Every vote in the coming UK General Election is a vote for freedom: either a vote for what will be a totalitarian restriction of freedom in an SNP dominated Scotland – independent or not; or a vote for freedom securely within the plurality of union.
This election and this vote may not be an overt independence referendum, but its outcome will absolutely determine whether or not a second independence referendum features in the SNP’s manifesto for next year’s Scottish Election. This is the last chance to keep the capability of union alive for Scotland.
If unarrested, a stand-out sweep for the separatists in the coming General Election is highly probable.
This would provide ‘the material change in public opinion’ cited by the SNP Leader, Nicola Sturgeon, in the debate in Aberdeen on Wednesday night [8th April] as the necessary validation for putting another independence referendum in the SNP manifesto for the 2016 Scottish Election.
If this General Election result supplies this validation, Nicola Sturgeon has absolutely no choice but to go for indy again in 2016. In that election there will be three more year’s worth of largely separatist-politicised 16 and 17 year olds who will, in the wonderful idealism of youth, major on indy; and three year’s fewer of the sages the then First Minister demonised in the immediate aftermath of the 2014 referendum loss for which he himself was largely responsible.
To rocket morale in triumphalism there is bound to be an SNP election rally on 24th March 2016, on what would have been Independence Day had the 2014 vote gone their way. With an independence referendum back in the manifesto, this would shake the mountain.
Unless this sequence is interrupted now, it is hard to see anything other than a SNP pyroclastic flow of wins in such a 2016 election, putting an independence referendum immediately back on the formal agenda.
Tactical voting is a WIN WIN for every unionist
This General Election is the pinch point.
Nothing could be more important – both to the separatists and the unionists – than the result of this May’s UK General Election.
That result will give Scotland’s First Minister the Green or the Red Light on whether to put a second indyref in the SNP’s manifesto for the 2016 Scottish Election.
This is why the way every single person in Scotland votes in this election could not be more important. If each vote is to count in representing the core preference of its voter [for a Green Light or a Red Light for indyref II] there has to be, in every constituency, ONE Red Light vote – because in every constituency there is already ONE Green Light vote.
The separatists are in unequivocal drive in a common direction – to sweep the Scottish seats into the SNP’s Green Light camp.
The unionists aren’t even talking about it. They’re busy fighting each other, in a situation where, with unionism coming in three varieties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat, there is no ONE vote for it, no common RED Light position.
It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that ONE vast Green Light vote can only sweep the boards on the single issue that counts, when all that vote has to confront is a selection of smaller votes of other colours which are not tallied as Red Lights – but are a fragmented and impotent vote for British unity.
This is why tactical voting – ONE vote in each constituency for the plurality, the tolerance and the mutual support of union – is no less than an imperative.
Take note that this will produce UK seats in Scotland for each individual’s party of preference [where otherwise they may get few or none] – but those seats will not necessarily be in the constituency of the individual voter.
By voting tactically to an agreed plan across Scotland, each single unionist voter can vote primarily to Red Light a renewed assault on union AND ensure that their party of preference will certainly have representation at Westminster – and certainly more than they will otherwise get.
Scotland’s BIG Voice has been doing the heavy lifting on the promotion of the need for tactical voting. It has bodies on the ground [they were in Helensburgh last weekend]. It has produced the Tactical Voting Wheel we have supported and will continue to support as the only achievable route to Red Lighting a second independence referendum.
If anyone does not agree with [or like] the balance-of-probability recommendation in their own constituency, it doesn’t matter – because seats that might not have come their party’s way will see its representatives elected elsewhere.
This is a matter for each individual voter to control – not for the unionist parties who still cannot put the union before their own narrow interests. Ironically, these party interests will be irrelevant anyway in the outcome of the Green Light sweep that will certainly take place if it is not stopped in its tracks.
Every voter who sees that the concept of union has real value must resolve to make their own vote count in the only way possible in this election: using it to support the suggested best pro-union vote in their own constituency.
Afterwards – if we don’t
This vote, this ONE VOTE for union is not just ONE Red Light vote to protect that unity, it is a vote for freedom.
The reality is that the Scottish Government emerging from the Scottish Election of 2016 will be almost exclusively formed of SNP MSPs. This is because the weight of pro-separatist votes cast, fuelled by the present crusading zeal – will also bring the SNP the greatest share of the List vote.
In the seats won by any other party – and they will be few – the separatist vote will be second and high. In the many seats won by the SNP across each LIST region – they will have stout majorities.
The SNP will therefore not only have the majority of the constituency MSPs but the majority of the wider-ranging Regional List MSPs.
This is a situation that will delight fanatic separatists but ought to cause alarm in the heart and soul of any democrat, because it is a recipe for the one-party totalitarian state Scotland is already well on the way to becoming.
Tactical voting is here to stay and Scotland’s BIG Voice has already made its intentions clear to have a powerful presence in the Scottish Election in 2016 and to produce a Tactical Voting Wheel for that contest too.
Before anyone is tempted to shrug off this argument on the basis that ‘it would never happen here’, every voter should look at what is happening here.
The shape of the future government of a one-party Scotland, independent or not - is already clear, with some of its most alarming aspects already on the statute book and others, on openly declared intentions, to follow.
The destination unless…
Without coordinated preventative action now by each individual pro-unity voter, on 6th May 2016 we will wake to a post Scottish Election government that will be completely dominated by the SNP. There will be small rump elements of Labour and the Conservatives and certainly no mainland Liberal Democrats.
This will be a government with no brake, free to do as it likes at whatever speed it wishes and with no requirement even to pay token attention to an opposition which will effectively not exist – and in a unicameral parliament where there is no other check.
We already wake in a country where:
- Each child born in Scotland is appointed a state guardian at birth, with that state guardian’s identity – on current evidence – not routinely disclosed to parents; and with that state guardian’s authority over the child superceding that of even the most responsible parent in the most caring family. This is totalitarianism – and it is already here. What young people of working age are going to migrate to Scotland with this certain state intervention in their family life ahead of them?
- Convictions being virtually guaranteed with the coming abolition of corroborating evidence – leaving a centralised national police force with the effective power to see convicted whoever they like, innocent or guilty – because the evidence given by a police officer would have to be accepted by the court as the account to trust. This is totalitarianism – and it is already in train.
- A unified police service under central control, armed and with the authority to Stop and Search any individual without consent, even children, on officers’ own initiative. This is totalitarianism – and it is already here.
- Centralised records for every individual in the country, open to access by the state and by a range of government agencies, despite the affront this offers to individual freedom; and despite the extent to which it demolishes the buttress of data protection. This has now been decreed by the Scottish Government, against widespread and informed concern. It is going ahead apace in the supposedly sole interests of enabling the new Scottish taxation authority to start collecting landfill and aggregates tax. This is totalitarianism – and it is already in train.
- State control of critics by intimidation and threat. These behaviours are well embedded now and were documented on first hand evidence in the campaign for the 2014 Referendum, where the well found concerns of businesses and universities were almost universally silenced by these means. This is totalitarianism – it is already here and it will get worse.
- Party rules [approved at the recent SNP conference] of the one governing party whose authority would be supreme and unchallenged – where MPs may not even voice the criticism of alternative views within private meetings. This is the ‘thought police’ in action. This is totalitarianism. It is already here and its scope will widen.
- State control of the Scottish national broadcaster – proposed and being energetically pursued by the former First Minister and SNP hero, Alex Salmond. What has fuelled this was the temerity of BBC journalists in daring to ask the First Minister himself inconvenient questions at the height of the 2014 indyref campaign. This is the gagging of free speech by a totalitarian state. Added to the routine use of intimidation and threat – and of course extended to whatever independent press Scotland can summon, the picture is chilling – and it will be unstoppable after a landslide SNP vote in 2016.
We are looking at a political party about to sweep to something like absolute power; with a powerfully totalitarian stance already at work in shaping the culture we live in; and with erratic levels of ability in governmental management of our key services. Education, health, policing, justice and fiscal policy are already in trouble.
If this is the road you want to see Scotland going further down, then Green Light the SNP on 7th May.
If this is not a prospect you can support and if you value the nature and philosophy of union, then Red Light the route out of the United Kingdom by voting tactically on 7th May.
Scotland’s BIG Voice’s Tactical Voting Wheel is the only guide there is to doing this. All it takes is any agreed guidance on this to be accepted and implemented – remember all unionist parties will also get representation this way at a level they will not get any other way.
This election is the last opportunity to save the plurality of the union and to avoid a blindly totalitarian Scotland.
The route map to indyref II
Scotland today faces a long political war where the entire country, deeply divided on the issue of separatism, will have to remain on battle alert for three or more probably four, continuous years.
After that, should Scotland leave the United Kingdom, it will face who knows how many years of systemic change and repositioning, with its sense of itself in that circumstance likely to be different from that anticipated by either separatists or unionists.
The three to four years of continuous battle alert 2015 to 2017 will see:
- 2015 – the coming UK General Election in May;
- 2016 – the Scottish Election in May;
- 2017 – the Scottish Local Authority Elections in May;
- 2017 – a possible In-Out Referendum on the EU – date undetermined;
- 2017 or 2018 – a probable second referendum on independence.
If it gets the predicted sort of General Election result, the SNP has virtually no choice but to do this. As For Argyll alone saw and published in September 2014, the immediate post-referendum surge in SNP membership confers a power whose source is driving the charabanc today.
Not to seize this – genuinely once in a lifetime – opportunity would see the SNP itself suffocate its ability to achieve its raison d’etre. The 2016 SNP win would still be convincing but less that it would be with the fuel of an independence manifesto in the tank.
And afterwards – many of the troops could be kept energised by assuring SNP victories in the 2017 local authority elections and also in any In-Out EU membership referendum in that year.
But there would then be a three [Europarl election] to four year [UK election] dearth of fighting opportunities to keep the separatist adrenaline high. That membership – fired up for indy NOW – would progressively wither away without the immediate prospect of the last push to a standalone Scotland.
Trying to reheat that five years on, in the Scottish Election of 2020, would be a tough ask – and in the meantime, with two powerful courts to control, in Holyrood and Westminster, the centralist leadership is going to have its work cut out in any event. Trying to retain and motivate a wilting membership at the same time would be a dangerous deflection for government in Scotland.
A second – and successful – indyref is almost in the bag
If a powerful SNP result in this General Election confirms the SNP in going for a second indyref in their 2016 manifesto, we can see no prospect in those circumstances other than a clear win for the separatists. The momentum would be unstoppable and afterwards it would be too late for those gullible to drama and the myth of onenessto retract.
Current Prime Minister, David Cameron talks of the UK refusing permission for so early a second referendum, given the assurances from the separatists to the nation that the September 2014 referendum would be a once-in-a-generation or a once-in-a-lifetime event. But crying ‘unfair’ would be wrong. The SNP openly exists to take Scotland to a separate existence from that of the rest of the United Kingdom. They have every right to play the card they hold to achieve that aim. Why on earth would they throw that card away?
The reality is that with the probable scale of the SNP’s victory on a 2015-validated independence manifesto in the 2016 election, any attempt to refuse a democratic expression of choice could well lead to undemocratic actions of a nature and consequence damaging to all concerned.
There would be a second referendum. The issue would be when.
The timing would be dictated by the nature of the United Kingdom government the nation will elect in 27 days time.
If there is a Labour/SNP administration, this would undoubtedly be in 2017. If there is Conservative administration, there will be a 2017 referendum on the UK’s EU membership.
In that situation and for good reason, the UK government is unlikely to contemplate two referenda in one year – the split focus and the strain on everyone of two campaigns in succession on such powerfully future-shaping issues is unthinkable.
This would see a UK-wide EU In-Out referendum in 2017; and in Scotland, a UK In or Out referendum in 2018.
In that campaign the SNP would seize the role of lead-support for the UK’s continuing membership of the EU [legitimately frontlining the interests of Scotland's economy but headlining the interests of a potentially independent Scotland].
With what would then be another win in the bag for the troops and the momentum at their backs, there can be no doubt that the separatists would take Scotland into independence in 2018 – unless this General Election erects a Red Light on the tracks – stopping that momentum before it builds up the power to float an SNP independence manifesto in 2016.
Earlier articles in this series:
