Wings Over Scotland

Yesterday we reminded you of how Wings predicted Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister of the UK several years ago. But of course, other soothsayers are available, like this confident chap from August 2014:

In news that will come as a shock to absolutely no readers at all, McDougall wasn’t just lying, and wasn’t just wrong about one thing, but was both wrong and lying about pretty much everything he said.

Both of the Yes camp’s “scare stories” which were sneeringly mocked by McDougall during a BBC debate in Inverness actually came true – the Tories DID win the next election, and Johnson DID end up as leader of the party and then as Prime Minister.

(McDougall burst into tears at Scottish Labour HQ on the night of the 2015 election as his party lost 40 of its 41 seats despite his services as Jim Murphy’s speechwriter and adviser, his powers of chortling seemingly having deserted him.)

And it’s interesting to revisit the debate.

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Let the bells ring out and rejoice.

Still, at least the Record hasn’t been so completely lacking in self-awareness as to point a finger at others in Scotland and say something like “far too many people who should know better are complicit in the tragedy”.

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29 June 2016. Don’t say we don’t warn you, readers.

And this was February of the same year, when Barack Obama and David Cameron were still in charge of their respective nations:

You’ll always read it here first, folks. Even when you don’t want to.

We weren’t sure whether tomorrow’s Cairnstoon was going to be delayed by technical gremlins (it turns out it isn’t), so we prepared an emergency backup plan on the same theme and you may as well see it now as a sort of trailer.

It’ll be good every time they dig him up yet again in the future too.

(With profound apologies to Oliver Frey.)

Hey readers, remember that time when England went to war with Germany?

You know, just England, under its Union Jack flag. Nobody else.

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Things were different in 2009.

Of course, they meant if they LOST the first one. But readers might feel that a certain degree of irony has perhaps manifested itself since then, particularly in terms of people knowing “what they would be in for” after June 2016.

So just to recap the UK government’s rules for the Yes movement:

 – If you win, you don’t really win and you have to go again in case things change.

 – If you lose once, that’s it forever, no matter how much things change.

Always remember what we’re dealing with, folks. The rules are always whatever they say they are, regardless of what they might have said a minute ago, and no matter what happens we’re swimming against the sea.

That’s the only reasonable interpretation of this tweet from Jenny Marra MSP.

Because clearly if the Scottish Parliament of 1707 was an illegitimate oligarchy that didn’t represent the people – and it certainly didn’t – then it can’t have had any right to sign away the sovereignty of Scotland and the Acts Of Union must immediately be repealed and a new referendum held to decide whether Scotland should join the UK.

And of course, we already know how that would go.

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The Times, 30 June 1998.

Wait, Michael who? Well, this should be good.

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You could actually weep for some of the people in our country.

But the point Yes supporters understand and Unionists don’t is that it’s everything to do with the question – because “who is or might be Prime Minister, or which party is in government” is never our choice. It’s the choice of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland together. One of those countries outnumbers the others by 8 to 1.

More than that, it isn’t just who is Prime Minister now, or who may be in the future – it’s every single Prime Minister in my 35 years of existence on this planet.

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Looking forward to that reactivation.

(WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW.)

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…for the EU election results, a reminder of days gone by.

Inexplicably, the Scottish Tory manifesto for the 2014 Euro election forgot to include the paragraph saying “Of course, if you vote No this September, then England votes to leave the EU in the most catastrophic manner possible, Scotland will be dragged out too no matter how it voted, and we’ll just tell you to shut up if you complain about it”.

It was probably meant to go in that space at the end, but you know how it is, mistakes happen. No harm done, eh?

Almost exactly two years ago, this website suggested that it might not be the smartest idea for Labour to go along with Theresa May’s call for a snap election. (Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, it couldn’t have happened without Labour’s support.)

And it occurred to us today that if they hadn’t, the current government would only have a maximum of one year left to run.

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