Now Wings aspires to become death, the destroyer of independence. But he's not Oppenheimer, he's just a bog standard Pied Piper, and frankly it's time to send him packing.

I've been keeping a vague eye on Wings Over Scotland during the election campaign, and what has struck me is how irrelevant he must suddenly seem to his dwinding band of sympathisers in the independence movement, simply as a result of his own apathy.  We're facing the most important and frankly most dangerous election in over a decade, and most independence supporters are rising to that moment by at least trying to do something positive. There's a sharp division of view about what positive action looks like, and I have my own doubts about whether splitting the pro-indy vote in lots of constituences will do more good than harm, but at least there's a kind of honest logic to picking a side and going out there and trying to win votes for your preferred pro-independence party or candidate.  That's not what Campbell has done.  He's just carried on wittering about the trans issue, like someone standing in a war zone trying to get wounded people to sign a petition to bring back smoking seats on planes. He just looks like an angry man shouting pointlessly and increasingly infrequently from the sidelines.

Or at least he did until yesterday, when he suddenly decided to participate after all in this maximally dangerous election for independence by telling his readers to vote against independence. If anyone can actually spot the difference between Campbell and the Daily Record these days, you're doing better than me.  Well, OK, maybe there are two differences - one is that the Daily Record is at least based in Scotland and the other is that it's going through the motions of pretending that its endorsement of Labour will not harm independence.  Campbell, by contrast, is making no secret of the fact that he's in the destruction business and that he wants the independence movement as we know it to cease to exist.  In fact he wants to subject it to total nuclear obliteration, as he makes clear by quoting the Bhagavad Gita via Robert Oppenheimer: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."  There's an unintentionally hilarious bit in his blogpost where he cautions against the supposed dangers of voting Alba because it might not be destructive enough, ie. in his view it might split the anti-SNP vote and help a pro-independence party to win!

This is effectively fulfilling the prophecy that many people have been making in the comments section of this blog for years, that the absolutely intentional and pre-planned end-point of Campbell's tortuous process of repositioning and reframing was for him to be able to instruct his readers that the only way to achieve independence is to vote No in an independence referendum.  What he's doing now is the exact equivalent of that, because he's saying explicitly that if you vote emphatically enough against independence, you will somehow be helping independence to rise from the ashes afterwards.  He's not stupid enough to actually believe that, but like the Record he thinks and hopes that his readers will prove stupid enough.  He knows perfectly well that you don't heal something by turning it into a corpse.  He absolutely understands that if people are daft enough to kill independence in this election as per his directions, it will stay dead.

I'll let you into a little secret.  Campbell does not see destruction as a creative act.  He does not see defeat for the SNP as a means to an end that will renew the independence cause. He sees it absolutely as an end in itself, because he loathes the SNP with every bit as much bitterness as the Record do.  And he loathes them not because of any betrayal on independence, but purely and simply because of their actions on the trans issue, which is his first and only love these days.  (And maybe just a little bit because they didn't support him in his vanity legal action against Kezia Dugdale.)  He has led his readers like the Pied Piper to act against their own interests and beliefs in service to his own narrow and petty agenda.

This guy is a cult leader who has painstakingly brainwashed you into voting against independence, and into thinking you are somehow helping independence while doing it.

Wake up.

There is nothing complicated about this.

If you believe in independence, the way to help the situation is by voting in favour of independence, not by voting against it.

You don't spoil your ballot.

You don't vote for an anti-independence party.

You vote, obviously, for a pro-independence party.

You keep the flame alive.

You don't extinguish it.

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I've previewed the constituency races in Hamilton & Clyde Valley and Inverclyde & Renfrewshire West for The National - you can read the articles HERE and HERE.