Ah Luv Ma Cuuntry...

I was standing with a lady nationalist at the polling station a few years ago. I knew her slightly, and we got on quite well. We agreed on almost all policy areas: housing, schools, health etc. After a while I ventured the suggestion that, as we agreed on so much, it was silly that we were on different sides of the argument, and that we should be in the same party, cooperating to deliver the solutions we both evidently wanted. To which my new nationalist friend replied: "But ah luv ma cuuntry". The implication being that anyone who is not an nationalist doesn't love his or her country, and that somehow disqualifies the rest of us, the actual majority of Scots, from any political legitimacy.

Anyone who blogs on politics in Scotland has seen, may even have suffered from, the malignancy of the cybernats, those self appointed "luvvers o' ma cuuntry" who think if you don't agree with them you're a "quisling" (quisling is one of their favourite words). It's at its most blatant online, where the cloak of annonymity allows the vitriol to flow against traitorous unionists and other scum who don't think "independence" is the ideal solution to the problems of the people of Scotland. If you don't agree with them no insult is too extreme.

But the same attitude not unknown among terrestrial nationalists, if less honestly expressed. Prominent nationalists frequently imply that only they have care and concern for "Scotland". "Scotland's Party" is a common slogan from the SNP leadership and has been used for years, on and off.

Today I got my hands on the above SNP leaflet from the current Scottish Parliamentary Election campaign, and it continues the theme: "There's only one party that cares about Scotland" it says. The implication being that all the rest are traitors and quislings.

Is there any more graphic illustration of the arrogance of the minority SNP Party. At the last election they got less than 17% of the possible vote, but that's no barrier to their arrogance. If you are not with them, you don't have "Scotland" "at your heart", you are not a real Scot and your opinion is negligble and easly dismissed.
 
Heaven help us if they ever get round to actually running the country rather than living off the Union that they pretend to hate.

Many a slip....

Last week I published this post, showing that an IPSOS/Mori poll revealed that the SNP had caught up with and passed Labour in voting intentions for Holyrood. 

Today there is a new YouGov poll of Scottish Parliamentary voting intentions, commissioned by the Scottish Greens. Topline figures are;

Constituency: CON 15%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, SNP 32%
Regional: CON 15%, LAB 40%, LDEM 7%, SNP 26%, GRN 6%

Labour would get 59 seqats and be in a position to form a coalition with the Greens (according to some).

So. All is right with the world. Labour is back in a healthy lead, the SNP is languishing and the election is in the bag.

Not so, IMHO. The SNP has loads of money from Brian Souter and (I would predict) Tom Farmer, the religious lobby working for a Nationalist victory. Labour and all the other Scottish parties are struggling for cash.And, as Lord Ashcroft and the USA elections show, money buys votes.

There's a long way to go and many a slip to be encountered. If you ask me, the election will be close and getting out the vote will be the key to victory or defeat.