Puerile threats from a desperate party

HOW quickly the SNP has descended into downright lunacy after its election triumph. Knowing its core demand for a second Scexit vote is doomed, the party is resorting to desperate measures.

Former deputy leader of the SNP, Stewart Hosie, yesterday failed to rule out an illegal Catalan-style referendum. That any senior politician should consider such a course of action is utterly shameful.

The Catalan poll led to a brutal police crackdown and was ultimately declared unlawful by the Spanish courts. It is an object lesson in how not to conduct a country’s constitutional affairs.

Yet it’s the recipe for chaos some of the hardliners in the SNP would advocate.

Mr Hosie’s claim that Boris Johnson would be a ‘despot’ if he continued to reject the SNP’s call for another vote on splitting up the UK is also contemptible.

Such hyperbole mocks the plight of those subjected to true tyranny – and belongs firmly in the realm of the absurd.

Nicola Sturgeon’s assertion that Scotland is ‘imprisoned’ within the UK is also a frankly bizarre fallacy. The truth is that the SNP leadership knows its call for a referendum is futile in the face of Boris Johnson’s strong stance against it.

But its apparent willingness to discuss the prospect of a profoundly undemocratic illegal poll is beyond reprehensible. Meanwhile, Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil has even called for all of the party’s new parliamentarians to quit, forcing byelections and plunging the Commons into turmoil. He describes this as ‘blue-sky thinking’, when in fact it would do nothing whatsoever to advance his party’s cause.

This kind of lunatic strategy also risks taking the SNP back to its roots – when it was a rabble of would-be revolutionaries, and could not be taken seriously.

Is it really too much to hope that the party puts an end to its endless machinations and focuses – finally – on the infinitely more important task of running devolved government in Scotland?

And won’t the party’s new voters expect more of its newly elected MPs than these puerile threats?