Scotland’s Wasted Decade after the Indyref

Keeping the Dream Alive: An Insider’s Account of a Tumultuous Decade in Scottish Politics, Joanna Cherry, Icon Books £20.

Reviewed by Jim Sillars

A spokesman for Nicola Sturgeon described Joanna Cherry’s book Keeping the Dream Alive as ‘a work of fiction – and not a very good one at that.’ That barb won’t stick. Fiction is invention, whereas in page after page Cherry, who has a prosecutorial background and an LLM in Law, provides, as one would expect from a KC,  detailed footnote references to every one of the charges she makes against the former First Minister, the SNP Westminster group leadership of Ian Blackford, the party’s NEC, officials, and individual members of the party including MPs and MSPs.  

The author tells us right at the start that she had ‘found it hard to write’ this book because what she found herself writing about ‘was fundamentally very upsetting.’ Those from within the independence movement and especially SNP members who still have the power of objectivity, will find it upsetting as they discover why the damage Nicola Sturgeon did to the SNP, and the idea of independence, outweighed any good she had done before she succeeded Alex Salmond as leader.

I am listed in the Acknowledgements as a political ally, and I have given her support whenever possible when she came under attack for standing up to proponents of trans rights. But Joanna and I take profoundly different positions on the aftermath action of the Brexit vote by her and other Remainers. She writes with a degree of pride of her involvement in the attempt to reverse the Brexit vote, still unaware of how disastrous it is to the democratic idea that you should seek to de-legitimise and over-turn a democratic decision of the people, because you did not like their decision. It did not trouble her as she engaged in the ploy for a second vote, that she was gifting a useful precedent to Scottish unionists who might lose a future close-result independence referendum. As one Labour member said to me at the timer ‘that one is now filed away for the future.’

And I think her pursuit of a Plan B, invested in a manipulation/interpretation of the 1998 Act, in the event of Westminster refusing a Section 30, shows a failure to understand the importance of power. In the famous 1953 case on the Queen’s insulting choice of title, Lord Cooper referring to the Statute of Westminster (when the Dominions countries required Westminster to acknowledge their independence) drew the ‘contrast between academic logic and political reality.’ What lay at the heart of that historic document was the power the Dominions then exercised, which could no longer be contested by the British government.  No matter what the legalities may be, the day and hour the Scottish people manifest an unmistakeable power for independence, it will happen.  

I thought it important to set out where I have real differences with Joanna so that people will understand that I did not come to read her book, or write this review afterwards, as an uncritical admirer.

Life at Westminster as an SNP MP

What I do find admirable in Cherry is the  moral courage as evidenced in this book, and I do have every sympathy for her isolated situation at Westminster, subject to spurious  accusations and investigations, attempts get her expelled, the target of real rape and death threats, and how Nicola Sturgeon the self-proclaimed ‘first feminist’ did nothing to stop the viciousness she suffered from within the party.

Joanna Cherry comes out of this book as someone whose priorities are to retain and defend the hard won right of lesbians to be recognised as women who love women; a fact that  impels her to contest the opposite as adumbrated by what many see as ‘trans ideology’; a lawyer’s concern with the protection law must give to individuals; a searing sense of the injustice visited upon Alex Salmond; and a desire so see Scotland become independent. 

She comes out of this book more lawyer than politician. The lawyer, used in her professional life to  calm dispute with colleagues without rancour, where she was highly respected for her integrity and ability, was bewildered and deeply hurt when viciously attacked for her principled views on the trans issue by SNP MPs,  who were also motivated by a good measure of jealousy as she commanded the respect across the House of Commons in her role as Justice spokesperson, and the publicity it brought her.  The old saw in the House of Commons that your opponents are those on the other side of the chamber, while your enemies are around you, applied in spades in her case.

It wasn’t because Joanna was a QC that made her stand out from the SNP group, always listened to with respect, and was welcomed into the all-party organisations concerned with human rights, it was the ability with which she handled her brief and her thoughtful, often penetrating, interventions on wider issues. Her high-level performance also meant that she would attract media coverage – to the discomfort of others who thought they were not getting the attention they deserved. 

Although a lawyer first she did not lack political instincts, and while her admiration for Alex Salmond was genuine she confesses to feeling ‘uneasy at the total adoration’ of him she witnessed at the 2011 SNP conference. She notes, as ‘the cult of personality’ developed around him that ‘he could have read out the local phone directory rather than give a speech and the audience would have swooned and clapped like seals.’ And she was aware, as her Westminster colleagues seemingly were not, that their fate in subsequent elections would hang on what the Scottish electorate thought of the Scottish government rather than anything they said or did in London.

That was something I tried to persuade Ian Blackford of when he became leader.  The SNP group I told him, would be judged by the policy performance of the government at Holyrood, and suggested he form a small sub-group which would meet the Scottish Cabinet at least every two weeks to discuss policy, and so have an input to the issues that would determine what would happen to them at the nest election.  I also advised that to advance independence he should rotate his group, sending half north to campaign for a month, then return them to Westminster while he sent the other half on the campaign trail.  He thought it a good idea, but it never happened. 

And so, it came to pass. In the elections that followed, Westminster MPs were not judged by their constituents on their individual worth, but became electoral scapegoats for the failures of the Scottish government at Holyrood, the calamitous adventure to bring down Alex Salmond (well documented in the book), and the scandals that emerged from the way the party was run.

This is an illuminating book for those in the independence movement to read and learn lessons from – as well as SNP members about what went on in their party. While a good part of it  would appear to be mainly about the appalling harassment, bullying, smearing, vicious campaign against Joanna  during the Sturgeon era when the cult of personality was taken to a level Salmond never contemplated; when the party was controlled by a politburo of two – Sturgeon and her enforcer husband – it delivers insight into how ‘the spirit of the Yes campaign was crushed’; and how it was taken for a ride on a roundabout of promised referendum that was never on.

The astonishing revelation by Cherry of just how the trans rights agenda  captured the  SNP leadership, the 2015 Westminster group, the MSP group, the NEC, and some party members, goes some way to explaining why the movement, in terms of gathering support for independence, got very little out of the large numbers of MPs (56) who were sent to Westminster in 2015. If her colleagues had spent more time on policy development on what really matters to most people – analysis of Scotland’s economic tie-down with its subservience to the Treasury and the Bank of England, housing, education, the NHS – we would not have the fractured and listless movement of today. But they spent little time and resources on such matters of substance and were prevented doing so by the Sturgeon leadership’s culture of control.

The SNP’s Wasted Decade Post-2014

In the decade of Westminster parliaments from 2015-24 the SNP group had around £1.2 million per year in Short money – which amounted to a staggering figure of over £11 million overall – to aid them in their parliamentary work, with a large research team financed by it. They also had on hand the House of Commons Library, a superb research facility. But as becomes clear in what the book describes correctly was a ‘Tumultuous Decade in Scottish Politics’ that group had no independent character. It took its orders from Nicola Sturgeon. Events have proved that the cult of personality brought inevitable disasters. Let that lesson be learned for the future: all our political Gods have feet of clay. 

As I concluded in the recently published The New Case for Optimism: ‘If the independence movement is to win, then we need to face facts that cannot be avoided.’ Many who support the SNP and/or independence have for understandable reasons for too long being encouraged by the party leadership to not face up to inconvenient facts or embrace debate, discussion and pluralism about Scotland’s future and independence.

The SNP in the Sturgeon era became a party which not only disrespected and bypassed its own members, it damaged democracy and the Scottish body politic, while ultimately not progressing the cause of independence and consciously refused to engage in the serious work which needs to be undertaken.

Scotland has had a wasted decade politically post-2014. The damage done to the SNP, democracy and independence has to be recognised if it is to be corrected and put right. It cannot as the current SNP leadership insist just be ignored or wished away as if the past decade never happened. The governance of the SNP, the Scottish Parliament and public institutions has been diminished and damaged.

Difficult questions about the nature of our politics and quality of our elected representatives need to be asked. Joanna Cherry’s book is a contribution to understanding what went wrong and while it will be difficult reading for many, it is an important book which can contribute to making sure such problematic politics never happens again.