Wings Over Scotland

A brief note on the current futility of political commentary.

Remember that? Well, let’s see how it really works.

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Posted without comment.

“Bias” is a word we hate. Other than in the article you’re about to read, you’ll almost never find it used on this site, for a string of reasons. It’s one of those words that – regardless of context or literal justification – simply makes people switch off instantly and dismiss your arguments. (See also: “Zionist”, “Quisling”, “fascist”, “Liebore”.)

It’s also largely irrelevant, because there are very few people or organisations who have any duty NOT to be biased. When it comes to Scottish independence we’re as biased as all heck, and there’s no legitimate reason to expect the Daily Record or Scotsman or Daily Mail to be any more impartial than we are. They’re privately-owned businesses and entitled to take any position they like.

(The difference, of course, is that unlike them we’re committed to still telling the truth when we’re being biased, and to always providing linked original sources so you can judge our biased interpretation of facts and events for yourself.)

But there’s one exception to that rule.

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You can’t throw a brick at the Scottish media at the moment – however much you’d like to – without hitting half a dozen articles all repeating the same mantra: that despite the post-Brexit surge in support for independence, a Yes vote would be more difficult to achieve because the economics are now harder than they were in 2014, due to the collapse in the oil price.

Weirdly, almost all of these articles simultaneously insist that any new White Paper for independence would have to abandon the Sterling currency union advocated by the Scottish Government the first time round (despite there being little to no concrete evidence that it was a significant factor in the No vote, other than the commentariat all loudly agreeing with each other that it was).

The problem is that those two claims – if for the sake of argument you take them both to be true – introduce a whacking great elephant to the room, which all the people making the arguments are pretending not to notice.

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This is prospective Labour leader Owen Smith on the Andrew Marr show this morning, explaining why he’ll be one of the 65% of Labour MPs voting in favour of the renewal of Trident next week:

Let’s just see if we can get this straight once and for all.

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If there haven’t been as many posts on this site as people might expect at a time of such incredible political turmoil, it’s because Wings isn’t at heart a commentary blog. We don’t do a lot of flat-out opinion pieces, tending to concern ourselves more with measurable, empirical facts, and since nobody knows anything about anything at the moment, we haven’t had all that much useful to say.

But the closest thing there is right now to a certainty is that sometime quite soon, Unionist politicians in Scotland are going to have to grow up and deal with this:

And their problem is that there’s no possible way to.

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The Scotsman reports a “blow” to Nicola Sturgeon this morning:

“The UK’s new Chancellor has said Scotland should not have a different relationship with Europe than the rest of the UK.

Philip Hammond, who replaced George Osborne as new Prime Minister Theresa May appointed her Cabinet, said the vote to leave the European Union was a “democratic decision” made by the United Kingdom as a whole, which would now be implemented.

It marks a blow for First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has been consistently making a case for Scotland to retain its links with Europe after the majority of voters north of the border opted for Remain.”

So the official Westminster line is that Scotland will HAVE to become independent if it wants to remain in the EU. We’re sure the FM will be absolutely gutted to hear that.

While we wait on tenterhooks to find out exactly how insane the Parliamentary Labour Party is, enjoy this jaw-dropping BBC Scotland news report on the trial of Labour MP Marie Rimmer for attacking a Yes campaigner at a polling station in September 2014.

Coming soon: Shooting Victim Denies Deliberately Damaging Assailant’s Bullet. 

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If your only source of news was the mainstream media, you could be forgiven for thinking that the consensus in the EU regarding an independent Scotland was bleak. Spain would, we’re told endlessly, veto Scotland’s place in the EU out of hand, and so, allegedly, would France.

And when Scotland’s First Minister went to Brussels after the referendum vote to meet with EU officials in regards to Scotland’s membership, we were told that this bold act of outreach fell on deaf ears.

The language of the press was hostile bordering on sadistic. The First Minister, acting to secure the democratic will of the people of Scotland, was apparently “running out of friends” and had to “beg” Ireland to help us out.

The reality, readers will be astonished to hear, is somewhat different.

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Some of you will have missed this over the weekend:

Yes – Michelle Mone, of all the people on Earth, really did just go on TV and accuse Nicola Sturgeon of being all about ego. We’ll leave you to absorb that for a bit.

Earlier today we were moved to tweet our scepticism regarding a claim made by the Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale, as reported in the Guardian.

Even on the most casual glance, the numbers just didn’t seem to add up. If 62% of Scots voted to stay in the EU and 55% voted to stay in the UK, with no correlation between the two things, then the Venn-diagram intersection between those two groups seems pretty unlikely to add up to more than 50%, let alone a “vast” majority.

So as we like to do, we checked.

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