Nicola Sturgeon’s Day of Armageddon approaches: prominent Yes Campaigner Jim Sillars says ‘I won't vote Yes in second referendum if it means return to EU’, Sturgeon is losing allies, voters and support, will Nicola Sturgeon be the first SNP First Minister to lose control of the Scottish Government to Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives?

Dear All

The Scottish National Party isn’t an independence party, the 80 years of fighting for Scottish self determination by countless members have for naught. The SNP is seen by many as a racist anti English party, they have selected racists and bigots as their candidates and do so openly.

Scotland’s ‘jolly fat man’ Alex Salmond wrote a called ‘the dream will never die’, a funny title from a man who effectively killed of true independence for Scotland. Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were happy to move from Westminster Control which is a benefit to Scotland to EU Control which means austerity, poverty and financial ruin.

All because they want to be seen as ‘good Europeans’ to the EU political elite, and perhaps see job opportunities open up for them as a retirement reward. I fought against Scottish independence because Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon would have ruined Scotland and caused untold harm to the people, I fought for Brexit because the EU is so corrupted now it cannot be salvaged.

On both occasions, I supported the winning side, the Scottish National Party under Salmond and Sturgeon weren’t on the winning side, not in the eyes of the voters and not morally. Scotland doesn’t have an independence party; it has people like Salmond, Sturgeon and hangers on like Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens attempting to sell you something unviable.

During Brexit I had the opportunity to meet Jim Sillars, he was a former deputy leader of the SNP, he believes in true independence, he doesn’t want Westminster rule and he doesn’t want EU rule. Whether you like it or not Jim Sillars is a principled man, he says what he means and does so logically and passionately, something which is rather lacking in Nationalist circles.

The SNP ‘row’ over Brexit to get a second Scottish independence vote is bogus, during the campaign, the SNP never put in the effort to stop Brexit on the ground, and they never spent any real money either, their campaign was a sham. On polling day, in Govan, the SNP turned up to do polling station duty at about 5 pm, the rest of the day, no one from the SNP showed up. Brexit is another grievance vehicle for the SNP.

Jim Sillars is saying something which will chime with many people who believe in true independence:

“I won't vote Yes in second referendum if it means return to EU”.

Jim Sillars is right in his stance when he says said he would refuse to vote for independence in a second referendum if it meant re-joining the EU after Brexit, at present the UK gets a bad deal, an independent Scotland would get worse.

And he is correct when he remarks what many have come to realise about the people who run the EU:

“I do not want to be run by an unelected, self-serving elite.”

Clearly Scottish independence isn’t at any cost with him and many like him who believe that the people of Scotland are the priority, and not as the way the SNP operate that people are to be managed.

During Brexit, members of the SNP were out campaigning for Leave, it is estimated that a third of SNP voters voted Leave in 2016. Imagine that, SNP members having to vote in secret because they can’t speak out in supposedly their own party, fighting for a second independence referendum which Nicola Sturgeon actively campaigned against.

It’s a funny old World without the ‘ha ha ha’ it seems!

What makes Jim Sillars intervention so topic is his part in the documentary by the BBC on radio 4 broadcast on Monday, as Jim Sillars rightly says, making a second referendum about EU membership would be a “big mistake” and alienate SNP supporters, and you can add in that EU citizens wouldn’t be able to vote if there was a second independence referendum because it would have to happen post Brexit. Not only would Nicola Sturgeon not get the Unionist remain vote, she would be losing a large chunk of other voters who support the SNP.

He said:

“I, for example, could not vote Yes if on the ballot paper it said, ‘We wish the Scottish state to be a member of the European Union’, and I’m not alone in that. One of the biggest miscalculations by Nicola Sturgeon is to believe that the 1.6m Scots who voted Remain would automatically then vote to go back into the European Union. That means Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tory party, and all the Tories who voted to Remain, would in fact vote to leave the United Kingdom and take a Scottish state into the European Union. I think that’s fantasy.”

Fantasy is certainly is, Brexit will go through, the political voting landscape will change in Scotland again and Nicola Sturgeon will still be behind the curve as usual.

I was at the Glasgow EU/Brexit count, it was clear to me when I saw Kezia Dugdale in Glasgow that there was to be a celebration of victory, as the results came in there was expectation of a remain win in the early stages of the count, then the tide turned, huge Leave results started to come in from down south, as well as that a million Scots voted to leave the EU. As the SNP cheered when remain won all Glasgow seats, I pointed out to Leave supporters, the important thing is the overall result, I was confident of a Leave win. I also knew that more people in Scotland would vote remain because the Leave campaign in Scotland didn’t have enough money, resources and manpower to mount the same campaign as all the combined political parties in Scotland.

And we still got a million votes!

In areas of Glasgow, Leave managed to get 40% of the total vote in areas such as Glasgow East, and Glasgow South West. Three areas managed to over the 40% benchmark and with just a handful of people doing the heavy lifting, a remarkable achievement in campaigning.

Within hours of losing the Brexit vote which was done as a UK referendum, an unhappy Nicola Sturgeon seeing that she had lost another referendum came up with the nonsense that Scotland had being taken out of the EU against its will. Scotland wasn’t voting as a nation, there weren’t four national votes deciding whether to stay in the EU, people had an individual vote which they exercised.

So, Nicola Sturgeon is demanding another referendum, but she isn’t going to get one while Brexit talks are going on, she isn’t getting a referendum in 2018, the ball has been kicked into the long grass by the Conservatives. Sturgeon is going to lose EU citizens get a vote in the next Scottish independence referendum if or when it takes place, he would get prominent people like Jim Sillars to campaign for independence is that means a return to the EU. Although she is being ‘coy’ about whether a future independence bid next time would involve a return to full EU membership. People aren’t stupid, they know the SNP want EU membership, and they know that they want the Euro and the access to the European Central Bank.

The Scottish National Party leadership cannot be trusted, lied all the way through the Scottish independence campaign and got found out!

A pragmatic Jim Sillars said:

“The wisest course for the Yes movement, and that includes the SNP component of it, is to wait to see the final deal. Then they can deploy their argument. At the moment we don’t know the deal. If it was a free trade deal [zero tariffs like the existing EU single market], why would we want to go back into the EU when we would inherit a free trade deal? That’s a question they don’t seem to (have) asked themselves. The likelihood of a free trade deal is greater than the likelihood of a hard Brexit on WTO [World Trade Organisation] conditions, if you look at the respective trade figures.”

It seems that Nicola Sturgeon is faced with being ‘pushed’ into a second referendum at a timing not of her choice, with less support and fewer allies such as Jim Sillars, her chances of winning are much worse then in 2014, and the only thing which is inevitable is her delivering a massive lost which leaves the SNP in limbo for decades. You can add on top now that more people are talking about incompetent SNP government, how long can the SNP maintain their hold on power?

Will Nicola Sturgeon be the first SNP First Minister to lose control of the Scottish Government to Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives?

She has to lose to someone or resign down the line!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University