‘A parcel of rogues in a nation’: national poet Robert Burns’ description of those active in Scotland in the process by which the Union of England Act was passed in 1707.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and First Minister of Scotland since 2014, unexpectedly resigned on 15 February. A party election to replace her was called. With all the paraphernalia of televised debates and hustings the earnest hopefuls were paraded. SNP members narrowly split over the two main contenders Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf. Almost half voted for a right wing Christian fundamentalist in Forbes who was opposed to abortion, gay marriage and the Gender Recognition Reform.
Sturgeon’s continuity candidate was Humza Yousaf and this privately educated rich kid was elevated to the top post in the SNP with 52% of the vote, making it a cosy double in the Scottish parliament, as the Labour Party there is headed by the millionaire Anas Sarwar who went to the same fee paying Glasgow school. Yousaf became First Minister of Scotland on 28 March. Like his predecessor, he styles himself as progressive and deploys a similar social democratic deceit.
By 5 April, with dubious and predictable choreography, Police Scotland were at the Sturgeons’ family home, detaining her partner Peter Murrell, who was arrested and taken into custody while the house and garden were searched. The police seized a camper van worth £110,000. On 19 April the party treasurer George Beattie, who claimed he had known nothing of this luxury vehicle at the time of purchase, was also arrested. The following day Murrell resigned after 25 years as Chief Executive Officer of the SNP.
Operation Branchform had begun in July 2021 to establish the whereabouts of more than £667,000 donated to the SNP specifically to finance another independence referendum campaign. Murrell was clearly not suffering any cost of living crisis himself as it was revealed that he had loaned the party £100,000 out of his own deep pockets. It later emerged that the accountancy firm Johnson Carmichael had resigned as the SNP’s auditors in September of 2022, a fact which the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party appeared unaware of. Somebody was running the SNP but it was not its NEC.
There is nothing unique about the behaviours revealed in any account of recent developments in the SNP. Indeed the scale of sums involved is absolutely minimal compared to the outrageous troughs of public money the parliamentary pigs have been swilling about in across Scotland, England, Wales and the North of Ireland. Covid-19 era fraud estimates vary between £5bn and £30bn. A Scottish Tory businesswoman elevated to the House of Lords, Michelle Mone, made £29m out of PPE contracts. Vital ferries to the Scottish islands remain unfinished and over price while the SNP government allowed generous bonuses to go to the shipyard managers. Every scam and dodge and swindle coursing through the Westminster sewer runs through the equally bourgeois Scottish parliament in Edinburgh presided over by the SNP. This is capitalism’s corrupt way.
While some of the SNP’s dirty laundry was made public in April, Citizens Advice Scotland revealed then that it had taken a record 174,500 requests for financial advice from people anxious about food and fuel bills between 2022 and this year, an increase of 40%. FRFI has reported regularly on the scale of poverty in Scotland which has grown massively under the devolved Scottish government of the SNP, as elsewhere. SNP councils have made no complaint about passing on savage public service cuts from this Tory government while the former SNP leader regularly prated about eradicating child poverty. Bruce Adamson, outgoing Children and Young People’s Commissioner said that Nicola Sturgeon had ‘absolutely’ failed. Humza Yousaf continues to claim unconvincingly that tackling poverty is a priority.
The Scottish independence referendum of September 2014 had engaged a historical 84.6% of the electorate and 44.7% voted to leave the United Kingdom. Electoral analysis confirmed that voting Yes directly correlated to low income. This massively motivated the poorest people suffering benefit sanctions, zero hours work contracts and poverty wages under the Tories’ 2010 austerity agenda. The vote was a popular challenge to the obscenely unequal UK setup and rattled that state to an extent not surpassed by the recent trade union and environmental protests.
Defeated in its independence aim, the SNP went on to wipe out the UK-supporting Labour Party in the 2015 Westminster parliamentary vote. Labour was left with only one MP in Scotland – significantly representing the richest constituency, Edinburgh South. Hoping today to win votes at the expense of the SNP, a Labour Party spokesperson has recently described the electorate in Scotland as recognising the governing party as ‘chancers’. The Labour Party was well recognised as such nearly a decade ago.
But the SNP was also spooked by the working class coming out for secession from the UK. The more radical independence movement was demobilised immediately after the failed referendum. This was achieved in alliance with the middle-class leadership of the Radical Independence Campaign who went on to be well rewarded with positions in the apparatus of the parliaments, civil service and media. The Home Rule SNP settled into its comfortable salaries and pensions and perks in Edinburgh and London. Passivity of the membership was ensured by rigid party control as exemplified by the present situation.
The independence campaign which culminated in near victory in 2014, brought forth a temporary and unplanned coalition of the normally disenfranchised working class, the youth, socialists, anarchists and principled allies, prepared to lower the bloody Union Jack over Scotland and begin to make progress in achieving social justice. This was a threat to the SNP. As poverty in Scotland hit a 20 year high, this rotten opportunist outfit continues to look after itself exclusively.
Michael McGregor
