Wings Over Scotland

… someone from the No campaign or a right-wing newspaper tries to tell you that Scotland’s attitudes to the EU aren’t actually very different to those in the rest of the UK, just show them this striking graphic and tell them to shush.

(And don’t take any “Well then we’d have to join the Euro!” cobblers either.)

If we choose to remain in the UK and the UK has a referendum on EU membership (which it’s highly likely to), there isn’t a whole lot of doubt about the outcome. There’s only one way to make sure Scotland stays in Europe. Businesspeople planning a No vote because they fear “uncertainty” might want to have a wee think about that.

Let’s all agree: from now on, anyone who says “An independent Scotland would have to join the Euro!” is either deliberately lying or a dribbling slack-jawed imbecile without the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.

As such their views should be dismissed with contempt, and ideally they should be chased out of town by an angry mob with pitchforks and flaming torches. We’d say Dr Zuleeg was pretty unequivocal and definitive on the subject here.

Some recent comments of mine about how the UK government and European Union wouldn’t – because they couldn’t – strip citizenship from anyone in the event of a Yes vote in the independence referendum brought dissenting responses on Twitter from a few folk who certainly know a thing or two about government.

Their primary arguments were so weak, though, that coming from such able individuals they exemplified how much the establishment is being forced to state obvious untruths in defence of an otherwise perfectly legitimate line of argument. But does politics really have to be this dishonest?

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Britain and Scotland’s journalists have set a high bar for stupid today, but this might take the biscuit. Almost every half-cut hack and so-called expert who talks about the currency options open to Scotland casually mentions that Scotland “could join the Euro”. Whether such people are doing so through ignorance of the rules of the Eurozone or through malicious intent is for observers to decide, but either way, this particular piece of witless misinformation just will not go away.

So, let’s make it nice and easy for all the lazy people who can’t be bothered Googling “Eurozone Convergence Criteria”, shall we?

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We’re not sure which of The Scotsman and Murdo Fraser of the Scottish Conservatives was most confused this morning. Reporting on the second half of its intriguing ICM poll (which put the gap between Yes and No votes as low as six points), the paper publishes some data about the attitude of Scots to the EU.

Excluding don’t knows, the results provide a clear 16-point margin for Scotland remaining in Europe, at 58% to 42%. (The raw numbers put it only slightly lower, at 46 to 33.) But for some odd reason the newspaper chooses to reveal this vote of confidence under the bafflingly negative headline “A third of Scots would back exit from EU”, without even an “only” in there to reflect the implication of the stats.

Weirder still is Murdo Fraser’s reaction, though.

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Something annoyed us a great deal this week, and for once it wasn’t some fatuous statement from Alistair Darling or Alistair Carmichael or Ruth Davidson (though all of those were in plentiful supply too). Rather, it was a comment from a distinguished academic and professional in what was otherwise a good-news story.

The chap in question was Patrick Layden QC, former Deputy Solicitor to the Scottish Executive (as was), prior to giving evidence to Holyrood’s European and External Relations Committee, and the quote published in several papers was a troubling one.

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“Better Together” must be nearly out of green bottles by now. 2014 has seen a bonfire of the scare stories. First to go was the terror of debt, which also all but guaranteed that there WILL be a Sterling currency union after independence (because the last thing the UK government needs is to have whatever amount Scotland takes as a share of UK liabilities being denoted in a fluctuating foreign currency).

Then the warnings about EU membership crumbled from several directions at once, culminating in today’s rather low-key story in which respected expert (and Unionist) Sir David Edward dismissed the idea of Scotland being thrown out of Europe as being nonsensical and impractical, having made similar comments last week.

The latest pillar of the No campaign’s case to collapse in the blink of an eye is the much-pushed line that independence means forcing Scots to choose between being Scottish and British. But who says so?

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We can’t be the only people, surely, to find the latest “Better Together” gambit one of their strangest yet. Never mind the made-up figures or the spurious assertions or their usual habit of having headline amounts which use cumulative sums over many years to make numbers sound bigger. Just look at the barely-concealed subtext here:

“Don’t leave the UK, or you’ll have to give your money to the English! Eurgh!”

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Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, just discovered:

“It’s such a pity that nobody knows any history, or it would be quite obvious what so-called Scottish ‘Independence’ is about. Our continental enemies sought for centuries to detach Scotland from England, to weaken us. Now they’re doing it again. 

If Scotland breaks away from England, it won’t be run from Edinburgh, but from Brussels and Frankfurt, and Scots will discover what it’s really like to be someone else’s subject province. I’m sure they’ll have more sense.”

God DAMN it! Who knew we were just the unwitting dupes of the Belgians all along?

Yesterday’s Scotland on Sunday took a slightly strange angle on the results of a social-attitudes survey conducted by the thinktank “British Future” last month.

“Almost half of the British people believe that the UK would be weakened in the event of Scottish independence, according to the first poll to illustrate the extent that Scotland is valued by its neighbours.”

…or put another way, MORE than half of them DON’T believe that. But anyway.

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It says something about the baleful influence of the right-wing press (not to mention Tory, UKIP and Labour politicians desperate to seek its favour) that some people in Scotland mention immigration as a reason for voting No.

Of the many scare stories originating south of the border, this one is among the least applicable to Scotland. (But is still perpetuated in the media because no major Scottish newspapers are actually owned here.) Scotland needs immigrants, and without sustained immigration over the next half century, we could be in trouble.

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There are now just fewer than nine months to go until the referendum that will decide Scotland’s future. But in those 260 or so days, there will be one that more than any other is likely to shape the outcome, and curiously it’s one in which few people in Scotland will actually be very interested.

The last elections to the European Parliament, in 2009, saw a turnout in Scotland of under 29%, below even the dismal UK figure of 34%. We have no reason to believe this year’s will be massively different, at least not on the northern side of the border.

But the election, which takes place (on 22 May) almost exactly halfway between now and the referendum, will have a huge impact on UK politics, and the corresponding knock-on effect could decide which way Scotland swings in September.

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