Wings Over Scotland

Yesterday afternoon John Swinney announced an independent review into the dual roles of Scotland’s main law officers, the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General, which have been a subject of great controversy since the Scottish Parliament was re-convened in 1999.

Wings welcomes this development unequivocally, albeit we’re slightly concerned that the former judge leading the review is himself a former Lord Advocate who may be inclined to regard any suggestion that the role – in which the LA is an independent law officer but also a government minister answerable to the First Minister – carries a huge conflict of interest as a personal slight.

But what’s interesting is that the SNP promised such a review way back in 2021, in its manifesto for that year’s Holyrood election.

We can’t imagine what can have caused them to delay it until now.

We don’t have much to say about this graph that it doesn’t say for itself.

The arrest of Peter Murrell on 5 April 2023, just a couple of weeks after his wife had realised the game was up and walked away before the cops came round and put a big blue tent up on their front garden, changed everything in Scottish politics.

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Alert readers will recall that last year the SNP convened a summit in Glasgow for the sole purpose of uniting the nation in preventing Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister.

The party also regularly tells us that to actually achieve independence, support would have to build to an overwhelming consensus into the 60-65% range, rather than the 50% +/-3 that it’s been stubbornly stuck at for the last 12 years.

So, y’know, now we know why they’re so frantically desperate to keep Farage out.

Funny how people change, isn’t it?

That sounds a lot to us like “Bombs Not Bairns”.

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We’re getting so much correspondence from Police Scotland at the moment that we’re starting to feel like their guiltily-neglected penpal.

This one, though, is slightly more involved than their usual two-paragraph brushoff.

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This is what it looks like, if you’ve ever wondered.

It’s basically the police’s own version of a seven-hour “no comment” interview.

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Given the refusal of Police Scotland to meaningfully answer our questions, we’ve been left with no alternative but to report Nicola Sturgeon for the crime of reset.

We’re sure the matter will be handled with the exact same professional diligence and complete and fearless impartiality that it would be for any other accused person.

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More than three months ago now, we sent Police Scotland a Freedom Of Information request. A few minutes ago we finally received a response. Brace yourselves.

That is, um… interesting.

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The SNP really really don’t want to have another independence referendum, but if somebody somehow FORCES them into one, they DEFINITELY don’t want to have it in circumstances where they’d be starting the campaign with a 16-point lead.

(We must conclude from all this, incidentally, that John Swinney LOVES the Tories, because he had no problem accepting an indyref from a right-wing party in 2012.)

If Scotland leaves the UK, who might be the Prime Minister of the remains of it is none of his business, and certainly shouldn’t be a dealbreaker in achieving independence.

If there’s anyone left in the SNP with a shred of integrity (and if there is they must be very deep undercover indeed), Swinney ought to be challenged for the leadership at next month’s conference and replaced with someone – the Lord alone knows who – who’s actually willing to pursue the party’s supposed primary goal, because Swinney has now dismissed every possible route to it out of hand.

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These are strange days, readers.

It’s getting hard to tell who’s on which side.

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Something rather extraordinary happened yesterday, dearest readers. Very briefly, we absolutely genuinely thought someone in a position of some influence in the SNP had taken a meaningful step towards being serious about independence.

We are not being sarcastic. Look: here it is. (Transcript at bottom of article.)

Dave Doogan is the SNP’s leader at Westminster. And let’s be clear: that is EXACTLY what the SNP’s stance ought to be. Its only purpose is supposed to be the securing of Scottish independence, and no peaceful democratic means of achieving that ought to be off the table. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing, like it was a dream.

The SNP was not formed with the purpose of denying England/the UK the government it voted for, it was formed to completely sever the governance of Scotland and England from each other as a matter of permanent principle, regardless of the prevailing political climate at any given point in time.

If England wants Nigel Farage as Prime Minister, that’s England’s business. The point of independence is that Scotland doesn’t have to get him too. No more, no less.

So obviously, the hapless Doogan’s brave and bright new dawn was brutally slapped down within a matter of hours.

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Now, readers, it’s not much of a secret that anyone who’s still supporting the SNP in the hopes that they’ll deliver Scottish independence is – and let’s put this as gently and kindly as possible – a bit thick.

From a membership high of 125,000 in the run-up to the 2021 Holyrood election, fully 60% have now wised up and left, and the 40% still left paying annual subscriptions to a party that’s stolen their money TWICE and spent it on pepper pots are pretty much by definition the dumbest of dum-dums.

But it looks like even they’re just about beginning to get it now.

Five more years and they might have just about woken up.

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