Rogue polls will send indy down the plughole

From my Daily Record column today  12/07/19

Whatever is in the water this summer is fast polluting the independence campaign.

First Angus MacNeil pipes up and says forget a referendum, any election win will do.

Then Kenny MacAskill, whose judgment and political antenna are several stages of evolution ahead, calls for a wildcat, illegal vote.

Add to that Joanna Cherry hijacking plans for citizens’ assemblies as a tool to “create a consensus around Scotland and a bigger majority for Yes” and there’s your democratic credibility swirling down the plughole.

A consultative referendum was a disaster in Catalonia and supporters of citizens’ assemblies are looking at the wrong country.

In Ireland, they were used, successfully, to transition the country on abortion and sexual equality.

These were big cultural and generational changes, massively assisted by the collapse of the Catholic Church and the lived experience of friends and family members talking about previously taboo subjects.

In Scotland, we have been talking about nothing else but constitutional politics for years. Not so much talking as shouting, abusing and singing Kylie Minogue with our hands over our ears if so much as a contradictory tweet comes our way.

Citizens’ assemblies will never be seen in Scotland as anything other than an SNP astroturf campaign, the independence agenda given the synthetic appearance of a grassroots engagement.

Scottish voters have been to the polls eight times in the last 10 years. We were the test tube for the divided, post-crash world that’s seen the rise of nationalism from America to India.

We are the canary in the coal mine of post-truth politics and now we’ve reached the stage where politicians say: “Forget the will of the people, who needs a referendum?” 

To quote the philosopher Justin Timberlake, sometimes the greatest way to say something is to say nothing at all. Not that you’d expect MacNeil to button up.

However, I notice the SNP Government spent £24million on foreign affairs last year, promoting independence abroad. That’s just £1million less than his party has cut from the core budget of MacNeil’s Western Isles council in the last five years.

It shows you what just one year of shutting up about the constitution is worth.