All the ingredients for failure
It seems the SNP is intent on rewarding failure. It's prospective candidate list is stuffed with with people who are associated with a lost decade for Scotland's cause. Alyn Smith is a prime example of someone who has built a career for himself on the back of the independence movement and someone whose 'thinking' on the constitutional issue is stuck in 2012. More agile minds long since recognised that tacking this and that political agenda or personal hobby-horse onto the constitutional issue was a very effective way of dragging it to a standstill. We might well wonder if this is what these career politicians actually want.
If you want to know what kind of a buffoon Alyn Smith is you need only consider the fact that he was still peddling the 'never closer to independence' drivel long after it had become an embarrassment to the independence movement.
The 2026 Scottish Parliament election is crucial for Scotland's cause. If we do not have a genuinely - as opposed to nominally - pro-independence parliament and government, our cause will remain in limbo for another five years. But how are we to elect a parliament and government committed to progressing our cause when none of the parties claiming to be pro-independence will make any kind of commitment?
Put this question to Alyn Smith or any of the others on the SNPs list of approved candidates. Or for that matter, any of the other nominally pro-independence party's equivalent list. In relation to the constitutional issue, what should be the new Scottish Government's first action?
I guarantee you will not get a straight answer. You will get waffle about governing well. (While simultaneously demonstrating how devolution makes it impossible to govern well!?) Or you'll get the threadbare line about gently persuading 'soft Nos'. (The same approach as has signally failed to persuade anybody for over ten years!?) Alyn Smith might even revert to his old 'never closer' script!
People may have good reasons for voting SNP or Alba or whatever. But if they are voting for these parties on the basis of their rhetoric about independence, they are being scammed. If activists are selling their parties with slogans about independence, they are the scammers.
The only politician or party you can trust to take Scotland's cause forward are those that have adopted the Manifesto for Independence. They are the only ones genuinely committed to the restoration of Scotland's independence. The only ones committed to a plan for restoring independence. To date, there are none!
Look again at that list of SNP candidates. Can you imagine any of them doing something bold and imaginative? Can you imagine them doing anything at all?
Perhaps a glimmer of hope might be found in the knowledge that a number of SNP members and supporters ( I've no idea how many) are also involved with Salvo/Liberation Scotland? Whatever the conclusion of the UN case brings, as with the NSP, they recognise that a political act in the form of a referendum will be required to take the next step. Surely those members must recognise the important potential role the SNP would need to play in that process which lines up with the thinking of the NSP. I don't know when the SNP party conference takes place..I imagine in the Autumn. Could there be enough muscle within the SNP to get the steering wheel so to speak to turn the party from a nominal independence party to a proper party focused on independence in time for the battle ahead for the 2026 election? I might be clutching at straws but the idea that the crucial step of taking back our parliament that could just be a parliament that is dominated by a top tier content to drift along in continued aimless devolution is almost unbearable.