SNP in-fighting showing true colours
As the starting pistol was fired in the SNP leadership contest, the candidates immediately turned both barrels on each other.
For almost two decades, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon maintained a vice-like grip on the SNP. Discipline was demanded and dissent was destroyed.
This was all part of the cult-like culture in which all that mattered was the Nats’ obsession with separating Scotland from the UK.
Now, the battle to become next First Minister has ignited an ugly civil war across the SNP. Dormant divisions have exploded into public view.
The Sturgeon camp’s preferred candidate is health secretary Humza Yousaf, despite his record of ministerial incompetence.
Team Humza and the SNP establishment have waged a ferocious attack on Kate Forbes over her religious views.
Paisley MP Mhairi Black was one of those who joined the pile-on as did John Swinney. Which is all very strange, given that Forbes’ Christian beliefs have never been a secret.
Forbes has responded with brutal criticism of Sturgeon’s reign.
She’s made it clear that Sturgeon’s flawed and dangerous gender self-ID law should be binned. Forbes is also scathing about the SNP government’s lack of support for businesses and economic growth. She’s right. But you have to ask – why, as finance secretary, did Forbes not do something about it before now?
Meanwhile, Ash Regan made a plea for unity – while also calling for the sacking of Sturgeon’s SNP chief executive husband Peter Murrell.
The party, which hates scrutiny, then attempted to ban the media from a series of leadership hustings.
It was a cowardly and paranoid move which confirmed the SNP’s discomfort about people witnessing their internal blood-letting.
As an MSP for Scotland’s secondlargest party at Holyrood, all of these shenanigans should be greatly entertaining...if only the consequences were not so serious.
Because whoever wins the keys to Bute House, the sad truth is that
Scotland loses.
Scots want the Edinburgh government to focus on the day job – on the cost-of-living crisis, our NHS, the teacher strikes, record drugs deaths and crime on our streets.
But Yousaf, Forbes and Regan are only really interested in one thing. It is the only thing that unites them – and that, of course, is ‘independence’.
This has resulted in increasingly shrill rhetoric as they appeal to their nationalist base.
Yousaf says, “I want independence tomorrow”; Regan demands “independence, nothing less”; while Forbes states “independence is front and centre of my campaign”.
Whoever succeeds Sturgeon, they will ignore poll after poll showing that people don’t want another divisive and disruptive referendum.
It’s staggering that we’ve heard barely a word about what policies and big ideas any of the three candidates would pursue.
All we know is that each one of them will keep shouting “INDEPENDENCE!” louder than the others.