Time to proscribe the SNP

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has been in the news in recent weeks for all the wrong reasons. We will have to wait for the completion of the police investigation to discover what has happened to the missing money that appears not to have been accounted for. So now is a good time to explore whether the SNP is a subversive organisation undermining the cohesion of the British nation sufficient to warrant its proscription.

The big problem raised by the continuation of the SNP is that it is at heart a one issue party whose sole objective is to deliver Scottish independence. Thus it follows that it can implement the most extreme policies and still attract the support of a sizeable chunk of the Scottish electorate who support independence.

Examples of this are the so called ‘transgender’ legislation which allows anyone over 16 years old to self identify as belonging to a ‘gender’ different to the sex into which they were born. This legislation has been blocked by the Westminster government. More recently the SNP has declared its intention to introduce juryless trials for men charged with rape, with the objective of raising the conviction rate. It should be remembered that Scotland is still an integral part of the United Kingdom. Thus the introduction of unjust and extremist laws by the SNP affects the reputation of the whole country, thus raising issues which it would be ill-advised to overlook.

The problem of the SNP has been compounded by the devolution system introduced by the Blair administration which created a Scottish assembly in 1999, with the power to frame legislation outside the control of the Westminster parliament. The hope was that this would lead to an indefinite Labour Party dominance in Scotland, given the then large majority of Scottish Labour MPs which had been in place for several decades. This strategy backfired badly when the SNP successfully hijacked the Scottish electoral system to install themselves as a permanent government, free to implement any legislation they pleased, however extreme.

So, two measures need to be taken to rectify this state of affairs. Firstly, to abolish the Scottish assembly, and secondly to prohibit the SNP from standing in Westminster and local elections. This would undoubtedly be controversial, but it would be far better than to allow the current arrangements to continue indefinitely. The three major parties support the union with Scotland, so they should have no objection in principle to measures that would strengthen the union.

The proscription of separatist political parties should not be confined to Scotland. For example, Plaid Cymru and the English National Party should also be proscribed on the same grounds, as should any political party advocating separation. It is not necessary to proscribe membership of these parties as was done with the IRA; it would be sufficient to just bar them from standing in elections, both national and local. They would still be free to argue the case for independence through the media and other means.

Given that there would be no longer any democratic platform to promote independence during elections it will be necessary to provide a vehicle to allow the support for separation to be tested periodically. This should be done through referenda. There was a forty year gap between the first and second referendums on membership of the European Union. It would therefore be appropriate for Scottish and Welsh referendums to be held on the same time scale. Thus the next referendum for Scotland would be held in 2054 and that for Wales about 2038. This provision would need to be included in any legislation abolishing the Scottish and Welsh assemblies and barring separatist parties standing in national and local elections.

These sensible and necessary reforms will allow the electorates in Scotland and Wales to determine the outcome of elections on the arguments and policies put forward by the political parties rather than being hijacked by separatist agitators as is the case today.

Boris stitch up

Boris Johnson’s detractors must be salivating with joy at the conclusions of the House of Commons Privileges Committee report into the ‘Partygate’ affair. It should be remembered that this was a wholly confected campaign promoted by the BBC and opposition parties to topple Boris when he was prime minister as outlined in this previous blog. https://bit.ly/3NDBXn9

The authors of the report have set out in great detail the background information about the various ‘parties’ about which Boris allegedly misled Parliament. So, although the facts have been accurately outlined, the conclusions reached are a disgrace. Boris was quite right to denounce the committee as a ‘kangaroo court’ engaged in a ‘witch hunt’ determined to find him guilty. As Jacob Rees-Mogg observed they ‘quite clearly made a deliberate attempt to take the most unfavourable interpretation of Mr Johnson’s activities’. Clearly the ninety days suspension is vindictive and the withdrawal of the parliamentary pass is petty.

The facts are that Boris received a single fixed penalty notice, bizarrely for accepting a birthday cake in his workplace. It is incomprehensible why he did not appeal against this grotesque travesty of justice. All the other fixed penalty notices relating to 10 Downing Street were handed out to civil servants. It is worth pointing out that Boris Johnson was not responsible for the management of No.10 or the supervising of staff compliance with the covid regulations. This work was delegated to civil servant middle managers. Boris Johnson’s role as prime minister was to focus on important national and international affairs, not to meddle in the running of the Downing Street workplace. So he would have no idea whether or not Downing Street staff were complying with the covid regulations.

So before answering questions in Parliament about this matter he would first have had to ask his private office civil servants to investigate and provide him with a form of words he could convey to his parliamentary colleagues. This is standard practice when ministers answer questions in Parliament. So Boris Johnson was entirely dependent on his private office staff providing him with accurate and honest information. They informed him that ‘the guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times’. So this form of words, or slight variations on it, was how Boris answered the questions relating to ‘Partygate’ in Parliament. There was no intention to mislead Parliament, certainly nor ‘deliberately or ‘recklessly’. He was merely providing the answer given to him by civil servants upon whom he was reliant for establishing the true facts, about which he would be largely unaware.

The committee’s conclusion that Boris Johnson, because he was working in the building, must have been aware that covid regulations were not being followed, is an unwarranted exercise in mind reading, and not one based on evidence. Boris Johnson’s big mistake was to answer the question about the ‘parties’ himself. What he should have done, for example at PM questions, would be to say that a Cabinet Office minister would shortly be issuing a statement on this subject. Such a minister would then have said exactly the same as what Boris said, and that would have been the end of the matter. This shows that the committee’s objective was not to investigate the truth about ‘Partygate’ but rather to bring down Boris by means of a wholly prejudicial report.