The fake red flag
The Daily Record’s run a whole clutch of articles of a vaguely positive nature towards independence recently, which is nice. We assume Torcuil Crichton must be ill. But an editorial leader column today commenting on the Yes campaign’s encouraging poll figures and identifying the SNP’s social-justice policy programme as the reason had an intriguing line buried in the middle of it.
Hang on. What does that mean, exactly?
Because Labour has long given up its short-lived pretence that the Scottish branch of the party is in any way autonomous. Any remaining shreds of doubt over that were thoroughly extinguished by the selection debacle in Falkirk, where an entirely Scottish matter has been kept under the control of London HQ to the extent that it’s still not clear whether Johann Lamont has even seen the party’s internal report.
(At official party events her position is made crystal-clear: she’s not the leader of anything called “Scottish Labour”, but the “Leader of the Labour Party in Scotland”.)
But what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that there’s only one Labour Party, and that there can therefore only be one set of Labour Party policies. The party has made that fact pretty indisputable too, with its “One Nation” branding and much talk of unifying policy north and south of the border, whether it be an end to “something for nothing” universal benefits in Scotland or bringing the Scottish NHS into line with the privatised English one.
So what’s the Record getting at when it talks about Labour in Scotland operating under “a different banner from the rest of the UK”? There’s really only one thing it can mean – that any commitments to left-wing initiatives made by Scottish Labour in the next eight months, or any promises with regard to greater devolution, will be lies.
If UK Labour and Scottish Labour are working under different banners, one of those banners must be false. And since UK Labour is in charge of everything, it’s not hard to work out which one it’ll be. It rather looks as if the Record has given up urging its favoured party to be socialist, but recognising that the centre-right positioning of the UK leadership is toxic in Scotland, can only plead with it to pretend to be socialist in order to win the referendum, before shame-facedly ditching the charade in 2015.
The only rational interpretation that can be put on the editorial’s words is that Labour must grit its teeth and deceive the Scottish public in the name of saving the Union. Scottish voters might want to keep that in mind.
If I actually bought the Record, I’d stop buying it.
MMMMMmmmmmmmmmm, 1979 again?
Such things used to be called “false flag” operations. The aim was to deceive, and still is
Labour must grit its teeth and deceive the Scottish public
That shouldn’t be too difficult.
In one of those hilarious episodes that never really got reported all parties had to use their true names in the European elections for 2009 and were not allowed to use their registered party descriptions because of all the fuss Labour, the Tories and the Lib-Dems had made about the SNP registering, “Alex Salmond for First Minister”, in 2007 as a party description which then allowed the SNP to put that on the ballot paper.
So in 2009 the truth was out as never before. Labour was Labour, the Conservatives were the Conservatives and the Liberal-Democrats were the Liberal-Democrats on the ballot paper with not a Scottish variety of any of them to be seen. The Scottish regions of these parties hated it.
That why under the, “The Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2010”, they quickly changed the rules and now all parties can stick the word, “Scottish”, before their genuine party name so we’re back toe where we started with “Scottish” varieties of these parties on the ballot paper.
I came to a differing conclusion, that it was a public shot across the bows to Lamont and Co to come up with something at your spring conference or else.
I recall The Sunday Mail also issuing a similar rebuke last year.
Hard to see the Record/Mail ever deserting Labour but I suspect neither will want to have been on the wrong side after a YES vote either.
They are also fully aware of what will happen to the Labour party post Indy if it says NO whilst it’s voters go YES.
So maybe they’ll start giving LfI more space and positive coverage ?
And of course if the trend in Westminister polling seen this week continues then it won’t matter a damn as Labour will be nowhere near power.
I think so. I couldn’t figure out what that bit meant, but I think Stu has nailed it. Hopefully Labour won’t pay any attention.
To be fair the Con/Dem’s pulled it off throughout 2009/10. With same massive backing bias from the BBC along with all UK owned national and local newspapers, Lamont and co will be pretty confident they can get away with saying anything to Scotland.
“If that is a different banner from the rest of the UK, so be it. ”
Is this not the definition of being independent from the ROTUK?
From the point of view of someone who genuinely wants to save the UK, then this line of action is tantamount to reporting that ‘The operation was successful, but the patient died’.
If the DR really wants SLAB to fly a different banner, then it should be supporting LFI.
My take in this from earlier:
“Only Labour can win this battle for the UK and they have to run up a red flag for Scotland and sail under it. If that is a different banner from the rest of the UK, so be it.”
I noticed this too, the problem of course is they are literally (and otherwise) a one nation party. But the Record is effectively telling them to say one thing in public (rUK) and another thing in public (Scotland).
At some point that’s got to fall apart.
No, I think Stu is right. They’re telling Labour to go all Red Flag Old Labour in Scotland to get a No vote. Then they can do what they like of course.
I live in hope that a Labour MSP will find it within themselves to put their head above the parapet and declare that they will vote yes. Can you imagine how that would change the game
What happened when Johann mentioned Scotland taking a slightly different course in policy ? – Her Westminster colleagues all shouted her down and told her ‘No way’.
Frankly the Record is barking up the wrong tree here. They may be trying to encourage, or indeed scare Lamont and co into fighting for alternative policy but we all know it isn’t going to happen.
scottish labour, is there a more embarrasing group of people?
Going red flag old Labour in Scotland would mean JoLa retracting her ‘something for nothing’ stance though. Or maybe they’ll just hope no one remembers it.
i would love to know what the likes of dr richard simpson thinks about that vile woman being his leader.in his quieter moments.
Didn’t she deny saying it already?
Or… They have some inside knowledge of an impending LFI coup?
I think this might be DR positioning itself for nearer 18/9/14 depending on how YES is performing and then depending on how LFI/LPIS they can flip easily either way. Think they are covering themselves with an each way bet. Not very confident I think!
If Stu’s interpretation is right,and I think it is,The Record are saying that Labour should deceive the people of Scotland in order to secure a No vote.The Record would be wrong to encourage any political party to do such a thing because they would be complicit in the deception.So why are they telling their readers about the deception they’d like to perpetrate upon them? It all seems quite bizarre.
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
Labour the most deceitful party, let us remember that.
They will never depart from UK Labour, but will try very hard aided by the MSM to give a different message, for the moment anyway.
They should remember though,” o! what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”
They do not have the wit nor the politicians to make it real. It will bite them back.They are watching the New labour vote falling and they are in panic mode, so they will try anything to hoodwink us. However we are watching as never before.
The people’s flag is palest pink
It’s not the colour you might think
The middle classes stand and cheer
The Labour government is here
We’ll change the country bit by bit
So nobody will notice it
And just to show that we’re sincere
We’ll sing The Red Flag once a year
@Croompenstein – there’s a shiver running round the Labour Party in Scotland looking for a spine…..
A badly worded statement from the DR.
Aren’t they trying to say that the Labour Party should run up the red flag for Scotland, i.e. stand on more ‘traditional’ policies.
They are acknowledging (I think) that this is not what most of the rUK want from Labour, especially in the key English marginals they need to win.
But so be it – Labour lose 2015 election on a manifesto geared to keeping Scotland in the union.
They haven’t thought it through. Voters can already see Labour not winning in 2015 so any promises from them are irrelevant (assuming anyone believed them in the first place).
The ‘One Nation’ Labour Party are more of a threat to Scotland than Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron`s Tories ever were and will be.
I regard them as I would an ardent ‘Home Counties’ Tory.
Quite correct Morag. This is Ultimate Jam Tomorrow *super flavour brand. Hit the Scots hard with fictitious old Labour rhetoric and promises to save the union. The DR has obviously been rattled with the latest poll results and they are worried Team Lamont is not up to the task.
Time for Labour for Indy to rebrand as the Scottish Labour Party and trademark it.
I don’t know, I initially thought it meant essentially breaking away from the better together line. I interpreted it as saying ‘Scotland hates the conservatives, and the lib dems are not much better. So only Labour can really make the argument for staying in the UK, and if that means they have to push their own agenda and fly a different flag to conservative/lib dem and better together in general’. Of course your interpretation is equally, probably more likely. but we know their policies aren’t going to change anytime soon and may as well be conservative-lite, so that’s hardly going to work anyway. Interestingly, most people I have seen resistant to independence are hardcore labour supporters, and dislike SNP.
Rev, Why not ask the Record for a comment on what they actually mean.
This would be a massive risk for Labour, especially in the run up to a general election; just imagine what their new best friends, the Daily Mail, will have to say when it looks like they are reverting back to their left wing roots in Scotland. The whole of the right wing press would jump on this,they would just LOVE it to happen, what a turn off for the swing voters in the southern marginals. It would almost guarantee a tory win in 2015.
O/T just completed a yougov questionnaire and after first asking who I’d vote for in a General Election, a few more questions in it asks do I think Scotland should be independent. There were some questions about immigrants before that and the question directly after it asked for what ethnicity, giving choices of Scottish, English, Irish, Welsh, can’t recall if British was an option, cos I ticked other ( I’m Northern European for the purposes of this kind of question!) just a wee heads up someone is asking the question in relation to GE voting and stuff on immigration.
Awfurfuksake.
Sommat else thats stupit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25917819
I didn’t know that the Americans, Mexicans, Polish and Romanians were Nazis…
“So what’s the Record getting at when it talks about Labour in Scotland operating under “a different banner from the rest of the UK”? There’s really only one thing it can mean – that any commitments to left-wing initiatives made by Scottish Labour in the next eight months, or any promises with regard to greater devolution, will be lies.”
They are shifting from Nu-Labour to Old Labour. Gearing up for supporting LFI when the time comes. Doesn’t really matter anyhow as their readers are already moving in that direction.
Only labour group in Scotland with a red flag is LFI.
NU-Labour is dead in Scotland, so are it’s leaders. Even I could no longer bring myself to vote for them in any election. Bye Bye Lamont, Curran, Murphy and Sarwar.
Spock would be proud of such logical analysis Rev. Lies are all they have to offer, but with political stock so low in the eyes of the public, this is fine with newliebour. Weasel words would follow on the heels of a No result.
And if that happens, could you get Kirk to beam me up please.
@Paula
Wow! Jackson Carlaw jumps the shark!
Surely they simply mean – keep up the good work chaps – we’ve got your back …whilst trying to look all impartial and complicated…
Labour has been saying one thing and doing another in Scotland for decades.
Alan Grogan’s LFI offers some hope of an alternative Labour voice, though I cant quite work out what their objective is … other than the obvious and declared support for Indy. I would have thought given the support they are getting, there would have been a scramble to get a bona_fide Scottish Labour party registered and up and running asap. But no … as far as I heard they have no such intentions … which I just cant understand … unless in some way they are hoping to revive the carcass of the existing corrupt and ideologically lost and defunct UK Westminster Labour!. Though I cant see how that would work …. To my reckoning creating such a party now .. would temp quite a number of Labour stalwarts and traditionalist away from following the ‘BT workers national executive’ in London and join the YES camp. But my suggestion falls on deaf ears …. Labour.scot sounds good!
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
(It’s “practise” when it’s a verb.)
This is not their first shot though. They’ve been at it for generations. And they think they can say it all in clear because they have a massive sense of entitlement.
Sorry I’m O/T but Mr McDougall has been at it again…YAWN!
http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/8652-better-together-chief-under-fire-after-oil-fund-claims-dismissed-by-norwegian-official
Got to love those “leaders” of Better (Bitter) Together. When you have nothing to say dream up a lie, the bigger and more outlandish the better.
This should be a workable strategy for Labour. Until September they hang red flags on everything north of the border and the Tories agree to say nothing about it. Hostilities between these two parties, however phoney, do not need to be operational until after the referendum.
As always with propaganda the requirement is not that it is true, but that it is so widely broadcast that many people believe it. In this I’m confident the Record will play its part bravely.
To be clear, the Record’s sole purpose is to get the lLabour party elected in Westminster nothing else .It’s naive to think anything else.Trinity. Mirror Group don’t care except for the band of Labour MPs in the so called ” seat of power” in Westminster,who’ll pander to Middle England’ and London’s demands
So why did the editor of the Record tell Labour voters that Scottish Labour are going to pretend to Scots to be socialist, a pretence to be given up after the referemndum.
I am rather more optimistic about the Record’s change of stance. A double page spread screaming that it is too close to call cannot be anything other than a huge aid to the YES campaign and they are very aware of that.
Vronsky says:
28 January, 2014 at 10:20 pm
“and the Tories agree to say nothing about it. Hostilities between these two parties, however phoney, do not need to be operational until after the referendum.2
To save the Union it will help Labour to be seen facing up to the Tories, as we saw in last weeks QT. Also enhances their phoney socialist clothes.
According to the FT the MoD are to appoint, within weeks, a private sector partner to manage its entire military estate from airfields to training bases. Sorry can’t access link. Wonder how Labour will react to that? And, come independence, would they support the SG cancelling these contracts in Scotland?
@ gillie
Brilliant! Made me laugh.
For my sins I check the Daily Record website most days and its been very noticable that pro-independence stories have been given favourable coverage over the past few weeks. If I had no prior knowledge of this newspaper and was told it was an extremely pro-Union publication I would be quite surprised.
Sadly I do have knowledge of the DR I would be shocked if they were in the process of adopting a neutral stance on the referendum but I think they at least deserve some praise for the stories they have highlighted recently.
BTW the ‘journalist’ Lance Price was on the paper review on the BBC News Channel. He produced this piece of nonsense for CBS News in America, the amount of glaring inaccuracies are astonishing.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scotlands-independence/
I definitely know some people who are worried about a YES vote because they know that Scotland is a Socialist Country but WOULD NOT want Johann Lamont or any of her NEW Labour Party to be elected as the Government of an Independent Scotland . I am voting YES because I want the SNP to be the government of an Independent Scotland . We are a socialist progressive party and I will campaign on that !
When I first scanned this the first thought was that it was a plea to break away officially from New Labour and properly create Scottish Labour pushing actual socialist principles but fighting to retain Scotland’s place in the Union.
It might even be proposing that Scot Labour form a separate grouping at Westminster to fight for different principles along the lines of what people in Scotland want.
To be frank, now I am just confused. If they took out the line about winning this battle for the UK they could be talking about ditching the leaders in Scotland and throwing in with LFI.
Alternatively asking for official Federal war footing?
Or maybe they are just attempting to run interference so that disillusioned Labour Voters will give them some more time.
Very strange passage and even stranger use of dissonant language.
No I think the record are suggesting that the UK real labour party should, in Scotland, give permission for Lamont to use her initiate and pledge to the Scottish electorate all sorts of red socialist stuff.
If it is successful then bingo job done a NO. The promises would melt away for the UKGE and if UK Labour lost then Lamont says ” sorry the bad Tories won what can we do”. Scotland still in UK. Labour if they win small amount of jam thinly spread if we are lucky!
Labour must grit its teeth and deceive the Scottish public
They’ve been deceiving the Scottish public for decades – not through gritted teeth but with a smug smirk.
If we vote Yes there is going to be something of a bun fight for leadership and senior posts in a Scottish Labour Party. I might be wrong but I think a number of MPs not least Brown and Darling might consider themselves better qualified than Johann. 2016 might be too soon for that sort of internal readjustment not to mention shock at losing the referendum. That said it isn’t easy to keep politicians from the trough and I am sure they would set about it with vigour.
Was it just me or did Danny Alexander look a bit scary on Newsnight? It was like invasion of the body snatchers. What have the Tories done with the real Danny Alexander?
@DRD Woodward
In my view LFI currently believe that their best chance of persuading Labour supporters of the positive case for Independence is by doing it within the Labour party. Their leaders are after all labour party members and they have the backing of significant former leaders.
They disagree with the London view that Labour should be automatically against Yes and believe that in Scotland, Independence should have been debated and every member should have had a vote.
Of course it can and may become a breakaway party in the future but maybe their strategy is right for now which means working within the Labour party.
@FlowerOfScotland …. tell you friends to look at http://www.scottishdemocraticalliance.com/ ( right of centre ).
Sorry. Initiate should be initiative
@HandandShrimp
I cannot see either Brown or Darling standing for Holyrood after a Yes vote. I think both would rather retire than take part in an independent Scottish Parliament. For their entire careers they have stood as Unionists.
@DRD Woodward
Thanks but no thanks , they are not interested in an anti EU Party .
“@Croompenstein – there’s a shiver running round the Labour Party in Scotland looking for a spine…..”
Or there’s an electron running round the Labour Party in Scotland looking for a neuron to fire on?
“Awfurfuksake.
Sommat else thats stupit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-25917819
I didn’t know that the Americans, Mexicans, Polish and Romanians were Nazis…”
And the very nice Michaela Strachan.
I’m prepared to put money on my post at 9:01.
“Wow! Jackson Carlaw jumps the shark!”
Just gave me a mental picture of a cartoon where a famous stunt motorbike star ( “Evil ‘K’n’Evil”?) sponsored by ‘MSM’ is revving up (or perhaps in mid flight) on a new record ramp jump attempt over an array of sharks.
What really sickens me is that there must be more Labour mp’s (other than LFI) who know that they want to and should be supporting Yes. I cant beleive that there’s not some out there? They must surely have something banging away in their gut? But instead they are, deliberately and consciously, choosing the Labour party OVER Scotland. They are turning a blind eye to all the lies and deceit that are intended to keep Scotland in Westminsters power.
What planet are these people on? What happened to them? Power? Greed? What is inducing them to sell their souls?
I will never, ever understand how they can do that and look at themselves, honestly, ever again. Surely their true heart cant possibly be in what they are trying to do to their own country and own people? The deceit is unpardonable and they may think they’ll get away with it but they wont. Ever.
Oh no. Forgot the double spaces. Sorry Rev
I think that a lot of votes in the referendum from traditional Labour voters will depend on how confident they are that Labour stands a chance of winning the next Westminster election.
Rev Stu, I’m sure you’ve already thought about this, but why not a question on your next poll for Labour voters to answer about who they THINK will win the next election in addition to the usual question about who they INTEND to vote for?
Perhaps the Record sees the writing on the wall and is urging the Labour Party in Scotland (or some members thereof) to mount a coup d’état and declare UDI from Westminster?
Maybe not, just the resuscitation of an old lie in order to con the voters…
Is Johan Lamont still even around? Haven’t heard of her for weeks.
Just another false (red jam) flag operation from Better Together. Tastes rank, just like all their other jam. Best to give it a miss.
I wrote to Katy Clark a couple of weeks ago, suggesting she might want to consider joining LFI.
It’s the only time she hasn’t replied. Fair enough, but I hope she and colleagues are having a good think about it.
Remember Sir Alex Douglas Homes promise of further devolution 1979.We all saw how that ended.Unless further devolution is written in stone and signed up too, by all UK party’s.
BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID!
Margaret Currans body language is the best thing about that photie. Can quite see they two sharing a wee bottle of Rose’ anytime soon.
@Bubbles – Hope you’re right, I have been urging them to do just that for a while now. Would put the matter beyond all doubt imho.