Labour (and Starmer) are definitely heavily against Scottish independence.
Labour lost 40 seats in Scotland and they want them back.
Why do you think Sturgeon sudden and surprising resignation happened? Coupled with the change in SNP standing rules to truncate the new leaderhip election duration. The top of the SNP are corrupt
The police were not digging up the garden
I've no doubt that Sturgeon's resignation was connected to the forthcoming police raid. But is there any evidence that a large number of people were involved in dodgy stuff or was it just a select handful at executive level?
I mean it’s getting to “only resting in my account” standards of farce. People have been talking about this lump sum now for a few years- it wasn’t yesterday it went “missing” or as the SNP say, “intertwined in other accounts” - it was either “ringfenced” and “frozen” or it wasn’t- it would be easy to produce if it was, but it hasn’t been, so it isn’t 😀
I’m not convinced- police were filmed taking photographs outside in the garden - you don’t do that in a standard corporate fraud type search exercise where you’d remove documents, laptops etc in evidence bags. And what’s with all of the tents on the lawn? Sorry no, there’s more to it than that. Whether they’re digging up the lawn who knows but those tents are a major overkill for a house search don’t you think?
They are massively overkill and I think there were 4 or possibly 5 large police vans/minibuses on the street. As far as I can tell there are no tents in the back garden and that is where people think they have been digging up as that is where the police were spotted with shovels (from the shed)
Your man is released without charge, according to Sky News.
But not in the clear apparently - it seems to be one of these released without charge 'for the moment' type things.
They would have put a number of questions to him and also any evidence they may have- quite possibly he gave a “no comment” interview. It’s then up to the crown prosecution service what happens next- as they are likely still gathering evidence it will be a number of weeks or months most likely before we’ll hear if any charges are to be brought as a result of this investigation
Wonder why the leaders of independence movements, from Mugabe to you know who, are often accused of having skeletons in the closet.
Never heard anything like that about Michael Collins.
To some he was a freedom fighter, to others a terrorist. Plenty of empty places around dinner tables because of him. History is written by the victors though.
Francis, is there any topic you will not get a dig in at the IRA? This is the Scottish Independence thread.
At this stage, I believe you are simply trolling.
Rubbish. We were talking about the husband of Sturgeon being arrested and his garden dug up. I never mentioned Ireland or the IRA. It was Water John who mentioned Michael Collins.
The garden was not dug up
I've no doubt that Sturgeon's resignation was connected to the forthcoming police raid.
Doesn't make much sense to be honest.
If they knew there was going to be a police raid, they'd have cleansed the place surely?
I'd think it's as likely there are political shennangins going on here, somebody has made an accusation safe in the knowledge it will be capitalised on by the 'there's no smoke without fire' crew.
I'm not claiming this is what happened, I could be totally wrong, but caution should be observed here. Political shennanigins and political policing are a thing after all.
Ah now, Murrell resigned suddenly. This investigation has been ongoing. Even so, the raids would not have been expected probably.
Really, having the two major roles occupied by members of the one family, is never a good idea. Neil Kinnock resigned his EU job because his wife Gladys got another position.
It is reported in many places on the media that it was.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11942651/Police-seen-holding-shovels-search-Nicola-Sturgeons-garden.html
https://www.channel4.com/news/what-next-for-the-snp-as-nicola-sturgeons-husband-is-arrested
I suppose the large tent in the garden and the spades the police were pictured with was for something else?
It should be noted though that even Richard Littlejohn - a right wing, Brexity type and Sturgeon critic - says he has serious misgivings about the raid on the house and feels it was a totally over the top operation by the Scottish police:
Maybe the police know or suspect something he does not?
I guess we'll know in due course. But if it turns out they found little of note at the premises, there may be questions as to why the search operation was so big - police raids on houses investigating financial fraud don't normally feature dozens of officers, diggers in the garden etc.
Didn't Cliff Richard get an unwelcome visit from the plods, with the BBC in tow?
How did that end?
Seems Douglas Ross would prefer Lb in Westminister and a weakened SNP:
6 auditors for the SNP resigned 6 months ago, their new First Minster has been forced to admit.
Bizarre goings on in the SNP.
Incompetence or corruption?
"out-of-touch careerists and activists pursuing issues which the wider public regard as irrelevant to their daily lives"
One could describe the UK Labour party or the US Democrats in the same fashion - and for the same reason. These are parties dominated by well-off college graduates who don't give a shít about bread and butter issues because they are unaffected. It's a flaw that Republicans/Tories exploit successfully by painting the decision makers in these parties as out-of-touch elitists, and by promising the less well off that the right will look after them - when in reality the likes of Rees Mogg despise them.
Bit of a false dichotomy, there, since incompetence and corruption can go hand-in-hand. Indeed, they often do. Case in point right now — the Tories.
While there is much that separates the Tories and the SNP there is one thing they have in common — too long in government. The Tories have been in office continuall since 2010; the SNP since 20007. This isn't healthy.
Parties that have been too long in office run out of ideas and energy. Also, it's in the nature of politics to attract careerists, opportunists and people on the make. The more successful a party is perceived to be, the more of these it attracts. The combination of these factors mean that, when a party is too long in office, the quality of government it provides starts to decline, and in fact to decline precipitously. Hence, incompetence and corruption. This phenomenon is unrelated to ideology; it affects both progressive and conservative parties.
Functional democracies need regular changes of government. Both Edinburgh and Westminster are exemplifying that right now.
If a party wants to implement a radical change, then 2 terms in Govn't should achieve most of that. Thus 7/8 years is the maximum. Multiple coalition situations as in many European countries might have a different dynamic.
A party which has governed well for two terms is quite likely to be returned for a third by a grateful electorate, but often the quality of governance in the third term will start to slip (and things tend to go to hell altogether in the fourth term, if there is one).
Your point about political renewal in European countries is a good one. I think the ways in which political renewal is acheived in those countries is not just constantly shifting coalitions (which can facilitate a kind of "rolling renewal") but also changing parties. One of the things that characterises UK (and to some extent Irish) politics is the extraordinary longevity of political parties. The Conservatives have been one of the two dominant political parties in the UK pretty much since the UK became a semi-democracy in the late nineteenth century; the Labour party are relative newcomers but have been the other dominant party for a century. This is become the UK electoral system strongly entrenches the established parties, regardless of how dysfunctional they may become.
Few other European democracies have dominant parties which endure for so long. Parties merge, or split, or are refounded, or are superseded, with relative frequency. For example, if we look at the top four parties in the French National Assembly, they were founded in 2016 (La République En Marche), 1972 (Rassemblement National, founded as Front National), 2016 (La France Insoumise) and 2002 (Les Républicains, founded as Union pour un mouvement populaire). Of course they all had predecessor parties and their first leaders and members of parliament came from those parties, but the foundation of new parties still allows for the injection of new ideas and (just as important) the abandonment of old ones.
