What a 24 hours it has been for the Scottish National Party. Westminster MPs have been dismissed from front-bench roles without a valid reason, in a panicked move by a party leadership desperate to reimpose discipline. One sacked MP has retreated to a safe house, having received a threat of violent rape. SNP MPs squabble and accuse one another on social media. Bookmakers expect Nicola Sturgeon to lose the leadership of the party before the May elections. It is a political progressive collapse.
It is a rare sight to witness the devastating implosion of a political party that is in office and riding high in the opinion polls. And it is the strangeness of these circumstances that demand a considered look at the division and poisonous rancour gripping the SNP.
This video, a discussion between myself and Brian Gerrish, examines the immediate background to these events: the scandal of the Salmond prosecution, and the corruption within the Scottish Government, Police Scotland and the prosecuting body (Crown Office) that bred it, and the so-called TERF ("Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist") Wars, bitter disputes over the trans agenda being introduced by Nicola Sturgeon and her allies in government.
We must also ask the question: do these events signal a broader failure of democracy in the West? Is this only the first of many such political crashes? The malicious form of democracy practised by the SNP has been an exemplar of its type, displaying an authoritarian mindset, a controlling nature, hostility towards dissent, and a relentless pursuit of radical ideologies imported from dubious philosophies. It has also been successful in the polls and largely lauded in the press. We ponder whether this suddenly revealed crisis in the SNP shows that 21st-century Western democracy is inherently unstable and poised for self-immolation.
