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.
The picture the BBC chose to illustrate events in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street today:
Former Labour spindoctor Charlie Whelan in the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald:
Click to enlarge as Whelan segues seamlessly from terrible Scottish “nationalism” to racial genocide in Auschwitz, because, you know, Yes voters are all basically Nazis*.
*George Galloway’s comments (made in his capacity as a nominated representative of “Better Together”) from yesterday’s BBC “Big Big Debate” were edited out of the broadcast version. We’re sure it was just to keep the running time tight.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
