A treat!

What a treat for connoisseurs of SNP apologists! Letters from Stan Grodynski and Nick Cole on the same page in The National!

Such a thing is much less of a treat for Scottish nationalists, such as myself. There is no pleasure for us in being urged to “wait and see” whether John Swinney defines the word “guarantee” in the same way as Stan. Not all of us have Stan’s apparently boundless patience. Some of us take the view that eleven wasted years is enough. We are not at all enamoured of the suggestion that we should sit and watch another five years drift away while “wait and see” if Swinney has a “cunning plan” up his finely tailored sleeve.

Stan should know that “cunning plan” derives from the Baldrick character in the Blackadder TV series. It refers to a plan that invariably fails. I have no problem believing John Swinney would have one of those up his sleeve. Indeed, I know for a fact that he does. His declared strategy of begging for a Section 30 order is the epitome of a Baldrickian “cunning plan”.

But for the crème de la crème of the SNP apologia genre, we turn to Nick Cole. “It is not the SNP who haven’t produced independence,” he bleats. Let’s think about that! Who else did we expect would ‘produce’ independence? Who else got elected time after time on the basis of their serial promises to deliver independence? Nick would have us believe the SNP leadership made those promises unaware of the fact that they would face Unionist opposition.

I have news for Nick. Unionists are still opposed to ending the Union. So, what’s going to be different this time? Don’t tell me! This time there’s a “cunning plan”!