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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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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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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It’s almost 20 years since this last happened.

The 2005 election was the last time the Daily Record and the Scottish Sun both endorsed the same party at a UK general election. So, y’know, something is going on.

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Survation released their final projection for the election last night. It’s quite a boring image because they had to make it mostly grey to correctly illustrate the margin of Labour’s lead.

Those ranges are substantial, but even their BEST-case scenario for the Tories is below 100 seats. The WORST-case scenario for Labour – 447 seats – still gives them a majority of 244, which would smash the all-time record of 209 set by the Tories exactly 100 years ago. (The best case is a dizzying 384.)

Scotland is probably the hardest area of the UK to call. In most polls there are only a few points between Labour and the SNP, and depending on how the votes are spread and who’s best at getting their support out either could still win the most seats.

That won’t, of course, make the slightest difference to the governance of the UK for the next five years. Even 57 Scottish MPs out of 57, for any party, would be completely meaningless to a government with a majority of over 200.

But it’ll make a big difference to the independence movement. Because if the SNP manages to hold onto to a significant proportion of its seats, we can all wave goodbye to the slightest chance of progress for another decade on top of the one that’s been wasted since Alex Salmond resigned.

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There are now just 10 days until the general election. Wings has never told its readers how to vote and we’re not going to start now. Which is lucky, because if we were, we wouldn’t have a clue how to.

Just, y’know, not for any of these wretched, worthless shiters.

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When you’ve been watching Scotland playing football for 50 years of your life, you become accustomed to disappointment. You expect disappointment. Anything better than disappointment becomes a bonus.

You also come to expect injustice, like last night’s inexplicable failure of VAR – which has unfailingly spotted micro-infringements like a player’s toenail being offside – to even take a look at a nailed-on stonewall penalty in the last minutes of the game.

But because you’re so used to these things, you’re not expecting rage.

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