Wings Over Scotland

Labour Party member Cailean Gallagher in the Herald, 7th June 2013:

“Until this week, the hope was that a Labour government at Westminster would respond with a cure. Now Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have disclosed Labour’s response to austerity: more austerity. No use sitting tight and hoping for change at Westminster – even with Labour we get a party in thrall to austerity.

So people realise austerity is not just a Tory policy, but an inevitability of the Westminster system. Alternating Labour and Tory governments at Westminster are not a route out of austerity. After 13 years of Labour, Britain is the fourth most unequal country in the developed world. It is on course to being the most unequal.”

The Sunday Mail, 19 May 2013:

“Labour are meant to be convincing Scots that we can trust them with our future. On this evidence, you would not trust them to go to the garage for chocolate.”

The Observer, 19 May 2013:

“The Scots are accustomed to having their views ignored in the British political system. Despite voting consistently for the left, Scotland has been governed by Labour for only 30 years out of 68. If England is set to elect the Conservatives, in other words, it’s hardly worth going out to vote in Scotland at all: we know what we’ll get.”

And today in QFT we’ve got three for the price of one.

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BBC News, 2.53pm today:

“Organisers of the ‘United With Labour’ campaign say they’re arguing for a fairer, better Scotland that stands strong within the United Kingdom. They’ll work with the ‘Better Together’ campaign run by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.”

Our emphasis, as ever. Poor old Alistair Darling. Where was he, anyway?

(Full package here.)

Sunday Herald, 28 April 2013:

“The Better Together campaign has many faults. It is tedious, piecemeal, relentlessly negative, and a factory for an endless supply of scare stores.

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Scotland on Sunday, 14th April 2013 (our emphasis):

“[A Labour] MP pointed out that any further devolution would need support from the Labour Party in England: ‘Johann can’t just say to Ed [Miliband, the Labour leader] this is what I want. These decisions and policies have consequences for the whole of the UK. There are Labour MPs in England now who are getting fed up with it, not just Tories.'”

We hate to harp on. But it may be that there are still some people stuck in a cave somewhere in the Hebrides who think Johann Lamont is the “leader” of a political party called “Scottish Labour” rather than a regional branch manager of one based in London, and who imagine that the findings of her commission on devolution – should there actually be any before the referendum – will become official Labour policy.

And for those people, we have four words.

The Daily Record, 5th May 2010:

“Before Margaret Thatcher, Scotland made steel, ships, cars and trucks and produced coal. By the time she had finished with our country, all those industries were devastated – and tens of thousands of proud men and their families were living in ravaged communities with no jobs and no hope.

Scotland could wake up tomorrow to the grim reality of a new Tory government, led by Thatcher disciple David Cameron. And for all his talk of “compassion”, few doubt that we will suffer again if he wins power. We spoke to five men who lost their livelihoods under the Tories, and they all had the same message for the voters: “Don’t let them loose on Scotland again.”“

Well, voting Labour didn’t work. What else could we try?

The Scottish Sun Says, 7th March 2013:

“Here’s a radical idea for the Better Together campaign.

Just once, just for a change, let’s hear something positive about why Scotland would be better staying part of the United Kingdom. Because frankly, the scare stories are wearing a bit thin.

The latest is over a leaked SNP document that’s cue for a doom-laden warning about slashing pensions, cutting defence spending and shedding public sector jobs. Strip away the hysteria and what you actually have is a sensible Government prepared to make sensible decisions about spending. A Government aware they are operating in a tough economic climate where there is no bottomless pit of money.

And that’s whether you’re an independent country or part of the UK. Is there a single household in Scotland that doesn’t have similar conversations about what they can and can’t afford? It would be a shambolic Government that didn’t behave in the same responsible way.

Bear in mind, too, this document was written a year ago in different economic circumstances and that oil prices and revenues have risen. The net effect and the hard fact is that the finances of Scots are £863-a-head healthier than the rest of the UK.

Or isn’t that scary enough to tell folk?“

Showbiz news from yesterday’s Daily Record:

“In a shameful confession that will shock their fans, cheeky TV duo Ant and Dec have admitted that one of them… voted Tory. The Geordie lads, back on ITV tonight on Saturday Night Takeaway, revealed all in a no-holds-barred interview in which they also said they’d taken drugs.

Asked about their political allegiances, the pair said they have both always voted Labour until the last election, when Ant voted Conservative for the first time. He told the Guardian’s Weekend magazine the decision would make his family in the North East of England “very angry”.

Ant said: “They certainly couldn’t give an argument for Labour for me at the moment – not a valid one. Then again, I’d struggle to give an argument for voting Conservative at the moment.””

It’s an understandable view.

A powerful reality check from Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald:

“Scotland bailed out the UK economy in the 1980s with Scottish oil revenues, and received precious little in return except factory closures and the highest mortality rates in Europe. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that any improvement in the UK economy is going to happen in London and the southeast, rather than in Scotland. Like the high-speed rail link, it might eventually extend to Manchester but no further. Scotland is on its own whether it likes it or not.”

From last year, but no less pertinent for it:

“Labour campaigned in Scotland on the basis of being the only party that will stand up to savage Tory cuts in local councils. Whilst the Tories’ vote declined significantly, their influence in Scotland has increased massively due to Labour’s willingness to enter into coalitions with them to keep the SNP out. It goes without saying that this is a complete betrayal of those who thought a Labour vote was an anti-Tory vote.”

(Ben Wray for International Socialist Group.)

We’re not quite sure what someone put in the tea at the Sunday Mail this morning, but the quoted-for-truth excerpt we’ve reproduced further down this post (emphasis ours) comes from what is a simply extraordinary editorial considering the source.

We’ve been saying the same thing since 2011, of course, but seeing it in the Mail is a bit like the Telegraph saying “Y’know, communism isn’t all THAT bad”. The Indiana Jones analogy, and what it implies about independence, is particularly startling.

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Never let it be said that Wings Over Scotland isn’t the sort of fair-minded site that would acknowledge when the Scottish press prints some reasonable and balanced commentary once in a while:

“The last time I wrote about the tone of the debate on Scottish independence, I came to the conclusion that there was little to choose between the two sides in the quality of the arguments and the calm or intelligence with which they were presented.

Since then, there has been something of an improvement on the nationalist side, perhaps through entrusting the presentation to Nicola Sturgeon rather than to other politicians I could name. But there has been an appalling deterioration on the unionist side.”

(Michael Fry in today’s Scotsman.)