Wings Over Scotland

Well, at least they gave it serious and respectful consideration first.

Be fair, that’s almost two whole hours before being told to sod off and eat our cereal. If that’s not one partner in a union showing the other respect, we don’t know what is.

Less than 10 months ago:

Record scratch, jump cut to the present day:

Let’s just hear that again.

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So it’s finally official: Boris Says No. He’s formally done the thing that we’ve all known he was going to do ever since he became UK Prime Minister last July.

So what’s the stunning, game-changing counter-response we’ve got for him, having known for six months that this was what he’d say and had all that time to prepare for it? What’s the stroke of strategic genius that all those SNP loyalists insisted we had up our sleeve and just weren’t revealing until the key moment?

“We’re going to wait for however long it takes for the Westminster establishment to accept that another referendum is inevitable.”

Brilliant. What a plan. To the barricades, everyone.

Anyone who’s followed the UK political media over the last decade or so with specific reference to Scotland will know that in a very crowded field, the standout poster boy for arrogant, condescending metropolitan cluelessness is the Independent’s chief political commentator John Rentoul.

For reasons which escape us, Rentoul – who was born in India and as far as we know has spent not a single day of his life resident in Scotland – identifies as Scottish. And yet he doesn’t appear to even recognise the concept of Scotland as a political entity, and today he demonstrated that fact in a manner so stark and striking that it’s worth recording for posterity.

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Over the last few days, for want of anything more interesting happening in Scottish politics, we’ve been reviewing some of the entertainingly fluid criteria by which Unionist politicians used to assert that Scotland could supposedly achieve independence. But we hadn’t seen this one before:

A view apparently “almost universally shared among English Tory backbenchers” back in the late 1980s was that independence could be won by the SNP securing a majority of Scottish MPs at not one but two successive UK general elections.

Given that that line has now been crossed in THREE Westminster elections in a row, we’re all agog to find where Boris Johnson will move the goalposts to in his keenly-awaited response to the Scottish Government’s second Section 30 request, which he’s due to deliver any minute now.

We’ve never been able to actually confirm the oft-cited “quote” from Margaret Thatcher suggesting that the SNP winning a majority of Scottish seats at a UK election would constitute a mandate for independence, but here’s a verified more recent one from a then-serving Conservative PM.

“[John] Major has made it clear that a majority of SNP MPs after an election would serve as a mandate to begin negotiations for separation. There are no plans to hold a referendum”, said former Thatcher minister and party chairman Norman Tebbit a few months before the 1997 election.

It was a position the Tories held right up to 2010 – the last election at which the SNP didn’t win a majority of Scottish seats, at which point the goalposts magically shifted. Now, of course, the rule is that a majority of MPs doesn’t count, but you also can’t have a referendum.

Scotland is a prisoner without hope of parole. Time for a breakout.

From less than 10 years ago:

A plebiscitary election? Now there’s an idea you don’t hear much any more.

We got blocked by LBC’s James O’Brien today for very gently and politely challenging him over this tweet:

And while this site most assuredly carries no torch for Jeremy Corbyn, it’s a reframing of reality that merits a bit of investigation for what it tells us about the UK media.

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