What Is The SNP For?

The SNP, like the Tories, used to campaign vigorously against nationalisation, seeing it as the transfer of control over Scottish industries from Scotland to London. It then went through a phase (as I recall, under the same Leader as at present) of calling for the renationalisation of this and that in an independent Scotland, together with the repeal of the entire corpus of anti-trade union legislation, but no one really took any of that seriously, certainly not based on the sorts of places where the SNP did not just well, but better and better, during the same period. Everyone has always known that an independent Scotland could not begin to afford to nationalise anything at all.

Now, however, the allegedly all-conquering, agenda-setting SNP has not only parked its one permanent, and defining, principle in some referendum to be held at the End of Time, but is vigorously cheerleading for the nationalisation of HBOS and the RBS. By, of course, the Government of the United Kingdom. An "independent" Scotland in which the banks are owned by the British Government, anyone?

What is the SNP for? What on earth is the point of it?