Scottish independence: Yes Scotland, funded by the SNP, run by the SNP for the benefit of the SNP, Euan McColm clears away the myth that Yes Scotland isn’t an SNP front using evidence, press adopting the George Laird view

Dear All

There I was pottering about and then I came across an article By Euan McColm.

It raises the issue that anyone knows in the SNP and beyond, Yes Scotland is an SNP front.

In Glasgow, you can’t have failed to noticed that the number of “Yes branches” match the same number of SNP branches, and that “Yes whoever” within the City is run by SNP members.

They take off their SNP hat and don their Yes Scotland hat.

It is complete bullshit.

Yes Scotland campaign makes great play of the diversity of its membership and support.

It’s a coalition of the damned, handicapped by a complete lack of original thought.

On twitter, I asked Patrick Harvie of the Greens a question awhile ago, do the Greens campaign at Yes Scotland/ SNP events?

No reply; fairly straightforward question, no reason not to answer it, but curiously Patrick didn’t.

Yes Scotland’s front man is chief executive Blair Jenkins OBE, what does he know about political campaigning?

I would say nil, however he probably has seen it on TV!

And as we are all aware, those of us who are awake; the SNP has their “key staff” in paid positions and of course on the board.

So, at every level the SNP is there, and despite this Mr. Jenkins insists this isn’t an SNP front and to say so is a smear.

Apparently, it’s a grassroots organisation as Euan says “overgrowing with compassionate, and almost exclusively ordinary and local, Scots”.

That is such cock!

The only ordinary Scots would be the mugs who they get to deliver leaflets.

A couple of weeks ago, Jenkins gave a speech, the speech was a business dinner organised by Yes West Lothian.

So what are the odds that Yes West Lothian is run by SNP members?

I would say without a doubt pretty high.

Jenkins explained:

“Yes has been much more visible and audible throughout Scotland, a genuine grassroots movement with more than 150 local groups now up and running and new ones emerging every month.”

And the percentage of these groups will probably be SNP branches just like the Glasgow set up.

But we shouldn’t forget other little organizations which have suddenly sprung up, these groups also have SNP members helping running them such as ‘Women for Independence’ and ‘Out for Independence’.

So, let us not kid ourselves that there is broad base support or even independent voices speaking out for independence.

It is just the same people popping up in different guises.

Presumably we are all supposed to be too dumb to notice, even on Twitter, we see the ‘I’m not in the SNP but I am voting indy’, then you scroll down their followers and see who they are connect to ….,SNP members.    

Jenkins added:

“Yes Scotland has support from people of all parties and – like myself – none. On our board are Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens and Colin Fox of the Scottish Socialist Party; we also have distinctive non-party voices like Pat Kane and Elaine C Smith; and of course, the formerly Labour but now formidably independent Dennis Canavan is our Chair. Yet Better Together asserts in the face of this evidence that "Yes Scotland is simply an SNP front". The smears start here.”

“distinctive non-party voices like Pat Kane and Elaine C Smith”.

Both of these people are attached to the SNP, Kane is connected to Joan McAlpine MSP and Elaine C Smith I have met at an SNP event, specifically ‘Ask Alex’.

Harvie is probably in it because it helps his Green cause, and as to Colin Fox, it is to try and rebuild his SSP Party which was wiped out in 2007.

Jenkins continued:

“Yes Scotland runs a positive campaign and we never indulge in personal or sweeping attacks. Better Together says falsely and again without producing any evidence that we are part of a "co-ordinated dirty-tricks campaign". The smears go on.”

As Euan articulates Jenkins’ claims are clearly bogus.

Or it could be that Jenkins is such a shit Chief Executive he doesn’t know what is going on around him?

And he missed the little Yes Scotland campaign of a wince-inducing open letter to George Osborne with the pay-off that the only thing an independent Scotland would “lose” for sure would be him?

Osborne wouldn’t be missed, but then neither will Alex Salmond when he goes, and as we are seeing Salmond is looking increasingly like exiting stage left before George Osborne.

I see Jenkins as a patsy; he is the front man much like Dennis Canavan, to portray it’s a big happy family of "ordinary people" coming together.

The reality is that Yes Scotland is in the main the coming together of the non elected SNP clique picking up ‘an earner’, it’s just such bullshit.

But despite all this we have Jenkins’s angry insistence that Yes Scotland is not an SNP-front (a claim made despite the fact that the bulk of its financial support comes from either the party or its donors).

There is no independent thought there, and Euan is saying what I have said, however, I am more robust, I call Yes Scotland a SNP crony ridden pit.

And the evidence keeps on mounting, the narrative of the SNP appears as the narrative of Yes Scotland, it’s the same people who are attached to Salmond and Sturgeon in the party.

And it uses identical lines to the Scottish Government.

When Sturgeon used the “scaremongering” line, it was automatically picked up and used in a Yes Scotland statement.

Great minds thinking alike!

No.

Interestingly Euan highlights the Sterling zone issue which I have blogged on, Yes Scotland’s position is exactly the same as the Scottish Government, and that is also the SNP position.

But as Blair Jenkins says, and also rejects Yes Scotland isn’t an SNP front.

On the day the date for indy was announced, Yes Scotland within minutes of Alex Salmond giving the day to Parliament, posted a picture of the date stage managed in a Glasgow Street.

Jenkins said he didn’t know in advance but apparently several of his staff seemed to have, and they all left the Yes Scotland Office to do the photo session, and he also apparently didn’t notice that his staff had walked out circa 2 pm. 

Euan asks an interesting question:

“So if Yes Scotland isn’t a SNP front, what is it? A Government department, maybe?”

The question is easy, Yes Scotland is an SNP front which has hangers on which make up the ‘coalition of the damned’, there is no original thought, it is running a virtual campaign with SNP branches effectively trying to pass themselves off as Yes whoever.

Yes Scotland is like Pravda, the newspaper of the Communist Party in old mother Russia, and the longer the campaign goes on the more desperate they will become, already they have failed to generate support or a narrative which people are buying into.

All their work so far has been a complete waste of time, recently they staged an attempt to win the mock referendum at Glasgow University, full time Yes Scotland staff, SNP Cabinet Ministers, SNP members and Patrick Harvie (looking rather lost), and pushing herself forward to lead it was Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Complete utter failure, apparently Ms. Sturgeon must have thought her popularity would win the day.

Disaster, a mistake to personally campaign on the campus streets which I said was wrong.

George Laird right again, when you spend 20 years at Glasgow University, you understand the mentality of the student body.  

To return to Mr. Jenkins of Yes Salmond, his leadership is poor, he needs an assistant who thinks politically and independently of the SNP, independence had to be run by the SNP as a special, they treated it like an another election.

They set up a phoney organisation filled with their cronies who couldn’t organise ‘getting their hole in a barrel of fannies; and from the get go, it was always going to fail.

This is supposed to be a community based movement, and the community isn’t turning up.

Blair Jenkins has got to go or have the guts to kick the Team Sturgeon cronies out the door, Somerville, Lythgoe, Kane, Noon and Mackie and any other Sturgeon crony that has took up residence……. ‘get the fuck out’!

Name the movie that line came from!

The tag that Yes Scotland is an SNP front will remain, 509 days left to the political death of Alex Salmond at the ballot box.

Bong Bong Bong!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University