Winnie Ewing, who has sadly passed away a few weeks short of her 94th birthday, was the second SNP politician I ever heard of.
My dad met her, and would speak of her with Billy Wolfe, the party leader who was also his employer at a forest machinery company in Bathgate (and our family friend), during her second term as an MP in the UK Parliament.
She now joins my dad and Billy as people who worked for the cause of independence but died before it came to fruition, after many wasted years under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon.
Still wondering what Humza Yousaf’s going to say to the SNP’s pretend “conference” on independence strategy this coming Saturday? Well, wonder no longer, because this morning he told Sky News.
In other words, he’s waving the white flag and praying for a miracle.
The Scottish National Party’s primary and defining purpose is Scottish independence. Next weekend’s “special conference” will at least notionally determine its policy on that subject for years to come. On the face of it it’s the most important congregation of party members in the SNP’s history.
The Caird Hall can accommodate just 3% of the claimed membership. (And you’d expect at least half the seats to have been reserved in advance for the faithful payroll.) Members ought to be fighting like dogs for a ticket. And yet a week before the event the leader is having to send out pleading letters to try to scare up enough attendees that it won’t be a half-empty humiliation.
Nicola Sturgeon has not been charged with any crime. Yesterday she was arrested, questioned and released without charge pending further investigation. We do not even know which specific suspected crime or crimes she was questioned in connection with, so it is manifestly impossible to meaningfully speculate on her innocence or guilt (save of course for the fact that all are innocent in the eyes of the law until proven otherwise, something Sturgeon herself often appears to forget).
Nevertheless, in Scotland the Contempt Of Court Act 1981 applies from the moment a person is arrested, as the country’s most senior lawyer and its official prosecution service were both keen to remind people yesterday in the clearest possible terms, and it applies equally whether you’re asserting someone’s guilt or their innocence.
So you need to be a really extra-special class of boneheaded numbwit to do this:
