Metro Dude

Anyone who’s read any of my previous posts will know I’m a fervent Scottish nationalist, but I try not to force my opinion on others since I know how much I hate it when JW’s come knocking on my door.

BUT, this whole thing with Wendy Alexander and the Scottish Labour Party is cracking me right up like a walnut hit with a hammer.

Here’s the situation for those of you who don’t know Scotland well. First, we don’t all wear kilts, secondly, for 300 odd years we’ve been in an ‘Act of Union’ with the English and Welsh. For the last few years the SNP has been waging a political battle for Scottish independence. Up until very recently the other major political parties have been against independence and for continuing the union.

Devolution gave us our first Scottish parliament and last year Alex Salmond and the SNP won the Scottish elections and formed a government, and in the process kicking Labour squarely out of the sandpit for a lot of their own long time supporters.

My own father is a Scottish nationalist but always voted Labour coz he was in the union and Labour was always the party of the the unions, but last election he switched to the SNP, he got a bit sick of people like Blair with their snobby accents and flash cars trying to tell him how to live his life.

Anyway, getting back to Wendy ALexander, well she’s the current leader of the opposition at Holyrood (our Scottish parliament) and is supposed to take instructions from Labour down in Westminster but just recently she came out in favour of an early referendum on Scottish independence. Supposedly she wants to preserve the United Kingdom and thinks an early referendum will oppose independence.

To me and my muddled thoughts this can only mean the mainstream parties are starting to get worried about the depth of feeling growing in Scotland over the independence issue, and that gives me a warm glow inside. The SNP have stated Scotland isn’t ready for a referendum, they want another year or two in power to prove themselves to the Scottish people, well I agree completely.

Unfortunately for Wendy Alexander she’s fallen out of favour with Gordon Brown, also a Scot, but who would prefer the independence issue would just go away.

I’m thinking this issue is going to haunt the Westminster Labour party well into Brown’s term as Prime Minister, it almost seems to me like Scottish Labour have realised the people of Scotland want independence and they want to distance themselves from the UK Labour party and set themselves up a credible alternative to the SNP in a post-independence Scotland.

I could be wrong, but if the First Minister and his cabinet ever read this I want you to know you have the support of one Scot in staying your hand. Don’t let Labour rush you into something until you feel the time is really right.