This is an extract from this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4 (starts about 2h 5m in), in which James Naughtie expresses an unusually frank and forthright opinion on Jim Murphy’s claim about the biggest party forming the government.
We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.
Because we’ve been thinking about it carefully, and as the biggest party always forms the government of the UK – like it or not, that’s a simple fact – there’s only one way to protect Scotland’s interests for the next five years. Independence can wait.
Today of all days, you know it makes sense.
Like some sort of out-of-control, unstoppable lying machine, Scottish Labour keep telling the electorate that the party with the most seats in a hung parliament is the one that forms the government, and that the only way to prevent the Conservatives from returning to power is for Labour to be the biggest party.
They’ve been saying it for weeks. They say it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, almost as if it’s all they’ve got.
The trouble is that an awful lot of people seem to disagree with them.
Credit is due to those of the Scottish media who have taken up this site’s challenge to ask Labour the key question of the 2015 election debate in Scotland – “Are Labour prepared to form a government if they’re not the largest party in a hung parliament?”
(Because if the answer is yes then Labour’s entire Scottish election strategy – “Vote SNP get Tories!” – crumbles to dust, and if it’s no then Labour is saying that it’d be prepared to abandon not just Scotland but the whole UK to another five years of Conservative government purely out of spite against the SNP.)
Three of the party’s elected representatives have now been asked the question on air – James Kelly MSP by John Mackay of Scotland Tonight a week ago, branch office leader Jim Murphy by BBC Scotland’s Gary Robertson yesterday, and the shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran last night (below), again by STV’s John Mackay.
As you can see, Scotland’s voters still await an answer. But on this page we’ll keep track of all the swerves, evasions and dodges until we get one, if we ever do.
Because we took a short break over the weekend, we sadly missed Labour’s solemn commemorations of the 1979 confidence vote, and as a result we don’t know whether anyone actually did don a black armband or lay a wreath to remember the miners that Labour didn’t support when they went on strike a few years later.
But an alert reader did find this for us.
It’s an extract from BBC reporter John Sergeant’s book “Maggie: Margaret Thatcher – Her Fatal Legacy” and you can read more of it below.
We’re going to compile all of these onto a single page soon, because as you can see, Scottish Labour just can’t seem to stop telling this lie.
Today’s expert saying “Does it, aye?” (and the latest in a long and distinguished line) is Peter Riddell from the Institute For Government, speaking on Radio 4’s “World At One” this afternoon (from 35m).
Listeners to today’s “Good Morning Scotland” were treated (from 2h 7m at that link) to a consummate masterclass in the art of evasion from Labour’s Scottish branch-office manager Jim Murphy. The bulk of a 13-minute segment was devoted to Murphy’s claim that a Labour vote in this May’s general election would bring about an end to foodbanks in Scotland, although the pledge steadily degraded as interviewer Gary Robertson pressed fruitlessly for detail.
(Murphy refused to say if or when any money generated by a Labour UK government would be given to the Scottish Government, wouldn’t be drawn on when the need for foodbanks would be eradicated, shot down a straw man on benefit sanctions and eventually conceded that in fact there would always be foodbanks, by way of a brief diversion to “I do a lot of work for charity but I don’t like to talk about it”.)
Towards the end, though, Robertson asked Murphy the question Scottish Labour really don’t want to answer, and this time he almost landed a knockout blow.
See you Monday, readers.
From an editorial leader in this week’s London Evening Standard:
His price: an end to austerity and to Trident.
Labour leader Ed Miliband has come out fighting against the threat.“
Seems to sum it up pretty well.
As readers will know, when professional broadcast journalists can’t or won’t do their jobs properly, we’re not above jumping in ourselves.
So when someone tweeted to tell us that Jim Murphy had just started a phone-in on London station LBC, it seemed an ideal opportunity to quickly ring up and try directly asking him the question that Scottish Labour really, really don’t want to answer.
Here’s what happened.
An alert reader pointed us to this edition of Newsnight we’d missed earlier this month, featuring the renowned Conservative Party chairman and liar Grant Shapps MP.
The population of the UK, according to the 2011 census, is 63,128,000. Shapps just told us he only cares about 11,200 of them (or 0.018%), because apparently those are all the votes the Tories need to turn round to secure an absolute majority in May’s general election. We very much doubt that any of the 23 target constituences he mentions, across which the required 11,200 votes are spread, are in Scotland.
And that, readers, is what the Tories (and, for that matter, Labour) really think of “the democratic will of the British people”. You may want to keep it in mind when you vote.
We’ve just had a fascinating email from Scottish Labour forwarded to us, from a concerned reader who’d written to them to ask if Labour would really refuse to form a government if they weren’t the largest party. The answer might not be the one anyone who’s seen the party’s election literature (below) would be expecting.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
