Wings Over Scotland | The Slowest Dawning

Now, readers, it’s not much of a secret that anyone who’s still supporting the SNP in the hopes that they’ll deliver Scottish independence is – and let’s put this as gently and kindly as possible – a bit thick.

From a membership high of 125,000 in the run-up to the 2021 Holyrood election, fully 60% have now wised up and left, and the 40% still left paying annual subscriptions to a party that’s stolen their money TWICE and spent it on pepper pots are pretty much by definition the dumbest of dum-dums.

But it looks like even they’re just about beginning to get it now.

Five more years and they might have just about woken up.

The National reports today that there’s a great disturbance in the Force over the SNP’s draft agenda for their national conference in a few weeks’ time, at which there will be no debate on independence strategy, despite the failure of John Swinney’s approach to this year’s Scottish Parliament election to produce the SNP majority that he promised would lead to a second indyref.

And, y’know, there should be a disturbance. The provisional agenda is a laughable, woke-obsessed embarrassment of a thing that harks back to the (cough) glory days of Nicola Sturgeon’s reign, which is now three-and-a-half years in the past. How time flies when you’re having fun, eh gang?

Wings has naturally obtained a copy of the full document, which you can peruse for yourself here. But allow us to present for you some highlights of what the SNP is prioritising above independence for the next 12 months.

The National Secretary spelling his own name wrongly in the very first section is an auspicious start. But this is a significant change to be sneaking in. It now provides a means for the party to expel anyone who disagrees not with its aims or policies, but with its general “direction”, or indeed for any “other activities” that the leadership might take umbrage at.

For a party where dissent is already locked down tighter than a drum and where a challenge to the leader has been made all but impossible, it’s a remarkable exercise in authoritarian paranoia.

Oh good, some more “white papers”. Those have been SUCH a success.

“What’s most important is that we have more black trans disabled vegan cooncillors, but this must not result in tokenism, even though tokenism is the only thing it can possibly result in, and it must be evidence-based, even though the entire point of it is to override all the available evidence (in the form of votes) about who members actually want as candidates.”

Interestingly the resolution calls for an increase in representation for “women”, but does not specify a definition of that term. It’s left to the reader’s imagination to ponder whether it includes blokes in frocks, but we all know where the smart money’s going.

And that’s the last clue we’re giving you.

Hmm, tricky one. Has anyone considered building some ferries?

Oh come on now, what’s the worst that could happen if you don’t have any rules governing the work of the Financial Scrutiny, Audit and Risk Committee?

“We’re not very popular! Quick! Everyone to the echo chamber!”

“All the horses are gone! Lock that stable door!”

“YSI calls for conference to praise YSI.”

We’ll be candid with you here, readers, the “work in this area” done by Young Scots For Independence has escaped our notice. We’re unaware of their having produced “clear, accessible, evidence based resources” that have been “made widely available to members, activists and the wider Yes movement”.

We do remember someone who DID do that, some time ago.

But curiously the SNP don’t seem to be very interested in talking to them or seeking their advice.

“Conference demands to have its cake, and also to eat its cake.”

“Let us be bold and fearless in our discussions, so that we may bravely state without shying away from controversy, that people shouldn’t beat up nurses.”

[This is all pretty transphobic, can we delete? – NatSec.]

That leads us neatly into the “Social Justice” section.

Short version:

?

You lost, lads. Cope.

It has for many years been the official policy position of the Scottish Government that sex work is violence against women and girls (leaving aside the fact that it doesn’t know what women or girls are).

But it appears that the SNP’s controversy-dogged, sex-offender-infested “Out For Independence” affiliate, together with its equalities convener Sadie Matthews and disabled members convener Michael Gibbons (those being the movers of this resolution), wish to overturn that stance.

Between them, Matthews, Gibbons and OFI appear as resolution movers a whopping 27 times in the provisional agenda. (We’d show you a pic of the OFI’s convener too, but their identity is a secret. No, really.)

All three, unsurprisingly, also appear as movers of the next resolution on the agenda.

At this point we’ll direct you to our extensive previous coverage of this extremely dangerous legislation, otherwise we’ll be here all day.

We asked Grok for its best guess at the number of trees in Scotland.

At a figure of 2.5bn, the resolution would increase Scotland’s tree population by 0.0018%. That is, we think, ONE extra tree for every 55,555 existing trees in Scotland. Take THAT, climate change!

This is a curious bit of retail politics. Anyone who gets free bus travel now (a policy currently costing around £200m a year and rising fast) is to get it for life, whereas anyone NOT currently in receipt of it won’t get it until they’re 60. Rotten luck for anyone born in 2003 or earlier, there. But hey, the SNP sure knows its voter demographics.

(And yes, there’s a £5bn budget deficit looming, but we’ll just find all the extra money somewhere, right? Maybe somebody can drop Peter Murrell a line.)

“Sod independence, let’s spend conference debating things we have absolutely no power over and which are definitely not going to happen.”

We’re absolutely sure that “MOAR IMMIGRATION!” is what the hard-pressed communities of Easterhouse and Springburn are clamouring for above all else from their elected representatives.

When they’re not fretting over Ukraine, obviously.

And with a second desperate plea to disassociate Scotland entirely from Satan (Elon Musk) and all his evil works (people disagreeing with you), it’s all over.

(X stopped Grok from creating deepfake nudes eight months ago, after about a week of people exploiting a loophole in its safeguards, whereas numerous other AI engines still allow it, but let’s not have pesky facts getting in the way of the witch-hunt against Mr Musk, who is after all basically Hitler but with electric cars and space rockets.)

It’ll be exciting to see which of the above survive to the final agenda. But even at this stage they tell you everything you need to know about what motivates the activist faction of the SNP membership, and how far down that list independence features.

We haven’t faked that screenshot. Go and look for yourself. We’d gone onto the Scottish Government website to look for the entirely performative new draft indyref bill, which doesn’t appear on the front page. We eventually found it nine items down the “Publications” page, below “Improving Gypsy Traveller Sites Guidance on minimum site standards”.

And even The National was a bit embarrassed by the move.

How much longer the people who still haven’t left the party yet will take to finally realise what the majority spotted some time ago is a question remaining to be answered.

But if even “Hashtag” Bill Cruickshank – the most tigerishly loyal diehard of all the two-watt bulbs in the party’s ranks – has reached the end of his tether (and to be fair we’ve had false dawns on that front before), it looks like there might finally be a speck of light on the horizon.