So something quite interesting just happened, and we don’t mean this race:
What’s interesting is specifically the video.
Happy Christmas, readers.
There are just under 36 hours until the 2019 general election.
God help us all.
We all remember this happy time, right?
Of course, it didn’t work out like that in practice.
You now have less than 24 hours left to secure your copy of our intermittent cartoonist Mr Cairns’ latest beautifully-crafted volume of biting political satire featuring a cute lion. (No, not the one pictured below.)
For the love of God please don’t upset him or we’ll get more like this.
Labour just had a vote at their party conference to decide on their Brexit policy. On a close show of hands, the party voted not to have a policy on Brexit until after the next general election, and – we promise you we’re not making any of this up – delegates immediately demanded to have another vote to overturn that vote.
A few minutes later, Momentum activist Cathleen Clarke and former Tony Blair adviser John McTernan appeared on Sky News to sort it all out for confused viewers.
Good luck in the next few months, everyone.
“Flounders” might have been a more appropriate animal.
It’s painfully entertaining viewing, but Gordon Brewer’s persistence pays off right at the end as we finally discover that Scottish Labour’s answer is “No – even if a clear majority of Scottish people vote for parties explicitly calling for a second independence referendum, and return a majority of pro-indy MSPs to Parliament, we will not consider that sufficient support.”
Which would mean there was no democratic route left open to Scotland to achieve independence. So what is it that he suggests we do?
We just watched a nine-minute segment on Sky News, purportedly on the subject of “Is the Union between Scotland and England under threat?”, which for maximum balance and impartiality included views from both Labour and the Tories – in the forms of Paul Sweeney MP and John Lamont MP – but nobody else.
Both men spouted some quite extraordinary claims, all of which went unchallenged by presenter Adam Boulton. Let’s just take a quick look at a couple of the best ones.
Wait, what?
It seems mad that this even needs to be said.
Luckily, as always, Wings is way ahead of the zeitgeist.
These are the Democratic Socialists of America, a fringe-left grouping in the USA with around 60,000 members (or roughly 10 times as many as the Scottish Greens, though per capita closer to the SSP or RISE), at their conference a couple of days ago.
It’s our most fervent wish that one day the left will grasp the fact that this isn’t how you win a war.
It’s also our most abiding fear that this – with its stern admonitions against clapping, or banner-waving, or speaking to anyone who might disagree with you, or taking “fun shortcuts” or wearing “aggressive scents”, in case any of those things cause trauma to the sensitive – might as well be the SNP conference of 2022.
Let’s not blow independence in this Parliament, eh folks?
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
