Wings Over Scotland

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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Same energy.

Although to be scrupulously fair to General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmany Melchett, he did at least actually launch an offensive from time to time, rather than just putting out occasional half-arsed discussion papers and press releases about it.

The SNP has for quite some time been a hollow shell of a political party. Like the Conservative Party, its members have been systematically stripped of all policy-making powers, with decisions of conference on major issues simply ignored and other policies pushed through (most notably “gender reform”) which have never been put in front of conference for debate at all.

The party is now primarily a vehicle for processing cash and funnelling it to carefully selected and ideologically vetted activists, mostly from the fundamentalist youth wing, who are given well-paid jobs working for MPs and MSPs or parachuted into council seats in return for their unquestioning loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon.

And at this, it must be admitted, the SNP is still a highly effective operation. Which is fortunate, because without UK government money it would be bankrupt.

Above are the Electoral Commission’s donation figures for the third quarter of 2022. They note that 100% of the SNP’s reportable income for that period came from the UK government’s coffers – a trait shared with Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the DUP.

Given that three of those four parties are nationalists committed to removing various constituent parts of the UK, one might almost be tempted to commend Westminster’s generosity. But perhaps it knows exactly what it’s doing.

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It’s THAT day again.

Try to feign some interest, it’s only polite.

Can this really be six and a half years ago?

We suddenly feel very old.

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Word reaches us, readers, that Nicola Sturgeon was “furious” when she joined the most recent meeting of the SNP’s Westminster group by Skype. Her rage was driven by the suggestion that the party should trigger a Holyrood election to act as a de facto independence referendum, a policy we’re reliably told is supported by a number of MPs who are too scared of being browbeaten by Sturgeon in front of their colleagues to actually speak out in favour of it.

(We won’t mention their names at this point.)

Our source mentioned to us that they seemed to remember an interview in which the First Minister had revealed a possible reason for her extreme antipathy to the idea – one for the BBC’s extensive and rather good three-part documentary “Yes/No – Inside The Indyref”, which was broadcast in August 2019 and never seen again.

It’s not available on iPlayer or YouTube, but fortunately we happened to still have the show recorded on our Sky+ box, so we went to check, and lo and behold our source’s recollection was correct. Apologies for the slightly wonky quality of this video, as we had to record it off the TV screen.

We’ve transcribed it below.

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You can’t move on social media today without tripping over effusive tweets from SNP MPs and MSPs singing the praises of departed Westminster leader Ian Blackford and admiring all his achievements in the position over the last five years, although weirdly nobody has actually listed any of them.

Wings Over Scotland would like to pay its own tribute by remembering this line in the sand drawn by Blackford in August 2019 and on many other occasions.

Thank goodness he didn’t allow that to happen, eh readers?

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…until we can all start actually trying to achieve independence again.

(Unless they replace him with Kirsty sodding Blackman or something, obv.)

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Left: February 2020. Right: November 2022.

Or possibly the other way round, we’re not sure. All we know is that we’re always surging upwards and forwards but somehow never actually getting anywhere.

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Five and three quarters years ago.

If anyone knows when “this process” will have ended and we’ll get our choice – or indeed what she achieved for Scotland in the Brexit negotiations – do let us know.

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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