We read something odd in the Herald yesterday.
In the same spirit of magnanimity, Wings Over Scotland would like to humbly and solemnly announce that from today onwards we will abide by the law of gravity and the requirement for human beings to breathe oxygen in order to respire. Thank you.
It can be a full-time job keeping up with the many inconsistencies and contradictions in the anti-independence campaign. (Labour’s professed hatred for the Tories but willingness to let them govern Scotland when Scottish voters reject them, and the Conservatives’ belief in the UK Union but deep-seated antipathy to the European one, leap out as two of the more obvious examples.) Today’s is a corker, though.
Attentive readers will recall that the “Better Together” camp has spent the five months since its launch constantly warning Scots that independence would be “irrevocable”. Here’s figurehead Alistair Darling being reported in the Telegraph as saying just that at the No campaign’s launch in June of this year (our emphasis, as usual):
Pretty unequivocal, then – independence is forever, no going back in our lifetime, or that of our children, or their children, or their children. But wait. Fast-forward to last night and the former Chancellor appears to have had a radical change of heart, in a BBC story headlined “Darling predicts independent Scotland would rejoin UK”:
Of course, if you’re a Wings Over Scotland reader you already knew the “irrevocable” line was a load of rubbish that could only be true if the core claim – and indeed, the very name – of “Better Together” was a cynical lie. But it’s nice to see Mr Darling admit it this early in the day. Which strident assertion, we wonder, will he recant next?
Labour today is a far cry from the party of old, a party that was set up to provide a voice for the working class so as to gain control over the means of production for the masses rather than to be dictated to by capitalism. The modern incarnation is now peddling the notion of “One Nation Labour”, with Johann Lamont decrying what she calls the “something for nothing country” of Scotland, presumably referring to the stubborn preference of the Scots for the social democractic principles of “old” Labour over the neoliberal New Labour. As justification for the rightward shift, Lamont asserts:
(Clearly she’s been using Gordon Brown’s sub-editor.)
On the face of it, that seems a relatively straightforward statement of fact: if you can’t pay for something then you have to cut back, go without or find new money to properly fund it. It should be noted that as we’ve seen, at present there’s no need to make this choice because current spending is fully funded. However, as costs rise and privatisation, budget cuts and PFI in England (along with some creative accounting of England-only spending as “UK” projects or reserve-budget items) continue to cause reductions in the Scottish block grant, we soon will.
As with any long campaign, we’re a bit worried that we might have to spend the next two years saying the same things over and over again, because the main Unionist tactic seems to be to keep asking questions after they’ve been answered a hundred times. That said, when you’ve got your hands full with domestic mini-crises (as we’ve had all this week), it can be quite useful to have already covered the day’s main topics and be able to just point people at the archives before rushing off to fight the latest fire.
If we don’t have a heart attack before then, see you tomorrow.
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Some alert listeners picked up a curious story on today’s edition of Good Morning Scotland, which was reported on the Tattie Scones blog and which we immediately set about investigating further. It was another outing for the “Scotland could be partitioned after the independence referendum” nonsense first peddled by a Tory peer back in January of this year, and picked up by unhinged Scotsman columnist Michael Kelly in August, but the latest advocate of slicing Scotland into countless separate parts that could require you to cross international borders a dozen times on a drive from Dumfries to Dingwall was our old pal Ian Davidson.
The Glasgow MP, who to the astonishment of alien observers from far-off galaxies has been placed in charge of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee in order to conduct a fully impartial analysis of Scottish “separation”, apparently made the suggestion sometime this week, but GMS curiously failed to include either an interview or a quote in its 69-second news report, which you can hear in its entirety by clicking on this link.
The piece also suggested that some of Davidson’s own colleagues were among those pouring scorn on the ludicrous notion, but declined to identify any of them. It wasn’t repeated in the rest of the programme, and we’re still none the wiser as to when and where the comments were made. (Although we know when it wasn’t.)
If any reader can enlighten us, please feel free.
The Daily Record carries the results of an interesting poll today. Carried out by the paper itself among its own readers, it shows conclusive support for a range of SNP policies. For example, 79% of Record readers want to retain Sterling should Scotland become independent, in line with the Nats’ position. They want Scotland to remain a member of the EU by a ratio of almost two to one (55% to 29%). They want to stay in NATO by an overwhelming margin of 68% to 13%. And abolishing Trident is backed by more than three-to-two (47% vs 31%) among the poll’s respondents.
You’d imagine that Scotland’s second-biggest-selling newspaper might be pleased that the country’s government so comprehensively reflects the desires of its own readers, wouldn’t you? And yet unaccountably, the Record appears to be furious about it.
“Our poll shows voters back the SNP’s blueprint for independence – and that’s exactly how Alex Salmond planned it”, the Record froths, as if putting forward a manifesto that people like and support was some kind of dishonourable, underhand tactic. “The SNP have thrown political beliefs out of their window in a desperate attempt to convince Scots to put a cross beside the Yes box in 2014”, it continues, seemingly in the belief that listening to the electorate is the most dastardly crime in the government playbook.
Much of the piece is of course given over to angry reactions from Labour and Unionist spokespersons, who we commend the Record on getting to actually turn up. And it ends rather abruptly, as if the Record’s exasperation at the sheer effrontery of the SNP in continuing to be popular has rendered it speechless. But ultimately, even Labour’s most loyal propaganda organ reluctantly faces the basic fact that the SNP can legitimately claim to be speaking for the people of Scotland, while Scottish Labour can’t even speak for itself. We suspect the Record has more such dark days ahead.
There was a shock admission from Anas Sarwar, “deputy” leader of Scottish Labour, when speaking about the referendum on BBC Scotland’s “The Big Debate” last night:
“This will be the biggest decision that any of you will make in your lifetime, and what we need actually is Yes.”
It’s not every day we agree with the often factually-challenged MP for Glasgow Central, but this time we think he’s hit the nail square on the head.
(Because it’s fine to just cut people’s quotes short to suit your own purposes, right?)
No. No it won’t.
A front-page piece in today’s Scotland On Sunday expands on Gordon Brown’s attempted intervention in the independence debate yesterday with an extraordinary headline which appears to be based on an actual quote from the former Prime Minister: “SNP plan makes Scotland a colony, claims Gordon Brown”.
Sure enough, Brown is reported as saying that an independence for Scotland would be “a form of self-imposed colonialism more reminiscent of the old empire than of the modern world”. Which raises an obvious question: given that an independent Scotland would by any definition have vastly more control of its own affairs than it does now, doesn’t that mean it must currently be something far less than a colony?
The only status we can think of for a nation that’s arguably lower than a “colony” is that of a vassal state. Wikipedia’s definition of that term certainly seems to apply to Scotland: we pay “tribute” to the UK (by contributing a greater share of its revenues than we get back in spending), and we also “provide military power to the dominant state”, both directly in the form of troops and by giving a home to the UK’s nuclear weapons, an important political tool which it wouldn’t be able to retain otherwise.
Wiki goes on to add that a more common modern term for a vassal state is “puppet state”. If you’ve got a minute, Gordon, can you just confirm for us that you and the rest of the Unionist alliance currently see Scotland as a puppet state of England? Cheers.
As the Scottish people ponder the merits of independence, it can be useful to examine areas in which Holyrood rather than Westminster already controls policy, and one of the most obvious is healthcare. The NHS is in almost all operational senses already independent in Scotland, and operates in a markedly different manner to the way the service is run in England and Wales.
But as we recently revealed, the Scottish NHS remains subject to hidden budget cuts as a result of the Barnett Formula, as well as the headline cuts imposed to Scotland’s block grant under Westminster austerity. The question, then, is whether this devolved form of “independence” is enough to maintain the standards of healthcare Scots have come to expect.
Watching FMQs yesterday, a thought suddenly occurred to us. Is it possible that a lot of Scottish people’s reluctance to support independence isn’t because they think the south-east of England knows what’s best for Scotland, but because they’re simply terrified of the possibility of someone other than the SNP winning an election to an independent Scottish Parliament, and thereby risking putting the entire nation in the hands of the likes of Johann Lamont, Jackie Baillie and Richard Baker?
Have we been making a terrible tactical error all this time? Should we, in fact, spend the next two years bigging up Scottish Labour and the rest of the Holyrood opposition instead of mercilessly exposing their hapless ineptitude at every turn? Should we do our best to reassure a frightened electorate that should the SNP split after independence (which some people think it will, though we don’t), there’s nothing to fear from a government that might include Anas Sarwar, Margaret Curran and James Kelly and have control of ALL of Scotland’s finances, welfare and defence?
Because if so we’ll give it a shot. But frankly, that’s going to be a tough sell.
Did anyone else notice that in last night’s Scotland Tonight interview (in which he noted that Labour’s tribal hatred of the SNP was blinding and damaging it), former First Minister Henry McLeish referred to Johann Lamont as “leader of the Labour Party in Scotland”, rather than as the leader of anything called “Scottish Labour”? As a current member and ex-head of the party’s Scottish division, you’d think Mr McLeish would know the proper name and internal structure of it. What aren’t we being told?
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
