Oh good, another plan. Just three and a half years to wait.
Should we, what’s the phrase, “Save The Date”?
Rhetorical question, obviously.
If you’re in a hurry, folks, just scroll down to the video and start there, because Believe In Scotland’s latest wheeze to get hold of your folding money and stash it in their opaque maze of accounts revolves around a bold set of – well, let’s be generous and call them “assumptions”, although a better word would be “lies”.
And we’re off to a quick start, because the above is cobblers on every level.
Firstly because Plaid are NOT currently ahead in the polls. The most recent one puts them in third place on just 22%, eight points behind Reform and one behind Labour. They’ve only led in three out of 18 polls conducted since the Welsh Senedd brought in a new electoral system last year – and two of those were by a single point – and the best they could realistically dream of would be to be a partner (senior or junior) in a coalition with Labour.
Secondly, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that any such deal wouldn’t be putting Wales “on the path to independence”, as Plaid themselves have deferred any action on that goal until at least 2031.
But it’s irrelevant anyway, according to BiS, because apparently there’s no chance of any progress in 2026.
So we’re not too sure why they even brought it up. Seemingly 2029 is the key.
It’s odd that they’ve signed up with the SNP, because just moments ago we saw them saying that the SNP have blown it for the last decade and aren’t in a fit state to fight an indyref. (We can agree on that much.) But it seems they have faith in John Swinney’s shambolic party to turn it round in just a couple of years, so yay! Let’s get started!
Oh good, another talking shop of the unco guid. That’ll work.
The “Scottish Constitutional Convention” appears to have replaced the “Scottish Citizens’ Convention” that BiS promised in July 2024 and which was supposed to have delivered its final outcomes three months ago, but which failed to materialise in any way, shape or form.
Which is a shame, because according to BiS it was going to have indy support at between 62% and 65% by now.
But this one will definitely change everything.
A vote loser for Labour? In 2029? On current trajectories Labour will be lucky to still EXIST in 2029, let alone be playing a significant role in UK politics.
Labour have been in the doldrums in Scotland for almost 20 years now and it still hasn’t persuaded them to support another indyref. We must confess, we’re struggling to imagine that another bout of the same old whining from the same old faces is going to turn that around.
Reform are only slightly less popular in Scotland than they are south of the border, and are very much on the rise. The idea of them being in power isn’t noticeably more unattractive to Scottish voters than the idea of any of the other Unionist parties occupying 10 Downing Street.
Meanwhile the SNP are on very much the opposite course, a spent force with no money and plummeting membership, just about clinging on to support in the mid-30s while the Greens are tearing themselves apart with toxic infighting so bad that barely a tenth of their members bothered casting a vote in their recent leadership election, and facing potentially lethal competition for the fringe vote from Jeremy Corbyn’s new far-left party.
2029 is a long way off, but it’s fair to say there are no signs pointing towards a big win in any de-facto referendum attempted during a UK election (when Scottish issues struggle to make much impact on the political radar compared to Holyrood elections), and we very much doubt another few sessions of self-appointed worthies pontificating in a closed-door echo chamber will make a lot of difference.
Wait, we’re having a Congress AND a Convention? What’s the difference?
And the Citizens’ Convention is back on too! Huzzah! Talk, talk and more talk! All the same tossers three times over, each wearing different hats on different days! This definitely isn’t laughable Walter McMitty bullshit that’ll never happen!
Oh joy unconfined. About the 20th embarrassingly-underwhelming indy march in a row, that half the movement wouldn’t be welcome at even if it had the slightest interest in attending, which it doesn’t.
And we bet punters will be clamouring in the streets to read a “Scottish Wellbeing Economy Strategy”, especially if it’s as cheap as BiS’ last publication!
After all, they’ve lapped up all the Scottish Government’s exciting indy papers, which were free, and which were sometimes read by almost as many as 1 in every 4,000 Scots.
Then what? Oh, the SNP have to produce an alternative version of GERS, something they’ve failed to do for the last decade and have neither the willingness nor the competence to do now. (The last person in the party who could even remotely count having run away.)
But then the big guns come out.
Holy cow. We’re going to print that one again just to make sure we actually just read what we think we just read, because surely it can’t say that.
Goodness gracious. “Captured the hopes and dreams of the people of Scotland”! We’re welling up here, folks. A bunch of independence-supporting people sat around in a room, decided they liked the idea of independence, issued a press release saying so and the world just changed overnight. It’s a miracle!
(We really hope one of the people at the Convention is a copy editor, because Jesus what a grammatical trainwreck the webpage alone is. And let’s also take a moment to applaud the sensible, moderate and mature use of language like “proto-fascist”, which is always so very persuasive with the electorate and probably the reason we’ve had all those hardcore socialist governments in the last 40 years.)
Oh, but wait. The plan’s actually going to fail.
Good grief. Somehow we’ve fallen through a time vortex to 2012 and people are pretending that Labour needs Scotland to win a UK election again – one of the very first nonsenses we ever debunked.
But then? Well, then it’s easy – we just win.
Also we’ll have infinite everything and it’ll always be sunny and we’ll win the World Cup and Eurovision and everyone will have flying cars that run on the clean, renewable energy from the beaming faces of happy children and we’ll all live to 150. Yay!
Now, if you have any sense you probably glazed over about 800 words ago so we’ll just quickly sum up for the people who skipped to the end:
(1) We hold a bunch of talking shops featuring all the same people who’ve been organising talking shops since 2011 and achieving sod-all.
(2) ????
(3) This time it works! Independence!!!!!!!!!
That’s it. That’s the “roadmap”. All the problems that have seen the indy movement make precisely zero progress for a decade will just magically melt away as soon as everyone reads a Scottish Wellbeing Economy Strategy, whatever the hell that is.
The UK government will simply be overpowered by the moral force of our argument, even though it’s the exact same argument that they’ve so steadfastly and unwaveringly refused to be overpowered by since 2014.
Everyone who left or stopped voting for the SNP for a myriad of reasons will suddenly forget them all and flock back to the party – by now being led by Fatima fucking Joji or something after Stephen Flynn quits to take up a job with BAE Systems – and do what neither Alex Salmond nor Nicola Sturgeon in their pomps could achieve: win over 50% of the vote in a general election.
We’re sorry for the bad language there, folks – only the second or third F-bomb we’ve dropped on Wings in 14 years – but honest to Satan we’ve not had our intelligence insulted like this for quite some considerable time, and we have to read Karen Adam and Kelly Given’s columns in The National.
If you’re planning on sending Believe In Scotland any money to pursue this farcical haggis hunt for endlessly gullible chumps, we suggest you spend it on stamps instead and write a series of letters to Santa Claus asking him to bring Scotland independence for Christmas (making sure to mention your Wellbeing Strategy), because it’s a lot more likely to succeed.
Failing that, stay tuned for details of the upcoming online cryptocurrency venture to be launched by our brand-new company, Super-Special Magic Independence Beans For Absolutely Desperately Stupid Slavering Fucking Idiots PLC. We’ve hired Michelle Mone to front the campaign and we’re pretty sure you’ll all end up billionaires.
We mean, shit on a bike.
