One of the stranger criticisms regularly levelled at this site is that we don’t attack the SNP/Scottish Government enough.

That’s weird firstly because it’s not like there’s currently a shortage of hostile media scrutiny of Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues, and secondly because we’ve never in our four-year life claimed for a moment to be neutral.

But the reality is far more nuanced than that.

Wings is openly and unashamedly a partisan pro-independence site. And because we monitor the media, and the media spends at least 90% of its time attacking the Nats, then when we point out lies and distortions in the press they’ll almost certainly have been lies and distortion aimed at the SNP, which means that highlighting them will tend to frequently involve – directly or indirectly – defending the party’s record.

Everything we write is published under the full disclosure that we’re unequivocally in favour of independence. Readers can judge our output in the prior knowledge of what side we’re on – something that can’t be said about Severin Carrell in the Guardian or David Torrance in the Herald or Tom Peterkin in the Scotsman (to name but three of many), all of whom implicitly pretend impartiality by not revealing to their readers which parties they vote for or what their constitutional preference is.

(As editor, and author of the majority of Wings articles, I’ve freely admitted voting Lib Dem for almost all my adult life, until this May when I reluctantly spoiled my ballot paper, unable in any conscience to vote for any of the candidates on offer.)

Nevertheless, while it’s not our job, from time to time we’ve voiced disagreement with SNP policies or those widely supported in the independence movement – we’ve been bitterly attacked by those on the Yes side on several occasions on issues around gender quotas and Gaelic, for example.

We also oppose the SNP’s policy of “full fiscal autonomy” (FFA), and have regularly drawn our readers’ attention to the trap being set by the Unionist parties around the extension of devolution, and both of those issues are about to come to a crucial decision point that could dictate the future of Scotland.

For more than two-and-a-half years we’ve warned that the “more powers” plans put forward by the Unionist parties meant loading more burdens, responsibilities and costs onto the Scottish Parliament, without giving it any meaningful extra powers at all.

The recent tax-credits fiasco is a case in point. On current proposals, the Scottish Government will find itself forced to devise, construct, administer and pay for a crazily complex system in an attempt to defend Scotland from the worst effects of savage welfare cuts from the Conservative government at Westminster.

(An attempt that may turn out to be entirely futile anyway – UK government ministers have repeatedly and conspicuously refused to rule out clawing back “top-ups” given to claimants by reducing their other benefits, which would leave those on low incomes still much worse off and Holyrood hundreds of millions of pounds out of pocket.)

The money and resources to do so will have to be found from Holyrood’s existing budget, which is at the same time being subjected to heavy cuts (set to amount to a 20% fall in a decade by 2018-19, according to Fiscal Affairs Scotland) so that the UK government can divert money to reducing taxes for millionaires and billionaires.

The only means available to the Scottish Government to generate cash to protect the victims of the cuts will be the power to raise income tax. But in a geographically tiny unitary state differential tax rates are wildly impractical, because it’s very easy for people – especially the wealthy who would be chiefly targeted – to move their tax address (and/or themselves entirely) out of Scotland.

The Scotland Bill which this week passed its final reading in the House Of Commons is a poison pill designed deliberately and specifically as a political tool to damage the SNP (just like GERS was before it), after an eight-year political and media onslaught has failed to do the job. The right-wing columnist Alex Massie of the Spectator called it “the smallest offer [David Cameron] thought he could plausibly escape with making”, but in reality it’s far more sinister than that.

There’s almost nothing in the Bill that genuinely amounts to a “power”. It’s mostly an accounting exercise – Scotland is being “assigned” half of VAT revenue raised in the country, for example, but only as a replacement for being given that same money in the block grant. Holyrood will still have no power to alter any aspect of VAT – cash that was previously sent to Scotland anyway has simply been relabelled.

The income tax “powers” which will be delivered, meanwhile, are also a trap. While in practice they can’t be used to raise any more money (for reasons we’ve already noted above), they have a much more real downside.

The esteemed Professor John Curtice told Radio Scotland listeners on Tuesday that even simply keeping tax rates the same as they are in England may very well result in Holyrood having less revenue:

(The Kaye Adams Programme, BBC Radio Scotland, 10 November 2015)

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“[Tax powers] have the potential to raise more money in Scotland, [but they] also come, however, with the risk that even if the rates of taxation in Scotland remain the same as they are in England, that Scotland could end up being worse off than it is at the moment. That depends on the bouyancy of the tax base, and equally of course, increasing rates of taxation doesn’t necessarily result in increased revenue. For example, if a future Scottish Government were to decide to increase the top rate of tax from 45p to 50p, then it would be facing the potential risk that those who are liable to that tax decide to move south of the border.“

What Prof. Curtice points out is that the Scotland Bill effectively largely removes the “pooling and sharing” safeguard the No campaign sold as a key benefit of the Union. (Interestingly, he believes there should be a referendum on the Scotland Bill.)

He notes that if any future UK economic growth is disproportionately concentrated in England (and what that really means in practice is London, where the vast majority of the “recovery” since 2010 has occurred), then Scotland will lose out because even with tax rates the same, the tax base will have fallen behind and there will no longer be a Barnett compensation to make up for it.

Because the Scotland Bill gives Holyrood almost no powers to generate growth or jobs (the only one which arguably has the potential to do so to a small degree is the ability to cut Air Passenger Duty, which Scottish Labour is bursting a gut to make politically impossible), that’s quite likely to happen.

At BEST, therefore, the tax powers will leave Scotland where it is now, except loaded with extra administrative costs and responsibilities. On almost any plausible scenario the Scottish Government and the country will be significantly financially damaged, having to spend more money from a reduced budget just to stand still.

The political problem for the SNP is that it campaigned on a demand for more powers, but then Labour’s collapse in England destroyed its ability to shape those powers to Scotland’s advantage. With a Tory majority, assisted by Labour abstaining or even voting with it (as on the rejected devolution of tax credits), the UK government has been able to ride roughshod over even the SNP’s huge proportion of Scottish MPs.

(The electorate voted No last September, but then they also voted in 56 SNP MPs because they didn’t trust Westminster to keep its promises, and the media led them to expect a hung parliament in which the Nats could hold the balance of power over the devolution negotiations. Labour’s uselessness in England wrecked that plan.)

The resulting Scotland Bill represents the worst of all possible worlds (why wouldn’t it? Why would a UK government, especially a Tory one with nothing to lose in Scotland, voluntarily hand over loads of goodies once it had secured a No vote?) and the opinion of the SNP’s own supporters seems to recognise that fact very clearly.

A poll run on Twitter this week had a striking result:

While not scientific, the nature of social media makes it likely that most respondents to the poll were Yes/SNP-sympathetic, and with a decent sample size the resounding nature of the figures – given that “more powers” is still officially SNP policy – is a powerful indicator of grassroots feeling.

Rejecting the Bill is still an option that’s open to the Scottish Government. It requires legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament to come into force, and the SNP has not ruled out blocking it. Much will depend on the “fiscal framework”, the all-important arrangements for exactly how the block grant will be adjusted to account for the new “powers”, which are currently completely unknown.

(The SNP may also feel that even if the Bill’s effects are negative in themselves, the principle of bringing ostensibly major aspects of governance to Holyrood will make the final step to independence seem smaller and easier in the event of a future second referendum, especially if a UK-imposed devo package has made things economically worse for Scotland anyway. We have no idea, they don’t consult us on stuff.)

In their haste to celebrate, the Unionists have already given the game away regarding the Bill and its true purpose, which is to siphon money from Scotland to Westminster while damaging the SNP. It remains to be seen whether the party can extricate itself politically from the corner it’s rather painted itself into by sticking to its FFA demands.

But what seems to be in no doubt is that as things stand, the people can see the trap this site’s been warning about for a very long time as what it is. And if the SNP walk dumbly into it, we’ll be at the head of the lynch mob with a torch and a pitchfork.