Wings Over Scotland

The entire Scottish media and professional-politician community is currently in a self-righteous froth about a campaign ad being run by Reform for the Hamilton by-election targeting Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.

Obviously none of the acres of press coverage trusts voters to see the ad and decide for themselves, because that simply isn’t how journalism works nowadays. You’re told that a bad thing happened – whether it be a campaign ad, a comedian’s joke or the supposed terrible abuse sent to a celebrity – and how outraged various pundits or other celebrities are about it, with the clear implication that you should feel the same, but you almost never get shown or told what was actually said.

So to start with, as a basic journalistic principle, here’s the ad itself in its entirety.

Now let’s look at what you’re being ordered to think about it.

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Whoever advised John Swinney to do this should be tarred, feathered and fired.

Because incredibly, the sheer abject patheticness of it isn’t even the biggest problem.

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Don Paterson is a celebrated Scottish poet, writer and musician. The essay below comes from a new anthology of Scottish writers called Irish Pages: Scotland, and is reproduced with his permission. 

Remember The Vow? Most of us have tried to forget it. This was Westminster’s Hail Mary as polling day approached in the 2014 referendum; a vote that Yessers – people tend to forget this part too – initially had no real expectation of winning, until an inspirationally positive campaign saw the polls draw neck-and-neck.

Then lo! There it was, splashed across the Daily Record: a fancy-font promise from Westminster party leaders that if Scotland voted to stay within the UK, we would enjoy new devolved powers. There was some other waffle about defence and opportunities and having an equal share in the UK’s prosperity. But the message was clear enough. We would be listened to.

Aye, right.

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We were a bit bemused by this yesterday.

The Scottish Tory MSP reacted furiously to a story in The National which said Scotland had been absorbed into England by the 1707 Act Of Union, rather than becoming a “partner” in anything, and had ceased to exist as a state in international law.

Which was a weird response, because that’s been the official stated position of both the UK government and the Conservative Party for at least the last 12 years.

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We’re getting there, folks.

Keep pushing.

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Despite everything, we almost allowed ourselves just the very tiniest little micro-flicker of optimism when we read Tommy Sheppard’s latest in The National.

Because that much is certainly true, and it’s uncommonly candid to have anyone in the SNP admit it. So what’s the answer?

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Not for us, admittedly.

(Kelly’s article is here. Link to Grok’s answer here. The ChatGPT analysis that triggered the article can be read in this tweet thread. A verifiable analysis by Grok of the debate, based on a neutral question, can be read here.)

So this is where the SNP are at now.

The legal imprint at the bottom means that that’s official SNP election communication. One assumes it’s intended for leaflets to be put through actual voters’ letterboxes.

We’re almost lost for words.

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Hi! I noticed, with very considerable amusement, your complaint last night that I hadn’t made a “substantive reply” to the [EDIT] EIGHT posts (totalling nearly 11,000 words) of semi-coherent ranting about me that you’ve made on your site in the last eight days.

(I’ll be absolutely honest, I’ve only skimmed the last few.)

We both know the reason that’s so tear-streamingly comical, of course.

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In so far as it’s worth talking about Scottish constitutional politics at all these days, it’s worth taking a moment to analyse the bloodless, anodyne nothingness spouted by the First Minister on The Sunday Show at the weekend.

That clip is less than three minutes long, but it’s so soul-crushingly boring and full of content-free drone and waffle that it’s almost impossible to sit all the way through it, so we’re going to translate and summarise it for you.

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Warning: despite the quite zingy title this is actually going to be a very dry stats post, readers. It is, on the other hand, based on a man having something disturbingly close to a complete psychotic mental breakdown, so there’s always that for a bit of colour.

Because the paragraph above, and in particular the highlighted part, is without a doubt the most dishonest, diametrically false and wildly extreme lie about Scottish politics that we’ve ever seen anyone tell in the 13.5 years of Wings Over Scotland’s existence.

And folks, that’s a high bar.

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Social media was having a good chuckle at this earlier today.

But as it turns out, it’s a bit more than just an embarrassment.

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