Wings Over Scotland

There’s been a running theme recently on Unionist social media.

It’s the claim that the No vote in 2014 was an anomaly – a rare victory of progressive, internationalist, inclusive politics over the anti-establishment, isolationist, separatist tone that won out in the EU referendum and now the election of Donald Trump.

This was the case back even before and just after the independence referendum, where the Yes movement was being compared to the far-right populist movements of England, France, and the Netherlands:

Of course, the alternative view is rather simpler – that perhaps the forces that won the EU referendum and 2016 presidency also won the independence referendum.

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If your only source of news was the mainstream media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the consensus in the EU regarding an independent Scotland was bleak. Spain would, we’re told endlessly, veto Scotland’s place in the EU out of hand, and so, allegedly, would France.

And when Scotland’s First Minister went to Brussels after the referendum vote to meet with EU officials in regards to Scotland’s membership, we were told that this bold act of outreach fell on deaf ears.

The language of the press was hostile bordering on sadistic. The First Minister, acting to secure the democratic will of the people of Scotland, was apparently “running out of friends” and had to “beg” Ireland to help us out.

The reality, readers will be astonished to hear, is somewhat different.

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