Kezia Dugdale Fact Check, Part 679 384
Sky News earlier this morning:
Our ears always prick up when Kezia says she’s counted something herself.
The highlights reel 160
Today the Scottish Parliament spent several hours heatedly debating a motion to call for a second Section 30 order to enable a new independence referendum (several more will follow tomorrow before the vote). We watched all of it so you didn’t have to, and are delighted to present you with a few clips that probably won’t make the news.
On such a momentous topic, this was the intervention that Scottish Labour list MSP Monica Lennon felt was the most pressing issue to raise, for example:
We’re very touched, obviously, and will add it to our file of other mentions in the chamber and elsewhere. But there were probably more important things to discuss.
Unreliable sources 235
It seems counter-intuitive – given Rupert Murdoch’s often-overstated (despite endless and fevered speculation, the Scottish Sun didn’t back a Yes vote) but still seemingly real support for Scottish independence – that Sky News should be seen as the most hostile of the nation’s broadcasters to the Yes movement.
Yet such it is.
Stitched up like kippers 261
Panelbase have released data tables for their recent Sunday Times poll. And wow.
That’s quite something.
Asking the wrong questions 479
Here’s the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, speaking to BBC News this morning and giving a striking illustration of the term “dancing on the head of a pin”.
Comically, his excuse for demanding another referendum on leaving the EU while opposing a second Scottish independence referendum is that his new EU vote would be a completely different question – he’d be asking voters if they wanted to accept the Brexit deal and exit from the EU (which one might reasonably summarise on the ballot paper as “Leave”), or to refuse to approve the deal and stay in the EU (or put another way, “Remain”).
Glad we cleared that up, then. But then it got weirder.
To keep links with the world 84
No 9: Mark, until recently from London.
Come and join us 215
Our favourite bit is at 27m 52s.
Does anyone speak Dugdale? 359
Scottish Labour’s regional branch manager (North Britain) clearly thought this was so important she needed to say it twice:
But that’s not helping us make any sense of it. All sarcasm and snark aside, we can’t figure out what on Earth it’s supposed to mean.
How soon isn’t now? 524
GERS, by economists 397
The announcement that the Scottish Government would seek the uncontested legal right to hold a second independence referendum met with an outpouring of rage and ignorance from the massed ranks of the UK media that was in one sense entirely predictable yet still startling in its fury and ferocity.
Most prominent was the assertion, stated as fact by every pundit and broadcaster – including those required by law to be fair and impartial – that a second referendum would be conducted in the environment of a significantly worse economic case.
And that’s a remarkable claim, because the indisputable fact is that nobody has the slightest clue what the economic case for No will be.