Nicola lost seats because she called for another referendum. Even my pro-indy grandchildren voted for Labour
SNP VETERAN WE NEED TO BE PATIENT
Nationalist heavyweight Jim Sillars has revealed his grandchildren voted Labour in the general election – but he still believes the campaign for independence is far from over.
The former SNP deputy leader also blamed Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence on a referendum by spring 2019 for the party losing more than a third of their Westminster seats 10 days ago.
Yes campaigner Sillars, 79, said the First Minister had “put the cart before the horse” by calling for a second vote while polls indicated the majority of Scots did not want independence.
He said: “There is a huge difference between calling for an independence referendum and independence itself.
“You don’t call a referendum until you have done more work on independence and have increased support from 45 per cent to about 60 per cent.
“It seems to me most of the politicians and media pundits have mixed up independence and a referendum. They’re different – and the idea that the 45 per cent of us who voted for independence in 2014 have gone away is ridiculous.
“Let me give you an example from my family. Three of my grandchildren are ardent Yes supporters but voted for Labour in the general election because they’re socialists and thought the idea of a referendum at the moment was ludicrous. They were attracted by a socialist manifesto from Labour.
“I asked, ‘ Well, what about independence?’ They said, ‘ We’re still for it. Of course we are. But this election wasn’t about independence. The SNP only asked us to support an independence referendum, which we don’t want just now because we know we’d lose it. That’s different from wanting independence.’
“I don’t understand why the SNP leadership can’t clarify this, especially when the other parties are saying independence is off the agenda. It is not off the agenda.”
Sillars was a Labour and SNP MP in a Westminster career spanning three decades.
He came out of retirement in 2014 in frustration at an uninspiring Yes campaign and published In Place Of Fear II, which he described as a “socialist programme for an independent Scotland”.
Sillars insists “a lot of work” needs to be done on the case for independence.
He said: “First of all, there has never been a postmortem on why we lost in 2014. Until that happens, and we start putting right some of the things that were wrong, you can’t advance the case for independence.
“For example, the currency issue has never been addressed. Before we go out to talk to people again, we need to address the currency issue.
“Then we can start campaigning, not shouting from the rooftops, but quietly. And there is the structure to do that because many of the Yes campaign groups have remained in existence. They are there to take a quiet educational campaign to people and then build it up. “Then we carefully examine the Brexit treaty and see how we deploy a new independence policy.
“Anyone who thinks independence is off the agenda is living in cloud cuckoo land.”
Sturgeon had wanted a vote on independence within weeks of a Brexit deal.
But Sillars said: “Brexit, whatever the deal is, will create an entirely new relationship between Scotland and England.
“A new case for independence can only be deployed when we see the Brexit treaty in black and white and signed.”
He claimed Sturgeon had made a “fundamental error of interpretation” of the EU vote, which saw 62 per cent of Scotland voting to Remain but only 48 per cent of the whole of the UK.
Sillars said: “She thought the 1.6million Scots who voted for Remain were a proxy for Scotland going into the EU and out of the UK. That’s ludicrous. Many of the 1.6million were Tories like Ruth Davidson.
“And she compounded the error of demanding a second independence referendum by constantly talking about it. Most of us knew that if the Tories gave us it, we would lose it.”
Sillars says he believes the key to independence is convincing Labour supporters to vote Yes.
He added: “Up in what the SNP thought was their heartlands, people voted 60/40 against independence. These are the seats they lost in the general election.
“Three million out of five million Scots live in the Central Belt and that is the key area to independence.
“It was traditionally Labour and I think, in ideological terms, it is still Labour, despite a number voting SNP.”