Letters / Cocky and infantile
I’ve been reading a lot of smug and self-congratulatory contributions to the ShetNews’ letters page in the past few days, and have to admit to feeling a certain amount of dismay.
I’d have thought that the old-style model of behaviour – ‘gracious in victory, graceful in defeat’ – would have been a far better and more appropriate way for the SNP and its apologists to present themselves; but apparently, they don’t seem to think so.
I think that the SNP may need to be reminded that they are still most definitely in the honeymoon period – of a success at the polls that was wrought very largely by the damage inflicted on Labour and the LibDems by people deciding (out of disgust and hope) to vote for UKIP.
I think they also need to ask themselves just how many more episodes of cocky and infantile ‘rebellion’ their largely 40+ age-group of supporters are likely to put up with; and how their support might melt away prior to the Scottish elections of 2016, simply because their older supporters have lost faith or patience.
We’ve just seen (in the national press and elsewhere) how the SNP candidates handle themselves in public when they think they have the whip hand – and quite frankly, I (and I suspect many others) wouldn’t be seen dead in such juvenile company (because it would be too degrading).
The solution to the problem is for the parties who might still carry some weight with the voters to get their fingers out and prepare properly for that next election.
By that time, my feeling is that the Scottish voters will have seen through the emptiness and futility of the SNP’s social, political and economic ‘deus ex machina’ voodoo-style model of the future, and be ready to elect something that can actually deliver Scotland and its adherent islands something convincing in the way of a long-term survival strategy.
I’m quite certain of one thing: which is that the SNP’s brand of ‘divide and conquer’ near-xenophobia is not going to cut it in the medium- or long-term: or at least, not among the people who actually think a bit more deeply about their future.
And if those deeper-thinking people also happen to be in the upper-earnings and ’employer’ brackets of private-sector wealth-creating contributors to the economy, and decide that Scotland simply isn’t the right kind of place to consider trying to do business, the loss to the rest of us will be incalculable.
Philip Andrews
Unst
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