In the Sunday Telegraph of 28 March Julie Burchill quoted Dennis Kavanagh saying ‘Scottish politics hasn’t been this much fun since Macbeth’. The thesis of Burchill’s article was questioning what the Scots had done to deserve the gruesome twosome of Salmond and Sturgeon. Both these characters are equally detestable and now they have given us unionists three political parties, including the Green nationalists in Scotland, to detest. Salmond has announced his intention to form a new Scottish nationalist party—Alba—yet to be approved by the Electoral Commission. Whether this is twice as good or twice as bad for unionists, only time will tell.
The smouldering coals of the situation between Salmond, the former SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland, and the incumbent need not be raked over. Anyone unaware of the SNP meltdown and the exchange of untruths in the recent Salmond Inquiry must have been asleep. But it is clearly the time for new political parties. Witness Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party* and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party and the possibility, in my view, of the eventual formation of a Recovery Party of disaffected Conservative MPs. And now Scotland has jumped on the bandwagon with the prospect of Alba.
New and splinter political parties have not had a good record in the UK at parliamentary level as shown by parties such as the SDP, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP and the Brexit Party (notwithstanding the success of the latter two in achieving their aims). Even long-established parties such as The Liberals—weakened by the shapeshifting of the SDP and Liberal Democrats—are, essentially, vestigial. But this may also be the time when new parties can make an impact. People are sickened by the Conservative Party and their complete mismanagement of the COVID-19 situation and with the Labour Party for their total failure to be the Loyal Opposition they are supposed to be. But south of the border we only have one vote in parliamentary elections. In Scotland people can cast two votes and if both are cast for nationalist parties then Scotland is stuffed politically and economically. And the erosion of free speech will continue now that the Hate Crime Bill is now going to become an Act of the Scottish Parliament.
Guns N’ Roses repeat at the end of Sweet Child O’ Mine ‘where do we go from here?’ Well, I am going nowhere, certainly not back to Scotland. But I know at least one prominent professional Scot who, with his wife, will leave Scotland if there is ever a vote for independence; they may even leave before that. We can only hope, indeed pray, that Alex Salmond will split the nationalist vote so, at least, the power of the SNP will be eroded. But that does not get the Scots out of the woods. The real hope, surely, is that this internecine wrangle between the two pillars of Scottish nationalism will undermine the whole concept of independence. If these two ‘superheroes’ cannot shelve their differences for the greater good, then what hope does an independent Scotland have of a safe and prosperous future?
* The author is a member of Reclaim
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