Exactly a decade ago today, on 11 August 2014, the Wee Blue Book was released.
This was where things stood at that moment in time.
One month after the WBB, that 20-point gap was down, like-for-like, to two points.
As any moderately heavy internet user will tell you, it’s very easy to get into a situation where you have literally hundreds of browser tabs open at any one time.
Every now and again you’ll go to clean them up and find something that you’ve been meaning to write about in a quiet moment, and this certainly counts as a quiet moment in Scottish politics, so let’s do this one now.
Because the story above is from March, but we don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone anywhere talk about just how weird it is, or what it tells us about the 2024 SNP.
(And Get Away With It)
You’d have to be living in a pretty strict prison not to have heard the big story from today’s Olympics in Paris, in which male Algerian cheat Imane Khelefi was put in a boxing ring with young Italian woman Angela Carini and allowed to hit her in the head for 46 seconds until she retired, in tears and in fear for her safety, saying “I had to preserve my life”.
Sound like your kind of fun, men? It’s surprisingly easy!
We’ve been off for a little break in the country, and as far as we can tell we’ve missed absolutely nothing in the moribund world of Scottish politics. We did, however, arrive back just in time for something mildly interesting, or at least revealing.
It’s the latest episode of a new podcast by veteran Scottish political journalist and broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby and jobbing opinion columnist Alex Massie, inventively titled The Ponsonby And Massie Podcast.
The first 35 minutes or so weren’t very noteworthy, other than the curious omission – when predicting the makeup of the next Scottish Government – of the idea of a Labour-SNP coalition, which to this site remains by far the most practical and logical outcome of the 2026 Holyrood election.
But then things got a little feisty.
So Andy Wightman just won’t stop lying.
As we’ve repeatedly pointed out, Wings has made NO comments about the “workplace harassment” allegations made against Alex Salmond several years ago. We’ve only commented on the CRIMINAL allegations, and workplace harassment isn’t a crime. (It’s a matter for an employment tribunal, not the police.)
But the real question is WHY Andy Wightman is so doggedly attached to these two complainers that he’s determined to keep digging himself further into a hole of lies. And everyone knows what you tend to find when you start digging holes.
David Davis may be the last of his kind – a libertarian Tory from a council-scheme and grammar-school background, and also one of the few remaining big beasts occupying the political jungle of the back benches.
(He could in fact have been Tory leader, and would have been if David Cameron and George Osborne hadn’t teamed up to defeat him in 2005 after he won the first ballot.)
He resigned from Cameron’s shadow cabinet in June 2008 on a principled issue of civil liberties (winning the subsequent by-election with a massive 72% of the vote) and from Theresa May’s Cabinet over Brexit, and he was one of a tiny handful of MPs prepared to defend Julian Assange from extradition.
And in 2022 it was Davis who rose from the back benches to tell Boris Johnson to “in the name of God, go”.
So on the rare occasions when he leads a Commons adjournment debate, as he did last Thursday evening, those with an educated eye for politics sit up and take notice.
In the interests of fairness we must note that we did get a response to this post.
Other than being rather more petulant and childish, it was much as expected.
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.
You should probably watch the whole of this speech by Sir David Davis this evening, even if you saw the trailer three and a quarter years ago.
It’s both a comprehensive refresher of events surrounding the Scottish Government’s conspiracy to convict Alex Salmond on false charges, and a sharp reminder of why Scotland is, in truth, not yet a country in a fit administrative state for independence.
But one part in particular ought to be the headline news tonight.
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.
The Scottish Greens, in a feat of remarkable hubris and financial profligacy, stood 44 candidates in this week’s general election, knowing that most of them would lose their deposits, which they duly did.
But not quite all of them. And there the comedy arose.
Because while SNP boneheads on social media are raging idiotically at Alba, Wings and others for causing division and damaging the unity of the indy cause yada yada yada, a small handful of Green candidates made a real difference.
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
Wings Over Scotland
