Wings Over Scotland

Just a quick update on the Alistair Carmichael fundraiser:

In barely 48 hours, almost £37,000 has been raised by the general public to challenge the election of a British MP under false pretences. We don’t believe there’s any sort of precedent for that. It would now seem beyond any reasonable doubt that there will be an official legal challenge to the former Secretary of State.

However greatly it may be to the chagrin of metropolitan commentators like Michael White, it appears that the people of Scotland, having been awoken in large numbers by the independence referendum, are simply no longer content to sit back meekly and allow either the political establishment itself or the media which claims to scrutinise it keep its house (or Houses) in order.

The events of the last few years have made Scotland increasingly disinclined to put its trust in self-appointed gatekeepers, and willing to take matters of politics directly into its own hands. Whatever the eventual outcome of the independence story, the electorate seems not to want to go back into its box, where attention is only paid to it twice a decade. If so, the referendum will have brought about a far more wide-reaching victory than anyone ever imagined.

The UK’s forthcoming referendum on EU membership was enshrined in the Queen’s Speech today, and it seems likely that the “Yes” side will be those arguing for the UK to stay in the EU.

That’s a good thing. However, it’s difficult not to get flashbacks to 2011 when various unionist idiots were insisting that the Yes option should have been “Yes to the UK”, effectively holding a referendum on whether people wanted things to remain the same.

For us pedants, holding a referendum in order to ask people if they’re happy to leave things as they are feels instinctively odd, because if nothing else, it implies that there might be something wrong – a bit like someone randomly coming up to you and asking if you’re okay sitting where you are, making you suspect someone must have done something to the seat.

But it’s just as well, because the pro-EU side is going to need all the help it can get to avoid falling into the same pitfalls as the pro-UK side did last year. And unlike the “Better Together” campaign, the pro-EU campaign won’t have a 30%+ buffer in the polls to insulate it against being led by incompetent buffoons.

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Many of you won’t have seen this quite extraordinary performance from the Guardian’s assistant editor Michael White on last night’s Scotland Tonight, and you really should.

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“Just go on the radio, play it all with a dead bat, fob them off with some bland waffle and kill the story”, the Lib Dems will have said to Sir Malcolm Bruce this morning.

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Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie – a man who was at the heart of the “MemoGate” smear, quoted prominently in almost all the media coverage of the untrue slur against Nicola Sturgeon – has offered the opinion that former Secretary of State for Scotland Alistair Carmichael deserves a “second chance” after admitting being behind the fabricated story and then brazenly lying about it on national TV.

We agree with Mr Rennie.

We believe that Mr Carmichael deserves a second chance to be elected, but this time honestly. The only way that can happen is if he is removed as an MP and given the opportunity to present himself to the electorate again in the light of the revelations. If the voters of Orkney & Shetland weigh up all the facts and conclude that on balance Alistair Carmichael should continue to represent them in Parliament, fair enough.

We therefore draw readers’ attention to the above campaign which has been launched by some of Mr Carmichael’s constituents, which seeks to raise the money required to issue a legal challenge to his election as an MP earlier this month, on the grounds that his narrow 817-vote victory was gained on the basis of lying to voters and covering up that lie until after the election, which may constitute an offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983.

The campaign requires just £6,000 to file the complaint, with the rest of the target sum being set against possible costs. Any unused funds will be donated to charity.

The former Liberal Democrat MP (and also the party’s former Scottish leader, and until just a few weeks ago its UK deputy leader) Sir Malcolm Bruce gave an extraordinary interview to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about Alistair Carmichael.

The whole thing can be heard here, but the short passage below stood out even in the context of a breathless, furious, scattergun performance that sounded like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 26 May 2015)
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We’re sure readers will be greatly comforted by the fact that it’s okay for the Secretary of State for Scotland to tell a “brazen lie”, on the grounds that everyone else in the Houses Of Parliament is a liar too, and by the notion that a government minister who’s caught lying to the nation in order to undermine the democratically-elected leader of Scotland is an offence for which the culprit can simply decide their own punishment.

We thought you should hear this extraordinary interview with Alistair Carmicheal from BBC Radio Orkney this morning.

(Around Orkney, BBC Radio Orkney, 25 May 2015)
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The former Scottish Secretary’s excuse for lying on air is a feeble, Hothersall-esque semantic dodge, and his excuse for not resigning is that his years of service as a constituency MP ought to outweigh the fact that a UK government minister abused his office and lied to the public in order to undermine the democratically-elected leader of Scotland and cling on to his own job.

Having now heard the case for the defence, readers can reach their own verdicts.

Alistair Carmichael on Channel 4 News a few weeks ago:

Now at least we know why he was struggling to keep a straight face.

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I was driving along under a lovely London sky yesterday and heard Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s interview on BBC Radio 4’s PM (package starts at 33.26).

As it progressed, it became clear that Sturgeon was turning in one of the best political performances on a radio programme ever. I say that as a Labour supporter, albeit one who’s belatedly grasping just how good she and her party folk are.

(PM, BBC Radio 4, 22 May 2015)
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It’s for you, and then the pundits, to reflect on her words and style. But what I heard moved me across a line of argument in a way I can’t remember being moved by anyone on the radio or telly before.

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…or, like us, out buying Eurovision party snacks:

This is a non-trivial matter. The (at the time) Secretary of State for Scotland seems to have just admitted deliberately and knowingly undermining the democratically-elected First Minister. The report may have been sneakily published on the eve of a Bank Holiday weekend, but we suspect this one won’t have gone away by Tuesday.