinery or driving or being left in charge of a knife and fork.

What these propagandists and naysayers are all failing to notice is that the independence movement in Scotland is not about individual personalities, it is not about political parties, or the political leaders of these parties, who come and go.

Over eight years on since the initial canvassing of the views of Scotland’s people about how they see their future (without an official structured Yes Campaign, without a referendum campaign to fight, having been led halfway up hills and back down again following the failure of starter pistols to go off, through mainly, and sometime wildly, fabricated scandals and the odd real one, through internal bickering, breakaway groups, he-said, she-said and the other way round, being dragged out of Europe against our will, through a pandemic, through a period of overwhelming disdain and disrespect for our civil and democratic rights by Westminster) we somehow still, give or take a percentage point here or there, see that around half the voters of Scotland would still vote Yes in an independence referendum. We’re only just getting started!

I tend to agree with Lesley Riddoch on this one. It is time, before the political machinations of the SNP leadership election are concluded, for the grassroots Yes family to stretch its muscles, get the comfy dancing shoes back on and get out there in Edinburgh in a massive show of support. demanding that the civil and democratic rights of the people of Scotland are respected by a government not of our choice, on a date yet to be set. Let’s drown out the Question Time Theme and put Pomp and Circumstance at a peep.

Independence is normal. Being governed by another country is not.