Where is the WHAT?

This article started as a response to a comment on an earlier post. As often happens, writing about something prompts me to think about the subject more and in diverse ways. If it all seems a bit stream-of-consciousness, it’s because that’s what it is. Sometimes I write what I think. Sometimes I write to discover what I think.

Another five wasted years is close to being unavoidable already. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fractiousness within the independence movement, which nobody in the wider population even notices. The problem is not the squabbling, but the fact that the vast majority are squabbling about entirely the wrong things.

Most of the disputes boil down to arguments about where to place your votes. In other words, they are arguments about WHO to vote for. Almost nobody is considering WHAT they’re voting for.

Look at Liberate Scotland, for example. They insist you should vote for them. Their supporters insist you should vote for them. Then somebody says no you should vote for Alba. Then the ding-dong starts. And it goes on and on. And it never gets beyond being an argument about WHO to vote for. Both make remarkably similar claims that they are the party to vote for if you want independence. Both claim a vote for them is a vote for independence. Both shout ‘INDEPENDENCE’ all the time and work the idea of independence into a slew of slogans. But the argument never gets beyond the superficial level of WHO. The argument never grows up to be a debate about WHAT.

Nobody - or precious few people - actually attempt to scrutinise the WHAT of the party’s offering. There’s the party’s name and its logo and its slogans and nothing else. Nothing! No substance whatever. That space where the WHAT should be is left empty. It’s left empty in some cases - such as Liberate Scotland - because the people involved have nothing with which to fill it. They haven’t thought beyond the party’s name and logo and slogans. They pick a name, logo, and slogans thinking they will attract people. And they’re right! People are lured in by the word ‘Liberate’ and the flag-in-fist logo and sloganeering about ‘unity’. since luring people is all they’re interested in, that job done as far as the founders of the party are concerned. There’s no motivation to fill the WHAT space. There’s no need. And filling it is hard. So they don’t do it.

In other cases - and probably to some extent in all cases - the WHAT space is left vacant quite deliberately. Because when that space is empty, people will tend to fill it with whatever it is that they prioritise. They’ll fill it with their own agenda. So, the party becomes all things to all people. Which suits the party hierarchy because all they want is votes.

Meanwhile, back at the squabbling, the warring tribes get to say whatever they want about what their party ‘stands for’ and whatever they want about what the other party stands for. Both claim to be everything that’s good. Both are accused of being everything that’s bad. The WHAT space being undefined, it can be defined and redefined at any time and in whatever way is expedient. Mostly, it is defined as bad because it is easier to accuse others than it is to define the WHAT of your own tribe. Because there is no WHAT!

Contrast all this with New Scotland Party (NSP). With NSP, the WHAT came first. The WHAT is #ScottishUDI and the Manifesto for independence and the whole new mindset that these ideas arise from. The WHO of NSP came later. The WHO only came into being because the WHAT was already there and it was thought that the message about the WHAT could be better be carried if there was a WHO in the form of a political party. But a political party that studiously avoids the squabbling about WHO by staying out of the electoral arena.

NSP was started because there needed to be an example of a party that had a WHAT. A party that put the WHAT first. A party for which the WHAT was the only thing that matters. This is as all political parties should be. This is as all parties are meant to be. They are meant to have a core of ideas and principles and not merely a shell of slick marketing material.