These new parties risk eroding the support for independence

That film was released 17 years before I was born, but the old Judean People’s Front versus the People’s Front of Judea debate was as relevant in 33AD as it was in 1979, and as relevant right now as it probably will be hundreds of years from now.

Why do those who are seeking to bring down the status quo in groundbreaking ways struggle to work together? Impatience, ideological purity, arrogance, genuine differences in strategy; your guess will likely be better than mine. The people who wrote The Life of Brian were making fun of that old left-wing tendency towards the kind factionalism that destroys any viable project. Factionalism that stems sometimes from important ideological divisions, but sometimes simply from the narcissism of the small difference.

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I raise this analogy because in the past few months we have seen at least three new pro-independence parties emerge on the Scottish political landscape, and for the most part they have been started by people who were once SNP members. Each one of these parties is a deeply misguided project.

My analogy ends when we recognise that the national movement for Scottish independence is not some hopeless cause that is struggling to get going – it’s a cause that is indeed very late in its day. A cause backed by a party with a century of history, 13 years of government, and polling numbers that most political parties in a democracy could only dream of.

I’ve learned much from the SNP’s “veteran” activists and politicians – the kind of incredible people who were knocking doors for the SNP back when Monty Python references were still fresh. Undeniably, the greatest impression these giants have left on me is that getting to where we are today was almost impossible; and only made possible by thousands upon thousands of hours of hard graft and grim perseverance.

When the day comes that Scotland becomes an independent nation, we’ll owe it more to them than to any politician working today. Over decades, the SNP have worked to achieve two things that none of these new independence parties will ever be able to replicate.

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The first is trust: the Scottish public generally trust the SNP to do a good job and to guide the country through whatever challenges we face. The second is recognition: the Scottish public know that the SNP is the premier political force behind the Scottish national movement.

Unfortunately, the Independence for Scotland Party, the Alliance for Independence, and the others, are all predicated on one dangerous principle: that Scots who vote for Unionist parties don’t deserve representation in Holyrood. They preach no ideological difference beyond a handful of objections to the Gender Recognition Act. This is all about “gaming the system” and there will be few quicker ways to break public faith in the movement for independence than telling Scots that their votes shouldn’t count. We must understand that independence-curious Scots will not appreciate any attempts to rob them of their rightful representation that they voted for under our current system.

We still have a long way to go before we can be confident of winning another independence referendum and I don’t worry that any of these new parties will gain electoral success, but I do worry that they may erode faith in the movement for Scottish independence just when we need it most.

To close on another tired old cliche; I don’t want us to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Too many people have given too much to get us this far. There’s much hard graft still to be done and there are many Scots still to be convinced of the merits of independence. There are no shortcuts to the end goal, but we could set the movement back years by indulging in factionalism just as we approach the final hurdle.

Gavin Lundy
​Paisley