Wings Over Scotland

The reliably toxic Simon Johnson in the Telegraph this morning:

“Blair Jenkins, the campaign’s chief executive, published [Yes To A Just Scotland] hours after suffering an embarrassing defeat in a mock referendum at Glasgow University, where students rejected independence by a margin of two to one.”

Actual result of referendum: 62-38, a margin of 1.6/1.

Size of Mr Johnson’s casual exaggeration: 25%. (1.6 x 1.25 = 2)

But seriously, though – what is it about believing in the Union that apparently renders educated people suddenly unable to count? We have no idea, but it may go some way to explaining the UK’s credit-rating downgrade.

Last year (24 June 2012, to be precise):

“Homeowners could face a £1 billion rise in mortgage payments in an independent Scotland, Treasury axeman Danny Alexander has warned.

The world’s leading credit rating agencies earlier this year warned Scotland would not be guaranteed the UK’s AAA borrowing status.”

This year:

“The UK has lost its top AAA credit rating for the first time since 1978 on expectations that growth will ‘remain sluggish over the next few years’.

The ratings agency Moody’s became the first to cut the UK from its highest rating, to Aa1. Moody’s said that the government’s debt reduction programme faced significant ‘challenges’ ahead.”

Nice to know we didn’t have to wait for independence, eh?

Today’s press is full of reports on the Glasgow University independence referendum, in which the vote went 62-38 against on a turnout variously reported as 11%, 12% and 13%. (To our considerable surprise, this dismal level of interest was in fact regarded as a triumph, and vastly above the usual amount of engagement with student politics.)

Fewer than 2,600 people voted – despite the ballot being held somewhere students had to go anyway – so the results are barely as authoritative as a typical opinion poll. They do suggest a couple of reasonably interesting things, though.

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This sort of thing does seem to be happening with disturbing frequency at the august offices of the Scotsman these days. Yesterday’s paper ran a story under the stark headline “EU budget cuts ‘will favour the English’, says SNP”.

[EDIT: Also spun into a truly vile column by Michael Kelly today.]

You’ve been playing this game a while now, readers. See if you can guess which words from the headline don’t actually appear anywhere in the story.

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This is the text of yesterday’s radio interview between BBC Scotland’s Glenn Campbell and Lord Malloch-Brown, the former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations who also served as a Foreign Office minister in the last UK Labour government. It seems reasonable to suggest that (a) he’s not a rabid SNP stooge, and (b) he’s a pretty good authority on how Europe works.

The interview starts with the response to a question we don’t get to hear, and we’ve excised a few “um”s, “you know”s and “I mean”s for readability. All emphasis is ours. The transcript is otherwise verbatim.

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A realistic, informed and expert assessment of an independent Scotland’s relationship with Europe was accidentally reported by the BBC this morning. It’s chilly here today so we’re going to have to warm up our transcribing fingers for those who can’t access streams, but in the meantime the rest of you can listen to the audio.

This guy’s on your team. Congratulations on that.

(We’re particularly impressed by the attack on Nicola Sturgeon, just days after a poll found her to be the most popular politician in Scotland, and probably Britain. Genius.)

At the last Scottish Parliament election, UKIP secured 0.52% of the vote, a little over half the share achieved by the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party. We’re not sure why the press doesn’t give their leader, whoever it is, more front covers.

This is a letter sent to the Scotsman this week, as yet unpublished by the newspaper, in response to this. It is reproduced here with the author’s permission.

SIR – I have read David Maddox’s article on Scotland and Catalonia (19th February 2013). As a Catalan that has lived and worked in Scotland for many years and also as a former Representative of the Government of Catalonia to the UK, I was surprised by the contents of the article.

The relations between Scotland and Catalonia have traditionally been excellent and since devolution they have become even better. How would you otherwise explain the lessons learnt from the Catalan political system when designing the devolution settlement for Scotland?; or the Scottish and Catalan governments Protocol of Cooperation signed in 2002?; or the symbolism associated with the fact that the Scottish Parliament was built by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles?; or even the extremely successful visit of the First Minister Salmond to Catalonia just a few years ago? These are powerful statements of friendship between two countries.

Catalans, and the rest of the world, know that Scotland is at the most important crossroads of the last 300 years. Now it is time for Scots to decide the future of its nation. We wish Scotland and its people well and we are very pleased to see that Scotland’s future is in the best possible hands.

Xavier Solano i Bello
Tiltman Place
London

The most interestingly consistent trend of recent opinion polls has been a significant movement away from the No vote to the Don’t Know camp. Almost every one conducted in the last few months has shown the proportion of the population intending to vote against independence dropping below 50%, but the Yes campaign has only picked up a minority, with the rest now firmly undecided.

The significance of this shift shouldn’t be underestimated. Once someone’s opinion starts to change, more often than not it tends to keep moving in the same direction, unless there’s a fundamental alteration in the reasons that caused it to start. And with the anti-independence side showing no signs of abandoning their campaign of relentless negativity, that seems unlikely.

However, it also shouldn’t be OVER-estimated. A crucial section of the populace has signified its willingness to be persuaded, but if it’s to turn the headline figures around YesScotland still has to finish the job. In order to understand how that might be achieved, we need to examine the fundamental tenets of Unionism.

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It might have taken three days, but we got there in the end. After:

And before:

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For those of you not on Twitter. Click for full-fat glory.

(From here, via alert reader Paul Martin.)

We’ve been (rather childishly, we admit) suggesting that “deputy” Anas Sarwar was Scottish Labour’s real leader for longer than we care to remember now. It was nice of the Daily Record to finally confirm it for us today, though.