Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

You're not pretty Andrew, I want my fiver :mad: :)

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

She's gone!

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Ding, dong …

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Internal SNP politics?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

There hasn’t been the merest hint of this in the Scottish media or commentariat, though those of us disinclined to be sympathetic to her have been aghast at the mounting pile of policy failures of the past two years. My guess now is that there is likely to be something significant in the Beeb describing the press conference as ‘hastily arranged’.

I’m going to take a wild guess that it’s health related. No matter how mediocre she has been at actually achieving anything in leadership she wouldn’t willingly do anything to derail their onward march to independence. The appearance of unity and well controlled party management is central to the SNP’s view of itself.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

I have seen stories of mounting discontent with the perceived lack of progress on independence from some sections of the SNP. They feel she didn't move fast or aggressively enough in pursuit of a referendum. She on the other hand seems to wanted to have waited until the polling numbers were better.

Maybe she is just sick of the job at this point?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

BBC Scotland’s newsdesk seems to have been bounced into actually doing its job and is now asking questions behind the scenes, and the emerging picture is that she has simply ‘had enough’.

The Scottish media collectively is absolutely awful at holding the government to account here so it is depressingly business-as-usual for us to know nothing about this and for there not to have been adequate coverage of the fact that the SNP (and more recently the SNP-Green coalition) is just crap at actually getting anything done.

If she’s spent 8 years slowly sinking the ship and now she’s going to try and do a St. Jacinda to gain public sympathy for her mediocrity then what little respect I have for her will rapidly vanish.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

The state broadcaster does an excellent job at criticising the government (ferries, gender, deposit return), it’s just so transparently biased it doesn’t seep through into mobilising voters in the direction they want.

My hunch is a bit from “internal party politics” and a bit from “had enough”. Independence parties win Holyrood elections, and the SNP wins Westminster elections at a landslide. It’s still not going to get independence over the line in the near or perhaps even medium term.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Only because the independence vote is concentrated almost entirely in one party whilst politics as usual is spread across three other ideologically distinct, unionist parties. But you knew that already. :rolleyes:

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

You’re assuming that once someone has crossed to supporting independence they’d never be tempted back. Something like a compelling vision for Scotland?

You probably knew that too. :rolleyes:

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Umm, no, I’m suggesting that the fantasy economics and sunny braveheart uplands they sold to the scunnered masses of west central scotland and Dundee in 2014 continues to have persistent appeal, especially as those same scunnered masses continue to see their living standards falling, their friends and families on picket lines and their GP insisting on phone appointments only. The SNP’s primary skill has been in the othering of the UK government and then making their supporters believe that everything that’s actually in the Scottish Government’s purview is actually the other’s fault.

But even in SNP Scotland, political mediocrity has a gravity all of its own. The gender reform bill/rapist-in-a-women’s-prison debacle, ferries that have cost more than 10 SpaceX rocket launches without yet having carried a single passenger, teachers on strike, meaningless targets for banning gas boilers and petrol cars, unworkable plans for social care reform and the Greens poised to tank the nation’s ability to sell bottled drinks … sooner or later people start noticing, and it seems her regular press conferences have become quite trying of late.

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

If the SNP are the benchmark for political mediocrity in Scotland yet still in Govermment (and will likely continue to be for some time, regardless of successor) that’s a damning indictment of the opposition parties, for whom you seemingly admonish their own uselessness by instead blaming the voters/media.

Almost every single issue you identify applies across the UK (while not ferries, there’s similarly flawed procurement. Bottle return is coming to England too. Although at least Starmer is finally capitalising upon the situation in the polls. Where/when will the unionists in Scotland step up?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Well, she’s on the telly now, desperately trying to channel the spirit of Jacinda Ardern.

---------- Post added at 11:19 ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 ----------

I’m unsure how you’re unable to see the magnitude of the problems on the SNP’s doorstep when the likes of Darren McGarvey are saying they have serious political issues which a change of leader won’t fix. (McGarvey’s by no means a unionist, though admittedly one of the few prominent Nats willing to question the official line that the SNP can do no wrong ever).

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

Yet I can’t find a single political party offering me solutions to any of them. Something which based on your own hyperbole around the subject should be quite easy for someone to do.

Can anyone, anywhere, name a Scottish Labour policy off the top of their head?

Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
 

:rofl:

She says the SNP is awash with talent and potential successors. Yet the polling says the most recognised of them as a potential leader is Kate Forbes on (wait for it) SEVEN whole percent. And 67% simply don’t know.