Wings Over Scotland

The BBC came in for a spot of criticism this week when its new BBC Scotland channel opted to show some snooker instead of Nicola Sturgeon’s major speech about a new independence referendum. But then things started to get weird.

An alert Wings reader noted that they hadn’t been able to locate any coverage by the state broadcaster of the SNP’s annual conference this weekend either, even though they send live cameras to just about any other party’s gatherings even if they amount to three people in a phone box (hi, Scottish Lib Dems).

The plot swiftly thickened.

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We got a tweet this morning from one of those odd Twitter accounts that’s been going for eight years and still only has six followers. This one appears to be a fairly moderate right-wing, UK-nationalist Brexiter with only a few dozen tweets (nearly all replies) to their name since 2011.

But readers, he’s got a point.

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…unfortunately. The hottest topic of debate within the Yes movement in recent months has been currency, and what sort of it a prospective independent Scotland should use. We’ve avoided it because it’s such a boring and pointless debate (at this stage, at least), and because the impact it had on the first referendum was vastly less than the media frantically insists.

The truth is that in 2014 most people simply didn’t believe the UK government’s claim that it would refuse Scotland a currency union, and nor did most people find it very important anyway. By enormous margins, Scots thought that an independent Scotland would keep using the pound, despite the No campaign’s assertions to the contrary.

We already live in a world of multiple currencies. People buy things seamlessly on the internet from Europe or the USA or China with all the exchange transactions handled automatically and invisibly. It can cause some issues for businesses, but it simply isn’t an issue for the huge majority of voters, however obsessively politics nerds debate it.

But just for the sake of argument, and for the benefit of delegates to this weekend’s SNP conference in Edinburgh, here’s what they think right now.

By comfortably more than two to one in our Panelbase poll conducted in March, Scots want to keep using the pound forever after independence. Yes voters marginally prefer a transition to a new currency, but only one in six want to go there on day one, and almost as many as want to transition want to stay with Sterling permanently. No voters – who are the people we need to persuade, remember – are overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the pound, with only 16% wanting a new Scottish currency at any point.

Wings has no position on the subject, because to be quite honest we don’t understand it well enough. Strong arguments have been made on various sides and we’re not sure which one we favour yet. It’s a decision for an independent Scottish Government.

But what these findings tell us is what the public thinks – and therefore which options would play the best in a referendum – and the public isn’t in much doubt at all.

Well, this won’t take long.

The First Minister’s speech to Parliament today contained a single useful and practical step: by aiming to pass the legislation required to conduct a second independence referendum by the end of this year, Scotland will be well prepared to act swiftly in the event that such a vote somehow becomes a reality.

On how to make it become a reality, there was nothing.

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(This article was originally intended to go up on Wednesday, but it was somewhat overtaken by events before it was finished.)

This week has seen another of those strange coincidences by which a whole slew of Unionist pundits all randomly decide to start talking about the same subject. On this occasion it was the rape clause, and why it proved the SNP are bad.

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The Conservatives’ disastrous handling of, and failure to deliver, Brexit seems to have finally begun to hurt them in the polls, with a clutch of recent stats showing Labour with a significant lead for the first time in many months.

Most seat projections on the numbers show Labour failing to reach a majority either on their own or with the Lib Dems, but being able to get Jeremy Corbyn in to Downing Street with the assistance of an increased number of SNP MPs.

But then what?

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We’ve still got a few of the results from our last Panelbase poll (conducted last month) to round up, and this one seems pertinent this week:

As has been the case ever since we started asking this question about the nation’s twin constitutional dilemmas back in July 2015, the single most popular option in a four-way choice remains an independent Scotland inside the EU, which leads the impending reality (a UK Scotland outside the EU) by a clear 10 points.

Scotland isn’t merely about to get something it doesn’t want, it’s about to get the exact opposite of the thing it wants most. But oh boy, is it ever more complicated than that.

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Firstly, our congratulations to Her Majesty’s Government (pictured below) on its setting last night of a new world record in incompetence.

We can’t see it being beaten in a long time. But Jesus, what now?

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Just you wait and see.

Scottish political pundits: they’ve got all the pieces in their hands, but they still haven’t even worked out that it’s a jigsaw.

We haven’t talked much on Wings about the court case currently in progress against former Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale, for hopefully obvious reasons.

The case is currently “in avizandum” – legal jargon for “the sheriff is considering his decision” – and a result is hoped for around the end of this month, and while as far as we know there’s no actual rule against talking about it at this stage, if you’re one of the participants it’s probably not the greatest idea as a general principle.

But what CAN be discussed is a much wider issue which it touched on, as highlighted by Daily Record columnist Anna Burnside while talking about the case during last week’s BBC Radio Scotland media review on the John Beattie Show.

The debate had a fully balanced panel: Burnside, who thought I was an awful person, Stuart Cosgrove, who thought I was an awful person with a sometimes-good website, and Anne Marie Watson, who thought I was an awful person. But it was Burnside who really went in with the boot, as can be heard from 2m 27s on the clip below.

(The John Beattie Show, BBC Radio Scotland, 28 March 2019)
.

Let’s take a walk through that.

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Alert readers may have noticed that the deadline for the Conservative Party to respond to our formal query about their fake indyref 2 “petition” was about to expire (today, in fact), but fear not, compliance fans – at the eleventh hour a reply was received.

This is it:

So we’ve asked the obvious question.

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