Wings Over Scotland

When even the deputy leader of the Scottish Tories complains that the fear-based arguments of the No campaign are getting “silly”, the more optimistic observer might be forgiven for hoping for at least a superficial temporary change in their tone, particularly in the light of the especially bad example which triggered the comments.

You’d think the more optimistic observer would have learned by now, eh?

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A couple of weeks ago we went to the rather excellent “Propaganda – Power And Persuasion” exhibition at the British Library in London. If that’s a bit too much of a trek for you, the book only costs £4 more than entry to the exhibition and contains a large proportion of the content. Sadly, though, it misses the single best exhibit.

The piece in question is a small, scruffy hand-written piece of paper on which press baron Viscount Northcliffe had scribbled half-a-dozen cardinal rules of propaganda – as part of his work in that role during World War 1 –  in terms so clear and concise it took our breath away. Photography was banned at the show, and the lines were so good we may yet have to go back and pay another nine quid in order to copy them down.

We’re pretty sure Scotland on Sunday’s Euan McColm has read them, though.

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I’m going to do something I only do rarely and write this post in the personal pronoun, because it’s very much a personal view rather than an attempt to speak for a wider section of the independence movement. But although it’s been forming for a while, it was finally triggered by an Ian Bell comment piece in the Herald today.

You should read it all, but the key paragraph is this one:

“You have to pause, then, and ask yourself why policies that have failed for three long years cause barely a whisper of argument in Westminster. The only sensible inference, surely, is that what looks like failure to some is a very satisfactory state of affairs to others.”

That simple, understated last sentence cuts to the very heart of why Scots will stand at the edge of a terrible abyss in September 2014, with a herd of buffalo stampeding towards them, and seriously consider NOT grasping at the rope ladder dangling from the last helicopter offering to carry them safely away from the cliff edge.

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Oddly, despite much trailing of it before publication, we haven’t seen any major coverage of Alex Salmond’s lengthy interview with the New Statesman last week in the media. We kept forgetting to go to the shop for a copy, but today we downloaded the magazine’s iPad app, which contains the full interview among its free content.

That being the case, we’re comfortable with reprinting it for the purposes of discussion. We’ve tidied the formatting up for ease of reading – the NS’s sub-editor/style guide compiler needs shooting, frankly – and added our own commentary (in red) where appropriate. A few quibbles aside, it’s a fascinating and quoteable piece. Have a read.

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It’s hard to know where to start on picking apart the torrent of misrepresentations, distortions and flat-out untruths that “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall was allowed to get away with in the space of a few short minutes during a rather powder-puff interview on last night’s Scotland Tonight.

So let’s just pick one at random and see how we get on.

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Each bright new day brings a fresh game of Spot The Magnus Gardham Headline here at WingsLand Towers, but we were a bit thrown by this morning’s front page.

“Economists say indyref could drive investors away” is pure Magnus, but that four-word qualifier tacked on the end is a bit out of character. What could be going on?

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Today’s editorial leader in Scotland on Sunday is really interesting, from a language nerd’s perspective (ie very much on our turf). Entitled “A warning to No campaign”, the column – nominally on the subject of pensions under devolution – purports to criticise said group, noting that “the Better Together campaign, by repeatedly presenting the idea of change as a threat, is doing Scotland no favours.”

But lurking just barely below the surface is an entirely different agenda.

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A recurring source of amusement for the independence camp is the weekly reader poll in Scotland On Sunday. Time and again the surveys fall victim to deeply-implausible sudden surges in backing for the Unionist option, often in the middle of the night and usually after Yes supporters have drawn attention to less favourable standings.

(The paper’s deputy editor Kenny Farquharson once memorably tried to explain away 25,000 overnight votes – in a poll which had attracted about a tenth that many* in the entire preceding week – as having come from American and Canadian readers, all having inexplicably decided to vote at once on the same day.)

A fairly typical example of the phenomenon, from back in April, can be seen here, but the No campaign’s IT black-ops department appears to have suffered from a bit of an itchy trigger finger this morning and pushed the bounds of credibility a little too far.

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There’s an intriguing interview in today’s Sunday Herald with ‘Better Together’ campaign director Blair McDougall (described by the paper as a “Labour apparatchik”), to mark the anniversary of the campaign’s launch. We recommend buying the paper – our digital copy costs just 69p from PressReader – and reading the whole thing, but if you’re pressed for time the last few paragraphs sum up the content pretty accurately.

And if you’re really in a rush, the last two sentences will do.

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We’ve got quite the exclusive for you today, folks. We’re indebted to the alert civil servant who’s managed to smuggle out of Whitehall a copy of the UK government’s draft document of its inaugural greetings to the people of an independent Scotland, to be delivered (naturally) by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague.

Given Mr Hague’s recent comments on how “baffling” the very notion of Scottish independence apparently was, readers may find the practical behind-the-scenes reality reassuring. You can read the speech in full below.

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This is a genuine request for enlightenment, readers. Hopefully someone can help.

When we’re bored, we like to take a look at the Herald website front page and play Spot The Magnus Gardham Headline. It’s not usually too taxing a game – by way of illustration, we suspect you won’t have too much trouble with this example:

The actual story itself, though, has us bewildered.

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Viewers watching the BBC and STV’s coverage of the Aberdeen Donside by-election last night will have noticed one particular pre-prepared script get repeated airings from Labour representatives. Kezia Dugdale on Newsnight Scotland, Anas Sarwar on Scotland Tonight and others at the count all spontaneously offered a list of SNP seats which would fall to Labour were the evening’s 9% swing to be repeated nationwide.

The interesting thing about the line, though, was how little it actually said. In the 2011 Holyrood election the SNP took 45% of the constituency vote to Labour’s 32%. Last night, despite the advantages of a by-election (traditionally used to register a protest vote), a 50% increase in the number of candidates contesting the seat and the loss of an MSP who was extremely personally popular in the constituency, the numbers were 42% and 33% respectively – a swing to Labour of just 2% in a little over two years.

On that schedule, Labour will surge back to power at Holyrood at the election of 2024.

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