The SNP released their general election manifesto today. We’re not going to link you to it, because we don’t want to be responsible for wasting your time. This is everything it has to say on the party’s (cough) strategy for achieving independence.
It deserves much, much less respect than we’re giving it. Tomorrow, ice lolly reviews.
Holiday Boy has of course chosen the general election campaign to spend the next three weeks feeding stray cats somewhere sunny, so here’s a cartoon by the brilliant webcomicname that summarises the Baillie Gifford story for anyone joining us late.
Because, y’know, idiots.
January 2018, with no general election due for four and a half years: “I very rarely talk about Scottish independence in the chamber, because I talk about things that matter”
June 2024, with an election in four weeks and a £91,346 salary, expenses and pension at stake: “ROBERT THE BRUCE! BANNOCKBURN! DECLARATION OF ARBROATH! FLOWER OF SCOTLAND! FREEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOMMMM!”
We suppose at least it distracts her from wondering what sex she is.
We suppose we should talk about the general election for a bit.
It’s going to be awful. Will that do?
The National have buried this pretty quickly in understandable embarrassment:
Because some things are just a little TOO on-the-nose for comfort.
It’s probably as good an illustration of the madness currently engulfing Scottish politics as anything that the most unusual suspect, Anas Sarwar, may have just – temporarily at least – saved Humza Yousaf’s job.
And although our head hurts already, we’ll try to explain why.
We tweeted this last night as a teaser for our big exclusive. (Which is now hilariously being claimed by Paul Hutcheon of the Daily Record seven hours later.)
And it does now seem to be the case that the news is that the SNP are ending the Bute House Agreement and kicking out the Greens before the Greens do it first.
And what that tells us, for a starter, is that the SNP’s once-legendary skill in news management really is now well and truly on fire, as in “bin”.
Correct us if we’re wrong, but isn’t this guy:
…the same man who LITERALLY just passed a law dividing Scotland into groups of people who are worthy of protection from hatred and those who aren’t? (Most notably women and people who know what sex they are.)
Is he, then, a “bad faith actor”? Maybe we misunderstood.
Now, before we start this piece we should probably note that we don’t think anyone’s losing anything by being excluded from Believe In Scotland’s latest money-gathering exercise (folding, please, not clinking!) in Glasgow later this month. We rather suspect most folk can manage fine without spending a Saturday afternoon listening to tedious speeches from Pat Kane, Ross Greer and Iona Fyfe.
But this is still disturbing:
Because for a party which pretty much never mentions Scottish independence, which conspicuously removed the word “INDEPENDENCE” from their conference banner last week, and which stated just days ago that independence wouldn’t be any sort of red line preventing them doing a coalition deal with Scottish Labour, to be able to effectively veto the participation of ACTUAL independence parties from (ostensibly) independence rallies is a strange state of affairs indeed.
Scotland’s fringe wankertariat has been terribly piqued by the amusing fact that Humza Yousaf’s infamous “WHITE!” speech has been reported as a hate crime more than any other event in Scotland since the introduction of the Hate Crime Act 12 days ago, on the grounds of its supposedly being racist.
The Observer, for example, blamed the stat on “neo-Nazis”.
But even if that were true, it wouldn’t of course disprove the claim. A stopped clock is right twice a day, and something isn’t intrinsically false just because a neo-Nazi says it. Hitler had some pretty messed-up ideas but the world didn’t become flat just because he said it was round.
So as is our wont, let’s look at the facts.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
