Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Sadly, being ambivalent often achieves nothing. And I was completely disinterested in the upcoming Scottish elections.

Then serendipity intervened. On the same day as I received my postal vote, the Labour candidate came to my door. His pitch, wisely, was not centred on policy, because Labour don’t have any that you’d appreciate in Scotland. He emphatically informed me that the SNP candidate for my area lives in Giffnock, but he lived locally – to which I thought – who cares? Then he asked who I wouldn’t vote for. I reflexively answered Reform. Given he was putting the effort in going door to door I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Labour was another of the parties I wouldn’t be entertaining. It was drizzling, the wind was uncomfortably sharp and I had to get back to work, so I fobbed him off before coldly sticking his leaflet in the recycling bin after he was out of sight.

That he asked me who I wasn’t voting for was telling. That’s what the Scottish elections have become, and hence my apathy – it’s more about who and what you’re voting against, not for.

Staunch Unionists are served well here, as it’s anyone but the SNP and the Greens on the list ballot. Normally I would be envious of choice, but not when the variety is so disgusting – Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the completely inept, racist and corrupt Reform UK.

Side note, here’s the list vote choices for Glasgow (including a few I hadn’t heard of): Alliance to Liberate Scotland, Independence for Scotland Party, Independent Green Voice, Reform UK, Scottish Christian Party, Scottish Common Party, Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Family Party (?), Scottish Greens, Scottish Labour, Scottish Liberal Democrats, The SNP, Scottish Socialist Party, UKIP, Workers Party of Britain and two independent candidates. Of this lot, the Greens are the only pro-independence offering likely to pick up enough votes to gain list seats.

But who cares about the voting preferences of the Unionists. If independence is your primary concern that’s where things are aggravatingly limited.

Here you’re faced, as a pro-independence voter, with the philosophical turmoil of rewarding the SNP, as the only pro-independence party on the ballot, for failing on the issue but possibly damaging the independence cause if you don’t vote for them. The accusations of the SNP kicking independence into the long grass not being a strategic one, but solely to retain their lavishly paid jobs for another five years is hard to refute. They’ve been the largest party in Holyrood since 2016, yet have done absolutely nothing to facilitate another referendum. Why will this time be different?

Polling might not be worth anything more than vibes and hypotheticals, but with support for independence consistently polling fifty percent or better, most people are clearly willing to consider the question again. Now is the time.

As for justifications, there’s plenty – a lot’s happened since September 2014 to change the calculus for Scots and the SNP; Brexit, the calamitous Boris Johnson being PM during Covid, never ending austerity Westminster governments and now we have the technocratic, morally bankrupt and insidiously corrupt Zionist Nu-Labour adults back in charge. That’s going great. Starmer probably won’t stammer on much longer. The pro-plutocratic Morgan McSweeney and the lord of darkness Peter Mandleson appeared to be Starmer’s handlers. Now they’re gone he’s flailing, sacking senior Civil Servants to cover his own disinterest in governance, and, worst of all, he doesn’t appear to stand for anything except economic stagnation.

So, what next? Reform UK are looming menacingly. They’re led by a populist charlatan and now populated by an imbecilic cohort of failed Tories. With dissatisfaction high among the public at perpetual austerity centrism they could easily form the next government in Westminster. Will this be good or bad for the cause of independence? Why take that risk? The omnishambles that is UK politics, and the diverging political outlooks north and south of the border, should create a sense of urgency for independence supporters and within the SNP to quickly find an out.

With all that you would assume that an SNP manifesto would centre on independence, given it’s why the party exists. Nope. Discouragingly the 2026 manifesto doesn’t mention the word until the fourth paragraph on the website header page. Even then it only talks of securing a referendum via an overall SNP majority. In the seventy-six-page manifesto it doesn’t outline how it will manifest a referendum. There’s page after page of grievance politics and bigging up their record in government, such as tackling the cost of living and the focus on renewable energy. But once again, the SNP would be able to govern far more effectively if they had all the powers, particularly over taxation and budgets, which they currently don’t.

Despite my cynicism and pessimism, like a sucker, I’m voting SNP on the constituency ballot and the Greens on the list. Voting SNP at this point is part Stockholm Syndrome, part Catch 22. You’re trapped. Think of it as a similar dilemma to that faced by Josef Fritzl’s kids, or where they technically his grandkids too? Little doubt they debated whether they should try to escape his basement. If you’ve lived in captivity all your life, escaping and giving the outside world a try can feel risky, even unwise, but remaining in a dungeon under his yoke is also a shitty outcome.

Perhaps a better, less grotesque analogy, is akin to the jilted wife with the philandering husband who keeps turning a blind eye to his misdeeds, no matter how brazenly he flaunts it in her face and humiliates her. Eventually she will succeed and endure because his prostate will not. It’s a question of time, and how long you need to wait. All we have left with the SNP is a faint hope that this time loyalty will be rewarded with an unexpected change of behaviour.

So, I make this promise, the timescale of my support for the SNP is the equivalent of a middle-aged prostate gland. Mine is this erection, sorry, election. After 2026, assuming they win a majority, if there’s no serious proposal for a referendum within that parliament term, I will no longer vote for them. Rewarding their failure simply cannot continue, but given the dismal state of things right now, what’s one more dice roll?