The Scottish parliament returned from its Christmas recess today and held its first debate of 2023. Take a guess what it was about.
Yes, independence. Holyrood occasionally touches on other matters – the NHS, the educational attainment gap – but these are mere throat-clearings in a never-ending dialogue between the SNP government and its hardline followers.
This strategy, though counter-intuitive, has thus far proved pretty useful to Nicola Sturgeon: the more she gins up her supporters with talk of breaking away from the UK, the less they seem to notice that she hasn’t taken them a single inch in that direction in eight years as SNP leader.
Today’s debate was tired and predictable, both sides re-rehearsing the same arguments they’ve been re-rehearsing since 2014. However, one contribution stood out. It came from a first-term Labour MSP, Michael Marra. Unlike other opponents of independence, he didn’t dismiss that cause or its adherents. He addressed them with civility, as a firm but courteous opponent, and told them their leaders were taking them for a ride.
Here’s a flavour of his remarks:
Those honourable folk who favour independence have been sorely failed by their leadership. Despite the Cabinet Secretary’s rhetoric, there is a route to the destination that they seek.
Build a case, through honest deliberation and careful compromise, to allow the prosecution of the argument. Build a coalition of those seeking change. Build a consensus, a settled will of the Scottish people. Make it overwhelming.
That is how the case for devolution was made and how it was won. No one – no one – can seriously suggest that since 2014 that work has been done by the people in the positions to do it.
As you can see, Marra gives a good speech, a woefully rare skill at Holyrood. But what distinguished his words was their ability to avoid all the usual political and rhetorical traps of what passes for the constitutional debate in Scotland and to burrow instead directly under the skin of the SNP leadership.
With a pointed reference to the once-revered, since memory-holed Alex Salmond, he reminded the nouveau regime how far it had strayed from its predecessor’s competence strategy for winning independence:
How about proving the case through the successful use of the powers of devolution? Now that’s not my idea. Once upon a time it was the SNP’s strategy, of He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken, but what a sorrowful disaster that has been.
Our precious NHS in chaos. Our schools closed. Our universities steadily losing their lead. The worst drugs deaths on record in the developed world, five times as bad as the rest of the UK under the same drug laws. Long-term, sclerotic growth — now recession.
Crumbling infrastructure. Ferries that do not sail. Islands locked off from the economy. Our national language under imminent threat. An overwhelming feeling everywhere you go that nothing — nothing — is working as it should.’
This is not the case I would make against Scottish secession. I am far more of a Westminster sovereigntist than Marra and I have also become thoroughly scunnered with devolution. Yet, at a mere four minutes, his was one of the most cogent and compelling deconstructions I have heard of the SNP’s sales patter.
Nicola Sturgeon holds debates like these to distract her grassroots from her failure to achieve independence. If more of her opponents spoke like Michael Marra, she would never hold one of these debates again. In a few words of Dundonian declamation he landed more blows on the SNP than many others have in 15 years.
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