THE thing about looking back at the independence referendum, is how long ago it all seems.
Go and look at some videos on YouTube. Footage of Jim Murphy humphing his Irn-Bru crate round the country’s town squares looks positively antiquated.
This here is The National’s completely unscientific list of the funniest indyref1 moments.
They aren’t in any order and there are undoubtedly hunners of moments also worth listing.
1. Imperial Masters
WHILE these aren’t in any order this still has to be number one.
Some 104 Labour MPs, including half of Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet, were shipped in from all over the UK to lovebomb the rebellious Scots.
And in one of the most bizarre decisions ever made, the high heid yins at Labour HQ decided to march all the MPs through Glasgow city centre.
This demonstration of solidarity was overshadowed by protests, including a man following the group in a rickshaw blaring out The Imperial March from Star Wars. Taking to a megaphone, he shouted: “People of Glasgow, this is your imperial masters,” he shouted, persued by TV cameras and journalists. “Say hello to your imperial masters.
“These lovely people, they have travelled all the way from England to tell us they are better to rule us than anybody else, our imperial masters. People of Glasgow your imperial masters have arrived.”
The then-shadow equalities minister Kate Green was not impressed. “Don’t be silly,” she told him.
2. Help Me, Rona
WHEN the indyref1 campaign started the Scottish Secretary was LibDem Michael Moore. He was known to be calm and methodical but not a warrior. And what the Better Together side needed was a fighter. So in comes Alistair “The Bruiser” Carmichael. The Westminster LibDem spin machine went into overdrive.
Here was a man with steel, they said, someone who would take the fight to Alex Salmond.
One paper claimed Carmichael was the “hellraising streetfighter” the No campaign needed.
His first test came early on in a clash with Nicola Sturgeon on Scotland Tonight. The SNP politician monstered him. It was brutal. The poor LibDem had to beg the show’s host to be rescued.
“Come on, you can hold your own, surely,” Sturgeon said.
“You don’t have to keep appealing to Rona, come on.”
“I’m sure I can hold my own,” he replied, adding: “But I’m trying to play by the rules and I think you ought to as well.”
3. The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars ...
WHEN he was defence secretary – and still a Tory MP – Philip Hammond warned that an independent Scotland would be at risk of threats ... from outer space.
Hammond said: “In the past, the threats we faced came only from the sea, from land and, more recently, from the air.
“Now, they also come from two new domains – space and cyber-space – and from non-state protagonists as well as from nation states.”
Weirdly, when asked about the comments, a government insider said the nature of such threats was “classified”.
For our full list of the top 10 funniest moments, pre-order your copy at www.thenational.scot/shop
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