In this case, in that respect, their voting record speaks for itself. They certainly are different.
100% of SNP MP's also voted agains the 2003 Iraq Conflict.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2862397.stm
Damn them, with their cynical consistent voting against war thing. Some left wingers might have been fooled, but not us. We know that self determination is just a cipher for swivel eyed xenophobia.
Yup. I'm taking the piss. I agree that the SNP are not a radical party, indeed it was telling as I watched the coverage that journalists were making the point that the yes campaign were doing all they could to reassure the markets.
But it's easy to get hung up on the specific labels of SNP/Salmond. If an independent Scotland had come about, the SNP would have lost it's reason for being. The best way to have shafted the fuckers would have been to made Scotland independent. Boom. No reason to vote for them anymore. Salmond would become the head of some centre right Scottish tory equivalent. Where their support base would have gone to, I have no idea. I get the sense that only a very small minority would have gone to some Scottish equivalent of UKIP. The characterisation of the Yes campaign as a parochial, right wing movement rings absolutely no bells with me.
It became apparent very early on that the opinion polls were largely correct. That in itself was an indicator that a vote for independence was a radical step. People generally support the staus quo, even if they feel disllusioned. To me, it's pretty remarkable that they "Yes" campaign got as close as it did.
One talking head made the point that the "don't know's" had generally made their minds up, but were embarrassed or felt guilty about it. So when vox popped, they said "Not decided yet". They found the same thing happened in the last general election. A lot of the "Don't know" votes turned out to be Tory. Cognitive dissonance indeed...
Personally, I'd have liked to have seen the vote go the other way. Not because I'm a huge fan of nationalism, but because I'd like to think people have the bollocks to put their X where their mouths are. It's only that way that we get out of the usual lesser of two evils ethos that means we only ever get the same old shit. It's difficult to say what a yes vote would have meant for either Scotland or the rest of the UK. It's all too depressingly familiar what a vote for the status quo means.
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