In years gone by lots of stories about the relationship between the SNP and corporate lobbyists have circulated.
But it is only when you put it all together you get a real sense of just how deep the process runs.
By laying out a series of examples, we begin to see the unity between the SNP leadership and the corporate establishment, importantly, at the expense of workers and their communities.
At present, Scotland has a lobbying register.
Fought for by a range of democracy organisations, the idea is to generate transparency between lobbyists and politicians by ensuring that such interactions are placed on the public record.
The system, however, contains all kinds of loopholes.
For example, say you were a lobbyist for Shell and wanted a conversation with a government minister, without it being recorded.
You could simply use the phone, and since it is not an in person meeting, it won’t be registered.
In 2020 alone, hundreds of meetings between multinational corporations and wealthy individuals took place with Scottish Government ministers. In a wide-ranging investigation the following was reported:
“Analysis of Scottish Government ministers’ engagements in 2020 shows that meetings, potentially of key public interest, were not in the register, including those between ministers and companies awarded multi-million pound UK and Scottish contracts to supply the NHS in the run-up to Covid-19.
“As these meetings took place by phone they did not fall under regulated lobbying rules, an exemption which means they don’t need to appear on the lobbying register.
Others in this category included meetings between ministers and the billionaire steel tycoon behind GFG Alliance, Sanjeev Gupta.”
Sanjeev Gupta, as it happens, has paid just £5 (five pounds) towards the acquisition of a Highlands smelting plant – with taxpayers financing the rest of the £330 million deal. The research also found that:
“…engagements with big business, including energy companies and renewables chasing Scotland’s booming renewables sector, dominated the diaries of several ministers.”
Let’s just think about this. The First Minister announces a National Energy Company in 2017.
Nothing happens. Then, in 2021, SNP members want to raise the issue again to add some urgency to the plan.
They vote overwhelmingly for the policy at their conference.
Again, nothing happens.
At the same time government ministers were having meetings, outside of the public record, with big businesses seeking to cash in on Scotland’s renewables industry.
This, of course, is packaged as a boon not for the multinationals, but the environment.
The Scottish Government are fond of greenwashing their big business partners.
Indeed they extend use of the word “green” as a passport to advancing the interests of the corporate lobby in a range of settings.
We see this through, for example, the Scottish Government’s embrace of freeports, rebadged as “green freeports”, but serving precisely the same function.
“Freeports” are bound up with the Tory incarnation of Brexit.
The are special zones that, as the TUC report, “sit outside the UK’s main tax and tariff rules, with lower regulations to attract investment and business.”
This means that once again the dice are loaded in favour of big business and against workers and local communities.
They are also loaded against SNP conference decisions which are effectively superfluous to events, as the SNP Trade Union Group noted in relation to the “green freeports.”
Sturgeon’s National Investment Bank for the common good of Scotland’s people has morphed into a tool for corporate business to capitalise on.
The “bank for the people” set up to make strategic investments for the common good, has morphed into yet another avenue for corporate Scotland to capitalise on.
Take a look at some of the corporate networks involved:
The Chair of SNIB is Willie Watt. Watt is an Advisory Board Member of Scottish Equity Partners, a private sector Glasgow-based investment consortia which is already investing in projects into which SNIB is investing.
Carolyn Jamieson is a Non Executive Director of the Scottish National Investment Bank and is also an Advisory Board Member of Scottish Equity Partners.
She is formerly Chief Legal Officer at Skyscanner.
Interestingly the new “Chief Entrepreneur” is also formerly a top executive at Skyscanner. Small world.
All of this fits neatly into the system of patronage set up around the leadership of the Scottish Government sprawling beyond the corporate sector and into wider parts of public life.
Thus, the Chair of the Economic Recovery Group, is also the Chair of Buccleuch Estates and is also Chair of the National Galleries of Scotland board, alongside Andrew Wilson of Charlotte Street Partners who is also the author of the Growth Commission, alongside Willie Watt who is also the inaugural chair of the Scottish National Investment bank.
The First Minister is perfectly positioned in this context.
Outwardly progressive, inwardly focussed on delivering for the corporate lobby.
Outwardly appealing, internally dictatorial.
In the world of the Scottish establishment the interests and concerns of the schemes which mobilised in 2014, and who then went on to deliver the SNP their political hegemony, are not on the agenda.
Parallels with New Labour are drawn. But this is only partially accurate.
This is why independence is an important part of the SNP formula, so long as it is never fully realised, and so long as the “campaigning” is run through political elites.
While the corporate lobby exercises a hundred times more power and influence than the SNP membership, the party hierarchy also comes down hard whenever the working class start to mobilise in their own interests.
They have shown they are willing to utilise Tory anti-trade union laws against striking cleansing workers in Glasgow.
Indeed, Susan Aitken, who wins the award for reintroducing the word “ned” into public discourse, is driving an agenda in Scotland’s largest “Yes” city based on a programme of massive privatisation.
If Swinney really did cut and paste Osborne’s business rate proposals for his conference speech in 2015, then Susan Aitken is a dead ringer for David Cameron.
In true “Big Society” fashion, the citizens of Glasgow are asked to do their own community cleaning in an initiative co-sponsored by McDonalds, who were given the green light for a new drive through in Toryglen despite concerns raised by local residents who fear the impact it will have on children’s health and traffic.
At the same time, the SNP led City Council has spent £10 million on private cleansing contractors in recent years.
“It beggars belief they are lining the pockets of private contractors with millions of pounds of public money while the city’s waste crisis keeps growing.
It would be far better if these monies were redistributed properly by investing in more full-time staff and better resources to help make our communities cleaner and greener.”
These processes, local and national, are furnished with a “quango class” composed of “influential bankers, retired senior civil servants, well-connected industry insiders, powerful chief executives and former politicians.”
As the cost of living crisis takes hold, Sturgeon is putting the focus on Westminster. But there is a hypocrisy here.
Because the SNP are gearing up to take on the public sector unions as their own Spending Review commits to a plan that will cut around 30,000 jobs.
At the same time, their strategy for independence amounts to box ticking.
In the end, the votes, money, activism and support for the SNP, drawn primarily from Scotland’s working class, has been funnelled directly into sustaining the architecture of the Scottish establishment.
That is the real crime the SNP leadership perpetuated against the people.
The disastrous Growth Commission, the Westminster government’s variant of “independence,” was brought together by Scotland’s premier corporate lobbying firm, Charlotte Street Partners, while the trade unions were excluded.
Charlotte Street Partners acts as a central cog between the leadership of the SNP and the array of business clients represented by the firm.
It worked behind the scenes with IHSL “the controversial private consortium set up to fund, build and run” the disastrous £150 million Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital.
Jonathon Shafi maps the influence of the corporate lobby in the governance of Scotland. The whole elaborate picture makes for a disturbing read.
The “Economic Recovery Group” set up during the pandemic, was led by the former CEO of Tesco bank, Benny Higgins, who is now Chairman of the estate of Scotland’s largest feudal landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch.
The council to advise on a ten year plan for Scotland to “unleash entrepreneurial potential and grow Scotland’s competitive business base,” included Sir Nick Macpherson, a former Treasury permanent secretary who advised George Osborne to reject a currency union during the 2014 referendum campaign.
The hotchpotch of word salad this apparently chaotic group arrived at, known as “Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation” has so far produced a couple of events which the press were excluded from, and the formation of a new post known as Scotland’s “Chief Entrepreneur” who is to be paid a salary of £192,000 for working just 8 days a month.
16 July 2016: Tommy Sheppard MP announced his candidacy for the Deputy Leader of the SNP
The experienced political activist and one of the hundred thousand new members said:
“We need to facilitate and lead a movement bigger than ourselves. There are arguments still to be won and they will be won by continually building alliances beyond the SNP. We need to involve as many people as possible encouraging them to play an active role in campaigning. We need to abandon our top-down party organisation and refocus our efforts on strengthening our basic units – the party branch – to include much more political discussion and action.”
His bid for the Deputy Leadership created a genuine, and long overdue debate about strategy for a second independence referendum.
Here’s his full statement:
“Over the past weeks I have been approached by a wide range of SNP members asking me to stand for the position of Depute Leader of our Party. After much thought I have decided to do so. Here’s why.
At this critical time in our nation’s history we have a window of opportunity, yet we still have much work to do in a short time. To be successful we need to use all of the talents of our party. I believe the job of Depute Leader is key to our success.
To achieve our goal of Independence our party needs to be even better at everything it does.
We’ve had some great election successes recently, but frankly our opponents have made it easy for us. We need to prepare for the challenges ahead, including IndyRef2 when it comes. That will be a far tougher test, and we need to be ready.
We need to revise how we do things, building on the massive increase in membership since 2014. Members are our biggest asset and we need structures that allow them to get more involved. They are central to our continuing success as a party and a movement.
We need to revise how we do things, building on the massive increase in membership since 2014. Members are our biggest asset and we need structures that allow them to get more involved. They are central to our continuing success as a party and a movement.
We need to prepare as many people as possible to play an active role in campaigns. I believe we need to refocus our basic unit – the party branch – to include much more political discussion and action. We need to spend money on professional organisers – at HQ and in a regional network – to support branch activities and members’ training. We need to bring together all our elected representatives – MPs, MSPs and Councillors – in coherent teams providing political leadership to our communities. We need to rethink how we make policy – involving as many members as possible in a continuous process.
To work, change must come from the bottom up via a swift but inclusive and comprehensive review. Working with other party officers and the NEC I’d like to lead that process, starting as soon as possible.
We have a superb leadership team in the SNP, each with a different role to play and collectively embodying a wealth of talent and experience. And the team is being tested at this crucial time, with so much going on around us, not least in providing the real opposition to the Tories at Westminster and protecting Scotland’s position in Europe. As Depute Leader I would complement and bolster an already strong team.
The Depute Leader needs to have a primary focus on swiftly and effectively developing our capability as a campaigning organisation, to better prepare the grassroots for the demands of politics in the digital era of the 21st century, allowing others the time to focus on the key jobs they are asked to do.
Finally, to win Independence we need to speak to all of our potential supporters. Those who have been working on this cause for decades, those like me who joined the party in the aftermath of the independence referendum, and those who are still to make the journey to Yes.
We need to facilitate and lead a movement bigger than ourselves. We still have arguments to win. And they will be won by continually building alliances beyond the SNP.
I still have a lot to learn: although active in Scottish politics for nearly 40 years, I’ve only been in the SNP since 2014. This means I can bring a new perspective to our leadership team. I don’t claim to represent new members, but I am fairly typical of those who have made a political journey in recent years, particularly from the Labour movement. I spent several years working in the Yes campaign building alliances with people across all parties and none. That’s a role we may need to revive, sooner rather than later, and as Depute Leader I would drive that forward.
I can bring a new perspective to our leadership team. I don’t claim to represent new members, but I am fairly typical of those who have made a political journey in recent years, particularly from the Labour movement. I spent several years working in the Yes campaign building alliances with people across all parties and none. That’s a role we may need to revive, sooner rather than later, and as Depute Leader I would drive that forward.
The discussion we will have on these key issues during this election will only strengthen the party, offering an exemplar of a healthy internal democracy in Scotland’s largest political organisation. And whoever wins will benefit from having the authority of the mandate an election offers.
I want to stress that I have every confidence in all the members of the current leadership of the party in their respective roles, and will continue to fully support all of the team no matter what the outcome of this election. That’s how we do things in the SNP.
My thanks to everyone who has encouraged me to stand. Your support is humbling and I confess I’m just a little daunted at the challenge. But I believe I am up to it. No person can achieve things by themselves. Winning independence for our country will need all our efforts. I hope that I can bring my skills and experience to the job and play a role inspiring and motivating our mass membership in the months and years ahead.”
Comment from aformer Branch member
“I believe we need to refocus our basic unit – the party branch – to include much more political discussion and action. We need to spend money on professional organisers – at HQ and in a regional network – to support branch activities and members’ training. We need to bring together all our elected representatives – MPs, MSPs and Councillors – in coherent teams providing political leadership to our communities. We need to rethink how we make policy – involving as many members as possible in a continuous process”.
This is the SNP achilles heal,the crux of the SNP’s inability to retain politically minded members who have either left the party or have become dormant members frustrated that their branch activity fails to engage in the political process failing to debate issues and consequently failing to prepare a stream of well informed future talent.
My own Branch experience is that cliques of well meaning individuals have often prevented or discouraged newer members from office bearer roles these new members being perceived as a threat to the Branch, rather than being accepted as a positive result of YES activity and warmly welcomed their new post Indy 1 ideas are not reflected in branch meetings or agendas. Active when electioneering yet stagnant in between.
I believe Tommy recognises this serious flaw and knows that it impedes progress nationally to win wider support for the Independence cause. The SNP structures of old failed to win in 2014 there needs to be change and reform if Indy2 is to be won.
But Sturgeon chose another path
Her preferred candidate and acolyte Angus Robertson’s favoured “modus operandi” centralised control was at odds with the membership campaigning organisation envisaged by Sheppard and he voiced concern that empowering the membership would breed disloyalty and create problems for the leadership. His views prevailed and he was appointed to the post of Deputy leader. From then on all Party activities would be managed by headquarters and information drip fed to the plebs.
Sturgeon sold Scotland to the Corporate lobby
The SNP leadership’s ruthless disciplining of the Party membership was instrumental in the unfettered transfer of influence and reach of the corporate lobby over government. A change accelerated under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon like no other government .
Standing on chairs in Parliament’s Sports and Social bar, a band of portly gentlemen are bellowing out Scottish folk songs.
A young barmaid, only in her early twenties yet a seasoned veteran when it comes to turfing out unruly Westminster soaks, approaches a new SNP MP and politely asks him to pack it in.
Words are exchanged.
Multiple witnesses allege a drunken ‘f— you’ is uttered.
Defeated, the barmaid retreats behind the bar to mocking male laughter.
So upset is she by the incident, she will leave her job a few weeks later.
A Labour wag reaches for his coat and sighs “They’re only just getting started.”
The conquering horde of Scots Nats have come to town and they are making themselves heard.
SW1 certainly expected the worst from the new SNP cohort.
As the Glasgow East MP Natalie McGarry puts it, “They thought we would come down waving flags, with our faces painted blue and white.”
Yet those preconceptions were not without substance.
An extraordinary, never-before-seen document written by disgruntled SNP aides reveals that even the party’s own employees have been horrified by their MPs’ behaviour for a while.
In their own staff’s words, this new Westminster group are described as “complete arseholes”
To find out whether the new intake are living up to their reputation, Westminster’s watering holes are the only place to begin.
The Sports and Social is traditionally a Labour haunt, earning it the nickname ‘Sports and Socialist’.
Just two weeks after polling day, to quote one Blairite boozehound, it had been ‘colonised’ by the Scots.
Such are their imperial ambitions, SNP MPs confirm with almost embarrassed smiles their plans to have it officially renamed the ‘Rabbie Burns Bar’.
At kicking-out time, it’s over to the infamous Strangers’ Bar.
A taxpayer-subsidised tot of Scotch here is just £2.55, yet despite the SNP’s arrival, the managers have not had cause to double their orders.
The man at the bar claims half jokingly “‘Most of them only drink champagne.”
His theory is that the £67,000-a-year MP’s salary is a considerable pay rise for many of his new punters, and that they are enjoying their newfound riches in style.
This is an allegation heartily rebuffed by ‘real ale man’ and Midlothian MP Owen Thompson, who is having beer from his local Stewart brewery shipped in and put on tap.
Bubbly or ale in hand, the terrace is a place where MPs forget the adversarial nature of the chamber and, their inhibitions loosened, have a good gossip with politicians from other tribes.
Not so the Nats, of whom one rival party hand complains they, “all stand together in a huddle by themselves, not talking to anyone else.”
A case of dour Scots?
Natalie McGarry insists she has had “a good bit of conversation” with “amenable” Labour colleagues, but that while, “some Tory MPs are unfailingly polite, some of them are stuck up their own bahookies.”
I barely have time to ask how one might spell that, before she is telling me what happens when the SNP stick to non-alcoholic beverages.
McGarry recalls, “a cabinet minister came up to us and said fruit juice? I would have thought you Scots would have been on the booze.”
In an example of Westminster Jockophobia, she claims the minister’s aide then turned to her boss and sneered, “Now they’re here we’ll have to start nailing things down.”
There are eight new SNP MPs under 30, and the younger generation have quickly taken over Westminster’s premier 3 a.m. dive, the Players Bar in the Charing Cross Theatre.
When 20-year-old Mhairi Black is not wowing the House with her eloquence, she is impressing revellers on the dance floor.
A fellow clubber reports, “She was a bit reserved early on, but that’s understandable.
She was dancing away with the rest of us by the end of the night.”
Black’s colleague Stuart Donaldson, the 23-year old MP for West Aberdeenshire, has meanwhile undergone something of a transformation.
An admiring colleague laughs and says, “He was the most socially awkward person here when he first turned up.
Now you never see him without his harem of attractive blonde girls.”
He would not be the first Honourable Member to find the trappings of power have improved his success with women, but he might be one of the youngest.
And after a night out, where do the SNP regiment go to lay their weary heads?
The highly rated Argyll and Bute MP Brendan O’Hara warns, with a hint of irony, “the last thing you want is folk swanning around Belgravia on the taxpayer.
O’Hara himself is taking advantage of gentrification, “I’m down in Elephant and Castle. I lived in London in the 1990s and it had an awful reputation. Someone said to me, “Look at Elephant and Castle,” and I thought, “Oh I don’t think so.” But what a transformation! What you could get in Glasgow for your IPSA [expenses] allowance here, well you could get anything you want. It’s remarkable.”
Ginger-bearded Owen Thompson is a Midlothian man at the weekend, but during the week he lives in Kensington.
He tells me of his initial shock at being quoted a price of £350 a week for a high-end property in west London, but was chuffed to haggle £25 off the final price: “Doing my bit for the taxpayer.”
Early hopes for flat shares between laddish MPs petered out, leaving much of the new contingent dotted around Vauxhall and Kennington.
O’hara explains, “almost everyone I know lives within walking distance of Parliament.”
A Tory source recounts recently bumping into Stuart Hosie, the SNP deputy leader and Westminster veteran outside the Scot’s ultra-luxury apartment at Great Minster House, where a flat can fetch up to £6 million. “Even I can’t afford to live here,” exclaimed the envious Tory, to which Hosie protested: “It’s a shoebox!”
Other than the cosy living arrangements, what has been the biggest surprise?
Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North gushes about the ‘good value’ of the subsidised Commons cafeteria.
Outside of the Parliamentary estate, the Nats have been a little more adventurous.
Natalie McGarry is outed by colleagues as the organiser of an SNP team dinner at the upmarket Cinnamon Kitchen in the heart of the City.
The sister restaurant of Westminster’s opulent Cinnamon Club, the Kitchen’s extensive menu offers spiced red deer for £29 and Pinot Noir at £100 a bottle.
Forty-five out of the 56 SNP MPs attended.
O’hara admits,”this isn’t a change of job, it’s a change of life,” and for him the most difficult adjustment has been the Palace of Westminster itself. He says. “Labyrinth doesn’t begin to describe it I find myself running up staircases and wandering around for hours thinking, How do I get back? I’d love to get into the mind of the architect.”
For McGarry, the change in climate has caused more serious concerns, “I woke up one morning and I had massive lumps all over me! I went into a tailspin thinking I had bed bugs, so I went to the nurse. She just scoffed at me.”
Had moving 400 miles nearer to the equator left her susceptible to tropical diseases? The Nats were expecting plenty of bite south of the border, but they had not bargained for mosquitoes.
Watching them sip champagne on the Commons terrace and hearing about their fine dining and luxurious flats, one cannot help but feel the SNP’s new intake are already becoming the very metropolitan elite they claim to despise.
Owen Thomson admits, “there is a real danger with that. It is absolutely in your face all the time. I hope we’re not showing we’re all getting caught up in the establishment.”
McGarry cautions, “You could get into bad habits. I think people could get swept into the Westminster state of mind. It is “not healthy” to ‘socialise too much.”
O’Hara disagrees, insisting, “it’s really important that we don’t go around as a tribe and that we get to know a lot of people down here.”
Jan 2017: Use of Gathered Data – Analysis of Petition Outcome
I compiled an analysis using information available to the public and produced a predictive 2017 election outcome.
Electorate totals were included and a percentage signatory total was established for each constituency. From that I used the mean figure of 3.75% to forward project the outcome of an Independence referendum.
The figures suggested that from an electorate of 4,021,203 the outcome of another referendum would result in a: 48.00% “Yes” vote in favour of independence with 52.00% preferring to remain with the Union.
This was important information which if used wisely would allow effective forward planning electioneering strategy.
As expected Edinburgh, Aberdeen, East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire recorded higher than average figures favouring remaining with the Union.
Jan 2017 General Election Calton Jock forecast
The General Election in Scotland will not be a re-run of the 2015 General Election and the landslide victory achieved by the SNP cannot realistically be achieved.
My analysis suggests 25 seats might be lost to the Tory Party.
Significant SNP financial resources and additional teams of activists will need to be deployed in force in the under-noted constituencies otherwise they may be lost.
This group of seats are marginals – risk decreases as the % number drops:
71749: Edinburgh West, Michelle Thomson MP : 4388-6.12% Lost
69982: East Renfrewshire, Kirsten Oswald MP: 4241-6.06% Lost
66966: East Dunbartonshire, John Nicolson MP: 3977-5.94% Lost
73445: West Abdn, Stuart Blair Donaldson MP: 3961-5.40% Lost
80978: Edinburgh North & Leith, Deidre Brock MP: 4280-5.29% Held
66208: Paisley & Renfrew, Gavin Newlands MP: 3158-4.77% Held
68875: Argyll & Bute, Brendan O’Hara MP: 3277-4.75% Held
62003: North East Fife, Stephen Gethins MP: 2937-4.74% Held
67236: Stirling, Steven Paterson MP: 3175-4.72% Lost
77379: Ochil & Perth, Tasmina-A-Sheikh MP: 3645-4.71% Lost
79393: Gordon, Rt. Hon Alex Salmond MP: 3711-4.68% Lost
68056: Aberdeen South, Callum McCaig MP: 3618-4.65% Lost
79481: East Lothian, George Kerevan MP: 3676-4.63% Lost
72178: Edinburgh S-West, Joanna Cherry QC: 3283-4.55% ) Held
72447: Perth & N-Perthshire, Pete Wishart MP: 3033-4.19% Held
71685: Moray, Rt. Hon Angus Robertson MP: 2995-4.18% Lost
78037: Lanark & Hamilton-E, Angela Crawley MP: 3272-4.19% Held
74179: Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk: Calum Kerr MP: 3026-4.08% Lost
86955: Linlithgow, East Falkirk, Martyn Day MP:3570-4.11% Held
68609: Banff & Buchan, Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP: 2772-4.04% Lost
73445: W. Abdn, Stuart-B-Donaldson MP: 3961-5.40% Lost
71685: Moray, Rt. Hon Angus Robertson MP: 2995-4.18% Lost
68056: Aberdeen South, Callum McCaig MP: 3618-4.65% Lost
The 2017 General Election and the resurgence of the Tory Party in Scotland
The 2017 General Election in Scotland first exposed Scottish voters to “data mining”. A new form of politics imported from the USA, providing tools and profiling information allowing Tory candidates to communicate personally with their prospective constituents.
The benefits were astounding. The Tories gained a stunning result, increasing their MP’s from 1 to 13 in total.
Pollsters were flabbergasted at the turnaround in the voting since the SNP appeared to be invulnerable.
But Tory candidates had been well briefed about the individual targets within their constituencies. The new voting strategy used predictive data models which identified, engaged and persuaded swing voters to turnout.
This was achieved through the use of internet, phone and personal surveys combined with many other data sets, created by teams of contracted data scientists, psychologists and political consultants allowing the campaign to map the Scottish electorate based on ideology, demographics, religious beliefs, strongly held opinions on key issues e.g. Independence, the Orange Lodge, Celtic, Rangers, The SNP and or political personalities.
The information gathered provided Tory campaign strategists with a predictive analysis based on thousands of data points on just about every voter in Scotland.
From that teams of political consultants and psychologists, hired by the Party directed the campaign and candidates on what and how to say it to selected groups of voters.
Other voter targeting, included use of Facebook adverts, one to one scripted phone calls and provision of the content of messages for door-to-door canvassers ensuring consistent communication with voters on any issue.
What won the day for the Tory party in 2017 was that they utilised “data mining” to gain a comprehensive understanding of the Scottish electorate and then used every communication aid available facilitating discussions with voters about matters important to them as individuals.
Throughout the campaign the Tory tactic was to constantly broadcast the “no new referendum” message in the “no” constituencies stressing the major difference between the Tory and any other candidates firmly imprinting this in the electorate’s minds.
In contrast the SNP campaign lacked inspiration. It was poorly directed (Murrell deliberately starved “at risk” constituencies of financial and other resources) and failed to get the SNP voters out.
Information is power and the incompetent SNP strategist, Peter Murrell, was outwitted by the Tory Party.
Had he been the chief strategist of any political party other than the SNP he would have been given his marching orders.
Incredulously the First Minister, (his wife) awarded him a massive pay rise and an extended contract.
The LGBTQ group proposed that the SNP’s eight regional lists for the Scottish parliamentary election should include either a *BAME or a disabled candidate in the top place,.
Four regions would be allocated a BAME person and the other four a disabled person.
The proposal carried the commitment that disabled status would be by self-identification with no confirmatory checking being carried out.
Members in attendance believed it would be illegal to adopt the proposal under the equalities law.
The matter was deferred and referred to the Party’s legal counsel, Jonathan Mitchell QC who warned that the policy was legally dubious and open to challenge in the courts and any case brought by a person disadvantaged by the rule would probably succeed, and cost the SNP maany thousands of pounds in legal expenses.
But the LGBTQ group insisted the proposal should be decided upon by the NEC.
The Chairperson, Kirsten Oswald decided to put the matter to the vote.
The vote was tied and it was expected that in compliance with accepted practice the Chair would cast her vote for retention of the status quo.
She didn’t and passed the motion placing the Party at great risk of legal and costly claims of discrimination.
Forget the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. The new utopian master plan is about to unfold in Scotland.
This year, we will celebrate the 34th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thanks in no small part to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union went away peacefully, almost without military incidents. A new era of freedom and prosperity reached new lands across the world.
Many of us thought that we would never see totalitarianism again. But the more time we put between ourselves and the country that President Ronald Reagan referred to as the “evil empire,” the weaker the memories of tyranny become.
Perhaps this is why, in Scotland, a new government initiative can pledge to completely rewrite society—with government master planning—travel restrictions on private citizens, workforce dictates, and an end to free enterprise.
Much like the communists of the early 20th century, the Scottish government aspires to completely transform society—whether people like it or not. However, unlike the communists who led hundreds of millions of people into a Marxist economic utopia, this time the people will be led by green bureaucrats.
Scotland is going to become a perfectly environmentally friendly society. The greenocracy envisions a brave new world so virtuous that nobody can refute it.
At the same time, once you examine the plan a little bit below the shiny, green surface, it comes across as entirely unachievable—at least under a democracy that respects individual and economic freedom. This, however, should not surprise anyone: un-achievability is an essential component of every utopia, the path to which requires the citizenry to give up their freedom.
If this new greenocracy gets what it wants, Scotland will aspire to become a recyclable North Korea. Since that is as unrealistic as creating the worker’s paradise was under Kim-Il Sung, the Scottish masterplan will require its citizenry to submit to three generations of benevolent expert rule. The Scotsmen will be asked to participate in a new, full-scale socioeconomic, utopian experiment, led by the enlightened few whose privilege it is to understand what the end product will be.
According to their ideological masterplan, these greenocrats claim that it will take some 20 years before the full brilliance of their efforts will be apparent to everyone. Until then, buckle up (but not in your private car—it will be phased out), bow your head, and join the long march.
There are, of course, many differences between Scotland’s green virtue crusaders and the red virtue crusaders of yore. For one, the former do not seem ready to resort to the kind of violent tactics that the latter used in order to impose their benevolence on their fellow citizens. The greenocrats have chosen another path: a master plan that carefully mixes politically correct terminology with seemingly analytical verbiage.
Part 1 of the https://www.transformingplanning.scot/national-planning-framework opens with a shower of virtuous verbal emoticons. The world, they say, “is facing unprecedented challenges under a global climate emergency.” Within the opening paragraph, they throw in “climate change” and “nature crisis,” as well as “cost crisis” and “longstanding inequality.” Interspersed among these psychological trigger terms are calls to action: the Scottish people “will need to respond” and “work together” to bring about the utopia where all problems are solved.
The substantive difference between the Scottish green crusaders on the one hand, and communists or Nazis on the other, is the focal point of the negative emotions. Where communists appeal to hatred against the ‘bourgeoisie’ and Nazis stirred up rage against the Jews, the aspiring Scottish totalitarians stir up fear. They want people to be so afraid of economic inequality and a climate collapse that they will never, ever question what the greenocrats will require of them.
By rallying people based on fear, they hope to insulate their master plan against mentions of the hundreds of experts who have dismissed the so-called climate emergency. They hope that nobody will have the courage to explain that there is no data to support the climate catastrophe hyperbole. This is not surprising: the purpose of an ideological master plan, regardless of what ideology produces it, is to steer clear of scholarship, analysis, and rational inquiry. The purpose is to turn off the functions of reason in people’s minds.
All the greenocrats want is a big enough emotional investment from the populace so that they will obey and follow their leader, regardless of what recyclable environment he leads them into.
We will plan our future places in a way that improves local living, so that we live in communities that are inclusive, empowered, resilient, safe and provides opportunities for learning. Quality homes will be better served by local facilities and services by applying the principles of local living to development proposals. The concept of 20 minute neighbourhoods will help support this, particularly in more urban areas.
This paragraph is a blueprint of what awaits the Scottish people if this master plan is implemented. The concept of 20-minute neighborhoods is far more frightening than it seems to be in this innocuous piece of text. A couple of commentators, such as Hot Air and Big Issue, have written informatively about it, but its ideological significance, and its full totalitarian meaning, has yet to be explored.
The neighborhood concept is a planning tool for the total reconfiguration of the way Scotsmen live their daily lives. Its purpose is to guide government, presumably at all levels, through a process that physically changes the layout of cities, towns, and even rural areas around Scotland. Although it is not spelled out in the National Planning Framework, it is made pretty clear between the lines that the geographical, or, to use the plan’s word, “spatial,” re-planning of Scotland’s economy and social life, must be done by the use of government force.
If people have a say in the process, specifically, there is a risk that they reject the plan. If they do, we are led to believe, then the Earth’s climate will collapse. Since Scotland is responsible for saving the world, it is unwise—is it not?—to let the people have too much to say about the master plan.
As I explain in Democracy or Socialism: The Fateful Question for America in 2024 (see in particular pp. 11-16), Russian revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin thought it was so important to reconfigure Russian society in the image of his ideology that the very criticism of his communist master plan was made a crime.
How far along the path to a ban on ‘opposition’ will the Scottish greenocrats go, in order to put their plan to work?
To see just how totalitarian this plan is, let us take a closer look at their 20-minute neighborhood concept. To take a random example, suppose you live in the Stenhouse neighborhood of Edinburgh. The border of your new neighborhood is a 20-minute radius, measured by an average ride by bicycle, from your home:
Sustainable transportation, including electric buses and “high quality walking”;
Shopping;
Health care and social services;
Childcare and schools, including “lifelong learning opportunities”; and
Employment.
This list is not exhaustive, but already here we have items that raise prominent questions about how the master planners intend to create their new, ideologically correct neighborhoods.
At the top of their list of challenges is the employment part. How are they going to guarantee everyone a job within 20 minutes of their homes?
Personally, I am particularly concerned about all the younglings who graduate from university with a gender studies degree. Will the master planners be able to guarantee them jobs within their field of expertise within the 20-minute circle?
There is another option. The greenocrats can adjust the labor force to the employment needs identified by the master plan. That would be a model much like the one described by the late American economist Emily Clark Brown in her informative article “The Soviet Labor Market” (ILR Review, January 1957).
The workforce is not the only part of the neighborhood economy that needs planning. Since people are promised shopping and health care within the 20-minute range, the new utopia must also secure everyone’s access to groceries, dentists, clothes (including shoes for “high-quality walking”), bicycle repair, barbers, therapists, home electronics, flowers, eyewear, brain surgery, and home improvement items.
The master plan calls for everyone to have “lifelong learning opportunities” within their neighborhood. That is good news: students will no longer have to move far away from their parents to attend university. But wait—it seems a bit overly ambitious to secure everyone’s preferred university degree within 20 minutes of their home. What about those who do not live close to the fine academic institutions in Glasgow, Stirling, or St. Andrews?
By now, it is clear that Scotland’s National Planning Framework will match the central-planning ambitions of their Soviet brethren. They cannot leave it to private entrepreneurs to open grocery stores, or fashion boutiques for that matter, with the desired density across both urban and rural Scotland. Inevitably, some entrepreneur is going to say that the market for his particular products is too small in East Kilbride or Stornoway.
At that point, the greenocrats will have no other option but to take over.
When they do, they will have their hands full. Here is more of what they want in every 20-minute neighborhood:
Public bathrooms;
“Playgrounds and informal play opportunities, parks, green streets and spaces, community gardens, opportunities for food growth and allotments, sport and recreation facilities”; and
So-called affordable housing.
In other words, everyone will have a vegetable garden of their own within 20 minutes of a home they can afford. If their neighborhood does not offer enough homes that anyone can afford, the government planners will use whatever power they need to make sure that those homes are there.
All this, they promise, while securing anyone’s access to “playgrounds … parks, green streets and spaces, community gardens … and recreation facilities.”
Perhaps the greenocrats are planning to seize private homes with more than one bedroom and turn them into multi-resident homes? Then they could allot living quarters based on what they deem a person needs, presumably along the lines of how this is done elsewhere.
But are we not being a bit too tough on the Scottish greenocrats? Maybe their 20-minute neighborhoods are not limited by a bicycle ride, but by mass transit. A bus moves at 12-14 miles per hour, so let’s say that in a car-free Scotland, those buses can reach an average speed of up to 15 mph on their routes.
Suddenly, the 20-minute neighborhood expands:
Who would not be able to find a job of their dreams, affordable housing, or a good law school to attend, within the red circle? Of course, things change a little bit if you happen to live in other parts of Edinburgh, like Danderhall or Leith, but if the greenocrat master plan says you can still get everything within a 20-minute bus ride, then what can you do but trust them?
There is one more thing with this plan: It wants Scotland to become a “circular economy.” How do the master planners intend to recycle the batteries from all the EV buses they are going to need?
A very optimistic outlook suggests that it will take until 2050 before we can even recycle 22-52% of the metals in EV batteries. The Scottish greenocrats want their 20-minute utopia up and running by 2045; even if they wait five years, they still have to throw away most of the metals in worn-out bus EV batteries.
Will they have toxic-metal scrap yards within 20 minutes of every bus garage?
Sven R. Larson is a political economist and author. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from Roskilde University, Denmark. Originally from Sweden, he lives in America where for the past 16 years he has worked in politics and public policy. He has written several books, including Democracy or Socialism: The Fateful Question for America in 2024.
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