Wings Over Scotland

Do Ed Miliband, Tony Benn and George Galloway and now Sir Menzies Campbell (who appeared on today’s edition of The Sunday Politics Scotland) have some sort of problem with foreigners? It sounds like they do. For instance, read these words from Tony Benn, the great elder statesman of the Labour Party, this summer:

“If Scotland wants to be independent they have the absolute right to do so. But I think nationalism is a mistake. And I am half Scots and feel it would divide me in half with a knife. The thought that my mother would suddenly be a foreigner would upset me very much.”

When asked about Benn’s views in a recent Holyrood magazine interview, Labour leader Ed Miliband had this to say:

“I am not the only person with family ties abroad and family is family, whatever the accent or postcode. But the Scottish people with family in England, or vice versa, will be living in a foreign country if Alex Salmond gets his way, that’s just a fact. We live in an increasingly interconnected world; we shouldn’t be building artificial barriers, we should be working out how to work more closely together.“

And on an episode of Scotland Tonight a few months ago, where Galloway discussed the issue of Scottish independence with YesScotland chair Dennis Canavan, the Respect MP talked passionately of solidarity between working-class people, which Scottish independence would, he claimed, damage. He felt just the same solidarity, he suggested, with bus drivers in Glasgow, Bradford and Belfast.

To which the most obvious immediate response is “What about bus drivers in Dublin, Oslo, Marseilles, Toronto or Lagos?” Does George Galloway not have the same sense of solidarity with them? Clearly not, if he feels that Scottish independence is somehow contrary to his solidarity with bus drivers either side of the border. If Scottish bus drivers somehow becoming citizens of a different country to bus drivers in his own Bradford constituency has any relevance to his ability to be in solidarity with them, you have to wonder about the nature of his socialism and his solidarity.

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We’ve taken quite a lot of cold medication this week, readers, and it’s caused us to have a bit of an epiphany. We’ve realised that our constant advocacy of independence is a recklessly optimistic position which takes no account of the very real dangers of separating Scotland from the rest of the UK (and the world), and that in order to be responsible citizens we ought to present a more balanced picture.

We’ve decided, therefore, to use this page to keep track of the numerous and often serious potential consequences of a Yes vote in 2014, as helpfully pointed out by our concerned countrymen south of the border and the cooler heads in our own land.

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Johann Lamont seems a bit confused today over whether her cap fits or not. Can you help the Scottish Labour “leader” get dressed in time for her big important speech?

If you’re still not convinced that the UK coalition government’s plans to “reform” welfare – by slashing tens of billions of pounds from the DWP’s budget, in order to fund tax cuts for the rich – are an example of pure, unambiguous evil at work, we suggest you spend half an hour reading this page and the ones linked at the bottom of it.

Done that? Filled with boiling rage and an urge to commit violent acts of revolution? Good. That suggests that you’re a vaguely decent human being with at least some basic level of compassion for the most vulnerable people in society. Congratulations.

It probably also means you’re NOT a Labour Party politician or activist, because a 2010 report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (entitled “Not much disagreement on welfare reform”) pointed out that Labour’s policy on the brutal state persecution of the poor and the crippled – like its policies in almost all other areas – differs from that of the Tories and Lib Dems only in degree and speed, and even then only slightly.

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You tend to expect legal professionals to be a bit more careful with their words than this. Over the last few days we’ve been documenting the bizarre mental collapse of staunch Scottish Labour activist Ian Smart, a practising solicitor from Cumbernauld who’s managed to arrive at the conclusion that there won’t be an independence referendum at all, but if there is and there’s a Yes vote then Scotland will almost instantly degenerate into a poverty-stricken fascist dictatorship with no elections, 100% unemployment, compulsory Gaelic in schools and cannibalism in the streets.

We don’t plan to carry on doing so beyond today, because right now it’s starting to feel like laughing at a car crash while the fire brigade are still frantically trying to saw bodies out before the petrol tank goes up. But the extraordinary breakdown Mr Smart suffered late last night on his Twitter account isn’t an isolated incident among Labour figures at the moment, and we’re a bit worried there could be a toxic leak of some sort in the water system at John Smith House which might harm innocent visitors.

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We’ve mentioned previously that one of the core tactics the No camp appears to be utilising in the referendum debate is that of attrition through extremism. It’s a strategy borrowed from the terrifying American right wing, and has two main goals.

One is to recalibrate the perceived centre-ground by abandoning any kind of moderate position and instead arguing positions so self-evidently ludicrous and dishonest that the listener is nudged towards assuming that they must be true purely on the grounds that nobody would dare to present such an audacious lie with a straight face. The other is to simply exhaust your opponents by forcing them to constantly battle over even the most basic and obvious facts, long before you get to the real debating points.

It’s a nihilistic but clever ploy, particularly effective in broadcast media where time is often very limited and such obfuscatory stalling can completely prevent the serious issues from being addressed at all. So far it seems to be pretty much the only weapon in Scottish Labour’s armoury, not just in respect of the referendum but also politics generally – a good example being the party’s absurd claims about the cost of knife crime during the 2011 election campaign.

It applies at the macro level as well as at the top end of the scale. When we started this blog we subscribed to the Twitter accounts of lots of prominent Labour activists in a naive attempt at engaging in genuine constructive debate, but were gradually forced to the realisation that the primary (or only) point of their dialogue was to deliberately waste our time and exasperate us into submission, and unfollowed them all.

So rather than be drawn into attempting to intelligently and forensically deconstruct three of the most recent outpourings of (calculated) lunacy from some of the No camp’s leading mad old men, we’re going to treat them with the amount of respect they deserve. Read the three articles below, then use your skill and judgement to decide (via the poll over in the central column) who’s the most barking-mad mental.

Michael Kelly in the Scotsman, insisting that an independent Scotland having its own defence forces is a hilarious joke

Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph, burbling about Alex Salmond sacrificing the referendum in return for more powers

Ian Smart in his shed, banging his worn-out drum of how Salmond doesn’t want to have a referendum in the first place

Vote now!

We mean cyberBritNats, of course. Last night’s Olympic closing ceremony brought a charming collection of positive Unionists out of the woodwork with moving, heartfelt words of British unity such as these. We’re choking up a little even now as we type.

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What Ian Davidson MP, chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee assessing the independence referendum, thinks about people with financial vested interests being consulted on political matters if one of those people is Prince Charles:

“This is a scandal and an anachronism. The idea that the Prince has a right to be consulted on legislation which might impact on his interests belongs to a bygone era.” (Daily Mail, March 2012)

What Ian Davidson MP, chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee assessing the independence referendum, thinks about people with financial vested interests being consulted on political matters if one of those people is Ian Davidson MP:

“We have the opportunity if we wish simply to hand over our powers to the Scottish Parliament, but we choose not to do so, and what we are saying in the committee is that the Scottish MPs, and the Scottish Affairs Committee, should have the responsibility for reviewing and supervising and assessing any Section 30 notice that is proposed.” (Newsnight Scotland, August 2012)

Something’s not quite the same, but we can’t put our finger on it. Can anyone help?

There seem to be a lot of things disappearing from the Scottish media today. First the interesting Robbie Dinwoodie story on Olympic football in the Herald does the Bermuda-Triangle routine, and then we see this odd piece in The Scotsman. It opens powerfully, promising to refute (or at least contest) one of the commonest and most compelling arguments made in favour of independence:

“ED MILIBAND has attacked the SNP’s suggestion that Scots face a choice of either independence or Conservative rule from Westminster as the Labour leader made his latest intervention in the referendum debate.”

We’ve read the rest of the short article three times now, however, without being able to locate a single sentence in which Mr Miliband (pictured in the piece as the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) refers to said choice in even the most oblique passing manner, far less “attacks” it. We’re rather keen to hear the official Labour answer, too. Can any eagle-eyed readers help us out?

In an earlier piece today, we referred to an error on the Herald’s website, where it was displaying a story about Madonna rather than a comment piece by Ian Smart. We note that the error appears to have now been fixed and the correct page is again displayed, in which Mr Smart offers his opinion on Scottish Labour’s choice of current leader.

Never having read a “Harry Potter” book or watched any of the films on account of being adults, we were unaware until today of the meaning of a word used in the column as a description of Ms Lamont, having simply assumed it to mean “madperson”. Having now looked it up, we thought it merited sharing:

“A Dementor is a Dark creature, considered one of the foulest to inhabit the world. Dementors feed off human happiness, and thus cause depression and despair to anyone near them. They can also consume a person’s soul, leaving their victims in a permanent vegetative state, and thus are often referred to as “soul-sucking fiends” and are known to leave a person as an “empty-shell.”

Mr Smart wishes to see such a creature as the First Minister of Scotland, and predicts such an event will take place should the electorate vote No in the 2014 independence referendum, which seems to us to be a highly compelling reason to vote Yes.

We had a fairly astonishing conversation on Twitter yesterday, after we ran this piece on an ugly incident at a July 12th parade (if that’s not tautology) in Belfast earlier this month. It was such a spectacular exhibition of doublethink, disingenuity and flat-out denial we felt it was worth sharing it with a wider audience.

We think it illustrates fairly neatly why Scotland still has a problem with sectarianism, and probably will for a long time to come. Have a read and judge for yourself.

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Whichever religion you belong to, or if you belong to no religion at all, most Scottish people are aware of the significance of the 12th of July. The Scottish Conservative blog Tory Hoose chose that day to publish a post from Jason Lingiah, the Chairman of the Edinburgh and South West Conservative Association and also the party’s defeated 2011 Holyrood-election candidate for the Loyalist stronghold of Coatbridge & Chryston.

In it, Mr Lingiah called for the Conservative Party to “do more to reach out” to the Orange Order, stating that its value system “echoes core Conservative beliefs” and that the Tories should try to reverse a situation where “Labour has become the Unionist party of choice” for the Order.

On the same day, just across the water in the New Lodge area of Belfast, the body which Mr Lingiah believes “stands for civil and religious freedom” was up to this:

The clip shows an Orange July-12th parade stopping and repeatedly circling in front of St Patrick’s Chapel, which you may not be entirely surprised to discover is a Catholic place of worship. They then start to play a tune which innocent English readers might know only as the Beach Boys hit “Sloop John B”, but which Scottish people will recognise under its alternative guise as “The Famine Song“, a cheerful ditty beloved of and regularly aired by Rangers supporters. When members of the Order belatedly notice that someone is filming this display, they violently attack him.

Given that the events took place in Northern Ireland, it would perhaps appear to be understandable under normal circumstances that no Scottish newspaper or broadcaster reported on them. But in the context of Mr Lingiah’s comments, on a site officially endorsed by the Scottish Conservative Party and which has hosted a number of articles by both the party’s leader Ruth Davidson and its Rangers-supporting former deputy Murdo Fraser, it’s a touch more strange that they attracted so little notice.

The SNP is regularly called upon to condemn and/or accept responsibility for the actions of random supporters of independence who make offensive or merely controversial comments on the internet. Yet the Scottish media seem oddly disinclined to castigate the Tories for failing to publicly attack these provocative and despicable sectarian actions, and actual violent assault, by an organisation a senior Conservative was lauding in print the very same day. (And which Labour is keen to see taking a more active and prominent role in Scottish society.)

Labour and the Tories are fighting for the backing of these people. The media turns a blind eye. If we were more paranoid we’d find that a bit worrying.