DESPITE the inevitable drama of an election weekend, the events of the past few days haven’t really told us much we didn’t already know. Scotland has a democratic mandate for indyref2; Neither Douglas Ross nor Anas Sarwar will be first minister any time soon; and Scotland is a very, very different country to England. One thing that was revealed, however, was just how little London media figures know about Scottish politics. Time and time again over the weekend, the Westminster commentariat lined up to give us their hot takes on the Holyrood election. Time and time again they’ve been told to keep their half-baked opinions to themselves, but they just don’t learn.
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Nick Clegg’s pious defence of Facebook is brazen hypocrisy
on switching sides
“Facebook employs a useful idiot. He is Sir Nick Clegg,” writes Jawad Iqbal in The Times. “His official title is head of global affairs and communications but his real job is to defend the indefensible,” Iqbal says. “The latest service rendered to his tech masters is a 5,000-word essay, ‘You and the Algorithm: It Takes Two to Tango’, in which he piously declares that any harmful content on Facebook platforms is all the fault of the users,” he continues. Clegg has “gall” to write such an essay when it was not long ago he would “pour scorn” on the company as Liberal Democrat leader. “The mystery is how Clegg continues to get away with such brazen hypocrisy and no more than a passing acquaintance with anything resembling political principle. Who can forget his 2010 promise to students that there would be no rise in tuition fees, only to treble them in office?”
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The Labour leader wants to convince Scotland’s ‘squeezed middle’ that he can get everything back under control
‘Starmer should be careful what he wishes for. England might get so carried away with its own devolutionary needs that Scotland begins to feel left out again.’ Photograph: Getty Images
‘Starmer should be careful what he wishes for. England might get so carried away with its own devolutionary needs that Scotland begins to feel left out again.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Thu 24 Dec 2020 04.00 EST
Last modified on Thu 24 Dec 2020 09.18 EST
Engraved on the threshold of the Donald Dewar room in the Scottish parliament is a quote from the Labour party intellectual and MP John Pitcairn Mackintosh: “People in Scotland want a degree of government for themselves. It is not beyond the wit of man to devise institutions to meet those demands.” Few are fortunate enough to be cited so prominently within a gigantic vindication of