Wings Over Scotland

Such a tragic loss.

So very very sad.

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This must be some kind of mistake.

Because we’re sure you’ve spent the last decade telling us that just couldn’t happen.

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The SNP have been pretty clear about the reason they think they got a battering in last week’s election: it was because people were voting to kick out the Tories.

Now, that’s obviously nonsense. There were almost no Tories in Scotland to start with – just 10% of voters had a Tory MP – and only one of the six actually lost his seat. (Which was entirely down to the ham-fisted interference of Douglas Ross rather than an SNP surge – the SNP’s vote share in the seat in question went DOWN.)

If you wanted to keep Tories out in Scotland all you had to do was keep voting for your current MP, most of whom were SNP, rather than risk splitting the anti-Tory vote by switching to Labour and risk letting the Tories squeeze through in the middle. (Which would have happened in many seats had the Tories’ own vote not collapsed.)

But if it was true that the SNP lost because the electorate thought the election was about getting rid of the Tories, whose fault was that?

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Well, we hope you all listened to us in January and got your bets in.

Enjoy your winnings. Because the real work starts now.

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Survation released their final projection for the election last night. It’s quite a boring image because they had to make it mostly grey to correctly illustrate the margin of Labour’s lead.

Those ranges are substantial, but even their BEST-case scenario for the Tories is below 100 seats. The WORST-case scenario for Labour – 447 seats – still gives them a majority of 244, which would smash the all-time record of 209 set by the Tories exactly 100 years ago. (The best case is a dizzying 384.)

Scotland is probably the hardest area of the UK to call. In most polls there are only a few points between Labour and the SNP, and depending on how the votes are spread and who’s best at getting their support out either could still win the most seats.

That won’t, of course, make the slightest difference to the governance of the UK for the next five years. Even 57 Scottish MPs out of 57, for any party, would be completely meaningless to a government with a majority of over 200.

But it’ll make a big difference to the independence movement. Because if the SNP manages to hold onto to a significant proportion of its seats, we can all wave goodbye to the slightest chance of progress for another decade on top of the one that’s been wasted since Alex Salmond resigned.

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We were a little perplexed by this story.

Because, for startlingly obvious reasons, even the SNP hasn’t had the brass neck to do a general fundraiser for this election, with the police’s inquiries still going on into the whereabouts of the cash from their last big appeals.

But in fact the party has managed to wring over £100,000 from the most gullible of its remaining supporters in the days since the election was announced. It’s just been a bit more subtle about it.

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It’s rather apt that this happened on the last day of the calendar. Because it truly is the rock-bottom moment in the grotesquely sullied history of the Scottish National Party.

We’ve heard that line somewhere before, haven’t we?

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Less than six months passed between these two comments.

And the weird thing is that the strategy in both cases was/is the exact same. Huh.

With the shock defection of Ash Regan from the SNP to Alba last week, followed by councillor Chris Cullen, Alex Salmond’s party now has representation at every level of Scottish politics – Westminster, Holyrood and local.

But it still awaits a mass breakthrough, either in politicians crossing the floor or in the polls. In the meantime the SNP is plunging to new lows, recording just 32% in two polls last week, one of which saw them trailing six points behind Scottish Labour.

It seems reasonable to assume that the SNP’s fall is going to continue, with lots more bad news looming in its future – Operation Branchform, the likely humiliating loss of the Section 35 challenge in the wake of Lady Dorrian’s judgement this week, the ongoing ferries and trams inquiries and now the already-damaging COVID inquiry.

The party and its media cheerleaders are pumping out increasingly desperate “please don’t leave us” messaging, ironically only drawing attention to its stricken state.

So the future of the political side of the independence movement appears to be very much up for grabs and open to debate. With that in mind, Wings sat down by Zoom with Ash Regan to quiz her about where she saw it going.

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This is the end of Humza Yousaf’s speech to the SNP conference today.

And if you examine what those words mean, the conclusion couldn’t be clearer.

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Six years ago today.

The mass uprisings will be any minute now, we’re sure.

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The parasite infestation within the SNP has sensed its moment has arrived.

The final act of hostile takeover is almost upon us.

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