Wings Over Scotland

Today a mostly-female jury drawn from the most Unionist city in Scotland and directed by a female judge delivered the only verdict it was credibly possible to reach on the (total absence of) evidence before it: that Alex Salmond was not guilty of any crime.

After two weeks hearing an assortment of lurid allegations from former friends and colleagues hidden behind cloaks of public anonymity, the jury – having been advised by the prosecuting counsel that they were the sole arbiters of fact – decided that there was no truth to them.

Since the two most serious charges, in particular, were both matters of the accuser’s word against that of the accused, and the two parties gave completely irreconcilable accounts of the facts (rather than competing interpretations of agreed events), it can only be the case that one side was lying absolutely, and the jury decided that it was the anonymous accusers who were doing so.

It remains to see whether there will be a legal reckoning for those lies. But more than one sort of reckoning will surely follow from these events.

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There are now exactly two weeks remaining of the Scottish Government’s second fake “consultation” into its proposed reforms to gender law.

We say “fake” not out of cynicism or mad paranoia, but because the cabinet minister responsible for the reforms has already made it explicitly, publicly and repeatedly clear that she intends to press ahead with them regardless of the responses, and that the only purpose of the “consultation” is to try to persuade people to agree with them.

Shirley-Anne Somerville reiterated this position just days ago, telling Scotland Tonight that she was “absolutely determined” to enact the bill and only interested in silencing opposition and removing any “medicalisation” of the process of gender transition.

While the Scottish Government has met literally hundreds of times with transactivist groups with regard to the reforms, it has refused to meet women’s groups critical of them, and frequently lied about that refusal.

(It also funds transactivist pressure groups with hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money to create a “feedback loop” supporting its position. Gender-critical women’s groups receive no such funding, largely because the conditions attached to Scottish Government funding specifically and deliberately exclude them.)

The consultation document and the draft bill leave enormous logical and legislative gaps which are likely to cause untold chaos if the reforms are implemented. The Scottish Government has apparently learned nothing from the shambolic fiascos around the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act and Named Person legislation, both of which have collapsed despite widespread public support – something the proposed gender reforms emphatically do NOT enjoy.

We’re obliged for the sake of sanity to assume that at some point the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary or both will have to undertake at least one proper interview on the subject of these extremely serious and potentially catastrophic proposals.

For the consideration of whoever may conduct these interviews, we submit below some questions which a very considerable number of people in Scotland – primarily but by no means exclusively women, and encompassing a majority of every political and social demographic – urgently want answered.

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So that’s it, then. That’s the grand plan.

We’re sorry, but we’d say the game’s a bogey, gang.

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At 51-49.

But it’s weirder than that.

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We had a brief but semi-enlightening debate on Twitter with some daft young idiot from Scottish Labour this morning, which culminated in his desperately clutching at votes for the Tories and Lib Dems last month as somehow representing a victory for Labour.

Readers can pass an idle moment by identifying all the obvious logical flaws in that tweet for themselves, but it did lead us to a striking realisation, which we instinctively knew was true but still had to double-check because it seems so ridiculous.

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So we’ve got a couple of weeks to wait to find out what the SNP’s grand plan that they should have had ready yesterday was, and in the absence of anything better to do we suppose we might as well speculate on the possibilities.

WARNING: if you’re one of the decreasing rump of ultra-faithful still clinging to the idea of a new indyref in 2020, don’t build your hopes up.

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Anyone who’s followed the UK political media over the last decade or so with specific reference to Scotland will know that in a very crowded field, the standout poster boy for arrogant, condescending metropolitan cluelessness is the Independent’s chief political commentator John Rentoul.

For reasons which escape us, Rentoul – who was born in India and as far as we know has spent not a single day of his life resident in Scotland – identifies as Scottish. And yet he doesn’t appear to even recognise the concept of Scotland as a political entity, and today he demonstrated that fact in a manner so stark and striking that it’s worth recording for posterity.

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We couldn’t help but raise a quizzical eyebrow at this assertion from SNP MP Pete Wishart in today’s Sunday National.

It was said in the specific context of securing a second indyref in 2020, and since such a referendum has NOT in fact been secured – and looks extremely unlikely to be – we wondered which other definition of “success” might be being used to justify the claim.

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The 2010s end in a matter of hours, and everyone and their genderfluid dog is writing retrospectives of the 10 years just past. This site, which came into existence in the second year of the decade, has very little interest in following suit – we’ve always been about the future.

But a cursory glance over the shoulder does reveal one immediately striking fact that’s worthy of passing note.

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We got blocked by LBC’s James O’Brien today for very gently and politely challenging him over this tweet:

And while this site most assuredly carries no torch for Jeremy Corbyn, it’s a reframing of reality that merits a bit of investigation for what it tells us about the UK media.

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Last night a bomb went off in British politics. It utterly destroyed the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, and may have fatally weakened the foundations of the UK itself – Northern Ireland now has a majority of nationalist MPs for the first time in its history, and over 80% of Scottish seats went to the SNP.

As this site had been warning for months and months, the patience of English and Welsh voters with Parliament refusing to implement their 2016 vote to leave the EU finally snapped. Some wildly improbable Labour seats – including the constituency of Grenfell Tower, for God’s sake – went to the Tories, especially in Wales and the north of England, in order to “Get Brexit Done”.

The Lib Dems, the only UK party with a clear (okay, fairly clear) Remain position and with a minimum of 48% of the electorate to target, somehow contrived to LOSE seats, not only compared to their 21-MP starting point (bolstered by defectors since the last election) but compared to the 12 MPs they won in the 2017 election itself.

And the SNP? Well, the SNP failed too.

Because having expressly told voters that the election wasn’t about independence but about stopping Brexit, they won 13 more seats, but seats which have zero leverage at Westminster and will be able to do absolutely nothing to prevent the UK leaving the EU seven weeks from now. For all Scotland’s renewed “STOP BREXIT” message, Brexit will not be stopped. The UK, and Scotland with it, will depart next month.

We can’t help but note at this point that if the party had taken our advice and done a deal with the Tories in October to let Brexit pass in return for Section 30 powers, we’d now have an indyref in the bag (which we’d win) and as a parting gift to our southern kin we’d also have saved England from having a thumping great Tory majority for the foreseeable future.

Hindsight, eh?

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Today is – thanks be to God and all that is holy – the last day of the worst general election in recorded human history, and indeed perhaps the worst thing of any kind to have happened in the UK since the Blitz.

In less than 24 hours many of us will go out to vote. But then what?

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