Dear All
Hearing people talk rubbish can be a lot of
fun, in my political life I have met many people in the Scottish National Party
who talk crap, although this generally isn’t a problem in conversations, it can
be a serious problem in leadership terms.
To give a classic example of the art,
Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond was talking out his political arse and
lying his head off because he thought he could get away it, because the SNP is
run as a one man band ‘in terms of the debate’.
Salmond believed his own hype that with a
daft look, a smile on his face, a balloon and some wee flags for the kids, he
would win independence. His sales pitch was ‘I’m your pal, trust me, everything
will be milk and honey’.
It’s bullshit.
I want you to imagine for a moment what the
Scottish Independence campaign would have looked like if there had been major
changes such as ‘telling the truth’, ‘having a plan’, ‘removing the malcontent
elements who ran an anti English hate campaign’, ‘having an inclusive campaign’
and ‘proper education’. When I talk about proper education, I am not talking
about the shit being pumped out by the Allison Hunter Training School; we all
know how that turned out on the 18th September 2014.
Angela Constance it appears recognises none
of these defects listed above which are all pretty important, instead she goes
off at a tangent talking about women and non Scots which are a symptom of all
of the above. It is a bit like recognising someone coughing but failing to
recognise the chest infection is the cause.
In politics, you should as much as possible
learn from other people’s mistakes, after all why keep doing something that is
wrong. Recently I read the Labour Party had started the process of doing a post
mortem of the poor Glasgow Labour result. The failure of losing every single
area in Glasgow which where previously Labour strongholds will give them food
for thought. And they have several problems to address from top to bottom. I
should point out, I flagged up to BT and others these problems for quite some
considerable time, the BT campaign towards the end did improve to their credit.
I didn’t take much interest in the Labour Party campaign outside the indyref
express and Jim Murphy tour, however I did attend some of Gordon Brown’s speeches
which were excellent, that surprised me. It is a pity that he couldn’t have
been like that while in Number 10, but sometimes like in football, he had a bad
team around him which also brought him down.
If you take the Pollok result which was Yes
on 26,807 votes, and No on 22, 956 votes, you can see that Yes had 3,851 more
votes. In previous posts, I have highlighted the need to understand ‘the
political economy’, so what is the political economy, this is made up of
people, money and resources. People and money are self evident, resources
includes everything else which is the plan, materials and concepts used. When
you understand that you can draw up an overview when you know what you have to
work with. There is no point in having ideas if you cannot execute them due to
a lack of understanding or experience.
In the Pollok constituency, the Yes mob had
in excess of 40 plus bodies, Better Together had on average between 3 to 6
people. When you look this and compare the numbers of votes, you can clearly see
that Better Together got a better ratio of votes to activists than the Yes mob.
How was this achieved?
I was asked to give an assessment by the
Better Together organiser of how Pollok should be tackled as an area. So, being
an experienced campaigner, I laid out an alternative vision on campaigning
which was adopted for the rest of the campaign. It took 40 plus people by the
SNP Organiser Chris Stephens to get 3,851 votes more than BT. Certain areas
were scrapped and certain activities were cancelled by Pollok BT, additional
workdays were introduced and new people were brought in with professional
knowledge which was transferable to the political environment. The core team
was expanded and results seemed to keep the BT HQ staff happy. They were also effectively
shut out of decision making in Pollok. When you understand the political
economy, you can craft a campaign that works while retaining the flexibility to
accommodate additional information to the core plan.
Alex Salmond is stepping down, he lost; he
took the petted lip, and is out of the political game, he is yesterday’s man.
He isn’t leaving politics, when unpopular Nicola Sturgeon becomes leader,
people will be looking over her shoulder to Salmond sitting up the back when
she makes a decision. Now that Sturgeon is taking over the First Minister with
guaranteed Wimbledon tennis tickets secured, the SNP will become a ‘home rule
party’.
There will exist a need for a new deputy
SNP leader, the candidates are transport minister Keith Brown MSP, SNP Treasury
spokesman Stewart Hosie MP and Angela Constance. But, the fact of the matter
is, the entire SNP clique is so tainted by this failure, so this isn’t ‘new
blood’ or anything close to it, its musical chairs within the SNP.
Who should be SNP Deputy Leader?
Hosie!
Brown and Constance are very much dull
uninspiring people who aren’t able to lead anyone anywhere.
Constance’s pitch for Deputy Leader is that
she says she knows how the YES campaign lost the _referendum. Her take is that
it failed to attract key groups of voters including women and “non-native”
Scots.
Well, what can you say to that?
It’s bullshit, there is no such thing as
“non-native” Scots. To say Constance is a lightweight is an understatement. In
what is will be soon to be legend on toilet walls, she said SNP must
acknowledge the “shortcomings” of the campaign which is also meaningless pap.
With Sturgeon more or less ruling out independence with a ‘not anytime soon
strategy’, Constance says independence must remain at the heart of party
strategy.
Brown and Hosie take a view that the SNP
need to work with the Smith Commission on greater devolution for Holyrood. To
clarify a point, the Smith Commission is seen by some to having already ‘got a
plan’, as we know this is ‘just a show’, which is Westminster agreeing to hand
over various functions in advance of anything proposed or asked for. Expect a
lot of talk as the SNP try to do a ‘standing up for Scotland’ number along with
the Scottish Greens. Why are the Greens there, they are there to make up the
numbers and drag out the process as being meaningful, if we could fast forward
from the blah blah blah bit we could have something to analyse.
Constance insisted:
“My campaign is essentially all about
independence and how we continue to campaign with head, heart and soul.”
Pish!
Is Constance really trying to position
herself as an ‘independence champion’?
Oh dear!!!!
In putting herself forward, she has also
put herself back by saying she ruled herself out as Deputy First Minister.
Which begs the question why apply in the
first place?
Given the lack of talent in the SNP, does
this mean that John Swinney would be appointed Deputy First Minister in the
event of Stewart Hosie not becoming deputy SNP leader as to try and keep Dundee
SNP onboard?
What should have happened when Alex Salmond
stepped down was that John Swinney should have declared his intention to stand
as SNP leader. Instead the SNP is to get unpopular Nicola Sturgeon to lead them
into the political desert to die. Sturgeon isn’t leading anyone anyway except
around in circles, year in year out, expect to see Sturgeon sitting in the
Royal box at Wimbledon while spouting rubbish about being a ‘social justice
champion’.
In case you don’t understand how the
Sturgeon clan operate, Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell pull in
jointly over £200,000 a year plus fighting for the poor and disadvantaged.
Each year, the poorest have seen their
situation getting worse. Nicola Sturgeon ‘represents’ Glasgow Southside, within
it there is a place called Govanhill, it is an utter shithole akin to a ghetto.
But let’s get it right, Nicola doesn’t live
there, she has her lovely expensive home over in the East end of Glasgow.
The Scottish National Party isn’t a party
of fairness, equality and social justice. As I said previously, if you are a
white working class and heterosexual you are shit out of luck dealing with the
Sturgeon Empire.
The era of tokenism will be starting
shortly!
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow
University
1 comment:
Georgie boy how do you see the general election going?
Crookie
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