Wings Over Scotland

Considering we’re only eleven days from a general election, there’s remarkably little politics coverage in the Sunday papers today. Most of what there is is in the Sunday Herald, which has a substantial (and quite entertaining) interview with Kezia Dugdale and another two pages devoted to what’s essentially spluttering attempted justification of its shambolic front-page lead from last week.

We’re not going to go into it in depth, as James Kelly on Scot Goes Pop! has already had a close look and made a pretty fair assessment. But for want of anything more interesting to talk about, and in the wake of some depressing Twitter conversations with people who apparently STILL don’t understand either the Holyrood electoral system or basic arithmetic, we’re going to have one more wade in the list-vote debate.

You might want to see if there’s football on or something.

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With fears growing that hundreds of jobs may be lost in the Clyde shipyards as the UK government slowly backs away from the commitments made during the independence referendum campaign, Kezia Dugdale was full of righteous outrage last night.

But note how delicately that tweet is phrased. The clear implication – while not directly stated – is that only the Tories were responsible for the promises.

Is that the case, though?

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We might just not post anything again until the second referendum.

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We’ve noted on numerous occasions previously that one of this site’s prime functions is merely to remember things – to serve as a repository of fact which can be referred to when politicians or the media try to mislead people about what happened in the past. It was a thought we were struck by again on reading The Times this morning.

Because as we beheld Kenny Farquharson’s account of the SNP’s manifesto launch, and how its emphasis on the word “RE-ELECT” was unfamiliar and “very different” to their last Holyrood manifesto launch, we were sure that wasn’t how we recalled it.

So we checked.

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This site has never told readers how to vote in Scottish elections and never will, partly because its editor has no vote there and doesn’t have to live with the consequences whoever wins. (Something that ISN’T true about independence, in which case Wings would relocate to Scotland, which is why we freely express a firm view on that.)

It’s in that context that we make the following observations about next month’s vote.

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Copies ordered to date: 38,521

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– NOW SOLD OUT –

The meaning of the word “reform” has taken something of a battering in Scotland this year. First the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust decided that it meant “bailing out a known liar in direct contravention of our own stated rules”. And today we have the strange case of the Electoral Reform Society.

“Make seats match votes”. Nobody could disagree with that, right?

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The Sunday Herald, which enjoyed a major sales boost from being the first Scottish newspaper to officially back independence but has since seen its circulation increase partly eroded, has this morning chosen to throw a stick of dynamite onto the fire.

The paper’s front page today teases a double-page spread inside with the headline “SPECIAL REPORT: HOW INDEPENDENCE SUPPORTERS SHOULD USE THEIR SECOND VOTE”. And then things get a little strange.

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While we’re on the subject of Ruth “line in the sand” Davidson of the Ruth Davidson No Surrender To The SNP Anti-Referendum Party making U-turns, we thought we might remind you of another one, this time from rather more recent history than 2011.

Just nine months ago, apparently Ms Davidson’s view was that “it would be wrong for the Tories to stand in the way” of another referendum “if the SNP gets a democratic mandate from the public”.

Sounds like a firm, resolute commitment to democracy and the incontrovertible right of the people of Scotland to determine their own destiny. Stirring stuff. We approve.

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The Scottish Conservatives manifesto for Holyrood, 2011:

But maybe it’s different if you’re openly campaigning to lose.

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Last weekend’s edition of the Sunday Times gave an article to a Green activist and party worker – not billed as such, even though until last month he was on the party’s regional candidate list for Lothian – to predict that the Greens would get 10 seats at next month’s election.

Much campaigning by the various fringe parties for the Holyrood contest has been based on “seat predictors” like the one deployed to produce the figures in the piece, purporting to show that a tactical-voting strategy on the list can deliver a large gain in numbers of pro-independence MSPs compared to using both votes for the SNP.

We’ve examined that argument in considerable depth already, both theoretical and practical. But its also worth noting that so-called “seat predictors” are a rather shaky basis for making such bold forecasts.

Let’s illustrate that assertion.

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We’ve made some progress. It’s just three days since we outlined a question that all the leaders of the Unionist parties should be asked, and we have our first answer. An alert reader emailed it to Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and to his credit he gave a quick, straight and unequivocal response. This is it:

“I don’t like addressing too many hypothetical situations but in this case let me be clear. If we voted to leave the EU then I would still vote to remain in the UK. I am very pro European and will campaign to remain in the EU. In the disappointing situation of Brexit I would not seek to heap more division on that divisive situation.”

Now it’s Kezia Dugdale of Scottish Labour and Ruth Davidson of the Ruth Davidson No Surrender To The SNP Anti-Referendum Party’s turn. We’re sure that if any of their constituents were to drop them a line, they’d be equally forthcoming.