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.
itisintruthnotforglory 