The top table 353
Posted on
December 15, 2018 by
Chris Cairns
Archive for the ‘comment’
The Handmaiden’s Tale 206
Posted on
December 14, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
It should now be abundantly clear to any rational person that time has very nearly run out to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Theresa May has been sent swiftly home from Europe with a skelped arse and told that any further negotiation is out of the question. But she’s insisted that the meaningful vote in the UK parliament on her Brexit deal won’t now happen before Christmas, which in practical terms means before mid-January.
That means that if Labour wait until the deal is thrown out before they call a vote of no confidence – which is their current position, so far as anyone can tell what their position is – then by the time the government falls it’ll already be February.
(Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, after a successful VoNC there are 14 days for someone to try to form an alternative administration before an election is called.)
Add in the six weeks minimum that are required for an election campaign and you’re halfway through March, literally just a few days before the UK will automatically crash out of the EU with no deal.
Even if a couple of months extension of Article 50 were to be granted – and we’re not sure who’d be asking by that stage – that’s plainly nowhere near enough time for a new government to come up with anything the EU would agree to.
(Remember that the withdrawal agreement was supposed to be done and dusted by October in order to give the EU six months to ratify it. Their patience with the UK is plainly at an end, and it’s hard to see them agreeing to drag the whole mess out for another year or more, which would be the realistic timescale.)
“And that’s all very well”, readers might be thinking at this point, “but that’s a picture of Kezia Dugdale, an insignificant backbench Holyrood list MSP. What the bloody hell’s it got to do with her?”
And the answer is that it’s all her fault.
Not out 429
Posted on
December 12, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is the 5,000th post since Wings Over Scotland began in November 2011, which is just shy of two a day, every single day, since then. We wanted such a landmark post to be something serious and significant, but in light of the utter brain-melting futility of trying to write anything sensible about politics in the UK today that won’t be overtaken by ridiculous events within seven minutes, screw it, we’re going to this instead.
So we’ll see you all later this evening for the result of Theresa May’s confidence vote. What’s the worst that could happen?
No, really, we’re asking.
The internationalist brigade 89
Posted on
December 06, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We all knew this already, of course. Last year we commissioned a poll from Panelbase which found an enormous 41-point gap between Yes and No voters on immigration. But it was still nice to have it both confirmed and laid out so clearly by Sir John Curtice on Good Morning Scotland earlier today.
(About 1h 55m in. We’re having some trouble recording sound on our new PC at the moment, we’ll get you a proper audio link as soon as we’ve figured it out.)
It’s worth keeping to hand the next time some witless Scottish Labour goon tries to tell you that independence is bad because it’s “separatist” and that voting for the Union is the international-solidarity option. Because that’s a flat-out lie.
In England’s Dreaming 181
Posted on
December 05, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We now have the verdicts on Brexit from three of the UK’s four nations. The Scottish Parliament, speaking for the Scottish nation, voted overwhelmingly this afternoon to reject both Theresa May’s draft agreement and leaving the EU without a deal.
And it wasn’t alone.
An excellent question 45
Posted on
December 05, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Posed by Kezia Dugdale in the Holyrood chamber today:
Articles without faith 397
Posted on
December 01, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
At a time of unprecedented political chaos and uncertainty, just about the only thing you can still count on is that for any given situation, senior Labour figures will issue proclamations both firmly in favour of it and stoutly opposed to it, usually the same day.
So the stories below, which are respectively from today’s Scotsman and today’s Times, won’t come as much of a shock to anyone.
But against the odds, we think we’ve made some sense of it.
Pretending to be stupid 797
Posted on
November 25, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
All political discourse is plagued with genuine imbeciles, of course. But what’s far more depressing is when educated and normally perceptive people merely act like imbeciles for money, such as the case of Alex Massie in the Sunday Times today.
Because for the last two years, commentators who ought to know better have insisted in presenting Scotland’s choice as between Brexit or Brexit plus independence, and solemnly concluding that the uncertainties and risks of the latter being piled on top of those of the former prove that independence is no solution.
And we don’t care to have our intelligence insulted in that way.
Helping out Murdo 250
Posted on
November 23, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
