Re: Will Scotland Leave the UK?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
(Post 35372071)
Question:
When the SNP hold the referendum, if they are beaten then the very thing they exist for has been removed from them.
Surely the need for the SNP suddenly becomes irrelevant?
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Not really ... Scotland's alternative party of government to Labour has got to be left-of-centre, because left-of-centre is where the centre ground of politics is in Scotland at the moment. The SNP is a left-of-centre party and this is the reason it was able to secure such a convincing victory in 2011. Alex Salmond is first minister despite his separatist agenda, not because of it. Note that while the Scottish electorate returned almost exactly the same General Election result in 2010 as they had in 2005, in the 2011 Holyrood election Labour got a serious kicking. Public opinion hadn't changed all that radically during those 12 months; it just shows that the Scottish electorate is rather more intelligent than it is sometimes given credit for and knows the difference in functions of Westminster and Holyrood and where a vote for one party in one assembly may be more valuable than a vote for that party in another.
If (when) the SNP fails to end the United Kingdom in 2014 it will be in a position of advocating the long-term aim of separatism whilst simultaneously being forced to acknowledge that the question can't be asked again any time soon (though I am certain they will start agitating to ask it again rather sooner than anyone else would like). Having set that aside I would expect them to continue to operate as a left-of-centre alternative to Labour with a policy agenda that seeks to set Scotland apart from England at every possible opportunity.
The thing to remember about Salmond is that, unlike many in his party, he is and has always been a gradualist. |
