Support for ALBA keeps adding breadth and depth as politicians from many backgrounds come to realise that we need Scottish Independence.
From the theft of our energy to power industry down south to the blight on our future represented by Brexit, the arguments persuade more and more people to join Alba in fighting for Scotland’s future.
Jim Sillars, who served as a Member of Parliament 3 times and rose to being Depute Leader of the SNP, joined the Wee Alba Book event last night in Edinburgh and joined Alex Salmond on the platform to deliver a powerful speech.
The national movement must now face reality: we are stuck, no nearer independence in 2023 than in 2014. If we don’t face reality, and change who leads us, stuck is where we shall stay.
The SNP Dundee convention showed why we are stuck: continuity of mistake, along with a dash of convoluted confusion; followed days later by the utter folly of Humza Yousaf volunteering to join the Euro — seemingly ignorant of the massive loss of sovereignty that involves. Swapping the Bank of England’s control of our monetary policy, for control by the European Central bank, and swapping Westminster government for the unelected, unaccountable European Commission, will keep us under someone else’s control. The very opposite of independence.
The mistake I refer to, was made by Nicola Sturgeon, now loyally followed by Humza. That is a failure to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. Our strategy is to gain independence by building a substantial majority to a level that the British state cannot ignore or thwart. Only then do we adopt a tactic, one of impeccable constitutional principle, a demand for a referendum.
For seven wasted years the SNP elevated a referendum as the be all and end all of Scottish politics. They have done so while support for independence has been a consistent minority. We are lucky the UK government didn’t, and does not, grant the Sturgeon-Yousaf wish, because we are in no position to win a referendum.
Our movement faces a double reality. Not only are we stuck, but we are in no condition at present to win over those unionist votes we need for that substantial majority. No longer can we trust the SNP government to produce the necessary geopolitical analysis combined with a coherent, convincing, economic case of how an independent Scotland will transform itself from a faltering, low wage region, to a nation able to win a prosperous position in a world where power, and competition, has shifted to Asia. No longer must we allow the path to independence be controlled by the SNP.
That task must now be taken up by the movement itself, through forming a single national organisation committed to producing the evidence that will convince our fellow Scots unionists of two things. First, that the British state’s crises, which means ours as well, is insoluble in the British context. Britain is broken and bankrupt, sustained at present by an international credit card it will find increasingly difficult to pay off. As the Daily Telegraph headline put it, over a column by Matthew Lynn: “Britain is a poor country pretending to be rich. “
Second, that if they, who have clung to the Union, are to escape from the continued decline and failure that is the fate of being “British”, their only escape from getting poorer is to join us on the road to independence.
Jim Sillars: Speech ALBA public meeting,
Edinburgh 7″ July 2023
(our emphasis).
There, in one sentence, Sillars sums it up.
No longer can we trust the SNP government to produce the necessary geopolitical analysis combined with a coherent, convincing, economic case of how an independent Scotland will transform itself from a faltering, low wage region, to a nation able to win a prosperous position in a world where power, and competition, has shifted to Asia.
The utter failure of the SNP to live up to its aims, to live up to the legacy gifted to it by Jim Sillars and Alex Salmond.
Simple, spare language with a clear, unflinching focus.
A lifetime’s experience of honing an intellectual argument, of making the case for Scotland.
No longer must we allow the path to independence be controlled by the SNP.
JIm Sillars
It is time for all those who believe in Scottish Independence to re-join the movement.
March with AUOB and ALBA in Ayr.
Or join ALBA and add your voice to thousands of others
looking to Scotland’s future, not the UK’s past.
You can view and download the Wee Alba Book here