Wings Over Scotland

What IS going on at the Herald? Yesterday we highlighted a bizarre article which flatly contradicted its own headline, then agreed with it, then contradicted it again. And today another piece by the same author appears to do much the same thing.

At least the headline is a bit more circumspect this time: “Uncertainty claims over EU situation”. But the opening paragraph blares a dramatic statement which doesn’t appear to be supported anywhere in the story.

“The Scottish Government has indicated for the first time that Scotland would not automatically be able to negotiate EU membership from within the organisation if Scots vote Yes in next year’s referendum.”

…is the bold-fonted proclamation from the paper’s Political Editor. But if you read the text which follows it, you’ll struggle to locate anyone indicating any such thing.

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Your jaw just drops sometimes at the sheer cheek of it.

“I am pleased that this impartial body has […] rejected the nationalist attempts to silence their opponents by setting spending limits that would have given them an unfair advantage.” – No campaign leader Alistair Darling, in a post on the “Better Together” site today.

Remember: the “nationalists” wanted to let the No campaign spend £250,000 more than the Yes campaign –  a funny kind of “silencing” and a quite unusual definition of “advantage”, let alone “unfair”. Instead, the Electoral Commission has recommended that the Yes campaign be allowed to spend more than its opponents. We’re trying for all we’re worth to work out why Mr Darling considers that a victory.

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In a Twitter conversation yesterday, we suggested that a solution to the problem of biased reporting in the Scottish media might be to adopt a variant of the “Whizzer and Chips” approach. That is, you’d have two newspapers in one – one way round the news would be presented from a Unionist perspective (as it is now), but if you flipped the paper over and read it from the other end it’d have all the same stories, except covered by independence-friendly journalists.

It looks like the Guardian has tentatively taken the idea up already.

There’s a small but quite vocal subset of opinion among followers of Scottish politics that David Cameron and the Tories are doing their damnedest to “throw” the independence referendum. A string of implausibly clumsy interventions starting with the Prime Minister’s attempt to lay down the law of a year ago have led to growing speculation that the Conservatives would in fact be somewhere beyond delighted to see Scotland go its own way, but simply can’t be seen to be saying so.

It’s an argument that has a lot of rational weight. Scotland hasn’t returned more than one Conservative MP since 1992, and seems unlikely to change that statistic any time soon, effectively giving the Tories a handicap of 50+ seats in every general election. There’s now little remaining dispute that the balance of Scottish revenue/expenditure at the Treasury is basically neutral, so there’s no great financial blow to be endured if the Scots make off with the remainder of North Sea oil.

(And even senior Scottish Tories think that the sort of complete break with the toxic Conservative brand which would accompany independence is the only hope of ever reviving their fortunes north of the border.)

Are we really meant to believe, then, that Cameron’s party is unbreakably committed to keeping a pathologically ungrateful Scotland in the Union for purely sentimental reasons? Pull the other one, readers – it’s got bells on.

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Cue six months of Jim Murphy droning on about the “Arc Of Inflammability”.

Bunnet-doff to alert reader Ray McRobbie.

To be honest, we’re still trying to work out what happened here. The Secretary of State for Scotland was well and truly slapped up and down the room yesterday by a panel of peers in the House Of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, every one of whom was a Unionist. One after another lined up to lambast the hapless minister with stinging attacks and rebukes in a session that caught most observers used to the Lords’ normal cosy atmosphere of mutual Nat-bashing completely unawares.

It seems far too late in the day for Westminster’s second chamber to present itself as the heroic defender of the people of Scotland. It would be much too ironic for the unelected Barons and Earls and whatnot to be doing it in the name of democracy. And there seems little chance this one-day aberration will suddenly convince anyone to buy the implausible notion that the Committee is an impartial investigator into the issues surrounding Scottish independence.

(The Herald reported proceedings almost word-for-word the same way STV did, under the headline “Michael Moore savaged by Unionist peers over EU row”, but the poor old Scotsman was so bewildered it couldn’t bring itself to mention Moore’s humiliation at all, glossing over the entire thing with a comically absurd assessment of how his evidence to the Committee “undermines one of the key claims of the SNP and Yes Scotland campaign over economic security for an independent Scotland”.)

So frankly, readers, your guess is as good as ours as to what the noble lords were up to. A momentary outbreak of conscience? One too many sherries at the office Christmas do? If you’ve got any suggestions, we’re all ears.

We read something odd in the Herald yesterday.

“In a joint statement, Labour’s Johann Lamont, Tory leader Ruth Davidson and the Liberal Democrats’ Willie Rennie said: “It is vital that the referendum properly reflects the will of the Scottish people. We look forward to hearing the views of the Electoral Commission and will abide by its ruling.”

In the same spirit of magnanimity, Wings Over Scotland would like to humbly and solemnly announce that from today onwards we will abide by the law of gravity and the requirement for human beings to breathe oxygen in order to respire. Thank you.

We’ve already seen that the latest Social Attitudes Survey reveals Scotland to be a deeply schizophrenic country, which wants independence but doesn’t want to admit it (even, it seems, to itself). But the deeper you get into the statistics the stranger the picture gets. Ponder, for example, the “Expectations” section.

The survey asked “If Scotland was an independent country, would the following things be better or worse than they are now?”, and recorded the answers in six categories.

NATIONAL PRIDE
Better: 67%
Worse: 2%

VOICE IN THE WORLD
Better: 51%
Worse: 19%

HEALTH SERVICE
Better: 37%
Worse: 19%

STANDARD OF LIVING
Better: 34%
Worse: 23%

ECONOMY
Better: 34%
Worse: 29%

TAXES
Better: 10%
Worse: 53%

(All other respondents in each category thought there would be no difference.)

So we see that Scots think independence will mean higher taxes. (Though it’s not clear WHY they think that – the SNP only has influence over Council Tax, and they’ve cut that in real terms in every one of their five years of government). But people also think that in return for those taxes they’ll get a healthier economy, a stronger NHS, a louder voice in the world, more national pride and, crucially, a better standard of living.

Seems like a good deal, no? Is it not worth paying higher taxes if it results in a higher standard of living and better public services (basically the Scandinavian model beloved of the SNP), especially if you fancy yourselves as a somewhat left-wing nation? You’d think so. By any measure, the survey shows that the nationalists have won the argument – the people believe that independence will mean a better Scotland.

But when offered that higher standard of living, that prouder, more confident country with a stronger economy and superior public services, the people of Scotland bizarrely turn away from the change that they themselves believe would deliver it. There’s only one rational reason for that disconnect between thought and deed, and it’s fear.

So far the “No” campaign has been founded entirely in scaremongering, and the creation of doubt and uncertainty. And it’s plainly working, to at least some degree, because it’s got the people frightened to act in what they think are their own interests. So expect the negative campaigning to continue all the way up to the referendum.

But at the same time, note that the percentage of people saying they’d vote Yes has only been higher in two of the last 14 years. Note that support is up by a third compared to the year the SNP came to power, despite the economic catastrophe that’s unfolded since then. Note that support for independence is highest – by far – among the young and vital, and lowest among the dying.

You don’t often win the argument and lose the vote. Two years to go.

We’re quite cynical folks, especially when it comes to Scottish Labour. We expect little from them, although even then we’re still sometimes surprised. But a couple of pieces today from two of the Scottish party’s most prominent – well, let’s use the word “thinkers” and keep things civil – raised our eyebrows good and proper.

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Can anyone help reconcile these two facts for us?

“Seventy-one per cent of people trust the Scottish Government to act in Scotland’s best interests (up from 61 per cent in 2010), compared to just 18 per cent who trust the UK Government (down from 35 per cent in 2007).“

“The number of people prepared to support Scottish independence is falling substantially, new polling suggests. A Mori Scotland poll found just 35% said they would vote ‘yes’ to independence north of the border, compared to 55% saying ‘no’.“

It’s not a rhetorical question. We don’t get it.

We’ve been getting very confused today by the (New) Sunday Herald. Last night the paper’s “Investigations Editor” Paul Hutcheon tweeted that this morning’s edition would carry an “exclusive” on how a psychologist was telling the SNP to avoid using the word “independence”. Mr Hutcheon was clearly pretty excited about this breaking story, as he plugged it again a few hours later, and has gone on to tweet about it no fewer than 31 more times (figure correct at time of writing) during the course of the day.

But weirdly, this great “exclusive”, rather than being splashed all over the front page as you might expect, didn’t manage to make the online edition of the newspaper at all.

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The Guardian today runs an extensive interview with Labour's shadow Defence Secretary and former Scottish Secretary, the estimable Jim Murphy MP, in which Murphy demands that Labour must take the lead in the campaign to save the Union. We're a bit confused, though, because Murphy doesn't seem to be all that big a fan of said Union. Most of his responses were predictable and unremarkable, but this line really jumped out at us:

"I'm proud to [be] Scottish. The only flag I ever wave would be a Scottish flag."

The ONLY one? We're not alone in finding that odd, are we? We can't imagine considering ourselves to be citizens of a country, actively wishing to keep the people of that country united under one flag, and yet being afraid, ashamed or just plain unwilling to wave that flag ourselves. So why does Murphy want to save the Union when he can't bear to wave the Union Flag? If anyone can help us understand, we'd be grateful.