Alex Massie Alex Massie

Salmond Accepts Reality

A very interesting interview with Il Tartanissimo in the Times today in which Salmond accepts, quite candidly, that independence isn’t happening any time soon:

“The centre of gravity in Scottish politics currently is clearly not independence,” he admitted. “You must campaign for what is good for Scotland as well as campaigning for independence.”

A cynic – not that there are any of those around here – might argue that there’s a contradiction in that second sentence but, in this instance, a cynic would be unfair on Eck. It’s really quite rare to come across a politician being quite this candid about what is, after all, supposed to be his party’s reason for being.

Nor did this alarming outbreak of common sense stop there. Salmond wants to renew the argument, correctly in my view, for fiscal autonomy, since, as he puts it:

“It is really important, in my view, to be able to say to people how we can change the circumstances and increase revenue as well as decreasing expenditure.

“It is my job to come up with some answers, along with others. If you jump up and down nihilistically saying ‘dreadful dreadful, dreadful, cuts, cuts, cuts’, then I would be failing in my duty to the people.”

This is good stuff. Interesting too, since it suggests to me that Salmond has caught the national mood a little more accurately than Scottish, or indeed UK, Labour has. The coalition is winning (just) the argument on cuts and Salmond appears, in this interview at least, to recognise that.

There’s a political angle to this too. Next year’s Holyrood elections are going to be tough for the SNP.

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