The much-awaited and hastily-extended Westminster debate on Scottish devolution is just about to start in the House of Commons. We’ll be watching it on the Parliament website rather than the BBC, for the obvious reasons.
The dust of the independence referendum is showing a distinct unwillingness to settle. Almost a month from the vote, alien observers would be hard pushed to identify Yes as the beaten side. SNP membership has more than tripled, and that of the Scottish Greens and SSP (much) more than doubled, in three weeks. The moribund Labour Party in Scotland has slumped in both Holyrood and Westminster polls. Newspaper sales figures continue to fall after not a single daily or national newspaper in the country backed the choice of almost half of the population.
Unionist politicians unnerved by the closeness of the result have advocated making independence actually illegal, and the Secretary of State for Portsmouth has issued a series of panicky warnings that the “nationalists” must not seek the best possible outcome from the figleaf Smith Commission (or, presumably, he’ll tell his mum).
Increasingly, the “once in a lifetime” referendum looks like only the opening skirmish.
A few days ago (and by criteria unknown), Wings Over Scotland was deemed the third most influential politics blog in the UK, which was nice. The #1 was LabourList, which today published a piece on last night’s two election results.
So let’s talk about UKIP.
With reference to our post from earlier today, we couldn’t help but notice Scottish Labour whining loudly this morning about the award of the ScotRail franchise to Dutch state-owned railway company Abellio. (On what sound like very good terms.)
We asked the party’s infrastructure spokesman James Kelly what Labour would have done instead had they been in power, and got no reply. So we went and had a look, and it turned out there was a clear and simple answer.
We’re still on holiday until Tuesday, readers. But we wanted to ask you something.
We couldn’t help noticing this sad story from yesterday’s Sunday Times:
That’s Johann Lamont, readers – the woman who wants to lead Scotland, but had to be “rescued” when she tried to negotiate entry into a lift. God save us.
There’s only one possible sane response to this story. It’s below:
Click the pic to sign. Let’s see who gets the most, shall we?
Because nothing scares Etonian Tory Prime Ministers like a poster on a van.
Your time is over, Daily Record. Tick tock.
Right then. I’m now back in Bath, which sadly is not yet technically in a foreign country. To be frank, readers, after the last three years and especially the last two weeks I’m mentally, emotionally and physically done in.
But on the 19th I said that it was “difficult to think of any useful purpose [Wings Over Scotland] can serve” in the aftermath of a No vote, and that’s no longer the case.
Or some regrets. It’s so hard to tell.
The UK media, ladies and gentlemen.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
