Wings Over Scotland

In its kneejerk “SNP BAD” reaction to the Alistair Carmichael affair, the Unionist establishment – politicians and media alike – has furiously tried to divert attention from Carmichael’s smear and attempted cover-up by harking back to an incident in 2012, when the press gave vast amounts of coverage to a claim that Alex Salmond had “lied” about legal advice regarding an independent Scotland’s EU membership.

Everyone and their dog has trotted out the allegation again in the past week, right across the Unionist political spectrum – “Steerpike” in the Spectator did it, Alex Johnstone of the Scottish Conservatives did it, Tavish Scott of the Scottish Lib Dems did it, Michael White in the Guardian did it, Toby Young in the Spectator (again) did it, thirsty Labour peer George Foulkes did it, Telegraph columnist Iain Martin did it, failed Lib Dem anti-Salmond candidate Christine Jardine did it, and countless numbers of shrill Scottish Labour activists and party officials did it.

And all of them are counting on the Scottish public not remembering the truth.

Read the rest of this entry →

The Scottish Conservatives last October:

Read the rest of this entry →

An alert reader today drew our attention to a detail we’d missed in a recent article in the Shetland News. It concerned Alistair Carmichael’s leaking of a false memo in order to smear Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP while the Orkney & Shetland MP was still Secretary of State for Scotland, and took the form of a quote from Carmichael’s Holyrood counterpart Tavish Scott, MSP for Shetland:

Two questions immediately leap to mind.

Read the rest of this entry →

Most of today’s papers quote an unnamed Scotland Office spokesman on the subject of the Scotland Bill 2015, and in particular its clauses concerning welfare powers:

“It is factually wrong to claim there are vetoes in the Bill. These are sensible, practical arrangements to ensure the transfer of new powers smoothly.”

We’ll let readers judge for themselves.

Read the rest of this entry →

Earlier today we noted that the indyref had empowered the Scottish people to an extent that they seemed very reluctant to give up on. But plutocracies don’t become the establishment by giving up their thrones lightly, and so today we get this:

The above is a passage we selected completely at random from the Scotland Bill 2015, the administrative manifestation of “The Vow” and the Smith Commission. It’s entirely typical of the full 77-page document (PDF), which is essentially an unreadable wordspew completely impenetrable to normal people. And that’s no accident.

Read the rest of this entry →

The current Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, on Politics Scotland earlier today:

“I was not convicted”, of course, isn’t quite the same thing as “I didn’t do it”.

Many of you won’t have seen this quite extraordinary performance from the Guardian’s assistant editor Michael White on last night’s Scotland Tonight, and you really should.

Read the rest of this entry →

“Just go on the radio, play it all with a dead bat, fob them off with some bland waffle and kill the story”, the Lib Dems will have said to Sir Malcolm Bruce this morning.

Read the rest of this entry →

Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie – a man who was at the heart of the “MemoGate” smear, quoted prominently in almost all the media coverage of the untrue slur against Nicola Sturgeon – has offered the opinion that former Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael deserves a “second chance” after admitting being behind the fabricated story and then brazenly lying about it on national TV.

We agree with Mr Rennie.

We believe that Mr Carmichael deserves a second chance to be elected, but this time honestly. The only way that can happen is if he is removed as an MP and given the opportunity to present himself to the electorate again in the light of the revelations. If the voters of Orkney & Shetland weigh up all the facts and conclude that on balance Alistair Carmichael should continue to represent them in Parliament, fair enough.

We therefore draw readers’ attention to the above campaign which has been launched by some of Mr Carmichael’s constituents, which seeks to raise the money required to issue a legal challenge to his election as an MP earlier this month, on the grounds that his narrow 817-vote victory was gained on the basis of lying to voters and covering up that lie until after the election, which may constitute an offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983.

The campaign requires just £6,000 to file the complaint, with the rest of the target sum being set against possible costs. Any unused funds will be donated to charity.

The former Liberal Democrat MP (and also the party’s former Scottish leader, and until just a few weeks ago its UK deputy leader) Sir Malcolm Bruce gave an extraordinary interview to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about Alistair Carmichael.

The whole thing can be heard here, but the short passage below stood out even in the context of a breathless, furious, scattergun performance that sounded like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 26 May 2015)
.

We’re sure readers will be greatly comforted by the fact that it’s okay for the Secretary of State for Scotland to tell a “brazen lie”, on the grounds that everyone else in the Houses Of Parliament is a liar too, and by the notion that a government minister who’s caught lying to the nation in order to undermine the democratically-elected leader of Scotland is an offence for which the culprit can simply decide their own punishment.