Going forward

Pete Wishart proudly boasts that he is the longest currently serving Scottish National Party MP and the longest serving of all time. He was first elected in 2001. That means he’s been representing the ‘party of independence’ in the English parliament for 25 years—covering all but the first year or two of the reconvened Scottish Parliament, where the SNP has been the dominant party for almost two decades.

Count the days! Every day that Scotland remains under the heel of the Union is a day that the SNP has failed. Pete Wishart has 25 years’ worth of failed days. The SNP in the Scottish Parliament has 20 years’ worth of failed days. If we tally the days spent in elected office by every SNP politician over the period that Pete Wishart has spent polishing the green benches with his arse, it would run to many thousands of days, every one of which can be counted as a day that the SNP has failed Scotland’s cause.

This is the point where somebody shouts, “Baby boxes!”, and starts to rattle off a memorised list of all the things that the SNP can claim as successes. I don’t dispute this. I do not deny that SNP governments have benefited Scotland over the years. I’ll happily give them that. I’ll even allow that Pete Wishart did some good work as chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. But Scotland continues to suffer under the heel of a grotesquely asymmetric political union. So, in terms of the SNP’s principal aim, they have failed.

In this regard, they continue to fail. An honest and objective appraisal would conclude that we are no closer to the restoration of independence now than we were when Pete Wishart was first elected a quarter of a century ago. Whatever else the SNP may have done, they have failed in the main task for which we elected them. We, the independence movement and the Scottish electorate, gave the SNP extraordinary power in the expectation that they would use it to restore Scotland’s rightful status as an independent nation. They have failed.

That they have failed cannot be denied. Which won’t prevent party loyalists from trying to do so. Not only are we still held in murderous Britannia’s cold and jealous grasp, we seem destined to suffer this increasingly deleterious condition for the foreseeable future. Which, I hasten to point out, is merely a figure of speech and should not be taken as meaning the future can be known. But we can deduce where certain trends will lead if they are permitted to continue. To date, the trend has been more failed days. As I write, I find no reason to suppose that this trend will not continue.

In an https://peterabell.substack.com/p/swinneys-big-secret-plan, I referred to the interview John Swinney gave exclusively to The National in which he was expected to reveal his ‘Big Secret Plan’ for progressing Scotland’s cause after his plea for a Section 30 order was contemptuously snubbed by some faceless Downing Street spokesbladder. What he revealed is that he has no plan, other than doing more of what has failed for long enough that any sensible person would long ago have thought to try something else.

As many of us anticipated, the SNP have no intention of doing what is required, supposing they even know what that is. As predicted by me and many others, yet another opportunity has been squandered in the election just past, and we are looking at another five lost years. Unless we do something about it.

By ‘we’ I mean the independence movement, as opposed to the independence industry which has grown up around the SNP and which largely follows the SNP’s agenda. For all the talk of ‘unity’ in the independence movement, nothing whatever has been achieved in that regard. The reason is plain enough to see. And yet the independence movement itself seems oblivious to it. All previous and current efforts to unite the independence movement have taken unity to mean all gathered together under a single umbrella group.

This ‘unity as amalgamation’ approach was never going to work if for no other reason than that all the factions want unity on their own terms, and none of them are prepared to have their identity subsumed in some umbrella organisation. Every faction thinks itself unique and wants its own voice to be heard, promulgating its own message. Just as importantly, these factions are understandably reluctant to be associated with things that might be said by one or more of the groups under the umbrella.

Unity as an amalgamation was never going to work. Trying to force all the factions together was never going to create a stable entity. A better approach would be to try and attract all these factions to the one place. Unity of purpose means that all the factions keep their discrete identities and their own voice, promulgating their own message. They are not being asked to reach out and hold hands with one another. They are asked to all reach out and take hold of the same purpose.

Now, all we need is that purpose. It has to be something which can be done without much expense or effort. It must be very clearly defined and very narrow so that everybody understands it in the same way. It must have an endpoint and a definition of success.

With all of this in mind, I would like to revive the idea of a campaign to repurpose ballots in the next UK general election, the date of which could be any time between now and 15 August 2029. Although that date is not yet fixed, we know it will be. So, we have our endpoint. Success will be defined by the percentage of ballots reported by the Returning Officer as spoilt by having #EndTheUnion scrawled across them.

Normally, only one or two percent of ballots are spoilt. If a ‘repurpose your ballot’ campaign does no more than increase that to 5%—the level at which candidates save their deposits—that would count as success. A similar campaign in the 2025 Irish presidential election got the level up to 13% and, in so doing, became the big talking point, overshadowing even the winner’s celebrations. I reckon we can make 15%. That would rock the boat very nicely.

One reason I feel confident that a ‘repurpose your ballot’ (RYB) campaign could reach 15% or more is the fact that it appeals to non-voters. Almost half the electorate didn’t bother to vote in the Holyrood election just past. That’s approximately the same proportion as the divide on the constitutional issue. So, without the slightest hint of statistical propriety, we shall estimate that half of those non-voters are pro-independence voters who for one reason or another just could not be arsed. A fair few of them might have made the effort if there was an option they liked. #EndTheUnion is a DIY extra option on the ballot paper.

Obviously, I’ll be writing more about this over the coming weeks. Some of you may remember that I did a campaign like this for the 2024 UK election. It didn’t have anything like the uptake that would make it effective. So, let’s call that a practice run. The website for the 2024 campaign is still there, and I’m trying to get in touch with the guy who holds the domain to see what we can do about updating it. But I think he may be a bit displeased with me for reasons which are perfectly understandable. I may need a ‘plan B’. Watch this space!