Last week supporters of Ash Regan were selling her silence as tactical genius. Let Forbes and Yousaf get all the bad headlines whilst their candidate sat on the sidelines waiting to pounce. After yesterday’s shambles of a launch it might have been better to stay hidden for another week.
Before throwing her hat into the leadership battle I had the same view of Regan as probably most people, a competent politician who was true to her principles when resigning her ministerial job over GRR. After yesterday however I can’t escape the feeling that she’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the box.
Let’s cut to the chase, her plans for treating every election as a referendum are simply bonkers. It’s detached from reality. First of all you can’t unilaterally declare an election to be about only one thing. People vote on a range of issues, doesn’t matter what the first line of her manifesto will say and she destroys her own argument by confirming there will be other policies in the manifesto. The idea of having these “referendums” every 2-3 years is ridiculous.
Secondly, and this is where we see that lack of any intelligent thought, her insistence that any U.K. government will agree to this is for the birds. When asked what would happen when Sunak or Starmer told her to shove it she looked like someone had asked her to explain the Theory of Relativity. As someone said yesterday maybe she didn’t have an answer as Salmond and Cherry hadn’t told her.
Thirdly the thought that the International community would take Scotlands side is utter pish. Spain ignored the Catalonian illegal referendum, sent in the Garda Civil to crack some heads, jailed the leaders responsible and the reaction of the International Community was to shrug their shoulders. They don’t care. Is Regan really suggesting that she would declare UDI on a 50% +1 vote (probably 30% of the total electorate). The International Community wouldn’t touch that with a barge pole and if she thinks that the 70% of the population that didn’t vote for that would sit down and say nothing is naive to say the least.
I stated the other day that Regan was the Alba candidate but I was maybe too kind to her. This is the politics of Clerkin and The Scottish Resistance. It’s the politics of Wings over Scotland. It’s red meat to the Salvo crowd who go to bed every night cuddling a copy of the Claim of Right. It’s pandering to the Braveheart believers, the GERS deniers, the people who believe in secret water pipes and the Whisky tax. She is the candidate for people who can’t be arsed doing the hard work in trying to persuade the majority of us that Independence wouldn’t be a bin fire and are more interested in waving flags and calling anyone who disagrees with them Quislings.
Finally she has though achieved what many people would think is the impossible. She’s made Humza Yousaf seem credible and that might be her lasting contribution to the leadership race.
Musings of a Quisling 
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