After Sturgeon and ‘Sturgeonism’: Facing Up to the Undemocracy of Scotland
The past week has seen the end of a monumental era of Scottish politics: of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP and of ‘Sturgeonism’. This has generated a welter of instant commentary as expected but with much of it focusing only on the immediate, the party’s prospects for 2026 and what Sturgeon might do post-politics, rather than look at the longer story in addressing how we got here and where this might take us.
There was lots of over-the-top commentary as there always has been about Sturgeon. Mike Small cited some of these examples (Nicola Sturgeon, lessons and legacy) – the tellingly inaccurate descriptions of Sturgeon as ‘unequivocally left-wing’ and ‘an avowed feminist’, and the lazy comparisons with Margaret Thatcher – all revealing a right-wing and sexist world unable to imagine wider reference points.
Some still fulminate against their predictable hate figures. Kevin McKenna railed yet again against Sturgeon’s deal with the Scottish Greens claiming the latter wanted to turn Scotland into ‘a cave-dwelling theme-park lit only by the stars and heated by the elves and sprites living in yonder Caledonian Forest.’ [sounds great – Ed] Mandy Rhodes, editor of Holyrood magazine, could not cope with the experience of Sturgeon barely acknowledging her in the street, making her recent column about herself and the toxicity of the trans debate and then declared ‘Building bridges across political divides is what I do.’ The most cursory examination of Holyrood would say otherwise.
The Longer Story of the Rise of the Modern SNP
Maybe none of the above matters too much, as such instant judgements and personal justifications will be washed away, and history and events will take a more nuanced assessment. But matter they do. For there is a bitterness and resentment in much of the commentary on Sturgeon’s era, a desire to condemn and portray as divisive, and a wilful refusal to address the bigger picture – for good and bad.
To start with the basic facts, Sturgeon and Salmond are the twin pillars of the modern SNP who led it through an era of unprecedented electoral success, ensuring that the cause of independence was a live one. They were leaders in different times and environments, requiring different skill sets.
Salmond led the SNP to office winning its first ever national election, and on an upward journey to near the peak of the mountain. By its nature, this was an exhilarating ride. Sturgeon inherited this position and in 2014-15 took the party to peak popularity. Having got there, she faced the challenge of managing that diverse and fragile coalition requiring a very different kind of leadership. She did not get it all right, but the pressures facing her were of maintaining rather than creating that popular alliance and managing expectations on Brexit and independence.
Putting the rise of Sturgeon and ‘Sturgeonism’ in a bigger and historical context helps understand what happened – and what the latter was and became. Sturgeon presided over a period of enduring electoral success for the party at Holyrood and Westminster, but such dominance always comes at a cost; one that it seems that Sturgeon and SNP senior figures did not want to acknowledge or address.
Namely, the SNP becoming the dominant party of Scotland meant it became the political establishment of this country. Some independence supporters still refuse to accept this, citing the party’s anti-establishment credentials in relation to Westminster and the British state. But this misses the point that in Scotland the party became about power and patronage and this altered how it did politics, saw itself and how it ran the Scottish Government and shaped public life.
This became the essence of ‘Sturgeonism.’ It was not left-wing in any real sense, but unashamedly progressive and contemporary, and tried in its early years to modernise on issues such as women’s representation in official Scotland. What it also became was, not surprisingly, defined by the desire to maintain that electoral dominance of the party. And in this ‘Sturgeonism’ became about the all-encompassing attitude to put this ahead of everything else with its progressive credentials being relegated beneath pragmatism.
In this ‘Sturgeonism’ had a distinct similarity with the ‘Wilsonism’ of Harold Wilson’s Labour – who won four out of five elections, but put pragmatism and keeping the show on the road above all else, at the cost of principle and strategy. It is worth noting the irony in this that the modern-day British politician Alex Salmond most admired was Harold Wilson, but it was Sturgeon who most embodied his strengths and weaknesses.
The consequences of the era of SNP dominance
Alongside this is the corrosive effect on Scottish public life of the SNP’s long dominance. Sturgeon’s eight-year leadership saw a deliberate erosion and even open contempt for the wider SNP; an atrophying of democracy across every aspect of public life in Scotland; government reduced to decisions by a handful of people around Sturgeon, with the Scottish Parliament and wider forums marginalised and a lack of honesty and strategy around independence.
Some SNP faithful still rail against the description that Sturgeon and Peter Murrell ran the party ‘as their personal fiefdom for almost a decade’, but the evidence is all-around. The manipulation of party processes, the exclusion of any dissenting figures, the decline of the independence and vitality of party forums, paints a picture that is difficult for many to accept. It is hard however to deny the sight, caught on record and camera, of Sturgeon suppressing enquiries about party finances, and telling people everything was fine when it was far from that.
More than this there was an unwillingness to treat the Scottish public as adult and to engage with them in a grown-up conversation about the challenges of government in difficult times and choices inherent in independence. Eight years of Sturgeon government brought some small advances in policy, but overall the picture is one of trying to maintain the domestic status quo and in so doing making some profound and damaging choices such as the cutting of local government funding and the disastrous savaging of drug service monies.
Similarly, on independence, there was a lack of depth, heavy lifting and candour. Post-2014 independence never engaged in any serious post-mortem about why it lost. This is one of the basic rules of politics – understand why you lost and then change. The absence of this allowed the mythology and falsehood to arise that ‘the Vow’, Gordon Brown and BBC had ‘stolen’ the result, and as seriously, limited the prospects for a new reinvigorated independence offer to emerge and which, over a decade later, there is still no sign of. That is a direct legacy of the limited politics of control of ‘Sturgeonism’.
Understanding Scotland’s undemocracy
The above must be placed in a wider historical context about how political power is exercised in Scotland. That is the diminution of the SNP to resemble in different ways a mixture of New Labour and Scottish Labour – a top-down politics of discipline from the former and a court politics shaped by patronage and an insider class of entitlement from the latter.
Scotland’s lack of democracy and democratic traditions are central in this. The Scottish Parliament was established as an institution administered by the old Scottish Office and nexus of institutions which had grown up pre-devolution. There was little thought or planning undertaken by Labour and home rule campaigners into how any of this democratised Scotland; even more some in Labour consciously saw it as about none of this but rather the maintenance of Labour one party rule in Scotland.
Besides this the Parliament was established as mainstream democracy was being corroded and hollowed out in the face of the whirlwind of neoliberalism. As the fanfare of the Parliament’s opening took place all around the Western world the democratic impulse was being weakened by the forces of inequality, wealth and privilege, which have subsequently turned the world upside down.
In this environment, the devolution experiment of the past 25 years under Labour and the SNP centred around a politics of caution, management and administration, has been threadbare and inadequate. But that is sadly true of mainstream politics across the West.
Redoubtable campaigners such as Lesley Riddoch and Andy Wightman rightly make the charge against the excessive and continual centralisation of public life and the cutting down of what passed for local democracy and autonomy. In this, they ignore the lack of democracy which has passed for civic life and the reality that any supposed ‘golden age’ of local government up to the 1974 reorganisation was nothing of the kind, but more about the elite, patrician, class rule of elders.
This is the bigger take from the story of Sturgeon and what made ‘Sturgeonism’ possible. We do not need to just revive democracy in Scotland and return to some mythical, idealised past. Rather we need to invent it in the first place along with the cultures, values and processes informing and underpinning it. ‘Sturgeonism’ and what the SNP became are direct products of the undemocracy which defines our politics and public life. A starting point must be an honest debate about what this means and how to challenge and change this state of affairs.
Without this, the conservative with a small ‘c’ politics which shape Scotland will continue, high on rhetoric, but low on substance, and the people and communities who most need active, interventionist government and public action, will be neglected and failed by a politics which was meant to put their interests and voice centrestage. That is the legacy of ‘Sturgeonism’ and the sooner we wake up the better.
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Fascinating read which I mostly agree with but two things.
1. The transformative Child Payment and other welfare policy moves such as two child limit and bedroom tax compensation, the more humane social security system, the greater affordable housing and subsidised lower council taxes, free bus transport for the young and old, cheapest ferry travel in the world, the world-leading Naloxone opioid overdose reversal system, the 100% free IVF, the all-round better NHS, the better pay and conditions throughout public service with consequent absence of damaging strikes and the more progressive income tax, are clear examples of left-wing, state protection of the weak and vulnerable and the creation of a more cohesive society with consequent reduced crime. I’d love to see more but this makes them imperfect but the only left-wing major party in the UK. We dare not lose them.
2. I’m surprised at the absence of, for me, the most worrying aspect of Sturgeonism – Atlanticism – the apparently uncritical support of the US democrats even Hilary Clinton, and their war-mongering.
I am surprised that the author alludes only ever so tangentially to the failed independence referendum; that whilst ‘calling Brexit a spade.’
I am astonished that the author fails to mention the criminal trial of Alex Salmond and the involvement of Ms Sturgeon and a considerable number of her closest collaborators there.
In terms of the narrative, rather than of the personalities involved, surely these omissions count as ‘Hamlet without the Prince’?
Very well said. Scotland has never really been a democratic country. What I think has distinguished it most from its southern neighbour has been the determination of a Scottish establishment to establish and maintain its own power, both against England and also within Scotland itself. In the medieval period, with a weak monarchy, real power was generally held by a group of Machiavellian courtiers, who were happy to keep it that way. But their power was always challenged by the semi-independent regions like the Lordship of the Isles. James IV (1473-1513), perhaps the most ‘successful’ of the Stuart kings, spent a great deal of time on ‘pilgrimage’ trying to assert his authority in the north, west and south west. Establishing centralised authority proved very difficult for all subsequent kings and queens of Scots until the conquest and genocide of the Highlands by Butcher Cumberland in the mid 18th c.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Lowland Scotland was becoming wealthier and the establishment was growing to include lawyers, merchants, and tradesmen, all keen to support and grow their status. This was helped by the rise of Presbyterianism on the Swiss model – and plenty of wheeling and dealing. The departure of James VI to London, accompanied by his fawning courtiers, provided an opportunity to assert themselves, as, for example, Covenanters. A parallel power structure quietly emerged alongside the official one, through the Kirk and Freemasonry. Against this James VI asserted his ‘divine right’, and with his colonial mindset saw Highlands and Islands, and Ireland too, much like ‘barbarous’ American colonies to be settled and / or exploited.
A colonial mindset, and behind-the-scenes authoritarianism, have never left us. Of course after the union of the Parliaments we became an English colony in all but name. Whatever the apparent constitutional position our politicians take, they suffer from the ‘Scottish cringe’ , the attitude typical of colonised people who have internalised a fear and respect for their colonial masters while asserting their own power over the “natives”, the ‘teuchters’. Today however England itself, the UK, is bought and sold for (mainly)American gold. Starmer takes his instructions from oligarchs.
The colonial mindset has deep historical roots, and it will be very difficult to shift. The feebleness and lack of confidence of the SNP is but one result. But shift it we must if we want any liveable future. Quiet networks of patronage and corruption have no place in 21st c Scotland. We need to demand transparency and accountability; and we need the decentralisation of power that the SNP has consistently been too afraid to implement.
As I’ve said before, this surely means looking to a new generation who reject ‘small c conservatism’ for Big R Radicalism. And stand for election as independent candidates committed to serving their constituents before party or lobbyist. Who will commit to the Claim of Right, and be held to it. And then deliver UDI.
John – the SNP have always been a fairly centrist party as they require to build a broad consensus to achieve independence. Their broadly social democratic policies may not be radical enough for many of us on the site but they are probably more in line with the Scottish electorate’s opinion. The biggest factor in determining how someone voted in 2014 was home ownership ie the biggest section of ‘small c’ conservatives in Scotland. Unfortunately we need to persuade some of these people to build support to the level required to achieve independence. IMO the best way to do this is to concentrate on explaining to people how resource rich Scotland is and how being independent would allow us to utilise these resources to benefit all members of Scottish society.
I agree that we need to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible. But if we set out to appeal to small c conservatives these are precisely the people who usually fear any kind of change. I suspect trying to appeal to them with a ‘conservative’ vision could be met with scepticism and prove counter-productive. The LibDems are building support for the union here on just that basis. On the other hand even small c conservatives are getting pretty fed up with what the Conservative and Labour Parties are now becoming, and life under Westminster is becoming less appealing by the minute – just as a growing number of SNP supporters are becoming disillusioned. Surely the argument has to be that whatever your politics – unless you happen to be am extreme right-winger – it would be better to vote independent in future.
I agree with your last sentence and I did say using Scotland’s resources to benefit the vast majority of the Scottish population. I also think a significant number of No voters in 2014 would agree with that as well including quite a few small c conservatives.
The 1% wealthiest won’t agree as will died in wool unionists but they do not represent a large section of electorate these days. Unfortunately they do represent a large proportion of media ownership in Scotland!
Your first paragraph is just the distilled wisdom of ‘British History’ where the Scottish kingdom has always been described as a chaotic mess just waiting to be civilised by England, and your ridiculous reference to Cumberland as the civilising agent just continues in the same vein. If you think that Malcolm, David 1st, the three Alexanders and Robert Bruce were weak kings you really need to consult a proper historian and there was not a lot wrong with their successors either. The Scottish Kingdom was quite different from the English against which you clearly judge it. It was a successful merger of the Celtic elites with feudalism and its European bearers and, contrary to your assumptions it achieved unity with a looser but effective Royal rule which withstood the pressures of English aggression. You consistently rubbish Scotland from a British perspective as incapable of effective rule. You might want, as a quick to count the number of Scots Kings who were murdered by their subjects in the medieval and early modern and compare that with the bloodbath of English history and its dynastic wars.
I’m sorry but you needs to think again, you completely misunderstand what I was trying to say. ‘British History’ might describe the Scottish kingdom as a chaotic mess just waiting to be civilised by England, but I certainly do not. My point there is not to make a value judgement but to point out a difference in the way power was distributed. I do not refer to Cumberland as a civilising agent, on the contrary I refer to him as Butcher Cumberland, a war criminal. I do not think that Malcolm, David 1st, the three Alexanders and Robert Bruce were ‘weak’ kings, but that the monarchy itself suffered from the frequent accession of minors and competing claims. I don’t suggest that the English crown was in any way ‘superior’, but the situation there was different, at least partly because its history as a centralised Roman province. I’m no fan of the Romans either. I don’t claim there was anything ‘wrong’ with any of the Scottish kings. The Scottish Kingdom was quite different from the English indeed, but you are wrong in assuming prejudice or value judgements I do not share. Each country developed in its own way. You are seriously mistaken to assume that I ‘ rubbish Scotland from a British perspective as incapable of effective rule’, nor do I compare it unfavourably with England. I do recognise the prejudices you refer to but certainly don’t share them. In fact for many years my research has been trying to debunk them. So it’s worrying that my words should =heve been so completely misread. Anyway, I’m sorry for any misunderstanding.
I agree with much of this article, though I think that many policies introduced under Nicola Sturgeon could reasonably be described as ‘left-wing’ in that they did seek to move the dial on social justice. But certainly, they were incremental, and did not decisively shift the balance of power in Scotland.
Relecting on the past 10 years, I do wonder why a sustained non-party or cross-party movement for independence failed to emerge after 2014. For a time, there was a mass basis for it, as shown by the big mobilisations prior to the Covid pandemic. Yet one initiative after the other led nowhere much: I’m thinking of the Scottish Independence Convention and Now Scotland, for example. Believe in Scotland keeps going as best it can, and as such should be welcomed, but is hardly setting Scotland alight. This failure to develop a sustained legacy within civil society was most stark, perhaps, on the left: the imaginative campaigning of RIC in the lead up to the referendum fizzled out with the non-event that was RISE.
Some have blamed the SNP (and Sturgeon) for this, but to my mind this completely misses the point: had the conditions been right for such a movement to emerge, no party or leader could have held it back. After all, this is about self-determination! It speaks, perhaps, to a fundamental weakness within the independence movement, which we have yet to properly identify, let alone address. My own hunch is that it’s a failure to think in terms of alliances, and the need to build links with other campaigns in civil society. I suspect that such a movement will only flourish – and independence eventually be achieved – when the rift between Scotland’s two great progressive traditions, the labour movement and the national movement, begins to lessen.
Very true Paddy. For me too I have been disappointed by the lack of a unified civil society movement for independence to emerge, similar to the Constitutional Convention movement of the 1980s and 1990s, separate from government. Independence is a responsibility we all have – not just the SNP government.
It speaks to a deeper truth about Scotland which very few acknowledge or attempt to analyse except perhaps Lesley Riddoch and Andy Wightman. They both point to deep structures of history and identify land ownership and land rights as lying at the root of it. Without a well established peasantry, localism could not grow strong healthy roots and the common people, the resilience and self-confidence for the self-direction needed to thrive.
Throughout our history it has been ‘Scot against Scot’ – an inability to form teams and work together for the common good.
For Scotland is a fissiparous place, full of dissenters who are well able to criticise and have an instinctive dislike of authority but are quite unable to unite or respond to any form of leadership.
My brief experience of Now Scotland showed me that.
Despite this, there has been a class of local entrepreneurs in the 18th and 19th centuries who found the means and the motivation to improve their local communities, by such voluntaryist ventures as the founding (by public subscription) of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (once named ‘Scotland’s noblest charity’).
There was once a class of municipal leaders too in the period c.1850-1914, self-made men with a strong social ethic who had real ability and ambition for their cities, leading to ‘municipal socialism’ – the creation and ownership of public utilities by the local authority. These kept costs down and brought in public revenue.
But that class seemed to disappear in the interwar years, replaced by people of little vision or ability. Only pockets of this spirit survives in far flung places like Shetland which managed to escape the sell off of public goods post-1945 because it was too meagre a prize to attract the attention of the greedy.
Sumburgh remained a municipally owned port in the 1960s when ‘trust ports’ were sold off (an early form of privatisation) and so Shetland Islands Council was able to extract port fees from the oil industry which have enabled a modest wealth fund to build up which funded the building of a sports centre and other public utilities which would otherwise never have happened.
Great comment Marianna.
What a great word, I’d never come across it:
fissiparous
adjective
fis·sip·a·rous fi-ˈsi-p(ə-)rəs
: tending to break or split up into parts : divisive
fissiparous tendencies within a political party
I think there is still hope that the sort of unifying “civil society movement for independence” will emerge, and agree 100% that “Independence is a responsibility we all have – not just the SNP government.”
Largely agree. The SNP’s legacy of the early 21st century I suspect will be that they will be regarded as the party that showed Scotland that it can govern itself, but ultimately failed to get Scotland to a place where it could.
I agree that there is an apparent failure to properly dissect the failure of the 2014 campaign, but wonder if it is known in-house. I don’t hold with the ‘Salmond did badly during the debates’ argument, as polling went up after that, not down. He got us close, but the Vow (and the screwing of purdah rules) and the economic arguments made were poor, and should have been so much better.
The party continues to fail on the economic front, in terms of having the right economic & financial policy for Indy, which party members keep kicking and screaming and pulling it towards, but never quite there. Frankly, the Scottish Greens have a far better policy on that for Indy than the SNP does.
And I really cannot forgive the utter lack of a ‘what to do next plan’ in the event of the Supreme Court judgement going against the planned Indyref.
What SNP members still have not cottoned onto, in all too many numbers, is that the SNP policy on Indy since then has been to continue to campaign through Westminster for the devo of Indyref. For all the vague statements about Indy made since November 2022, the most clear cut was made by Swinney when he put out the GE2024 manifesto (itself vague on Indy), where he confirmed that ‘winning’ in Scotland would mean Independence “talks”, clarifying that “The best way to secure independence is through a democratic referendum” – which as the Scot Parly had been ruled out of having, must only mean that the talks would be about that – at Westminster.
So when I say clear-cut, that was as clear cut as the SNP had been on the matter. Their policy was to get Indyref devolved – which was also the stance of the Scot Greens, only they were clearer and more up front about it, as per their own 2024 manifesto.
I put it to you that nothing has changed here. This remains their policy.
The SNP could also therefore do with a proper dissection of their loss of MPs at GE2024. My own two penneth on that is that their insipid campaign, which quietly rolled back on using GE2024 as a de facto referendum (rightly or wrongly – and it is arguable), which had been the position that Sturgeon appeared to take, resulted in people either staying at home, or voting red or green instead. Throw in the foot shooting of how they ended the BHA and lost their FM out of it, not to mention the rolling issue of its finances,
The SNP continues to resort to vagueness and the occasional misleading deceit (see silly claims about four years since Indy had such high support, which I can only think were made to draw attention away from the actual date, which was just after the SC hearing) in order to maintain its political hold. To my mind it has done little to nothing on Indy, which has seen rising support largely thanks to the Labour party support imploding, rather than what the SNP has done, with people seeing that even a Labour Gov is not going to help them, so only Indy remains.
Yes, the SNP has managed things well at Holyrood, but SNP Indy supporters are still crying out for them to have a de facto referendum or do ‘something’ at the SP2026 elections, which doesn’t seem to be coming. And probably isn’t.
It seems that our best hopes for Indy anytime soon are actually with the non-party political Liberation Scotland and its route through the UN, because all I see the SNP doing is attempting to remain in power at Holyrood and then attempting to get back in the ascendency at Westminster – in 2029.
I believe much of the SNP’s fortress-type mentality is a consequence of our generally, right wing, anti-independence msm. 50% of the country supports independence whilst 90%+ of our msm is vociferously opposed.
Even today, morning noon and night, we’ve had the BBC and most others portraying Reform Scotland as “non-partisan”.
I’m an SNP loyalist and disgree with your casual dismissal of the SNP’s progressive record in government. But i do recognise the radical changes required to fully democratise Scotland. I think that’ll only come with the SNP encouraged into fully backing the less adversarial, pro-independence organisations such as Believe in Scotland. Solidarity, solidarity, solidarity …… leave the biggest decisions until after we’ve won full self determination.
A way forward?
Reading thus interesting article and comments prompted this!
Could it be that the Social Justice and Fairnesss Commission Report is a template where everyone can recognise agreeable change towards an even better Scotland?
https://www.snp.org/social-justice-and-fairness-commission/
Could supporters of Independence align behind this as the basis of discussion with our fellow citizens to understand Iif they could agree that it could lead to a better everyday reality in their communities and day to day lives?
There is an appetite for change , evidenced by rising support for Reform, maybe with some respectful dialogue people would see this as a better alternative?
People are under the influence of constant right wing media propoganda….we need to engage them face to face with a different message – we can then trust in them making an informed choice..
Thanks for sharing this. I hadn’t seen it before. Who really could disagree with any of this? Great stuff. Although of course there will be those who say that ‘small c conservatives’ are the majority and must be appeased by ignoring all this and carrying on as usual.
Sadly the Scottish Government says one thing and four years later continues to practice the opposite. Fine words will butter no parsnips when everything in Scotland is actually done for private profit at public expense. With utter ruthlessness. If that’s going to change we need a specific commitment to it.
Democratic renewal – changing how we make decisions:
At the moment our political choices are entirely defined by political parties, all of whom seem to be signed up to neoliberalism. Henry Ford is said to have said ‘You can have any colour so long as it’ black’. In the last local elections, in this multi-member ward in the Highlands, we had the choice of (if I remember right) five candidates for four places. Even having four places was something we had to fight for as the Boundary Commission tried to reduce it to three. Apart from one, very long standing independent existing councillor, the candidates stood on party platforms that simply blamed other parties or the lack of independence for the serious problems of economic decline and depopulation facing the rural highlands. I wrote to each candidate and on the basis of replies received, spoiled my ballot. WE currently have two SNP councillors, neither of whom was known to our community until they were elected; one who was elected as a Tory but has defected to the LibDems, and who I understand does not engage with locals at all; and an independent councillor who lives over 70 miles away and has represented her area as best she can since before the multi-member wards were introduced. The party councillors cannot pretend to represent us, we just get the party line, even if that – as in my case- turns out to be directly against our interests. Our community council does not represent the community but is apparently completely above the law and ‘entitled’ to do as it pleases. The ward I live in is geographically huge, stretching from the Sound of Sleat to Coigach and east to Strathpeffer. Hundreds of square miles, how could anyone represent all that?
And the Holyrood and Westminster constituencies are even bigger. Then the List MSPs are supposed to cover the entire Highlands and Islands – to represent parties, not communities. Democracy is a complete farce in Scotland. That has to change. Let’s see some concrete proposals.
Values rooted in human rights and equality:
All I can say is that in my experience, the opposite is true. My human rights and those of my neighbours have been under sustained attack for over five years but the police, the legal profession and the authorities at all levels just tell me I have no remedy. Certain groups are set above the law and ‘entitled’ do do as they please. and commercial interests are all that count. The poor, including me, still have no lawyers. We need a National Legal Service, rather like the NHS, free at the point of use, to hold authorities to account. Is anyone proposing that?
Prioritising wellbeing – through transformative policies that put the wellbeing of people first:
Again, it’s good to see this flagged up, but the authorities in Scotland currently do the opposite. Where are these ‘transformative policies’?
It’s all very well to produce reports like this but it is no substitute for actually practicing what you preach. Again and again politicians’ promises somehow turn on their heads when elected. I’m sorry to say that this report, as far as I can see, is all words. It’s hard not to become cynical.
This latest ‘hot take’ on Nicola Sturgeon seems much more biased, unpleasant and vindictive than the last one. Let’s remember than Nicola Sturgeon started from a council house, went to a comprehensive not a private school and was the first ever woman FM in a still deeply misogynistic society. She achieved a gender balanced cabinet and the best ever results for her party the SNP and she took the right stand on all the political issues of the day. Alex Salmond had a similar style of leadership of the SNP but fewer of the commentariat criticised him for it, because we expect strong leadership from a man. A lot of working class people swiftly give up on political meetings and the political game because real life intrudes, they don’t have a financial cussion and actual political change is extremely slow. These (boring) political meetings are generally dominated by wealthy upper or middle class confidence and certainty and such individuals find it very easy to be in it for the long haul, even if they actually achieve very little for people at the bottom (wage wise) of society. The media promotes a false view of the working class as generally criminals and or thugs or in BBC Scotland’s case pig ignorant thickos as evidenced by so called ‘comedy’ like Scots Squad. The warmer take of working class people working together represented by River City and featuring actual Scottish accents has been dumped while EastEnders will no doubt continue for eternity. A country’s soap reflects ourselves and the BBC obviously don’t see that as any kind of priority far better to have the likes of Question Time seeded with intolerant Tories. That’s what we colonised Scots should be happy with. We are so used to it that we tolerate and expect to see utter ignorance on our screens when in fact most of the ‘ordinary’ people of Scotland are generally quite educated, avid readers, empathic to others and on the ball politically ie like Nicola. Nicola Sturgeon was different to most duplicitous lying politicians and Scotland as a whole warmed to her as a kindred spirit, someone who didn’t talk down to them, answered political questions with panache and actually ‘got things done’, she encouraged other young female politicians and despite admitting to suffering from imposter syndrome was the most successful SNP leader of all time so far. She had a reach and popularity which went beyond Scotland and went worldwide. Certain people resented that mass popularity and influence and now they are all queuing up to diminish her legacy based on the idea that in the same situations no doubt they would have performed better. Here’s a newsflash none of you would have because Sturgeon was a phenomenon and when the actual story of independence is told she will have a much bigger role in it than any blogger or political writer. Leading us through COVID through calm and sensible leadership while the unbalanced grifters of Westminster tried to defraud the public purse led to extraordinary public exposure and popularity which no doubt deeply scared the British state. No wonder they were persuaded to follow this high level of daily TV exposure (something the Tories in particular were deeply jealous of) the invented ‘crimes’ of Branchform (the SNP has every right to spend donations in any way they see fit) and undermine her reputation for almost four years when the Police could probably have realistically cleared her reputation within a month. Four years is effectively a fit up with the reward being the attempt to portray the SNP as no better than other parties when in fact it is unique in putting Scottish interests first, always. The SNP is a small simple organisation with a fully audited set of books. A kid with a calculator could analyse their accounts. It was all a sick joke and it failed in its smearing objective when the Police were forced to admit Nicola herself had done nothing actually wrong and was entirely innocent. However there are many ways to skin a cat and now we have to suffer the political supposed ‘experts’ mansplaining her career and explaining that what we all witnessed for ourselves was really someone out for herself who achieved very little for Scotland’s democracy. Aye right. You can claim it, but it’s not reality.
I’m with Colin Macauley and Joe Middleton here. Like Gerry Hassan and others, I deeply wish that there had been much more open democratic dialogue in Scotland over the last decade, about the kind of society we are and would wish to be. But to say that is to forget the political and economic context within which the Sturgeon governments were faced. The single consistent theme in Scottish government policy-making was an ethic of care – doing its best to protect people against poverty, austerity and then the pandemic. Any move onto the front foot, in terms of opening up a space for wider dialogue, was pounced on by the massed ranks of unionist media.
A way forward?
Reading this interesting article and comments prompted this!
Could it be that the Social Justice and Fairnesss Commission Report is a template where everyone can recognise agreeable change towards an even better Scotland?
https://www.snp.org/social-justice-and-fairness-commission/
Could supporters of Independence align behind this as the basis of discussion with our fellow citizens to understand Iif they could agree that it could lead to a better everyday reality in their communities and day to day lives?
There is an appetite for change , evidenced by rising support for Reform, maybe with some respectful dialogue people would see this as a better alternative?
People are under the influence of constant right wing media propoganda….we need to engage them face to face with a different message – we can then trust in them making an informed choice..
John – it appears to me that it is difficult to govern at Holyrood and lead independence movement as well.
Good governance by Holyrood that benefits majority of Scots is in itself a major factor in building confidence in Scotland becoming an independent country.
Perhaps leadership on independence movement should be via another body eg Constitutional Convention which helped achieve devolution. It would require to both work with SNP (major political wing of independence movement) and be bigger and more inclusive than SNP.
I would add that the current divergence between popularity of SNP and independence also indicate that this may be the best way forward for both.
I note that vast majority of commentators writing articles on NS are male and none have mentioned how she built support for independence among women in Scotland. It would be a pleasant change to read an article on NS by a Scottish, working class woman.
Don’t agree on a convention that must work alongside a particular political party, or any, for that matter. Aside from other party supporters feeling left out, it makes that party the only game in town and with undue influence. No, any such should be non-party political and thereby put all parties on the same footing: None.
People should indeed to well to remember there is a considerable gap between SNP support and independence support (roughly 1/3 do not vote SNP). We’ve told Unionists that often enough. Do we really need to point this out to our own?
But frankly, the biggest reason for not discussing or having active groups talking about how Scotland looks after Indy is, for me, plainly obvious. Most people do not see anymore how nor when this is going to happen, when up and until shortly after the SC decision, it seemed that it could be imminent (and I come back to the SNP not wanting to associate the slide in support for Indy tying-in to that event, by stating that such high recent support had not occurred for four years when it was nearer to two).
With the SC decision meaning no role for Holyrood with Indy, the political parties have resorted to quietly trying to influence Westminster. The SNP suffered the public response to that and its failure to have a better plan following the SC decision, by losing most of its MPs. Sure, the vote Labour to get rid of the Tories was a factor, but an overstated one, when we were doing that already by voting SNP at General Elections. We needed England to do that, not Scotland, as we did that already. People switched vote or didn’t vote SNP due to disillusionment with them. Now people are just more disillusioned with Labour than they are the SNP.
I say again that the most viable route to Indy we currently have is through Liberation Scotland.
I get that people find it strange and are sceptical that this route was followed up by a relatively small group of pro-Independence supporters, and not others, which does beg the question why it was overlooked by the SNP, when it has got as far as being able to make a submission to the UN?
In part, it had to be a non-political organisation doing it (although surely the SNP could have been arms length or openly supportive without being part of it, as opposed to entirely uninvolved and dead quiet about it), but also, as the saying goes, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world – because it is the only thing that ever has.
The convention would be open to the public but as previously it would best if it had representatives from all sections of community and their representatives if they either supported or were interested in and not opposed to independence. It would not be beholden to any political party but it would be counterproductive if it was in open conflict with an independence supporting government or the SNP which is the political wing of independence movement.
The convention should engage widely with Scottish public which in itself should increase participation and support.
I agree SNP lost support after SC decision but there were several other factors in their fall in support. I am sure the SNP do want independence but I think they are fearful of holding another referendum when they are not assured of victory hence their rather timid approach at present. A convention would therefore help SNP in taking a lot of the work for achieving independence out of their hands.
Very well said. Very good to hear these points made. Although I don’t agree with some policies and think others far too timid, I agree she did her best and think she was up against horrendous odds with the Unionist establishment behaving as it always does. The sheer malice and vindictiveness is something we all have to deal with somehow, and the first thing to recognise that it’s there, all the time, relentless, implacable. And it’s not confined to a few masters of war but a culture of bullying and corruption tacitly accepted by far too many.
Bit by bit, the British state is taking over and destroying everything and anyone they don’t like, one way or another. It’s just how they work. In my direct experience, at all levels, right down to the local. It is simply rule by violence and democracy and the rule of law only apply when they work to their advantage. It is the philosophy of Donald Trump, of America, of the British Empire.
Thank goodness for Nicola Sturgeon, a politician who was not perfect but was I believe genuinely on our side. I hope there’s a new generation ready to take up the baton.
Part of the problem is a distinct lack of activism in Scottish civil society on the matter of independence and other issues, something which historically is normally led by political parties, or factions within political parties, or else the trade unions. The “emptiness at the heart of Scotland” Edwin Muir talked about in his famous /infamous essay on Scott still holds true to some extent today. We lack a civic network with regular meetings and discussions, and then so many of our more ambitious and politically switched on citizens live outside of Scotland. But in one word, we need some leadership, and a bit like the fitba, a new generation doesn’t seem to be coming through with the quality of the one on the way out.
Another problem is the terms of the debate are too narrow. Sturgeon and the SNP as the be all and end all of national self-determination by all accounts. Is there that much to discuss here really? Sturgeon, a politics graduate with a law degree, opted to play with a straight bat, because that is the political culture she matured in and thrived in. She had no answer to the Supreme Court ruling, and by losing there, effectively parked the independence bus in a cul de sac. That was clearly a mistake in hindisght, but hardly a surprising one. The Catalans, for example had followed precisely the same route, albeit they chose to ignore the Spanish Supreme Court when the ruling (various rulings) went against them. But to have no plan B is clearly censurable.
The challenge is to plug the cause of Scottish independence into wider international, social and societal issues. According to Matt Kennard on Aaron Bastani’s Novara Media (availabe on Youtube), the UK State is actively collaborating with the genocide in Gaza in a massive way, with British planes taking off from Cyprus and flying over Gaza routinely. Arguably the last three UK defence ministers are indictable by the ICC and the ICJ for collaborating in crimes against humanity by sharing intelligence with the ethno-fascist State of Israel. Facism is on the rise all over the place, yet Scottish civil scoiety seems strangely subdued, not to say indifferent.
Certainly, when you walk around Edinburgh, you hardly get the feeling you are in a country straining at the leash to be independent… in a UK which Kennard and Bastani rightly suggest is on the verge of societal collapse, after 18 years of next to no growth and never-ending austerity…
The “emptiness at the heart of Scotland” is our lack of mass land ownership.
We are tennants in our own land and we are still feart of the Laird . “The Laird” can appear as mortgage, landlord, bank loan, employer, government, legal system or any number of other agents who can render us homeless and hungry on a whim. Until many more of us own land, we won’t have the guts and resilience and experience and agency to demand self-rule.
The toffs know this. That’s why they cling to their massive land holdings, whilst telling the rest of us that they are an unprofitable burden that they reluctantly shoulder on our behalf. It is a lie.
“Certainly, when you walk around Edinburgh, you hardly get the feeling you are in a country straining at the leash to be independent”.
Edinburgh is so tourist orientated that this is hardly surprising. However if you head out to some of the suburbs you might start to sense it (or used to). And Glasgow is a different matter entirely, where you are more likely to sense this.
However I come back to that the general sense of the population is that Indy is not happening ‘imminently’ or ‘soon’ anymore and people having more immediate concerns, which absolutely is part of the dampening of this ‘spirit’, and by no means accidental.
Agreed, the centre of Edinburgh these days is more like one of those international cities of the 20s and 30s like Casablanca or Tangiers than the capital of Scotland. There must be more visitors in the centre than any given day than Scots.
But such is the way of things these days in many cities with charm. I would move the capital to Glasgow, which gets a raw deal, but that, again, would be too radical for the SNP, the most conservative party on the planet ( I must say, it amazes me, the tourists in Scotland, which is a cold and wet, overpriced country on the fringes of Europe with crap food; yet still they come)…
Small c conservative of course, the SNP. But they seem to think their primary duty is to protect the post-war settlement which has been under sustained attack since Thatcher. I’m all for that of course, but it’s hardly the stuff to set the heather alight either… they have failed miserably on keynote issues like local government finance, land reform, cultural renewal (and indigenous languages) and look far too comfy in power as Gerry rightly says, and even go so far as to cosy up to the obscenity which is the British monarchy…
I would certainly have been using power in Holyrood to mount a sustained attack on the corrupt, militaristic, patrician, rotten, neo-colonial British State on every single issue….
WORTH A TRY!?la
– See below a radical suggestion to turn all of this excellent action and overcome some of the barriers identified!
THE INPUT
“We do not need to just revive democracy in Scotland and return to some mythical, idealised past. Rather we need to invent it in the first place along with the cultures, values and processes informing and underpinning it”
“even small c conservatives are getting pretty fed up with what the Conservative and Labour Parties are now becoming, and life under Westminster is becoming less appealing by the minute”
“a sustained non-party or cross-party movement for independence failed to emerge after 2014.”
“this is about self-determination! It speaks, perhaps, to a fundamental weakness within the independence movement, which we have yet to properly identify, let alone address’
“independence eventually be achieved – when the rift between Scotland’s two great progressive traditions, the labour movement and the national movement, begins to lessen.”
” the lack of a unified civil society movement for independence to emerge”
“Scotland is a fissiparous place, full of dissenters who are well able to criticise and have an instinctive dislike of authority but are quite unable to unite ”
“I think there is still hope that the sort of unifying “civil society movement for independence” will emerge, and agree 100% that “Independence is a responsibility we all have – not just the SNP government.”
“the radical changes required to fully democratise Scotland. I think that’ll only come with the SNP encouraged into fully backing the less adversarial, pro-independence organisations such as Believe in Scotland. Solidarity, solidarity, solidarity …”
“Could it be that the Social Justice and Fairnesss Commission Report is a template where everyone can recognise agreeable change towards an even better Scotland?”
https://www.snp.org/social-justice-and-fairness-commission/
“I hadn’t seen it before. Who really could disagree with any of this? Great stuff.”
“deeply wish that there had been much more open democratic dialogue in Scotland over the last decade, about the kind of society we are and would wish to be”
bigger and more inclusive than SNP.!!!
“part of the problem is a distinct lack of activism in Scottish civil society on the matter of independence and other issues, something which historically is normally led by political parties, or factions within political parties, or else the trade unions”
“We lack a civic network with regular meetings and discussions, ”
“when you walk around Edinburgh, you hardly get the feeling you are in a country straining at the leash to be independent… in a UK which Kennard and Bastani rightly suggest is on the verge of societal collapse, after 18 years of next to no growth and never-ending austerity…”
THE SUGGESTION !
(Simplicity is a virtue!)
The YES movement needs to dissolve …if indeed it even is an entity.
YES as a campaign brand is obsolete.
Everyone who wants to contribute to an even better Scotland enabled by policies and systems different from today needs to join and be active in the political vehicle that can realistically deliver meaningful change in the near future
That vehicle today is known as the SNP and has ,over 90 years , secured that half the citizens of Scotland support Independence as the means to an even better Scotland.
The vehicle going forward can be an evolution of the SNP.
The SNP needs to evolve and position itself as the – New Scotland Party – signalling the change in approach that is now required to forge a different political reality for our citizens.
The party then needs to invite all those active in promoting change in our society today to join and shape it’s ( and Scotland’s) future direction – this should include for example current Common Weal, Living Rent, Believe in Scotland, Climate change, Poverty Alliance, Building a Local Scotland activists etc etc
Ideally they would join as new party members in the spirit of a new chapter or at least participate as invited guests at re- imagined , re-energised , new format COMMUNITY ( formerly branch!) meetings.
Two trains are then running ….
current elected representatives continuing to manage day to day governance , striving to progress an even better Scotland whilst constrained by current systems and Westminster dictats, but now receiving energy, ideas and challenges from their community meetings to shape their ongoing decisions and policy choices
meanwhile…the previous YES cohorts,, various campaign groups and activists and curious citizens in every community are sparrng, debating and having a ball shaping the future at party community meetings where new policies that are endorsed by the many are created!
( sort of like a national conversation, the electricity of 2014 referendum campaign – all under one banner! :))
A rolling series of Community engagement meetings facilitated and enabled by SNP branches across the whole country.
Join the Conversation ( Community debates, presentations, )
Join the Action ( Community improvement events)
Join the Fun ( Community Social events)
Walk and Talk ( Excercise and reflection)
understanding what our citizens want and need,, inspirng them to participate will lead to change that may be possible within current systems but could also lead to more people demanding the full powers of Independence.
A window of opportunity ?
Should start!…
WORTH A TRY!?l
– See below a radical suggestion to turn all of this excellent input into action and overcome some of the barriers identified!