Wings Over Scotland

In any functional nation, Friday’s revelations in Parliament by Sir David Davis would have been headline news. An extremely powerful figure, the then-First Minister’s chief of staff, was named and accused of conspiring with the Scottish Government, civil service and media to imprison an innocent man – the former leader of the country – on very serious charges of sexual assault, and of seeking to destroy his reputation by illegally leaking the false allegations to the press.

Liz Lloyd had never been publicly named as the suspect before that moment, so it was almost immeasurably bizarre that only two of Scotland’s newspapers (and two of its lowest-selling), namely The Times and – belatedly – The National, bothered to even report the accusation, far less spend any time seriously delving into it.

But it still wasn’t as odd as THIS response from a former Green MSP.

What on Earth is being suggested here? Let’s try to find out.

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You should probably watch the whole of this speech by Sir David Davis this evening, even if you saw the trailer three and a quarter years ago.

It’s both a comprehensive refresher of events surrounding the Scottish Government’s conspiracy to convict Alex Salmond on false charges, and a sharp reminder of why Scotland is, in truth, not yet a country in a fit administrative state for independence.

But one part in particular ought to be the headline news tonight.

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Independence is dead as a political issue in Scotland for the next few years. This much should not be in any dispute. A Labour government with a crushing majority sits firmly in Westminster with absolutely no intentions of granting a second referendum, and the SNP has loudly and clearly abandoned any other strategy.

This fact is understandably painful and difficult to come to terms with for anyone who’s devoted the last 13 years (or more) to pursuing that cause and now isn’t quite sure what to do with theirself. But for those who still aren’t ready to face up to the unpleasant reality, there’s always the comforting world of fantasy.

Because there’s always money to be made from snake oil and pie in the sky.

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The average rape sentence in Scotland is seven years, so to get six years plus three years’ supervision for the technically lesser crime of sexual assaults means they must have been pretty grim ones.

So we know that Cameron Downing is a very bad man. Which does rather invite the question of why he was so popular in the SNP.

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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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Ah, the innocent and hopeful days of May.

Just for a bit of fun, shall we see how that went?

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To be honest, folks, we’re not quite sure what to do with ourselves at the moment.

Everyone and his wee dug is writing election-aftermath columns and offering the SNP advice of varying intelligence and solemnity about how to recover from the shattering blow they’ve just been dealt by Scottish voters.

But it’s a pointless exercise. They may as well be yelling down a manhole.

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The Scottish Greens, in a feat of remarkable hubris and financial profligacy, stood 44 candidates in this week’s general election, knowing that most of them would lose their deposits, which they duly did.

But not quite all of them. And there the comedy arose.

Because while SNP boneheads on social media are raging idiotically at Alba, Wings and others for causing division and damaging the unity of the indy cause yada yada yada, a small handful of Green candidates made a real difference.

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Joanna Cherry’s been on a mission on the airwaves today.

It’s a beautiful thing to watch. The truth usually is.

Don’t say we don’t tell you this stuff, readers.

Because we always do.

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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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We had to go and check for ourselves to make sure this really happened.

But it did.

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