8 may 2011, scotland the brave

Several reactions to my blog yesterday, under the impression that the scottish national party was of the far-right; forgiveable because of its name and that I have a strong opinion about such parties (see 26 march 2011). I was under the same impression an era ago when I remember a scottish friend of mine saying he'd voted for them, and I, and indeed the whole crowd, reacted incredulously. In fact, the snp is very much leftist, though it is the other part of its ethos that seems to dominate, namely nationalism. That is why it's european parliament affiliation is the ineffectual ragbag of the european free alliance and it's magazine called independence. That is the issue that has always fired up its activists, until recently when many seem to have come along for running a better, scottish, government. Until now they could always, justifiably, say we can't pull off a referendum. Now, with a parliamentary majority, they have no excuse and have already now committed. However charismatic their leader though, my guess is that more people voted for a better government than independence, and the referendum is unlikely to break out of the solid 30% or so of the population that has always supported it. This will, I suspect, go down the road of quebec, where for a decade or two there were several referenda, but no yes vote. There's a lesson there for the snp, because finally, a decade after it lost its initial raison d'etre, this week the bloc québécois was virtually wiped out. The snp are at the start of their dominant period: they need to use it well.