Weekend reading: informative essay on Sturgeon's SNP

 Further to our brief Scottish foray after the Supreme Court ruling ... here. Extracts: 

Where [Salmond] imposed his chaotic ego on issues foreign and domestic, [Sturgeon] had more strategic nous, crystallizing the party’s Europhile credentials in the wake of Brexit and consolidating its standing among Scotland’s middle-class Remainer majority ... Sturgeon engineered the destruction of Scottish Labour, lifting support for independence to record-breaking highs. Recently, however ... the semi-biblical belief in Sturgeon’s power has started to fade. [She] saw the 2016 Brexit referendum as an opportunity to de-risk, or de-radicalize, Scottish nationalism. From then on, the SNP moved to the centre in pursuit of liberal Remainers; the Yes campaign began to splinter and dissipate (thanks in part to a controversy over trans rights); and the prospect of a second independence vote receded.

... she will leave behind a threadbare political legacy ... pledges to scrap Council Tax and abolish student loan debt were ditched. In their place came a botched green industrial strategy, record drugs deaths and, potentially ... tens of thousands of public sector job cuts. In 2015, Sturgeon ostentatiously invited the Scottish media to ‘judge’ her on her record of eliminating the class attainment gap in Scottish schools. Nearly a decade later, that gap remains as vast as ever. 

... In 2018, the SNP appeared to concede that the era of petro-nationalism was over was by removing North Sea revenues from its fiscal projections for an independent state. But in her speech to the SNP’s annual conference on 10 October, Sturgeon abruptly repositioned oil at the centre of her vision for Scottish self-government. Tax receipts from remaining North Sea fields would be paid into an investment fund, she said, which would help kickstart Scotland’s economy during the early years of independence. The announcement eradicated what was left of Sturgeon’s meagre environmental credibility and reflected a ‘business-as-usual’ vision for independence.      

ND

Nicola Sturgeon is Mightily Relieved ...

 ... despite what the Beeb says, for the sake of form:

But she's a player.  She knows full well that an IndyRef2 run tomorrow would be a nightmare for her.  

If she "wins", WTF does she do then?  I can't see the EU rolling out the red carpet for her: it'd be cap-in-hand, multi-year negotiations - and with London, too, in parallel, haha! - with adopting the EUR as a red line requirement on the part of Brussels.  And who knows what else besides, with one eye on the Catalans.  Not as if they don't have any other distractions just now.

If she "loses" she's a gonner in Scotland, and the issue really does take a mighty setback.

Nope, she's only too happy to be throwing indignant strops and stomping around righteously demanding consolation prizes.

ND

Reality closing in on 'decarbonisation'

Returning from the annual Drew westwards foray - having gloriously reunited with C@W stalwarts from that neck of the (rather damp) woods - I find the wonderful story circulating of Wee Nicola being put on the spot by 'climate protesters' who'd like her support for their opposition to the Cambo oilfield development.

Her turn, then, to be skewered in the run-up to COP26.  Boris has of course already backed off fracking and that Cumbrian coalfield for reason of adverse green COPtics, but those English would-be developments have rather limited** strategic impact on the economy.  Rather different in the case of Cambo, because of course Wee Nicola wants the Scots to believe in oil revenues as the underpinning of their economy post IndyRef2.    To come out now as being opposed to all future oil & gas developments (and somewhat surprisingly, in Scottish waters there are plenty of those 'in the pipeline', so to say) is to slit her own throat.  They don't come much more strategic than that.

Haha!  The SNP spin-merchants will need to be pretty creative on this one, given that there's no end of troublesome leftie-greens lined up to needle her relentlessly.  What price a new SNP "green future" policy that will conjure 100,000 new jobs out of thin air, all faithfully promised to materialise starting, errr, 2024...

ND

___________

**Though not zero ...

Scorecard

The EC assume Parliament can steer the Britannia back to Brussels, and they'll not lift a finger until this has been tried.  So today marks the end of the phoney war (UK theatre).  What has Team Boris achieved up until this point?

1.  Some rather obvious stuff:  boosting Tory morale; obtaining the (fairly usual) honeymoon bounce in the polls; and presumably carrying out more concrete no-deal prep than Hammond allowed to happen in the forgoing three years.  All quite useful as far as it goes, but none of it sufficient to carry the day**

2.  Taken control of the agenda to the maximum extent possible (given that Grieve et al will have their day, one way or the other); made all the running; herded the opposition parties onto ground of Cummings' choosing; depressed a lot of lefties, and reinforced people's generally bad impression of Corbyn

Now it gets interesting ...

3.  Signalled from Day 1 that there's confidence aplenty on the GE front, making Corbyn shifty on the subject as Labour MPs hum and haw.

4.  Substantially neutered Corbyn's "unicorns for everyone" GE strategy (which did rather better than the Tories imagined it would in 2017)

5.  Signalled that the Gloves are Off (proroguing Parliament, firing Spads, hint at de-selection) 

On 3, it's not precisely clear whom Brenda from Bristol will blame for a forthcoming GE.  But Bren is exactly the kind of voter Cummings excels in reading, so we may guess he's got that one covered.  Heaven alone knows where the unicorn bidding war will go (4): but Cummings is pretty shrewd on the headlines he wants (crime, NHS, schools) and has staked them out early.  However, I don't see a decisive move on / from Farage (yet): and the Celtic Fringe aspects don't seem at all under control.  Extremely interesting that an 'Irish Unity' march in Glasgow caused rioting ... the fish-woman may have more on her hands than she'd realised.

Finally ...

6.  Gone a long way to get the benefits of what is often termed the "Israeli Nuclear Strategy", i.e. - yeah, but they really are mad enough to do it.

Gets even more interesting from here.

ND
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** of course, Boris' definition of "carrying the day" is something that many Brexiteers are deeply suspicious about.

Corbyn Makes His Move

You have to feel a bit sorry for Paul Mason: an intelligent, thoughtful & imaginative chap, basically honest, a bit didactic & earnest, much taken with some of Karl Marx's insights, groping around for a 21st C application for them, would like to be consistent ... but the Real World somehow doesn't fall as neatly into his categories as he'd eagerly wish.

So now Corbyn's made his move - well, a move, he had to do something now or be condemned to utter, contemptible irrelevance - and Paul would like to think this immediately confirms everything he's analysed and was hoping for.  "Corbyn has taken a brave step. Now he must rule out any ‘Labour Brexit’".   Hmm.  Let's see how much Little Paul's enjoying it a fortnight from now.

So what to make of Corbyn's roll of the die?  It's clearly reactive, and no great stroke, that's for sure: comfortably within anything Cummings will have considered.  Team Boris is still drawing everyone else onto the battlefield of its own choosing.  (Which, incidentally, makes all the sillier Mason's opening contention that "Corbyn just got inside everyone else’s decision cycles" - a reference to the thinking of the great John Boyd that will be familiar to many readers.)

I think we may assume Team Corbyn, rattled by initiatives coming from elsewhere (Lucas, Kinnock, Hammond etc) felt the urgent need to slap something on the table.  With a couple of blatant attempts to shield their SNP flank as a preparatory step (but weakening their own Scottish legion in the process), their own effort looks very much like an attempt at a low-risk, win-win, no-regrets type of affair.  If it works, and Jezza is wafted into No.10 by this strange backdoor method, well, he's in!  No telling what he might do with executive authority whilst pretending to be arranging a GE and an A50 extension. 

If it fails, well, Boris gets to crash out (as the Leninist / Stalinist faction always wanted) with only his fingerprints on the deed; revolutionary purity is retained; and maybe it brings down Swinson in the process as an added bonus.  Indeed, you'd have to say on balance they are hoping for and expecting the latter, because by insisting on Corbyn being PM, they've actually blown it from the start, as well they know.

Now Swinson: there's an interesting thing.  The Corbyn outriders are busily saying this'll be the end of her, what with rejecting the saintly Jezza overtures out of hand like that.  Now I have no particular insight into the LibDems (does anyone here?): but I'd say her immediate reactions were spot-on, and that she'll be infinitely less discomfitted by this - maybe indeed, not bovvered at all - than Lucas was by her mighty BAME faux pas.  Why would Swinson wish to submerge her position as leader of the largest unequivocally Remain group of MPs in Parliament for a bit-part in a complex Milne-plot?  (The SNP - a group that really can see some win-win possibilities - are clearly banking on No Deal followed by IndyRef2.)  It'll be Lucas, Fish-woman and Grieve who'll be squirming at being told what to do by Labour.

Meanwhile, Team Boris will be barely distracted.  Nobody shows any sign of getting ahead of them, or turning their flanks - still less "getting inside their decision cycle".  The fact that Corbyn has given up his distant reverse-slope position for a brief foray in the open, well, it's no great stroke.  Let him spend a few weeks in the woke version of a smoke-filled room with Lucas et al, and see how clever he feels at the end of that.

CU said yesterday that Sept and Oct could be fun.  August still has some life in it yet!

ND

Woe to the SNP: Sturgeon Wilts, Orchid Dies!

Yes, it's been an unhappy turn of events for Nicola Sturgeon.  Remember those happy evenings spent curled up on the sofa, flashing her knees and writing to Teresa May in big loopy handwriting?  Well, no more pen-pals.

We can tell she's a Bad Person, because she's let the orchid die!

ND

Waiting For Sturgeon's Letter. The Suspense!

As Continental Europe hyperventilates over whether May's Letter contains veiled threats (hint: yes, it does - and see part (2) here), we all wait for Nicola Sturgeon to complete her homework in her best loopy joined-up girl-writing.  As luck would have it, a photographer just happened to be in her lounge.  And she was wearing her Interview Suit!

This letter had better be worth it.

ND

SNP - Get yor act together at once and stop being such scaredy cats

Here we were last week, all* cheering on St Nicola and her handbagging of the evil Thatcher Prime Minister May. Everything was so good, it was even sunny and spring like in London.


What do we get just a few days later?


A wretched, confused and frankly useless diatribe at the SNP conference where no effort was made to guild the lily at all. Apparently there will be no challenge to a Second Project Fear and Scotland, if ever granted a second referendum will go straight into a terminal economic decline. Plus there will be no security or army and there will also be no currency - or at least none that can be guaranteed.


It is almost as if the SNP don't really want there to be a second referendum - as if instead this was some kind of Machiavellian attempt to wage an endless war of grievance on England.


No, I say, No -


1) Look to Brexit - PROJECT FEAR FAILED - there won't be an economic crash. The more one is confidently predicted, the less chance of this occurring.


2) Currency - pah - just use the Pound, it is not like you have any control of the Bank of England anyway. This is all deflection as the reality is no change.


3) Don't forget to threaten to welch on the debt, I recall they did actually scare the establishment last time.


4) Keep reminding Scots they have a Tory Government, it is a surefire winner in the long-run.


There is no chance of the SNP losing the next referendum, I just hope they can keep the courage of their convictions to push for one in 2021. Scotland declaring independence to rejoin the EU would surely be the cherry on the rather delicious cake of Brexit.


*(OK, this maybe a minority view)