It\u2019s been a very busy weekend in politics in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Saturday saw thousands gather at George Square, and across the country,\u00a0to protest against austerity.\u00a0 The SNP Trade Union Group held its first National Conference in Stirling with over 250 delegates and I understand fantastic presentations from Christina McKelvie MSP and Marion Fellows MP.<\/p>\n
And on Sunday, the first National Council for the SNP following our historic victory in the Westminster elections took place. SNP delegates were treated to a number of fantastic contributions from MPs old and newly elected. There were speakers making their first contributions; notably Heather Anderson who argued for more reflection on the Zero waste motion speaking passionately and knowledgably about her own co-operative on Whitmore Farm, the Organic Place and winning the vote for the remit back.\u00a0 It was an absolute joy to hear the First Minister and party leader Nicola speak of her experiences in the US, recognise the rise stratospheric rise in membership with a little tease at prospective Labour Leadership candidate, Kezia Dugdale, who seemed a little vague as to whether Scottish Labour membership lay at 13 or 15 thousand at the moment. The killer comment being that either of these claims still leaves them below the 16 thousand plus that make up the SNP Trade Union Group!<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Labour have spent the weekend pretending that they understand why, in Jim Murphy\u2019s words, \u201cThe party that has traditionally been the tireless champion of the underdog now finds itself in the position of being the underdog.\u201d\u00a0 The answer is in this quote for all to see. They still believe that they have been the \u201ctireless champion\u201d when the experience of the Scottish people and the Scottish Trades Union movement has been far from having a champion. They have been ignored, patronised and taken for granted for too long.<\/p>\n
The weekend saw a strange juxtaposition of two parties. \u00a0While Nicola galvanised the whole of National Council with a positive vision of the future where the SNP\u2019s work is far from done and the height of our achievements is yet to come; Labour gave us, in Ken Mackintosh, a politician so determined to distance himself from politics and politicians that he espouses some bizarre parody of Lady Macbeth in an \u201cun-politics me here\u201d rant or Kezia\u2019s ironic whinge about Scotland being a \u201cone party state.\u201d \u00a0Ms Dugdale, the Scottish people exercised their democratic choice in a free and fair election. Just about as far from a \u2018one party state\u2019 as it is possible to be.<\/p>\n
I am content to let Labour continue to navel gaze and angst about what they did wrong, while the SNP get on with doing what they do right; representing the interests of the people of Scotland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s been a very busy weekend in politics in Scotland. Saturday saw thousands gather at George Square, and across the country,\u00a0to protest against austerity.\u00a0 The SNP Trade Union Group held its first National Conference in Stirling with over 250 delegates and I understand fantastic presentations from Christina McKelvie MSP and Marion Fellows MP. And on Sunday, the first National Council for the SNP following our historic victory in the Westminster elections took place. SNP delegates were treated to a number of fantastic contributions from MPs old and newly elected. There were speakers making their first contributions; notably Heather Anderson who argued for more reflection onRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scotsindependent.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}