“It was the only beacon of light”.
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Speaking about the First Minister’s plan, Wilson said: “It’s about time we stopped talking about the referendum. If we don’t prepare now for 10 or 20 years ahead, our NHS will be overwhelmed by demand”.
Paul Hynes, 22, from Wishaw, Lanarkshire, joined the party last October.
“People were on a journey and I think that journey is continuing”.
We’re clear social justice and economic growth go hand in hand – and that’s why we’ll not only do everything we can with the powers we have now to boost growth, but we’ll continue to press the UK Government for the full economic powers we need to create more and better jobs here in the North-east and right across Scotland. “We also need to be seen as a party of compassion and empathy”. But, as she said on Thursday, the voters’ 2014 verdict has to be respected. They can be up one day and down the next.
Dr Richard Dixon, director of the charity, said: “The SNP has faced growing pressure from within its own ranks from the new campaign group SNP Members Against Unconventional Gas (SMAUG), who are calling on the Scottish Government to ban fracking, coal-bed methane and underground coal gasification outright”.
The party’s footsoldiers by and large are hungry for a second referendum, while its leaders are far more cautious.
The only structured discussion on the subject was due to be an “indyref2” fringe event organised by Scotland’s Law Society.
The SNP strategy was endorsed overwhelmingly by the party’s national conference in Aberdeen on Friday, after former leader Alex Salmond said military intervention would be futile and would add Syria to a long list of British military failures, including in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
“They’re impatient but they’re not stupid”, one SNP councillor told me. There’s an element of theatrical production about them rather than places where you feel policy is being made.
Such members will be happy to support the party leadership, who are now trying to downplay the prospect of another referendum.
“It would be too cynical to say that they have taken their line from Nicola”.
“There is a segment of the “no” electorate that wanted to give things another chance in the hope that things would improve and I think are open to Scottish independence”. But many in the SNP high command are more cautious.
He said Labour one-time biggest asset, that it can be “the Government of Westminster”, has now gone.
“I have had a telephone call about it”, he said. There are more than 500 journalists from all over the world here and there’s a sense the world is looking at Scotland. He predicted that, while they would win the election, they were “vulnerable”.
‘If we want Scotland to be independent – and we most certainly do – then we’ve got work to do.
Nicola Sturgeon said during her Scottish National Party’s annual conference last week she’ll wait for “strong evidence” of a change in the national mood before putting independence to another vote after last year’s decision by 55 percent to 45 percent to stay in the United Kingdom And that evidence will come from polls.
A more familiar face was Stewart Stevenson, MSP for Banff and Buchan, who has been at Holyrood since 2001.
“I would recognise now that a lot of people were being polite and were not persuaded”.
She also promised to use new welfare powers being devolved through the Scotland Bill to increase the carer’s allowance so the benefit is of the same level as that provided to jobseekers. This is undoubtedly good news for people across Scotland.
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“No one has the right to stand in the way of democracy”. The conference slogan “Stronger for Scotland” seems created to target the same fears of Corbyn’s Labour as that the Tories’ conference slogan “Security”.
