Yesterday, the former chief of the Scottish National Party and husband of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was sentenced to more than five years in prison for embezzlement. This corruption scandal will be another hammer blow to the SNP’s authority.
Last week, a Scottish man went on an anti-Muslim rampage in Edinburgh, injuring five people as he ranted about “protecting our country from these fucking Muslim bastards”. We cannot trust politicians or the police to protect our communities from racist violence.
300 racist masked men rampaged through Glasgow last week. Parliamentary statements in Holyrood are not enough to clear this menace. They were met by 7000 anti-racists on the weekend showing the real balance of forces. This is the real way forward.
In Scotland, as across Britain, workers showed extraordinary discipline, solidarity, and initiative. They proved that without them nothing moves. More than that, they showed in outline how workers could begin organising society themselves.
Superficially, the Holyrood election results suggest that all is calm north of the border, and that the Scottish National Party are enjoying popular support. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Social and political instability lies in store for Scotland.
Elections for Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament, are less than two weeks away. Pollsters are predicting that the Scottish National Party may achieve an outright parliamentary majority. Will this put the question of Scottish independence back on the agenda?
Though many in Scotland will hold their nose and vote SNP this May, there is no enthusiasm for any of the establishment parties’ Holyrood candidates. Beneath the surface of this apparent apathy is a burning class anger ready to erupt.
Ahead of the May Holyrood elections, the ruling Scottish National Party is trying to make overtures to the Palestine movement. But for all the gestures of solidarity, the SNP will not be taking any action against the war machine or the capitalists complicit in genocide.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar recently made headlines with his calls for Keir Starmer to step down over the Mandelson affair. But it’s not just the Westminster parties mired in scandal. Both Scottish Labour and the SNP are part of the sleazy establishment.
With an unusually contentious Scottish Parliament election in May, the ruling Scottish National Party has thrown a few crumbs to working people in their latest budget. But these superficial ‘progressive’ measures won’t reverse the SNP’s declining support.
The SNP government is proposing to issue its own debt bonds in the near future, in the hope of funding public spending through extra borrowing. Far from providing sovereignty and independence, this will put Scotland more at the mercy of the markets.
Standing starkly at odds with the success of the Greens in England and Wales, several Scottish Green Party councillors and MSP candidates recently defected to Your Party – and urged others to follow suit. How do we make sense of this development?