The SNP: Factions, Fractures, and Failure
MICHAEL BLAIR
Perthshire, Scotland
Shock horror, headline… Politician tells the truth!
Yes it happened. A senior member of the SNP administration, Pete Wishart, wrote a newspaper piece on why a second independence referendum should be put on hold until the public opinion for Independence was stronger and Brexit was settled.
This was a fairly common sense set of ideas, but the hard core Sporran Legion took exception to an SNP Member of Parliament being truthful on a subject on which they can only handle one view.
Now, Mr Wishart is no stranger to online bullying. Indeed, he’s a past master of the art of online bullying of anyone who isn’t an SNP voter or member. In fact anyone who has the temerity to disagree with the SNP’s position on independence. Some of his Twitter comments are particularly unpleasant, even by Sporran Legion standards.
This time, he got a taste of his own medicine. He was vilified and abused by the mob, on social media.
He was called a traitor, a quisling, a loser who had no right to be a member of the party, never mind an MP.
Some people said they were done with the SNP. They had been betrayed by one of their own.
Others were just walking around in a daze, slack jawed, wondering what had just happened. This was the SNP. All members have to pledge never to criticise the party or other members in public or anywhere really.
What had happened was a seismic event. It had tipped reality on its head. Shaken the membership to their very core. The sheer lack of self awareness is astonishing. But of course, if you only listen to the people who agree with you, what else can you expect?
What has to be remembered, Pete Wishart had only clung on to his parliamentary seat by the tiny margin of 21 votes.
He is the longest serving SNP Member of Parliament, and to be so close to being beaten by a Conservative made him realise that the power of the SNP was waning, and if he still wanted to be on the Westminster gravy train for the next ten years, he had better attempt to appease the voters who had deserted him in droves.
He was visibly shaken by the sheer rage he was having to face for having pointed out something which had been so obvious to everyone except the Sporran Legion, who still believed every increasingly idiotic and desperate utterance from Ms Ironpants and her house husband, Peter Murrell, the man behind the throne.
A man so anonymous, he could be sitting beside her, and remain almost invisible, except for the glint of light from his wee round bald head.
Cracks are now beginning to appear in what was seemingly the invincible fortress of the SNP.
Other members, Mhairi Black MP being one of them, with similar opinions as Wishart, are poking their heads above the parapet of fortress SNP, and openly criticising the leadership for refusing to see public opinion is leaking from the ever widening cracks.
I foresee a split in the party, along the lines I have described, happening immediately after the next Scottish Parliamentary elections. Unfortunately we have to wait for another three years, but I suppose if the SNP’s position on Brexit stays as the idiotic stubborn childish way it is now, a break up of the party could happen well before 2021.
In my opinion, for what it’s worth, a split SNP would be a refreshing change and a chance for a much more open and democratic party to emerge.
The more radical elements would probably fight like rats in a sack, and disintegrate into small brain dead factions, still wearing their tattered kilts, and knitted shoes, barking at the moon and trying to convince themselves they are still relevant to Scotland.
I look forward to seeing this spectacle in the near future.
Follow The Party of Common Sense on Twitter, at @tpocs
Michael J Blair contributes political analysis to DDA, and he can be reached at: michaelblair43@googlemail.com. His Twitter handle is: @mmjblair
[header photo courtesy of estillbham, Wikimedia Commons]