Friday, May 19, 2017

The long grass: Theresa May rules out second Scottish referendum for at least another five years, for the entire next term of Westminster, Nicola Sturgeon will just be a depressed ‘wallflower’, is this the end of Nicola Sturgeon’s career now that the momentum has been effectively stopped dead in its tracks


















Dear All

Like me you are probably someone who values straight talking, you might not always like what you hear but you can certainly value the truth.

A home truth which has just come down the pipeline is that Theresa May has signalled that if on the 8th June, the Conservatives win the Westminster election, there will be no second Scottish independence referendum going to be allowed for the entirety of the next Westminster Parliament.

This statement is huge.

Theresa May has also dropped another gem that any referendum would also need public consent.

Nicola Sturgeon is now someone who is treading water, the news effectively kills independence campaigning stone dead as you would see in a short campaign, and a long campaign of 5 years plus is too long to sustain interest. Politics by its every nature requires the agenda to move on.

And the only game in town is……….. governance!

Years ago, I highlighted the need for the SNP to use their second term for National and Local government reform, and as indy is out the window, the Nationalists who are on the slide will be forced to do the day job.

A recent poll sees all parties having a rise in their vote for Westminster; however, no one who is a back marker in their constituency has effectively leapfrogged over others by this revelation.

If nothing happens next term, the date of the next possible chance slides to around 2022, then you have talks about when, where and who gets to vote. EU Nationals still here will not get the vote, Brexit will be done and dusted by then and as such they will be excluded from the franchise. I assume I will in 2022 be writing a post on the SNP leader whoever that is squealing of rigged vote.

The reason for Theresa May dropping the bombshell is to court traditional Labour supporters to her cause but also to set in motion what I suspect is a plan to win the Holyrood campaign, so that the Conservatives form the administration in Edinburgh. There will be a few years before the next big election which means that all efforts by the Conservatives will be geared towards that aim.

Although the SNP will want to keep talking indy, this will bomb with the public, everything has its time, and if you miss your chance, you can’t guarantee a second shot.

Although the Conservatives have a plan, in many places in Scotland, they are still not able to operate effectively on the ground, it isn’t a secret, you by even casual research can see which constituencies have just ‘paper candidates’.

How do you do that?

Take a candidate’s name, and then cross reference that with the nearest key target seat for the Conservatives. What you will see in places like twitter is that the candidate in the ‘paper’ area is campaigning a lot in the key marginal. Then check for evidence of them campaigning in their seat, the results might surprise you.

Resources are scarce and putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t new, on the blog I said that Scottish Labour needed to adopt a similar policy in Glasgow. James Kelly, their campaign manager flagged up two seats for Labour in Glasgow, Glasgow South West and Glasgow East.

There hasn’t been a huge influx into Glasgow South West to assist the Labour candidate and I doubt Labour even had a meeting to make a policy for activists to work in other areas.

Basically, it seems it is every man for him or herself; time to start swimming!

I bumped into Thomas Haddow, Conservative Candidate last night in town, he told me, he was happy enough the way his campaigning was going, and he had roped in his family to help out. In Glasgow South West, it comes down however to a two horse race despite a Conservative rise in the voting intentions.

This campaign is a short campaign so if you haven’t got a lot of people and resources, you are down to relying on the brand. In Glasgow South West, although the brand for Conservatives is established as a name, they need to go door to door which is very time consuming and there isn’t enough of that left before the vote. I would say good luck to Thomas, he is willing to give it a go and that is the important thing, areas have to be developed, so reality is that there needs to be a Conservative Councillor first to open expectations for Holyrood and Westminster.

Finally, the news that Scottish independence is effectively gone till beyond 2022 is a huge body blow to Nicola Sturgeon, perhaps much more than she knows, expect her to scream long and loud, gnashing of teeth, knickers to be twisted, collective whines as the ‘cult’ gather round Nicola’s feet expecting a miracle.

And miracles are off the menu!

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University   

11 comments:

  1. w2ell said sir!

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  2. Fantastic piece George Laird, I was directed here by someone who is an avid reader of your blog, as they put it, you don't hold back, and its so refreshing.

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  3. Well, that's it then. If independence is to happen at all, it wont be the current generation of SNP leaders who realise it. It's now at some far off date - sometime in the 2030s or beyond, if indeed it ever happens. The SNP and Greens cannot win a majority in 2021. If they can pull it off despite 14 years of SNP government and 10 years of neverendum, I'll be very surprised and would hand them the section 30 order personally if they could pull off such a feat. But they wont, so its over - for now.

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  4. Straight talking indeed! And when the SNP eventually do disappear, then I won't shed a single tear for them.

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    1. They wont disappear. But they will be contained and constrained. Knock them back to a quarter of the vote - a fairly big presence but constantly outvoted, frustrated and denied. I think I'd enjoy that.

      Long term project though. Just now we hold the line. Pushing it back comes later on. Patience required.

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  5. Hello George

    Absolutely excellent news. The snp now face the death of a thousand cuts. Their silence speaks volumes. They know it's over. I think they will lose at least some seats in June. It seems that there are, at last, some serious steps being taken in thin boy fat's (salmond's) constituency to dump him. I believe a local farmer is standing against him. If he does get the bullet, many of us will raise a glass.

    I saw an snp party political on tv the other day. Naturally, I muted the sound but it was like no other party political I have ever seen. The video content consisted of wall to wall young children skipping smiling and playing. There was not a single adult or recognisable geographical location visible. We know the nikkster is fond of kissing babies in the style of 1950s politicians but even, by her pathetic standards, this was a political first. Do I detect desperation? The message appears to be "never mind our appalling record in government, just focus on the children and vote for us because nikky likes kids".

    Like I said, never saw anything like it.

    Auld Jock

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    1. It also has Nazi undertones. Didn't they use young, cute kids in their propaganda? And what of the children who participated in this ad? Did they know what it's about? Have they been brainwashed or exploited?

      I'd ban all politicians going within a hundred yards of children, unless they actually spawned them.

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  6. Very true, Aldo. Rather than deciding to go all the way back to the drawing board, the SNP decided the movement needed to keep trying. I agree, it would be enjoyable to see those idiots and their hateful rubbish restricted and tied down by their own brainlessness.

    Also, I saw an interesting graph way back, that indicated the pattern of popular movements that just before they decline, they hit peak popularity after a small dip. Match this up with indyref 2014, followed by their large-scale win in 2015, and the loss of majority parliament in 2016, this seems to add up.

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