Scottish Greens candidate and transactivist Matt “Ellie” Gomersall, with whom Wings readers will be familiar, appeared on the Jeremy Vine show today and blundered straight into an elephant trap a myopic mole could have seen coming on a foggy night.
Having just embarked on a diatribe in which he dismissed as “ridiculous” the idea that predatory men would ever pretend to be transwomen to gain access to vulnerable women, Vine asked him about Adam “Isla Bryson” Graham, the convicted double rapist that even hapless Humza Yousaf felt able to confidently assert was “at it”.
Having just painted himself into a corner, Gomersall was then embarrassingly unable to disown Bryson as a “real” transwoman, thereby implicitly admitting that transwomen do indeed present a danger to women in exactly the same way that predatory men do, and torpedoing his entire core point that it was unfair to “discriminate” against them in exactly the same way single-sex spaces discriminate against non-trans men.
(Outrageously, earlier in the speech he’d tried to claim that it was only natural that some transwomen would be sex offenders because some biological women were.)
It’s tempting to believe that Gomersall was demonstrating an intellectual vacuum by making such vacuously cretinous arguments and failing to spot even the most obvious pitfalls in them, but the truth is far worse. Gomersall, and people like him, know that they’re lying (which is why they always try to silence opponents), but they lack the moral courage to face up to the fact that the inevitable price of their lies is vulnerable women being raped by what he revoltingly waves away as “fringe cases”.
All rapists are fringe cases. 95% of men would never dream of raping anyone. But we discriminate against ALL men in women’s spaces because you can’t tell which ones are rapists by looking. Men like “Ellie” Gomersall, though, think that the price of a few women being raped is worth paying to validate their delusions and fetishes (in his case, the creepy fetish of skinwalking as his pretty sister), and they don’t even have the shred of decency to bother coming up with a coherent line of bullshit to cover it.
It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.
In April 2021, the SNP were still the undisputed masters of all they surveyed. A poll conducted by Ipsos MORI that month showed them on 53% of the vote for the Scottish Parliament, a jawdropping 33 points ahead of their nearest rivals.
When the Holyrood election a month later was held, they won 64 seats, one more than they had done in 2016. Yet despite having led a minority government without any significant difficulties for the preceding five years, Nicola Sturgeon chose to invite the Greens to form a coalition with her party, and the effect that had on the public’s view of the government was… well, let’s see.
The difficulty is that any minute now, someone is going to ask the beleaguered First Minister the staggeringly obvious question that arises from the fact, namely:
This is the SNP’s latest messaging. Ministers, MSPs, payroll drones and the central party account were all tweeting the graphic and variations on the line yesterday.
And it’s quite difficult even just to count the number of different ways in which it’s not just mind-bogglingly offensive, but also clatteringly, jaw-droppingly stupid.
The wild thing about this poll isn’t the headline that six months after winning a massive landslide majority, Keir Starmer now trails Nigel Farage – leader of a party with five MPs to Starmer’s 411 – as the electorate’s choice for best Prime Minister.
It’s the little grey numbers sitting quietly at the bottom.
Nobody really answered the question in this article from a few days ago. A few of the dimmer bulbs in the indy movement have been getting over-excited at what are still currently a couple of outlier polls from fringe polling companies, which suggest that the 2026 election could unexpectedly return a pro-indy majority due to the Unionist vote being split four ways in the wake of UK Labour’s implosion in government.
That scenario depends on all sorts of dubious propositions, but in any event what none of them have addressed is what that would change even if it did happen, given that Holyrood has a pro-indy majority RIGHT NOW (and has done so on every single day since the indyref more than a decade ago) and it’s produced nothing whatsoever in terms of movement towards independence by any possible measure.
And it occurred to us that we had genuinely no idea what the SNP’s current official indy strategy is, because the party’s been in such farcical chaos and turmoil ever since Nicola Sturgeon’s sudden resignation. So we thought we should go and check.
To be honest, we’re not much the wiser for having read it.
Look, we know that mocking front pages on The National is low-hanging fruit, and this particular example could hardly be any more of a self-parody if it tried.
But just for the sheer mental exercise in that stone-dead last week of December when nobody even knows what day it is, let’s imagine if it came true.
PB on The Interests Of The Many: “I was very confused when, in 2022, the Scottish Government announced that there WOULD be a referendum, and even announced…” Jul 8, 23:42
George Ferguson on Search And Replace: “@Hatey McHateface Duty I have been doing my duty all of my life. Of course it’s people like me that…” Jul 8, 23:09
James on Search And Replace: “Snowflake Adrian threatening handbags at dawn. LOLZ Better get some of the hard stuff doon ee first, petal. Try a…” Jul 8, 23:04
Dick Wall on The Interests Of The Many: “alf, Here’s what I found was decolonisation online. Beyond political independence, decolonisation also involves undoing the cultural, social, and psychological…” Jul 8, 21:52
robertkknight on The Interests Of The Many: “I’d like to think so, but as will all forms of the press they are guided by sales. It’d be…” Jul 8, 21:49
sarah on The Interests Of The Many: “@ robertknight: yes, amazing that The National should publish such an honest appraisal of the SNP’s failings on independence. Is…” Jul 8, 21:28
agentx on The Interests Of The Many: “The Clacton by-election is a farce – yes maybe the SNP should be involved!” Jul 8, 21:21
Hatey McHateface on Search And Replace: “Ah, c’moan noo, Aidan. Weapons grade halitosis for certain.” Jul 8, 21:10
100%Yes on The Interests Of The Many: “John Swinney has been totally played by Nicola Sturgeon she left the scene with no Interest to return to Scotland.…” Jul 8, 21:02
Aidan on Search And Replace: “At the end of the day James, you’re just some sad little keyboard warrior getting a pathetic thrill by mouthing…” Jul 8, 21:01
Hatey McHateface on Search And Replace: “Aw, Wally, I can see you’re suffering. Hope it’s something that will involve root canal work. Hope you have to…” Jul 8, 20:56
100%Yes on The Interests Of The Many: “Some of us have been saying on here since 2015 about the SNP and Sturgeon its a pity most not…” Jul 8, 20:28
John McGregor on Search And Replace: “I hope wee Pete in his cushy jail cell write’s a book n sets out everything he’s got on (ex…” Jul 8, 19:55
James on Search And Replace: “What would YOU know aboot normal Scots, Prick? Warmongering unionist Tory. GTF.” Jul 8, 19:43
Hatey McHateface on Search And Replace: ““This is a Scots Indy site” No shit, Wally, here’s a haddie just for you. Why don’t you post something…” Jul 8, 19:31
Hatey McHateface on The Interests Of The Many: “They could dust off and re-use the policy statements, economic arguments, and timeline they presented to great popular acclaim in…” Jul 8, 19:27
Southernbystander on The Interests Of The Many: “This is actually a good idea. The media will be glad of anything that isn’t Farage or Binface.” Jul 8, 19:24
Hatey McHateface on Search And Replace: “Give over, Dan. Even schoolkids will know that it’s the 40 ton HGV’s doing 95% of the road damage. I…” Jul 8, 19:21
Dan on Search And Replace: “All good here Confused, thanks. Trust life is good for yourself tae. Aye, the trio of bawbags hard at it,…” Jul 8, 18:22
robertkknight on The Interests Of The Many: “Has The National finally realised that their meagre subscriptions/sales among the Wee Ginger Fud loyalists aren’t cutting it? Or has…” Jul 8, 18:21
James on Search And Replace: “Away and take a flying fuck to youself; this is a Scots Indy site and it’s you who is the…” Jul 8, 17:46
Aidan on Search And Replace: “If you don’t like it here James, you can always fuck off. It’s not like you add anything to any…” Jul 8, 17:14
James on Search And Replace: “Larry, Curly & Moe; all day, every day. *yawn*” Jul 8, 16:16
James Barr Gardner on The Interests Of The Many: “All this SNP information was on “SAGE” for the Police investigating a doddle to interrogate those who donated and those…” Jul 8, 16:15
sarah on The Interests Of The Many: “O/T: Clacton by-election. Surely this is a good opportunity for a Scottish independence candidate/party to stand? Their platform could be…” Jul 8, 15:29
lothianlad on The Interests Of The Many: “This is the scrutiny that is so needed. Well done Stu and your team. There is no doubt in my…” Jul 8, 14:44
MaryB on The Interests Of The Many: “Count Binface is really Jon Harvey, a Corpus Christie, Cambridge graduate.” Jul 8, 13:59
Hatey McHateface on The Interests Of The Many: “Football’s all very well, TURABDIN, and some people are enjoying Wimbledon, but the greatest televisual spectacle of the moment is…” Jul 8, 13:37
Hatey McHateface on Search And Replace: “At least nobody’s popped up to say there was a boy developed a car that ran entirely on water, but…” Jul 8, 13:33
TURABDIN on The Interests Of The Many: “OVERHEARD in a shop today. Old Man…….Trump just wants to set the world to right. Young Man…Yeah, but he should…” Jul 8, 13:05