Wings Over Scotland

It’s been a while since our first Straight Debate and we’d hoped to have had more by now, but it’s surprising how many Unionists (nearly all of them) aren’t prepared to have a simple and open discussion. Duncan Hothersall, though, is one of the most prominent and hardcore online Labour activists in Scotland. We’d been badgering him to take up the cudgels for ages, and last week he finally agreed. This is how it went.

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As part of our continuing look at the people who haven’t yet their minds up about independence, we’re delighted to present this piece by Sue Lyons. If you’re a “Don’t know” too, we’d love to hear from you – why not drop us a line?

I am a mum and a wife. In point of fact, I’m an English wife married to a Scottish husband, with three English children from my first marriage and two Scottish children from my current marriage. Why would I even bother to mention that at all, you might wonder – surely it doesn’t matter where my children were born, surely I love them just the same? And you would be right.

What makes it worth mentioning is that my husband is a Scottish nationalist. In fact, he’s such a Scottish nationalist that were the UK government to say tomorrow “You can have independence for Scotland but you have to pay for it yourself”, he would say, “Where do I sign?”

He describes himself as “rabid” and he’s absolutely right – if you cut off his leg he would have a saltire running through it like a stick of rock (but not Blackpool rock, because that’s in England). Not for him the sitting on the fence that others might do, not for him the idea that you can vote for the SNP and yet still be undecided on independence. John is for an independent Scotland completely and absolutely. That sometimes causes fun and games in our own personal Union – our home.

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An unexpected development!

“THE word “Union” will not feature in the title of the cross-party campaign against Scottish independence.

The key plank of the group’s campaign emerged as Blair McDougall, a former aide to former foreign secretary David Miliband, was recruited to manage it. The six-strong campaign organising committee, which includes Anas Sarwar for Labour and David McLetchie for the Conservatives, has undertaken public research on what to call the pro-UK campaign.

A source said details were still being finalised but added: “I don’t think the word ‘Union’ will feature in the name.”“

Would anyone like to help them out with some suggestions?

We mean Bing Hitler, of course. The First Minister recently gave a special interview to The Late Late Show in the US, which was broadcast last night, in which he warmly and repeatedly praises Mr Hitler – or if we’re being strictly accurate his alter-ego, the show’s Scottish presenter Craig Ferguson – at around the two-minute mark. (And in fairness, Labour actually haven’t found a way to be furious about it yet as far as we know, but as sure as night follows day they will soon. Probably the usual torn-faced bleating about the FM having the temerity to gallivant around on telly when he could be out personally filling in potholes in Pollokshields or something.)

Anyway, Wings over Scotland is proud to present the world-exclusive first UK airing, extracted from the complete show by our own fair hands:

It’s actually a pretty interesting and intelligent interview by chat-show standards (and especially considering the normally irreverent tone of TLLS), and was preceded by a nice piece about the Declaration Of Arbroath, which is discussed throughout. Sadly, though, we couldn’t possibly condone the flagrant breaching of copyright by giving you a link to download the (excellent) entire episode, or we’d be extradited and put in jail forever. Thanks for THAT ace bit of modern progressive lawmaking, Labour!

We’ve noticed, and perhaps you have too, that things have been very quiet on the “positive case for the Union” front recently. (Partly, we suspect, because the constant hooting of nationalists over its continued absence was starting to become so loud and embarrassing that even the Unionist media couldn’t keep ignoring it.)

Ever since David Cameron visited Scotland in February and mumbled some vague platitudes about maybe getting more powers someday if we voted No in 2014, Unionists seem to have given up on even promising a “positive” case and have concentrated more doggedly than ever on the blood-curdling scare tactics that they’re much more familiar and comfortable with.

(Recent weeks have delivered a particularly fine crop, which can be concisely and accurately summed up by the sentence “Vote Yes and Scotland will be blown up by terrorists and bombed by England, then everyone left will die of cancer.”)

We’ve spotted a couple of stray mentions – neither of which, it probably goes without saying, go on to actually offer the positive case they cite – but nothing very significant:

“Although Unionists seem to find it difficult to articulate a positive argument for union, Scottish nationalists are not afflicted by the same inhibitions.”
(Colin Kidd, The Scotsman, 15 May 2012)

“It’s our job to drown out [Alex Salmond’s] separatist rhetoric with a positive case for keeping the Union intact.”
(Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Conservative Party chairman, 23 March 2012)

That was until today, however. Our regular bout of hope-over-expectation Googling threw up a site called “Free Advice For Unionists”, in which someone by the name of Rob Marrs who lays claim to no fewer than THREE nationalities (Scottish, English and British) boldly attempted to go where no Unionist had gone before.

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The sheer speed and barely-concealed enthusiasm with which Scottish Labour has reverted to its true neo-liberal type given even the slightest sniff of any kind of electoral success has been startling. Having gained a few dozen seats, almost all from the Lib Dems, in the council elections, the party has lurched back to the centre-right positions it occupied before the 2011 Holyrood parliamentary election, having abandoned several of them in the run-up to that vote in a desperate attempt to avert defeat.

We’ve already seen Johann Lamont doggedly refuse to oppose the renewal of Trident, and Glagow council leader Gordon Matheson prepare to backtrack on years of anti-sectarian progress by allowing the Orange Order to greatly increase its toxic presence on the city’s streets (a prime example of the Bain Principle at work, in the wake of the SNP’s controversial Offensive Behaviour At Football Act – if the SNP are taking steps to tackle sectarianism, Labour must take steps to encourage it, however insane that is or whatever their previous policy might have been).

And last week we saw a party whose 2011 manifesto opened with the dire warning “Now that the Tories are back” take every possible opportunity to jump into bed with the Tories in councils all over the country, giving the lie to the constantly-pushed official media narrative that the SNP and Labour are two near-identical centre-left social-democratic parties separated only by their disagreement over independence.

(Since the constitution is outwith the remit of councils, you might therefore imagine that Labour-SNP coalitions would be the norm all over the country, aimed at fighting savage Tory cuts together while Holyrood argues about the referendum, but Labour seems far more concerned with battling the nationalists rather than the right-wing Coalition and its increasingly discredited austerity programme.)

So perhaps nobody ought to be surprised that at the weekend Johann Lamont decided to test public opinion by suggesting that Scottish Labour – which is currently strangely at odds with the UK party on the subject – might once again abandon its opposition to university tuition fees.

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We don’t know if anyone still reads the BBC’s “Blether With Brian” column since the Corporation banned Scottish readers – uniquely in these islands – from posting comments on it, nor can we normally think of a reason why anyone would. It’s generally the blandest-possible summary of events people have already seen for themselves, with no effort to impart any sort of insight or analysis.

However, once in a while the understated approach yields a more profoundly powerful result than screeds of polemic, and we can think of no way to better illustrate the bizarreness of Johann Lamont’s chosen line of attack at yesterday’s First Minister’s Questions than to simply relate the events as they transpired, in the most neutral and factual manner, as the national broadcaster’s Scottish political editor does today.

“How to decide who has won an election? The customary method is to count the ballot papers – and to award victory to the one with the most votes. Now the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies adds a degree of sophistication to that. But, still, the spoils tend to go to those with evident popular support.

This, apparently, is an old-fashioned outlook. Just so Twentieth Century. At Holyrood, Labour’s Johann Lamont suggested another test might be used instead. The SNP, she said, might have won the council elections “on the arithmetic”. But “on the politics” they “got stuffed.”

It is difficult to be entirely certain, but I suspect that most political leaders would probably settle, on balance, for winning “on the arithmetic”.“

Stranger still was Brian’s citation of Fat Les in support of his assertion, but other than to wistfully dwell for a moment on our long-held dream of Scottish fans repurposing the song in question with the words “Irn Bru” replacing the title, we’ll let that one pass.

A&E departments all over Scotland were reportedly swamped by spinal-injury cases yesterday, resulting from the nation collectively falling off its seat in surprise as the Scottish Affairs Committee of Westminster MPs concluded that the SNP’s proposed referendum question (“Do you agree that Scotland should become an independent country?”) was biased. The committee, headed by delightful Labour MP Ian “I only meant I’d assault you physically, not sexually“ Davidson, decided after consulting a carefully-chosen panel of “experts” that a question posed by an SNP government might just be designed to increase support for independence.

We jest, obviously. In fact it’s not entirely unexpected that such a conclusion would be reached by an all-Unionist committee of Westminster MPs who would all lose their £200,000-a-year jobs in the event of a Yes vote and who are currently engaged in producing a document called “The Referendum on Separation for Scotland“. (No, we’re not kidding – it’s really called that, and therefore clearly an entirely neutral and impartial investigation.) But there’s an interesting angle to the committee’s findings that inexplicably doesn’t get a lot of media analysis.

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It’s been interesting to watch how the mainstream media position on last week’s council elections has shifted over the last couple of days. The instant narrative was that of a huge victory for Labour and disappointment for the SNP, as noticed by Mark MacLachlan over on The Universality Of Cheese. All the papers proclaimed Labour’s holding of Glasgow as the key story of the day (reducing the rest of Scotland to the catch-all “elsewhere“), and contrasted it with the SNP’s underachievement, despite that even on Friday it was apparent that the nationalists had won majorities in two councils and increased its total number of councillors significantly.

Most of the media chose to run with a set of misleading figures first produced (we think) by the BBC, which showed that Labour had made the most gains, and by Saturday that spin had turned into outright lying. A fascinating piece on Newsnet Scotland revealed that the BBC’s figures ran contrary to the Corporation’s own official guidelines on how election results should be reported.

Over the weekend, angry nationalists kicked up a loud fuss over such chicanery (though in fact, this blog had called it around Friday teatime), and as a result subsequent coverage of the elections has adopted a markedly different tone. Even the Scotsman was forced to admit, albeit extremely grudgingly and piling on caveats, that in fact the SNP had won the popular vote for the first time ever. Over in the Herald, meanwhile, Iain Macwhirter performed a remarkable 24-hour “reverse ferret”. First the commentator penned a Friday column headlined “SNP in a spin” and talking of Alex Salmond’s party suffering “a huge psychological blow”. The very next day, though, another Macwhirter column, headed “The SNP won it“, included this line:

“the local elections were in no way a disaster, or even a setback for the SNP”

The second column explicitly (if grumpily) noted the angry nationalist reaction to the previous day’s print and broadcast coverage. For all the opprobrium so often directed at the “cybernats”, it’s hard to dispute their influence in keeping an unwilling and hostile media at least partly honest. By swiftly disseminating accurate counterpoints to Unionist spin, they make it far harder for that spin to maintain traction.

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If you’re pushed for time, we’ll give you the answer up front: when it’s in the Scottish media. But a closer analysis of yesterday’s and this morning’s press and broadcasting provides a full and and illuminating picture of the reality. The fact is, the nationalists aren’t paranoid – their own country’s media really is out to get them.

Those of us watching events unfold yesterday afternoon were a little bemused when various sources started tweeting summarised results, which showed Labour as the biggest winners. To anyone comparing the results to those of the last election, those gain/loss figures were perplexing. Set against 2007, the SNP had gained 61 seats, not 57, and Labour just 46 rather than 58. (In both cases almost entirely at the expense of the Lib Dems, who lost nearly 100 seats. Hardly any seats anywhere in the country changed hands directly from Labour to SNP or vice versa.)

We couldn’t at the time, and we still can’t now, find any published record of where the numbers for the second interpretation derive from.

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A quick analysis of the Scottish council election results, then (with Dunoon still to vote and the Cromarty Firth ward in Highlands still to declare, the two areas between them being likely to return 2-3 SNP and 3-4 independents, no Labour or Tories).

The SNP started with 15 more seats nationwide than Labour and will end up with 30-32 more, at least doubling their lead. The nationalists and Labour both gained overall control of two new councils. It looks likely that the SNP will have won the popular vote, which they didn’t manage in 2007.

That would seem remarkably good progress for a government that’s been in power for five years during a recession, is having to implement hefty budget cuts passed down from London, and has endured a large amount of recent bad press. Compare and contrast with the thrashing delivered to the UK’s governing coalition on the same day, and the SNP managing to not only hold what it had but extend its advantage and capture outright control of two councils appears a striking success.

The media narrative, however, is focusing on what the SNP didn’t win, and (not unreasonably) concentrating on the country’s most important councils, so let’s take a look at Labour’s three much-trumpeted big results, in Scotland’s largest cities.

GLASGOW
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 23 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 17 seats

EDINBURGH
Labour lead over SNP in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats

ABERDEEN
SNP lead over Labour in 2007: 2 seats
Labour lead over SNP in 2012: 2 seats

So a net gain for Labour of 4 seats in Aberdeen, no change in Edinburgh, and a net gain of 6 seats for the SNP in Glasgow. That means that in Scotland’s three biggest cities, where Labour’s performance was most spectacular, the net result when all the dust has settled is still a 2-seat improvement for the SNP over Labour.

(It remains to be seen, of course, what deals are done and who ends up in the ruling groups in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. The SNP have easily enough seats in each city to lead a coalition with other parties and freeze Labour out.)

With the nationalists suffering in Glasgow from the anti-sectarianism bill and the Rangers crisis, and in Aberdeen over the Union City Gardens controversy and the ongoing Donald Trump fiasco, we suspect the party will regard a 2-seat net gain across those cities, accompanied by a raft of substantial and significant gains elsewhere, as the kind of “defeat” it can live with pretty happily.

This article’s about the council elections, but allow us to first digress for a moment. One of the odder little quirks of the online independence movement is that, of those who express a preference when it comes to the subject of Scotland’s national sport, a disproportionately high percentage seem to be Aberdeen supporters. (Possibly partly explained by the North-East, as the First Minister’s political stomping ground and centre of the oil industry, having always been fertile ground for nationalism.)

This blog is among that number, and so for those of us currently living in England and seeking to maintain an interest in the people’s game Manchester United is the logical choice of club to follow, at least for as long as Sir Alex Ferguson is at the helm. (Even if the daft old fool himself has been out of Scotland for so long he still thinks Labour are socialists, and dutifully trots out every time they need a celebrity backer.)

So when we saw the team United put out for the crucial Premiership derby against Manchester City last week, we were concerned. A midfield of Carrick (the English Barry Ferguson, we’ve always thought), the recently un-retired Scholes and the rusty Park (making his first start since January) clearly wasn’t designed to provide a pacy attacking threat, and before the game started we tweeted “That’s an old, slow Man U side lining up tonight. Looks like a chokehold.”

And sure enough, as the match progressed Ferguson’s team showed beyond any reasonable doubt that it had been sent out with the intention of smothering City’s menacing attack and securing the 0-0 draw that would have all but sealed the league for the Old Trafford club. Sluggish and toothless, with Wayne Rooney a lonely and frustrated figure up front, United failed – for the first time in three years, said the statisticians afterwards – to register a single shot on the opposition’s goal, and when a wobbly defence that’s been badly missing Nemanja Vidic all season offered Vincent Kompany a free header from eight yards out, there never looked like being any way back for a side that just a month ago had a commanding eight-point lead at the top of the table and appeared to be a shoo-in for a record-breaking 20th title.

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