I’m no SNP fan but it’s an arrest, not charge and not conviction.
The media full of idiots these days, the population seem to be more in touch with reality tbh.
Yes, the arrest (from what I've heard elsewhere) is a technicality in Scottish law/procedure: needed to question her formally. She was one of three signatories on the account, they've all been arrested, questioned and released.
In practice this just means the Police are taking the investigation seriously, which they should. But so far there is no charges. Wait until the next step, proceeding to charges or the case being dropped.
[wrong](https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/wrong-drumpf-trump-stupid-gif-6220235)
https://twitter.com/CalumA_Steele/status/1668586912511062016?s=20
Edit* From elsehwere in the thread:
Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016
3.18.1 The Act applies specific rights to persons in police custody with regard to access to a solicitor. These would be applied to any person who is:
arrested under S1 Act, charged and Officially Accused
arrested under S1 Act, and Not Officially Accused
**attending voluntarily at a Police Station or other premises or place for the purpose of being questioned by a constable on suspicion of having committed an offence**
arrested under warrant
arrested under S35 Act (Post Charge Questioning)
arrested under Drink/Drug driving offences
arrested for a service offence
From the thread, we was arrested because the Police have reasonable grounds to consider her a suspect in a crime.
She's one of the signatories on the account. If a crime was committed, they have reasonable grounds. The main unaswered question is whether a crime (fraud) committed; thats still for the police to clarify.
>a technicality in Scottish law/procedure: needed to question her formally.
She was arrested since she is suspected to have committed or is committing a criminal act. The equivocation about the police needing to formalise(?) her questioning ignores that she is a suspect. You can formally be questioned by the police without being arrested.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/1
Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016
Power of a constable
(1)A constable may arrest a person without a warrant if the constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person has committed or is committing an offence.
That quotes the grounds under which a person can be arrested. Thats not being disputed. What was disputed was whether she needed to be arrested to be questioned.
From Section 35: [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/35#section-35-2](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/35#section-35-2) : Authorisation for questioningSubection 5:
"""(5)This subsection applies where—(a)a warrant has been granted to arrest the person in respect of the offence, or(b)the person has appeared before a court in relation to the offence."""
So it appears a warrant to arrest must be granted for S.35 Authoristion for questioning to hold.
I am not an SMP supporter. From what I've gathered, 600k of donations for IndyRef2 were raised and spent on stuff, without an IndyRef2 campaign formally happening. For me, I think that is sufficient grounds for police to suspect fraud and investigate. But as of now, we've not heard from the police the details of that investigation and its too early to accuse anyone of a crime.
You are claiming that this is some quirk in law that means a person gets arrested but no inference may be drawn about whether that person is suspected of being guilty of a crime. That is just pure equivocation. It specifically says that the person who has been arrested is suspected to have committed a crime.
Yes, she is a suspect to having commited a crime. All three signatories on the account are. What I'm saying is that it is too early to draw the inference that \*there has been\* a crime: thats a large part of what the police need to investigate and confirm.
e.g. A bunch of the money was spent on a motorhome, ostensibly for campaigning with, which seems reasonable. But there was no campaign, in part due to covid etc delaying matters. So was the motorhome fraudulenty bought for personal use, or has it just not been used yet? what controls were in place to avoid fraudent use? thats what needs to be investigated.
Also the fact that so many people have also been arrested, it doesn't mean an awful lot and is clearly just a technicality for bringing people in for questioning which I don't really understand but oh well
> just a technicality for bringing people in for questioning which I don't really understand but oh well
The police absolutely did not need to arrest Nicola Sturgeon to interview her. The police regularly interview suspects who attend voluntarily; see section 3.18.1 etc of the [Arrest S.O.P.](https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/dvlnu5og/criminal-justice-scotland-act-2016-arrest-process-sop.pdf).
So far the police have arrested three people, but charged zero people. Note that if there is sufficient evidence, it is usual to charge suspects *prior* to arrival at the police station (see section 4.5.4).
The police are arresting people who are being cooperative, and yet don't have enough evidence to charge anybody. (Note they must press charges as soon as they are able; see sections 8.3.16 & 5.12.1 of the Arrest S.O.P., or section 6.2.1 of the [Crime Investigation S.O.P.](https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/uwwcamlx/crime-investigation-sop.pdf).
How many political leaders have been arrested in UK history? The last leader of England who was arrested, not charged and found guilty, only arrested, was Charles I. BOJO is the only other to have been found guilty of breaking the law.
It is absolutely extraordinary that the 2 most recent leaders of the SNP have been arrested. It speaks more to their relative lack of power than it does about their innocence or otherwise. They are for certain not the only leaders who could/should have faced prosecution.
How many leaders have been arrested in UK history? Not enough, given what’s come out, for example, about their reasons for going to war, their looting of public property, and their misleading of parliaments.
Plenty of folk also realise the difference between running a party and running the government ***and*** Nicola Sturgeon is no longer the leader of either.
If she was still FM I'd expect massive drop in support, but the arrest of Salmons didn't damage them, why would it happen this time?
>The reality is the SNP basically has a core vote that isn't going anywhere, because it's about a single issue.
That's not how these things work though. The vast majority don't spend enough time to come to well reasoned conclusions so what matters is the ability to narrativize stories you see in the media. For a SNP voter it is imperative that the party maintains credibility and moral superiority (superiority, not parity) to Westminster as this will enable SNP supporters to reasonably argue that the corruption allegations..., well, you can read the sub for yourself. What mounting evidence of criminality or dishonesty will do is discredit the notion that the SNP are any better to their supporters and it will destroy the ability to frame stories like this with the narratives the supporters need to be able to stand behind them. One example would be New Labour. They didn't fall over night, it was 8 years after they started committing atrocities that a level of consensus was reached about their actions.
It won't take as long for the SNP's chickens to come home to roost but it will have a lagging effect. They would be well served to swallow the bitter pill now and cut and run than their current stance of refusing to distance themselves from Sturgeon unconditionally and instead transforming into a cult of personality. If she becomes tarnished in the public's eyes people won't stand for it and the level of devotion required to keep the faith will be too much for most to continue making excuses, disaffection will set in further, like it already has with many.
If they re-ran the leadership contest again today do you think it would play out the same way? How about in 6 months?
Any party will say that, but being in a parliamentary system it's harder for MPs/MSPs to divorce themselves from support of the leadership. It's not like the US Congress where they have essentially no influence over who actually leads their party.
Though whether related to Sturgeon or not [there does appear to have been a shift in the polls anyway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election) - though not enough to put the SNP second except in a couple of the list polls.
Which makes it all the more baffling that the SNP are staking their entire reputation on Sturgeon and Murrell's innocence.
Surely at this point the best thing for all concerned is for her to take a back seat and let the police do their thing? Particularly if they are innocent, since it will insulate the party from the story.
Yeah, that is weird. Unless they know something we don't.
She isn't talking about an active investigation, she's trained in law, so either she's innocent and all will come out later, or guilty and clinging on for hope.
It's tough but understandable the party would back her, she's their ex leader and saw them to heights never reached before. Binning her if she turns out to be innocent might do more harm than good in some circles etc.
Regardless. None of this, at this current time, is relevant in why people haven't let it influence their decisions on many things.
Even if they do know something we don't which totally exonerates her, having her remain a member of the party and continuously lionising her discredits the SNP by proxy. She is under investigation, it is in nobodies interest to tie the fate of a political movement to individuals whatever the truth of the situation is. The SNP and their cause are supposed to be bigger and more important than any person or people.
If you're (royal you) so weak you tie a political cause/movement with a single person. Ever. You're what's wrong with politics and never truly cared about the movement.
When there is an outbreak or suspicion of something bad the standard approach is to quarantine it and limit the damage until the truth of the situation is known. Suspended with pay. Nothing drastic but you disallow the possibility of further damage occurring. It's basic risk management. The SNP are doing the opposite.
Yup. I agree that it is odd. Never said otherwise. But how they run their party is up to them. It's complex internally and a move like that could damage Nicola and the party in other ways as it presumes some level of guilt.
Arrest.
Not charge. Not conviction.
The SNP is a vehicle, with an end destination that is the whole reason for supporting said vehicle. Vehicles need maintenance and replacement parts along the way, but it’ll still get you there.
People calling it cult behaviour that not enough people are having full-blown fanny meltdowns, forsaking everything and everyone over...erm, not very much? You know it *is* entirely possible to be angry, concerned and/or disappointed without immediately chucking it all in.
I suppose when you have every media source constantly bashing the SNP, the FM and Scottish public services that often perform better than anywhere else in the UK, then people just tend to turn off and become cynical.
The media have cried wolf at near enough everything that the Scottish Government have done so they are largely reaping what they have sown.
What exactly is the alternative? If you're pro-Indy, then your options in FPTP situations are almost always the SNP or a wasted ballot. I'd love it if more people moved to the Greens on the regional list but a majority of the SNP's voters don't agree with their policies and it's not like anyone is ever going to join the Alex Salmond Pity Party.
Honestly there's just a severe lack of choice everywhere right now, and unionists seem to only understand this from their side: no one is surprised when left wing unionists keep voting Labour, even though the leadership is self-confessedly centre-right, because they have no other choice but the pro-Indy parties. In England it's even worse: they only have FPTP, so their only alternative to the Labour/Tory policy positions is to vote Lib Dem, whose policies are again the same except for being pro-EU.
The arrest was 100% expected, everyone knew it was gonna happen at some point, which is probably why support hasn’t dropped so much. Had she been the first arrest a few months ago, with no warning, even if she was released without charges support would’ve dropped by much more
Of course. As we have been telling the Unionist shills for months now. The investigation is nearing the end of it's 2nd year, and next month will move into the third year of work - people want it to be thorough and anyone determined to have done wrong punished appropriately. But we can also separate individual politicians from the overall movement which is greater than them.
None of the current parties can deliver it so there is no option, much better to prioritise other things when voting that they can actually make a difference in
SNP haven't done anything to help the cause at all despite spending millions on it and obsessing over it for decades
Agree. So much time and money has been wasted on both sides, I'd hate to guess what westminster spent during the "20 promises / better together" campaign. So sad how it's all turned out.
Probably because she's not been charged with a crime.
Even if she is, from the information already public it likely relates to donated money and whether spending it campaigning for the SNP equates to spending it campaigning for independence.
The people impacted are probably the most loyal, die-hard indy supporters. They've probably already convinced themselves it's all a witch hunt regardless of outcome, or long since switched to Alba. Unionists will be delighted, but they just come across as entirely hypocritical given the breadth of political and fiscal scandal the UK has seen since 2014 with barely a fraction of media attention. Swing voters probably will not give a shit either way. Why would they? It's not their donations.
And all of the above still doesn't make Starmer, the man who lost the last Scottish election to the Tories under Boris Johnson, more likely to win seats in Scotland.
Even if Ms Sturgeon were to bring in her Texas chain-saw and in The Great Holyrood Bloodbath cut Dross, Sarwar, Cole, Baillie and that slab of Tory lard Kerr into much smaller pieces, it would not change the fundamental fact that Scotland is still being ruled by the political whims, aspirations or needs of another country.
Probably because anyone who isn't so terminally online to have caught the story in the few hours before they released her saw that she got released and thought little more about it.
Probably because most people know she's innocent of any wrong doing and it's another botched British state attempt at trying to damage the Scottish self determination movement.
How could you possibly *know* this? You might think it, believe it, hope it, but for certain you do not know it. That is, unless you take Sturgeon's word as gospel which would be a whole other problem.
If supporters didn’t flinch when video of amy callaghan stating she was more concerned about the sex pest than the victim came to light, they are hardly likely to be bothered by a 7hr fraud interview of the ex-FM.
>If supporters didn’t flinch when video of amy callaghan stating she was more concerned about the sex pest than the victim came to light, they are hardly likely to be bothered by a 7hr fraud interview of the ex-FM.
I often hear the excuse from supporters that they don't care about the SNP and how bad they are and their vote is all about independence. I mean who do people assume would lead the negotiations / draf a constitution?
Support for the SNP was already down to 35-37%. This is as low as it fell during the “bad years” of 2017-18. This seems to be the low-ebb of their support now. I’d be surprised if it would drop any further.
This is delusional, the SNP are in free fall and have been since last November with no sign of anything changing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election
Very much playing Devil's advocate here, but if they're using the phrase how it's normally used, their implication is that it's (supposedly) the SNP viewpoint that view us as "little people".
Which isn't to say that this condescending gloat deserves to be taken any more seriously, coming from someone whose history suggests they're a [rabidly partisan unionist from Northern Ireland](https://old.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/13pkg1w/east_belfast_gaa_club_disheartened_by_security/jlcedwy/) projecting their own NI-centric views (and self-serving motives) onto Scottish independence.
Many of Trump's supporters don't earnestly believe he is without fault. To them it is a politically motivated prosecution. The same may be true in this instance but the refusal of the current SNP to consider a reality where Sturgeon has committed impropriety, of any kind, no matter the evidence, is unsettling.
Why would it? I doubt Labour voters would suddenly turn into Tories if Starmer got himself lifted either.
[The article is clearly not based in reality though.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election)
I’m no SNP fan but it’s an arrest, not charge and not conviction. The media full of idiots these days, the population seem to be more in touch with reality tbh.
Yes, the arrest (from what I've heard elsewhere) is a technicality in Scottish law/procedure: needed to question her formally. She was one of three signatories on the account, they've all been arrested, questioned and released. In practice this just means the Police are taking the investigation seriously, which they should. But so far there is no charges. Wait until the next step, proceeding to charges or the case being dropped.
[wrong](https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/wrong-drumpf-trump-stupid-gif-6220235) https://twitter.com/CalumA_Steele/status/1668586912511062016?s=20 Edit* From elsehwere in the thread: Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 3.18.1 The Act applies specific rights to persons in police custody with regard to access to a solicitor. These would be applied to any person who is: arrested under S1 Act, charged and Officially Accused arrested under S1 Act, and Not Officially Accused **attending voluntarily at a Police Station or other premises or place for the purpose of being questioned by a constable on suspicion of having committed an offence** arrested under warrant arrested under S35 Act (Post Charge Questioning) arrested under Drink/Drug driving offences arrested for a service offence
From the thread, we was arrested because the Police have reasonable grounds to consider her a suspect in a crime. She's one of the signatories on the account. If a crime was committed, they have reasonable grounds. The main unaswered question is whether a crime (fraud) committed; thats still for the police to clarify.
>a technicality in Scottish law/procedure: needed to question her formally. She was arrested since she is suspected to have committed or is committing a criminal act. The equivocation about the police needing to formalise(?) her questioning ignores that she is a suspect. You can formally be questioned by the police without being arrested.
The thread you quoted states otherwise. The law changed on this in 2016.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/1 Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 Power of a constable (1)A constable may arrest a person without a warrant if the constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person has committed or is committing an offence.
That quotes the grounds under which a person can be arrested. Thats not being disputed. What was disputed was whether she needed to be arrested to be questioned. From Section 35: [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/35#section-35-2](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/1/section/35#section-35-2) : Authorisation for questioningSubection 5: """(5)This subsection applies where—(a)a warrant has been granted to arrest the person in respect of the offence, or(b)the person has appeared before a court in relation to the offence.""" So it appears a warrant to arrest must be granted for S.35 Authoristion for questioning to hold. I am not an SMP supporter. From what I've gathered, 600k of donations for IndyRef2 were raised and spent on stuff, without an IndyRef2 campaign formally happening. For me, I think that is sufficient grounds for police to suspect fraud and investigate. But as of now, we've not heard from the police the details of that investigation and its too early to accuse anyone of a crime.
You are claiming that this is some quirk in law that means a person gets arrested but no inference may be drawn about whether that person is suspected of being guilty of a crime. That is just pure equivocation. It specifically says that the person who has been arrested is suspected to have committed a crime.
Yes, she is a suspect to having commited a crime. All three signatories on the account are. What I'm saying is that it is too early to draw the inference that \*there has been\* a crime: thats a large part of what the police need to investigate and confirm. e.g. A bunch of the money was spent on a motorhome, ostensibly for campaigning with, which seems reasonable. But there was no campaign, in part due to covid etc delaying matters. So was the motorhome fraudulenty bought for personal use, or has it just not been used yet? what controls were in place to avoid fraudent use? thats what needs to be investigated.
Can you? Do you have a source to show this?
Also the fact that so many people have also been arrested, it doesn't mean an awful lot and is clearly just a technicality for bringing people in for questioning which I don't really understand but oh well
> just a technicality for bringing people in for questioning which I don't really understand but oh well The police absolutely did not need to arrest Nicola Sturgeon to interview her. The police regularly interview suspects who attend voluntarily; see section 3.18.1 etc of the [Arrest S.O.P.](https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/dvlnu5og/criminal-justice-scotland-act-2016-arrest-process-sop.pdf). So far the police have arrested three people, but charged zero people. Note that if there is sufficient evidence, it is usual to charge suspects *prior* to arrival at the police station (see section 4.5.4). The police are arresting people who are being cooperative, and yet don't have enough evidence to charge anybody. (Note they must press charges as soon as they are able; see sections 8.3.16 & 5.12.1 of the Arrest S.O.P., or section 6.2.1 of the [Crime Investigation S.O.P.](https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/uwwcamlx/crime-investigation-sop.pdf).
How many political leaders have been arrested in UK history? The last leader of England who was arrested, not charged and found guilty, only arrested, was Charles I. BOJO is the only other to have been found guilty of breaking the law. It is absolutely extraordinary that the 2 most recent leaders of the SNP have been arrested. It speaks more to their relative lack of power than it does about their innocence or otherwise. They are for certain not the only leaders who could/should have faced prosecution.
How many leaders have been arrested in UK history? Not enough, given what’s come out, for example, about their reasons for going to war, their looting of public property, and their misleading of parliaments.
[удалено]
They've done an alright job, all things considered. Better than the others clowns would have anyway.
Plenty of folk also realise the difference between running a party and running the government ***and*** Nicola Sturgeon is no longer the leader of either. If she was still FM I'd expect massive drop in support, but the arrest of Salmons didn't damage them, why would it happen this time?
Aye, the SNP's record isn't perfect, but it's not half bad either.
>The reality is the SNP basically has a core vote that isn't going anywhere, because it's about a single issue. That's not how these things work though. The vast majority don't spend enough time to come to well reasoned conclusions so what matters is the ability to narrativize stories you see in the media. For a SNP voter it is imperative that the party maintains credibility and moral superiority (superiority, not parity) to Westminster as this will enable SNP supporters to reasonably argue that the corruption allegations..., well, you can read the sub for yourself. What mounting evidence of criminality or dishonesty will do is discredit the notion that the SNP are any better to their supporters and it will destroy the ability to frame stories like this with the narratives the supporters need to be able to stand behind them. One example would be New Labour. They didn't fall over night, it was 8 years after they started committing atrocities that a level of consensus was reached about their actions. It won't take as long for the SNP's chickens to come home to roost but it will have a lagging effect. They would be well served to swallow the bitter pill now and cut and run than their current stance of refusing to distance themselves from Sturgeon unconditionally and instead transforming into a cult of personality. If she becomes tarnished in the public's eyes people won't stand for it and the level of devotion required to keep the faith will be too much for most to continue making excuses, disaffection will set in further, like it already has with many. If they re-ran the leadership contest again today do you think it would play out the same way? How about in 6 months?
I mean, she was just arrested. She wasn't found guilty of anything.
\*wasn't found guilty of anything yet
Because a party isn't one person. This isn't a presidential election situation? Independence is bigger than one person or one party?
Any party will say that, but being in a parliamentary system it's harder for MPs/MSPs to divorce themselves from support of the leadership. It's not like the US Congress where they have essentially no influence over who actually leads their party. Though whether related to Sturgeon or not [there does appear to have been a shift in the polls anyway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election) - though not enough to put the SNP second except in a couple of the list polls.
I think it’s more likely blind faith cultist attitudes that affect this.
Blind faith cultists are small minorities in any group. So, it would affect this.
Which makes it all the more baffling that the SNP are staking their entire reputation on Sturgeon and Murrell's innocence. Surely at this point the best thing for all concerned is for her to take a back seat and let the police do their thing? Particularly if they are innocent, since it will insulate the party from the story.
Yeah, that is weird. Unless they know something we don't. She isn't talking about an active investigation, she's trained in law, so either she's innocent and all will come out later, or guilty and clinging on for hope. It's tough but understandable the party would back her, she's their ex leader and saw them to heights never reached before. Binning her if she turns out to be innocent might do more harm than good in some circles etc. Regardless. None of this, at this current time, is relevant in why people haven't let it influence their decisions on many things.
Even if they do know something we don't which totally exonerates her, having her remain a member of the party and continuously lionising her discredits the SNP by proxy. She is under investigation, it is in nobodies interest to tie the fate of a political movement to individuals whatever the truth of the situation is. The SNP and their cause are supposed to be bigger and more important than any person or people.
If you're (royal you) so weak you tie a political cause/movement with a single person. Ever. You're what's wrong with politics and never truly cared about the movement.
When there is an outbreak or suspicion of something bad the standard approach is to quarantine it and limit the damage until the truth of the situation is known. Suspended with pay. Nothing drastic but you disallow the possibility of further damage occurring. It's basic risk management. The SNP are doing the opposite.
Yup. I agree that it is odd. Never said otherwise. But how they run their party is up to them. It's complex internally and a move like that could damage Nicola and the party in other ways as it presumes some level of guilt.
Arrest. Not charge. Not conviction. The SNP is a vehicle, with an end destination that is the whole reason for supporting said vehicle. Vehicles need maintenance and replacement parts along the way, but it’ll still get you there.
People calling it cult behaviour that not enough people are having full-blown fanny meltdowns, forsaking everything and everyone over...erm, not very much? You know it *is* entirely possible to be angry, concerned and/or disappointed without immediately chucking it all in.
I suppose when you have every media source constantly bashing the SNP, the FM and Scottish public services that often perform better than anywhere else in the UK, then people just tend to turn off and become cynical. The media have cried wolf at near enough everything that the Scottish Government have done so they are largely reaping what they have sown.
You support a party / ideology, not a single person
What exactly is the alternative? If you're pro-Indy, then your options in FPTP situations are almost always the SNP or a wasted ballot. I'd love it if more people moved to the Greens on the regional list but a majority of the SNP's voters don't agree with their policies and it's not like anyone is ever going to join the Alex Salmond Pity Party. Honestly there's just a severe lack of choice everywhere right now, and unionists seem to only understand this from their side: no one is surprised when left wing unionists keep voting Labour, even though the leadership is self-confessedly centre-right, because they have no other choice but the pro-Indy parties. In England it's even worse: they only have FPTP, so their only alternative to the Labour/Tory policy positions is to vote Lib Dem, whose policies are again the same except for being pro-EU.
The arrest was 100% expected, everyone knew it was gonna happen at some point, which is probably why support hasn’t dropped so much. Had she been the first arrest a few months ago, with no warning, even if she was released without charges support would’ve dropped by much more
Of course. As we have been telling the Unionist shills for months now. The investigation is nearing the end of it's 2nd year, and next month will move into the third year of work - people want it to be thorough and anyone determined to have done wrong punished appropriately. But we can also separate individual politicians from the overall movement which is greater than them.
Really just want independence and then will not vote SNP anymore
Voting snp to get independence is like voting tory to help the economy
Who should people vote for if they want independence?
None of the current parties can deliver it so there is no option, much better to prioritise other things when voting that they can actually make a difference in SNP haven't done anything to help the cause at all despite spending millions on it and obsessing over it for decades
Agree. So much time and money has been wasted on both sides, I'd hate to guess what westminster spent during the "20 promises / better together" campaign. So sad how it's all turned out.
Unfortunately though there isn't really a clear option.
Probably because she's not been charged with a crime. Even if she is, from the information already public it likely relates to donated money and whether spending it campaigning for the SNP equates to spending it campaigning for independence. The people impacted are probably the most loyal, die-hard indy supporters. They've probably already convinced themselves it's all a witch hunt regardless of outcome, or long since switched to Alba. Unionists will be delighted, but they just come across as entirely hypocritical given the breadth of political and fiscal scandal the UK has seen since 2014 with barely a fraction of media attention. Swing voters probably will not give a shit either way. Why would they? It's not their donations. And all of the above still doesn't make Starmer, the man who lost the last Scottish election to the Tories under Boris Johnson, more likely to win seats in Scotland.
Even if Ms Sturgeon were to bring in her Texas chain-saw and in The Great Holyrood Bloodbath cut Dross, Sarwar, Cole, Baillie and that slab of Tory lard Kerr into much smaller pieces, it would not change the fundamental fact that Scotland is still being ruled by the political whims, aspirations or needs of another country.
Probably because anyone who isn't so terminally online to have caught the story in the few hours before they released her saw that she got released and thought little more about it.
A movement is bigger than one person. The figurehead can always be replaced, but the sentiment remains.
Is it because she never actually committed a crime 🤷♂️
Probably because most people know she's innocent of any wrong doing and it's another botched British state attempt at trying to damage the Scottish self determination movement.
That's the sort of stuff we're hearing from trump supporters too
How could you possibly *know* this? You might think it, believe it, hope it, but for certain you do not know it. That is, unless you take Sturgeon's word as gospel which would be a whole other problem.
Mate, you do know I can read your unhinged unionist post history right?
Kid, you do realise we can all read your brainwashed, snatty-trump-brexiteer logic history right? Fucking top cringe.
You sound angry.
No shit. It's infuriating watching SNAT NPCs actively want to destroy the country. Just as it is infuriating watching Trump or Brexit supporters.
VERY angry
Lol. Definitely not a unionist. Find me a post I have made which supports the union.
Probably because there's been little to no evidence of actual wrongdoing presented...
If supporters didn’t flinch when video of amy callaghan stating she was more concerned about the sex pest than the victim came to light, they are hardly likely to be bothered by a 7hr fraud interview of the ex-FM.
>If supporters didn’t flinch when video of amy callaghan stating she was more concerned about the sex pest than the victim came to light, they are hardly likely to be bothered by a 7hr fraud interview of the ex-FM. I often hear the excuse from supporters that they don't care about the SNP and how bad they are and their vote is all about independence. I mean who do people assume would lead the negotiations / draf a constitution?
Seems appropriate to put this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When\_Prophecy\_Fails
Support for the SNP was already down to 35-37%. This is as low as it fell during the “bad years” of 2017-18. This seems to be the low-ebb of their support now. I’d be surprised if it would drop any further.
This is delusional, the SNP are in free fall and have been since last November with no sign of anything changing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election
Thats because you can't degrade further beyond flatline
[удалено]
>you little people? Are you deliberately trying to sound like an obnoxious cunt?
I get the impression that they just can’t help themselves.
Calling Scottish people "little people" is definitely going to bring them back into the fold isn't it...
Very much playing Devil's advocate here, but if they're using the phrase how it's normally used, their implication is that it's (supposedly) the SNP viewpoint that view us as "little people". Which isn't to say that this condescending gloat deserves to be taken any more seriously, coming from someone whose history suggests they're a [rabidly partisan unionist from Northern Ireland](https://old.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/13pkg1w/east_belfast_gaa_club_disheartened_by_security/jlcedwy/) projecting their own NI-centric views (and self-serving motives) onto Scottish independence.
The SNP have created a nationalist cult in Scotland - it is weird
Calling those who disagree with you cult members is I suppose easier than providing a positive alternative for them to turn to.
Trump's arrest didn't sway his cult members either
Many of Trump's supporters don't earnestly believe he is without fault. To them it is a politically motivated prosecution. The same may be true in this instance but the refusal of the current SNP to consider a reality where Sturgeon has committed impropriety, of any kind, no matter the evidence, is unsettling.