Word reaches us, readers, that Nicola Sturgeon was “furious” when she joined the most recent meeting of the SNP’s Westminster group by Skype. Her rage was driven by the suggestion that the party should trigger a Holyrood election to act as a de facto independence referendum, a policy we’re reliably told is supported by a number of MPs who are too scared of being browbeaten by Sturgeon in front of their colleagues to actually speak out in favour of it.
(We won’t mention their names at this point.)
Our source mentioned to us that they seemed to remember an interview in which the First Minister had revealed a possible reason for her extreme antipathy to the idea – one for the BBC’s extensive and rather good three-part documentary “Yes/No – Inside The Indyref”, which was broadcast in August 2019 and never seen again.
It’s not available on iPlayer or YouTube, but fortunately we happened to still have the show recorded on our Sky+ box, so we went to check, and lo and behold our source’s recollection was correct. Apologies for the slightly wonky quality of this video, as we had to record it off the TV screen.
You can’t move on social media today without tripping over effusive tweets from SNP MPs and MSPs singing the praises of departed Westminster leader Ian Blackford and admiring all his achievements in the position over the last five years, although weirdly nobody has actually listed any of them.
Or possibly the other way round, we’re not sure. All we know is that we’re always surging upwards and forwards but somehow never actually getting anywhere.
If anyone knows when “this process” will have ended and we’ll get our choice – or indeed what she achieved for Scotland in the Brexit negotiations – do let us know.
It’s more than two years now since we published this article, but it’s worth quickly going over it again, because there’s nothing on Earth more tedious than boneheads on social media going “Oh, you slag off the SNP but what’s YOUR plan if you’re so clever?”, who haven’t bothered to read any of the dozen times we’ve already answered that question since 25 months ago.
This is it. This is our plan. Try listening this time, thickos.
The SNP have been all over the place since Wednesday’s judgement of the Supreme Court. Astonishingly, the party hadn’t prepared an agreed line in the event of the Court ruling against it, with the result that various party figures had popped up with all sorts of different versions of what a supposed plebiscite election would mean.
It’s nice to see the British media (and perhaps, if we might be allowed to dream for a moment, the law) catching up with Michelle Mone.
It’s such a shame nobody did any proper investigative journalism into what a crooked, venal chancer she is before now – seven years ago or even four years ago, say – or the country might have been saved a few billion quid. Ah well, you live and learn, eh?
Let’s get straight to the point: this is a straight-up categorical lie.
Since Wednesday’s events there’s been a lot of chatter and confusion on social media about whether the Scottish Government has the ability to trigger a snap Holyrood election and use it as a de facto plebiscite on independence.
The short answer, as we told you yesterday, is “officially no, in practice yes”. But that needs a bit of further explanation, so as usual let’s do the job of actual journalism that nobody else in Scotland can apparently be bothered to.
