Wings Over Scotland

The Scottish media has worked itself into an indignant froth over the last few days about the appearance of Sputnik News – an Edinburgh-based arm of a publicly-owned, state-run Russian news agency, fronted by (among others) former Dateline Scotland and NewsShaft stars Jack Foster and Carolyn Scott.

(Any resemblance to publicly-owned, state-run national news agencies of questionable impartiality in other countries is of course entirely coincidental and totally different.)

The Sunday Herald ran a bizarre smear piece yesterday on the pair’s past fundraising initiatives for their two previous projects (which were obviously completely unrelated to Sputnik), and today’s Times has an even weirder column by Melanie Reid in which Foster and Scott are directly and startlingly compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis:

We tried, for the purposes of satire, to think of another country that played host to nuclear missiles that were controversially imposed on it by an external government, but unfortunately we couldn’t come up with anything. Sorry about that.

Annie Wells and Brian Whittle are two new Conservative MSPs. Look how happy and excited they are today at Labour winning a council by-election from the SNP.

The SNP candidate actually won comfortably on first-preference votes, but was edged out at the sixth count under the Single Transferable Vote system when 78% of Tory voters gave their second preference to Labour (whose own vote fell 7%).

We’re trying to think of a good reason why they’re still two separate parties, but to be honest with you, readers, we’re coming up short.

Posted without comment.

This is prospective Labour leader Owen Smith on the Andrew Marr show this morning, explaining why he’ll be one of the 65% of Labour MPs voting in favour of the renewal of Trident next week:

Let’s just see if we can get this straight once and for all.

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The UK is currently a non-functioning democracy. The Prime Minister has handed in his notice and has no nominated successor. The leader of the Opposition has just been served with a vote of no confidence by 80% of his own MPs. Parliamentarians are openly discussing overturning the result of a democratic referendum. People are pretending that Angela Eagle is a credible future Prime Minister.

The country, in short, has lost its mind.

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The people (of England) have spoken, and their elected representatives are freaking out all over the shop.

Several senior Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs have openly called for the result of a democratic referendum to be overturned by Parliament against the wishes of voters. The Prime Minister has quit, the Chancellor is expected to follow on Monday, and half of the Labour shadow cabinet is apparently doing it as we speak, after Jeremy Corbyn fired Hilary Benn for planning a coup.

(Apparently including Ian Murray, the shadow Scottish Secretary who’s also the only Scottish Labour MP at Westminster, putting the party in the farcical position of having to find itself a spokesman on Scottish affairs who either sits in an English or Welsh seat or is an unelected lord.)

Labour MPs are also demanding Corbyn’s head, in essence for the crime of his being hugely popular with the party’s membership for reflecting the old-fashioned left-wing ideology and views that they actually believe in, rather than the “moderate” neo-Tory position of Blairite parliamentarians. Corbyn shows no sign of going.

Two opinion polls, meanwhile, suggest that support for independence has taken the lead in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is quietly and calmly making arrangements with senior European officials to hold discussions about ways to keep Scotland in the EU – with the backing of Willie Rennie just in case any of the talks take place on a bouncy castle or a slide.

(The Daily Telegraph, which we must assume has been chatting to Alistair Carmichael again, is reporting that Sturgeon has joined the Tories and turned gay.)

It’s been suggested that the Scottish Parliament could in fact block any attempt by the UK to leave (though it seems unlikely). Britain faces a future without Milky Way Magic Stars. UK politics, to put it mildly, is in chaos.  So what the hell’s going on?

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So, just to recap this week’s events so far:

It’s now offensive to call gay people human beings, a Leave vote will destroy Western civilisation, a Remain vote will bring about an Orlando-style mass killing by Islamic terrorists, Ed Balls – whose party isn’t in government and who isn’t even an MP – has promised to cut immigration if we vote Remain, Alistair Darling has teamed up with George Osborne to deliver a Punishment Budget if we vote Leave (except that it won’t pass because 57 Tory MPs will vote against it), Jeremy Corbyn led the last Prime Minister’s Questions before the EU referendum by asking about the Leveson Inquiry, and Bob Geldof is conducting a naval battle on the Thames with Nigel Farage.

Did we miss anything?

Both of these things really happened today.

Good luck with that rational, considered decision, everyone!

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Over the past few days, readers, we haven’t been able to avoid noticing a recurring theme among Unionist types on social media – namely that the Holyrood election results are proof that support for independence is declining.

But it’s not until you ask them to explain that it gets completely mental.

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It must be bewildering being the SNP sometimes.

You win a historic third election with a second massive landslide, getting more than twice as many seats as your nearest challenger – the first time such a thing has ever happened in a Holyrood election – on the back of what’s (self-evidently) by and large a very popular policy programme and record, and before you’ve even taken your seats in the chamber all the parties you just thrashed out of sight line up to explain how you’ve been doing everything wrong.

And as alliances go, they don’t get much less holy.

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SNP tax plans simultaneously raise £300m and lose £900m:

The Guardian’s daily sale in Scotland: 8,700 copies and falling.

The Unionist parties are taking such a kicking in the polls for next month’s Holyrood election that you could forgive them for not always knowing where they were.

The above tweet does indeed have the potential to be “astonishing”, given that (a) Ruth Davidson isn’t standing in Carnoustie, and (b) the 2011 result suggests that there are only around 700 Labour voters to find in the entire town behind the “1000s” of doors that 20 Tories have impressively managed to knock by teatime.

(Indeed, the area is so Labour-unfriendly that the Tories actually managed to come 2nd five years ago, getting over 50% more votes than the Labour candidate.)

But it’s not the only piece of geographical confusion afflicting the UK parties.

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