Wings Over Scotland

It’s one of the defining mysteries of the independence debate so far. The Scottish Government says that an independent Scotland would remain an EU member at all times before, during and after the process of dissolving the UK, with the precise terms being negotiated. The UK Government, meanwhile, insists that Scotland would be thrown out of the EU and have to reapply for membership.

The EU has said it’s happy to settle this dispute, but only on receipt of a request from the UK Government to issue a definitive position. The Scottish Government has urged the UK Government to do so, but the UK Government refuses, despite its professed confidence in its view and the huge propaganda victory that would presumably result.

We can only assume that the UK Government is too busy to write the letter, occupied as it is with destroying the British economy and society. So as a helpful time-saving gesture of goodwill and in the interests of informed debate, we’ve done it for them.

We’re even happy to put a stamp on it, pop out (we need milk anyway) and stick it in the postbox ourselves. Just say the word, Prime Minister.

This is “No” campaign director Blair McDougall, telling lies:

“There’s one thing that’s absolutely certain – if the nationalists get a Yes vote, Scotland will be leaving the UK and so we’ll be leaving the European Union.”

That’s a lie, isn’t it, Blair? It couldn’t possibly be any more clearly a lie. Nobody actually believes that Scotland will “leave” the European Union as a result of a Yes vote. No matter how much they deliberately spin, misrepresent and mislead about the EC President’s comments, nobody honestly believes that there will be so much as a single solitary day on which Scottish people are not EU citizens. (Unless, of course, they choose to stay in the UK and the Tories then take the whole UK out.)

Even the feeble semantic-hairsplitting defence that an independent Scotland might for a split second technically “leave” the EU while negotiations over the precise terms of membership were concluded and amended is anything but “absolutely certain”. Such a scenario is, in fact, a hugely unlikely, but strictly speaking astronomically-small theoretical possibility, so irrational that a lunatic might clutch desperately at it. Either way, we would in every meaningful sense remain in the EU.

The only absolute certainty here is that Blair McDougall is a liar.

This came out quite a few days ago, but didn’t get the attention it merited. Once again, we invite readers to ponder the “invisible hypothetical” of whether the Scottish media would have shown such complete disinterest in a piece of investigative journalism which revealed an elected representative of the SNP and some of its prominent activists discussing their own party’s complete uselessness.

We do accept that Scottish Labour being in shambolic disarray isn’t exactly hold-the-front-page stuff, and is in fact somewhere on a par with “Rain forecast for Hebrides” or “Scottish rugby team beaten at Twickenham”. But clearly the bar for headline stories is rather lower than it used to be, so you’d think it’d at least get a passing mention.

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Try as we might, we’re only one small website and we can’t track every last news story in the world. So we’re not sure who died and made Calum Cashley chief of the Internet Police. But whoever it was did the cause of independence a great disservice by not clinging to life for a couple more years.

The Herald’s front-page headline this morning – that is, the most important thing the newspaper considers to be happening in the world today – is “Yes campaigners launch bid to silence cybernats“. We won’t insult our readers’ intelligence by naming its author. It exists solely as a result of the actions of Calum Cashley, and it manages to turn an event of such microscopic non-significance it wouldn’t have raised a gnat’s eyelash into a bilious spew of toxic No-campaign propaganda. Nice work, officer.

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One of the problems for anyone highlighting media bias is the “invisible hypothetical”. Take, by way of example, this snapshot of today’s Scotsman website front page:

The headline on the first piece especially is an astonishing piece of work. Rather than report that Parliament had passed a motion criticising the UK government’s welfare reforms (something given extra poignancy by the article below it, and despite Labour voting with the Tories and Lib Dems against the motion), the paper mind-bogglingly manages to twist the story into an attack on the SNP for not explicitly providing an alternative plan – even though Holyrood has no powers over welfare.

We invite any Wings Over Scotland readers with an idle moment to ponder what the headline might have been had it been Labour attacking the SNP in similar circumstances. We’ll get you started – you’ll be wanting the word “ACCUSED”.

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Alex Salmond’s appearance on Scotland Tonight this week raised an issue we’ve been meaning to address for a while, so let’s do it now before we forget again.

Of the numerous polls of the last few months, the most encouraging for supporters of independence was the one conducted by Panelbase for the Sunday Times in late October. It showed a pretty tight race at 37% Yes to 45% No, but the most interesting aspect was how the numbers changed when voters were asked for their opinion in the hypothetical scenario that they expected the Conservatives be returned as either a majority or coalition government at the 2015 Westminster general election.

In that scenario, independence leapt ahead with a massive 10% swing, to lead by 52% to 40%. But much less reported by the media was another finding of the poll.

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1. Scottish Labour says universal free bus travel for pensioners is unaffordable.

2. Scottish Government manages to reduce the cost of universal free bus travel.

3. “CUTS TO CONCESSIONARY TRAVEL WILL HIT HARD-WORKING SCOTS”

4. Repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

There’s very little room for ambiguity in the Electoral Commission’s request that both sides in the independence debate provide voters with information in advance of the referendum about the likely consequences of either a Yes or No vote. Here’s how the Scotsman reported their comments, for example:

“In a surprise recommendation reflecting widespread public confusion over the choices on offer, the commission said that the UK and Scottish government should try to ‘clarify’ the situation by seeking agreement on ‘how any competing claims made about independence during the campaigns would be resolved’.

The same clarity should be offered on events after a No vote, it said. It proposed that ‘both governments should agree a joint position, if possible, so that voters have access to agreed information about what would follow the referendum’.”

In the case of (what we’re finally now able to officially call) the No campaign, that only means – indeed, only can mean – one thing. After all, their platform is the status quo. In every immediate respect, the consequences of a No vote will be that nothing changes, so nothing needs explaining. There is but a single exception.

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In a Twitter conversation yesterday, we suggested that a solution to the problem of biased reporting in the Scottish media might be to adopt a variant of the “Whizzer and Chips” approach. That is, you’d have two newspapers in one – one way round the news would be presented from a Unionist perspective (as it is now), but if you flipped the paper over and read it from the other end it’d have all the same stories, except covered by independence-friendly journalists.

It looks like the Guardian has tentatively taken the idea up already.

We’ve already offered our opinion on the Electoral Commission’s report on the question for the independence referendum. The Commission also made two other main recommendations: that both sides should provide information on the consequences of their preferred outcome (something the Unionist side has steadfastly refused to do until now), and that the campaign spending limits should be higher than the Scottish Government’s proposed figures, at £1.5m per side for politicial parties, and the same for other organisations – a total of up to £6m.

The former will be intriguing to watch, but for now let’s talk quickly about the money.

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You can download the Commission’s full report on the question here.