The wild thing about this poll isn’t the headline that six months after winning a massive landslide majority, Keir Starmer now trails Nigel Farage – leader of a party with five MPs to Starmer’s 411 – as the electorate’s choice for best Prime Minister.
It’s the little grey numbers sitting quietly at the bottom.
In the recent US election, the Democrats made a huge play out of the notion that the very concept of democracy itself was at risk if Donald Trump won.
And yet his eventual victory was unquestionably democratic. Not only did Trump win under the electoral college system by a huge 312-226 margin, and secure control of both the Senate and the House Of Representatives, he also beat Kamala Harris in the popular vote, by 50% to 48%. By every possible count and measure, Trump was the legitimate winner and has a clear mandate to govern for the next four years.
Over in the UK, however, things aren’t quite so neat and tidy.
As more horrific experiences from survivors of rape torture gangs surface from across the UK, we must focus not on knee-jerk political posturing but on the root cause that led to the failure of these children by our society.
Political inaction has now opened the door to inevitable political mileage, nurtured from stoking vengeance in a rightly-angered public. Those only interested in creating cultural conflicts no more support justice for survivors than those who allowed this abomination to fester by looking away or worse, covering up the problem.
For any functioning society, inflicting unimaginable pain on children on an alarming scale seems unimaginable. Yet, the evidence has been in front of us for years – so why has immediate action to ensure the safeguarding of children – and vulnerable adults – not been a pressing priority?
Any rational assessment of Scottish (or indeed UK or world) politics at the moment tends to be negative and depressing, so since it’s a new year we thought we’d make an extra-special effort at writing something positive.
Unfortunately that does require us to enter the realm of fantasy. But hey, everybody needs a little holiday from time to time, right?
Look, we know that mocking front pages on The National is low-hanging fruit, and this particular example could hardly be any more of a self-parody if it tried.
But just for the sheer mental exercise in that stone-dead last week of December when nobody even knows what day it is, let’s imagine if it came true.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
