Wings Over Scotland

When assessing who might be the best choice for the next leader of the SNP, and by extension of the independence movement, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb to beware of anyone being bigged up by the Unionist media.

(Not only because they don’t have the SNP or Yes movement’s best interests at heart, but also because these are the people who thought Jim Murphy would take Scottish Labour surging to triumph in 2015 and Kezia Dugdale would win the 2021 election.)

So let’s take a quick look at the runners and riders.

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Okay, folks, time to put our hands up and admit it: we got this one wrong.

We thought they’d be subtle.

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There has of course been a lot of chat since last night about the latest Ipsos Mori poll putting independence on 56%, with the usual suspects getting over-excited.

It remains to be seen whether the figures represent a short blip of anger over the Supreme Court decision, a more sustained but still temporary period of Yes support like that of summer 2020 – spring 2021, or a permanent shift in public opinion.

So as such they’re actually relatively uninteresting, although the SNP’s plan to do absolutely nothing to take advantage of any momentum that might exist, and to wait several months before even having a strategy conference, remains disturbing.

But what actually caught our eye about the poll were a couple of questions nobody else has reported on.

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It’s more than two years now since we published this article, but it’s worth quickly going over it again, because there’s nothing on Earth more tedious than boneheads on social media going “Oh, you slag off the SNP but what’s YOUR plan if you’re so clever?”, who haven’t bothered to read any of the dozen times we’ve already answered that question since 25 months ago.

This is it. This is our plan. Try listening this time, thickos.

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Honestly, readers, swear to God, all joking and sarcasm aside, when we saw this tweet yesterday we were wondering how on Earth some clever satirist had managed to hack Anas Sarwar’s account to insert the screenshot into it.

Because we didn’t believe that even Scottish Labour’s low-watt-bulb of a branch manager would willingly post something that made him look so much of an imbecile.

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One might almost imagine that once every Parliament, a drawing of lots is conducted at The Times’ offices in Scotland and the loser is obliged to write this column, on pain of a ceremonial debagging and a jolly good paddling with an old cricket bat from all the other chaps in the newsroom.

Perhaps the fear is playing tricks with Alex Massie’s memory.

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So we now know, if it was ever in doubt, that the Scottish Government is not remotely serious about holding an independence referendum in 2023.

Today’s speech by the First Minister revealed one positive act: that she finally intends to do what this website has been repeatedly calling on her to do since April 2018, by establishing once and for all whether or not the Scottish Parliament has the power to conduct an independence referendum, and that if it is determined by the Supreme Court that it does not, she intends to do what this site called on her to do a year and a half ago – conduct the next general election (now due in late 2024) as a plebiscite.

We’re not sure what the point of frittering away five years by waiting was.

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So here’s your majority:

And we know because they told us.

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We’d actually planned to leave Chris Cairns’ fabulous cartoon at the top of the front page all day today, but this post is important so we’re putting it in here again (no, Chris, you don’t get paid twice) so we can say this.

Because no matter how much you hate the Unionist parties or certain of their individual MSPs, if you want Alba MSPs elected today there are several seats where you really, really can’t afford to vote SNP on the constituency ballot.

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“They don’t even live in Scotland!”  

It really is quite uncanny how similar some SNP supporters have become to the most frothing, abusive blood-and-soil Yoons of 2014. But we can live with this company:

And let’s make something very clear.

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While we were out this afternoon diligently patrolling for bears in the 20C beauty of a Bath early spring (largely because there’s a rather implausible 40% chance of snow forecast for next Wednesday), an email flooded in from Tom Gordon of the Herald.

“Hello Stuart. We’ve been contacted by a reader who says he also contacted you about a post on the website in the early hours of Saturday. Referring to Nicola Sturgeon, the poster says “Decapitating this witch would stop the SNP dead in their tracks.” 

Our reader, Ian Reid, an SNP activist in the Borders, has been a regular Wings reader but was taken aback by the language. He had hoped you would have deleted the post, but that hasn’t happened.

He has reported it to the police and given a statement to them.

He has also given us these comments on why the Alba Party should condemn this sort of material and cut its ties to the Wings site.

“Alex Salmond and the leaders of the new party need to separate themselves from that, they need to call it out. They seem to be trying to set themselves up as the moral guardians for women’s rights, which I absolutely support. At the same time, we’ve got somebody posting this on a blog that they clearly associate with and clearly use.

On the one hand, they’re talking about gender-proofing their policies, which is great. On the other hand, they’ve got this where a woman is being described as the devil herself, and where there’s a reference to decapitating the witch having a justifiable end.

That needs to be called out. The party needs to come out and say something about it. The best possible outcome would be that they do condemn it. It would be such a powerful message. Separating themselves from that cesspit would be a very politically astute thing for them. As long as they don’t, it’s colluding with it, it’s condoning it.”

This is for a potential story online and in print.

Would you care to comment?”

And, y’know, of course we would.

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Nine days ago Wings told you this:

And you’ll never guess what’s happened.

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