Wings Over Scotland

On 31 January last year everything changed. On that date – the one when Scotland was officially dragged out of the EU because it was in the UK, despite the SNP’s repeated pronouncements that such a thing would not happen – sane people finally woke up and realised that Nicola Sturgeon had no plan to secure independence.

Almost a year later, a shrinking rump of less-sane people are still clinging desperately to a variety of irrational beliefs (there’s still a secret genius strategy waiting to be unveiled and we simply can’t give away our hand yet; Boris Johnson is an honourable democrat and will cave in if the SNP get a majority in May’s election; magic pixies on unicorns will descend from the heavens and grant Scotland its freedom), but most of us have now realised that 31 January 2021 will be just as pivotal as 31 January 2020.

Because an awful lot of stuff is about to happen in a hurry.

Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday we noted that rational people arrive at decisions about things based on the facts, not the personalities of who else might support or oppose those things. But in the interests of balance, allow us to present the counterpoint.

Yesterday the SNP’s defence spokesman at Westminster cited the position of French National Front leader Marine Le Pen when arguing with someone who suggested that an independent Scotland should leave NATO.

As it happens, we agree with McDonald on NATO membership. It would be a pointless folly and an exercise in self-destructive virtue-signalling to leave an organisation which is willing to defend Scotland militarily for free because of its strategic location, and it would be extremely unpopular with the Scottish public (including SNP voters), no matter how much those on the left might wish otherwise.

His reasoning above, however, is a wretched embarrassment.

Read the rest of this entry →

If this site seems to spend most of its time being angry at the SNP these days, that’s because we are. And a large part of that is because there’s very little that hacks us off more than people insulting our intelligence.

Smith’s tweet is just a crassly offensive flat-out lie. This week’s vote is NOT about “EU membership”. The United Kingdom hasn’t been a member of the EU since 31 January. We’ve already left and there’s no going back. The vote is about whether we leave with a sliver of a trade deal slightly reducing the self-inflicted harm, or the total catastrophe of no deal at all, and it’s just crushingly embarrassing for all concerned that Smith thinks so little of his own supporters as to believe he can “frame” it otherwise.

Read the rest of this entry →

There is no good position for the opposition parties in the House Of Commons to take on the impending Brexit deal vote this coming week.

It’s a terrible deal, and voting for it – as Labour will do – makes you look like an idiot, especially when it completely fails the “six tests” you swore never to vote for it without. On the other hand, time is absolutely up and were it to be somehow defeated the only alternative left to the deal would be a no-deal exit, which is the only thing worse.

Which makes this look simply pathetic.

Read the rest of this entry →

With precisely the grim level of cynicism we’ve now come to expect as standard, the Scottish Government has released a key document relating to the Salmond inquiry two days before Christmas, hoping it’ll be buried in the ongoing coronavirus-and-Brexit-related implosion of the UK.

The document, which contains legal advice relating to the judicial review brought by Salmond regarding the Scottish Government’s investigations into false allegations of misconduct against him, is extremely heavily redacted. But a few interesting passages remain, so let’s have some fun.

Read the rest of this entry →

On 8 December this site ran an article about the Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish National Party, Peter Murrell. It has recently been drawn to our attention that the piece contained a serious inaccuracy, which we would like to remedy.

Because as it turns out, Peter Murrell IS a liar.

Read the rest of this entry →

For much of last year, this site advocated a rational but unpopular position – namely that the SNP, which at the time held the balance of power in the UK parliament, should offer to support Theresa May’s soft-Brexit deal in exchange for the transfer of powers to hold a second independence referendum.

The logic was clear – nothing was ever going to stop Brexit from happening, but passing May’s deal would save the UK from the catastrophe of a no-deal. Everyone would be a winner – England and Wales would get what they voted for, Remain-voting Northern Ireland would get special terms that kept it in the EU in all but name, and Scotland would get the chance to stay in the EU as an independent nation.

“But no!”, everyone screamed at us. “We can’t possibly do any sort of deal with the Tories or we’d be electorally crucified and lose the referendum, you idiots!”

Record scratch, jump-cut to the present day.

[Pause for long, weary sigh.]

Read the rest of this entry →

The Scottish Parliament website has just published a letter from Peter Murrell following his appearance at the Salmond inquiry yesterday.

The media is focusing on Murrell’s continued evasion of the question of his WhatsApp usage (Murrell bizarrely states he has several messaging apps installed on his phone but uses none of them), but there’s a much more interesting revelation in the second of the letter’s two sections.

This is a direct, unambiguous and categorical statement from the First Minister that the investigation into the false allegations against Salmond was a Scottish Government matter that was absolutely nothing to do with the SNP.

Her failure to record the use of her private office at the Scottish Parliament to discuss the issue on 29 March 2018 (despite repeated denials that such a thing happened at all), and to take minutes of that discussion and of subsequent meetings at her home to consider the issue, and her numerous statements that the matter was private party business (now revealed by Murrell to be false) are all therefore indisputably breaches of the Ministerial Code.

The net draws ever tighter.

Read the rest of this entry →

This site and other gender-critical voices are regularly accused of being “obsessed” with trans issues, even though the subject has been mentioned in fewer than 0.7% of Wings posts. But this week the SNP’s transgender faction – when it hasn’t been STILL raging about its battering in the NEC elections – has been swamping social media with organised complaints about a tiny prospective legislative change that they themselves insist doesn’t actually matter at all.

But wait a minute – that’s not true, is it?

Read the rest of this entry →

We’ve now filed a formal complaint with the Scottish Information Commissioner about this, because what we’d forgotten last week was that our original request was actually sent in September and it’s now been almost 60 working days with no sign of a proper response, not the 20 it’s supposed to take.

Because for some reason the Scottish Government REALLY doesn’t want you to know what the First Minister and Geoff Aberdein talked about in March 2018, and we think that you probably should.

Read the rest of this entry →

We got this email last night.

And, y’know, that’s really not good enough, folks.

Read the rest of this entry →

Alert readers will recall the deranged open letter released by a group of transactivists last Friday, in a nakedly transparent attempt to influence the SNP’s NEC elections that weekend which backfired on them horribly (and amusingly) when the party’s members instead kicked out three-quarters of the committee’s woke faction and replaced them with feminists, socialists and above all advocates of actually achieving independence.

But things just got rather more interesting.

Read the rest of this entry →