Some quick thoughts on the EU elections, then.
Despite in some ways being the most tumultuous election result in UK history (in terms of the near-destruction of the two main parties), it also changed almost nothing.
This video is 20 minutes long, and most of you won’t watch it all the way through. But you really should.
Because the UK is changing, and it’s changing fast.
So Theresa May has handed in her notice. She will formally resign as Conservative Party leader on June 7, triggering a leadership election which will be concluded by “the end of July”, until which time she’ll continue as a powerless lame-duck caretaker PM.
Let’s just recap that timetable.
Almost nine in ten Scottish voters now back a second referendum on independence. This rather startling news was brought to us at the weekend by an unlikely source, in the form of walking brain vacuum Annie Wells MSP.
Wells was absolutely unequivocal that NO other vote this Thursday – not Labour, not Lib Dem, not Brexit Party – would constitute opposition to a second indyref.
(She emphasised the point by RTing a tweet from the Scottish Tories’ boorish and obnoxious head of media Adam Morris which described both Nigel Farage and Vince Cable as “weak on Scotland’s place in the UK”.)
So how are those numbers looking?
We watched the whole of the Labour shadow Scottish Secretary’s interview on this morning’s Sunday Politics Scotland, and can confirm that this is a wholly accurate representation of what she said on it with regard to Labour’s position on Brexit.
So for those of you keeping score: Labour does NOT support a second referendum, does NOT support the current deal, does NOT support no deal, but WOULD vote for the current deal if it included a second referendum, and would INSIST on a second referendum on any alternative deal.
Honestly, we have no idea why anyone’s still confused.
On Saturday, for the second year in a row, there was a huge and joyous independence march through the centre of Glasgow, which passed off with no incidents, arrests or disturbances despite attempted provocation from a small handful of abusive Unionist bigots led by a Holocaust denier.
Most of the Sunday papers carried largely neutral and factual reports of the event, of varying quality and size, with only a comical piece of hysteria in the extremist Scottish Daily Express standing out as objectionable for its ridiculous headline (and even then the actual copy barely mentioned the march at all).
But also for the second year in a row, one paper – or to be more specific, one man – took a rather more negative slant.
We got a tweet this morning from one of those odd Twitter accounts that’s been going for eight years and still only has six followers. This one appears to be a fairly moderate right-wing, UK-nationalist Brexiter with only a few dozen tweets (nearly all replies) to their name since 2011.
But readers, he’s got a point.
Well, this won’t take long.
The First Minister’s speech to Parliament today contained a single useful and practical step: by aiming to pass the legislation required to conduct a second independence referendum by the end of this year, Scotland will be well prepared to act swiftly in the event that such a vote somehow becomes a reality.
On how to make it become a reality, there was nothing.
(This article was originally intended to go up on Wednesday, but it was somewhat overtaken by events before it was finished.)
This week has seen another of those strange coincidences by which a whole slew of Unionist pundits all randomly decide to start talking about the same subject. On this occasion it was the rape clause, and why it proved the SNP are bad.
Almost exactly two years ago, this website suggested that it might not be the smartest idea for Labour to go along with Theresa May’s call for a snap election. (Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, it couldn’t have happened without Labour’s support.)
And it occurred to us today that if they hadn’t, the current government would only have a maximum of one year left to run.
After running a minor post about poll results this morning to pass the time between Brexit fiascos, we got a bit engrossed – as we’re wont to do now and again – in some stats. Because the Labour Party in Scotland has been in a seemingly inexorable slide into irrelevance for a good few years now, and seems completely unable to find itself a supremo capable of stopping the rot.
But with our customary diligence, we’ve discovered their secret star player.
Because somewhat to our surprise, it turns out that the most successful Scottish Labour leader of the past 20 years is… Alex Rowley.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
