Wings Over Scotland

This is a tweet today from Allan Sutherland, a prominent No activist (he’s currently co-ordinating an attempt to unseat Ian Blackford in Ross, Skye and Lochaber via Unionist tactical voting) and regular fixture of the letters pages of all Scottish newspapers.

The tweet literally incites – indeed, implores – not one but two very serious criminal offences. (His Twitter account also includes such satirical gems as tweeting a video of the First Minister’s speech on Saturday with the voice of Adolf Hitler dubbed over it.)

The tweet comes days after a Scottish Labour candidate tweeted a meme depicting someone spraying bleach on SNP MP Joanna Cherry with the caption “BANG! and the terf is gone”, despite said candidate being supported by the Jo Cox Foundation – a charity set up after the Labour MP of that name was murdered with a gun.

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Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?

Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?

Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.

Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.

Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.

In April 2021, the SNP were still the undisputed masters of all they surveyed. A poll conducted by Ipsos MORI that month showed them on 53% of the vote for the Scottish Parliament, a jawdropping 33 points ahead of their nearest rivals.

When the Holyrood election a month later was held, they won 64 seats, one more than they had done in 2016. Yet despite having led a minority government without any significant difficulties for the preceding five years, Nicola Sturgeon chose to invite the Greens to form a coalition with her party, and the effect that had on the public’s view of the government was… well, let’s see.

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Well, imagine our surprise.

There was very little realistic prospect of any other outcome, particularly in light of the same judge – Lady Haldane – ruling last month that the definition of “woman” was not limited to biological reality.

In doing so she placed it beyond any credible dispute that the Scottish Government’s proposed Gender Recognition Reform Act did indeed impinge on equality law reserved to the UK government, because the rules on who constituted a legal man or woman would have been different in Scotland and England.

But what now for poor beleaguered Humza Yousaf?

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Wings readers are by now familiar with the face of Jack/Beth Douglas, the transgender Scottish Greens activist with a long history of abuse and advocating violence against women who is nonetheless feted and worshipped by most of the Scottish Parliament.

Yet even after our extensive revelations about his past last week, not a single MSP has disassociated themselves from him. And now we find ourselves in a position whereby in order to protect other women, we’re forced to direct people’s attention to something we really wish we didn’t have to.

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For many years now, whenever I’ve done one of those “Which Political Party Should You Be In?” online quiz things, it always says that I’m a Green, which is weird because I really hate cyclists. Nevertheless, it was still the result when I did one most recently, just last month.

So I decided that for the first time in my life it was finally time to join a political party.

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If there’s still anyone reading this site thinking of voting Green:

Nice to have it finally admitted openly, we suppose.

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Let’s break this down, shall we?

Won’t take long.

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Even by the intellectual standards of the Scottish media, this is a stupid question:

But just to be helpful, we’ll answer it: by a majority of more than 500 votes is how.

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Stuck for any actual news at the tail of the Easter weekend, today’s Scottish Daily Mail reaches once again into the bag marked “Emergency Barrel Scrapings” and comes up with that old faithful beloved of all newspapers, a shock-horror “OMG LOOK HOW EXPENSIVE THE TRAINS ARE!” story.

It’s always an easy hit – partly because since a shambolic, fragmented privatisation the UK does have pretty much the most expensive railways per mile in the civilised world, but also because regular train users tend to mainly travel in the same area all the time, and are easily persuaded that they have it worse than people anywhere else.

So let’s ignore all the Mail’s ridiculous cobblers blaming the SNP – who have very limited control over the fare policies of Abellio (the Dutch state-owned company who run ScotRail) and who have been prevented by successive UK governments from nationalising the network – and just see if that’s true.

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It was nice to see an old friend back in the Scottish media today.

How times change.

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Let me first declare my interests. I’m a Yorkshireman, so I suppose that technically makes me English. I wish my beautiful region had more autonomy from Westminster, because perhaps if we had our local representatives would have fought to protect our vital industries (steel, coal, fishing, transport), rather than letting Westminster ruin them as part of their ideological experiment in turning the UK into a “post-industrial society” built around the London financial sector. (We all know how that turned out.)

I know there’s no chance of Yorkshire achieving regional autonomy from London in my lifetime, but that doesn’t mean I begrudge the people of Scotland their opportunity to end London rule – in fact I’m delighted for them.

The only concern I have is the possibility that the people of Scotland will decline this magnificent chance to assert their autonomy. Come September the 18th, I hope we’ll be celebrating the rebirth of the Scottish nation. I hope I’ll be drinking a toast to “Scotland the brave”, not mournfully lamenting for “Scotland the servile”.

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