{"id":805114,"date":"2026-10-17T02:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T02:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/805114\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T02:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T02:34:09","slug":"swinney-insists-stars-are-aligning-for-scottish-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/805114\/","title":{"rendered":"Swinney insists &#8216;stars are aligning&#8217; for Scottish independence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The nationalist first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland held a summit in Cardiff last month where they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c62enegxyl9o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">signed an agreement<\/a>, which is not legally binding, that said no Westminster government had the right to &#8220;block democracy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swinney will tell his party&#8217;s supporters that &#8220;one by one, the stars are aligning in our favour&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He will say that if the SNP lost May&#8217;s Scottish Parliament election, the case for independence &#8220;would have been set back decades&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While the SNP won the Holyrood ballot, the party failed to win the overall majority  Swinney had set as a target for trying to force a second referendum in the face of Westminster opposition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Despite that, Swinney will declare that &#8220;there is no turning back&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is expected to say: &#8220;The SNP is making the weather.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;And make no mistake \u2013 the wind is now firmly in the sails of Scotland&#8217;s independence movement.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The first minister will go on to claim that the unionist parties at Westminster are &#8220;weaker than they have ever been&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nationalist first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland held a summit in Cardiff last month where&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-805114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}