Dear All
Today is the election of First Minster at Holyrood, 3 people put themselves forward, Nicola Sturgeon, Douglas Ross and Willie Rennie. Two people missing from putting their names forward was Scottish Greens list MSP Patrick Harvie and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. The outcome was predictable, MSPs from all parties who voted did so on party lines, and those who did not stand, their parties abstained. There was no one, not one single person who voted for someone from another party. Holyrood as mentioned by many is a middle class institution going middle class student union politics. The election on the 6th May brought in a few new faces which changed their financial circumstances but in the wider picture, absolutely nothing has changed at all, we are locked into the same nonsense of woke and identity politics. Over the next 5 years, Scotland will get worse, and worse and worse. The mainstream parties of the opposition will be just as ineffective as they presently were in the last parliament. I remember reading an online comment by someone, I think it was on the Herald, that the Scottish Labour result is the worst since 1935. Personally, I would say, it is hard to top the Westminster 2015 election for Scottish Labour, that was a Titanic scale disaster under Jim Murphy.
The main problem for Scottish Labour, and there are many other problems, but this new one sticks out like a sore thumb, is what I would called the 'Neville Chamberlain' strategy, appeasement. During the election campaign, Anas Sarwar said in adverts, vote Scottish Labour for a better opposition. The purpose of an opposition is to oppose, but the noises from Anas Sarwar about working with the SNP show that what I blogged on some time ago on him being effectively a 'list hostage' is surprisingly correct. This leads people to the conclusion that if the Scottish Labour Party blindly supports Sturgeon, and makes a few grunted noises of opposition what is the point of them. Sarwar has a job which involves many facets for turning round Scottish Labour to make it appear as a government in waiting. I think looking at the party, sitting in 3rd place, with the worst Holyrood election since the creation of the Scottish Parliament, that Scottish Government is not viable through the 2020's. I think that Scottish Labour will be sitting on the backbenches until the 2030's. The party as I mentioned needs reformed, that won't happen, so basically, it is degenerating into being just a 'list party'.
The wider Labour Party in the rest of the UK has its problems, the biggest one is the delusion of the right wings which controls the party in Scotland and England that a return to Blair-ism MK 2 can happen. Current Labour Party politicians values are being rejected as Hartlepool so brutally showed. Poor man's Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer is an anchor round its neck. I would go further, and point out what should be noted by many in the party. The right wing don't want to work with the left wing, and the left wing when in control don't know how to act when they have power. Both each have a bunker mentality which is akin to the mentality of the best known bunker in history, the Reich Chancellery. Anas Sarwar's leadership isn't just off to a bad start, his campaign strategy was absolutely appalling in the 2021, what makes it even worse, was the non recognition and to add insult to injury, they even paid people who delivered this bad result. Bad policy, bad strategy and bad politicians isn't just a Scottish Labour, it is a Holyrood problem, and has been since 1999. You see in 1999, a standard was set for mediocre people becoming MSPs, if you wanted to learn politics and if you had talent, you really wanted to go to Westminster. Westminster is the place to learn governance, compare Westminster to Holyrood, and it is a different class.
As Nicola Sturgeon gets elected by only her own MSPs, you can see how why the next 5 years will equate to no change in the Scottish Government. As people have retired, Nicola Sturgeon will be doing a cabinet reshuffle, it will probably be based on identity politics, so you will have presumably Lgbt ministers, Muslim Ministers, possibly a self ID disabled Ministers, I would be tempted to put a small wager on a first woman of colour minister because that would be ticking a box for great pr. Of course, although there isn't a recognised category, you can expect a 'dumb as' Minister in the shape of Shirley Anne Somerville. Somerville even beats John Swinney and Humza Yousaf to that title, however in the last few years have gave strong competition. Of all the SNP deadbeats who have been Minister in Charge of Education, John Swinney has been the worst, most inept and as some people have pointed out by fronting the woke agenda in schools. If there is a man who should be thoroughly disgusted with himself, John Swinney should be on his knees begging God's forgiveness. He is the kind of guy who looks like he is involved in something disgusting but doesn't have the moral fibre to do anything about it.
If you having been watching the news, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf have been attacking Rangers Fans after the incidents in George Square. The George Square troubles were wrong, but their rhetoric contrasts sharply with the Kenmure mob situation in Pollokshields. Only a hypocrite can condemn one but not the other. Is there such a thing as a good unlawful mob forcing the police to free someone from lawful arrest? To be clear, the illegal immigrants have broken the law. I guess someone should point out that the rather sad fact is that for several years, Humza Yousaf and Anas Sarwar have in effective being doing a 'double act' on perceived racism. The general jist of it is that some white people in jobs got there by racism. But both neglect to mention that both Sarwar and Yousaf both sit in the same room as presumably racists in government meeting. I would make this point, yes, there are people in government who are possibly racist, but when was the last time you saw a successful prosecution of any senior government employee for racism? If you take both Humza Yousaf and Anas Sarwar's videos at face value, Scotland would seem to be teaming with racists.
But not one senior Scottish government employee has ever made it to court!
Another interesting thing about Humza Yousaf, is that he alleges he is a Celtic fan, he even put a picture on twitter of himself wearing a Celtic hoodie. In his recent condemnation of Rangers fans, the media just completely gloss over his links to Celtic. They completely glossed over the SNP links to Celtic and, not a dicky bird about how the SNP cultivate the Sein Fein lite into their ranks. Sein Fein lite is one of the four groups which make up the controlling interest of the SNP. Many people have commented on social media particularly about the content of Humza Yousaf's videos on twitter. Some people have said, this looks like stoking up division between Catholics and Protestants. Humza Yousaf is known by some people to be a 'race card player'. Periodic, he will claim he is the victim of racism, now he has overstretched himself, what are the odds of him pulling out the race card now he is in trouble? 50/50, 70/30 or a stonking 100%, maybe he is hoping someone after his rants will come back on him and bring up his ethnic background. The problem isn't his ethnic background, the problem is much more clearer to see, he is a privileged privately educated middle class clown.
Humza Yousaf basically shows up what Holyrood is, a middle class freak show, it is a private club which as no relevance in the real lives of the people of Scotland. A place where fools can live out their deluded reality in a political bubble. This is why you can get Humza Yousaf and Anas Sarwar teaming up as a 'double act' on race politics, it has not gone un-noticed, even before their 'white people in jobs' videos. Here are two videos, which at the time may have seemed as a good idea to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and SNP Justice Minister Yousaf, but in the long term will be remembered by people who vote. Have either of these two ever been so specific about the lack of representation of white working class non university educated in senior jobs at Holyrood, or the Scottish Government, what about lack of opportunities in education, housing or jobs? In fact the real discrimination in this country is recognised by two groups, black and white working class people. These are the people who face the real discrimination, and have done so for decades. As the new Sturgeon cabinet takes shape, one thing which we can be certain of is that it will have a wealth of inexperience, it will be a losers' cabinet, so we can expect Humza Yousaf to be back in there. If you want to watch an interesting twitter butchered for comedy, then follow this link. You see as I have mentioned other people do notice what is going on in Scotland, and it is all very ugly. Scotland is a land of false prophets, their Mecca is Holyrood, they are benevolent rulers spending other people's money, they are also a nasty vicious short sighted clique.
Finally,
I mentioned this earlier, but keep a close eye out for the Sturgeon cabinet
reshuffle, once it is done, then look in the backgrounds of the new appointees,
and try to guess what criteria they were selected under. See how many ticked
diversity boxes, because as we have seen with the SNP, every diversity
candidate selected has been a disaster. In the last parliament, notably
Freeman, Mackay and Yousaf all stood for various unsavoury reasons. Freeman as
Health Sec was in charge when infected covid patients were moved into care
homes, Finance Sec Derek Mackay was outed after chasing after a 16 year old boy,
and last but not least SNP Justice Sec Humza Yousaf. He is unfit to be a justice
minister, he actually trumps that with his race card playing. The only silver lining is that
Nicola Sturgeon is going to face 5 years of attacks by the Yes Movement, and
once their anger gets up a head of steam, they will crack on publicly
undermining her. The bunker mentality isn't just about protecting enemies from
getting into the bunker, it is to also watch those in the bunker as well,
because some of them will be passing on information to others.
Yours sincerely
George Laird The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Give Her Royal Slyness Her due. She's cunningly shunted Swinney out of Education and made Him "Minister" for Covid recovery thereby depriving the opposition parties of a well deserved scalp when the education report is finally published!!
ReplyDeleteDoes Anas Sarwar really want to work with the SNP? I must say, that is news to me. For the first 4 years of their time in opposition, Scottish Labour went into a frenzy of criticising everything that the newly elected SNP administration were doing, but they failed to communicate any positive or coherent message about how they would manage devolution any better.
ReplyDeleteI wish Mr Sarwar well, as it would appear that he has a rather difficult if not unenviable job to do in turning around Labour's electoral fortunes in Scotland. He is the tenth leader in 22 years and that should say something about the state of the party.