Genuinely, can anyone tell us what the heck this actually means?
Because to us, it’s just meaningless quacking to fill a void.
It’s very short, so let’s transcribe the whole thing.
“I want to do spectacularly well in the 2026 election, that’s what my sights are on.”
Well, duh. And there was us thinking you wanted to get thrashed and end your career in humiliation. We’re not told what would constitute “spectacular” – though presumably at a minimum such a hyperbolic term would require some sort of improvement on 2021’s outcome – but perhaps the First Minister has lower standards, we can’t tell.
“I want to deliver a significant advance on my political arguments for independence in the 2026 election.”
Wait, what? A “significant advance” on your ARGUMENTS? You want to make your ARGUMENTS a lot better? You’ve been an SNP MSP for 26 years, been through a three-year campaign for an actual independence referendum, and more than a decade AFTER that you still haven’t got your ARGUMENTS together yet? What? WHAT?
“That requires me to do spectacularly well. So that’s what I’m focused on.”
Pardon? You can’t make your arguments unless you do “spectacularly well” in the election? That’s not the order politics works in, John. Typically, parties win elections BECAUSE they’ve made their arguments convincingly.
What if you DON’T achieve that? What if you do poorly, or perhaps only do quite well? That means you suddenly somehow become incapable of improving your arguments? Because what, your brain stops working if you don’t have a majority? You’re sulking at the electorate? What?
The Holyrood Sources event was not a white-hot crucible of interrogation. It was an extremely cosy, chummy couple of hours (bordering at times on toe-curlingly twee) with a stage full of political-bubble insiders, sponsored by a whisky firm providing the speakers and audience with free booze. (At one point Geoff Aberdein said “this is all far too jovial for my liking”, jovially, which met with a jovial response from everyone, and he then proceeded to fearlessly grill Swinney on whether he’d been vocal enough about his successes.)
Swinney’s comments weren’t the panic response of a man sweating under pressure. They were the words of someone who didn’t give a toss about making sense, because it won’t make any difference to anything, because there are still enough gullible saps out there who’ll vote for a dogturd as long as it’s got a yellow rosette on it, and who don’t even actually much care that there’s zero chance of achieving independence by doing so.
Independence now only just squeezes into SNP voters’ top three priorities, and it’s 20-odd points behind the stuff they actually think is important, as well as only fractionally ahead of the likes of education and social care. Mostly they just like winning, no matter how thin and hollow and meaningless the victory is in practice.
(Ironically, of course, most of the things they want doing, like sorting out the economy, are reserved and could only properly be addressed with the powers of independence.)
But the truth is that no outcome of next year’s election will matter to anyone except the few dozen people who pick up the fat Holyrood paycheques and pension contributions, and their assorted hangers-on they’ll get to employ and/or issue patronage to. Whether the SNP win a majority, win and run as a minority, go into some sort of coalition or other deal with Labour, or whether some unforeseeable apocalyptic event results in a Unionist government, nothing will happen that brings independence one step closer.
The SNP gave up on any pretence to the contrary a long time ago, so it should come as no great surprise that they can’t even be arsed to speak in coherent sentences any more. ARGLE BARGLE WARGLE FLARGLE, that’ll do for the mug punters.
And folks, that’s you they’re talking about.
