Wings Over Scotland

This came out quite a few days ago, but didn’t get the attention it merited. Once again, we invite readers to ponder the “invisible hypothetical” of whether the Scottish media would have shown such complete disinterest in a piece of investigative journalism which revealed an elected representative of the SNP and some of its prominent activists discussing their own party’s complete uselessness.

We do accept that Scottish Labour being in shambolic disarray isn’t exactly hold-the-front-page stuff, and is in fact somewhere on a par with “Rain forecast for Hebrides” or “Scottish rugby team beaten at Twickenham”. But clearly the bar for headline stories is rather lower than it used to be, so you’d think it’d at least get a passing mention.

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An unnamed SNP spokesman on STV News:

“We have no wish to comment on Cllr Matheson’s private life. The issues which are important to the city are Labour’s scandalous £500,000 pay-off to a supposed anti-poverty boss which has been condemned by the charity regulator, the closure of day centres for adults with learning disabilities without consultation, and their incompetence over plans to redevelop George Square.”

Still, we’re sure that free wi-fi will be along any day now.

Joyce McMillan in the Scotsman today, as the Scottish press is finally, after three days, shamed into acknowledging what happened on Tuesday.

“What I see at Westminster now is not an alternative politics that avoids the pitfalls of nationalism, but an instinctive, backward-looking British nationalism that is even worse: a farrago of double standards about Westminster and Holyrood, and of reactionary nonsense about the nature of national identity in the 21st century, combined with a complete vacuum of progressive policy, and an instinctive willingness – on the part of the Labour Party – to side in this debate with what is perhaps the most privileged and reactionary government the UK has seen in a century.

The truth is that the tone of the No camp’s response to the independence debate has – in too many cases – been so reactionary, so negative, and so fundamentally disrespectful of the Scottish Parliament as an institution, that I now find it hard to think of voting with them, no matter what my views on the constitution.

And this, for me, is a new experience in politics – to enter a debate with a strongish view on one side of the argument, and to find myself so repelled by the tone and attitudes of those who should be my allies that I am gradually forced into the other camp.”

We’ll have more on that subject later this morning. Don’t miss it.

John Harris in the Guardian today:

“[six years ago] to be living on an estate, and in receipt of benefits, and possibly out of work, was to not just to be fair game for Oxford undergraduates, the future king and a certain kind of TV comedian, but the butt of a huge national joke. Some of us wondered where exactly what was briefly known as ‘The New Snobbery’ was headed.

We now know. Its cultural aspects were merely the tip of the iceberg – as the Labour party engaged in the rebranding of social security as ‘welfare’ and its ministers raged against ‘benefit cheats’, something poisonous was being embedded at the core of our national life.

While the Conservative party grimaced through a fleeting modernisation, it sat there, ready to be picked up by a Tory-led administration and taken to its logical conclusion.”

And, of course, by Scottish Labour.

Sometimes other writers say things better and/or more concisely than we could hope to, which is great as it’s a real time-saver for us, so we might make this a regular strand. Today’s QFT is from an excellent Iain Macwhirter piece in the Herald (as, coincidentally, was the first one), which is worth reading in its entirety, but from which we especially commend the following passages (our emphasis as ever):

“But supporters of independence hope that voters will eventually come to realise that, in a sense, they have no option but to go for broke in 2014. Scots will be the laughing stock of every stand-up comedian in Britain if they bottle out of self-government.“

“Anyone who believes that the UK Government is itching to give the Scottish Parliament more economic powers than those in last year’s Scotland Act really hasn’t been keeping up. The review of Barnett that will follow the implementation of the Scotland Act will be an opportunity for the Coalition to answer the charge that Scotland has been getting more than its fair share of public funding. With the threat of independence removed, the UK will no longer feel any need to placate Scottish demands for what many English voters believe is special treatment.“

Okay, it’s not quite as snappy as “Vote No, Get Nothing”, but it does have the benefit of being actually slightly more true.

We don’t know if anyone still reads the BBC’s “Blether With Brian” column since the Corporation banned Scottish readers – uniquely in these islands – from posting comments on it, nor can we normally think of a reason why anyone would. It’s generally the blandest-possible summary of events people have already seen for themselves, with no effort to impart any sort of insight or analysis.

However, once in a while the understated approach yields a more profoundly powerful result than screeds of polemic, and we can think of no way to better illustrate the bizarreness of Johann Lamont’s chosen line of attack at yesterday’s First Minister’s Questions than to simply relate the events as they transpired, in the most neutral and factual manner, as the national broadcaster’s Scottish political editor does today.

“How to decide who has won an election? The customary method is to count the ballot papers – and to award victory to the one with the most votes. Now the Single Transferable Vote in multi-member constituencies adds a degree of sophistication to that. But, still, the spoils tend to go to those with evident popular support.

This, apparently, is an old-fashioned outlook. Just so Twentieth Century. At Holyrood, Labour’s Johann Lamont suggested another test might be used instead. The SNP, she said, might have won the council elections “on the arithmetic”. But “on the politics” they “got stuffed.”

It is difficult to be entirely certain, but I suspect that most political leaders would probably settle, on balance, for winning “on the arithmetic”.“

Stranger still was Brian’s citation of Fat Les in support of his assertion, but other than to wistfully dwell for a moment on our long-held dream of Scottish fans repurposing the song in question with the words “Irn Bru” replacing the title, we’ll let that one pass.

…we would give it to Ian Bell, for he’s hit the nail so hard on the head in today’s Herald that he must surely have broken his own. As we’ve said before, we don’t make a habit of reproducing stuff from behind newspaper paywalls, because as journalists ourselves in our day jobs we support the idea of paying for quality journalism, and at just 75p a week a Herald online subscription is very fairly priced, unlike some.

But Bell’s piece today (which also indirectly addresses the hysterical, hypocritical faux-outrage over Joan McAlpine’s “anti-Scottish” comments) is more important than that, and deserves a nationwide audience who can be directed to it time and again over the next two and a half years. Read it below, and then please consider whether for Scotland’s sake you can afford NOT to support one of its few remaining outlets of decent, honest and reasonably balanced writing about politics.

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