The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Indyref2 in 2021 would be ‘stupid’, says Sillars
The SNP has a “huge amount of work” to do in order to make a post-coronavirus case for independence, a senior nationalist has warned.
Jim Sillars, the party’s former deputy leader, said the SNP’s existing economic blueprint for breaking up t h e UK needed to be “shredded” because the pandemic meant it was now of no value.
Dismissing SNP suggestions that a second vote could be held next year as “stupid”, Mr Sillars argued that the economics of independence had to be reconsidered in light of Brexit and the pandemic.
This weekend, Nicola Sturgeon’s party will hold its 86th national conference in an unconventional form, a far cry from the large-scale events which charac terised the SNP gatherings in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum.
Speaking last night, Ms Sturgeon said she believed a second independence referendum should be held “in the earlier part” of the next Scottish Parliament term.
She said her focus was currently on guiding the country through the pandemic, but insisted that the UK g o v e r n m e n t ’s current opposition to Indyref2 was unsustainable.
She told the BBC: “I think the referendum should, for a whole variety of reasons, be in the earlier part of the next parliament.”
She added: “I intend to say more about this before the election in our manifesto, but we are still in a global pandemic that I feel a bit more hopeful about seeing the end of than I did even just a couple of months ago.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty ahead. I’m a life-long believer and campaigner and advocate for independence, but right now I’m also the first minister of Scotland.
“My responsibility is to the health and wellbeing of the country and trying to steer it through a pandemic and I’m very focused on that.”
The Covid restrictions mean this year’s conference is to be conducted virtually, which will be a source of frustration for those activists who relish the cutand-thrust of debate and the social side of conference.
Fo r the leadership, howe ver, the confined format may be a blessing in that will enable conference to be tightly controlled and axe- grinding kept to a minimum.
That will not suit grassroots members growing impatient at what the y see as a lack of direction when it comes to pushing for a second independence referendum as the SNP rides high in the polls.
Nor will it suit those who are concerned by the significant change in SNP nuclear weapons policy, which has seen the party’s traditional position in favour of unilateral
disarmament ditched for a multilateral approach.
Former SNP leader Alex Salmond is among those who have objected to the change, which was outlined in the party’s submission to the UK Defence Review.
Mr Salmond is no longer an SNP member, therefore he will not feature in person at the virtual conference.
Nevertheless, his bitter dispute with Ms Sturgeon, which has split the party and is currently being played out at Holyrood, will hang over the event.
The divisions between Salmond and Sturgeon supporters, which have been publicised on the back of civil and criminal court cases as well as the Holyrood inquiry, will be the elephant in the virtual conference rooms.
As ever, the other big issue will be independence.
For months there has been frustration from the
hardliners that the SNP leadership’s approach to the party’s raison d’etre has been too cautious.
A l r e a d y, those who believe the party should explore a Plan B on how to achieve independence should the UK Government refuse to countenance a second referendum have been disappointed that their proposal will not be debated formally.
And within the party, there is disagreement over the issue of when a second poll should be held.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, has said the party should plan for one as soon as next year.
Mr Sillars dismissed Mr Blackford’s suggestion as “stupid” and “playing to the gallery”, arguing that the SNP had to reset its economic case for breaking up the United Kingdom.
“We are going to emerge – hopefully emerge – from this devastating pandemic
with its devastating effects upon the economy and there will have to be time to try to repair everything before we start to think about having a referendum,” Mr Sillars said.
“The idea of having a referendum in 2021 is absolutely stupid and I think everybody with half a brain knows that to be the case.
“Playing to the gallery on the basis of a referendum next year does nobody in Scotland any good.”
As a priority, Mr Sillars suggested a fresh economic case for independence had to be made, arguing that the pandemic had made Andrew Wilson’s Growth Commission irrelevant.
Mr Sillars said: “There is a huge amount of work to be done that we cannot do at the moment and certainly won’t be done in 2021 as people try to stitch the economy back together.”