A year and a quarter ago, we contrasted the performance of the SNP’s last two leaders in terms of building support for independence. As the First Minister crows about how much better she’s been at staying in power than a succession of UK leaders, it seems only proper to bring the stats up to date.
(Click pic to enlarge.)
Do you remember, readers, how the next UK election was supposed to be a single-issue de facto referendum on independence if the Supreme Court ruled Holyrood didn’t have the power to hold one itself?
Well, it appears that policy has been abruptly and quietly ditched.
Because just a couple of hours ago SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford told BBC News that “I can assure you” the SNP “will have a growth manifesto” for the whole UK whenever the next election comes around, because in his view the UK economy hasn’t been growing enough for the last few decades and the SNP would have a plan to fix it. Because apparently fixing the UK is the SNP’s purpose now.
Guess we better hope for a good result from the Supreme Court, then.
Between recesses and the mourning period for the Queen, the UK Parliament has been sitting for just four weeks since the 1st of July this year.
In that time the government has somehow managed to lose three Chancellors Of The Exchequer and is about to engage its fourth in the alarming form of Jeremy Hunt, a man whose primary claim to fame and utility to the UK is as rhyming slang.
Sometimes even fools and liars and charlatans speak the truth.
Thing is, we rather liked it when the horses south of the border were frightened. Things happened in those days. But to coin a phrase, those days are past now.
Honestly, readers, swear to God, all joking and sarcasm aside, when we saw this tweet yesterday we were wondering how on Earth some clever satirist had managed to hack Anas Sarwar’s account to insert the screenshot into it.
Because we didn’t believe that even Scottish Labour’s low-watt-bulb of a branch manager would willingly post something that made him look so much of an imbecile.
This probably merits more attention.
Because the SNP are now openly, publicly telling you that they’re never going to achieve independence for Scotland, nor even make any meaningful attempt at it.
The SNP have just revealed the agenda for their conference next month. As expected, and hilariously, it includes a proposal for a “code of conduct” as proposed by the Twitler Youth sturmjugend of the Aberdeen Independence Movement.
We can only salute their timing.
On the 8th anniversary of the indyref, and 16 months after closing down (although in fact we’ve averaged one post a week since then), Wings Over Scotland is once again getting more traffic than the next five biggest indy sites put together.
This isn’t a good thing.
Robert Burns was well known for liking a wee dram. He grew up in the aftermath of the failed rising of 1745, living through the harsh and brutal consequences inflicted on Scotland by the Act of Proscription.
In “Earnest Cry and Prayer” the Bard was responding to the UK Parliament’s Scotch Distillery Act of 1786, a protectionist act aimed at supporting London’s gin industry by hiking duties on whisky sold in England and by taxing Scottish still capacity. It was a call for action to Scotland’s 45 members of Parliament from a man who understood the destructive power of such acts.
He asked which Scot would not feel his blood boil at seeing the resources of the nation’s stills destroyed and its wealth plundered, roaring to the MPs:
“God bless your Honors! can ye see’t,
The kind, auld, cantie carlin greet,
An’ no get warmly to your feet,
An’ gar them hear it,
An’ tell them wi’ a patriot-heat,
Ye winna bear it?”
As the UK Parliament is set to return from its summer holiday it is hard not to see continued parallels over the ages and again today.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
