The SNP - Taking the Tide on the Flood?

Hearing the results in Glasgow East at some ungodly hour this morning my first thought was of my pal who is a member of the SNP. We had an email exchange a couple of weeks ago and she had been out campaigning. She was genuinely buoyed up, believing they could win. I remembered visiting her and her family a couple of years ago. Her father too is an SNP activist and what struck me about both of them was the enthusiasm with which they talked about their party. They conveyed a real sense of commitment to and belief in everything the SNP stood for. The party was full of heroes, leading lights who they spoke of almost in hushed tones. The contrast with Labour, even then, was palpable. In the inevitable ebb and flow of politics it is clear the SNP are flowing. Barring a huge disaster, this kind of momentum is almost impossible to counter, on the contrary, a party that is ebbing can do virtually nothing about it. Sometimes the more they try to do, the worse it gets.

I guess our challenge is to think about what this means for us. Where are we in terms of the ebb and flow? Where were the SNP a few short years ago, did they anticipate the changing tide and take full advantage of it? Regardless of our views of their politics we must surely learn lessons from their success.

To quote Brutus in Julius Caesar "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."