wings over scotland | unserious people – News Block

Tuesday’s front-page headline in The National was more or less the political equivalent of introducing yourself to your new next-door neighbor by saying “Hello, nice to meet you, I’m Jimmy from No.22 and I definitely wasn’t the one who killed your cat last night.”

Humza Yousaf’s grand master plan of an independence strategy is imploding faster than the OceanGate Titan, and hardly less disastrously. And unless you’re one of the tragic victims’ colleagues, family, or friends aboard the doomed ship, it’s all the more painful to watch.

Ian Blackford gave a pitiful performance on last night’s Representing Borders:

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your line of “Our leader just gave a blockbuster speech and we’ll tell you what it really meant sometime next year, maybe.” it was a lurid piece of political television.

But the truly harrowing viewing occurred earlier in the week, when Comical Ali-esque “Minister for Independence”, Jamie Hepburn, snuck into Scotland tonight after what we can only assume was a few hours of pub mingling.

We had only seen the brief Twitter clip until this morning, but after steeling ourselves to listen to it all, we thought you needed to watch it too to understand the magnitude of the mess pro-independence supporters are now in.

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For nearly eight excruciating minutes, a grinning, giggling Hepburn paused, swerved, and dodged her way through Colin Mackay’s simple and reasonable questions, desperately clinging to the patently ridiculous fantasy that Westminster will collapse if the SNP wins 29 seats. in the UK next year. election, despite the fact that they have not managed to cede when the SNP had 56 seats, when it had 35 seats and when it has 46 seats as it does now.

He demanded that, rather than having the temerity to challenge him, Mackay ask questions of the UK government (who were not represented on the show that night) which the UK government has been asked many times already and the answers to which we already know by heart. . .

By watering down Nicola Sturgeon’s already weak version of a de facto referendum to the point where it is essentially homeopathic, the SNP has more or less removed any lingering pretense of genuinely seeking independence.

Who apparently hopes his voters will be satisfied with such a precipitous retreat into a policy that is so obviously has less than zero credibility “35% of the vote is a mandate for independence!”FFS, in fact, shows the absolute contempt he has for them.

“Yes, this is an absolute load of piss that a brain damaged chimpanzee wouldn’t swallow, but the lady and I are spending over £200,000 on each other over the next three years, come what may, so we don’t care. shit and what You’re going to do it, huh? is what Hepburn’s face said throughout the piece, and it was very much in keeping with the general tone of the SNP today.

(The party’s lack of response when asked how much of its members’ money would be paid to Ms. Hepburn, who already has a full-time job and hasn’t said anything about giving it up, was entirely in the character of the two interviews. .)

Alex Massie of The Times and Spectator has been calling it out for months, and it’s hard to blame him because why should journalists and columnists bother to do their job properly when politicians aren’t even making a token effort to pretend anymore? , as they were still a year ago?

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But so rudely now they insult SNPs all in Scotland, regardless of their political loyalties, that even Massie was forced to wake up from his usual arrogant aloofness and loosen up a bit this week in stupefied exasperation.

On that last line, we agree 100%.

Today is the last sitting day of the Scottish Parliament before the summer recess. This afternoon MSPs will head off camera to spend the next nine and a half weeks soaking up the sun on beaches of the kind of exclusive holiday destinations you can afford when you’re pocketing the better part of £6,000 a month and don’t have to. showing up for work or being asked uncomfortable questions by the press.

(Or more than £8,000 a month for ministers like Hepburn, who makes up almost half of SNP MSPs – as far as we know ministers and junior ministers are paid the same, and there are 28 in all of the SNP’s 64 MSPs . )

And to be fair, if you were them, you’d probably be laughing too.