Wings Over Scotland

The SNP have historically been swift to suspend any party members when there’s any hint of inappropriate conduct, never mind even a whiff of illegality. It’s been that way since 2015, with the axe falling on elected members as well as candidates in target seats and critical elections, and ordinary activists.

Not even a by-your-leave, let alone an explanation, is afforded – just suspension with immediate effect. And that’s all well and good, some might say. No hint of impropriety should attach to the party and making a virtue of acting swiftly can be both necessary and appropriate.

So why then no action against the Chief Executive?

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The Electoral Commission appears to have missed yet another deadline for publishing the SNP’s 2019 accounts (we’re waiting on them to return our phone call), so we’ve got a moment to talk about something else relating to the party’s finances.

[EDIT 12.56pm: the Commission now “hopes” to have the accounts published “in the next three weeks” along with those of the other main Westminster parties.]

The Scottish press covered itself in as much disgrace over the publication of the will of lottery winner Colin Weir after his tragic death last year as it had done during his life. Pretty much every paper in the country ran lurid headlines about how he’d “blown” or “burned” (translation: spent) half of his £80m share of the 2011 jackpot in nine years.

Weirdly, the Scottish Sun and the Daily Mail stood out for (mainly) respectful coverage focused on the fact that Colin Weir had in fact used most of the money on good causes and generous support for friends, family and strangers.

(Also, both of the Weirs were fairly old and already in quite poor health when they won the money, so why wouldn’t they spend it? You famously can’t take it with you.)

But the Mail was almost unique in the fact that its headline mentioned something that seemed to stand out as the most obviously newsworthy aspect of the will.

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Senator Claire Chandler is a Liberal Party member of the Australian Parliament. Some recent experiences she’s had send a very serious warning about the likely outcomes of the Scottish Government’s wildly unpopular new Hate Crime Bill. She’s graciously allowed us to publish this column she wrote on the subject.

Early this month I received a letter from Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner directing me to attend a compulsory “conciliation” conference with somebody offended by my comments about the need to protect women’s sport and women’s toilets and changerooms. You can watch them here:

Ironically, the complaint against me was about an opinion article I wrote about free speech. You can read it here and make up your own mind whether bureaucrats at the Anti-Discrimination Commission should be able to censor any Australian citizens for this kind of public policy discussion.

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As a right-of-centre English conservative, there are Scottish National Party concepts I haven’t so far been able to comprehend. Perhaps it’s because I don’t follow Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford. Should I keep an eye on what The Scotsman is saying?

SNP leaders talk in the same sentence of a “free” and “independent” Scotland having a future as a member of the EU. My grasp of those words is not theirs. Distinguished lawyers – be they Remainers, Leavers or Don’t-Care-Just-Pay-My-Billsers – all agree that a series of European Court of Justice decisions have established the unqualified supremacy of European Union laws – disguised as “Regulations and Directives” – over the national laws of EU states.

By 1970, the court ruled that Community law must take precedence even over the constitutional laws of member states — including basic laws guaranteeing fundamental rights, such as in Internationale Handelsgesellschaft mbH v Einfuhr- und Vorratsstelle für Getreide und Futtermittel.

I see this as vassalage, not independence.

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Last night on social media a few people raised a semi-interested eyebrow at Scotland On Sunday’s front page, and wondered if the suspiciously unattributed lead story might be something balanced and worthwhile, or if it’d be by Dani Garavelli again.

We have sad news to relate.

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Forgive us for not joining in the pointless and unusually muted hoopla about the latest indyref anniversary (which for the first time we can recall, nobody has bothered to mark by commissioning an opinion poll).

We’re still thinking about the SNP’s treatment of the man who was chiefly responsible for securing the only independence referendum Scotland has ever had.

And of its utter abysmal failure for more than half a decade to come up with anything even remotely approaching a credible plan to get a second one.

Our previous offer remains open: we’ll take any bet of any size from anyone against the proposition “Boris Johnson will never grant Nicola Sturgeon a Section 30 order in the absence of some sort of court judgement legally compelling him to”.

We’ve had no takers yet from the Sturgeon faithful. We don’t expect any.

Every day that passes from now until the current SNP leadership is removed is another one wasted to add to the 2,191 that have been wasted from 19 September 2014 until today, achieving nothing. Until that tally ends we have nothing to celebrate.

“Settling up, not settling down” was the rhetoric, as Westminster reconvened and the new SNP group headed south. Fine words and said no doubt sincerely. But it’s been said by every SNP generation that’s gone there, though none possessed the authority or faced the threats to Scottish democracy as now.

But what has happened since? As ever fine speeches given and incisive questioning of Ministers made, but to what effect?

The first major debate was the Fisheries Bill. A sore point in Scotland where a Tory government sold out our fishing industry and entire communities along with it decades ago, when negotiating EEC entry terms. Now, two generations on, as another Tory administration seeks to implement Brexit, that industry and those communities face betrayal yet again.

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The most recent insult handed down by the smirking, sneering Permanent Secretary To The Scottish Government to the people of Scotland, who she ostensibly works for and who pay her enormous salary (she gets more than either Nicola Sturgeon or Boris Johnson, and who knows, possibly even slightly more than Peter Murrell), is a crass and dismissive one even by her extraordinary standards.

The Woman Who Remembers Nothing, having asked for some time to think about it, concluded that there was simply no way to estimate the total cost to the public purse of the biased and unlawful fiasco she presided over regarding the investigation of false abuse claims against Alex Salmond, and which had cost taxpayers over half a million pounds in Mr Salmond’s legal fees alone.

Her argument was that because government employees are paid fixed salaries and don’t record how much of their time they spent on specific tasks, there was no way to estimate how much had been spent on the attempt to fit up the former First Minister.

But that isn’t how anything works these days, is it?

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The purpose of the paper below is to kickstart the process of examining alternative methods of holding a second referendum which can claim constitutional validity and thus satisfy both our voting public and, if necessary the courts, of its legality.

At the stage when the commitment to a referendum in 2020 was dropped, questioning of our leadership on the sole reliance on Section 30 to achieve a referendum and the need to explore alternatives, made it clear that this was not a matter for debate.

Whilst the First Minister has now committed to a referendum should the Holyrood elections provide a further mandate, it would appear that the strategy continues to be a sole reliance on Section 30 and a belief that the UK Government would consider further opposition to a Section 30 unsustainable.

The dangers of both leaving the initiative in the hands of a hostile UK Government, and of depending on a sole method of proceeding, are obvious. Whilst one can accept that the leadership, faced with the joint demands of Brexit and the COVID pandemic superimposed on the “day job”, is unable itself to prioritise the necessary examination of more innovative possibilities it does not preclude it setting up an internal group to do so using the expertise that lies within the Party.

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There’s a good column by Kevin McKenna in today’s Herald On Sunday about Boris Johnson, from which this paragraph in particular jumped out at us.

It did so because of something else we’d just read this weekend.

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