Wings Over Scotland

Alert social-media users couldn’t have failed to notice Unionist activists and hacks working themselves up into a very great lather last night over (currently former) SNP MP Michelle Thomson. The ex-director of Business For Scotland has resigned the party whip and is now sitting, at least temporarily, as an independent while police conduct an investigation into some property purchases in which she was involved.

As yet no criminal activity by anyone has been alleged, and Police Scotland has said that it has no plans at the moment to even interview Ms Thomson, let alone arrest or charge her. As yet it’s a political non-story.

But the mere proximity of the member for Edinburgh West – previously the victim of a smear related to the Ashley Madison website hacking – to even a sniff of impropriety has triggered a paroxysm amongst the media and the beleagured opposition.

Amusingly, some senior journalists have even tweeted an accusatory blog written by Labour activist and regular BBC pundit Ian Smart, whose own membership of the Labour Party remains a subject of uncertainty after a series of abusive incidents – Scottish Labour have persistently refused to confirm whether he’s been expelled, despite having been “investigating” him since April.

But that’s not the most interesting piece of hypocrisy on show.

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We were greatly amused to learn this morning that Professor Adam Tomkins of Glasgow University, the bad-tempered darling of the Scottish Conservatives and the only political pundit who can make Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph seem measured and thoughtful, plans to stand for election to the Scottish Parliament next May.

We suspect he’ll succeed, too. It now seems plain that Ruth Davidson’s move earlier this month from the Glasgow list to the Lothian one was a ploy to get Prof. Tomkins to the top of the former, and while a Tory list seat in Glasgow is by no means a certainty next year, it’s more likely than not.

(We’ll be somewhat startled if the irritable English academic finds the courage to even try contesting a constituency in Scotland’s largest city. It’s moderately possible that his abrasive hectoring of Scottish voters’ stupidity in continuing to elect the SNP might not go down too well in the council schemes of Easterhouse and Drumchapel.)

Trying to pick out the funniest line in the announcement is no easy task.

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You can kind of see why they don’t think Ian Smart is a problem.

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By now you should all have had a chance to marvel at the extraordinary madness that is Scottish Labour’s 51-page suicide note of SNP members who’ve said rude words on the internet since 2012.

You may even have had time to read a data protection expert (and Labour voter)’s assessment of all the ways in which the dossier breaks the law.

Now let’s get down to business.

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STV’s notorious quisling correspondent Stephen “Stevo” Daisley has an interesting piece today about the latest manufactured “cybernat” shock-horror outrage being punted by the Daily Mail (although curiously, the major “CYBERNAT WEB OF HATE!” exposé they promised readers would be published on Thursday is yet to materialise).

Daisley’s column makes some valid points about how the SNP could distance itself from the most extremist elements of its online support, but with one important flaw – it overlooks a crucial factor driving internet rage, and as a result its recommendations would only actually make the situation worse.

But fear not, gentle and sensitive reader. Conveniently, there’s an easy solution.

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An update for those interested, via an alert cartoonist:

From: Garreth.Lodge

To: Christopher Cairns

Subject: RE: Ian Smart

Date: 9 June 2015 14:25:33 BST

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for your e-mail to Kezia with regards to her exchange with the First Minister in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 23rd April 2015.

Kezia can confirm that the person mentioned in the exchange has had their membership of the Labour Party put under administrative suspension and an investigation is currently being conducted by the General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party.

If you have specific questions on the investigation you will need to direct them to the Scottish Labour Party, not Kezia’s Parliamentary office.

If there is anything other issues Kezia can help with as your MSP, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Kind Regards

Garreth

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Scottish Labour branch office manager Jim Murphy will be appearing on BBC Radio Scotland’s “Call Kaye” programme from 9am today, taking questions from voters as well as presenter Kaye Adams. The phone number to ring in is 0500 92 95 00.

Below are a few posers readers might like to put to Mr Murphy, because he seems to have been adept at avoiding them throughout the campaign. Feel free to reword them.

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You might not think it, readers, but even after all this time we’re still capable of a certain degree of innocent, naive trust in Scottish journalism.

When Nicola Sturgeon didn’t just issue a boilerplate condemnation at FMQs yesterday after ludicrously overblown allegations of Twitter “trolling” by an SNP candidate, but went on the counter-attack over Labour’s grotesquely abusive Ian Smart, we foolishly thought that might make both sides of the story newsworthy.

And then we opened the papers.

We don’t expect the media to be impartial. But let there today officially be an end to even the slightest pretence that it’s at least fair, professional and honest.

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A few days ago, a constituency poll by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft found that the SNP were leading narrowly in Edinburgh South – a seat in which they secured a paltry 7.7% of the vote in the 2010 general election. Keep that fact in mind, readers.

Today the Edinburgh Evening News (EEN) published an article by David Maddox, a senior political journalist on the Scotsman, alleging that the SNP candidate for the seat, Neil Hay, had “liken[ed] anti-independence campaigners to Nazi collaborators” in a tweet over two and a half years ago (from a pseudonymous account under the name “Paco McSheepie”), and had also tweeted a series of attacks on pensioners.

Scottish Labour immediately leapt on the article and demanded Mr Hay be sacked as the candidate, less than two weeks before the election. It’s not possible to replace a candidate at such a late stage – some voters may already have voted by post – and such a move would thereby effectively have handed the seat to the Labour candidate and previous MP Ian Murray by default.

The story turned out to be an absurd, massive exaggeration and misrepresentation of the reality. But it also exposed a level of naked, shameless dishonesty and hypocrisy in Scottish Labour, and in particular its deputy leader Kezia Dugdale, that even this site hadn’t previously dared to imagine.

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Earlier today we highlighted some of the social-media charm of Labour blogger and BBC pundit Ian Smart, after the Scottish branch office deputy leader Kezia Dugdale demanded that the First Minister should take a more pro-active role in policing the comments of party members on Twitter and Facebook.

Mr Smart’s history of incredibly abusive and offensive comments stretches back many years. But of course, it wouldn’t be reasonable to berate Scottish Labour for its failure to act if it wasn’t aware of them. So we had a trawl through his Twitter followers list just to see if there was anyone who might have noticed and brought it to the leadership’s attention so they could have a quiet word.

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At today’s First Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Labour deputy leader Kezia Dugdale launched into an ill-advised attack over an SNP candidate who’d made some foolish (but not especially outrageous) comments on Twitter in 2012. Rather than simply issuing the standard generic condemnation of abusive remarks, Nicola Sturgeon did so but also drew Dugdale’s attention to the beam in her own eye.

Labour activist, blogger, lawyer and regular BBC pundit Ian Smart (he hasn’t been seen on STV since accusing them repeatedly, without any evidence, of letting the SNP pre-approve all interview questions some time ago) is well known to readers of this blog. Bizarrely, however, Dugdale feigned ignorance of his activity.

To help her, we’ve compiled some of Mr Smart’s greatest hits.

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Alert readers may recall that since the election of Jim Murphy as Scottish Labour branch office manager he’s barely gone a moment without promising to “reach out” to Yes voters. Last month he even pledged that he’d employ some in his team if he won the Labour job.

We imagine they’ll be fair hammering on his door after the latest addition to his crew, because today’s Herald reveals that Murphy’s new chief of staff, and joining “Better Together” director Blair McDougall among Jim’s backroom boys, is to be our old pal John “there will be no referendum” McTernan.

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