Wings Over Scotland

Normally when I go back to Bath after spending time in Scotland, it’s with a mixture of sadness and happiness, because – usually after a delightful but exhausting round of racing around working and catching up with family and old pals – I’m returning to the place where I’ve made my life, where most of my friends and familiar comforts reside.

This time it feels different.

Because I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared for Scotland before.

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Last night’s farce in the House Of Commons, where MPs rejected in turn every single possible Brexit option and variant thereof, perfectly encapsulated the ridiculous state of British politics and may well have scuppered any chance of avoiding a no-deal Brexit, because the EU’s terms for a longer Article 50 extension than April 12 were that the UK presented a clear and achievable plan.

But who ultimately sank the plans for either a softer Brexit or a second referendum?

Oh.

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Well, hopefully there won’t be too much of that, as we’ve got a sitter in to keep the Separats in check while we’re away. But activity on Wings will probably be a little sparse over the next few days, for hopefully-obvious reasons.

There’s a limit on how much we’ll be able to say about the case, and chances to post on the site will be restricted in general, but we’ll try to keep on top of any important events. Normal service will be resumed ASAP. In the meantime, behave yourselves.

From today’s Telegraph:

But who’s this “we”, exactly?

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Wings Over Scotland isn’t the only website dedicated to scrutinising the truthfulness of things claimed by politicians and media pundits. There’s the widely-respected and diligent FullFact.org, there’s Scotland’s own The Ferret, and there’s the BBC’s Reality Check (which frequently takes the more unconventional approach of, er, not making a finding either way about what the reality of things is).

And then there’s Channel 4’s FactCheck, which we’re going to generously assume had a liquid lunch yesterday and was a little under the weather.

Because not only is the conclusion that it reached on the subject of an independent Scotland having to use the Euro utter nonsense that’s been debunked roughly 1000 times in the last six years, it doesn’t even agree with itself.

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This was the Scottish Tories two years ago, when Scotland’s economy registered a small downturn for a single quarter, which was definitely the SNP’s fault:

Shall we find out what actually happened, readers?

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Several media outlets today relate a story from BBC Scotland’s fascinating three-part documentary of the indyref, revealing that secret UK government polling in the first week of September 2014 gave Yes a lead even bigger than the famous 51-49 one published by the Sunday Times on the 7th.

And naturally we couldn’t help wondering what might have caused it.

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Dr Craig Dalzell of the Common Weal is a very sharp guy we’ve run several pieces by on Wings, and he’s currently appearing all over the place with a highly accessible and concise explanation of how an independent Scotland could sensibly run its economy.

If you haven’t been able to make it out to see him, a quiet Sunday might be an ideal time to catch up with it.

So, some official and very brief Wings analysis, because we just watched an army of pundits on the TV all missing the bleeding obvious and talking as if a delay to Brexit was now a done deal.

After tonight’s series of votes in the Commons, all five of which were technically won by Theresa May, there are three possible outcomes. Let’s whizz through them all.

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Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the ALDE group in the European Parliament (essentially the Euro Lib Dems), is by no means our standard go-to guy for political guidance. Like most European politicians he’s been criminally silent on the outrages being perpetrated by the government of Spain, and in general he’s a bit neoliberal for our tastes.

But his speech from yesterday is powerful stuff.

As we write this, the UK’s parliament is blundering through a third successive day of toe-curling farce on the floor of the Commons, aimed this time at securing some sort of extension to Brexit to avoid a disastrous no-deal in just 15 days’ time.

It may yet be that such a request will be issued and the EU will grant it, dragging out the whole awful mess for God knows how much longer. But judging by the tone of M. Verhofstadt’s impassioned, exasperated address in Strasbourg, we wouldn’t like to have money on it. It appears that an entire continent has had just about enough of us.

For some time, most polls for “Who’d make the best UK Prime Minister?” – the stat that really decides who wins general elections – have shown a solid lead for “Don’t know”, narrowly ahead of Theresa May and a long way ahead of Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s a prime symptom of a UK-wide contempt for politicians the magnitude of which we’ve never seen in our lifetime, and Scottish voters are in no way immune.

We loaded this question from our latest Panelbase poll in the party leaders’ favours, because you don’t have to think any of them is doing a GOOD job to say that one of them is doing the BEST job out of the four. Everything is relative – and we also didn’t ask the question specifically about Brexit.

But even with those get-outs, “They’re all useless” came out on top by a clear seven points over Nicola Sturgeon, and the rest weren’t even at the races.

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The Scotsman is delighted to have some bad news to report:

So, the number of teachers is falling, right?

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