Wings Over Scotland

So, some official and very brief Wings analysis, because we just watched an army of pundits on the TV all missing the bleeding obvious and talking as if a delay to Brexit was now a done deal.

After tonight’s series of votes in the Commons, all five of which were technically won by Theresa May, there are three possible outcomes. Let’s whizz through them all.

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Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the ALDE group in the European Parliament (essentially the Euro Lib Dems), is by no means our standard go-to guy for political guidance. Like most European politicians he’s been criminally silent on the outrages being perpetrated by the government of Spain, and in general he’s a bit neoliberal for our tastes.

But his speech from yesterday is powerful stuff.

As we write this, the UK’s parliament is blundering through a third successive day of toe-curling farce on the floor of the Commons, aimed this time at securing some sort of extension to Brexit to avoid a disastrous no-deal in just 15 days’ time.

It may yet be that such a request will be issued and the EU will grant it, dragging out the whole awful mess for God knows how much longer. But judging by the tone of M. Verhofstadt’s impassioned, exasperated address in Strasbourg, we wouldn’t like to have money on it. It appears that an entire continent has had just about enough of us.

For some time, most polls for “Who’d make the best UK Prime Minister?” – the stat that really decides who wins general elections – have shown a solid lead for “Don’t know”, narrowly ahead of Theresa May and a long way ahead of Jeremy Corbyn.

It’s a prime symptom of a UK-wide contempt for politicians the magnitude of which we’ve never seen in our lifetime, and Scottish voters are in no way immune.

We loaded this question from our latest Panelbase poll in the party leaders’ favours, because you don’t have to think any of them is doing a GOOD job to say that one of them is doing the BEST job out of the four. Everything is relative – and we also didn’t ask the question specifically about Brexit.

But even with those get-outs, “They’re all useless” came out on top by a clear seven points over Nicola Sturgeon, and the rest weren’t even at the races.

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The Foreign Secretary in September 2018:

And after an apparent change of heart in March 2019:

What an absolute Hunt, eh readers?

In today’s Times:

Yeah, you read it right. He really said it out loud.

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Another slow news day, so here’s one from the archives:

Don’t worry, we’re not going to make you try to read it that size.

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Earlier on today we reported on a case of a Scottish Labour MP being inadvertently unacquainted with some quite pertinent facts regarding a public pronouncement they’d made. While we’d assumed this to be an isolated incident, it’s in fact our sad duty to report another example within the Northern Branch Office.

That’s the pro-Brexit former Labour minister Tom Harris, there, making just the sort of statement that this site like to fact-check. So let’s see the most recent data.

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We had a brief exchange with Scottish Labour MP Paul Sweeney last night.

But the thing is, he’s exactly, diametrically wrong about that.

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Because it looks like you’re going to need them.

If the Scottish Government can’t pass a budget it’ll fall, and with no majority for any alternative administration that’ll leave no option but to hold a general election.

Meanwhile, at Westminster, the UK government is running out of time to get a Brexit deal through Parliament, and facing all kinds of procedural shenanigans which may very well lead to a UK general election.

Should that happen, the UK will likely ask the EU for an extension to Article 50, which would take us past the European elections in May, which would mean that the UK would have to take part in those elections  too (because you can’t have a country that’s still an EU member state having no representation in the European Parliament).

Scottish or UK general elections could lead to a new independence referendum, a new Brexit referendum, or both, sending Scots to the polling stations up to FIVE times (and the rest of the UK up to four) in a matter of months, with all the attendant campaigning, colossal expense, economic uncertainty and governmental standstill that such insanity would bring about.

Good luck, everyone.