Wings Over Scotland

The Herald’s lead story this morning is a fascinating piece from the always-interesting Gerry Braiden. Under the headline “MSP poll plan may backfire”, it reveals:

“Labour’s new selection process for the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections is expected to see high-profile casualties, the return of anonymous MSPs, and bitter infighting among potential candidates.

The party will choose ­candidates it hopes will topple the SNP Government next time around in January, a full two-and-a-half years before the poll.”

It goes on to focus on the local tribal aspects of the decision, and the likelihood that it will strengthen the grip on their seats of some of the party’s “most inconspicuous elected representatives” (Braiden singles out Glasgow list MSPs Anne McTaggart and Hanzala Malik), but uncharacteristically misses what seems to us to be by far the most intriguing consequence of the move.

To find out what that is, we need to go back to a time and place in which many Glasgow Labour politicians will feel very much at home – 1940s Soviet Russia.

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A protest is taking place today from 3pm at 9 Scotland Street, Glasgow G5 8NB, the location of Anas Sarwar MP‘s constituency office. The purpose of the protest is to register people’s disapproval at Mr Sarwar’s failure to attend this week’s House of Commons division on a motion proposing to abolish the so-called “bedroom tax”, which was defeated by 26 votes and at which 47 Labour MPs didn’t turn up.

We urge any readers who are constituents of Mr Sarwar to go along, though we suspect that Mr Sarwar himself, true to his character, will elect to dodge this weekly surgery. But if he’s there, please don’t hurl abuse, jostle him or throw bricks. Instead, we’d be grateful if you could politely and calmly ask him two simple questions for us.

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The bit they always leave out is who it’s better for.

Click either image for the story.

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No.1: Stop.

Labour MPs have been largely conspicuous by their absence on social media today, just as they were at this Tuesday’s bedroom tax vote. With even the Scottish press belatedly picking up on their no-show, most have been keeping their heads down rather than trying to explain their (in)actions.

So kudos to the party’s culture-loving Airdrie & Shotts MP Pamela Nash, who bravely stood up, despite already having one massive bullet-hole in her foot, to take careful aim and have a blast with the other barrel.

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We’ve rather neglected the Crybaby Nation meme for a while. But as it approaches a year since the last time we wrote about it, perhaps it’s due for a revival.

Because it’s extra-specially dismal to see grown adults whimpering and whining like primary-school children in a playground when the Scottish press has spent most of the preceding weeks excitably hyping them as belligerent, aggressive “bruisers”.

Because in what appears to be part of a co-ordinated campaign of petted-lip clyping to teacher from the No camp, the latest middle-aged professional politician boo-hooing about “bullies” all over our newspapers and screens about people being mean to him is the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael.

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Because this is a real thing that really happened today.

If you’ve been affected by any issues raised in the independence debate, do write in.

From this morning’s Daily Record:

– Number of Scottish Lib Dems MPs who didn’t vote for an opposition motion: 11
– Number of Scottish Labour MPs who didn’t vote for their own motion: 10

– Number of UK Lib Dem MPs who didn’t vote for an opposition motion: 55
– Number of UK Labour MPs who didn’t vote for their own motion: 47

Where should we drop this delivery of stones for Torcuil Crichton’s glass house?

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Just for a little bit of fun, we thought we’d dig out how much money was claimed for accommodation last year by the 47 Labour MPs who couldn’t be bothered to turn up and vote to abolish the bedroom tax yesterday. (You can look up the data here.)

It was this much: £387,439.

That’s more than a third of a million pounds, paid by all of us, specifically for second homes so that MPs can be close to Parliament and attend votes there. It doesn’t include any of their other expenses. It only covers those 47 Labour MPs.

It’s an average of £8,243 each. It would pay the bedroom tax for a year for 532 people.

See if you can guess which piggy was the greediest out of the 47.

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So all the names are in, and we now know that 47 Labour MPs didn’t bother turning up in the Commons yesterday to vote for the party’s motion to repeal the bedroom tax, which was defeated by just 26 votes. There’s a full list at the end of this article.

Today Labour’s officers and apologists are all over Twitter trying to justify the craven failure of the people’s tribunes to appear, on the grounds that they’d simply “paired” with Tory MPs who also wanted to stay at home scratching their arses and filling out expenses forms for their heating bills instead of going to work and doing their jobs.

Which would be fine, except for one thing.

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So, there was another vote in the House of Commons today on the bedroom tax. Labour brought forward a motion to abolish it, having abstained from the one the SNP and Plaid Cymru filed back in February according to the Bain Principle.

With many Lib Dems abstaining this time, the motion failed by just 26 votes. Dozens* of Labour MPs had failed to turn up to support the motion, including 10 (ie 25%) of the party’s Scottish MPs – Gordon Brown, Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander, Pamela Nash and Ann McKechin among them.

Someone else didn’t make it either. Can you guess who, readers?

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When an alert reader pointed us to a story yesterday in the comments, we were too busy to get round to covering it and now all the mainstream media has picked it up and we’re behind the times. But having looked at the media’s reporting of it, we couldn’t help noticing something strange.

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These pranksters have gone too far with our beloved cultural icons.

(Story, in case you missed it.)