Wings Over Scotland

We still have no reliable internet, just occasional five-minute bursts or a shonky 4G phone connection, but there’s a BT Openreach man in the garden and as soon as he gets hold of a different kind of all-terrain BT Openreach man we’re hopeful that the problem will finally be fixed by the end of today, after two weeks.

In the meantime, we couldn’t help but be struck in passing by the collapse of talks on reopening the Northern Ireland’s devolved Assembly, which has now been closed for over a year following the failure of an election to deliver a workable administration.

If there’s a better illustration of just how limited the powers of devolution in the UK are than the fact that the region seems to have muddled along just fine for 13 months without the parliament, we’re having a hard time thinking of what it might be. The old saying that “power devolved is power retained” has never been more visibly true.

If Scotland wants to thrive, it can only do so with all the meaningful powers of a nation under its own control, and at the end of the day there’s only one way to get those.

…with the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Boo! But wait!

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This is an interesting one. Almost 40 years on from the event, Scottish politics is still plagued by micro-brained Labour types insisting that the SNP “ushered in” Margaret Thatcher after the devolution referendum of 1979 was sabotaged by a Labour MP.

SNP supporters counter that this is complete bollocks, largely because it’s complete bollocks. James Callaghan, the Labour PM at the time, blamed 34 of his own MPs for bringing his government down, by supporting an amendment from Islington South and Finsbury Labour MP George Cunningham which blocked the creation of a Scottish Assembly even though it won the referendum by a narrow margin.

(Cunningham resigned from Labour two years later and subsequently joined the SDP, but in 2012 the Daily Express dragged him out to demand that the same “40% rule” be applied to the indyref.)

History, though, has forgotten someone else who was apparently the true architect of the fix, to the extent that we’d never heard about it until now.

Let’s find out more, shall we?

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The gigantic-clown-shoed bunglemuppet that is Scottish Tory MP Ross Thomson was galumphing around social media yesterday, quoting a notoriously dim-witted Yoon troll to the effect that the Scottish Government could (and therefore presumably should) use its own money to compensate the “WASPI women” – a group who’ve been robbed of years of rightful pension payments by the UK government changing the rules after they’d already qualified for their pensions.

Which throws up a whole series of questions.

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So this one was interesting.

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This is the well-known hardcore Corbynite commentator John McTernan on the radio yesterday, detailing how outrageous it would be for politicians to attempt to block a second referendum on a divisive but important issue.

(Talkback, BBC Radio Ulster, 4 January 2018)
.

No, not THAT kind of second referendum, silly!

More data from our latest poll:

Almost 30% of No voters still believe the decision on whether Scotland should vote on independence again should be a matter for the Scottish Government (which already, as we know, has a Parliamentary mandate for it), not the UK government in London.

Very nearly half of 2017 Labour voters (excluding DKs), and almost 40% of Lib Dems, also think their own parties should butt out and leave it to the government Scotland chose, not the one England chose.

And among demographic groups, men divided a pretty close but still clear 54/46 in favour of the Scottish Government, with women a much stronger 61/39. Young people were an overwhelming 75/25 for Holyrood, with middle-aged and over-55s cancelling each other out by splitting 56/44 and 44/56 respectively on the issue. The wealthier ABC1 demographic were 50/50 and less well-off C2DEs a thumping 65/35.

The argument has been won, just like the vote in the Scottish Parliament. All that remains to be seen is whether the UK government continues to play by Madrid Rules.

Not too many surprises here. (Except, perhaps, the 18% of respondents who claimed to be football fans yet also said they had no interest in the World Cup.)

Excluding the disinterested the numbers were:

England 24%
England’s opponents 38%
Others 40%

And for people actually born in Scotland the figures came out at

England 20%
England’s opponents 41%
Others 39%

And that’s pretty much the natural order of things. If you’re a “Rangers” fan and you cheer for Celtic when they play (let’s not say “compete”) in the Champions League, or a Celtic fan who backed “Rangers” in the Petrofac Training Cup, you’re the weirdo.

So this isn’t true, any more than it was when Labour first promised it 22 years ago.

But the sheer number of ways in which it’s a lie is quite the thing.

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