Margo MacDonald raises the issue of David Cameron and Alex Salmond having a head to head debate on Scottish independence, indy campaign is dying, like unpopular Nicola Sturgeon saw recently at Wimbledon, it’s game, set and match to Unionists

Dear All

The Scottish National Party and supporters of independence are keen to get Prime Minister David Cameron into a TV studio with Alex Salmond.

The idea is to run through a catalogue of grudge, grievance and malcontent of how Scotland isn’t represented by Westminster using populist arguments.

David Cameron and his advisors have wisely refused to play Alex Salmond’s game, he isn’t going to be dancing to a Scottish jig, he doesn’t have to, the less oxygen Salmond gets the worse it is for him.

Alex Salmond recently embarrassed himself with his ill judged and stupid Wimbledon stunt by pulling out a Scottish Flag to photobomb David Cameron when Andy Murray won the Wimbledon men’s final.

If there was a time for dignity then Salmond blew it, he lost out on a proper post Murray photo op as he tried to hijack Murray’s success for his own ends. One has to wonder who thought up this ridiculous idea in the first place, as I keep saying; there is a genuine lack of talent in the Scottish National Party.

The latest person from the Nationalist camp to call for David Cameron to go head to head with Salmond is Margo MacDonald.

She is calling for two keynote TV debates, involving both referendum campaigns as well as the UK and Scottish governments, to take place in the run up to the vote on independence.

Margo MacDonald says “that’s the fairest way of doing it”, so Salmond gets two TV debates but David Cameron gets only one, how exactly is that fair?

And why should Cameron debate at all, there is nothing in it for him or his coalition government.

Nothing to gain and something to lose, his advisors would say no. Let Salmond go head to head with Alastair Darling, the sub text is that Salmond isn’t a proper or credible government minister.

MacDonald says she will raise the issue at Holyrood when MSPs return after the summer recess.

Waste of time on her part, the SNP and its supporters are desperate for this debate; and poll after poll shows they have already lost the issue. It was lost due to stupidity on the part of Salmond and Sturgeon, and they can’t make up the ground, they are standing on political quicksand.

Ms. MacDonald also says a deal was needed on the issue to avoid a damaging row similar to that over the controversial exclusion of the SNP from the leader’s debate at the 2010 General Election.

This issue is different, in her mind she has already worked out the contenders for both sides and without consultation with Better Together and Westminster. She also wants Labour and the Greens to be represented in any TV clashes as well as saying she would be prepared to act as Alex Salmond’s seconder in any debate against Mr Cameron.

She isn’t up to the task, although Patrick Harvie is a decent speaker, some of the Green’s policies don’t stack up in the big arena of international politics. On defence it is a mixture of universal love and no to nuclear weapons, both positions are unworkable in strategic warfare of the 21^st Century.

As we are seeing in Syria with the murder of unarmed prisoners, respect for human rights, and universal love doesn’t work. I don’t think Patrick Harvie could solve that situation with talk unless he also happened to be holding an M4 carbine using 5.56 mm ammunition.

Better Together leader Alastair Darling has publicly challenged Alex Salmond to a debate, although Salmond has yet to agree to it.

The Yes Scotland crowd won’t get Cameron unless they can pull off a miracle of campaigning and with half of their directors baling out on them in less than one year, ineffective management failing to produce results, no one to work for them, Nicola Sturgeon’s cronies in key positions, the old adage of staying out of the way while your enemy makes a mistake applies here.

Unionists can simply wait out Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon as these two buffoons flounder from knee jerk reaction to knee jerk reaction in trying to scrap together support, the more they try to grasp it the more it slips through their hands.

There is no vision of Scottish independence, however there is a clear position from the British side, we know the plus and the negatives.

I previously said that there must be two successful periods of Scottish Government completed to show a record of achievement, this term of the SNP Government has been a complete and utter disaster, and we are finding out the previous term wasn’t so sterling as the hype we were told.

Detail matters.

As to Margo MacDonald’s motion it is a pointless exercise in a sham parliament which is full of SNP drones whose opinions are generally not worth hearing. 

Recently Scotland’s unpopular Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon attended Wimbledon; sitting beside her was Jude Law who was excellent as Vassily Zeitzev in the movie, ‘Enemy at the Gates’. From the look on Nicola Sturgeon’s face, it rather looked like she wasn’t enjoying herself; perhaps as she watched the tennis, she was pondering how it was ‘game, set and match’ for the Unionist side.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University