Wings Over Scotland

The former Liberal Democrat MP (and also the party’s former Scottish leader, and until just a few weeks ago its UK deputy leader) Sir Malcolm Bruce gave an extraordinary interview to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about Alistair Carmichael.

The whole thing can be heard here, but the short passage below stood out even in the context of a breathless, furious, scattergun performance that sounded like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 26 May 2015)
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We’re sure readers will be greatly comforted by the fact that it’s okay for the Secretary of State for Scotland to tell a “brazen lie”, on the grounds that everyone else in the Houses Of Parliament is a liar too, and by the notion that a government minister who’s caught lying to the nation in order to undermine the democratically-elected leader of Scotland is an offence for which the culprit can simply decide their own punishment.

We thought you should hear this extraordinary interview with Alistair Carmicheal from BBC Radio Orkney this morning.

(Around Orkney, BBC Radio Orkney, 25 May 2015)
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The former Scottish Secretary’s excuse for lying on air is a feeble, Hothersall-esque semantic dodge, and his excuse for not resigning is that his years of service as a constituency MP ought to outweigh the fact that a UK government minister abused his office and lied to the public in order to undermine the democratically-elected leader of Scotland and cling on to his own job.

Having now heard the case for the defence, readers can reach their own verdicts.

An awkward time for poor Kezia Dugdale on the radio this morning.

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 5 May 2015)
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We’ll just leave that there to help you out, Kez.

It’s come awfully late, but we’ve finally got an answer to a question people have been asking Jim Murphy since last December.

In an interview with the BBC’s Gary Robertson this morning, the Scottish Labour regional manager told listeners that should he win the East Renfrewshire seat in next month’s election, he’d stay in the job for the full five-year term, but would also stand for election as a Holyrood MSP in 2016.

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 29 April 2015)
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And that raises more questions than it answers.

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Waking up bleary-eyed this morning at 6.45am, we reached over to switch on Good Morning Scotland, just in time for the news headlines round-up. This is what we heard:

(Good Morning Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland, 28 April 2015)
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We honestly thought in our semi-awake state we might have dreamed it.

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The BBC’s Robert Peston on yesterday’s Today programme. (About 2h 37m in.)

(Today, BBC Radio 4, 14 April 2015)
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Thank heavens that nice Mr Miliband’s going to stand up for austerity, eh?

As our veteran readers will know, Duncan Hothersall is a prominent Scottish Labour activist, occasional BBC and STV pundit, prospective Labour parliamentary candidate and editor of LabourHame, the party’s favoured blog in Scotland.

Earlier today we got an email from someone who wanted us to ask him a question.

Here’s how the conversation went.

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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.

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We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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