Some of our more alert readers may recall the events of four years ago this month, when a mob of SNP representatives all suddenly raged against the idea of (perfectly legally) “gaming” the Holyrood electoral system to produce a pro-indy supermajority.
Voters try to organise themselves to maximise their desired outcomes all the time (see various tactical-voting campaigns), and so do political parties – witness John Swinney’s current plans for a grand anti-Reform coalition. And of course, the SNP never objected to indy voters voting for a different party on the list if it was the Greens. The entire thing was just a poorly-disguised attack on Alba.
But even so, guess what? The rules just changed again.
It’s one of the most profoundly disappointing things about the last decade of Scottish politics that for about five minutes in 2015 we all thought that this awful dunderheaded foghorn was a bright new hope for the future.
In April 2021, the SNP were still the undisputed masters of all they surveyed. A poll conducted by Ipsos MORI that month showed them on 53% of the vote for the Scottish Parliament, a jawdropping 33 points ahead of their nearest rivals.
When the Holyrood election a month later was held, they won 64 seats, one more than they had done in 2016. Yet despite having led a minority government without any significant difficulties for the preceding five years, Nicola Sturgeon chose to invite the Greens to form a coalition with her party, and the effect that had on the public’s view of the government was… well, let’s see.
As alert Wings readers will know, we’re fond of a WW2 analogy from time to time. The conflict is so extensively documented, and so deeply embedded in British culture (for both good and ill), that it’s a reliable tool for getting points across concisely and clearly.
(It’s also one of the last major wars in which, overall, the good guys and the bad guys were pretty indisputably easy to identify.)
So let’s keep that in mind for a moment while we look at this.
For 10 years in Germany between 1935 and 1945, Jewish people were not legally human. The Nuremberg Laws, drafted in large part by Wilhelm Stuckart, established the principle in law that Jews were to be denied any rights on the basis that they were untermensch, a German word literally meaning “subhuman”.
It would be, to say the least, highly controversial for anyone to put forward in 2025 the idea that Jewish people had actually ceased to be human beings during that period, even though the various laws had been passed by a legitimately-elected government in peacetime and attracted little in the way of international condemnation.
The truth is that regardless of what the law said, Jewish people remained humans for the whole time, which is why Nazi war criminals were tried after the war for “crimes against humanity”. The passing of a law had had absolutely no effect on their biological reality. (Other than that it led to millions of them being murdered, of course.)
But anyway. Nicola Sturgeon.
Is the above how she imagined her feminist legacy, do you think, readers?
The National carried a strange article yesterday, apropos of seemingly nothing, about a Brussels-based political thinktank supposedly linked to the right-wing Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. The piece actually originated on superwoke “fact-checking” site The Ferret a couple of days earlier, and professed to expose how the thinktank was “stoking Scotland’s culture war”.
Alert readers will already have pricked up their ears at this point, because “culture war” is a radical-left dogwhistle term used to obscure, belittle and dismiss groups (largely though not exclusively comprising left-wing feminists) fighting for the safeguarding of children and the protection of women’s and LGB rights.
As a lifelong political geek and former SNP and Alba Party member, I’ve spent years supporting Scotland’s independence movement. However, over the last few years, I’ve watched the campaign (as opposed to support for independence) wither away. Being a Scottish nationalist has become increasingly disheartening, like watching someone you love succumb to a slow, debilitating illness. In frustration, I switched off from my homeland and turned my focus to the drama of US politics.
Over the last three years I immersed myself in it, watching both left and right-wing outlets. I became so hooked and invested that I jumped on a plane to Washington DC for the 2024 election. I canvassed with DC Democrats in rural Pennsylvania (that’s me third from the left in the pic below), attended Kamala Harris’s concession rally, and went to Trump’s only watch party in DC.
My journey led me to believe that Scotland’s independence campaign could learn a great deal from Trump’s victory and the Democrats’ failure.
To be honest, readers, the peculiar events of yesterday continued to nag at us all day as every news broadcaster in Scotland and beyond leapt eagerly on the ludicrous non-story from the Herald On Sunday’s front page. (It was even the #2 item on BBC Radio Wales, inexplicably).
For such an absolute nothingball of scurrilous sub-gossip to so dominate the entire news media was just too strange to ignore. We cannot remember the last time a low-grade freelancer managed to sell the same story to FOUR major Scottish newspapers – who normally, remember, only want exclusives for their big front-page splashes – let alone a crummy opinion columnist (not even an actual news reporter) who’s only been back in journalism for five minutes after a 15-year break as a failed PR guru.
(Once they’d all run the shoddy hatchet piece, TV and radio then had all the excuse they needed to blare it across the airwaves. “Oh, it’s not us inflating and amplifying this garbage, guv, we’re just reporting what the papers are saying.”)
So in our eternal quest for enlightenment and understanding we thought we’d see if we could find out a bit more about the little-known but recently-revived sleeper assassin with the ironic name: Carlos Alba.
Everyone even remotely connected to Scottish politics has known for months that the below is the case. It’s an open secret.
But what’s playing out right now is something much bigger than the fate of one or two or three individuals. It’s the entire future of the credibility of Scotland’s justice system.
When times are quiet in Scottish politics, as they currently are, our favourite genre of story is “mainstream press belatedly catches up with Wings Over Scotland”. And so to this morning’s front page splash in the Sunday Mail.
The rumour mill has been grinding about Operation Branchform developments again in the last few days, although we’ve seen too many false dawns now to get overly excited about that. But the Mail’s story sounded awfully familiar.
twathater on Holiday Relief: “One of the reasons I vehemently support direct democracy is the inclusion of a formation of a citizens assembly group…” Jun 22, 03:22
twathater on Holiday Relief: “Re “Nothing Going On In Scotland”exposed by ISP I find it eye watering the amount of money given to private…” Jun 22, 02:58
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Knuckle draggers is my insult, Bips. If you intend to try to gatecrash the smart set on Wings BTL, put…” Jun 22, 00:36
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Breaking new ground there, Xaracen, big respect. We are fully entitled to bring the Union to an end and we…” Jun 22, 00:31
Breastplate on Holiday Relief: “Agent x, It does not follow that Turabdin is talking nonsense because you don’t understand what he is saying. You’ve…” Jun 21, 23:28
Xaracen on Holiday Relief: “The point, Hatey, is the one that I made perfectly clearly, but which you and others relentlessly overlook and never…” Jun 21, 21:54
Neil Singleton on Holiday Relief: “Ar what cost (millions) to pander to the less than 1% Gaelic speakers. More speak Klingon than Gaelic in Scotland.” Jun 21, 20:50
Neil Singleton on Holiday Relief: “Plea deal for Murrell done and dusted (all to keep Saint Nic out of jail). He will pleaded guilty and…” Jun 21, 20:26
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “So what does it mean, Xaracen, every time you conform with a law fraudulently and criminally passed by WM? Or…” Jun 21, 20:17
Xaracen on Holiday Relief: “What do you mean “so what”? It’s an ongoing constitutional and democratic crime, Andy, that’s what; an illegal exertion of…” Jun 21, 19:54
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “True democracies are only possible with a mono cultural demos. It is only with a shared outlook that all citizens…” Jun 21, 19:54
TURABDIN on Holiday Relief: “The world is divided between those who live and those who think about living. «Systems» much prefer the latter, so…” Jun 21, 19:22
Hatey McHateface on Holiday Relief: “Evidence, perhaps, of the fallacy of UDI. It’s a big unfriendly world out there! Discuss 🙂” Jun 21, 19:00
TURABDIN on Holiday Relief: “Oh for god’s sake «None of the Above»….okay?” Jun 21, 18:39
agent x on Holiday Relief: “So basically you have no idea what you are talking about and no answer to my simple questions. Who will…” Jun 21, 18:00
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “It is questionable which country at the moment will break out first, It may not be Scotland, the people have…” Jun 21, 17:46
James Cheyne on Holiday Relief: “And who will in charge of Ireland or Wales and come to think of it, who will be in charge…” Jun 21, 17:40
TURABDIN on Holiday Relief: “@ agent x Being less «conventional», one might endeavour to think outside the strictures of the westminster/parliamentary box. Democracy, which…” Jun 21, 17:33
agent x on Holiday Relief: “I have no idea what your reply means. Who will be the President of the Democratic Republic of Scotland (DROS)?…” Jun 21, 17:03
Andy Ellis on Holiday Relief: “So what? The actions of people who fashioned the Treaties 300 years ago have SFA to do with our proximate…” Jun 21, 17:02
TURABDIN on Holiday Relief: “SUCH a scenario would be a critical test of how democratic a Scottish state would be. Democracy MAX, would be…” Jun 21, 16:45
Chas on Holiday Relief: “Link posted for the 792nd time. Only 208 to go before the magic number. This will probably be achieved in…” Jun 21, 16:28
Chas on Holiday Relief: “I wonder how long it took you to write that drivel? On the plus side, Alfie boy will be pleased.…” Jun 21, 16:21
Xaracen on Holiday Relief: “It’s called sovereignty, Andy, and neither party to the Treaty gave their sovereignty up, or agreed to subordinate their sovereignty…” Jun 21, 16:07
agent x on Holiday Relief: “Once the UN declare that Scotland should be Independent and UDI is declared, who will form the Scottish Government?” Jun 21, 16:00
Captain Caveman on Holiday Relief: “Indeed Andy. It’s like they’re all trying to outdo each other in the stupidity stakes; one ever more idiotic claim…” Jun 21, 15:56
TURABDIN on Holiday Relief: “ANY system which creates a psychological dependency might be termed a species of «slavery». In the contemporary world whips and…” Jun 21, 15:40
Insider on Holiday Relief: “Codeman! Perhaps you and “puir auld alf ” should get a cave together somewhere ! Just think ! You could…” Jun 21, 14:47
Andy Ellis on Holiday Relief: “@xaracen Where does it say in the Treaties of Union that Scots MPs could overturn the decisions of the whole…” Jun 21, 14:43
Andy Ellis on Holiday Relief: “I’m afraid for the hard of thinking such hyperbole is de rigeur. See also Ms Goldberg and her recent false…” Jun 21, 14:31
