Asking the question is the easy bit: “If the all-new, super-autonomous Scottish Labour decides to oppose the renewal of Trident, and UK Labour continues to support it, which way do Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster vote on it?”
The answer, unsurprisingly, was a lot more difficult to ascertain.
Even the alertest readers will probably already be confused by the baffling tale of Douglas and Jacqueline Wright, who sold their home to Edinburgh West MP Michelle Thomson. We certainly were last night, but on delving a little more into the media coverage of their story, things got a whole lot worse.
Older readers may remember an ITV show called The Krypton Factor, which had an “observation round” section in which contestants were shown a short video clip and then asked a series of questions about it.
Let’s play it now.
An alert reader last night reminded us of a story from March this year:
It told a chilling tale.
An extract from First Minister’s Questions earlier today:
That was Kezia Dugdale’s opening question. Despite the Presiding Officer making it absolutely clear that the question was improper and outwith Holyrood’s remit, the Scottish Labour leader went on to use her entire allotted time on the issue. She was then followed by Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson doing the same.
The people of Scotland are being done a grave disservice.
Readers will probably recall that we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale’s recent claim on national TV that “50% of the poorest kids leave our schools unable to read“.
It appeared on any possible interpretation to be complete nonsense, but Ms Dugdale – who’s pledged to make education the issue at the heart of her leadership – has been somewhat reluctant to clarify the statement.
Several queries from her Lothian constituents have gone unanswered, but one Wings viewer did manage to get a single tweet of response.
So let’s take a look at that link.
This is shadow Chancellor John McDonnell speaking to the Labour Party conference in Brighton just a few minutes ago (immediately prior to rather presumptuously inviting the Scottish electorate to “come home to Labour”):
We don’t recall those things happening. We feel sure that if they had, they would have been mentioned in the papers. Can any readers help us out?
You’d put this down as a slip of the tongue, but when it came in the middle of an extended bout of bodyswerving John Mackay’s straightforward question about a referendum on Trident, maybe Kezia Dugdale really was just saying what she meant.
This debate between John “Mental Mad” McTernan and Owen Jones from the BBC News channel this morning doesn’t need a lot of commentary from us, to be honest.
It’s like watching someone try to reason with voicemail.
Here’s Michelle Mone on last night’s Channel 4 News:
When presenter Matt Frei sympathetically puts to her that she left Scotland because she was being “given a very very hard time” by Yes/SNP supporters, Mone denies it, saying “I didn’t actually leave, that wasn’t the main reason to have left Scotland”.
So where could Frei have come by such a misapprehension?
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
