My first choice of title for this article was 'Compare and contrast'. The intention was to compare and contrast two items from The National today. On the one hand there was the latest woeful waffling from First Minister John Swinney - to which I shall return. On the other was a letter to the aforementioned from the good people of Yes Dunbar. The latter piece appeared under a headline proclaiming "Yes group urges John Swinney to 'prioritise path to independence'". Which I took to mean that they had written to John Swinney urging him to actually prioritise an actual path to actual independence. An assumption which, regrettably, did not survive my actual reading of the actual text of the actual letter.
The headline on the report of Yes Dunbar's letter is very misleading. The phrase "path to independence" implies - to my mind, at least - an identified process with the restoration of independence as its end-point. But the letter makes no mention of either path or process. What Yes Dunbar is urging is nothing more than that John Swinney dial down the gentle a bit on his preferred strategy of gentle persuasion. Rather than demanding that the FM spell out the path/process by which he intends to fulfil his party's very, very long-standing promise to restore independence, the Yes Dunbar letter merely asks that he be a bit more forceful in arguing that Scotland is fully capable of surviving and prospering as a nation.
Forgive me, but I'd have thought that Scotland's capability in this regard was the default assumption among independence supporters. We would hardly be supportive of restoring Scotland's independence if we imagined it would bring down even half of the ghastly consequences promised by Better Together. The question is not whether Scotland can survive and prosper as an independent nation, but whether Scotland can prosper and survive as a nation without independence.
It may be argued that voters need to be reassured that Scotland is no less equipped to be an independent nation than any other independent nation, and considerably better equipped than most. I don't disagree. But the fact that support for Yes has been becalmed around the 50% mark for a decade suggests to me that the strategy of gentle persuasion has had all the success it is capable of having. The fact that support has stayed at this level also suggests that, once people have been gently persuaded, they don't lose their new-found confidence in Scotland's viability as an independent nation.
The question then is why persist with a campaign strategy that stopped having any positive effect perhaps as long ago as the summer of 2014? John Swinney insists it's the only way to go. Yes Dunbar appears to agree and asks only that a bit more verve be put into the task of qualifying for the prize of independence.
And here we hit a problem. Because independence is not a prize that will be awarded to us when we have jumped through every conceivable hoop and ticked every imaginable box and answered every possible question. The number of hoops, boxes and questions being without limit, that prize is unwinnable. So. what's the point in all that hoop-jumping, box-ticking and question answering?
The gentle persuasion approach isn't just ineffective and potentially unending, it is actually counter-productive as participating in all the hoop- jumping etc. creates the impression that qualification is necessary. It evinces and encourages a mindset geared to plodding failure. (Or, if Yes Dunbar is listened to, marching failure.) We must be rid of that mindset. We need to think of independence not as something that would be nice if only we could persuade the British state to give it to us, but as something that is ours by right and is being illegitimately withheld from us by the British state.
Reluctantly, I turn to John Swinney's column in The National under the headline "John Swinney: Shortcuts and impatience will not win independence". In this case, the headline is accurate. It precisely reflects the dishonesty in Swinney's drab diatribe. He seeks, with a slight subtlety that some might see as sleekitness, to portray those who question or criticise the gentle persuasion approach as recklessly impatient and favouring facile 'solutions'. In reality, the impatience is no more than the sense of urgency Scotland's cause demands and the questions and criticisms are mostly constructive and considered. There is no recklessness in something that has been reflected on for as many years/decades as some of us have thinking about the constitutional issue.
By the same token, 'solutions' that have been mulled over for many years are unlikely to deserve being called facile. Besides which, if these 'solutions' were as slapdash and impractical as Swinny implies, surely someone in the SNP would be able to contrive a counter-argument. If an idea is bad, it should be easy to argue against it. We have never had any counter-argument from the SNP. Criticism of the party's approach to the constitutional issue elicits only demands that we desist from criticising. An increasingly shrill insistence that we exempt the SNP from scrutiny because it calls itself the 'party of independence'.
As to the questions that are put to the SNP by the pro-independence part of the Yes movement, doesn't it strike you as strange that the SNP makes such frantic efforts to answer every daft question put by Unionists but flatly refuses to engage with those inside the Yes movement who seek information or explanation?
John Swinney purposefully and dishonestly misrepresents critics of his party’s 'strategy for independence' in the hope of rationalising his inability to respond meaningfully to the criticism - all of which is thoughtful, constructive and respectfully proffered, at least initially. It is only when critics are ignored that they tend to become more strident. The SNP leadership has been blanket ignoring critics for a decade or more. It's not so surprising if we're now getting a bit shouty.
As is my customary practice, I read John Swinney's column several times. After the first reading, I went over it again highlighting points which I was minded to address. There were a lot of them! So as not to test the forbearance of my readers, I have selected but one short passage on which to comment.
I am as impatient as anyone, but it is through respectful persuasion, evidence-building, and unfailing commitment and focus that we will achieve our goal.
The people of Scotland want to hear substance from us, not just process.
As a party that believes in the rule of law we can’t ignore the decision of the UK Supreme Court. There are no shortcuts here.
But that must not mean we accept in any way Westminster’s undemocratic blocking of the right of people to choose their own future.
I can assure John Swinney that he does not share my sense of urgency. Nothing of what he says speaks of impatience at all. Rather, it is all about being so hyper-cautious as to make no discernible progress whatever. His only idea - after seventeen fucking years in government - is to persist in plodding on with the same approach that has failed to make any progress at all in ten years. Is it any wonder that many in the independence movement now look at the SNP leadership insisting on a 'strategy' with an unblemished record of failure and conclude that failure is the SNP leadership's preference? From outside the bubble, it certainly looks like the SNP leadership is perfectly content with things as they are and is therefore seeking to maintain the status quo.
So long as the SNP can convince the pro-independence half of the population that it is working to restore independence, it is all but guaranteed that massive chunk of the vote. It is in the party's interest to ensure that any progress towards independence is as gradual as possible. They've been so successful in retarding Scotland's cause that it now appears to be going backwards. That is not a success they can be proud of.
If John Swinney reckons "the people of Scotland want to hear substance from us, not just process", why doesn't he offer something substantial? There is no substance to anything that he has said or written on the constitutional issue since becoming party leader and now First Minister. I can answer my own question. He can't give us substance because the substance is the process that he dismisses as if it was a mere triviality compared to the glittering generalities of his rhetoric. Without a process, there can be no substance. Absent a process, all the gentle persuasion is just so much wind and pish.
It is all very well to talk about how beneficial and even essential something is, but if you can't (or won't) also demonstrate that it is doable then it is all just talk. Having a dream, a vision, an aspiration, is a wonderful thing. But it is all ephemeral airborne castles unless and until you set out the series of steps that will realise the aspiration and give substance to the dream.
John Swinney declines to discuss the process by which Scotland's independence will be restored either because he is totally ignorant on the subject never having bother to think about in all the time he's been in government having been elected because voters assumed he knew the process, or because he is aware of the process but he's also shit-scared of it because it involves seriously confronting the British state. Whatever the reason. the fact that Swinney refuses to even talk about process is incontrovertible proof that he has not the slightest intention of implementing any process.
Swinney says he "can’t ignore the decision of the UK Supreme Court" because the SNP "believes in the rule of law". Very worthy, John! Virtue duly signalled! But here's a question for you to dismiss unanswered, whose law? You say you can't ignore what I shall call British law. But you effortlessly disregard Scotland's law and Scotland's constitution. Why is that?
He says there are "no shortcuts". But nobody has claimed there are. It's not a shortcut we're looking for but a route. A real route drawn on a real map of our circumstances, with the start and end points clearly identified along with all the important landmarks along the way. That would be substance!
Finally, John Swinney says we must not accept "Westminster’s undemocratic blocking of the right of people to choose their own future". But that is precisely what he is accepting! By requesting a Section 30 order, as he has intimated is his intention, he is affirming the very thing he says we must deny! He is accepting that which he maintains we must reject!
This is a politician choosing words for the way they sound rather than for what they mean. However bold it may seem, the stuff about rejecting the British veto on the exercise of our inalienable right of self-determination is exposed as the most vacuous of empty political rhetoric when it is placed alongside the intention to compromise the sovereignty of Scotland's people by grovelling disgracefully and treacherously before the imposed principle of parliamentary sovereignty.
With every word he writes, John Swinney confirms the view that his elevation to the role of SNP leader and First Minister spells disaster for Scotland's cause. The big question is, can he be stopped?
Respectful persuasion. RESPECTFUL persuasion. Why the hell should we be respectful? Why is there a need to persuade? We know the English government would not be persuaded by the most grovelling of approaches. Telling them where go and asserting our right to independence under international law is where it is at, not wheedling, crawling, respectful persuasion.