Avatar Image QuizmonsterAt last someone, Jim @ 16.12, has grasped that “once in a generation/lifetime” is no more than an idiomatic phrase used to emphasise the importance of a decision or situation.
Given that independence is and always has been the raison d’etre for the SNP’s very existence, there never was any intention that they would abandon pressing for that to happen for any given number of years…25 or 75 perhaps…suggested by the key words in the quote in the opening paragraph.
On an Andrew Marr programme in 2014, referring to the upcoming first Scottish Independence referendum, Alex Salmond - leader of the SNP at the time - said, “In my view this is a once in a generation, perhaps even a once in a lifetime, opportunity.”
Notice the opening three words, “In my view…” This statement was, perfectly clearly, just a personal opinion of Mr Salmond’s at the time and certainly not a promise or a policy statement made on behalf of the SNP as a party.
Indeed, Mr Salmond actually said later in the same interview, "In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, this is a once in a generation opportunity for Scotland."
In other words, it in no way compelled any future leader of that party to avoid for decades any further attempt to attain the party’s ends.
Yet, every single time the matter arises here, it is met by at least one but more frequently a veritable chorus of complaints about the supposed “promise/policy”!
It was obviously neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon who made any such promise, so who did? As they have been the two most recent leaders of the SNP, who else, indeed, ever had any right to make such a promise? It's conceivable, of course, that other SNP members may have 'echoed' Mr Salmond's opinion, but party policy regarding future referenda on the subject it never was.
Please, if you can, provide checkable evidence that it ever WAS. If you can’t, please stop mindlessly trotting it out every time you see the words ‘Scotland’ and ‘referendum’ on AnswerBank. If you can’t, you really have no justification for ever making such a claim again.
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Quite a lengthy rant...but who has said it was party policy or Salmond or Sturgeon made a promise?
Sturgeon did however say ''the SNP's have always said that in our view these kind of referendums are once in a generations event this is a probably once in a lifetime opportunity''