Wings Over Scotland

Let’s start with what we know.

The SNP tell us that independence support is currently at 53%.

They tell us that most Scots want a referendum within the next year:

And we know that it’s absolutely unequivocally possible for the SNP and Greens to trigger a Holyrood election which would serve as a de facto referendum not only within a year, but within weeks. Scots could entirely realistically go to the polls this August or September, or even on the date Nicola Sturgeon promised less than a year ago.

So why are the SNP choosing this of all moments to give up?

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In fairness, on one level it’s really funny.

Assuming you’ve already resigned yourself to independence never happening, that is.

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Even for Lorna Slater this is jaw-droppingly dumb:

It takes Olympic-class stupidity to publicly put a figure to how much your staggering incompetence has cost Scottish businesses in the middle of an economic crisis.

Either the Scottish Government knew the DRS wasn’t compliant and was hoping the UK government would shut it down, so that it could attempt to clumsily extract some political capital from “interference” (in which case it’s directly responsible for those losses of hundreds of millions of pounds), OR it was so mindbogglingly inept that it genuinely intended the scheme to go into operation but failed to legislate it properly (in which case it’s directly responsible for those losses of hundreds of millions of pounds).

In either case, any minister with responsibility for the gargantuan shambles should – quite obviously – be out on their ears before FMQs on Thursday in desperate hope of avoiding the government being sued by the affected firms. But the SNP/Green coalition has as little shame as it has ability or dignity, so expect the clown show to continue.

There’s still nothing happening in Scottish politics, so inspired by the Hieland Coo from yesterday’s godawful Economist front-page story, and for those of you who don’t use Twitter, and by reader request, meet some of my new friends from the last couple of weeks of strolling around Bath, guarding against ursine incursion.

Because VIGILANCE MUST BE MAINTAINED AT ALL TIMES.

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This is a wretchedly boring time to be writing about politics for a living, readers. Parliamentarians in Edinburgh and London haven’t technically checked out for the summer yet – Holyrood still has a month to go before taking two months off, while Westminster is currently having a couple of weeks off for “Whitsun”, whatever the hell that is, before coming back for a month and a half then sodding off until September.

But really they’re already at the “bringing board games in” stage of term, and both the elected chambers and the media already have their eyes on the beach, which probably explains why we’re being punted drivel like this.

Even if we must afford the graphics team some grudging kudos for the unicoo.

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Wait, has Nicola Sturgeon died? We didn’t see anything on the news.

Because there are only a limited number of possible reasonable explanations for why police wanting to find out what Nicola Sturgeon knew about something would ask people who aren’t Nicola Sturgeon.

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It’s a bit disappointing to see an Italian-born man play into Mafia stereotypes.

“Nice indy movement you’ve got there. Be a shame if anything… happened to it.”

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When I was a boy at Balbardie Primary School in Bathgate in the mid-70s, football was banned in the playground. Of course we were all fitba-daft laddies, so we sought ways around the prohibition. Occasionally someone would bring in a tennis ball, but those were difficult to control in school shoes and also apt to fly over the wall of the outdoor toilet block if somebody caught one sweetly on the volley.

So most playtimes somebody would produce a tin of Pepsi or Irn-Bru or Cresta, chug the contents, stand the empty container on its end and stomp sharply on it, producing something more akin to an ice-hockey puck that would serve for our kickabout.

But even after being skelped and scudded around a concrete playground into stone walls for 20 minutes, that can was still in better shape at the end of our game than the one the SNP have been kicking down the road since 2016.

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He just can’t grasp anything, can he?

Because no, they don’t.

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If you’re still falling for this idiot-fodder after seven years, give yourself a shake.

Because for the love of Christ, an orangutan would have twigged by now. And we’re not talking about the long-suffering fans of Dundee United.

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The SNP now seem to be involved in some sort of competition where they dare each other to come up with the most blatant insult to their own members and/or the wider independence movement and see just how much they can get people to put up with.

First up was this drivel:

Humza Yousaf is leader of the SNP, a political party whose defining purpose – arguably its SOLE real purpose – is the pursuit of Scottish independence, but his “vision for Scotland” didn’t include a single mention of it.

Instead, Yousaf intends to spend the next three years on “equality”, “opportunity” and “community”, three meaningless buzzwords which every political party on Earth would claim to be in favour of. He might as well have identified his key values as kittens, lollipops and hugs.

But it gets worse.

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Just slightly under four weeks ago, this site told you “It seems very much as though the strategy has reverted to ‘Beg the UK government for a Section 30, and when they refuse, wait a while then beg them again'”.

Once again, we’re dismayed to report that we called it right. Because last night SNP MSP Mairi McAllan, officially representing the party on Question Time, told a weary audience in Fort William that that was precisely the case.

And readers, if ever a policy has been tested in battle and found wanting, it’s that one.

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