Today we’ve all been voting in the Scottish Parliament elections, or at least I hope we all have.
These are important votes.
I went out earlier for mine and I’ve spoken to one or two friends who are out on the stump canvassing both for their parties and for themselves. I’ve made no secret of my voting intentions. Although I’ve swayed – mostly through momentary anger – a number of times in the course of the last few months I know what’s at stake here.
The Scottish Government needs the mandate to deliver another referendum.
The Parliament has to be made up of the right people in the right proportions.
As the SNP will win the individual constituency vote the real power lies in the list votes, and I’ve made sure that mine have gone to the party best placed to represent us … the Greens, who have been honest brokers throughout this parliament and even used their influence to bring down the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act.
Aside from reminding this government who their friends are, this election should serve as a seismic reminder of something else; who their enemies are too.
For a while this year it seemed almost as if the Scottish Government was going out of its way to pander to those Peepul. When I published the email I got back from an elected official in relation to the Ibrox racism scandal, I didn’t name the person … but I was dismayed by the crude attempt at fence-sitting which I believe was cowardly and self-defeating.
Because the Scottish Government gains nothing by pandering to and sucking up to these Peepul. If we are amongst their most reliable friends, then the bulk of the Ibrox support should certainly be classed as amongst their most mortal enemies and I cannot understand what benefits anyone believes there are in cosying up to them or trying to win them over.
Today a number of Ibrox fan organisations are openly campaigning against the SNP and the other pro-independence parties. They aren’t even pretending that they care who their followers do vote for instead, although many will certainly vote Tory, which is a gruesome option still all too popular in many parts of Scotland.
These folk are so bitter and so wedded to their flag and their bizarre creed that they would certainly vote to inflict damage on the communities where they live and the people who live there with them. They are never going to get behind the SNP or the Greens or any other party which threatens their ludicrous ideology … this is now pretty clear.
But really, it isn’t a shock to those of us who have been saying it all year long.
When the SNP was hammering away at Celtic every day and finding itself able to praise the club from Ibrox they were warned that they risked alienating friends to win the approval of enemies who would never, ever give that. The stickers and posters and banners all over Glasgow today should be a lesson how that kind of folly ends.
Whether it makes a material difference to how this election pans out or not remains to be seen, but these people have to stop insulting us by playing to the gallery of goons which cannot stand them and will never offer them the slightest support.
This election will remind them who their friends are … and who their enemies are too.