Wings Over Scotland

Let’s get straight to the point: this is a straight-up categorical lie.

Since Wednesday’s events there’s been a lot of chatter and confusion on social media about whether the Scottish Government has the ability to trigger a snap Holyrood election and use it as a de facto plebiscite on independence.

The short answer, as we told you yesterday, is “officially no, in practice yes”. But that needs a bit of further explanation, so as usual let’s do the job of actual journalism that nobody else in Scotland can apparently be bothered to.

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This legendary soliloquy never rang more true than on 23 November 2022.

Let’s be methodical about it.

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So it’s official – Scotland is not a partner in the UK, but a prisoner. Supposedly equal signatories to a treaty, we were in fact captured in 1707, with no hope of release other than at the whim of our jailer. It is an outrage, but a wholly predictable one.

Nicola Sturgeon could have put the matter of Holyrood’s legislative authority to the Supreme Court at any point since she became First Minister in November 2014. More particularly, she could have done so in July 2016, after the UK voted to leave the EU, thereby triggering a clear and explicit condition of the manifesto on which the SNP were re-elected as the Scottish Government just weeks earlier.

Instead, she’s wasted a decade of your time and probably sold Scotland’s future.

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Stop us if you think you’ve heard this one before, readers.

Because you won’t be wrong.

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As you might expect, our return to Twitter yesterday caused quite a commotion among the more sensitive flowers on the social media platform. At the head of the pouting mob was of course our dear old pal SNP MP Pete Wishart, who was clutching his pearls as usual about such terrible elements as ourselves – “vile abusers” – putting people off independence.

And at such times, it’s useful to remember how much he cares about independence:

Because by his own admission, Pete Wishart would sell out Scottish independence at its most crucial moment for the sake of getting to wear the Speaker’s silk gown – adorned on special state occasions with golden lace, frogs and a wig – in the House Of Commons and uphold all its ancient traditions like a good little Briton.

Scotland’s whole future, 300 years of struggle to regain control of its own destiny, could hang in the balance, held solely in the hands of one man, and rather than disappoint the grey eminences of the British establishment and risk being frowned upon in their oak-panelled subsidised dining rooms, Pete Wishart would say “No”.

(We don’t know if you get an even bigger pension for being the Speaker than the £50,000 or so a year that Wishart will trouser when he leaves the UK Parliament after 20 years of spectacular non-achievement, but we’d be prepared to hazard a guess.)

There’s a word to describe people like that, which is never used on Wings, but we’re making an exception just this once.

Blue-haired brain vacuum Kirsty Blackman in Westminster yesterday, during the SNP’s big showpiece “let’s pretend we’re doing something about independence” debate.

So presumably she’s made it a priority since being elected seven years ago, right?

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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.)

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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.

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The only major prediction this site has gotten wrong in the last decade is that we didn’t think Theresa May would be so stupid as to call a general election in 2017.

And while the prediction itself wasn’t vindicated, the reasoning behind it certainly was, because she duly lost her majority just as we said she would, and limped pitifully into oblivion over the next two painful and shambolic years. (While Nicola Sturgeon ponced around hopelessly trying to stop Brexit instead of saving Scotland by getting it the hell out of the UK before it was too late.)

So it’s in that spirit that we’re going to stick our necks out once again and predict that despite the opinions of most political pundits Liz Truss is going nowhere any time soon, because as incredible as it seems, she’s almost certainly the least worst option for the Conservative Party right now.

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The National has an “EXCLUSIVE” story today.

We think you’re meant to be outraged.

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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.

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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.