Wings Over Scotland

At the weekend we examined the likely outcome of Scottish Labour’s long-awaited “Devolution Commission”, and the media’s extraordinary spin on it. Hyped breathlessly as a “game-changer” by more than one Scottish journalist, the plan is in fact an empty piece of window-dressing, a charade as fake as the shop-fronts which line so many High Streets as the UK government’s “recovery” bypasses most normal people’s lives.

And while Johann Lamont might have fooled the media – always willing to be suckered by any passing devolution conman – she clearly doesn’t fancy her chances of pulling the (painting of) wool over the Scottish public’s eyes, because a piece in yesterday’s Sunday Mail reveals just how low Labour are trying to manage Scotland’s hopes.

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The top five most-read stories on Wings Over Scotland in the last seven days.

1. We less, we happy less
Awful grammar and the same old scaremongering from “Better Together”.

2. Sympathy for the devil
The No camp tries not to rejoice at bad news for Scotland.

3. Please stop lying to us
Reporting the news from Things That Didn’t Actually Happen World.

4. The countdown starts tomorrow
We got the date wrong on this – just two days to go.

5. An apology to Gordon Brown
Instantly gazumped in the “old man gibberish” stakes.

This week’s theme: devo schmevo.

Scotland on Sunday deputy editor Kenny Farquharson was sticking with all the doggedness of the Inverness Caley Thistle defence to his paper’s bizarre story about Johann Lamont’s “Devo 2.0” plans when we chatted briefly to him on Twitter this afternoon. (Although let’s at least give SoS credit for what as far as we know is a whole new “devo something” suffix.)

The concept is so strange it merits breaking down further.

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It’s nearly time for us to go and watch the League Cup Final, so for the unfortunately benighted among you with no interest in Derek’s Dandy Dons (or Inverness Caley Thistle, or indeed soccerball in general), enjoy some classic shots of Ruth Davidson’s speech just a few minutes ago at what the media has been describing this weekend as a “resurgent” Scottish Conservatives conference in Edinburgh.

That’s the party leader’s keynote address. Captions invited as usual.

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Being a journalist can occasionally present some tricky ethical dilemmas. Today’s Scotland on Sunday carries a story about Scottish Labour’s strife-riddled devolution plans, which attributes this quote to the Scottish branch manager Johann Lamont:

Now, that’s an awkward one for any conscientious reporter. We have to presume that the former English teacher MEANT to say “increase” (or “restore”), rather than “reduce”. But you can’t just casually reverse in print what someone actually said on the assumption that they meant the opposite, so the hapless Andrew Whitaker has to resort to the least-bad option, which is just printing it and hoping nobody notices.

It’s the rest of the article that contains the real nonsense, though.

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Conservative MP for Carlisle John Stevenson has drawn up a “10-Minute Rule” bill proposing that should Scotland vote Yes in September, citizens of Scotland should be barred from voting in the 2015 UK general election, even though at that point it’ll still be at least a year until Scotland is actually independent.

It’s not an unreasonable point – we’ve previously noted the constitutional chaos that could arise from that election going ahead after a Yes vote. But we couldn’t help but smile at the MP’s outraged justification for the step:

“You just can’t have your government chosen by the citizens of another country.”

We couldn’t agree more, Mr Stevenson.

At this week’s First Minister’s Questions, Johann Lamont banged repeatedly on a drum that the Unionist parties never tire of thrashing like an Orangeman in marching season – the notion that an independent Scotland couldn’t afford to live as it does now and would have to raise taxes or cut public spending.

Over and over again Lamont demanded the First Minister say which he would do if Scotland voted Yes, implying the choice wouldn’t have to be made inside the Union:

“If Scotland were outside the United Kingdom, I ask again: how would the First Minister pay for that loss in revenue—by cutting services or by raising taxes?”

Ms Lamont’s colleague Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is about to embark on a tour of Scotland, flitting from city to town to village like some demonic ghostly apparation out of “Tam O’Shanter”, frightening Scots with blood-chilling tales of “black holes” and, most especially, unaffordable pensions.

Sounds like we better stay in the safety and security of the UK, then.

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Headline in the Guardian this evening.

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Heavens above, readers. Immersing ourselves as we do in the tepid and murky waters of Scottish political journalism for a living – because it was either that or drowning kittens in a bucket and the hours for that are slightly unsociable – we sometimes imagine that we’ve become inured to even the most fatuously cretinous word-vomiting arse-quackery that passes for analysis in the supposedly intelligent press.

And then we read something like the spectacularly, cosmically moronic mind-sewage Hamish Macdonell just strained and heaved onto the electro-pages of the Spectator this afternoon and realise that the abyss of idiocy has no end, or at the very least culminates in a black-hole singularity from which the light of reason can never escape.

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Major kudos to the hyper-alert reader who covertly recorded the Q&A session after last night’s event in Glasgow where Alistair Darling was interviewed by James Naughtie.

Obviously it’s not exactly broadcast-quality, but it’s perfectly audible for all but the occasional couple of seconds. We were going to catalogue all the flat-out lies Mr Darling told in the 51 minutes, but frankly the “Better Together” chairman was on autopilot and you’ve heard all the untruths – and their respective debunkings – a dozen times before on this site alone.

So while we see if we can summon up the mental stamina to wade through them all yet again, just watch and see how many you can spot for yourselves.

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Three opinion polls this week have all suggested that Labour’s opinion-poll lead over the Conservatives is continuing to shrink. ICM put Ed Miliband’s party just three points in front, as do Ipsos MORI, while Populus have a mere 1% between the two parties.

For perspective, the same distance out from the 2010 general election, the Tories were 16 points in front. By seven months away from the vote, in October 2009, their lead was an incredible NINETEEN points, and they still couldn’t win a majority.

Who fancies Labour’s chances?

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Tony Benn, who died today at the age of 88, was an archetypal British nationalist. He wanted Britain out of the EU, but opposed Scottish independence on the grounds that it would turn his mother into a “foreigner”.

Nevertheless, even to a lot of people on the Yes side he represented, in the words of pro-independence New Statesman columnist James Maxwell this morning, “a Britain I could’ve voted for”. (NB Retweets are not necessarily endorsements.)

A man who went to court to fight against his own personal privilege, Benn was an anachronism in a country full of politicians who spend much of their time battling to protect their access to the great trough of public money on the banks of the Thames.

So it’s no surprise that his passing has unleashed a tidal wave of hypocrisy.

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