Wings Over Scotland

For reasons which defy all known science, John McTernan remains the first number on the BBC’s speed-dial list when they need a commentator to represent Labour views. It’s a remarkable editorial decision, given that McTernan despises the party’s current leadership almost beyond words, and it doesn’t seem too fond of him either.

But on today’s Good Morning Scotland, McTernan really kicked it up a notch.

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Yesterday George Osborne treated us to an Autumn Statement in which he performed one of the most remarkable political U-turns in living memory.

The apparent need to cut £12bn from the welfare budget has long been sign-posted by the Tories as a requirement to getting us “back in the black” and on the road to a “higher wage, lower welfare, lower tax” society as part of their oft-cited “long-term economic plan”. (Or what academic economists prefer to call a “risky experiment with the economy in order to score political points“.)

Alert readers will recall David Cameron saying before the general election that child tax credits wouldn’t be cut in pursuit of that goal. But after the election, Osborne decided that they would. The Institute for Fiscal Studies determined that these cuts would have the worst effects on some of the poorest families in Britain.

Despite widespread opposition to the cuts, Labour infamously abstained on the critical vote in the Commons. Then, when the welfare bill reached the Lords, Labour once again abstained on a Lib Dem motion that would have completely killed the bill, in favour of a Labour one which phased in the cuts over three years, but meant Osborne would have to find another £4.5bn in his budget.

The passing of the Labour motion enraged Cameron so much that he went on an extraordinary rant about a “constitutional crisis” and announced a “rapid review”.

So we were somewhat surprised to hear Osborne say yesterday that the best thing to do was “not to phase these changes in, but to avoid them altogether”.

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At today’s First Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale oddly chose to spend her entire allotted time not on any current issues affecting Scotland, but on attacking the SNP’s 2013 White Paper on independence, seemingly unaware that the referendum was held 14 months ago and resulted in a win for the No side.

Happily for Scotland, that decision resulted in a huge £200bn oil bonanza.

Hang on, let’s just double-check that to be sure.

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Here’s our old pal John McTernan, angrily condemning Labour’s shadow Chancellor John McDonnell quoting Chairman Mao to make a point in the Commons yesterday:

And for once he’s right. What sort of vile cretin would go around quoting Mao?

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For over two years now, this site has been warning that the UK government will take the earliest opportunity it thinks it can possibly get away with to abolish the Barnett Formula, the funding mechanism which the No campaign sold as the biggest benefit of Scotland remaining in the Union.

The Formula is hated almost everywhere else in the UK, by both politicians and the English (especially) public, who see it as an over-generous subsidy to the scrounging Jocks, and with the threat of independence theoretically removed after the referendum there’s very little protecting it.

Neither Labour nor the Tories – with just one Scottish MP each – would have much to lose politically from reducing Scottish funding by billions of pounds they could use to bribe swing voters in England instead. Barnett’s partial survival was the only solid commitment made in The Vow, but it’s set to be slashed by the Scotland Bill, and the smaller it gets the less resistance there will be to its total removal.

This week the House Of Lords made lots of headlines by highlighting the shambolic, half-baked state of the Bill, which hasn’t yet come up with a “fiscal framework” to replace the bulk of Barnett. But make no mistake – the Lords want it gone just as much as everyone else does.

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Order “Welcome To Cairnstoon”, Chris’ compilation of Wings cartoons and more, here.

We’ve been pondering this week whether or not to hold a quick fundraiser to pay the £750 fine levied on us recently by the Electoral Commission for being a bit late with some indyref paperwork, readers.

(Our feeling is that there’s still plenty money left in the Wings War Chest from this year’s big crowdfunder, but lots of people have specifically asked for one for the fine, mainly to make a point to both the Commission and the little army of Unionist trolls who almost exploded with glee when the news came out late last month.)

But we’re not sure we can compete with this.

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The media, bless it, has finally spotted the elephant.

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The Unionist media has leapt on former SNP adviser Alex Bell’s blog post about the economic case for independence this week like a starving dog thrown a sausage.

It’s been wringing articles out of it for days, the latest being Torcuil Crichton’s column in today’s Daily Record, in which the unembarrassable hack (last seen trumpeting an entirely imaginary £20bn increase in Holyrood’s budget from the Smith Commission proposals) rather audaciously takes someone else to task over an economic “lie”.

Bell’s article is such self-evidently weak sauce that we haven’t bothered with it until now. But as it seems clear that the papers are going to talk about nothing else for the forseeable future, we may as well point out the obvious.

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Of course, that particular problem is easily solved. All the SNP needs to do is decide NOT to offer an alternative, at which point one will magically be created out of thin air.

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