Wings Over Scotland

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet, scammers used to have to work a bit harder to cheat people than they do now.

A popular method was to advertise a “clearance sale” in the press. You’d see an ad in the Daily Record or a local paper for an event in a High Street location – typically a vacant shop – promising brand-new TVs for £20, microwaves for a fiver, toasters for £2.50 or whatever. So you’d show up on the day and it always worked the same.

There’d be the ringmaster on a raised platform, surrounded by loads of unmarked white boxes, and he’d start off by picking some “random” punter from the crowd and bestowing gifts upon him. This guy would walk away with armfuls of swag for £25 or something (doubtless just going straight round the back with them), and the real show would begin.

Next the ringmaster would say “Now, before we get properly started, who’ll give me £10 for what’s on my mind?” (that phrase, “what’s on my mind”, was always the same). And basically they were flogging a mystery box, invariably containing a few trashy trinkets worth a fraction of the cost.

Any chump who bought one would then be escorted out of the shop before opening it, on the pretence that the bargains on offer in these sales were so great that they were limited to one per person. (There was always security on the door, sometimes even cops. There’s nothing intrinsically illegal about selling mystery boxes, even mainstream chainstores still do it today.)

And that was basically it. The ringmaster would delay and delay, punting more mystery boxes and never actually getting to the bit where you could buy a specific item at a specific price, and after a couple of hours the event would close down and the would-be customers would disperse in disgruntlement.

Now here’s John Swinney.

He’s got a mystery box to sell you.

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Seamus Logan, an SNP MP of whom it has often been said “Seamus who?”, has an article in The National today categorically ruling out Scotland achieving independence via a democratic vote in an event fully recognised by the UK government.

That in itself shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to Wings readers, as this site has been documenting the SNP’s increasingly open abandonment of even the pretence at achieving independence for more than five years now.

Logan’s stance that if begging Westminster for another Section 30 doesn’t work (which it doesn’t, hasn’t and never will) then it’s basically impossible and we should just give up has – to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention – been official SNP policy since at least the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and in reality long before then, and we don’t think it’s a coincidence that the party has lost more than half of its members and over 40% of its voters over that period.

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Tommy Sheppard knows a John Swinney you don’t know.

And who, conveniently, you’re not allowed to see.

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At first, this merely sounds like the worst day out ever.

But for supporters of independence, in fact it’s even grimmer than that.

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One of the very few phrases universally recognised in Scotland but which will draw blank looks anywhere else in the UK is the dry, dark “Well, ye ken noo”. Until recently it had no equivalent that we can bring to mind in the rest of the English-speaking world, although arguably that gap has now been at least partly filled by the acronym “FAFO”.

(We try not to swear on the site, so let’s say it stands for “Fool Around, Find Out”.)

So now the smoke has cleared, the troops have departed the battlefield and the winner is enjoying the spoils, what did we find out on Thursday night, and what didn’t we?

Let’s assess the scene.

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A few weeks ago we had a thought. And it seemed quite an interesting thought, so we decided to commission a poll on it from our old pals at Norstat.

63-37? Well, there’s your clear and overwhelming support.

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Despite everything, we almost allowed ourselves just the very tiniest little micro-flicker of optimism when we read Tommy Sheppard’s latest in The National.

Because that much is certainly true, and it’s uncommonly candid to have anyone in the SNP admit it. So what’s the answer?

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In so far as it’s worth talking about Scottish constitutional politics at all these days, it’s worth taking a moment to analyse the bloodless, anodyne nothingness spouted by the First Minister on The Sunday Show at the weekend.

That clip is less than three minutes long, but it’s so soul-crushingly boring and full of content-free drone and waffle that it’s almost impossible to sit all the way through it, so we’re going to translate and summarise it for you.

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It’s worth remembering that they didn’t have to do this.

Labour had already announced their intention to abstain. There was no danger of the budget being defeated. So the SNP could have allocated however much money they wanted from their increased funding to the pursuit of independence.

And maybe they did.

People sometimes ask us if we get bored of being right all the time.

But in truth, we just wish we had to work a bit harder at it.

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Don’t say we don’t tell you, readers.

Because we do tell you.

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Earlier today we heard from the SNP’s depute leader Keith Brown that the party now accepts there will never be another UK-sanctioned independence referendum.

And this afternoon in the chamber the SNP also voted against the only alternative.

Alba MSP Ash Regan laid down the above motion, which supports what as far as we knew was still the SNP’s official policy in the absence of another Section 30, in so far as they even know what their policy is.

Today that motion was voted down by 125 votes to 1.

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