JIM SPENCE: Are the SNP just Tartan Tories in disguise?

The Scottish Government is a fur coat and no knickers outfit.

And they’ll be feeling the first chills of winter whistling up their kilts soon as we shiver with exorbitant heating bills and start to ask what they’re doing to help those who put them in power.

They can only blame the Tories at Westminster for so long before folk start to question their own very conservative behaviour.

There’s little sign of any of the radical principles which we Scots like to claim would feature in an independent country.

Nicola Sturgeon broke her promise to set up a publicly-owned energy company, blaming it on Covid despite the fact she made the promise in 2017 and the coronavirus lockdown started on March 23 2020.

I increasingly liken their offer of independence to that of being offered a job where the potential employer won’t tell you what your wages, holidays, sick pay, and other terms and conditions are.

The more I look at their running of Scotland the more I ask, are they actually Tartan Tories in disguise?

Iain Lawson, a former SNP trade and industry spokesman, recently tweeted: “In light of the obscene cost of living increases and energy increases, I am abandoning my lifetime of centrist, moderate politics and am now joining the revolutionary front wanting to topple the Governments, both at Westminster and Holyrood, along with their corporate allies.”

When a conservative leaning independence supporter like Lawson embraces his inner Che Guevara, it’s fair to say the masquerade of the governing party in Scotland as a centre left outfit has been exposed for the sham it is.

Forget the Braveheart rhetoric, Scotland is no different

Of course many independence supporters would be firm adherents of the kind of Tory policies they claim to despise at Westminster if we ever did break from the UK.

Many others just don’t ask hard questions about the actual policies of the governing party, blithely believing a Socialist Scotland commences on day one of independence.

Regular assertions of our Scottish exceptionalism as a more sensitive and caring nation are being exposed daily as a myth as Scots struggle to feed and heat themselves.

Recent revelations that the Scottish parliament subsidises dirt cheap lunches for MSPs earning over £60,000 a year points to an “I’m alright Jack” approach.

We could’ve stopped the need for food banks at a stroke and eliminated the worst of poverty.

Instead, many on starvation level incomes fear the approaching winter and the prospect of cold hungry nights.

Devolution offers more than ample powers to tackle these issues but it requires a Scottish Government with a radical spine.

There’s a harsh truth hiding in plain sight in Scotland.

Despite our Braveheart rhetoric, we’re not one single iota different from our friends over the border.

We’re no more left or right, or caring or sharing, than folk in Newcastle or Northampton. No kinder than the people of Liverpool or Leeds.

The independence movement should make common cause with Mick Lynch

Currently we’re witnessing Mick Lynch – a Londoner of Irish heritage and an inspirational trade union leader – giving a lead to working people in the fight back against the system which is impoverishing them.

Lynch refused to enter the debate when asked about Scottish independence, saying rightly it was for the Scottish people to decide.

The SNP and the wider independence movement though should be making common cause with Lynch and those of his ilk who want a better deal for working folk.

Instead, as we saw at the Tory hustings at Perth, we’ve had screeching bampots in the independence movement yelling “traitor” and “scum” at Forfar-born BBC reporter James Cook and asking him the unbelievably crass and racist question of “how long have you been in this country?”

Now we have bin strikes that would embarrass a third world country as Holyrood absolves itself of any blame for failing to provide the cash for a settlement with workers who see their living standards plummet.

The SNP are no different from the Tories they despise

Folk like me, who after a third Thatcher victory gave up on the Labour party and bought into the dream that we could be a different kind of society from England, have been sadly disappointed by the reality of fourteen years of SNP stewardship.

Independence supporters have been too gullible.

For instance, too easily swallowing the guff that we’ve been dragged out of the EU against our will, despite knowing that if we’d become independent in 2014 we’d have been out of it anyhow with no firm guarantee of future membership.

They bow before the EU as some saintly body completely ignoring its vicious attack on the living standards of Greek workers and pensioners which left many of them in poverty.

From their position on the EU (which many independence supporters voted to leave) to Nicola Sturgeon’s recent hypocritical call to nationalise energy companies, after scrapping her own manifesto commitment to set up a Scottish power company, the SNP emits enough hot air to heat every house in Scotland.

Sadly, though, I now see nothing in their windy rhetoric and lack of serious planning for independence to show that they’re much different from the Tories they supposedly despise.

They are all style and no substance.