Chris

There are a couple of main reasons. First because they’ve been winning elections, which has allowed a personality cult to develop around those at the very top, and those personalities have been able to demand everyone else shut up and leave them to get on with winning. Second, because of a phenomenon called ‘wheesht for indy’ … a great many people within the nationalist movement have always known the SNP is amateurish and could see perfectly well that its record in office was patchy at best, but as it is the only mainstream party committed to Scottish independence there has been something of a self-imposed vow of silence about it all. They didn’t want to criticise the SNP because if the SNP’s reputation was tarnished it might lose power and that would set back the cause of independence for years.