Wings Over Scotland

The Scotsman reports today the less-than-astonishing news that the Orange Order plans to take the (Ulster Says) No side in the independence debate, lining up with such other lovely “Better Together” bedfellows as the BNP, National Front and UKIP in a coalition of all the most likeable aspects of Britishness.

In the light of this exciting and important development, we couldn’t help but wonder how their last attempt at influencing Scottish politics had gone.

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An alert reader pointed us this morning to an Ipsos Mori poll from last week that seemed to escape most of the media’s attention. As well as mirroring numerous recent surveys showing Labour’s lead over the Conservatives collapsing, it asked a rather more specific question.

Long-time readers may recall a piece this site wrote back in September 2012 about the “Kinnock Factor”, a well-documented phenomenon in British politics by which the electorate, when it comes to the crunch of a general election, invariably rejects parties whose leaders it doesn’t like – even if the party itself is well ahead in the polls.

And in that context, Ipsos had nothing but bad news for Ed Miliband.

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Here’s some more from Johann Lamont’s recent BBC interview (18m 20s).

BRIAN TAYLOR: Will a Labour government repeal the bedroom tax?

JOHANN LAMONT: Well, what we’ve been very clear about is that this is, em, deeply damaging to very many families. I’ve had examples of young people with learning disabilities living in supported accommodation who are now paying more. That is simply unacceptable.

As answers go we suppose it’s not exactly “Yes” or “No”, but it definitely sounds like we’ve got a firm and specific commitment coming up any second now, readers!

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Johann Lamont, interviewed on the BBC last weekend:

“You can understand the desirability of people having access to medicines, but everybody knows there are tough choices being made now.” (10m 19s)

That’s the “leader of the Labour Party in Scotland”, there, seemingly equivocal on the principle of “people having access to medicines”. Nye Bevin must be proud.

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It would appear that we’ve reached the point where the anti-independence campaign has officially run out of arguments, and is being forced to reissue its Greatest Hits.

The headline on the left is from January 2012, the one on the right is yesterday’s.

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There’s something different about one of these pictures of all the big-name speakers at the Scottish Labour conference, but we can’t quite seem to put our finger on it.

Can you help, readers?

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We have a fun task for Scottish Labour’s exciting new “Truth Team”, which made its debut last week. Clearly it would be rather unseemly to go around proclaiming yourself an arbiter of truth if there was a great big lie at the heart of your very existence, so hopefully someone on the Team will be able to explain the curious and seemingly untrue assertion that still heads up Scottish Labour’s own Twitter account.

We highlighted it yesterday for fun, but it’s worth serious examination too.

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We’ve had a look at this troubling issue before.

Click the image to solve the problem.

In a shock development surprising absolutely nobody on Earth, the Sunday Times today reports that “Scottish Labour plans to hand the Scottish parliament full control over income tax are expected to be shelved after a backlash from some of the party’s most senior figures.”

The writing’s been on the wall for Johann Lamont’s policy brainwave all weekend, as Labour MPs and MSPs – even those who were actually members of the devolution commission which came up with the proposal – queued up on TV to conspicuously NOT give their backing to the idea of devolving control of income tax to Holyrood. You can see the rest of the Times piece below.

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Here’s Edinburgh MP Alistair Darling telling the Scottish Labour conference (around 1h 19m 40s) that in addition to an independent Scotland not being able to use the Euro or Sterling, it wouldn’t be able to have its own currency either.

“Every time your granny or your uncle or your auntie came up here they’d have to get currency in order to come and visit you.”

Now, we know the former Chancellor is careful with his pennies (if not so much with ours), but when our relatives come to see us, we don’t charge for bed and breakfast.

We gather a few refreshments are usually taken at party conferences, so given that Eddie Barnes of the Scotsman is in Inverness covering the Scottish Labour gathering, perhaps a hangover explains his rather confused piece for Scotland on Sunday today.

There are three particularly notable passages, which we’ll take you through quickly here so you don’t have to go and read them on the paper’s website.

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