Every time today that we’ve re-watched Johann Lamont’s multi-vehicular pile-up of an interview on last night’s Newsnight Scotland, we’ve seen something new in it that we missed previously and which makes us pull this face:
So (hngh) we’re going to have to get these down for posterity.
We just had to put this up before packing in for the evening.
Read that over to yourselves a few times, folks. Let it seep right in. Labour refused to devolve APD, a policy their own Devo Commission’s interim report had recommended, because it was an SNP policy that some major Scottish employers approved of.
Nothing to do with Devo Nano, just something spotted by an alert reader that we don’t recall being picked up anywhere in the press. And it seems, you know, interesting.
Shouldn’t that really be “ear-catching”? But we can’t help wondering whether Mr Carmichael has explained this rather pertinent fact to his cabinet colleagues or not. With the EU elections coming up, it might be something they’d want to know.
[NOTE: The content of this article will be added to Part 1 after today for easy future reference. This one will be left here so that comments will be preserved. Comment on either this post or the earlier one as you see fit.]
Let’s proactively synergise some more inter-operational solutions!
So, the wait is over. Two full years after announcing the setup of its “Devolution Commission” (comprising three MPs, three MSPs, one MEP, a pair of general-purpose office wonks and one increasingly-unhinged councillor), this morning Scottish Labour unveiled its final report, strikingly clad in the flag of, er, Shetland.
As we write, only the executive summary has been made available – a slim 14 pages including the preamble, reasoning and recommendations. These are our observations.
While we wait for the full detail of what look like being even more watered-down and insipid “Devo Lite” proposals from Labour than we were expecting, we suppose we might as well spend a minute on last night’s big “Better Together” announcement that Eddie Izzard was going to hold a benefit gig for the No campaign, putting the Union on a par with starving Ethiopians and earthquake victims.
Einstein is claimed to have said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (and readers hopefully already know our views on Quote Nazis), so we found a line attributed to Izzard in the press release particularly striking.
Well, this is the month of the Mad March Hare, we suppose.
First we had Bernard Ponsonby telling us that the referendum was a choice between independence and a completely imaginary “more powers” option. Next up was Hamish Macdonell in the Spectator, oddly hallucinating that David Cameron had announced “devo max” when in fact he’d announced devo nothing at all.
At the weekend (and, we suspect, all this week) there were journalists insisting that Johann Lamont was offering Scots major advances devolution when in fact she was essentially offering the 2009 Calman Commission with a new ribbon tied on it.
But the winner is surely David Torrance in today’s Herald.
Our emphasis. But, um…
At the weekend we examined the likely outcome of Scottish Labour’s long-awaited “Devolution Commission”, and the media’s extraordinary spin on it. Hyped breathlessly as a “game-changer” by more than one Scottish journalist, the plan is in fact an empty piece of window-dressing, a charade as fake as the shop-fronts which line so many High Streets as the UK government’s “recovery” bypasses most normal people’s lives.
And while Johann Lamont might have fooled the media – always willing to be suckered by any passing devolution conman – she clearly doesn’t fancy her chances of pulling the (painting of) wool over the Scottish public’s eyes, because a piece in yesterday’s Sunday Mail reveals just how low Labour are trying to manage Scotland’s hopes.
Scotland on Sunday deputy editor Kenny Farquharson was sticking with all the doggedness of the Inverness Caley Thistle defence to his paper’s bizarre story about Johann Lamont’s “Devo 2.0” plans when we chatted briefly to him on Twitter this afternoon. (Although let’s at least give SoS credit for what as far as we know is a whole new “devo something” suffix.)
The concept is so strange it merits breaking down further.
Being a journalist can occasionally present some tricky ethical dilemmas. Today’s Scotland on Sunday carries a story about Scottish Labour’s strife-riddled devolution plans, which attributes this quote to the Scottish branch manager Johann Lamont:
Now, that’s an awkward one for any conscientious reporter. We have to presume that the former English teacher MEANT to say “increase” (or “restore”), rather than “reduce”. But you can’t just casually reverse in print what someone actually said on the assumption that they meant the opposite, so the hapless Andrew Whitaker has to resort to the least-bad option, which is just printing it and hoping nobody notices.
It’s the rest of the article that contains the real nonsense, though.
Theresa May, the UK Home Secretary, yesterday told the Scottish Conservative conference that a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum would see the UK government putting up passport and immigration controls at the border.
Really? Rather than accept a common travel area, as exists with Ireland, the UK government would instigate full international border arrangements – arrangements which exist nowhere else in Europe – on the UK mainland?
Let’s just consider what that would require.
Conservative MP for Carlisle John Stevenson has drawn up a “10-Minute Rule” bill proposing that should Scotland vote Yes in September, citizens of Scotland should be barred from voting in the 2015 UK general election, even though at that point it’ll still be at least a year until Scotland is actually independent.
It’s not an unreasonable point – we’ve previously noted the constitutional chaos that could arise from that election going ahead after a Yes vote. But we couldn’t help but smile at the MP’s outraged justification for the step:
“You just can’t have your government chosen by the citizens of another country.”
We couldn’t agree more, Mr Stevenson.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
