Wings Over Scotland

We must admit, the terrible people that we are, we’ve been enjoying watching today’s extended meltdown by the SNP’s woke faction about last night’s NEC election results. Because it appears their egos are so huge that they’re not even smart enough to play dignified to spoil our schadenfreudish fun. It’s been full-on public tantrums.

But this nonsense needs briefly addressing.

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It wouldn’t be human not to take a brief pause to enjoy a victory.

But this is only one battle.

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Ridiculously, more than eight hours after voting closed in an all-electronic election in which “counting” should have taken a maximum of one second, and at 11.30pm, the SNP have released the results of this year’s NEC elections.

There are some big stories.

Alyn Smith is OUT as Policy Development Convener, replaced by Chris Hanlon.

Rhiannon Spear is OUT as Women’s Convener, replaced by Caroline McAllister.

Fiona Robertson is OUT as Equalities Convener, replaced by Lynne Anderson.

All of these are dramatic changes for the better.

Joanna Cherry is IN. Neale Hanvey is IN. Roger Mullin is IN. Dorothy Jessiman is IN. Catriona McDonald is IN. Douglas Chapman is IN. All ditto.

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We had, we think it’s only fair to say, extremely low expectations of Nicola Sturgeon’s keynote speech this afternoon to the SNP’s soporific, strangled 2020 non-conference. It seems that members felt the same, because 15 seconds before the speech began only 1,166 of them were logged in to watch it.

The speech she just delivered, though, limboed under those expectations in platform shoes and a stovepipe hat without even grazing the underside of the bar.

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SNP MP Joanna Cherry posted a series of tweets this morning.

She hasn’t asked us to, but they deserve some amplifying.

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In a post last month we referenced a ZX Spectrum computer game from 1984 called “Worse Things Happen At Sea”. Today as we watched the First Minister on the Andrew Marr Show, we were put in mind of another nautical-disaster-themed one from a great deal nearer to the end of the Speccy’s life.

It was grim viewing in every sense.

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In case anyone was looking for a list:

One’s just turned up.

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When’s a Plan B not a Plan B? Well, when it’s something that could and should have been done already, and won’t be anywhere near adequate even if delivered.

Yet that seems to be what some colleagues are now arguing for. It’s welcome that their thoughts are at last turning to the possibility of the Tories saying No to the Scottish people’s democratic vote. But it’s happening dangerously slowly as the dismantling of devolution and reintegration into the UK gathers pace. Which’s why the Yes Movement needs to act now, not after a Holyrood election.

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This week on Wings has been altogether more navel-gazey than we’re comfortable with, as various SNP MPs have mounted a series of all-out personal attacks on the site before the weekend’s crucial NEC elections.

So we’ll have a proper article for you a little later on today, but in the meantime it’d be remiss of us not to tidy up the last fragments of shrapnel, so we’ll direct you to the right of reply to Alyn Smith’s column that The National kindly gave us today:

(Sadly they chose to disable comments, we’d quite have enjoyed the reaction from the few remaining diehard leadership loyalists still posting there.)

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We couldn’t help but chuckle yesterday when the £100K-a-year Westminster MP and obsessive Wings Over Scotland reader “Pension Pete” Wishart announced – in the space of six minutes – that this site was simultaneously an irrelevance that nobody listened to, but also somehow one of the greatest threats to independence.

It got a lot funnier today, though.

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We’ve just been alerted to a new FOI response. It pretty much speaks for itself.

But it’s worth pondering the numbers.

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