Wings Over Scotland

We see Gordon Brown is celebrating his 500th article promising “federalism” in the Scottish media today. Which is nice. We always enjoy hearing about the stuff Labour pretends it’s going to do when it’s in power.

But like everyone who’s been waiting 100 years and counting for it to abolish the House Of Lords (a pledge which also gets another runout in Brown’s latest intervention, bless him), we won’t be holding our breath.

It seems mad that this even needs to be said.

Luckily, as always, Wings is way ahead of the zeitgeist.

If you’re a writer for a living and you want to check if something you’ve written might be embarrassingly stupid, there’s an easy and quick technique you can use.

By way of example, here’s Kenny Farquharson in the Times today, on the subject of the supposed similarities in the relationships between the Tories and the Brexit Party, and the SNP and the potential new Wings party:

So here’s the trick: switch the protagonists around.

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We really can’t be bothered with having the GERS “debate” again, in which all the same people make all the same exactly opposite spins on the exact same data. Minor annual fluctuations aside, the core reality is the same as the one we repeat every 12 months, and serious economists on both sides of the political divide still treat the figures with the disdain they properly merit.

One such person is Richard Murphy, and in an excellent piece today he posted a version of this graph which did catch our jaded eye. It purports to show the share of UK debt supposedly accounted for by Scotland – which has, let’s remember, just 8% of the UK’s population – in each of the last 16 years, and which immediately prior to the SNP’s 2011 majority stood at almost exactly that of our population share.

(Which is itself a gross calumny against reality, but let’s stay focused.)

How very remarkable, some readers may feel, that the extent of Scotland’s supposed responsibility for the UK’s debt should have rocketed so very dramatically at the exact point when independence became a live political question.

It does rather make you wonder why the UK government, scraping as it is for every penny of possible savings, seems more and more desperate to hang onto Scotland as the terrible economic burden we become on the rest of the country grows ever heavier.

Truly, our partners in this great equal and bountiful union must be the most generous and forgiving people on Earth. We don’t deserve them.

Ah, the good old days of the positive case for the Union.

But oh no! Shock twist!

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Oh dear God in Heaven, not THIS again.

Helen Thompson is apparently the “Professor of Political Economy” at Cambridge University. No wonder the country is being run by imbeciles.

Let’s speak really slowly and see if the idiots can get it into their thick heads this time.

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This poll from Opinium came out a few days ago, but didn’t get as much attention as people might normally have expected, possibly because it was presented in a very difficult-to-follow graphical form. So we’ve sorted it out, and also added in the missing Lib Dem voters.

The takeaway is that a clear majority of voters both in Scotland and the UK now believe that the UK government should accept the Scottish Government’s request for a second independence referendum.

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Crazy stuff happens when we have a thought.

Buckle in for a bumpy ride if you don’t like pictures of my ugly mug.

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We thought readers might possibly like to hear the unexpurgated audio of our interview with The Times this week, so that they could judge the tone of our “expletive-ridden condemnations” and whatnot for themselves.

Other than a few bits of minor tidying-up – such as me umming and aahing trying to remember the name of a song, or when the manager came round to ask if we wanted more drinks – this is the whole of the “official” interview.

(In conversation with Kenny Farquharson of The Times, 1 August 2019)
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So, there’s been quite a response to our interview in today’s Times.

The interview was an interesting one in itself that we might talk more about later this weekend, but let’s leave that aside for now and talk about the headline take, because as usual the Scottish media is presenting it in a remarkably dishonest manner.

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In case you missed it, there was an interesting phone-in on the subject of Scottish independence on James O’Brien’s LBC radio show from 10am this morning. I chipped my tuppence-worth in at the start (I’m the second caller, from about 6m 25s), but it’s fascinating listening to O’Brien’s tone evolve as the hour-long segment goes on.

(James O’Brien, LBC, 7 August 2019)
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We don’t doubt for a moment the sincerity and good intent with which he states his position. But when he talks in the intro about the special feelings he has when he’s in Scotland, which he also gets in Greece, the whole argument collapses.

Because O’Brien doesn’t appear to need to feel that he “owns” Greece, or that he’s a Greek citizen, to have that warmth towards it. He doesn’t need the people of England to elect Greece’s governments for it – he’s happy to have those feelings towards a completely independent country. So why not about an independent Scotland?

(Sadly I was cut off before I got a chance to respond to his point about Germany and its federal regions, which would have been to point out that no one German region is six times bigger than all the others put together and can – and does – impose its will on them whenever it wants.)

And much to his credit he appears to realise that as the show goes on. Whether he still thinks deep down that the Scottish independence movement is in significant part driven by anti-Englishness, only he can say. But his callers today at least appear to have made him think about it, and it’s a process worth listening to.