Stuart Campbell has not only turned against independence, he's turned against the rights of women and girls. If anyone is crazy enough to follow his advice today, make sure you hold him accountable for the long-term consequences.

To save you having to directly experience the final descent of Wings Over Scotland into either hell or Narnia (delete as appropriate), I'll summarise his latest post for you.

* He's telling people that the way to get independence is to vote against independence.

* He wants his readers to help inflict the most crushing defeat possible on the cause of independence, and to deliver the most overwhelming supermajority possible for a unionist government in London.

* Despite claiming only ten days ago that "Wings has never told its readers how to vote and we’re not going to start now", he is now instructing his readers to vote Labour.  He says "there’s a job that needs doing...grit your teeth and gird your loins and get it done".

* In spite of having urged Alex Salmond to set up his own party in 2021, and in spite of having then demanded that Alba adopt the most radical and potentially reckless tactics at every turn, and in spite of having partly got his way with Alba putting up nineteen candidates against the SNP in a first-past-the-post election at a moment of maximum danger for the independence cause, and in spite of - to be blunt - the sycophancy that senior Alba figures have poured on this abusive bully over the last three years, he's telling his readers to vote for the anti-independence Labour party, and not for Alba.

* Despite having lectured SNP loyalists for years that they can't use independence as a form of blackmail to get feminists to vote for a party that wouldn't respect the rights of women and girls, he's now brazenly telling people to vote Labour, the party that JK Rowling says has abandoned women, because apparently trampling on the rights of women and girls is suddenly loads of fun as long as it's done to get revenge against the SNP.

* He's inviting his readers to believe that when they vote Labour, they'll be doing the opposite of what Keir Starmer wants, because apparently Starmer has only been pretending to support Labour candidates and he actually wants the SNP to win in Scotland, not Labour. (I'm not making this up - this is literally what Campbell is claiming.)

* Despite all of the above being self-evidently bats**t crazy, one of the priceless first reactions of his readers in the comments section is: "Perfectly put, Rev, not one thing in there that anyone could argue with."

We all know that the hardcore of Wings fans are so brainwashed by their bog-standard Pied Piper that - crazy though it may seem - some of them probably will go out today and vote Labour, and then have a little chuckle to themselves about how they've screwed up the masterplan of the pro-SNP Keir Starmer.  But sometimes people who are under the influence of a cult leader eventually have an epiphany, so what I would say to those people is just remember this moment.  If in five or ten years' time you realise that voting against independence killed independence rather than saved it, if you realise that voting for the British establishment helped the British establishment rather than harmed it, if you realise that you were not in fact playing 5D chess but were just having your strings pulled by a man with a petty and destructive agenda, then for pity's sake hold that man accountable for the damage he has caused to your country and the way he has exploited you.

A few years ago, I wrote an iScot column that was critical of Campbell's proposal for a Wings political party led by himself.  Because the editor of iScot generally allows his columnists to express their personal views freely (unless that causes legal problems or whatever), he published the column as normal without that constituting any sort of editorial endorsement of what I had said.  Campbell wasn't just angry. He effectively tried to put iScot - one of only two pro-independence print magazines in existence - out of business as an act of revenge.  He published a list of supposed "backstabbers" and included iScot on it, as a result of which some people cancelled their subscriptions and put the future of the publication in peril.  Thankfully it survived in spite of Campbell's best efforts, as it thoroughly deserved to, because it's a great magazine.  But if after today anyone is vindictive enough to draw up a list of backstabbers or betrayers of the independence movement, we all know there's only one man who can possibly have pride of place at the top of the list, and that'll be the man who backed Starmer and Sarwar at the 2024 general election.

I have very few political regrets, but I'd have to say that one of the exceptions is that until a few years ago I used to defend Campbell to the hilt against the radical left, who I thought were insufferable purists for trying to exclude the most popular and persuasive advocate for independence from our movement. In my defence I'd point out that Campbell was extremely consistent in his support of independence until a certain point and it would have been almost impossible to predict that he would eventually turn against us. I would also maintain that the radical left were right about Campbell for the wrong reasons.  But nevertheless they were right about him in the sense that we'd always have been better off without him, because all he's done is build up a following and used it to try to kill independence.

What exactly is his motivation?  Until yesterday I'd have said that he prioritises the trans issue over everything else, but an endorsement of Labour rules that out as an explanation.  It must boil down to a personal vendetta against the SNP.  A number of people have traced his loss of the plot to his defeat in his vanity legal action against Kezia Dugdale, during which the SNP did not support him, and perhaps he's just never going to forgive them for that.

But for people who care more about independence than about Campbell's bruised ego, here's some rather more sensible election advice - 

Please vote today

Please remember to take your photo ID with you

Please vote for a pro-independence party

Please vote SNP if you live in one of the thirty-seven constituencies where Alba or Angus MacNeil are not standing

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My final batch of constituency profiles is in The National today - West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine, Stirling & Strathallan and West Dunbartonshire.