I’m generally very good at avoiding the news. I used to read a broadsheet newspaper every day, but I must confess, since leaving university and getting a job, I’ve rather fallen out of the habit of reading the news. These days, the news I get is either from the BBC Sport site or from Reuters’ Twitter feed, and that’s generally fine with me.
But, try as I may, it’s hard to avoid the current debate about Scottish independence. The trouble is, it’s not coming from where you’d expect. The SNP really don’t seem to be pushing the independence agenda particularly hard. This may seem odd, until, of course, you realist they simply don’t need to. The Scottish Labour Party are constantly banging on about independence. Ruth Davidson’s first contribution as leader of the Scottish Conservatives at Holyrood was about independence. Even David Cameron and the Westminster government can’t resist bringing the subject up.
And so, independence is constantly in the news – just what the SNP want, expect they don’t need to do any work. They can claim it is not they, but the other parties who are obsessed by independence, and that, since the others are so obsessed with it; therefore, it must be a brilliant idea.
The unionist parties need to stop shooting themselves in the foot. Shut up about independence. Let the Scottish people forget about the issue. Force the SNP to bring the matter up if they must, because at the moment, the opposition parties are playing right into Alex Salmond’s hands – and they just don’t seem to realise it.
Which is funny, really, because if only they would stop fanning the flames, they would realise that only about one in three people in Scotland would vote in favour of independence at the moment anyway.