Mark Steel in the Independent, 16 October 2014:
Craig Murray said something quite similar recently from the other side, as it were, and at the moment we’re finding it quite tough to disagree with either of them.
We didn’t notice this piece in Scotland on Sunday three weekends ago, because we were on holiday and, well, it was in Scotland on Sunday. But it seems odd that nobody (including SoS) has picked up on its ramifications at the time or since, because if it’s true then it would officially and conclusively mark the complete abandonment of the “vow” all three Westminster party leaders made to Scottish voters prior to the referendum, just 10 days after Scots voted to believe that vow.
And you’d think that’d be bigger news.
This morning’s Daily Record has a rather panicky-sounding editorial complaining that Yes supporters, from the First Minister down, are refusing to “move on” from the referendum result and are complaining about “betrayal”, especially in the light of yesterday’s joke of a Commons debate. The Record calls for unity and also talks, hilariously, of the “settled will of the Scottish people”.
(What is it, exactly, that the will of the Scottish people is meant to have settled on, given that they had and still have no idea which powers a No vote would bring?)
It rather smacks of the accused in a murder trial saying “Look, sure, I killed and butchered your wife and children, but that was MONTHS ago, let’s just forget about it and get back to normal”, but it’s not actually the point.
Because it’s not the referendum result that most people feel betrayed by. It’s not even the behaviour of the Unionist parties since the vote.
The entity in the dock here is the Daily Record itself – which still claims to be the most-read newspaper in Scotland, although the Scottish Sun sells more copies – and it’s charged with the serious crime of knowingly and deliberately lying to the people of Scotland, while proclaiming itself to be their “Champion”.
The much-awaited and hastily-extended Westminster debate on Scottish devolution is just about to start in the House of Commons. We’ll be watching it on the Parliament website rather than the BBC, for the obvious reasons.
The dust of the independence referendum is showing a distinct unwillingness to settle. Almost a month from the vote, alien observers would be hard pushed to identify Yes as the beaten side. SNP membership has more than tripled, and that of the Scottish Greens and SSP (much) more than doubled, in three weeks. The moribund Labour Party in Scotland has slumped in both Holyrood and Westminster polls. Newspaper sales figures continue to fall after not a single daily or national newspaper in the country backed the choice of almost half of the population.
Unionist politicians unnerved by the closeness of the result have advocated making independence actually illegal, and the Secretary of State for Portsmouth has issued a series of panicky warnings that the “nationalists” must not seek the best possible outcome from the figleaf Smith Commission (or, presumably, he’ll tell his mum).
Increasingly, the “once in a lifetime” referendum looks like only the opening skirmish.
From today’s Daily Record:
Better late than never, eh?
Because nothing scares Etonian Tory Prime Ministers like a poster on a van.
Your time is over, Daily Record. Tick tock.
More information here. Wings Over Scotland endorses (and indeed, may well become actively involved with) this event or product.
Or some regrets. It’s so hard to tell.
The UK media, ladies and gentlemen.
Last night, everyone in Scotland lost.
45% of the electorate in the highest turnout in modern UK political history voted for hope and for change, and didn’t get them. 55% voted in terror of change, but will get it (for the worse) anyway.
The No campaign desperately abandoned all pretence of being an alliance and turned into a red-and-yellow-branded Labour one, only to lose in Labour’s core Glasgow heartland and doom the party to all but certain defeat in both 2015 and 2016. The SNP will likely take advantage at the ballot box, but win only a poisoned chalice.
The Tories will triumph in the next UK election as saviours of the Union, then be forced into an EU referendum only a demented minority of them really want, and which will result in a disastrous exit from the EU. And of course, the Lib Dems were dying no matter what.
So it goes.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
