Well do you accept this?

Ready to accept the foreign decision?

WHat country in the world would meekly accept that a foreign neighbour has the right to dictate their right of self determination? To pretend, in the face of all the evidence, that they, not you, gets to determine what happens to your resources, your assets, your very existence as a nation.

All the time pretending you are part of an “equal union”. A Union where unionist parties are represented by 12 seats, while pro Indy representation has 47 seats. Where the electorate have provided six consecutive mandates to have the right to have a democratic vote on our constitutional future. Yet it remains denied.

Now contrast with the current Tory Leadership contest where less than 200,000 people, the vast majority living in England, will determine who the next Prime Minister will be. No matter who wins they will be opposed by the vast majority of Scots. You need to go back to 1955 to find the last time the Tories won an election in Scotland.

Yet Scotland has proved to be the unifying issue in the Tory election. Not tax, not National Insurance, not the Health Service, or immigration,  the candidates hold various views on these topics. Not so when it comes to Scotland, all are opposed to Scotland being allowed to determine our own future. In one of the favourites Penny “I have never heard of her before” Mordaunt,  we have a woman who says she will never ever approve a referendum in Scotland. A penny for your thoughts, no thanks, overpriced!

Now that is a stunning statement. The arrogance of someone who has never won a single vote in Scotland thinks she gets to make that decision. With a stroke of her colonial pen she sweeps aside the total democratic rights of an entire nation.

Now that makes me angry, but perhaps for a very different reason to what you might expect. You see after we factor in that she is a blinkered, self entitled Tory with a. Built in Colonial mindset, even allowing for that, why in God’s name does she think she can make such an outrageous undemocratic statement like that and get away with it?

I will tell you why, because we have a craven, cowardly Scottish Government led by a timid devolutionary leadership who would have preferred to have had a holiday in Brighton ( all expenses paid) rather than fight for freedom at Bannockburn. Stuck inside a wet paper bag they avoid confrontation. Witness how they abandoned Scotland’s case when the Alba Party representatives protested the undemocratic refusals of the Tories. It was “gesture politics” came the timid whimper from within the SNP wet paper bag.

We desperately need to get our act together in this country, far from being a free independent country we are playing a very convincing role as a pathetic colony of London with a colonial administration in Holyrood more intent to devaluing and diverting Scotland’s route to freedom than promoting it.

We have long passed giving them the benefit of the doubt. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from their “gold standard” route to a Section 30, a plan that accepted Scotland’s role as the supplicant, on bended knee hoping from a crumb or two from the master’s table. Bowl outstretched as “Oliver” Sturgeon hoped for a “concession”. It has been a humiliating seven years.

They pay lip service to Scotland’s sovereignty. The Claim of Right 1689 scares them more than it does Westminster. How else can you explain its absence from any defence of Scotland’s interests? No much easier to accept the surrender of our place in the Single Market, to the constant encroachment of Westminster on Holyrood’s powers, to avoid any topic that might involve having to argue on the regular and historic Breaches to the Treaty that would justify our Parliament ending the Treaty of Union once and for all.

Professor Alf Baird has catalogued the unarguable case that we have been colonised for a long time and that the persistent process of colonisation is accelerating all the time as England now encourages widespread migration from elsewhere in the UK to Scotland. This process is changing Scotland, economic pressures forcing young people to move as they are priced out of homes in their local area. We know those votes changed the result in 2014 when the majority of Scots voted Yes but votes from others, not born in Scotland changed the result. We know that the franchise that allowed this to happen would be illegal in any other European country. I would like this topic to be discussed at the forthcoming SNP and Alba conferences. I suspect great efforts will be made to keep it well buried in terms of getting on the SNP agenda. I would hope Alba might be more Democratic. We will see.

I see the forthcoming SSRG conference as very important, the Salvo launch created real momentum behind the Claim of Right argument and I hope the SSRG Conference will do the same as well as developing a clear route ahead on a Scottish currency and joining EFTA thereby regaining access to the Single Market.

We are a trading nation, we need to develop our own direct links with our overseas markets. That will never happen while we remain tied to England. It is in their interests to deny us those direct links and force so much of our trade to be routed through England. That way they get their cut. It need not be this way. Have a look at the ferry development that has happened in Ireland since Brexit. We could and should do the same.

Folk are depressed, they see little movement in moving Independence forward from the current SNP leadership who, after all these years in power seem singularly unprepared for what comes next. They only finally moved off the S30 route when they identified Scotland’s people were beginning to move past them, egged on with Alba’s continued success in building their Party.

I certainly see Salvo and the SSRG adding to that discomfort as they are driving a new agenda and urgency that is meeting with growing enthusiasm and effort from the grassroots. Likewise Alba’s Wee Blue Book meetings are being well attended and their numbers continue to grow.

I have no doubt those factors played the dominant role in convincing the SNP they had to do more. Unfortunately that “more” could be classified as “as little as possible” and the rushed nature of their announcements have confused and diluted efforts to make the plebiscite route more effective. I find it quite amazing that some SNP folk cannot recognise what is clearly sabotage to our cause. Nobody can be this consistently tactically inept.

So full marks to the ordinary Independence activists that have forced the movement off a S30, pass marks to Alba for their efforts as well, which I recognise are growing in effectiveness, but in the absence of any real summer campaign from the SNP and a plethora of confused and ineffective, directionless statements from the leadership I am afraid it is still a big fail from me for the SNP.

Hopefully SNP members will take the opportunity of their conference to make widespread changes to their NEC, which let’s face it should be the NEC that leads the fight in the run up to Nicola’s October Independence Referendum. As they say, seeing is believing. They can also make it abundantly clear to the leadership that they want a return to a member driven Party, rather than the Presidential cabal that has found it so easy to promote a policy agenda no members have ever had the opportunity to cast a vote on. That has ignored the Conference wishes on currency and is still sticking with the Growth Commission proposals that were roundly tossed out at Conference by the membership.

I hope they manage to do all that. It will take people with courage, good organisation and effort. I hope they exist and I wish them well in their efforts. This blog will support them if they wish me to do so. I know some do because they have already contacted me. I hope others will join them.

I have never had anything other than admiration for the ordinary SNP members that support and campaign for Independence. My problems lie with the careerist wing who are in it for what they can make out of it and who are happy to follow another organisation’s policy agenda with absolutely NO say whatsoever in it themselves even when those policies are doing great harm to the Yes Movement.

I hope time is running out for them.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland.

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