Wings Over Scotland

It’s quite difficult to construct a rational case for why an independent Scotland would need an army at all. A couple of battalions for emergencies can’t hurt, but beyond that level ground forces are something of an affectation for a small country like ours.

Given Scotland’s location, the threat of invasion is essentially zero. Only one nation has attempted to invade Scotland in the last thousand years – the sole country with which we have a land border – and we doubt that even the wildest fringes of the nationalist movement really think England would try it again in the forseeable future.

(And if they did, frankly, the biggest army we could plausibly hope to ever field would have very little chance of stopping them. Ditto Russia, China, North Korea, Guatemala, giant space dinosaurs or whoever the latest Project Fear fantasy bogeyman is.)

Nevertheless, we’re a bit confused by the dire warnings currently being issued by all and sundry regarding the difficulty of recruiting soldiers to such a force.

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Who says there’s no satire in Scottish politics? We’re indebted to the alert reader who sent us a link to this magnificent website from the ever-delightful Orange Order.

(“British Together is a campaign group set up by the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland to assist the mainstream Unionist groups leading up to and including the independence referendum in 2014.”)

Why the Union? Want to read the positive case for the most successful political union the world has ever known? Just click the “Find Out More” button! Okay, try it again. You might have to click it quite a lot of times. Oh well, maybe one day.

We got an email from the Electoral Commission today. Further to our attempts to discern the membership of “Scottish Labour” last week, we’d dropped them a line with a couple of queries about which information parties and their sub-divsions (or “accounting units”) were required to divulge.

The answers weren’t particularly surprising, but they did give us an idea.

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The first minute is January to May of 2011. From around 1m 12s, the glass represents the next two years’ referendum polling. Julianne Moore plays the parties of the Union. (Jeff Goldblum is the SNP throughout.) Technically speaking nothing changes for quite a prolonged period. Positions are maintained. But something’s happening.

That’s just how we interpret the situation. We could be wrong, of course.

A couple of weeks ago we noted something rather curious in the Daily Record. Interpreted a certain way, it seemed as if the ultra-Unionist paper was tentatively preparing the ground for a possible seismic event. Some readers poured scorn on the assessment, but we’re not sure it’s going to be as easy to dismiss a second time.

Today’s edition carries a lengthy piece by political editor and fervent SNP-basher Torcuil Crichton, based around the “Home Rule” vision of iconic 1920s Labour MP James Maxton. You can read the whole thing here, but the key passage is hiding at the end – in fact, in the very last paragraph.

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Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, 2 July 2013:

“The only place to cement social change is in the hearts and minds of voters. Blair and Brown were defeatists, convinced Britain was essentially conservative, individualist, imbued with Thatcherism.

Confronted with the Mail, Sun, Times and Telegraph, the culture looked immutable, a force to be appeased. Not even when ordinary living standards plummeted as banks were bailed out did Labour seize the chance to make a stronger social democratic case.

Ideas matter. Had Labour changed the political climate (as Cameron briefly thought), this government could not dismantle the social state. But like tumbleweed, Labour policies put down no roots to anchor ideas of collective provision and social protection.”

In the full article, Toynbee rather glosses over some of Labour’s failings in power in her eagerness to present a rosy picture of 13 years in which inequality grew almost constantly. But the paragraphs above concisely and surgically extract the heart of the party’s betrayal of not only its own voters, but the whole concept of British democracy – and inadvertently also the reason why it won’t win the 2015 election.

The only mistake Toynbee makes is to imagine that it matters.

London-born, Los Angeles-resident singer Rod Stewart in today’s Scottish Sun:

“Proud Scotland fan Rod Stewart revealed he’d hate to see the break-up of the Union. Rock idol Rod, 68, hopes Scots will snub independence by rallying behind the ‘No’ push in next year’s referendum.

But the veteran singer fears many young voters could be swayed to say ‘Yes’ because of stirring Mel Gibson blockbuster Braveheart.

Rod, whose dad Robert was from Leith, Edinburgh, said: “I’d hate to see the Union broken after all these years — and I don’t think it will happen.”

(We note with passing interest and without comment the paper’s own description of Rod as a “Scotland fan” rather than a “Scot”, and that a few lines later in the same piece he says “as I don’t live there I shouldn’t comment on independence”. Whoops!)

Hmm, what could have brought that on all of a sudden?

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If you ever want to make a Labour activist in Scotland uncomfortable and desperate to change the subject, there’s always been an easy way to do it in a single sentence:

“If the Tories are as bad as you say, why is it better for Scotland to be governed by them for six years out of every ten, even though we never vote for them?”

We’ve been asking that one for years now and never had an answer, for the very good reason that there is only one honest reply – one “Scottish Labour” can never admit.

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Yesterday the No campaign’s Rob Murray responded to allegations of scaremongering by complaining on Twitter that supporters of independence “don’t like debate”.

For some unknown reason he didn’t reply to our observation that “Better Together” has banned hundreds of would-be debaters from its Facebook page for politely raising various awkward issues about “Project Fear”, but later the same day rather more disturbing news reached us of some events in the north of Scotland.

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When even the deputy leader of the Scottish Tories complains that the fear-based arguments of the No campaign are getting “silly”, the more optimistic observer might be forgiven for hoping for at least a superficial temporary change in their tone, particularly in the light of the especially bad example which triggered the comments.

You’d think the more optimistic observer would have learned by now, eh?

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While browsing the Trade Unionists For Independence page earlier today, a story from the website of SNP Paisley MSP George Adam caught our eye. We’re unable to verify its claims, but since that wasn’t a problem for the entire UK media over Susan Calman, we offer it as an item of interest anyway. We might just give William Hill and Coral a ring tomorrow and check it out for ourselves.

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A couple of weeks ago we went to the rather excellent “Propaganda – Power And Persuasion” exhibition at the British Library in London. If that’s a bit too much of a trek for you, the book only costs £4 more than entry to the exhibition and contains a large proportion of the content. Sadly, though, it misses the single best exhibit.

The piece in question is a small, scruffy hand-written piece of paper on which press baron Viscount Northcliffe had scribbled half-a-dozen cardinal rules of propaganda – as part of his work in that role during World War 1 –  in terms so clear and concise it took our breath away. Photography was banned at the show, and the lines were so good we may yet have to go back and pay another nine quid in order to copy them down.

We’re pretty sure Scotland on Sunday’s Euan McColm has read them, though.

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