Wings Over Scotland

Pretty much every newspaper and media source ran with a particular statistic as their headline from the published conclusions of the UK government's consultation on the independence referendum. More or less everywhere led with the 75% of respondents who wanted a single Yes/No question, which is mildly curious because it's not really news – the stated preference of every party and MSP in the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Government itself, is already for a single question.

The Secretary of State for Scotland loudly proclaimed that the consultation had therefore delivered a mandate to get on with the referendum on the UK government's terms, meaning a single question as quickly as possible and no votes for 16/17-year-olds. But the respondents to the consultation actually presented a much more significant demand: a similarly large majority of them – 72% – expressed the view that what they really wanted the UK government to do was butt the hell out altogether and give the Scottish Government the power to get on with it.

For some reason, Moore and the Scottish media weren't so keen to draw attention to that particular finding. But it would appear to mean that the electorate overwhelmingly want the Scottish Parliament – the only body which has an actual democratic mandate to hold a referendum on independence at all – to handle the entire matter without interference from Moore and his coalition colleagues.

We look forward, therefore, to the Scottish Secretary and his chums – having made their point and stated their views – keeping their noses out from now on, waiting for the Scottish Government to conclude its own (far more popular) consultation, and make its own decisions about the number and wording of the questions, the timing of the vote and the extent of the franchise. As democrats, we're sure they'll happily comply with the wishes of the people.

We invite the de facto leader of Scottish Labour to sue us if the title of this article is libellous. But the facts seem to us to be clear and incontrovertible. On BBC1’s weekend political programme Sunday Politics Scotland on the 1st of April 2012, Anas Sarwar was interviewed by Isabel Fraser, along with the SNP’s Stewart Hosie.

Below is a transcript of part of the discussion, on the subject of Labour’s allegations that the Scottish Government’s consultation on the independence referendum was “designed for abuse”. It begins 43m 36s into the show, just after Fraser has suggested to Sarwar that the consultation process is in fact, as stated by Hosie, identical to those previously conducted by Labour.

SARWAR: It isn’t the same as previous processes, because you don’t even have to submit an email address or any form of identity to put in an anonymous response, and you can put in multiple anonymous responses… on the second point that Stewart raised around the Labour Party’s own website, you have to put in an email address and a name to be able to respond, so it’s not an anonymous response that you could put in from our own site.

FRASER: But you could put in multiple responses from that address.

SARWAR: No, you have to put in your own name and an email address, which, which you can’t use multiple…

FRASER: So you’re monitoring it, and you will ensure that?

SARWAR: Absolutely, there’s no multiple responses, they can see exactly who has put in a response with their name and also their email address.

Sarwar then repeats the allegation that the process was“not only open to abuse, it’s designed for abuse” by the SNP. Fraser puts it to Hosie that that’s a very significant accusation and asks him if he accepts the charge.

HOSIE: What’s more disturbing is Anas Sarwar there saying that the responses through the Labour Party website are being monitored. That clearly is very worrying indeed, if the Labour Party are able to monitor responses through their website to a public consultation. That’s extremely concerning indeed that you said that.

SARWAR: That’s not what I said, Stewart. What I said was –

HOSIE: You said they were being monitored.

SARWAR: – there are individual, individual email addresses and names –

HOSIE: You said they were being monitored.

SARWAR: – individual email addresses and names that would go in from our responses. The point I’m making, and this is clear – I am making that accusation that the SNP are looking like they’re trying to rig this referendum.

(We’ll ignore the cowardly weasel-worded smear “I am making the accusation that the SNP are looking like they’re trying to rig this referendum” for now.)

We’ll be clear: Sarwar’s statements in the transcript above are lies. That’s not a matter of our interpretation or opinion, but empirical fact. You do NOT “have to put in your own name” on Labour’s form. Wings Over Scotland has already proved this by submitting a consultation response through the form using Anas Sarwar’s name, along with the email address “anas.sarwar@scottishlabour.org.uk”. We are not Anas Sarwar.

Sarwar’s repeated claim that “no multiple responses” are possible through the form is also a lie – there are no discernible safeguards against either fake names or multiple responses on the site, as we also verified by successfully submitting further multiple entries through the same form, including this one in which we used the name “anonymous” and the email address “anonymous@anonymous.com”.

Sarwar’s position on whether Labour are monitoring the responses in order to potentially catch these abuses is doubly untruthful. When Fraser asks him “So you’re monitoring [the responses via the form]?”, he answers “Absolutely” (although our experiments suggest this is not the case), yet mere seconds later when Hosie expresses concern about this admission, he replies “That’s not what I said”, even though it was, as an indisputable matter of record, precisely what he said.

The Scottish media, it probably goes without saying, has not challenged Sarwar on these easily-demonstrable lies. As Sarwar was nominated by Scottish Labour to be its spokesman for the issue on Sunday Politics Scotland, we believe it’s reasonable to assume, furthermore, that his responses were not made out of simple ignorance.

Should Mr Sarwar contact us to explain that in fact it was the case that he simply had no idea what he was talking about, we will gladly withdraw our allegations and issue an apology to that effect. But in the absence of any such statement, the evidence makes it impossible for us to reach any other conclusion than that he deliberately and knowingly lied to Isabel Fraser, Stewart Hosie and the Scottish people.

We do not believe such a person is fit for office in one of the nation’s biggest political parties, or indeed to be a Member of Parliament. We think most people would agree, and we call on Anas Sarwar to resign both positions immediately.

Normally we enjoy a little chuckle at Kevin McKenna’s weekly column in the Guardian, as befits one of the stalwarts of our Zany Comedy Relief link section. On taking an early peek at this week’s effort, it looked to be one of those rare occasions when Kevin takes a break from slagging off the SNP and talks about something else, but instead we were horrified to witness one of the most despicable things we’ve seen in the mainstream “quality” press for quite some time.

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The Tories blow £110,000 on tea and biscuits in a single department in three months:

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond pays for two cups of tea and two Caramel Wafers out of his own pocket and makes £1m profit in a single afternoon:

Is it any wonder the canny Scottish people would rather have the clever First Minister running their country than the hapless Tories?

We were struck by a little parable in the Scotsman today, penned by our favourite teller of fireside morality tales Michael Kelly. (Who, as attentive readers will know, only fails to grace our “Zany Comedy Relief” links column due to the lack of any central hub address for his contributions to the paper.)

In what we could most charitably describe as a “there but for the grace of God” scenario, the man whose chairmanship of Celtic took it to within hours of the fate that’s currently befalling Rangers reiterated the tired old lie about how Scotland needs both of the Old Firm, but in the course of the article he also passed on an interesting fact we hadn’t previously known.

“Rangers were once before in financial difficulty. It was in the 1920’s when my grandfather, James Kelly (a former Scotland centre-half), was chairman of Celtic. Rangers had a temporary cash flow problem and their board came out to his house in Blantyre to explain the problem and seek help. Celtic gave them an unconditional short-term loan. The fact that Rangers felt able to ask and that Celtic willingly responded indicates that both clubs were aware of their inter-dependence.”

We couldn’t help but find the 1920s football situation strikingly analogous to the modern political one. Rangers and Celtic are supposedly the bitterest of rivals, and their fans treat each other like diametrically opposed poles, with honour and virtue the sole property of one side and bigotry and hatred found exclusively on the other. Yet when it comes to the crunch, the institutions themselves know which side their bread is buttered, and unhesitatingly come together in their mutual interest. Remind you of any two big political parties at all?

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The media and blogosphere is awash with anguished, hand-wringing pleas for the independence debate to be conducted in a mature, reasoned and intelligent way over the next couple of years, but which do very little to bring that situation about. Yet it's a vital goal, because the way we're going whoever wins the referendum will find themselves living in a bitterly divided Scotland torn apart by years of vicious fighting.

Looking to the mainstream media is hopeless, because it's simply not set up for adult discussion. Politicians are crammed into tiny amounts of airtime which encourage nothing but vacant point-scoring soundbites – prepared in advance, often repeated robotically, and on no account to be deflected by anything the interviewer might have actually asked. (Though in fairness, on his night the BBC's Gordon Brewer can be as tenacious an inquisitor as these islands have seen.)

The online arena is no better, overwhelmingly inhabited by partisan sites – including this one – many of which also censor large swathes of dissenting opinion behind cowardly moderation policies. (Which we don't – only a contributor's first comment is moderated, as an anti-spam measure.) It's almost unheard of for opposing sides to undertake any sort of above-the-line dialogue.

So we're going to have a go.

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(You’ll see what we did there in a moment.)

Speaking as someone with a certain amount of experience in the field of polemic – and with the death threats, internet hate campaigns and Daily Star doorsteppings to show for it – this writer is always a little disappointed when grown adults fail to grasp how the concept works. We must, I regret to say, begin with the dictionary definition:

polemic (noun)
a strong verbal or written attack on someone or something: his polemic against the cultural relativism of the Sixties [mass noun]: a writer of feminist polemic
(usually polemics) the practice of engaging in controversial debate or dispute: the history of science has become embroiled in religious polemics

Joan McAlpine MSP is rapidly proving herself a subtle master of the form. Writing a new column for the red-top tabloid Daily Record (read, and this isn’t a coincidence, predominantly by Labour voters), she’s immediately got the FUD camp fumingly a-flutter with her debut piece, an interesting analogy comparing the Union to a marriage in which the husband jealously controls the purse strings of the household.

At this point, readers, let us diverge for a moment to offer a professional tip derived from over 20 years of experience. The art of the polemic – at least when deploying it in the manner of the second definition above – is to say something that isn’t actually offensive, in a way that sounds as though it is. With luck, your “mark” will spot a trigger word and immediately embark on a furious kneejerk whinge, having not bothered to actually read the article in question properly or establish any context.

In such a manner can you, for example, gather 30,000 complaints about a comment nobody with even the most basic functioning brain could possibly have misinterpreted – indeed, which the perpetrator both immediately before and immediately afterwards specifically said did not in any way represent his real views.

And what’s the result? The wider public – which didn’t go looking for offence and was therefore able to rationally and calmly see that there was none to be had – just thinks the complainers are cretins and invariably develops a certain sympathy with the perpetrator, even if they weren’t necessarily favourably inclined towards them in general. Jeremy Clarkson gets paid a lot of money, and not by accident.

Most normal people – a grouping which excludes most of us politics nerds – are sick of the modern outrage culture (a relatively new phenomenon facilitated in large part by the internet), in which someone somewhere can be relied on to be offended by anything, and where barely-sentient idiots demand compensation and/or legal remedy for their hurt feelings or the fact that they were too stupid to realise that coffee is generally served hot and is best not poured directly into your lap. Nobody loves a moaner, and especially not a thick one trying to start a storm in an empty coffee cup.

We’ve never met Joan McAlpine, but we promise you that as a professional journalist she knows that fact very well. We’re not even going to bother discussing the specifics of her Record column, because this blog has a pretty bright readership and we wouldn’t insult their intelligence. Let’s just say we’re not expecting either the SNP or the Record to drag her over any hot coals any time soon, okay?

WoS: Despite what the media would have you believe, independence isn’t a party political issue. A sizeable minority of SNP voters don’t back the policy, and many members of the other parties do, but the voices of either group are rarely heard. Andrew Page of the popular A Scottish Liberal blog is a proponent of “Home Rule”, and has kindly allowed us to reproduce this superb piece on the subject.

A few weeks ago I put together a draft topical motion with Derek Young on the issue of the party’s position on a second question in the independence referendum. My motivation for doing this was primarily to ensure that this issue is debated rather than being decided for the members by the party leadership. I was also concerned that the Scottish Liberal Democrats can campaign positively during the independence referendum, that we seize the best opportunity in decades to achieve our vision for a constitutional settlement and simultaneously ensure that the Home Rule Commission has some purpose other than cynical opposition to the SNP.

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LabourHame, the Scottish Labour blog set up by Tom Harris, started off with a pretty Stalinist approach to reader comments. It used to be the case that nothing even remotely critical of the party made it through their moderation policy (Harris sometimes deleting entire comment threads even of previously-approved posts if he’d had too much of a cuffing from readers in them), but as the site grew increasingly widely-mocked for its censorship the iron grip relented to a degree.

Since two or three months ago it’s generally been possible to have some sort of debate below the line – indeed, it’s latterly been just about the only place there was a chance of engaging Labour supporters in something vaguely approaching constructive discussion, even if you did have to wait two days to get a comment posted.

So we were slightly surprised when we hit a tender spot with this mildly pointed question, which is the first one we’ve had rejected in a few weeks, and which starts by quoting a line from the Labour leader’s speech to conference on Saturday.

“The question is not what powers should Scotland claw back, but which powers should we share.”

Or put another way, “which powers are we too wee, too poor and too stupid to handle for ourselves”.

It’s a cringing embarrassment that someone who wants people to elect her as the First Minister of Scotland doesn’t think she’s fit to handle all the powers of government. In addition to Corporation Tax, can Johann list for us all the other powers she can’t be trusted to wield, and which should therefore be left to that nice Mr Cameron?

Looks like that one was just a little bit too close to the bone for comfort, eh readers? Still, at least now we know which bits of the speech the loyal comrades were embarrassed by. We can’t say that we blame them.

We’d better have a word about Bill Walker, then. Unionists – scenting a possible party political point to be scored out of some women being beaten up – are already falling over each other in rather distasteful glee demanding public excoriation by SNP supporters of the Dunfermline MSP, over allegations of multiple incidents of past domestic abuse published in today’s Sunday Herald.

Murdo Fraser, for example, ridiculously crowed that it was “curious” how “cyberNats” were “strangely quiet” about the story after “jumping all over” Eric Joyce. Except he posted that tweet at 9.30am on the Sunday that the story broke – a time when it’s probably fair to say most “cyberNats”, like the rest of us, would still be in bed and blissfully unaware of the story’s existence, or at least its specific details.

(When this blog turned in for the night at around 2am, the name of the MSP involved was still unknown, with the Herald having published only a teaser and a cryptic front cover on which the story was given only a tiny narrow strip of space. But it was nice of the Tories’ former deputy leader to apparently be so concerned about fair treatment for the left-wing Labour MP for Falkirk West all the same.)

Let’s be clear from the off – we hope Bill Walker DOES resign, because he was a liability to the SNP already on account of his homophobic views, and we don’t think the SNP has anything to fear from a byelection at this stage. (On the contrary, we suspect they’d welcome one as a chance to deliver a resounding defeat to Labour before the council elections.) But drawing comparisons between Walker and Joyce is absurd, and it’s disappointing to see nationalists rushing to jump on the bandwagon.

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So that’s where Johann Lamont’s been hiding all this time. Evidently she was holed up somewhere learning her speech to the Scottish Labour conference off by heart, and she demonstrated the fact by rattling the whole thing out in practically a single breath. There was barely a gap left for the party faithful to applaud in, though they dutifully roared with laughter at a succession of limp anti-SNP jibes.

In fact, most of the speech was devoted to attacking the SNP rather than putting forward any positive ideas. The word “Salmond” appeared more times in the text than “justice”, “fairness”, and “jobs” put together, and by a distance at that. (“Socialism” and “Miliband” both scored zero.) It was a safety-first, preach-to-the-choir speech from a leader making her debut in the position, and who it’s probably fair to say isn’t a natural orator. But it’s hard to see who it would appeal to outside of the Caird Hall.

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It’s tempting to be taken in by the performances of Westminster politicians when they come to Scotland. David Cameron was full of self-effacement and humility in Edinburgh last week, and Michael Moore talks in soft and moderate tones of seeking only to “help” the Scottish Government whenever he speaks to the Scottish media. But if you want to see how our partners in the Union REALLY feel about us, it’s best to watch how they behave when they’re safely back at home.

The contempt for Scotland, and the Scottish Government in particular, just leaps off the screen. The Secretary of State for Scotland is supposed to be Scotland’s man in the government, not the government’s man in Scotland. It’s a post that the Lib Dems said they would abolish altogether in their 2010 manifesto (which is doubtless why in 2012 the job is not only still in existence under the coalition, but occupied by a Lib Dem). And it’s supposed to be a representative figurehead through which the opposition can challenge the UK government’s policies relating to Scotland.

But in the entire half-hour, only one notable question is actually directed by Labour (in the shape of Margaret Curran, who must have been ill) to Moore about his own administration’s conduct. Rather, the rest of the time he’s invited by members of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories to offer his opinion (which invariably concurs with theirs) on the actions of another body, which is not permitted any opportunity to answer back. The proceedings can be accurately summarised thusly:

RANDOM MP, ANY SIDE: “Does the Secretary of State agree that the SNP are simply ghastly, and that they smell and all their mums are ugly?”

SECRETARY OF STATE: “Yes. Yes I do. But the Honourable Member should rest assured that this government is doing everything in its power to put the jumped-up little Scotch oiks in their place.”

(Repeat ad infinitum.)

The sheer disrespect in which Scotland is held by the Commons is demonstrated by the constant hubbub of noise over which some questioners fight to be heard, and which the Speaker repeatedly but ineffectually attempts to silence. The volume of contempt rises significantly if any SNP member rises from their seat to speak, only to be all but drowned in jeering, catcalling and hooting from all sides of the House.

When you’re implored over the coming years to remain in our “shared home“, never forget what our position in that home is. We’re not the husband or the wife, nor even a slightly sulky teenager or a new-born and wanted child. We’re the dog. And a dog that keeps making a mess on the carpet, at that. Vote No in 2014  and we’ll have our faces rubbed in it for a generation.