Wings Over Scotland

A strange phenomenon we’ve remarked upon a few times since the independence referendum is the inexplicable undying rage of a certain subset of Unionist voters.

Having won the vote, a casual observer might expect them to be happy, but instead they appear to exist in a constant state of fury.

(Our own best guess is that they were expecting to triumph by a crushing margin of two or three to one – some fretted that it might only be a 20-point victory – and then suffered the double blow of a much closer result that kept the Yes movement very much alive coupled with a massive surge in SNP membership and support.)

A demented anti-SNP tactical-voting campaign for this year’s general election – led by, among others, a frothing ultra-Loyalist-nutter-type by the name of Andrew Skinner – recorded one of the most spectacular failures in history as the Nats captured 56 out of 59 Scottish seats, only narrowly missing the other three, and the party’s poll ratings have continued to rise since then.

So this week, Mr Skinner decided to try for a more manageable target.

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This one rather speaks for itself.

(Data below from our latest Panelbase poll.)

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When it comes to Scottish Labour’s great brainwave about “restoring” Tory tax-credit cuts, the madness just won’t stop. Here’s Magnus Gardham, formerly political editor of Scotland’s staunchest Labour paper the Daily Record, in the Herald today:

Read that one over a few times.

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This is amazing, readers. It’s an extract from this afternoon’s The Big Debate on Radio Scotland, in which a journalist – the BBC’s Gordon Brewer – finally gets round to asking someone from Scottish Labour how they can make the extra £500m they need to fund their tax-credits “policy” while keeping all taxes the same.

The answer… well, the answer is quite something.

(The Big Debate, BBC Radio Scotland, 6 November 2015)
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You might have to listen through a few times to get your head round it, because that really is what a grown woman actually tried to get away with in front of a live audience.

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Some of you may not have seen this from last night, and it needs to be seen.

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…from today’s Daily Record.

Honestly, they’re really in there.

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A convention of the world’s finest satirists pulling a 24-hour shift on Red Bull couldn’t come up with anything to beat Labour’s position on renewing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system. Following an overwhelming vote at the Scottish Labour conference this afternoon, these are the current cut-out-and-keep standings:

But it’s even better than that.

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Was feeling a bit left out as the only person involved in the independence debate who hadn’t been accused of being in the pay of MI5. But no more!

Thank goodness for thirsty old Ian.

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.

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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.

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March 2015:

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Ever since the SNP’s unexpected majority in 2011, there’s been a constant low-level whine of “one-party state” from various elements of the Unionist establishment. (The first example we could find from a quick Google search was Liberal Democrat buffoon Sir Malcolm Bruce in September of that year.)

It’s a curiously bitter and irrational way to refer to the outcome of democratic elections held under proportional representation, reflecting a worrying contempt for the views of voters, but after the SNP saw the benefits of First Past The Post in May 2015 (having spent decades being its victim), the angry bleating has become far more noticeable.

(The most recent politician to use the phrase was the Lib Dems’ current leader Tim Farron. Perhaps the party is engaging in displacement activity to distract itself from its craven abandonment in 2010 of its lifelong commitment to introduce PR, selling its principles cheaply for ministerial cars and a referendum on what Nick Clegg called the “miserable little compromise” of AV, which was then lost by a humiliating margin.)

But today someone really kicked it up a notch.

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