By Rab Bruce’s Spider

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, with the media doing their best to create news stories out of nothing very much. Kezia’s inevitable election to leader of Labour’s Scottish branch office has been much hyped but really means it’s business as usual for the "SNP Bad" clan. It’s a nuisance for Yessers because it means we can no longer refer to her as Deputy Dugdale and will need to come up with some other mocking soubriquet.

As for the news that the DWP have been lying to the public in one of their leaflets which extolled the virtues of Benefits Sanctions, this seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the mainstream media, perhaps because a Government Department deliberately lying to people is now regarded as standard practice and therefore unworthy of comment.

There were, though, two stories which are revealing because of how they show the British State operating.

First there was Michelle Mone’s elevation to Business Start Up Tsar and perhaps to the House of Lords. Rev Stuart Campbell did a fine job of examining her business career on Wings Over Scotland so there’s no need to go into that here. Suffice to say that, whatever her qualifications for this new role, running a profitable business and providing hundreds of UK jobs don’t seem to be among them.

Then there’s the ongoing Jeremy Corbyn saga. It is fantastic that, at last, someone is standing up and decrying the neo-Liberal agenda and the rightward drift of the Red Tories. The UK needs a Labour Party who will actually act in opposition rather than abstain on every Tory measure. However, even if Jeremy Corbyn becomes the next Labour leader, it isn’t going to help the case for Scottish independence. For one thing, Corbyn is a Unionist and will resist any moves for Scotland to leave the Union. For another, his election may well split the Labour Party in two, thus reducing the impact his policies could have when half his MPs either set up a new Party or bite the bullet and cross the floor to become Blue Tories.

Whether he will win remains in doubt because the Establishment are going all out to stop him, adopting exactly the same tactics as were employed against the Yes campaign during the IndieRef. Corbyn and his followers haven’t actually been called Nazis yet but he’s been accused of anti-Semitism and his followers are, naturally, vile online abusive trolls, while his policies are extreme and his economics laughable. It all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? In fact, his policies are pretty much in line with what was the norm forty years ago and his economic theories are based on those of some very eminent economists.

However, the really interesting thing about these two stories is that they demonstrate a very simple truth. Michelle Mone was vocal in her support of Better Together during the IndieRef and has been rewarded, thus confirming to wealthy individuals that the State will look after them if they say the right things. On the other hand, anyone who argues against the Establishment will, like the Yes campaign and Jeremy Corbyn, be mercilessly attacked. Whatever the eventual outcome of these events, that is the real message we are being given here.