Wings Over Scotland

There seem to be a lot of things disappearing from the Scottish media today. First the interesting Robbie Dinwoodie story on Olympic football in the Herald does the Bermuda-Triangle routine, and then we see this odd piece in The Scotsman. It opens powerfully, promising to refute (or at least contest) one of the commonest and most compelling arguments made in favour of independence:

“ED MILIBAND has attacked the SNP’s suggestion that Scots face a choice of either independence or Conservative rule from Westminster as the Labour leader made his latest intervention in the referendum debate.”

We’ve read the rest of the short article three times now, however, without being able to locate a single sentence in which Mr Miliband (pictured in the piece as the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) refers to said choice in even the most oblique passing manner, far less “attacks” it. We’re rather keen to hear the official Labour answer, too. Can any eagle-eyed readers help us out?

Just seven months ago, we ran a piece castigating some of Scotland’s nationalists for their ludicrously churlish and negative assessment of the SNP’s first half-year as a majority administration. Several high-profile pro-independence bloggers had attacked the Scottish Government for an opening programme that was variously described as “despairing, girning, partisan, vacuous and dreary”.

We criticised them at the time, and today we feel thoroughly vindicated in the light of the news that the SNP will indeed bring forward a bill to legalise gay marriage in Scotland, making it the first part of the UK to do so.

The bill will be the third major seriously contentious one to be put before Parliament by the majority government in barely over a year, following hot on the heels of the anti-sectarianism bill and minimum alcohol pricing. All three were faced with considerable political and/or public opposition, and it seems extremely likely that the sectarianism bill cost the SNP a significant number of votes in May’s local council elections, particularly in and around Glasgow.

The equal-marriage bill, opposed by around 65% of respondents to the consultation, may very well cost it more, particularly among the Catholic community it only recently won over after years of work. And it won’t win many in compensation from the gay community, which is noisy but vastly smaller than the Church and in any event spent most of last week engaged in a colossally ungrateful and petulant sulking fit that the Government hadn’t made the announcement on the exact day they wanted it to.

But even with an independence referendum to win, Alex Salmond’s cabinet has pressed ahead with doing the things it believes are in the interests of the people of Scotland, even if that means damaging their own party and jeopardising the thing some of them have fought their whole lives to achieve. This blog can think of no greater tribute to bestow on any government than that it’s prepared to lose votes, and considerable numbers of them, to do the right thing. We salute it without reservation.

As we’ve said before, we really don’t see much point in getting worked up about opinion polls when we’re still more than two years out from any public vote on anything.  A new poll by Panelbase has some fairly standard results – the SNP well in front in Holyrood voting intentions (up 2% overall on the 2011 result, with Labour and the Greens both up 1%, and the Tories and Lib Dems down 1.5% each), independence trailing by 9% in a two-way vote with 20% undecided, and the three options (including greater devolution) neck-and-neck when set directly against each other (independence 30, devo-X 29, status quo 28).

While we’re encouraged by these numbers at the height of the Great 2012 Festival Of Britishness, they essentially mean nothing at this point, and don’t tell us anything we haven’t known for months or years already. But what IS mildly interesting is seeing how the Scottish print and online media handles them.

Read the rest of this entry →

Whichever religion you belong to, or if you belong to no religion at all, most Scottish people are aware of the significance of the 12th of July. The Scottish Conservative blog Tory Hoose chose that day to publish a post from Jason Lingiah, the Chairman of the Edinburgh and South West Conservative Association and also the party’s defeated 2011 Holyrood-election candidate for the Loyalist stronghold of Coatbridge & Chryston.

In it, Mr Lingiah called for the Conservative Party to “do more to reach out” to the Orange Order, stating that its value system “echoes core Conservative beliefs” and that the Tories should try to reverse a situation where “Labour has become the Unionist party of choice” for the Order.

On the same day, just across the water in the New Lodge area of Belfast, the body which Mr Lingiah believes “stands for civil and religious freedom” was up to this:

The clip shows an Orange July-12th parade stopping and repeatedly circling in front of St Patrick’s Chapel, which you may not be entirely surprised to discover is a Catholic place of worship. They then start to play a tune which innocent English readers might know only as the Beach Boys hit “Sloop John B”, but which Scottish people will recognise under its alternative guise as “The Famine Song“, a cheerful ditty beloved of and regularly aired by Rangers supporters. When members of the Order belatedly notice that someone is filming this display, they violently attack him.

Given that the events took place in Northern Ireland, it would perhaps appear to be understandable under normal circumstances that no Scottish newspaper or broadcaster reported on them. But in the context of Mr Lingiah’s comments, on a site officially endorsed by the Scottish Conservative Party and which has hosted a number of articles by both the party’s leader Ruth Davidson and its Rangers-supporting former deputy Murdo Fraser, it’s a touch more strange that they attracted so little notice.

The SNP is regularly called upon to condemn and/or accept responsibility for the actions of random supporters of independence who make offensive or merely controversial comments on the internet. Yet the Scottish media seem oddly disinclined to castigate the Tories for failing to publicly attack these provocative and despicable sectarian actions, and actual violent assault, by an organisation a senior Conservative was lauding in print the very same day. (And which Labour is keen to see taking a more active and prominent role in Scottish society.)

Labour and the Tories are fighting for the backing of these people. The media turns a blind eye. If we were more paranoid we’d find that a bit worrying.

We’re finding it hard to get worked up about the media’s latest shock-horror revelations with regard to the SNP’s policy on NATO membership. All that’s been proposed is that the party debates its position at its annual conference, and if a party’s members agree – or not – on an alteration to a policy then that’s what the party’s policy should be. It’s an exercise of the most fundamental principle of democracy, and we can’t even really be bothered pointing out the laughable hypocrisy of it being criticised by a party that refuses to tell us its policy on just about anything, including defence.

That said, we were still deeply dismayed by Angus Robertson’s performance on last night’s Newsnight Scotland. Highly-rated by most political commentators, Robertson may be a whiz at actually drawing up policy and strategy but he’s hopeless at presenting it. While SNP figures like Nicola Sturgeon, Stewart Hosie, John Swinney and the First Minister himself have provided a breath of fresh air with direct and honest answers in interviews since coming to power, Robertson seems stuck in the mindset of Westminster, and his needlessly vague, waffling and evasive responses to Isobel Fraser’s perfectly legitimate and not especially challenging questions were like stepping back in time a decade, or watching Johann Lamont now.

To be honest, we don’t really care whether an independent Scotland is in NATO or not, so long as nuclear weapons are removed permanently from Scottish waters. We struggle to see how it would affect the day-to-day life of Scottish people, and we’re not the least bit convinced it’s a matter of pressing importance to the average voter.  But what we DO regard as a danger for the SNP and by extension the independence movement is if it comes increasingly to be seen as just like all the discredited and widely-loathed Westminster parties, rather than the genuinely different alternative to the neoliberal consensus that it actually is.

Appearances like Robertson’s last night will damage the SNP far more than an entirely reasonable debate about policy at conference, which is after all the very thing party conferences are supposed to be for. We hope someone takes him aside and points out that if we wanted useless Westminster politicians, we could just stay in the Union.

We’re a bit bemused by a story reported in the Herald this morning, which makes a fairly dramatic headline claim:

“Scottish voters are turning strongly against independence, according to the latest opinion poll, which shows the cross-party No camp charging ahead with a record 20-point lead.

The snapshot by TNS BMRB – taken after both campaign launches – puts those against independence on 50% and those in favour on 30%; the latter figure being the lowest received for independence in five years of surveys by the Edinburgh-based pollster.”

We were even more bemused when we went to the TNS BMRB site to examine the details and found no mention of it. Now, we’re sure the Herald hasn’t just made it up and that it’ll appear shortly, but the odd thing was that we DID find mention of some other polling by the same company on the subject, conducted just two weeks ago.

Read the rest of this entry →

We should be grateful for the ongoing Rangers circus. With both the Scottish and UK Parliaments now off on their summer recesses, we’re entering what newspapers traditionally call the “silly season”, where there’s little for political reporters to cover and they’re reduced to fabricating copy out of nothing to fill their sections.

Even so, the Herald’s front-page splash today is a bit desperate. Watch in amazement as the dramatic headline (“Cameron under pressure to stage vote on independence“) crumbles to pieces before your very eyes in the space of a few short sentences:

Frustration is growing in Whitehall that Alex Salmond is “dragging his feet” on sorting out key issues surrounding the 2014 poll, most notably on whether there should be one or two questions.

To be able to deliver the SNP Government’s preferred time-table, it is thought there is just a matter of months to pin down the technical details of the referendum. By next spring, if agreement has not been reached, then the Prime Minister faces a major political dilemma.

Asked if he might have to decide Westminster will legislate to hold an independence referendum in Scotland, a senior Coalition source told The Herald: “Potentially, this is a scenario he may have to face.””

So let’s break that down. “A few months” in fact means “almost a year”, while “Cameron under pressure” actually translates into “POTENTIALLY, Cameron MAY come under pressure, at some point in the fairly distant future, IF the Scottish Government’s consultation process hasn’t resolved itself in a manner everyone can live with, and IF Cameron then decides to commit electoral suicide by imposing a London-run referendum on Scotland”. Well, hold the front page.

We’re reminded of a popular Scottish phrase regarding the addition of certain physical appendages to the person of one’s grandmother in order that she might be denoted one’s grandfather. We commend the Herald on their powers of invention in a lean news period, and will now get back to our piece on what the constitutional implications will be if Michael Moore is unexpectedly revealed to be a Nazi from the moon.

For any of you sick of football talk (to be honest, that includes us) and questioning this blog’s oft-stated belief that the fate of Rangers FC (IL) and the fate of the independence campaign are intertwined, we attach below the minutes of the Rangers Fans’ Fighting Fund meeting held earlier this week at Ibrox Stadium. As far as we’re able to ascertain they’re genuine, and we thank the alert reader who sent us the link. The entire document is below, but we’ll highlight the relevant passage right here:

“A representative from Denny then informed the panel that he had four reasons why we should go into Division 3. First he believed it would test Charles Green resolve; secondly he believed it would show the benefit of Auchenhowie and allow the management team to gain experience. Third, it would galvanise and unite the Rangers support, and lastly it would allow us to move on and concentrate on defeating the SNP’s fight for independence.”

Read the rest of this entry →

*Jonathan Edwards is the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. This piece first appeared on his own blog, but we asked if we could reprint it to bring some of its excellent insights to a wider audience. (And also to fix the original’s impressively esoteric rendering of “paraphernalia”. We’re real spelling Nazis.)

I’ve been meaning to write this blog ever since Ed Miliband’s car-crash speech on English identity. I have also taken part in a number of BBC interviews over recent months in which it is sometimes difficult to get your point across when you have an interviewer on the other end barking at you as you challenge unionist perceptions. It also supports why Leanne Woods’ intervention this week is an important one.

When the Miliband speech was being pre-briefed I had high hopes that we were about to hear something significant – that Labour were going to proclaim that their answer to the challenge posed by the SNP’s independence drive was a federal settlement for the British state. I expected Labour to position themselves as advocates of an English Parliament as the political expression of English identity. Instead what we got was hot air, followed by one of the most painful interviews I have seen by a Unionist leader on Channel 4 News.

Read the rest of this entry →

We’re bored of the “debate” about a second question in the independence referendum. The facts are plain and beyond any sensible dispute:

(a) the SNP has a majority government, and therefore a legitimate democratic mandate to conduct the business of government – including the referendum – any way it wants.

(b) The party’s 2011 election manifesto promised a referendum – it did NOT, contrary to the No camp’s constant assertions, specifically promise a single-question one. (A lie the media bizarrely never challenges.)

(c) All referenda in the United Kingdom are advisory rather than legally binding, so the reservation of the constitution to Westminster under the Scotland Act is therefore irrelevant, and

(d) …is in any event over-ridden by the universal principle of self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Charter and the Declaration Of Human Rights.

So that’s that. This blog, however, neither supports a two-question referendum nor believes for a moment that there will be one. As we’ve said numerous times, Alex Salmond has manoeuvered the Unionist parties onto the ground they instinctively want to occupy anyway – that of denying the people of Scotland the right to select their preferred form of government from the full range of choices – and has neither the desire nor the intention to actually put a second question on the ballot paper, which would all but guarantee the failure of the goal for which he has worked his entire adult life.

But more than that, a two-question referendum is unacceptable no matter which side you’re on. If we’re discounting the simple and reasonable “Yes-Yes” formula of the 1999 devolution referendum – as it appears we must on the grounds of Willie Rennie’s mendacious and disingenuous “51% rule” – and insisting on either-or voting, then the only legitimate number of questions for the referendum is either one or three.

Read the rest of this entry →

On the few occasions we’ve bothered reading Better Nation in recent times, it’s usually been as a result of something posted by Kirsty Connell. She’s penned several thoughtful, interesting blogs since joining the editorial team, and we’ve even tweeted a few of them before now. Today’s piece, in which she explains why she’s finally lapsing her membership of the Labour Party, is unmissable.

We won’t keep you from it, but there’s one enormously telling phrase in particular in the post. Connell dates many of her doubts about Labour back to a traumatic experience when campaigning in the famous Westminster by-election in Glasgow East, a deprived area whose troubles she attributes to “a Thatcherite government [which] strangled funds to a Labour-led council”. Perhaps it’s some last remnant of tribal loyalty which prevents Kirsty from coming out and saying it: the “Thatcherite” government strangling those funds went under the banner of the Labour Party.

The Glasgow East by-election took place in 2008. By then, the “Labour” government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had already been in power at Westminster for 11 years. Even as the party’s support reaches all-time lows in Scotland, a dogged hardcore of wilfully-blind loyalists continues to desperately gloss over the fact that Labour long ago abandoned most of the honourable socialist values and principles on which it was founded and surrendered to Thatcherite ideology in order to grab power. We rejoice that one more member, in a long and continuing line, has seen through the deception, and hope that the others will one day choose to open their eyes too.

So we’d probably better comment on Willie Rennie’s personal attack yesterday. It was hardly surprising, and indeed a little flattering that the leader of a formerly-major political party would take time out of his day to send out a press release excoriating little old us and our insignificant wee blog, but it’s still a tad disappointing to see a senior politician happy to tell so many lies in a few short sentences.

We’ll skip through it quickly, then move on with our lives.

Read the rest of this entry →