My very good friend, George Galloway – the Brian Clough of British politics – made a startling declaration on his Twitter/X account last week. Mr Galloway – like him or not – has never let his political ambitions get in the way of his political beliefs.

This, of course, is a direct contravention of the ethics that currently govern the UK Labour Party. Had Mr Galloway subjugated his conscience to his career ambitions then, he’d probably have taken his place among all those Labour MPs who have watched in silence as Sir Keir Starmer recalibrates the Tories’ austerity drive.

Mr Galloway wrote this on his Twitter/X account on Friday evening: “You COULD persuade me to Scottish Independence, you could never persuade me to the SNP.”

During the first referendum on independence, the former Labour MP who held Glasgow Hillhead and Glasgow Kelvin between 1987 and 2005, conducted a nationwide speaking tour to campaign against Scottish independence. Thus, his admission that he might yet be persuaded of the case for independence is rather stunning.

I feel though, that his views on the SNP are shared by many who have been duped by this party of frauds since Alex Salmond resigned the leadership.

Having been annihilated in July’s UK election, SNP principles have been slyly stepping forward to lower expectations of a second referendum. Indeed, their MSPs virtually distanced themselves from the party’s core purpose by voting against Ash Regan’s proposal that Scottish voters be given the chance to back independence in the regional vote for Holyrood in 2026.

Effectively, the party’s professional and career wing have now declared that the independence era is over.

Nat the way ahead

Of course, as recent opinion polls show, there remains an appetite for Scottish independence. It’s just that, similar to George Galloway, those of us who will always believe that Scotland should run all its own affairs, know that the SNP have become the biggest hindrance to achieving this.

Given the choice, many of us would probably think long and hard about voting Yes if it meant that the political fraudsters and chancers currently directing SNP policy were in charge of a newly independent Scotland.

I have a suggestion though, and I think that such as Kate Forbes, Fergus Ewing and Joanna Cherry need to think about this. These three are among the very few remaining voices in the party who can walk and talk at the same time without making fools of themselves.

Kate Forbes MSP

Given that their party has declared an end to the struggle for independence, surely now is the time to dismantle the SNP and start again. Ms Forbes and Ms Cherry have both been targeted in the most egregiously cowardly and misogynistic manner by the extreme gender cult that has destroyed anything the SNP once stood for.

They know – and so do I – that this campaign was orchestrated by the leadership at Holyrood and Westminster. They owe this wretched party nothing.

Public respect

I’m at a loss to understand why these two women feel they can remain part of an organisation that continues to revile many of their core values and which still supports organisations which present a clear and present danger to vulnerable women in prison and to victims of male sexual violence.

Ms Forbes and Ms Cherry, along with Mr Ewing, command a great deal of support among ordinary SNP members. Given that the party has given up on the main and only reason for its existence, they have nothing to lose. What’s the point in fighting to win seats in 2026 when you’ve given up the ghost?

All that you’ll succeed in doing is assist in providing more semi-literate phonies with wages well beyond their limited abilities. And we’ve already got plenty of those in the current Scottish cabinet.     

Ms Forbes and Ms Cherry, along with those who want to rescue the party from the visigoths who have eaten it alive, should be using their superior intellects to split the party, mount a coup and finally chase out the swindlers. Quite literally, they have nothing to lose. The damage would be potentially catastrophic and that would be no bad thing.   

Joanna Cherry

'Nest-featherers'

Events in UK politics this last week bring to mind an interview I conducted last year with Irvine Welsh. In discussing the lamentable performance of the SNP’s Westminster contingent, Mr Welsh said told me: “I think we all believed they were going down to cause ructions and that we were in the middle of an Independence boom. But they were just a bunch of nest-feathering bureaucrats, exactly like the Labour Party and the Conservatives. They weren’t really interested in standing up against anything.

“Unfortunately now, the mechanisms for change seem to be so limited. We’re having to let the system dictate. The idea that a parliamentary party can seize power and change anything is delusional. They tried it in Greece and international capitalism just stamped all over them. Jeremy Corbyn tried it, but he was completely taken out before he got anywhere near there.

“All these institutions that seem to have held Britain together for so long just seem to be so manifestly weak and corrupt and ineffective. Democracy is such an unfashionable thing now. It’s against the acceleration of the spirt of the times. Voting is the window-dressing for democracy.

“We might as well have a political lottery where 650 names will randomly be selected as our MPs. And you have to put your name forward as your civic duty. And so it becomes incumbent on the education system to change, so that you don’t have ill-informed balloons. That means putting civic education; moral philosophy, basic economics, the science of climate change at the heart.

“It would be a way of combating nepotism and fiefdom-building and you’d serve for one term only. You would minimise the power of the lobbyists. So, basically we simply elect administrators to keep the lights on and the streets clean.”

In a week when Labour and the Tories and the SNP all effectively morphed into one political super-organism representing their own self-interests perhaps Mr Welsh’s idea may not be as radical as it seems.