Wings Over Scotland

A real letter sent out by the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland this week.

Someone do us a favour and explain to her in language she’ll understand that as the Scottish Parliament isn’t trusted by her Westminster pals to control its own resources, the price of oil doesn’t actually impact on “the SNP’s economic plan” in any way whatsoever, would you? We’re not very good with crayons.

Phew, eh?

(April 2014 on the left, December 2014 on the right.)

George Osborne’s autumn mini-Budget is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be read late at night. The programme of swingeing cuts to public services it outlined would chill the blood of anyone with an ounce of compassion in their souls.

Fortunately, this site concerns itself chiefly with Scottish politics, so we can leave the full horror to others, turn away in fear and focus on a couple of decisions that are particularly interesting in a constitutional context.

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Alert readers will already be aware that we’re not the biggest fans of prospective Scottish Labour deputy “leader” Kezia Dugdale. Even this site, however, doesn’t think the Lothian list MSP is so inept and slow-witted that she could single-handedly be held responsible for the party losing the next two general elections.

Some of her comrades, however, have less faith.

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The Daily Record, 27 November 2014:

So, IS the Scottish Government budget going to “nearly double”?

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We’ve been watching in some bafflement the continuation of this bizarre non-story from yesterday. (For which, incidentally, the P&J has published a correction today.)

As one in five Scottish children live in poverty and temperatures fall at the beginning of winter with many families facing the choice between heating their homes or buying food, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie apparently arrived at the conclusion that the most important thing he could be doing with his taxpayer-funded time was occupying the Scottish Parliament with a demand to know (for no immediately apparent reason) how often civil servants had accessed Wings Over Scotland in the six months leading up to the referendum.

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“We are agreed that the Scottish Parliament is permanent”:

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We didn’t think we’d ever encounter a greater feat of rapid comprehension than Alistair Darling digesting and analysing the entire 670-page White Paper on independence in under two hours back in 2013, readers. But we’re delighted to reveal a new champion.

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Of all the powers that Labour were reportedly responsible for keeping reserved to Westminster, abortion law is perhaps the most revealing about Labour’s true attitude towards Scotland and devolution during the Smith Commission’s deliberations.

It’s one of a handful of issues, including embryology, xenotransplantation (that’s transplanting a cell or organ from one species to another) and surrogacy, which would otherwise fall to the Cabinet Secretary for Health had Labour not specifically reserved them when creating the Scottish Parliament in 1997.

(In fact, it was Tony Blair who personally insisted that abortion law remain reserved to Westminster. Donald Dewar was apparently in favour of devolving it, but we all know who wins in a battle between Scottish Labour and London Labour.)

If the Smith Commission was nothing else, it was an opportunity for unionists – Labour in particular – to prove their commitment to devolution by relinquishing their hold on powers previously considered too important to fall within the Scottish Parliament’s remit. Unsurprisingly, they declined it.

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…of the Press & Journal.

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As we’re talking about surveys, opinion polls and statistics today, it seemed worth mentioning another one that’s come to our attention. Conducted earlier in the year by YouGov but only released today, it’s a vast poll done on behalf of the Co-operative and canvassed over 180,000 people, most of them through the Co-op’s own website.

It’s relevant to us because the Co-operative also runs a political party, which has representatives at both Westminster (31 MPs) and Holyrood (4). They’re little-known because the Co-op never stands in its own right, but in conjunction with Labour, so to all intents and purposes it’s a branch of the Labour Party, funded by Co-op customers.

And it turns out most of them don’t know that, and don’t like it when they find out.

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We’ve long known that Labour’s attachment to the Union was founded on the belief – though a statistically erroneous one – that it couldn’t form a secure UK government without the block of MPs (currently 40) that it sends to Westminster from Scotland.

But a fascinating article from YouGov president Peter Kellner on the YG website today suggests that the party’s desperate and eventually successful efforts to secure a No vote could turn out to be the most Pyrrhic victory of all time.

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