| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:There could be trouble ahead... | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 25/09/14 16:28:00 |
Lol James. Actually Sam makes a reasonable point. The exponential growth of UKIP brought many attendant problems to that party. The limitations of the existing organisational structures that were in place rendered it incapable of properly monitoring and vetting new applicants, leading to many embarrassing officer appointments and candidate selections. Barely a week goes past when some new horror story doesn't emerge and the credibility of the whole organisation is thereby compromised. This is invariably what happens when internal development and training cannot keep pace with an explosive growth in membership numbers which can sometimes be down in whole or in part to external factors. I've seen the phenomenon in action first hand! Whilst the SNP will, I'm sure, have recruited its fair share of extremists, eccentrics and cat stranglers over the past seven days I would doubt whether it will face such difficulties on the same scale as UKIP. It is an older party, more established, with several MPs at Westminster and is by some margin the largest party in Scotland. For a very large proportion of the population independence has become THE major issue and the SNP is the only major party associated with that cause. The three main UK parties have presented themselves to the Scottish people as a bloc and there is a widespread perception amongst Scottish progressives - accurate in my opinion - that there is very little of substance that separates any one from the other. There is also an almost universal belief amongst pro-independence activists that the recent referendum was in effect "stitched up" by the Westminster elite. Personally I remain unconvinced by the evidence thus far gathered of ballot rigging on anything like a significant scale (although I would not for a second doubt the establishment's willingness to indulge in such if it was felt it could be got away with). Nonetheless few could seriously deny that the No campaign thrived on scare stories and fearmongering propagated by all three main parties through the good offices of an almost universally hostile media, and it has left a very bad taste. The SNP growth rate will eventually slow, probably at some point in the not too distant future it will even go into reverse. But Scottish campaigners are clear about what needs to be done to set the wheels in motion for another referendum, or for that matter even to demonstrate a mandate for a simple declaration of independence, and that is to achieve decisive political majorities in Scotland both at next year's general election and again at the Holyrood elections in 2016. So determined is this movement that even the radical socialist Tommy Sheridan and his party are urging Scottish people to join and vote for the SNP, and it is likely that the Scottish Greens will do likewise. This is much, much bigger than the UKIP thing in England and I've been astounded by how well thought-out and organised the whole movement has become in such an incredibly short space of time. If the major UK parties thought a No vote would kill off the SNP and the movement for independence they were guilty of a miscalculation on a monumental scale and it is amusingly ironic that the Labour Party, which took a shamelessly party-before-people approach to its campaigning in the referendum, may now end up without the Scottish seats at Westminster that were the whole rationale for its support for the status quo in the first place. |