Wings Over Scotland

We stumbled across this quite by accident yesterday. We think you’ll enjoy it.

The clip is from last year, and was aired on Canadian national news channel Sun News. Douglas Murray is a British writer who claims to be half-Scottish on account of unspecified links to Unionist breeding ground the Isle of Lewis, popular haunt of No-camp luminaries like Alistair Darling, virulent Labour anti-devolutionist Brian Wilson and controversial “Better Together” donor Ian Taylor.

Murray studied at Eton and Oxford and writes for august UK journals like the Spectator and Guardian, as well as appearing on numerous BBC political shows. For some reason, the Canadians consider him an expert on Scottish politics, qualified to inform and enlighten their viewers. See what you think.

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Emphasis, as always, is ours.

“STATEMENT BY SCOTTISH COOPERATIVE PARTY EXECUTIVE

The Scottish Co-operative Party’s 2011 manifesto is one full of co-operative and mutual solutions to the challenges faced in Scotland, issues of independence, devolution or the constitutional settlement did not feature. The annual Co-operative Party conference has passed motions which promote a view of Scotland playing a vital role in a United Kingdom.

We have noted the personal comments made by Mary Lockhart, a long serving Co-operative Party and Labour Party member. Mary has been a great advocate for co-operative and mutual solutions. Whilst we recognise that members of political parties hold differing, sometimes opposite, positions the views Mary has expressed are not shared by the Party. Mary has offered her resignation from the role of Chair of the Scottish Co-operative Party and the Scottish Executive committee has accepted this.“

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The BBC’s flagship satirical programme “Have I Got News For You” is, of course, comedy. The tone of the opening minutes of last night’s episode was a little uglier and nastier than the usual friendly inter-regional jibes (normally delivered by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and accompanied by rebukes from the rest of the panel), but it really wasn’t anything to get overly worked up about. Comedy isn’t always cuddly.

It must have been a little uncomfortable for the No camp, though.

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We already know that the No camp has, shall we say, a bit of difficulty when it comes to basic arithmetic. But rarely do they demonstrate it so eagerly as they did last night.

We very much appreciate their helping to make our job easier.

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The Scotsman reports today the less-than-astonishing news that the Orange Order plans to take the (Ulster Says) No side in the independence debate, lining up with such other lovely “Better Together” bedfellows as the BNP, National Front and UKIP in a coalition of all the most likeable aspects of Britishness.

In the light of this exciting and important development, we couldn’t help but wonder how their last attempt at influencing Scottish politics had gone.

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It would appear that we’ve reached the point where the anti-independence campaign has officially run out of arguments, and is being forced to reissue its Greatest Hits.

The headline on the left is from January 2012, the one on the right is yesterday’s.

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Here’s Edinburgh MP Alistair Darling telling the Scottish Labour conference (around 1h 19m 40s) that in addition to an independent Scotland not being able to use the Euro or Sterling, it wouldn’t be able to have its own currency either.

“Every time your granny or your uncle or your auntie came up here they’d have to get currency in order to come and visit you.”

Now, we know the former Chancellor is careful with his pennies (if not so much with ours), but when our relatives come to see us, we don’t charge for bed and breakfast.

We think this might be that cross-border vortex at play again.

(This post is respectfully dedicated to the wonderful late Scottish folk singer, comedian and actual proper socialist Matt McGinn.)

We’re not impartial witnesses, of course, but we suspect even the most unbiased observer would struggle to dispute that the last 12 hours have seen Scottish Labour’s most spectacular on-air implosion since Iain Gray’s infamous Hindenberg disaster in the wake of Wendy Alexander’s “bring it on” brainfail of 2008.

For openers, a pained and ghostly-looking Johann Lamont on Scotland Tonight. (Starts at 0:51, continues for about six toe-curling, slow-motion minutes. Audio-only recording here for when the video is no longer available on the STV website.)

Then some desperate stalling from Anas Sarwar on Newsnight Scotland. (We’ve linked to a bit four minutes in, which lasts until the end about eight minutes later.)

But the glorious piece de resistance is unquestionably Johann Lamont being speared, skinned and filletted by David Miller on Good Morning Scotland. (The first two minutes or so are a bit slow, but you really need to hear all of the 10 minutes following them.)

And if you don’t have the time to watch/listen to the whole 24 minutes of those right now, here’s all three appearances compressed into just nine seconds.

To be honest, further commentary from us seems superfluous.

The Scotsman reports this morning that Ed Miliband is planning a highly personal attack on Alex Salmond and the SNP at the Scottish Labour conference in Inverness later today. Apparently the Labour leader will say, among other things:

“His is a narrow nationalism that thinks the way Scotland prospers is in a race to the bottom across the UK, cutting corporation tax rates for powerful companies while doing nothing for working people. And a narrow nationalism that says if it is in the interest of the SNP then it is OK to do cosy deals with Rupert Murdoch.”

If you can’t quite remember who Ed Miliband is, this is him:

“He refused to put a date on when a new set of Labour policies would be ready, saying only: ‘You will read it first in The Sun.’”

We look forward to that exclusive.

We must admit we’re quite jealous of National Collective’s media management. We told Ian Taylor’s lawyers to sod off over a week ago and nobody put US all over the news. But in amongst all the brouhaha around the site’s welcome return, one aspect of the coverage stood out rather startlingly.

“Better Together campaign director Jackie Baillie MSP said she did not have a problem accepting Mr Taylor’s money. […] Ms Baillie also pointed out that Mr Taylor had made important investments in the Harris tweed industry on the Western Isles.

‘Is the first minister equally suggesting that Mr Taylor should disinvest from Harris tweed?’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’s said that today.'”

After a week of stonewall silence, it seems the No camp has finally come up with its defence line (the Tories, Lib Dems and various tame columnists have also been faithfully parroting it all day): there’s no difference between Ian Taylor investing his doubtless-legally-obtained wealth in Harris Tweed and investing it in “Better Together”.

Except there rather obviously is, isn’t there?

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