Wings Over Scotland

Scotland’s two main political parties have published their 2024 accounts. The SNP’s can be found here, and Scottish Labour’s here. Neither tells a massively inspiring tale.

(Click pics to enlarge.)

The SNP lost £445,000 despite being boosted by donations totalling almost £940,000 from just FOUR individuals. Scottish Labour made a profit of £350,000 but only because it was bailed out to the tune of £777,000 by the UK party, otherwise it would have made a very similar loss to the SNP’s (specifically £428,000).

Neither of those things are surprising, since 2024 was a UK general election year and those are when parties spend big. But the devil, as always, is in the details.

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Before becoming a politician Nicola Sturgeon had a brief and somewhat unsuccessful career in the world of law. Which means she has no excuse whatsoever for this:

Because in law, yes it does. That’s EXACTLY what it means.

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The media coverage of the gender-ideology revelations in Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir has been based on a couple of short sentences from it, but since the main section of the book devotes 14 pages to the subject it’s worth checking out in depth, at least until something more interesting happens.

Highly intelligent people only, obviously.

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There was one revealing moment in what was an otherwise nauseatingly sycophantic interview with Nicola Sturgeon by Adam Fleming on BBC2 last night.

And the thing it revealed is what Sturgeon’s book is really about. Because as more and more extracts have found their way into the public domain this week, the overarching theme of “Frankly” has become impossible to miss.

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As more and more of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoirs ooze out into the public sphere like pus leaking from a burns-victim’s blisters, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of rank, festering untruth spreading out in all directions.

First she audaciously attempted to blame Alex Salmond for supposedly leaking the news of his own arrest on false sexual-assault charges to the press, a laughably mad allegation totally derided by everyone involved including the journalist the story was leaked to (by Sturgeon’s own chief of staff, Liz Lloyd).

For good measure she then accused the MSPs investigating her conspiracy against him of being mere puppets controlled and directed by Salmond, an obvious nonsense immediately refuted by them directly, in case the idea of Murdo Fraser taking orders from Alex Salmond wasn’t already too idiotic to contemplate.

And her spewing sewage cannon still wasn’t done, managing to dredge up another smear that Salmond had been secretly opposed to equal marriage in 2012, an assertion so laughably obviously disproved by entire truckloads of evidence that making it can only have been a result of the gravest desperation.

(Or perhaps pure jealousy that Pink News never made HER their “Ally Of The Year”, as they did with both Salmond and David Cameron.)

But even so, this might be the boldest Hail Mary attempt of all.

Because even for Nicola Sturgeon, trying to rewrite time itself is an ambitious move.

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Say what you like about Nicola Sturgeon, but she’s not stupid. Releasing her memoirs when the Scottish Parliament is in recess has ensured acres of media coverage for what so far have been extremely anodyne “revelations” bundled up with barefaced and obvious lies of such startling audacity that it’s almost impossible to discuss them rationally. (Which is of course the point.)

But this extract from an interview to be aired on ITV tonight is actually interesting.

In it, Sturgeon doggedly continues to refuse to use male pronouns for multiple rapist Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, despite admitting that he IS male, instead calling him “they”. But it was the bit before that that raised our eyebrows.

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We’ve written a couple of articles about the media coverage of this already, but as the slow summer season continues it’s worth taking a little time to have a proper look at the source material, because it’s your cash that’s being spent on it, and used to shape public policy in Scotland.

And it’s very hard to overstate both what a waste of money, and what a colossal insult to every woman in Scotland, it represents.

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A little over two years ago, three SNP MSPs contested the leadership of the party in the wake of the sudden resignation of Nicola Sturgeon. All were full of grand plans and dreams for the future of the party, the nation and the independence movement.

None of the three is leader now, and in nine months’ time none of them will be SNP MSPs. Indeed, it’s overwhelmingly likely that none will be an MSP at all.

And that, readers, is not a sign of a party – or indeed a Parliament – in good health.

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Oh, it’s a long, long while.

They have little to offer, but the songs they sing.