SNP lose Stirling Council as Labour and Conservatives form the new administration, lost of key council is blow to Alex Salmond and Nationalists

Dear All

Did you catch FMQ’s today?

I understand that SNP MSP Joe Fitzpatrick allegedly said did the First Minster believe that the SNP gaining control of Dundee Council was down to the SNP Government’s good work and blah blah blah etc.

Although that was a poor question in the round, it highlights how strong Dundee SNP are within the Scottish National Party.

Openly crowing at Glasgow SNP and Team Sturgeon’s abject failure was the clear message I took from his question.

The question of who is going to be the next leader of the Scottish National Party is firmly in the minds of Dundee SNP now.

However rather than looking for the best man for the job, we should be looking for the best person.

That person in my opinion is John Swinney.

In declaring a ‘win’ for the Scottish National Party by Alex Salmond some interesting results appeared, such as the SNP losing power in their key council stronghold of Stirling.

The Labour Party and Conservatives agreed a deal to take control and bounced the Nationalists out the door.

In Glasgow, Team Sturgeon was totally outfought, outwitted and crushed at the ballot box by the Labour Party.

Labour stuck up 45 candidates and returned 44, to the embarrassment of the SNP who opted for 43 and only returned 27.

In a nutshell what went wrong?

Every single thing humanely possible, but for me, the fact that for 5 years the SNP Group were ineffectual, they had the same problem as the Labour Party had at Holyrood.

Done nothing achieved nothing and no vision!

Their record spoke for itself, silence!

It was so bad that they had to opt for other people’s success to portray as their own and the voters saw straight through that con.

Crushed, Glasgow SNP thought they were strolling into the chambers, the voters thought differently; #changeatthechambers could be rewritten for twitter as #humpedsenselessbyLabour.

Sunny Govan saw a single SNP councillor out of 3 people put up, Govan is supposed to be an SNP heartland.

Up in Stirling, the SNP emerged as the biggest party after last Thursday’s vote with nine seats, Labour had 8 while the Tories had four.

A press release on the SNP website said:

Sturgeon tours victorious SNP Councils with Stirling highlighted as a ‘victorious’ SNP council in that press release along with East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire.

The Labour Party and the Conservatives did a deal, and the SNP are the party of opposition.

Stirling Council lost.

For Alex Salmond who launched the SNP local government campaign in Stirling, he had hoped desperately to stay in control of the area because of the history it evokes.

Bannockburn, the Wallace monument and Stirling Bridge, the Braveheart scenario of freedommmmmmmm!

Pop quiz, anyone know the difference between freedom and freedum?

Anyway back to Stirling, Tory group leader Alistair Berrill, said:

“We have always said we will work together with other parties to do the best for Stirling. This power sharing deal allows us to work on our key election priorities of focus on the frontline, balancing the council’s books and making our schools system better. There will be disagreements along the way, but we are confident that a good working relationship can be built between the two parties and we can truly gain great achievements for the people of Stirling.”

You can argue the toss whether you believe that statement.

With the debate and launch of the countdown for the independence referendum on the horizon, the failure to win outright control in several key councils is a serious problem for the SNP.

The Labour Party in Glasgow fought a good solid campaign; it was subtle how they beat the SNP, who still haven’t worked out how they were blown out of the water by Glasgow Labour.

In submarine terms the Labour Party stuck ‘two fish’ in the Team Sturgeon tramp steamer before Sturgeon’s crew could say:

“High speed screw torpedo in the water”.

For the film buffs, that quote was from The Hunt for Red October, Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones and Richard Jordan.

Out of an SNP crew of 43, 16 people went under.

The fight for independence has become so much harder for the SNP.

My advice, abandon the referendum and reset it for June 2018.

The Glasgow debacle could be summed up using this speech from Mel Gibson in Braveheart:

“Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!”

There was no real fight for Glasgow by the SNP that was very much a problem with their campaign.

And we all know who to blame for that!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University