Westminster will never feel any heat from the FM's hot air and bluff
READ MORE: Mike Small: I pored over John Swinney's strategy – here's what we must do now
If this three-point plan is all we are to get from the SNP and its leadership between now and May 2026 then we are, at best, looking at ten or more years of trying, and increasingly failing, to make the devolution settlement add up. Scotland free by 2033, perhaps.
Council Tax will be unaffordable for many households while radical and practical solutions like Annual Ground Rent will continue to be ignored. Jobs in vital industries will continue to be lost and the wind turbines which increasingly dominate our landscapes will continue to export their electricity to our southern neighbours.
READ MORE: SNP must realise Yes groups aren't rivals – they're reinforcements
John needs to wake up and smell the Scottish political coffee. It has gone well off the boil in the past 10 years. SNP support is falling well behind support for independence and this latest three-point plan will do nothing to close that gap.
Apparently John is ready to 'turn the heat up on Westminster'. The last time I looked, [[Westminster]] had a massive Unionist majority – it always has and always will. They will never feel any heat from John's hot air and bluff.
It is clear that the SNP's message is "keep the faith and vote for us in May so that we can just keep on doing the same as we have been doing for the past ten years for another ten years at least."
John Baird
Largs
FRIDAY'S National devoted two full pages to 'John Swinney: Why I'm launching a renewed strategy for independence'.
I firstly had to wonder if John penned this article himself, or was it the product of AI and the efforts of one of the Scottish Government's small army of special advisers, then simply approved by John? It is clear that the renewed strategy is cauld political porridge reheated and served up to try and fill the empty bellies of Scotland's independence supporters who are desperately hungry, virtually starving in fact, for new initiatives with hopefully a wee sprinkling of inspiration.
I had to wait until I reached the very bottom scrapings of John's porridge bowl to find his scarce-in-detail three-part plan. The final 329 words to be exact. There are more words in this letter!
READ MORE: John Swinney's plan can't be the final word on independence
John claims that 'first, it will be a campaign designed to build the highest levels of support possible for independence as the best future for Scotland'.
This is welcome but it's nothing new. The SNP have been trying to do it for almost 100 years. The real problem for John is that SNP support is now firmly anchored well below support for independence. Some might even argue it is dragging it down.
Second in John's plan is 'building public pressure around Scotland's fundamental national rights. We are ready to turn the heat up on Westminster and its anti-democratic stance, mobilising the support, energy and the impetus of people in Scotland behind the simple idea: no ifs, no buts, Scotland has the right to choose'. This is fighting talk, just talk, but with the loss of almost all of the SNP's MPs just over a year ago, Westminster is not going to listen, John. The Scottish public need to hear what is the SNP's practical road map to independence – if they even have one.
The third point: 'The way to deliver independence is only with an emphatic SNP win' is simply longhand for "vote SNP on both ballot papers so that the SNP can try to manage devolution for yet another five years."
Is that the best we can hope for?
Brian Lawson
Paisley
JOHN Swinney is asking us to imagine this and imagine that. What the hell for?
It's a sure sign he is out of touch with Scotland. We don't need to imagine anything he is asking for. It might be in his imagination, but not ours. Just what does he think we have been doing since 2014?
We, the people of Scotland, know what we want. So it's time he got out of his SNP bubble and talked to us through a national public convention. This is the diplomatic way forward, just to remind him. Not a dictatorial set of notions of his own making.
And yes, I am still an SNP member.
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
READ MORE: Pro-independence politicians respond to John Swinney's strategy
I HAVE a lot of sympathy for John Swinney. I think fundamentally he's a good guy with an almost impossible job to do. There's no doubt he's improved the SNP position since he took over. He's a good manager, but as a radical independence motivating force ... err no, that's not going to happen!
I know it's been tried before (with the wrong people in my view ) but I believe John should appoint Stephen Flynn as indy minister. He already has a known media profile, he seems to have a bit of fire in him and is a bit of a disruptor. I don't know if that's a realistic possibility, but we desperately need someone from the [[SNP]] to be 100% dedicated to promoting the benefits of indy and the depressing reality of the union. We need someone to be working with other indy parties as a united front, someone who will attend rallies, etc. We need action urgently – time is running out, John!!
Colin T
Largs
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By the time Nicola Sturgeon resigned in February 2023, Forbes had established herself as a moderate, pro-business Nationalist who wanted the Scottish government to focus on prosperity rather than gender ideology, an agenda she opposed. Yet the prospect of the party moving to the centre, and especially of it being led by an evangelical Christian, prompted the SNP establishment to throw its weight behind Humza Yousaf, who was well-meaning but plainly not up to running a devolved government. In a straight fight, he would have been no match for Forbes, but instead the leadership contest was shaped by her internal enemies and the media into an inquisition on her religious beliefs. Journalists well-laden with secular prejudices delighted in making her answer for those verses of Scripture which scandalise modern sensibilities. To her credit as a Christian, but disastrously for a politician, she refused to lie or be evasive about her beliefs. When they asked her views on abortion, she told the truth. When they enquired as to her thinking about gay marriage, she did the same again. When they tried to corner her on trans rights, she was honest and took the punishment that came with it. Compelled to bear witness, she did so with her head held high, fighting the good fight and keeping the faith. It is one of the most personally admirable and politically suicidal decisions I have ever seen. In the end, she lost, though only narrowly, and was vindicated when her opponent swiftly proved as unequal to the challenges of office as she had warned. He inflicted so much damage with a programme of Continuity Sturgeon progressivism that, just 14 months later, his successor was drafting in Forbes as deputy head of the government to repair relations with the business sector, steer economic policy back to growth, and serve as the symbol of a new pragmatism. Despite our fundamental disagreements, I rate Forbes as a politician and a public official and said so regularly on Coffee House and elsewhere. This did nothing for her reputation among Nationalists. In fact, I know that it was used against her, and I'm sorry for that. Some regarded with bemusement, others horror, the sight of a gay Catholic Unionist simping for a Wee Free separatist, but the simping was not for Forbes so much as for the fleeting possibility that a leader of her calibre could get her hands on the controls. In a way, I should be relieved that she was sabotaged by the liberal bigots in her own party. If she had been half the first minister I reckon she might have been, she could have broadened the SNP's electoral coalition to the point at which independence became the consensus view across the electorate. She was a very dangerous woman for a time there, and might be again if she were to return after her children have grown up. The cynics will reassert themselves in the coming days, pronouncing that Forbes has seen the writing on the wall, that the SNP is finished, that she is hinting at her lack of faith in Swinney, that she had risen as high as she would be allowed to in a party thoroughly in the grips of identity politics progressives. Or, and I will tread lightly here, perhaps she truly values motherhood above career, one of the few remaining mortal sins in a non-judgemental age. Her fellow Nationalist Gail Ross did the same in 2021, admitting that five days a week away from her son was just too much. Not coincidentally, she too was a Highlands MSP, where constituencies rival small countries for square mileage. Labour's Jenny Marra, a considerable talent, walked away after ten years darting up and down the vast North East Scotland region. Family had to come first. Anglo culture is hardly alone in associating labour with fortitude and moral uprightness, but it is noticeably unforgiving of those who opt out in favour of raising children. Try to balance work and family but say you find it impossible, and you can expect to be chastised for failing at something so many parents do. The resentment is not for admitting you cannot manage but for forcing others to reconsider how well they are managing. I have sat in many a newsroom well into the evening, hearing bedtime stories read over the phone by loving parents who were wanted at home, and wanted to be there, but who were working late to give their children the best start in life. I'm not a parent, and maybe it's not my place to comment, but I know too many people whose fathers and mothers worked those hours, provided abundantly for their offspring, but now have no relationship with them. Their material needs were more than met but at the expense of other, deeper needs. No doubt Kate Forbes has made the right decision for her family but I can't help but wonder how many more families would have benefited from her making it to Bute House. Yes, she's hopelessly wrong about the constitution, but there's more to politics than policy. There's talent and character and leadership. We will have to settle for much less.
