Independence has been damaged by the current SNP, says veteran Sillars

“I said to Margo: ‘I’m finished. I can’t believe this is happening’. It was the worst performance I’d ever witnessed: utter mediocrity. For mediocrity to survive it has to kill talent. This was why there was an orchestrated attack on Kate Forbes and Joanna Cherry. Mediocrity has a vested interest in not having talent. That candidate is now a minister in the Scottish Government.”

My meeting with Mr Sillars occurs as my support for independence hangs by a gossamer thread. Why would anyone want to be associated with a movement led by a political party so full of impostors and charlatans that it has redefined our concept of what failure looks like?

Yet, a couple of hours or so in the company of this party grandee who memorably took Govan for the SNP in 1988 rekindles hope. It’s also a rebuke to those who, appalled by the stumbling and mumbling of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, believe that the role of older people in politics should be minimised. At 86, Jim Sillars is five years older than the American President yet his powers of recall, analysis and lucidity are characteristic of a man still in his prime.

Jim Sillars and Margo MacDonald (Image: free)

We discuss the Hate Crime Act. He refrains from apportioning blame or targeting individuals for the most failed piece of legislation in the history of British politics. Instead, he considers how it could have been made better.

“There is no clear definition of Hate in the Act,” he says. “They use the word ‘threatening’. Well, that’s actually common law where fear and alarm are also covered. The other words they use are: ‘abusive’ and ‘insulting’ but that doesn’t cut the mustard either.

“I’m in favour of independence but I come from the Westminster school of legislation where we did it word by word and line by line. I was taught by Willie Ross (Secretary of State for Scotland in Harold Wilson’s first Labour Government) who, according to a House of Commons clerk was ‘a master of detailed legislation’. If you’re impinging on free speech then you’d better have the highest bar possible. They’re building this Act on ambiguous words.”

Other men of a silvern vintage might spend their mornings arranging check-ups or, like TS Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock, measuring out their lives with coffee spoons. Mr Sillars has been drafting policy. He hands me his version of what Hate should mean: “Expression of dislike of such an intensity that it falls well outside the wide boundaries of normal critical thought.”

“Aye, it’s sharp, Jim,” say I, “but it’s still subjective.”

We discuss how this car crash came about. “Some good people sincerely believe that it’s merely a bad act with good intentions, but I don’t accept that. I think it’s quite deliberate that they want us to zip our mouths and eventually zip our minds so that we never say anything they don’t approve of. It’s got to be repealed.”

He laments the influence that the Scottish Greens have come to exert on the SNP and believes they’ve exacerbated the amateurism that’s come to settle across the Scottish Government like a blight.

“The Greens have done enormous damage to the SNP,” he says. “I think Patrick Harvie lives in a make-believe world of his own invention, while Lorna Slater is wired to the moon. And yet these two and the party they represent are driving Government policy.

“It’s about political judgment, or the lack of it. Nicola Sturgeon was short of one for a majority, yet if she’d asked people with a degree of experience she’d have been told not to worry. You have four opposition parties. The only thing you need to worry about is getting your budget through because after that you have huge executive power. It’s a matter of bargaining with all four parties.

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“You’ll get at least one of them to ensure the budget goes through. Certainly, there will be the odd bill where you might have to do a deal with Labour – or even with the Greens – but this is marginal stuff. You don’t need to put yourself in someone else’s back pocket as the SNP have done with the Greens.”

He asks me why I’ve losing the faith. “It’s the way in which Humza and his senior people have turned on their own people,” I reply, “making them out to be hate-filled knuckle-draggers. They’ve killed independence for at least another generation and sickened many others like me.”

He understands but says there is a way out of this. “If we’re to win independence, we must take a significant chunk of Unionist support with us. At present, Unionists looking at the current Scottish Government are saying to me ‘If that’s what you mean by independence I’m not buying it’. Many people have told me they support independence ‘but not if that lot are running it’.

“I think the SNP has lost its credibility as leader of the national movement. But if the membership can’t sort them out then the electorate will need to. This lot have never experienced adversity. And I wonder if they have the guts to come out fighting after a heavy defeat.”

How does it occur then that within ten years the SNP have gone from priding itself on civility and generosity of spirit to an organisation that fosters division and orchestrates campaigns of intimidation against some of its most able people? During the Hate Crime consultation they deliberately excluded formidable thinkers and policy-makers in favour of government-funded activists: like holding a World Cup without Brazil and Germany.

He cites changes to the SNP’s constitution. “I joined the SNP in 1980 when it unquestionably the most democratic party in the UK and probably in Europe. The senior people in the party had to be elected and they were held accountable. We had an executive that included senior office bearers. We had to go to National Council twice a year with written reports on what we had done.

“However, John Swinney began a process resulting in the current set-up where the leadership group has total power. The leader now personally appoints the Chair of the National Executive Committee which is now full of third-party organisations. Nicola has created a one-person party. This is reinforced by the way they gerrymander the selection of candidates for the constituency and the list. This is where the mediocrity starts.”

Jim Sillars and Margo MacDonald (Image: free)

He doesn’t agree with me entirely that many in the SNP’s current professional wing are less interested in independence than maintaining incomes and lifestyles that would have been well beyond them in the real world. “What I will say is that they seem to be unaware that their inability to be able to think deeply on policy and the mistakes they have made in governmental positions is extremely damaging to the independence they claim to adhere to. They don’t seem to be realise the damage they are doing to the independence movement.”

I venture to ask what Margo would have made of it. For a moment, a film of emotion flits across his eyes. A photograph of them together as a couple sits behind us. This week marks the tenth anniversary of her death.

“I think broadsides would be getting fired out of this house,” he says. “I’ve met three outstanding intellects across the broad spectrum of public life in Scotland and the UK: Enoch Powell was one. Leaving aside his views on race, he was an intellectual Rolls Royce.

“The others were Jimmy Reid and Margo MacDonald. Jimmy had an extraordinary mind and so had Margo. They were in a dimension different from everybody else. Underneath this roof we were equal, but she had an intellect that was far, far superior.”

IN MONDAY’S HERALD: INDEPENDENCE CAN BE SAVED BUT ONLY BY REMOVING THE SNP’S INFLUENCE ON THE YES MOVEMENT