Alex Salmond has resigned.  We are all shocked but we must not be surprised.  Alex Salmond is one of the shrewdest tacticians of this century.  He has earned his place in history and he will now take his place as a living Scottish political legend.

In resigning he is doing two things.  First of all he has turned the tables on the Westminster ‘Chums’.  Their behaviour will force them to shoulder much of the blame for Scotland losing it’s First Minister and one of its greatest politicians.  Secondly, Alex Salmond has given the Movement the spring board to launch..

 THE NEXT CAMPAIGN – THE FINAL PUSH TO INDEPENDENCE

I’m going nowhere.  Better Together worked out their strategy on the back of a fag packet.  Here’s the back of my fag packet.  I know that many NO voters will be reading my blog and may think I am saying too much.  I don’t care.  I don’t care if they try to organise themselves and oppose the next stage.  If they are reading I say …

BRING IT ON!

We have lost a battle, where truth was the first casualty, but the war goes on.  I am in for the long haul and always swore I would fight to the last breath for independence.

THE FIRST THINGS WE MUST DO ARE CLEAR:

1.  We must regroup and make sure our vast organisation on social media and grass-roots stays intact.  Many of our groups already have their next meeting booked.  We must do something about YESScotland, the movement;

IT IS A GREAT MOVEMENT WITH AN OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP – IT MUST PREVAIL

2.  We will need funding to ensure we have officers.  We should appoint a funds manager to do whatever it takes to build up our fighting fund in much the same way as the Trade Unions did.

3.  We must quickly shore up the the extensive structure we have in place throughout Scotland.  Across all social, ethnic, cultural, gender and age groups.  We should have a relaunch day.  We must send a message, even louder than before, to Westminster that we have bounced back.  We are bigger, better, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to achieve independence.

4.  We must pull together all the disparate layers of the old campaign, the grass-roots movement from YESScotland, align the massive blogs such as Wings, Newsnet, Radical, Bateman, Bella, National with the campaign as well as the multitude of smaller blogs, and the vast number of Facebook and Twitter hubs.  We must align the vast number of independence movements such as WomenforIndy, Trade Unions, Labour for Indy, BusinessforScotland, and so many other key movements to many to list.  We must let the prominent figures that served the campaign so immensely well, know that we did not go away, we were not licking our wounds we were reforming bigger and better than ever.  Many of these figure will want to lend their weight and gravitas to the campaign.  There were so many it was staggering.  I was immensely impressed by Lesley Riddoch, Ruth Wishart, Jim Sillars, Tommy Sheridan, Elaine C Smith, Jeane Freeman and all those others towers of strength who emerged during the campaign.

WE MUST DO THIS QUICKLY – THAT WILL ROCK THEM TO THEIR SOCKS

4.  We must put together a coherence Communications Plan and we must get out there quickly to let them know we did not roll over and die,

WE ARE HERE TO STAY, TO HELP LEAD SCOTLAND TO ITS NATURAL STATE, TO INDEPENDENCE

These things are already happening.  Even as I write the buzz and enthusiasm of last night’s meeting at Indy House in Helensburgh is ringing in my ears.  It cannot have escaped the attention of social media users and especially Facebook users that a new force has emerged that went from ZERO TO TREND in hours.  ‘We are the 45%’ has captured the mood and momentum of the campaign and we must embrace this incredible initiative.  From a marketing perspective I believe they have got is spot on.  I passionately believe and foresee 45 appearing everywhere in Scotland and beyond.  Last time I looked that had 100,000 subscribers and growing and growing …

5.  For me, one of the most important things we must do as we inhabit a different techno world is to produce a fully thought through SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY.  I know it new, but it is absolutely crucial.  This time when Social Media lights up it will do so with FORCE and DIRECTION

6.  We must REJECT the whole concept of more powers.  The Campaign moved past that and we must NOT DOUBLE BACK.  More powers to raise taxes and borrow more is a con, an appeasement, it is a POISON CHALICE.  More powers is THE PIED PIPER, designed to hook us and lead us off to a place that will never be, a place that will never happen!

 

WHILE THESE INITIAL STEPS ARE BEING TAKEN THERE ARE OTHER THINGS WE CAN DO:

We must create the blue-print for the next stage.  First of all there is the learning.

Many, if not all the groups will have ‘post-referendum reviews’.  High on the agenda should be an initiative to hold a formal ‘no-rank’ review.  We must establish the number of key learnings that will help us forge the strategy for going forward.

a) What we did really well and what have we learning from that.  What would we do again.

b) What we did badly, why was it bad what have we learned.  What will we do better in future

c)  What things did we do that we should not have

d)  What things did we not do that we should have

e)  What did we learn from the other side.  What was there strategy, what did they do well, what punches did they land, what did they do badly that we were able to capitalise

f) What other things can we do

The next stage will be to take the fight to the other side.  We know who they are now.

There are a number of obvious strands:

a)  The tri-party agreement on offer by Better Together offered a cross party negotiation to resolved the disparity between their respective offers.  They also produced a committed timetable.  The negotiation must not fall outside the scope of the entire 3 offers.  Any deviation from what is on offer or the timescale must be trumpeted loudly to hold them to account for the offers they made to secure votes.  We DON’T WANT these new powers but we do want to remind NO voters that that offer made to them was simply a ruse to secure their vote.

b)  Every time something happens that would otherwise have been avoided had we an independent country we will remind the NO voters that this could have been avoided with independence.

c)  We must begin a campaign of peaceful actions that will send out powerful messages and secure early successes.

 The world watched as we came to close to victory against the might of all that was left of the British Empire and the Establishment.  They watched as we achieved 45%.  For me the first target has to be

GIVE ME 5

I say, the world is still watching.  Still watching as we pick ourselves up, pull ourselves together, stand taller and prouder than ever and go forward to

INDEPENDENCE

The world is watching and the world is …

WAITING!